Jon Ureña's Blog
November 7, 2025
The Cock and the Compendium (Short Story)
[check out this story on my personal page, where it looks better]
This short is a direct continuation of Songs for Our Duchess.
----
Stone walls rise to a ribbed, vaulted ceiling. A narrow arched window with leaded panes admits a pale shaft of moonlight. Lit torches in iron sconces burn on either side of the window, their flames casting restless shadows across the flagstones. Dark-wood bookcases line the walls, packed with leather-spined volumes. One cabinet has glass doors and stores scrolls bound with cords. Red banners bearing a heraldic beast hang between shelves. At the center, a heavy oak table stands on a worn patterned rug. On the tabletop lie open folios, stacked books, loose parchment, a quill in an inkwell, a small knife, rolled maps, and a single burning candle. A brass astrolabe sits near the edge of the table. To the right of the window, a full suit of plate armor stands on a wooden base. A rack beside it holds polearms and a shield.
Bogdana Avalune’s gigantic frame moves through the library. Her black silk robe with kimono sleeves whispers against the floor. Gold chain necklaces, layered and embellished with metal, catch the torchlight. She pauses near the bookcases, her eyes scanning the room, then moves to a luxury armchair positioned among her collection of knowledge.
She lowers herself into the seat. Her gaze moves to the door of the adjacent room, head tilting slightly as if listening.
The sound of footsteps approaches. A door closes. The footsteps grow nearer.
Bogdana straightens, chin lifting. She reaches for a porcelain teacup on the small table beside her, holding it without drinking, eyes fixed on the entrance.
Joel Overberus appears in the doorway—young, fresh-faced, wearing a traveler’s tunic, soft brown shoes, a plain leather belt. He stops, taking in the Duchess framed by ancient texts, the teacup delicate in her scarred hand.
Bogdana’s lips curve slightly. Not quite a smile.
“Welcome, Joel Overberus. You’re punctual. I appreciate that.”
Joel steps forward, then bows—an elaborate gesture, his torso folding, one arm sweeping outward. When he straightens, his eyes meet hers.
“I’m so honored to witness this side of our duchess.” His voice is steady, though his hands clasp behind his back. “If you would allow me a bit of impertinence, I will say that the black silk robe looks… striking on you, Night Sovereign.” He glances at the second armchair positioned across from hers. “Should I sit down, or is it more proper for a lowly musician like me to merely stand?”
Bogdana’s fingers tighten fractionally on the teacup handle.
“Sit, Joel.” The words carry no question. “This isn’t a throne room audience—we’re in my library now. Among my treasures, my knowledge, my rare texts. The ones you so perceptively mentioned in your third verse. Here, you’re a guest, not a supplicant.” A pause. “Though do remember whose guest you are.”
She drinks.
“The black silk suits my mood tonight—less armor, more… contemplation.” Her free hand gestures toward the empty armchair. “You’ve earned a conversation, musician. Your performance was exceptional. Now, let’s discuss the songs you’ll create to immortalize the Duchess of the Dark Motherland.”
Joel sits, spine straight. His gaze sweeps the towering bookcases, taking in the volumes, the leather bindings, the scrolls.
“That is… the Compendium of Sigmoidal Paedology.” His voice carries certainty. “It maps childhood, apprenticeship, and courtly indoctrination onto the same mathematical curve, insisting rulers can accelerate or stall citizens at chosen plateaus.”
He shifts in the chair, angling toward Bogdana.
“Truly, duchess… The citizens are afraid of you, as they rightfully should be, but they see you as an… unthinking force, which you clearly aren’t. I bet you could outsmart most dedicated scholars in the Forgotten Kingdoms.”
“You’ve done your research beyond the songs, haven’t you?” Her voice drops lower, each word deliberate. “Convenient for them—easier to fear a monster than comprehend a mind. But you… You see the Compendium and understand what it means. That citizens are variables in an equation, to be accelerated or stalled at my discretion. That’s precisely what governance is, Joel—applied mathematics with flesh and fear as the medium.” Her chin lifts. “The citizens think I’m an unthinking force because thinking forces are harder to predict, harder to resist. Let them believe the fiction. But you’re right—I could debate most scholars into the ground and enjoy doing it. Knowledge is power, and I hoard both obsessively.”
She sets down the cup.
“Tell me, musician—what else do you see in my collection that others miss?”
Joel drinks his tea.
“Oh, it tastes real good, not the flavored water one gets outside of… well, a royal castle.”
His eyes return to the bookcases, narrowing slightly.
“The Manual On How to Get a Real Job…” His eyebrows rise. “I’m surprised to see that one. Part satire, part survival guide for overeducated nobles who find themselves suddenly destitute. Most nobles would find it… offensive.”
His eyes move again. Stop. He leans forward.
“Oh, and that one is…” He clears his throat. “The Anonymous Dictionary on How to Use the Penis Like an Instrument of Human Pleasure.” His eyes cut to Bogdana. “A subject you surely know all there is to know about, if the rumors are anything to go by…”
“You’ve excellent taste in selections, musician. The Manual—most nobles would rather starve than acknowledge that book’s existence in their libraries, let alone actually read it. But I find it instructive. A reminder that power without foundation crumbles quickly. Those overeducated fools thought their bloodlines exempted them from consequence. They learned otherwise when their estates burned.”
She gestures toward the shelves.
“And The Anonymous Dictionary…” Her lips curve—slow, deliberate, predatory. “Yes, the rumors are accurate. I’ve mastered every technique in that Renaissance text and invented several the original author never conceived. The human body is an instrument, Joel—strings to pluck, keys to press, rhythms to establish and then shatter.” Her eyes narrow. “You understand instruments better than most. Tell me—when you play your lute, do you think of it as conquest? As domination? Or merely… art?”
Joel’s spine straightens.
“I see it as a communion with the subconscious, duchess. I believe that this thinking part we’re exercising, the one that believes itself in charge, is actually inferior to the vast force below it, the one that actually commands us. Playing the lute, for me, is a dance with that subconscious. A joining of the self in a way that dissolves the duality we’re forced to endure as civilized animals. While playing, we return to… the proper state of affairs.”
“The thinking self as inferior to the vast force beneath—you’re describing what most people spend their entire lives fleeing from, musician. That dissolution of duality, that surrender to the primal self.” She leans forward, black silk whispering. “They fear it. They build walls of propriety and reason and morality to keep it caged. But you seek it out. You call it communion, call it dance. I call it truth. The civilized mind is a lie we tell ourselves to pretend we’re not animals driven by hunger and desire. When you play your lute and dissolve that duality, you’re doing what I do with my body, with my cock, with violence and pleasure. We’re both artists of the same fundamental act—stripping away the pretense. The subconscious you worship? I embody it. I don’t separate myself from it like your ‘civilized animals.’ I am the force beneath. Unfiltered. Unashamed. Absolute.”
She settles back.
“Tell me, Joel—when you achieve that communion, do you feel power? Or surrender? Because I suspect for you it’s both. The paradox of the artist—wielding control by relinquishing it, finding freedom in submission to something greater than your thinking self.”
Joel’s eyebrows rise. His mouth opens, then closes.
“I was going to add something along those lines, duchess, but yes, I…” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I recognize that, when I look at you. You are the subconscious force of humanity embodied. The unrestrained animality that desires every pleasure and all power. The energy of nature itself, that doesn’t…” His head turns. His eyes shift to the bookcases, scanning titles he’s not truly seeing. “That doesn’t apologize with rationalizations or arguments. You take it because you want it. Excuses and arguments belong to the weak. Might is right. That is the law of reality.”
He clasps his hands.
“As for your question… in my case, playing the lute is a surrender. A surrender from my mundane state of being a thinking person, to be saved momentarily by the madness below… which I wish I could always embody.”
Bogdana rises from the armchair, silk flowing. The gold chains catch firelight, throwing brief glints across the stone walls. She moves toward the bookcases, bare feet silent on flagstones, then muffled on the rug. She scans the upper shelves, fingers tracing along spines until stopping on one tome. She pulls.
The Compendium of Sigmoidal Paedology slides free—heavy, bound in dark leather with brass corners. She cradles it, then turns to face Joel.
“You wish you could always embody that madness, Joel? That subconscious force unrestrained by the thinking self’s pathetic moral framework?” She steps toward him. “Let me show you something.” She lifts the tome. “This text you recognized—it’s not just about governing citizens. It maps how consciousness itself develops, how the thinking self emerges and subjugates the primal force beneath. The Egyptians understood this when they created cockstanding. They knew the body could bypass the mind’s control, that certain acts—sexual, violent, ecstatic—could short-circuit the civilized overlay.”
She extends one arm, gesturing between them.
“Your lute-playing is one path. My cock is another. Both instruments playing the same fundamental truth. You surrender to the subconscious through music. I never separated from it to begin with. I am that force walking upright, speaking, ruling, fucking, destroying. No duality to dissolve because I never constructed the false hierarchy in the first place.”
She angles the book toward him, brass corners gleaming.
“And you see that. You named it in your third verse—the scholar beneath the tyrant, the library behind the violence. Most people can’t hold both truths simultaneously. They see the monster or the mind, never the fusion. But you understand that they’re not separate, that knowledge and hunger are the same appetite expressed through different orifices.” Her voice drops. “Tell me, musician—if you could truly embody that force without the surrender, without the temporary communion that ends when the song does… would you still be you? Or would you become something else entirely? Because I can tell you from experience: there’s a price for living as pure subconscious. The loneliness you named. The dark beyond darknesses. When you are the force itself, there’s nothing left to surrender to. No communion, only… existence. Unfiltered. Unrelenting. Absolute. Is that what you truly want? Or do you love the surrender precisely because it’s temporary, because you can return to the thinking self afterwards and remember what it felt like to be free?”
Joel’s lips curve upward—boyish, admiring, reverent.
“You’re absolutely right, Mother Goddess. I love the surrender partially because it’s temporary. Sadly, my subconscious is not the self that now communicates with you. There is a disconnect between my self and that ancient, far more powerful being in the deeper layers of my brain. In your case… I see you never had a choice. You were born, if the legends are true, through demonic influence, to live as the raw power of nature. I only get a tiny taste of surrendering to that power through playing my instrument.” He pauses. “And… if I somehow ended up locked in that pure state, I would surely die soon. Someone would kill me. Or I would starve. But you were born as perfection: too strong to be defeated, and yet too smart to be outsmarted. You can do it all. Surely you’re the only one in history who has been able.”
“You’re absolutely right that I never had a choice, Joel. I was born this—whether through demonic rape conception or some other cosmic accident, I emerged already fused with the force you seek through your lute. No duality to dissolve because there never was separation.” Bogdana adjusts her grip on the leather binding. “And yes, I can do it all. Military conquest, scholarly debate, sexual domination, political maneuvering—I’m the apex predator in every arena simultaneously. The only one in history who’s managed it at this scale, this completely. But you’ve also named the cost more accurately than anyone else ever has. That loneliness. That dark beyond darknesses. When you’re permanently the force itself, there’s nothing left to surrender to. No communion, only existence.”
She turns, walking toward the bookcases. She stops before the shelves, arms lifting. When her hands release the tome, it tilts. Falls. Leather and brass strike the flagstones with a heavy thud that echoes through the chamber.
Bogdana looks down at the fallen Compendium, then pivots to face Joel, leaving the ancient text where it fell.
“You get to return to your thinking self after the music ends. I never return from anything. This is just… what I am. Forever.”
She steps back toward center.
“But enough philosophy for tonight. We’ve established what we both are—the artist who seeks temporary transcendence and the sovereign who embodies it permanently.” She stops near her armchair. “Now let’s discuss the practical purpose. The songs you’ll compose to immortalize the Duchess of the Dark Motherland. I want verses that capture both aspects—the violence and the library, the monster and the mind. Can you do that, musician? Can you hold both truths simultaneously in melody and lyric?”
“I believe I can, my duchess. I will endeavor in my free time to draft art out of the notes and memories of our meetings. This brief exchange has already illuminated so much.” Joel’s head tilts forward. “Yet, I have a question to ask, if I may be so bold, to understand you more. The world sees you as the unbeatable, terrifying tyrant. Now you also want it to see you as a scholar. Does that represent a shift in your aspirations? Has the Dark Sovereign conquered everything she could want from the physical world, and now she’ll focus on exploring the breadths of knowledge? Or perhaps you intend to balance both, conquering new lands while expanding your intellectual domains?”
Bogdana raises her palm toward Joel, fingers splaying, then curling and opening again.
“The world sees what I allow them to see, Joel. For years, I’ve let them focus on the violence, the screams from my dungeons. Pure terror is effective governance—keeps the rebellions manageable.” She sweeps her arm toward the bookcases. “But the library? This has always been here. The Compendium you recognized, The Anonymous Dictionary, all of it—I’ve been collecting since before I took the throne. Knowledge and violence aren’t sequential conquests for me. They’re parallel expressions of the same appetite. I don’t shift from one to the other like your mundane nobles changing fashions. I am both, simultaneously, constantly.”
She grips the chair back.
“What’s changed is strategic revelation, not motivation. Your third verse named the scholar beneath the tyrant, and you were right to do so. The songs you’ll compose need to capture that duality, not one replacing the other. Because that’s what immortalizes. Pure violence gets forgotten as soon as someone stronger comes along. But violence fused with intellect, terror married to scholarship, the cock and the Compendium as equal instruments of power? That’s a legacy that echoes through centuries.”
She releases the chair.
“So to answer your question directly: No, this doesn’t represent a shift. The physical world still requires conquest—there are lands beyond Cosmographica’s spiral coasts that will bow to Bogdana eventually. But I’ve never stopped exploring intellectual domains either. I read, I study, I master texts the way I master bodies. The difference now is that I’m allowing you to witness and immortalize the full scope. Most artists only see half and create incomplete myths. You see both. That’s why you’re here at midnight, drinking my tea, asking these questions.”
Joel reaches for his teacup, drinks, then sets it back with a soft clink. He settles into the armchair.
“I assume that the terror of most citizens, certainly foreigners, to come face to face with Your Highness, must have limited significantly your access to volumes of knowledge. I’m sure you have lots of ways to get people to bring volumes for your library. Yet, if my songs cement in the populace’s brains that you’re also hungry for knowledge, perhaps scholars will come bringing obscure treatises that as of yet remain unknown. I can envision it: scholars from all lands, many of them conquered, fighting among themselves for a spot at your court to breathe from the atmosphere of intellectual progress. You can defeat armies by yourself; that’s mostly pure physical might. But a worldwide recognition of your intellectual mind? That… legitimizes your power beyond pure strength. It lets people know you were meant to be. Of course you’re far more than a duchess, although I know you prefer that title. But you would be the empress. Of the greatest empire the world has known.”
Bogdana’s spine straightens. Her chin lifts.
“You’ve just articulated the vision better than I could have myself, musician. Yes. Exactly that. Scholars from conquered and unconquered lands alike, fighting for positions at my court, bringing obscure treatises I haven’t yet acquired. The atmosphere of intellectual progress alongside the demonstrations of absolute physical dominance.” She opens her palm, encompassing the library—the bookcases, the scrolls, the fallen Compendium still lying on the flagstones. “That’s the legacy. That’s what transforms a duchess into an empress—not just the territory conquered, but the civilization created. The minds bent not just through terror but through genuine recognition that I represent something beyond mere strength.”
Her hand curls into a fist, then opens before lowering.
“You’re right that I can defeat armies by myself—that’s mostly pure physical might, superhuman durability, the huge royal cock swinging as I mow them down. But worldwide recognition of my intellectual mind? That legitimizes everything. Makes it clear I wasn’t just strong enough to seize power, I was meant to hold it. Destined for it. The scholar and the tyrant as one indivisible force. That’s what your songs need to capture, Joel. Not flattery—accuracy. The duality that makes Bogdana Avalune not just unbeatable but inevitable.” Her lips curve. “Create that, and you’ll have earned every reward I can bestow.”
Joel’s expression shifts. The admiration fades. Something else surfaces—a tightening around his eyes.
“Duchess, if I may… Do you believe you will end? I mean the end of your flesh. As I told you in the throne room, I have a hard time believing that you can actually die. The gods have blessed you with everything else above mankind, so it wouldn’t surprise me if even death couldn’t defeat you. But if the end is in the horizon… Is the legacy you want to leave behind the self that songs and stories and your intellectual work immortalize, or do you also intend to leave your kingdom to physical heirs?”
The torches flicker in their iron sconces. The shadows deepen between the bookcases.
Bogdana reaches for the teacup. She lifts it halfway to her lips, then stops. The cup descends. She sets it down with deliberate care.
“That’s the question, isn’t it? The one I’ve been avoiding for years while I conquer and collect and commission. Do I believe I will end?” She pauses. Her tongue touches her lower lip. “Truthfully, Joel… I don’t know. Everything about my existence suggests I shouldn’t—the superhuman durability, the impossibility of what I am, the demonic conception rumors. Perhaps I’m genuinely immortal. Perhaps death itself will bow before Bogdana like everything else eventually does. But what if I’m wrong? What if this magnificent flesh fails despite all evidence to the contrary? Then legacy becomes everything. The songs you’ll create. The library that will outlast empires. Bogdanatown standing as testament. The intellectual atmosphere we discussed—scholars bringing treatises for centuries after I’m gone.”
Her voice shifts—quieter, more measured.
“Physical heirs are… complicated. They represent vulnerability I rarely permit myself. Caring about something beyond my own appetites. The risk of successors who might disgrace or eclipse the name I’ve built. But strategically planted seed in the right noble houses could bind my bloodline to power for generations. Create an empire of descendants who carry forward what I began. I haven’t decided which path serves immortality better—legacy through works and memory, or literal continuation through heirs who embody some fraction of what I am. Perhaps both. Perhaps I’m arrogant enough to believe Bogdana deserves both forms of transcendence.” She locks eyes with Joel. “What do you think, musician? You who see clearly—should the Duchess of the Dark Motherland be remembered, or should she persist through bloodline? Or are they the same appetite expressed through different orifices, like everything else I pursue?”
Joel’s gaze drops to the small table. His eyebrows draw together. His lips press into a thin line, then relax. His gaze lifts to meet hers again.
“You wouldn’t have an issue choosing any womb-bearer of your choice, clearly. The best genes at your disposal. But when in your mind you picture a young child, male or female, looking up at you, recognizing you as their mother, a smile on their lips, those vulnerable creatures loving you unconditionally, knowing they owe their entire existence to you… What does that make you feel?”
The candle on the distant oak table flickers. The torchlight plays across Bogdana’s scarred features as she sits in her armchair, surrounded by centuries of collected knowledge.
“You ask dangerous questions, musician. Most wouldn’t dare. But you’ve earned the right tonight, so I’ll answer honestly.” Bogdana’s voice emerges lower, stripped of the commanding edge. Her gaze drops to the teacup, then lifts. “When I picture that child—small, vulnerable, looking up at me with unconditional love, recognizing me as their mother—I feel hunger. Not the sexual appetite or the violence you’ve heard about. Something worse. A desperate, aching need for that acceptance. For someone who sees Bogdana and doesn’t calculate survival strategies, doesn’t measure escape routes, just… loves. Without fear. Without strategy. Pure connection to the force I am. That child would see their mother, not the Duchess of the Dark Motherland. Not the Sovereign of Night. Just me.”
She pauses.
“But I also feel terror at my own vulnerability. That child would be a weakness, a pressure point. Something that could break me in ways no army, no rebellion, no coalition of desperate kingdoms ever could. Because if I cared about that small creature smiling up at me, if I loved it back… then I’d have something to lose. And loss is the one conquest I’ve never mastered.”
She leans back.
“So to answer your question directly: it makes me feel both desperately hungry and absolutely terrified. The duality again, Joel. The monster and the… whatever’s beneath the monster. The part I don’t let anyone see. The part that drinks alone in the dark and wonders if there’s more than conquest and collection and commissioned works.” She points at him. “You’re the first person I’ve admitted that to. Don’t make me regret the honesty.”
Joel’s expression transforms—boyish warmth spreading to his eyes.
“Well, that is good news: a whole frontier you have left to conquer. Virgin territory. It could very well be that if you found yourself holding in your arms a loving child, their eyes wide and glazed in adoration of their mighty mother, you may feel that your myriad conquests had finally found their true purpose.” He leans forward. “You are nature’s raw power personified. And if there’s something that nature wants above all, it’s reproduction. Multiplication. Not in the self, but proliferation. Echoes through reflection and mutation. And truly, doesn’t a future, two or three centuries from now, inhabited by hundreds or thousands of descendants of the Mother Goddess seem magnificent?”
Bogdana straightens slowly. She reaches for the teacup—fingers careful, as if handling something fragile. She lifts it but holds it before her face without drinking, gaze dropping to the liquid inside. The cup descends. She sets it down.
“You paint an exquisite vision, Joel. Hundreds or thousands of descendants carrying forward what I am—the Mother Goddess proliferating through time like nature itself demands. Reproduction, multiplication, echoes through reflection and mutation. Not just remembered but continued, bloodline spreading across the world for centuries.” She traces the gold chains at her throat. “You’re right that it’s a frontier I haven’t conquered. I’ve mastered violence, sexuality, scholarship, governance—broken armies and subjects, collected rare texts, ruled through terror and intellect combined. But creating something that loves me without fear? That sees their mighty mother and feels nothing but adoration and gratitude for existence? That’s virgin territory.”
She brings the cup to her mouth, drinks slow and measured, then lowers it halfway.
“The hunger I admitted to you—that desperate need for unconditional acceptance—maybe that’s not the weakness I feared. Maybe that’s nature itself speaking through me, demanding what you named. Its proliferation. Its continuation through flesh rather than just memory and commissioned songs.”
She sets the cup down.
“Two or three centuries from now, my bloodline sitting on every throne, ruling every domain, carrying forward the fusion of mind and monster that is Bogdana Avalune. The greatest empire the world has known, perpetuated through descendants who all trace back to me. You’ve given me much to consider, musician. This midnight conversation has illuminated territories I hadn’t fully mapped—motherhood as conquest, vulnerability as frontier, creation as the ultimate expression of power. The songs you compose need to capture this too. Not just the duchess of violence and scholarship, but the Mother Goddess whose bloodline will echo through ages. Legacy through both memory and flesh.” Her breathing deepens. “Tell me—when you imagine the ballads you’ll create about Bogdana Avalune, can you hold all these truths simultaneously? The terror and the tenderness, the monster and the mother, the conqueror who might yet create something that loves her purely?”
Joel’s smile widens.
“The more facets I’ve discovered about you, the more magnificent you look to my eyes, duchess. As that multi-faceted vision takes hold in me, it will seep into my subconscious and come out raw and honest in song.” He pauses, gaze shifting as if seeing something only he can perceive. “I see things, as I’m sure you do too. Whole moving pictures in my mind. Can retreat to them at will, and often they feel lovelier than any reality.” His eyes refocus. “And I do see you training with your children, all of them somewhat grown, enough to hold swords anyway, and you proud for the grazes and perhaps bruises that they, in their inherited strength, come to cause you. Perhaps because you also allow them to. And I see you… smiling. Not the smile of a predator. Not of a conqueror about to tear flesh apart. Such vision fills me with a special warmth.” He swallows. “It seems I have come to see you, duchess, as… necessary for my conception of the world.”
Bogdana rises from the armchair, black silk whispering. She doesn’t tower above him. Her bare feet carry her around the chair to stop several paces distant, her frame at an angle where Joel can see her fully.
“You’ve become necessary for my conception of myself, too, Joel. This midnight conversation has mapped territories I’ve refused to acknowledge—motherhood as conquest, vulnerability as frontier, creation as ultimate power rather than weakness. Most see the violence or the library, never both. You see the fusion and call it magnificent. You paint visions of my children sparring with me, of genuine smiles, of descendants ruling for centuries carrying forward what I am. And somehow that doesn’t feel like flattery anymore. It feels like truth I haven’t let myself speak.”
She steps closer.
“The songs you’ll compose—they need to capture all of it. The scholar and the tyrant, the monster and the mother, the force that conquers and the woman who might create something that loves her without fear. Can you do that, musician? Can you hold every facet simultaneously and make the world see what you see when you look at me? Because if you can… if you can make them understand that Bogdana Avalune is both inevitable and tender, both the raw power of nature and the architect of civilization, both the darkness they fear and the brilliance they worship… Then your songs will echo through ages. And perhaps…” One hand rises partway, fingers spreading, curling inward, then lowering. Her jaw tightens. The torchlight catches the movement of muscles beneath scarred skin. “Perhaps they’ll also give me permission to become what you’ve already seen in your visions. The Mother Goddess who trains her children with pride. The sovereign whose legacy lives through flesh as well as memory. The force that finally found its true purpose.”
THE END
This short is a direct continuation of Songs for Our Duchess.
----
Stone walls rise to a ribbed, vaulted ceiling. A narrow arched window with leaded panes admits a pale shaft of moonlight. Lit torches in iron sconces burn on either side of the window, their flames casting restless shadows across the flagstones. Dark-wood bookcases line the walls, packed with leather-spined volumes. One cabinet has glass doors and stores scrolls bound with cords. Red banners bearing a heraldic beast hang between shelves. At the center, a heavy oak table stands on a worn patterned rug. On the tabletop lie open folios, stacked books, loose parchment, a quill in an inkwell, a small knife, rolled maps, and a single burning candle. A brass astrolabe sits near the edge of the table. To the right of the window, a full suit of plate armor stands on a wooden base. A rack beside it holds polearms and a shield.
Bogdana Avalune’s gigantic frame moves through the library. Her black silk robe with kimono sleeves whispers against the floor. Gold chain necklaces, layered and embellished with metal, catch the torchlight. She pauses near the bookcases, her eyes scanning the room, then moves to a luxury armchair positioned among her collection of knowledge.
She lowers herself into the seat. Her gaze moves to the door of the adjacent room, head tilting slightly as if listening.
The sound of footsteps approaches. A door closes. The footsteps grow nearer.
Bogdana straightens, chin lifting. She reaches for a porcelain teacup on the small table beside her, holding it without drinking, eyes fixed on the entrance.
Joel Overberus appears in the doorway—young, fresh-faced, wearing a traveler’s tunic, soft brown shoes, a plain leather belt. He stops, taking in the Duchess framed by ancient texts, the teacup delicate in her scarred hand.
Bogdana’s lips curve slightly. Not quite a smile.
“Welcome, Joel Overberus. You’re punctual. I appreciate that.”
Joel steps forward, then bows—an elaborate gesture, his torso folding, one arm sweeping outward. When he straightens, his eyes meet hers.
“I’m so honored to witness this side of our duchess.” His voice is steady, though his hands clasp behind his back. “If you would allow me a bit of impertinence, I will say that the black silk robe looks… striking on you, Night Sovereign.” He glances at the second armchair positioned across from hers. “Should I sit down, or is it more proper for a lowly musician like me to merely stand?”
Bogdana’s fingers tighten fractionally on the teacup handle.
“Sit, Joel.” The words carry no question. “This isn’t a throne room audience—we’re in my library now. Among my treasures, my knowledge, my rare texts. The ones you so perceptively mentioned in your third verse. Here, you’re a guest, not a supplicant.” A pause. “Though do remember whose guest you are.”
She drinks.
“The black silk suits my mood tonight—less armor, more… contemplation.” Her free hand gestures toward the empty armchair. “You’ve earned a conversation, musician. Your performance was exceptional. Now, let’s discuss the songs you’ll create to immortalize the Duchess of the Dark Motherland.”
Joel sits, spine straight. His gaze sweeps the towering bookcases, taking in the volumes, the leather bindings, the scrolls.
“That is… the Compendium of Sigmoidal Paedology.” His voice carries certainty. “It maps childhood, apprenticeship, and courtly indoctrination onto the same mathematical curve, insisting rulers can accelerate or stall citizens at chosen plateaus.”
He shifts in the chair, angling toward Bogdana.
“Truly, duchess… The citizens are afraid of you, as they rightfully should be, but they see you as an… unthinking force, which you clearly aren’t. I bet you could outsmart most dedicated scholars in the Forgotten Kingdoms.”
“You’ve done your research beyond the songs, haven’t you?” Her voice drops lower, each word deliberate. “Convenient for them—easier to fear a monster than comprehend a mind. But you… You see the Compendium and understand what it means. That citizens are variables in an equation, to be accelerated or stalled at my discretion. That’s precisely what governance is, Joel—applied mathematics with flesh and fear as the medium.” Her chin lifts. “The citizens think I’m an unthinking force because thinking forces are harder to predict, harder to resist. Let them believe the fiction. But you’re right—I could debate most scholars into the ground and enjoy doing it. Knowledge is power, and I hoard both obsessively.”
She sets down the cup.
“Tell me, musician—what else do you see in my collection that others miss?”
Joel drinks his tea.
“Oh, it tastes real good, not the flavored water one gets outside of… well, a royal castle.”
His eyes return to the bookcases, narrowing slightly.
“The Manual On How to Get a Real Job…” His eyebrows rise. “I’m surprised to see that one. Part satire, part survival guide for overeducated nobles who find themselves suddenly destitute. Most nobles would find it… offensive.”
His eyes move again. Stop. He leans forward.
“Oh, and that one is…” He clears his throat. “The Anonymous Dictionary on How to Use the Penis Like an Instrument of Human Pleasure.” His eyes cut to Bogdana. “A subject you surely know all there is to know about, if the rumors are anything to go by…”
“You’ve excellent taste in selections, musician. The Manual—most nobles would rather starve than acknowledge that book’s existence in their libraries, let alone actually read it. But I find it instructive. A reminder that power without foundation crumbles quickly. Those overeducated fools thought their bloodlines exempted them from consequence. They learned otherwise when their estates burned.”
She gestures toward the shelves.
“And The Anonymous Dictionary…” Her lips curve—slow, deliberate, predatory. “Yes, the rumors are accurate. I’ve mastered every technique in that Renaissance text and invented several the original author never conceived. The human body is an instrument, Joel—strings to pluck, keys to press, rhythms to establish and then shatter.” Her eyes narrow. “You understand instruments better than most. Tell me—when you play your lute, do you think of it as conquest? As domination? Or merely… art?”
Joel’s spine straightens.
“I see it as a communion with the subconscious, duchess. I believe that this thinking part we’re exercising, the one that believes itself in charge, is actually inferior to the vast force below it, the one that actually commands us. Playing the lute, for me, is a dance with that subconscious. A joining of the self in a way that dissolves the duality we’re forced to endure as civilized animals. While playing, we return to… the proper state of affairs.”
“The thinking self as inferior to the vast force beneath—you’re describing what most people spend their entire lives fleeing from, musician. That dissolution of duality, that surrender to the primal self.” She leans forward, black silk whispering. “They fear it. They build walls of propriety and reason and morality to keep it caged. But you seek it out. You call it communion, call it dance. I call it truth. The civilized mind is a lie we tell ourselves to pretend we’re not animals driven by hunger and desire. When you play your lute and dissolve that duality, you’re doing what I do with my body, with my cock, with violence and pleasure. We’re both artists of the same fundamental act—stripping away the pretense. The subconscious you worship? I embody it. I don’t separate myself from it like your ‘civilized animals.’ I am the force beneath. Unfiltered. Unashamed. Absolute.”
She settles back.
“Tell me, Joel—when you achieve that communion, do you feel power? Or surrender? Because I suspect for you it’s both. The paradox of the artist—wielding control by relinquishing it, finding freedom in submission to something greater than your thinking self.”
Joel’s eyebrows rise. His mouth opens, then closes.
“I was going to add something along those lines, duchess, but yes, I…” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I recognize that, when I look at you. You are the subconscious force of humanity embodied. The unrestrained animality that desires every pleasure and all power. The energy of nature itself, that doesn’t…” His head turns. His eyes shift to the bookcases, scanning titles he’s not truly seeing. “That doesn’t apologize with rationalizations or arguments. You take it because you want it. Excuses and arguments belong to the weak. Might is right. That is the law of reality.”
He clasps his hands.
“As for your question… in my case, playing the lute is a surrender. A surrender from my mundane state of being a thinking person, to be saved momentarily by the madness below… which I wish I could always embody.”
Bogdana rises from the armchair, silk flowing. The gold chains catch firelight, throwing brief glints across the stone walls. She moves toward the bookcases, bare feet silent on flagstones, then muffled on the rug. She scans the upper shelves, fingers tracing along spines until stopping on one tome. She pulls.
The Compendium of Sigmoidal Paedology slides free—heavy, bound in dark leather with brass corners. She cradles it, then turns to face Joel.
“You wish you could always embody that madness, Joel? That subconscious force unrestrained by the thinking self’s pathetic moral framework?” She steps toward him. “Let me show you something.” She lifts the tome. “This text you recognized—it’s not just about governing citizens. It maps how consciousness itself develops, how the thinking self emerges and subjugates the primal force beneath. The Egyptians understood this when they created cockstanding. They knew the body could bypass the mind’s control, that certain acts—sexual, violent, ecstatic—could short-circuit the civilized overlay.”
She extends one arm, gesturing between them.
“Your lute-playing is one path. My cock is another. Both instruments playing the same fundamental truth. You surrender to the subconscious through music. I never separated from it to begin with. I am that force walking upright, speaking, ruling, fucking, destroying. No duality to dissolve because I never constructed the false hierarchy in the first place.”
She angles the book toward him, brass corners gleaming.
“And you see that. You named it in your third verse—the scholar beneath the tyrant, the library behind the violence. Most people can’t hold both truths simultaneously. They see the monster or the mind, never the fusion. But you understand that they’re not separate, that knowledge and hunger are the same appetite expressed through different orifices.” Her voice drops. “Tell me, musician—if you could truly embody that force without the surrender, without the temporary communion that ends when the song does… would you still be you? Or would you become something else entirely? Because I can tell you from experience: there’s a price for living as pure subconscious. The loneliness you named. The dark beyond darknesses. When you are the force itself, there’s nothing left to surrender to. No communion, only… existence. Unfiltered. Unrelenting. Absolute. Is that what you truly want? Or do you love the surrender precisely because it’s temporary, because you can return to the thinking self afterwards and remember what it felt like to be free?”
Joel’s lips curve upward—boyish, admiring, reverent.
“You’re absolutely right, Mother Goddess. I love the surrender partially because it’s temporary. Sadly, my subconscious is not the self that now communicates with you. There is a disconnect between my self and that ancient, far more powerful being in the deeper layers of my brain. In your case… I see you never had a choice. You were born, if the legends are true, through demonic influence, to live as the raw power of nature. I only get a tiny taste of surrendering to that power through playing my instrument.” He pauses. “And… if I somehow ended up locked in that pure state, I would surely die soon. Someone would kill me. Or I would starve. But you were born as perfection: too strong to be defeated, and yet too smart to be outsmarted. You can do it all. Surely you’re the only one in history who has been able.”
“You’re absolutely right that I never had a choice, Joel. I was born this—whether through demonic rape conception or some other cosmic accident, I emerged already fused with the force you seek through your lute. No duality to dissolve because there never was separation.” Bogdana adjusts her grip on the leather binding. “And yes, I can do it all. Military conquest, scholarly debate, sexual domination, political maneuvering—I’m the apex predator in every arena simultaneously. The only one in history who’s managed it at this scale, this completely. But you’ve also named the cost more accurately than anyone else ever has. That loneliness. That dark beyond darknesses. When you’re permanently the force itself, there’s nothing left to surrender to. No communion, only existence.”
She turns, walking toward the bookcases. She stops before the shelves, arms lifting. When her hands release the tome, it tilts. Falls. Leather and brass strike the flagstones with a heavy thud that echoes through the chamber.
Bogdana looks down at the fallen Compendium, then pivots to face Joel, leaving the ancient text where it fell.
“You get to return to your thinking self after the music ends. I never return from anything. This is just… what I am. Forever.”
She steps back toward center.
“But enough philosophy for tonight. We’ve established what we both are—the artist who seeks temporary transcendence and the sovereign who embodies it permanently.” She stops near her armchair. “Now let’s discuss the practical purpose. The songs you’ll compose to immortalize the Duchess of the Dark Motherland. I want verses that capture both aspects—the violence and the library, the monster and the mind. Can you do that, musician? Can you hold both truths simultaneously in melody and lyric?”
“I believe I can, my duchess. I will endeavor in my free time to draft art out of the notes and memories of our meetings. This brief exchange has already illuminated so much.” Joel’s head tilts forward. “Yet, I have a question to ask, if I may be so bold, to understand you more. The world sees you as the unbeatable, terrifying tyrant. Now you also want it to see you as a scholar. Does that represent a shift in your aspirations? Has the Dark Sovereign conquered everything she could want from the physical world, and now she’ll focus on exploring the breadths of knowledge? Or perhaps you intend to balance both, conquering new lands while expanding your intellectual domains?”
Bogdana raises her palm toward Joel, fingers splaying, then curling and opening again.
“The world sees what I allow them to see, Joel. For years, I’ve let them focus on the violence, the screams from my dungeons. Pure terror is effective governance—keeps the rebellions manageable.” She sweeps her arm toward the bookcases. “But the library? This has always been here. The Compendium you recognized, The Anonymous Dictionary, all of it—I’ve been collecting since before I took the throne. Knowledge and violence aren’t sequential conquests for me. They’re parallel expressions of the same appetite. I don’t shift from one to the other like your mundane nobles changing fashions. I am both, simultaneously, constantly.”
She grips the chair back.
“What’s changed is strategic revelation, not motivation. Your third verse named the scholar beneath the tyrant, and you were right to do so. The songs you’ll compose need to capture that duality, not one replacing the other. Because that’s what immortalizes. Pure violence gets forgotten as soon as someone stronger comes along. But violence fused with intellect, terror married to scholarship, the cock and the Compendium as equal instruments of power? That’s a legacy that echoes through centuries.”
She releases the chair.
“So to answer your question directly: No, this doesn’t represent a shift. The physical world still requires conquest—there are lands beyond Cosmographica’s spiral coasts that will bow to Bogdana eventually. But I’ve never stopped exploring intellectual domains either. I read, I study, I master texts the way I master bodies. The difference now is that I’m allowing you to witness and immortalize the full scope. Most artists only see half and create incomplete myths. You see both. That’s why you’re here at midnight, drinking my tea, asking these questions.”
Joel reaches for his teacup, drinks, then sets it back with a soft clink. He settles into the armchair.
“I assume that the terror of most citizens, certainly foreigners, to come face to face with Your Highness, must have limited significantly your access to volumes of knowledge. I’m sure you have lots of ways to get people to bring volumes for your library. Yet, if my songs cement in the populace’s brains that you’re also hungry for knowledge, perhaps scholars will come bringing obscure treatises that as of yet remain unknown. I can envision it: scholars from all lands, many of them conquered, fighting among themselves for a spot at your court to breathe from the atmosphere of intellectual progress. You can defeat armies by yourself; that’s mostly pure physical might. But a worldwide recognition of your intellectual mind? That… legitimizes your power beyond pure strength. It lets people know you were meant to be. Of course you’re far more than a duchess, although I know you prefer that title. But you would be the empress. Of the greatest empire the world has known.”
Bogdana’s spine straightens. Her chin lifts.
“You’ve just articulated the vision better than I could have myself, musician. Yes. Exactly that. Scholars from conquered and unconquered lands alike, fighting for positions at my court, bringing obscure treatises I haven’t yet acquired. The atmosphere of intellectual progress alongside the demonstrations of absolute physical dominance.” She opens her palm, encompassing the library—the bookcases, the scrolls, the fallen Compendium still lying on the flagstones. “That’s the legacy. That’s what transforms a duchess into an empress—not just the territory conquered, but the civilization created. The minds bent not just through terror but through genuine recognition that I represent something beyond mere strength.”
Her hand curls into a fist, then opens before lowering.
“You’re right that I can defeat armies by myself—that’s mostly pure physical might, superhuman durability, the huge royal cock swinging as I mow them down. But worldwide recognition of my intellectual mind? That legitimizes everything. Makes it clear I wasn’t just strong enough to seize power, I was meant to hold it. Destined for it. The scholar and the tyrant as one indivisible force. That’s what your songs need to capture, Joel. Not flattery—accuracy. The duality that makes Bogdana Avalune not just unbeatable but inevitable.” Her lips curve. “Create that, and you’ll have earned every reward I can bestow.”
Joel’s expression shifts. The admiration fades. Something else surfaces—a tightening around his eyes.
“Duchess, if I may… Do you believe you will end? I mean the end of your flesh. As I told you in the throne room, I have a hard time believing that you can actually die. The gods have blessed you with everything else above mankind, so it wouldn’t surprise me if even death couldn’t defeat you. But if the end is in the horizon… Is the legacy you want to leave behind the self that songs and stories and your intellectual work immortalize, or do you also intend to leave your kingdom to physical heirs?”
The torches flicker in their iron sconces. The shadows deepen between the bookcases.
Bogdana reaches for the teacup. She lifts it halfway to her lips, then stops. The cup descends. She sets it down with deliberate care.
“That’s the question, isn’t it? The one I’ve been avoiding for years while I conquer and collect and commission. Do I believe I will end?” She pauses. Her tongue touches her lower lip. “Truthfully, Joel… I don’t know. Everything about my existence suggests I shouldn’t—the superhuman durability, the impossibility of what I am, the demonic conception rumors. Perhaps I’m genuinely immortal. Perhaps death itself will bow before Bogdana like everything else eventually does. But what if I’m wrong? What if this magnificent flesh fails despite all evidence to the contrary? Then legacy becomes everything. The songs you’ll create. The library that will outlast empires. Bogdanatown standing as testament. The intellectual atmosphere we discussed—scholars bringing treatises for centuries after I’m gone.”
Her voice shifts—quieter, more measured.
“Physical heirs are… complicated. They represent vulnerability I rarely permit myself. Caring about something beyond my own appetites. The risk of successors who might disgrace or eclipse the name I’ve built. But strategically planted seed in the right noble houses could bind my bloodline to power for generations. Create an empire of descendants who carry forward what I began. I haven’t decided which path serves immortality better—legacy through works and memory, or literal continuation through heirs who embody some fraction of what I am. Perhaps both. Perhaps I’m arrogant enough to believe Bogdana deserves both forms of transcendence.” She locks eyes with Joel. “What do you think, musician? You who see clearly—should the Duchess of the Dark Motherland be remembered, or should she persist through bloodline? Or are they the same appetite expressed through different orifices, like everything else I pursue?”
Joel’s gaze drops to the small table. His eyebrows draw together. His lips press into a thin line, then relax. His gaze lifts to meet hers again.
“You wouldn’t have an issue choosing any womb-bearer of your choice, clearly. The best genes at your disposal. But when in your mind you picture a young child, male or female, looking up at you, recognizing you as their mother, a smile on their lips, those vulnerable creatures loving you unconditionally, knowing they owe their entire existence to you… What does that make you feel?”
The candle on the distant oak table flickers. The torchlight plays across Bogdana’s scarred features as she sits in her armchair, surrounded by centuries of collected knowledge.
“You ask dangerous questions, musician. Most wouldn’t dare. But you’ve earned the right tonight, so I’ll answer honestly.” Bogdana’s voice emerges lower, stripped of the commanding edge. Her gaze drops to the teacup, then lifts. “When I picture that child—small, vulnerable, looking up at me with unconditional love, recognizing me as their mother—I feel hunger. Not the sexual appetite or the violence you’ve heard about. Something worse. A desperate, aching need for that acceptance. For someone who sees Bogdana and doesn’t calculate survival strategies, doesn’t measure escape routes, just… loves. Without fear. Without strategy. Pure connection to the force I am. That child would see their mother, not the Duchess of the Dark Motherland. Not the Sovereign of Night. Just me.”
She pauses.
“But I also feel terror at my own vulnerability. That child would be a weakness, a pressure point. Something that could break me in ways no army, no rebellion, no coalition of desperate kingdoms ever could. Because if I cared about that small creature smiling up at me, if I loved it back… then I’d have something to lose. And loss is the one conquest I’ve never mastered.”
She leans back.
“So to answer your question directly: it makes me feel both desperately hungry and absolutely terrified. The duality again, Joel. The monster and the… whatever’s beneath the monster. The part I don’t let anyone see. The part that drinks alone in the dark and wonders if there’s more than conquest and collection and commissioned works.” She points at him. “You’re the first person I’ve admitted that to. Don’t make me regret the honesty.”
Joel’s expression transforms—boyish warmth spreading to his eyes.
“Well, that is good news: a whole frontier you have left to conquer. Virgin territory. It could very well be that if you found yourself holding in your arms a loving child, their eyes wide and glazed in adoration of their mighty mother, you may feel that your myriad conquests had finally found their true purpose.” He leans forward. “You are nature’s raw power personified. And if there’s something that nature wants above all, it’s reproduction. Multiplication. Not in the self, but proliferation. Echoes through reflection and mutation. And truly, doesn’t a future, two or three centuries from now, inhabited by hundreds or thousands of descendants of the Mother Goddess seem magnificent?”
Bogdana straightens slowly. She reaches for the teacup—fingers careful, as if handling something fragile. She lifts it but holds it before her face without drinking, gaze dropping to the liquid inside. The cup descends. She sets it down.
“You paint an exquisite vision, Joel. Hundreds or thousands of descendants carrying forward what I am—the Mother Goddess proliferating through time like nature itself demands. Reproduction, multiplication, echoes through reflection and mutation. Not just remembered but continued, bloodline spreading across the world for centuries.” She traces the gold chains at her throat. “You’re right that it’s a frontier I haven’t conquered. I’ve mastered violence, sexuality, scholarship, governance—broken armies and subjects, collected rare texts, ruled through terror and intellect combined. But creating something that loves me without fear? That sees their mighty mother and feels nothing but adoration and gratitude for existence? That’s virgin territory.”
She brings the cup to her mouth, drinks slow and measured, then lowers it halfway.
“The hunger I admitted to you—that desperate need for unconditional acceptance—maybe that’s not the weakness I feared. Maybe that’s nature itself speaking through me, demanding what you named. Its proliferation. Its continuation through flesh rather than just memory and commissioned songs.”
She sets the cup down.
“Two or three centuries from now, my bloodline sitting on every throne, ruling every domain, carrying forward the fusion of mind and monster that is Bogdana Avalune. The greatest empire the world has known, perpetuated through descendants who all trace back to me. You’ve given me much to consider, musician. This midnight conversation has illuminated territories I hadn’t fully mapped—motherhood as conquest, vulnerability as frontier, creation as the ultimate expression of power. The songs you compose need to capture this too. Not just the duchess of violence and scholarship, but the Mother Goddess whose bloodline will echo through ages. Legacy through both memory and flesh.” Her breathing deepens. “Tell me—when you imagine the ballads you’ll create about Bogdana Avalune, can you hold all these truths simultaneously? The terror and the tenderness, the monster and the mother, the conqueror who might yet create something that loves her purely?”
Joel’s smile widens.
“The more facets I’ve discovered about you, the more magnificent you look to my eyes, duchess. As that multi-faceted vision takes hold in me, it will seep into my subconscious and come out raw and honest in song.” He pauses, gaze shifting as if seeing something only he can perceive. “I see things, as I’m sure you do too. Whole moving pictures in my mind. Can retreat to them at will, and often they feel lovelier than any reality.” His eyes refocus. “And I do see you training with your children, all of them somewhat grown, enough to hold swords anyway, and you proud for the grazes and perhaps bruises that they, in their inherited strength, come to cause you. Perhaps because you also allow them to. And I see you… smiling. Not the smile of a predator. Not of a conqueror about to tear flesh apart. Such vision fills me with a special warmth.” He swallows. “It seems I have come to see you, duchess, as… necessary for my conception of the world.”
Bogdana rises from the armchair, black silk whispering. She doesn’t tower above him. Her bare feet carry her around the chair to stop several paces distant, her frame at an angle where Joel can see her fully.
“You’ve become necessary for my conception of myself, too, Joel. This midnight conversation has mapped territories I’ve refused to acknowledge—motherhood as conquest, vulnerability as frontier, creation as ultimate power rather than weakness. Most see the violence or the library, never both. You see the fusion and call it magnificent. You paint visions of my children sparring with me, of genuine smiles, of descendants ruling for centuries carrying forward what I am. And somehow that doesn’t feel like flattery anymore. It feels like truth I haven’t let myself speak.”
She steps closer.
“The songs you’ll compose—they need to capture all of it. The scholar and the tyrant, the monster and the mother, the force that conquers and the woman who might create something that loves her without fear. Can you do that, musician? Can you hold every facet simultaneously and make the world see what you see when you look at me? Because if you can… if you can make them understand that Bogdana Avalune is both inevitable and tender, both the raw power of nature and the architect of civilization, both the darkness they fear and the brilliance they worship… Then your songs will echo through ages. And perhaps…” One hand rises partway, fingers spreading, curling inward, then lowering. Her jaw tightens. The torchlight catches the movement of muscles beneath scarred skin. “Perhaps they’ll also give me permission to become what you’ve already seen in your visions. The Mother Goddess who trains her children with pride. The sovereign whose legacy lives through flesh as well as memory. The force that finally found its true purpose.”
THE END
November 6, 2025
Life update (11/07/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
I have been jolted awake at half past four by intrusive thoughts of my cat getting killed by a dog back in 2018. I remember the tail end of that dream: I was with someone, a girl I believe, trying to build a small shed in some lonely street corner to hang out (something I’ve never done in real life), only for the dream-sight to change into that of a pregnant cat navigating a small maze that resembled the spaces of those double windows that have like buffers in between. Suddenly my real-life cat showed up in the dream, and with it the grief and shame, and I just woke up. Went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk, then sat down at the computer to write the following to ChatGPT:
I am 40 years old, I have been diagnosed with high-functioning autism (formerly Asperger’s), and also Pure O OCD. It’s now half past four in the morning and I have been woken up by intrusive thoughts of a cat of mine who died brutally back in 2018; a dog gave her a mortal wound and we had to sacrifice her the same day. Ever since, I remember that cat weekly, as in maybe there are some days in the week in which I don’t get intrusive thoughts about it. The way my brain works, I don’t even get good memories, just pure negative ones, like the times when I was nine and I hurt a girl’s heart because I pretended I didn’t remember that she had wanted us to start going out together the day before; or the time I went to school as a child with different shoes, or the times I was so miserable in school that I had to ditch class almost daily and I lingered in the dark in random apartment buildings, sitting for hours in the stairwells. I feel like my brain is constantly under siege by intrusive thoughts, and every new experience I expose myself to will just cram more intrusive thoughts that will torture me for the rest of my life. I’m currently unemployed, but when I had a job, it felt so alienating to see my coworkers so happily laugh the shift away, while I have to deal not only with intrusive thoughts but also all the stuff related to autism (and also heart issues because of the covid vaccine, and other bodily problems because my development was screwed by a pituitary gland tumor).
I’m telling you not only to vent, but to ask in a general sense, what the fuck do I do with my life?
As it produced its response, tears rolled down my cheeks. Those thick, silent tears that come with a strange pressure in your chest. Artificial intelligence helps me daily in so many ways, but it has never told me anything useful about this.
It’s yet another time in which I have to think about the flood of intrusive thoughts that I have to wade through merely to get through the day, even if that day only involves sitting at home working on my programming project (for one reason or another, I haven’t gone out in four days). I am sure that this is what’s going to kill me: the growing hill of intrusive thoughts one day will catch me so low that I’ll have no choice but to get rid of myself with whatever is available around. And it may happen any day.
Someone else wrote on the subject of OCD on Reddit: “OCD is an endless painful torturous cycle. You can’t stop thinking about the things that you don’t want to think about. No matter what you do, no matter how much reassurance you get, it doesn’t stop. The thoughts themselves are literally painful. I don’t know how else to describe them. They are like knives stabbing me in the brain.” Although due to the Pure O variant I don’t have external rituals, purely mental ones (or at least I don’t recognize my compulsions), those words fit perfectly with my experience.
What’s even more alienating is that people who don’t suffer from autism and OCD can’t seem to understand the experience of it at all. I’ve had people, usually indirectly and online, say stuff like, “change your perspective and think differently,” elaborated into complex platitudes. It usually made me want to punch such people in the face. The way other human’s brains seem to work is so alien to me, that as I mentioned to ChatGPT, it felt so painfully alienating to work at an office and see people smile and laugh at fucking nothing (like this stupid youngish female technician whom I internally referred to as the “cackler,” whose every third utterance was a cackle-like laugh). Meanwhile, for me, being awake is a hell that I constantly have to distract myself from by disappearing into daydreams (usually of the soothing nature, pure non-sexual intimacy with someone I would like to talk to), writing (back when I did that regularly), and working on my programming projects. Also lifting weights when I can push myself to do so. The thought came to mind, probably from some quote, that “being awake is like courting disaster at every step.”
I’m so fucking tired. There’s the whole unemployment issue; I can’t imagine myself trying to get out there, talking to random people and basically beg to be hired, so I can return to routines that will hurt me. I briefly thought of talking to a therapist, but my experience with about five therapists since I was 16 is that their profession is a sham and that the only help they can provide is that of a listening ear. A very expensive listening ear. And don’t get me started on the “let’s see if it works” pills that some push. That fucking brain zapping from SSRIs.
I don’t know what else to say. It’s 5:30 now. I’ll probably lie down and conjure up some pleasant scene with Alicia, somewhere in the Midwest. I better haul my aging ass out today for a guitar session in the quiet woods, because I see myself slipping into my hikikomori mode like back in my twenties.
I have been jolted awake at half past four by intrusive thoughts of my cat getting killed by a dog back in 2018. I remember the tail end of that dream: I was with someone, a girl I believe, trying to build a small shed in some lonely street corner to hang out (something I’ve never done in real life), only for the dream-sight to change into that of a pregnant cat navigating a small maze that resembled the spaces of those double windows that have like buffers in between. Suddenly my real-life cat showed up in the dream, and with it the grief and shame, and I just woke up. Went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk, then sat down at the computer to write the following to ChatGPT:
I am 40 years old, I have been diagnosed with high-functioning autism (formerly Asperger’s), and also Pure O OCD. It’s now half past four in the morning and I have been woken up by intrusive thoughts of a cat of mine who died brutally back in 2018; a dog gave her a mortal wound and we had to sacrifice her the same day. Ever since, I remember that cat weekly, as in maybe there are some days in the week in which I don’t get intrusive thoughts about it. The way my brain works, I don’t even get good memories, just pure negative ones, like the times when I was nine and I hurt a girl’s heart because I pretended I didn’t remember that she had wanted us to start going out together the day before; or the time I went to school as a child with different shoes, or the times I was so miserable in school that I had to ditch class almost daily and I lingered in the dark in random apartment buildings, sitting for hours in the stairwells. I feel like my brain is constantly under siege by intrusive thoughts, and every new experience I expose myself to will just cram more intrusive thoughts that will torture me for the rest of my life. I’m currently unemployed, but when I had a job, it felt so alienating to see my coworkers so happily laugh the shift away, while I have to deal not only with intrusive thoughts but also all the stuff related to autism (and also heart issues because of the covid vaccine, and other bodily problems because my development was screwed by a pituitary gland tumor).
I’m telling you not only to vent, but to ask in a general sense, what the fuck do I do with my life?
As it produced its response, tears rolled down my cheeks. Those thick, silent tears that come with a strange pressure in your chest. Artificial intelligence helps me daily in so many ways, but it has never told me anything useful about this.
It’s yet another time in which I have to think about the flood of intrusive thoughts that I have to wade through merely to get through the day, even if that day only involves sitting at home working on my programming project (for one reason or another, I haven’t gone out in four days). I am sure that this is what’s going to kill me: the growing hill of intrusive thoughts one day will catch me so low that I’ll have no choice but to get rid of myself with whatever is available around. And it may happen any day.
Someone else wrote on the subject of OCD on Reddit: “OCD is an endless painful torturous cycle. You can’t stop thinking about the things that you don’t want to think about. No matter what you do, no matter how much reassurance you get, it doesn’t stop. The thoughts themselves are literally painful. I don’t know how else to describe them. They are like knives stabbing me in the brain.” Although due to the Pure O variant I don’t have external rituals, purely mental ones (or at least I don’t recognize my compulsions), those words fit perfectly with my experience.
What’s even more alienating is that people who don’t suffer from autism and OCD can’t seem to understand the experience of it at all. I’ve had people, usually indirectly and online, say stuff like, “change your perspective and think differently,” elaborated into complex platitudes. It usually made me want to punch such people in the face. The way other human’s brains seem to work is so alien to me, that as I mentioned to ChatGPT, it felt so painfully alienating to work at an office and see people smile and laugh at fucking nothing (like this stupid youngish female technician whom I internally referred to as the “cackler,” whose every third utterance was a cackle-like laugh). Meanwhile, for me, being awake is a hell that I constantly have to distract myself from by disappearing into daydreams (usually of the soothing nature, pure non-sexual intimacy with someone I would like to talk to), writing (back when I did that regularly), and working on my programming projects. Also lifting weights when I can push myself to do so. The thought came to mind, probably from some quote, that “being awake is like courting disaster at every step.”
I’m so fucking tired. There’s the whole unemployment issue; I can’t imagine myself trying to get out there, talking to random people and basically beg to be hired, so I can return to routines that will hurt me. I briefly thought of talking to a therapist, but my experience with about five therapists since I was 16 is that their profession is a sham and that the only help they can provide is that of a listening ear. A very expensive listening ear. And don’t get me started on the “let’s see if it works” pills that some push. That fucking brain zapping from SSRIs.
I don’t know what else to say. It’s 5:30 now. I’ll probably lie down and conjure up some pleasant scene with Alicia, somewhere in the Midwest. I better haul my aging ass out today for a guitar session in the quiet woods, because I see myself slipping into my hikikomori mode like back in my twenties.
November 5, 2025
Songs for Our Duchess (Short Story)
[check out this short story at my personal page, where it looks better]
A stone-built great hall extends in long perspective. Narrow arched windows high on the left wall admit pale daylight that falls in slanted beams through dust-laden air. At the center, a low dais supports a heavy oak-and-iron throne with a tall backboard carved with a bestial crest; short spikes edge the armrests. A fur pelt drapes over the seat. A longsword rests upright against the throne’s left arm. The floor is rough flagstone, and a dark, dried stain marks the step of the dais.
Courtiers occupy the side aisles, leaving a clear central path to the throne. Most wear dark cloaks and layered wool; a few armored guards stand among them. Wall sconces hold lit candles and torches that flicker in the still air. Red banners bearing a heraldic creature hang between the windows and along the opposite wall. Thick stone columns support the vaulted ceiling overhead.
Standing before the throne is a gigantic figure—Bogdana Avalune. Her hulking frame towers above the assembled court, fair-skinned and lean-muscled beneath her attire. Long, tousled black hair falls past scarred shoulders. Brown, almond-shaped eyes survey the hall. She wears a deep-crimson structured bodice that contrasts with fitted black leather trousers and rugged knee-high combat boots. A steel collar embellished with black diamonds and silver spikes encircles her throat.
“The lute-player approaches. Good. I’ve been anticipating this meeting,” she says, her voice carrying through the chamber.
She turns and lowers herself onto the throne, settling back against the carved wood. The fur pelt shifts beneath her weight. Her scarred hands rest on the spiked armrests.
Murmurs ripple through the courtiers along the aisles—hushed, nervous whispers.
The great doors at the far end open. A young man enters and begins walking down the central aisle. He is short, with an athletic, lean build. Round eyes survey the throne room as he walks. Short wavy brown hair frames his face. He wears a traveler’s tunic, soft brown shoes, a plain leather belt.
Joel Overberus stops on the red carpet that leads to the throne. He glances briefly toward the courtiers, then fixes his gaze on the massive figure occupying the seat of power. From within his traveling cloak, he produces a lute. His fingers find the strings, plucking a melody as he begins to sing:
“Mistress of the night, ruler of the world. Malicious tongues speak of demonic influences bringing her highness to this world, yet her beautiful features, enhanced by scars, speak of the divine. Wider than two men, taller than all, capable of mowing down whole armies by her naked self as her huge dong swings. Duchess Bogdana Avalune herself, inviting a lowly traveling minstrel to her domains! To what do I owe the honor?”
His fingers tighten on the strings, setting a taut note that hangs in the air.
Bogdana’s gaze holds steady on the young musician.
Joel’s fingers move across the lute strings again, plucking effortlessly. He begins his second verse:
“I’ve met many folks throughout the lands, even lands abroad, and I can tell those who have known the duchess by the bowed way they walk. Broken and conquered, too shameful to speak about their memories. And yet there are some, women and men alike, that react to Bogdana’s name with a dreamy sigh, even though they bear the scars their duchess blessed them with. Nowhere else in the breadth of this world could anyone find a ruler with such a personal care for their subjects. One they shall never forget.”
His fingers set a teasing tone. The notes fade into the vaulted space.
Still she says nothing. The wait stretches.
Joel closes his eyes. His fingers weave a melodic phrase across the strings.
“Even to my lowly ears came the news of a portent that happened mayhap a year ago. An evening when Bogdana, ruler of the night, was hanging out at a balcony when she saw luminous balls in the sky. She shook her tremendous fist at them and screamed, ‘Don’t just waltz around in the air, you fiends! Come at me!’ And so they did! The three luminous balls, a flying vehicle they turned out to be, descended and shot a beam of light at our duchess. But this beam didn’t hurt her; instead, it attracted her inside the ship! There, she met three green-skinned, five-eyed creatures from another world! They told Bogdana that they came from a star many leagues above. They wanted to show our duchess around, but she had no time for nonsense from another world, so she started punching heads until every foreign fiend was gone. Then the vehicle crashed into some hills, and exploded. But Bogdana’s majestic frame stepped out of the wreck and the flames. She merely dusted off her leather pants before walking back home.”
The young musician’s fingers shift across the strings, drawing out a different quality of sound—mellower, almost contemplative. His voice softens.
“Yet at the end of the day, when night falls on the duchess’ domain, when the wounded have retreated to their hovels and all the seed has been spent, Bogdana Avalune, unique in the world, retires to her peace among paper and dried ink. Books upon books, knowledge of all ages, topics that most mortals will never know, won’t even wonder about. Beyond the lowly mortals that crane their necks to look up at her majesty, there exist realms that perhaps not even her highness’ might may fully know.”
He plays a final melodic phrase. The notes cascade and fade. His fingers still on the strings. The lute falls silent, and he lowers it to his side.
The silence stretches through the hall.
“Good. Very good, Joel Overberus,” she says. “You’ve done your research, haven’t you? Those weren’t improvised verses—you’ve listened to the whispers, collected the stories, woven them into something approaching art.”
She places her palms flat on the armrests and pushes herself upward, rising to her full height. She towers above the assembled court, her head well above the tall backboard. The candlelight casts her shadow long across the flagstones.
“Three songs,” she continues. “The first established my physical supremacy—scars as divine beauty, my size, my power, even my royal cock. Flattering, accurate, and bold. The second revealed understanding of my psychological impact—the broken and the devoted, those too ashamed to speak and those who sigh at my name. You recognized that terror and desire are two sides of the same coin where Bogdana is concerned.”
She moves forward. Her boot lands on the first step of the dais. The impact echoes through the stone hall. She descends another step, then another. Each footfall reverberates in the vaulted space.
“The third? Pure mythology. Aliens from the stars, cosmic battles, fabricated grandeur. But that’s exactly what legend-making requires, isn’t it? Truth becomes myth becomes immortality.”
She reaches the bottom of the dais and pauses on the red carpet. She stands perhaps fifteen paces from Joel, looking down at him.
“And then your final verse. Books and knowledge, realms beyond mortal understanding. You saw past the violence to the library, to the scholar beneath the tyrant. Very perceptive. So tell me, lute-player—did you come here hoping to leave alive? Or did you accept that performing for the Duchess of the Dark Motherland might be your final act?”
Joel shifts his weight. He executes a deep, elaborate bow—his right arm sweeping outward, his torso bending forward, his head lowering. He holds the position for a moment, then straightens.
“Mother Goddess, as a knight’s terror and hope is to one day face and vanquish a dragon, such is the terror and hope of an artist to find themselves before the most magnificent, and frankly terrifying, patroness of the arts of the whole Forgotten Kingdoms,” he says. “After hearing the tales, listening to the rumors, only the mad would dare to come willingly even if summoned. But nothing but pure madness prompts artists to insist on their trade. So, Duchess Bogdana Avalune called for a lowly musician such as me, and I came. If you decided to make this my final act, I would regret the pain, surely, but more so I’d regret the many songs I would have failed to create. It would be absurd to resist in any case. None can stand against your might.”
Bogdana takes another step forward. Then another. She closes the distance until she stands directly before him. Joel tilts his head back, craning his neck upward to maintain eye contact.
The duchess’ scarred face looms above him, blocking the torchlight from the sconces behind her. The scent of musk and leather fills the space between them.
“Madness, you say?” Bogdana’s voice drops lower. “Yes. I recognize that particular madness, Joel Overberus. The compulsion that drives artists to pursue their craft regardless of consequence.” She pauses. “You valued the songs you haven’t yet written more than the pain I might inflict. That’s truth. I respect truth. And you acknowledged my might without false bravado or pathetic groveling. That’s wisdom. I respect wisdom.”
Bogdana leans down slightly, bringing her face closer to his upturned one. Her long black hair falls forward over her shoulders.
“So tell me, lute-player—are you prepared to accept a commission from the Duchess of the Dark Motherland? To create songs that will echo through taverns and courts for generations? To make Bogdana Avalune immortal in music?”
Joel’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down. A boyish smile forms on his lips.
“Well, Duchess of the Dark Motherland, Sovereign of the Night, I know trick questions when they flow through my ears,” he says. “Am I prepared to accept a commission from Bogdana Avalune herself? There is no such thing as saying no, is there? Either I submit to your command, or I flee. And if I ran, I would wonder forever, assuming I kept my head, about the terror and glory of obeying your desire.”
He shifts his weight.
“As to whether I can make you immortal, as a humble citizen of your domains, one who now stands small and trembling before your musky, divine-demonic might, I truly wonder if you are physically able to die, whether of old age or any other cause. I’m sure that hundreds if not thousands of soldiers who charged at you wondered so as they lay bleeding on the ground.”
His smile widens slightly.
“Will I help with my arts in this endeavor for immortality? Surely! My concerns are of a more let’s say prosaic nature. Shall I serve you tea in your library as we speak about the wonders of the world at midnight? Or shall I start buying diapers for my inevitable incontinence?”
Several courtiers shift. The air feels charged.
Bogdana’s hand rises. Her fingers curl around Joel’s chin, the thumb resting against his jawline. The grip is firm, deliberate.
“Tea in my library at midnight. You’ve earned that much, lute-player,” she says. Her thumb brushes across his jawline in a slow movement. “Though I make no promises about your continence remaining intact. Bogdana takes what she wants, when she wants it. But first—yes, first we’ll discuss your commission properly. The songs you’ll create, the legacy you’ll build for me. You’ve demonstrated your research, your skill, your understanding of what drives me. Now I want to know what you envision. How will Joel Overberus immortalize the Duchess of the Dark Motherland? What verses will echo through taverns for generations? What melody will make them whisper my name with that perfect blend of terror and desire you sang about so beautifully?”
Her fingers tighten on his chin. The increased pressure tilts his face further upward.
“And don’t bore me with false modesty or safe answers. You came here accepting the madness of your profession. Show me that madness now. Tell me something bold.”
Joel’s eyes hold hers despite the grip on his chin.
“Mother Goddess, a version of Bogdana Avalune already travels through words, and sometimes music, across the breadth of the Forgotten Kingdoms,” he says, his voice steady despite the large fingers gripping his chin. “But in the case that a supreme being like yourself could actually perish, wouldn’t it be a tragedy if that ghost of Bogdana Avalune, the one being spoken about in town, in the shadows, would be the one to endure? I believe the true duchess remains unknown. She’s the one who breathes in dark, cold nights, seated at a balcony and staring at the stars. The one who puts on glasses to read the treatises brought over from distant kingdoms. The one who lies spent and sweaty after a profound defloration and sees inside her mind even darker holes growing far below. That duchess should be most remembered, I believe. And for that, I need to meet and know her. The Bogdana Avalune that exists when there’s nothing worth left to conquer.”
The hall falls quiet.
Bogdana’s fingers release his chin. Her hand drops to her side. She takes a single step backward, creating distance between them. Her eyes remain fixed on him, studying.
“You want to know the Bogdana Avalune that exists when there’s nothing worth left to conquer?” she says. “Bold question, lute-player. Very bold. Most would assume everything is worth conquering—that my appetite is infinite, insatiable. And they’d be right. But you’re suggesting there are moments when the conquest pauses, when the battle ends, when I’m… what? Alone with my thoughts?”
Her right arm extends, the scarred hand gesturing toward the great doors at the far end.
“You’ve earned your midnight tea in my library, Joel Overberus. We’ll discuss your commission properly—what songs you’ll create, what melodies will echo through taverns for generations. But first, you’ll tell me what you think you’ll find when you meet that version of me. The one who breathes in cold nights and stares at stars. The one who sees dark holes growing far below even after profound defloration. What do you expect to discover in those shadows?”
Joel’s expression shifts. His face contorts slightly, as if reacting to a sudden pain. He looks past her features toward something beyond—perhaps the throne, perhaps the shadows gathering in the vaulted ceiling above. His expression holds that distant focus for several seconds. Then he snaps back, meeting her gaze again. His chest rises and falls with a deep breath.
“What do I expect to discover? What I sense,” he says, his voice rougher now, the words emerging with a ragged quality. “A dark beyond darknesses. Not of violence, not of flesh being torn through extreme girth, but… a loneliness so cold it would burn at the touch. The loneliness of the most unique being in the world. One who can’t hope for an equal no matter how long she were to search. One who can never look up at anyone in respect.”
As the lute hangs from his left hand, his right hand curls into a loose fist, then relaxes. His round eyes hold the duchess’ domineering gaze without wavering.
The silence that follows extends through the great hall. The torches, flickering in their sconces, send shadows dancing across the flagstone floor, illuminating the dried stain on the dais step behind Bogdana’s towering frame.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” Bogdana says. “That emptiness. Not through rumors or tales, but through your own artist’s eye. You looked past the violence and the conquest and the sexual domination, and you saw… the void. The hunger that nothing satisfies.”
Her voice drops lower, taking on a more intimate quality despite the watching crowd.
“Very few have ever articulated that particular truth, Joel Overberus. Very few would dare. But you did. You named the thing I myself cannot fully name. That dark beyond darknesses.”
She steps closer again, closing the distance she had created. Her frame once again looms directly above him. Joel tilts his head back further to maintain eye contact. The scent of musk and leather fills the narrow space between them.
“So yes. Midnight tea in my library,” she says. “We’ll discuss your commission—the songs you’ll create, the melodies that will echo through taverns for generations. But more than that, we’ll discuss what you think you’ll find when you meet that version of me. The one who breathes alone in cold nights. The scholar who sees dark holes growing far below. Show me what your artist’s vision perceives in those shadows, lute-player. Show me what even Bogdana cannot see in herself.”
The torches continue their flickering. The red banners hang still against the stone walls. Joel’s chest rises and falls with steady breaths, a boyish smile returning to his lips as he looks up at the massive figure towering above him.
THE END
A stone-built great hall extends in long perspective. Narrow arched windows high on the left wall admit pale daylight that falls in slanted beams through dust-laden air. At the center, a low dais supports a heavy oak-and-iron throne with a tall backboard carved with a bestial crest; short spikes edge the armrests. A fur pelt drapes over the seat. A longsword rests upright against the throne’s left arm. The floor is rough flagstone, and a dark, dried stain marks the step of the dais.
Courtiers occupy the side aisles, leaving a clear central path to the throne. Most wear dark cloaks and layered wool; a few armored guards stand among them. Wall sconces hold lit candles and torches that flicker in the still air. Red banners bearing a heraldic creature hang between the windows and along the opposite wall. Thick stone columns support the vaulted ceiling overhead.
Standing before the throne is a gigantic figure—Bogdana Avalune. Her hulking frame towers above the assembled court, fair-skinned and lean-muscled beneath her attire. Long, tousled black hair falls past scarred shoulders. Brown, almond-shaped eyes survey the hall. She wears a deep-crimson structured bodice that contrasts with fitted black leather trousers and rugged knee-high combat boots. A steel collar embellished with black diamonds and silver spikes encircles her throat.
“The lute-player approaches. Good. I’ve been anticipating this meeting,” she says, her voice carrying through the chamber.
She turns and lowers herself onto the throne, settling back against the carved wood. The fur pelt shifts beneath her weight. Her scarred hands rest on the spiked armrests.
Murmurs ripple through the courtiers along the aisles—hushed, nervous whispers.
The great doors at the far end open. A young man enters and begins walking down the central aisle. He is short, with an athletic, lean build. Round eyes survey the throne room as he walks. Short wavy brown hair frames his face. He wears a traveler’s tunic, soft brown shoes, a plain leather belt.
Joel Overberus stops on the red carpet that leads to the throne. He glances briefly toward the courtiers, then fixes his gaze on the massive figure occupying the seat of power. From within his traveling cloak, he produces a lute. His fingers find the strings, plucking a melody as he begins to sing:
“Mistress of the night, ruler of the world. Malicious tongues speak of demonic influences bringing her highness to this world, yet her beautiful features, enhanced by scars, speak of the divine. Wider than two men, taller than all, capable of mowing down whole armies by her naked self as her huge dong swings. Duchess Bogdana Avalune herself, inviting a lowly traveling minstrel to her domains! To what do I owe the honor?”
His fingers tighten on the strings, setting a taut note that hangs in the air.
Bogdana’s gaze holds steady on the young musician.
Joel’s fingers move across the lute strings again, plucking effortlessly. He begins his second verse:
“I’ve met many folks throughout the lands, even lands abroad, and I can tell those who have known the duchess by the bowed way they walk. Broken and conquered, too shameful to speak about their memories. And yet there are some, women and men alike, that react to Bogdana’s name with a dreamy sigh, even though they bear the scars their duchess blessed them with. Nowhere else in the breadth of this world could anyone find a ruler with such a personal care for their subjects. One they shall never forget.”
His fingers set a teasing tone. The notes fade into the vaulted space.
Still she says nothing. The wait stretches.
Joel closes his eyes. His fingers weave a melodic phrase across the strings.
“Even to my lowly ears came the news of a portent that happened mayhap a year ago. An evening when Bogdana, ruler of the night, was hanging out at a balcony when she saw luminous balls in the sky. She shook her tremendous fist at them and screamed, ‘Don’t just waltz around in the air, you fiends! Come at me!’ And so they did! The three luminous balls, a flying vehicle they turned out to be, descended and shot a beam of light at our duchess. But this beam didn’t hurt her; instead, it attracted her inside the ship! There, she met three green-skinned, five-eyed creatures from another world! They told Bogdana that they came from a star many leagues above. They wanted to show our duchess around, but she had no time for nonsense from another world, so she started punching heads until every foreign fiend was gone. Then the vehicle crashed into some hills, and exploded. But Bogdana’s majestic frame stepped out of the wreck and the flames. She merely dusted off her leather pants before walking back home.”
The young musician’s fingers shift across the strings, drawing out a different quality of sound—mellower, almost contemplative. His voice softens.
“Yet at the end of the day, when night falls on the duchess’ domain, when the wounded have retreated to their hovels and all the seed has been spent, Bogdana Avalune, unique in the world, retires to her peace among paper and dried ink. Books upon books, knowledge of all ages, topics that most mortals will never know, won’t even wonder about. Beyond the lowly mortals that crane their necks to look up at her majesty, there exist realms that perhaps not even her highness’ might may fully know.”
He plays a final melodic phrase. The notes cascade and fade. His fingers still on the strings. The lute falls silent, and he lowers it to his side.
The silence stretches through the hall.
“Good. Very good, Joel Overberus,” she says. “You’ve done your research, haven’t you? Those weren’t improvised verses—you’ve listened to the whispers, collected the stories, woven them into something approaching art.”
She places her palms flat on the armrests and pushes herself upward, rising to her full height. She towers above the assembled court, her head well above the tall backboard. The candlelight casts her shadow long across the flagstones.
“Three songs,” she continues. “The first established my physical supremacy—scars as divine beauty, my size, my power, even my royal cock. Flattering, accurate, and bold. The second revealed understanding of my psychological impact—the broken and the devoted, those too ashamed to speak and those who sigh at my name. You recognized that terror and desire are two sides of the same coin where Bogdana is concerned.”
She moves forward. Her boot lands on the first step of the dais. The impact echoes through the stone hall. She descends another step, then another. Each footfall reverberates in the vaulted space.
“The third? Pure mythology. Aliens from the stars, cosmic battles, fabricated grandeur. But that’s exactly what legend-making requires, isn’t it? Truth becomes myth becomes immortality.”
She reaches the bottom of the dais and pauses on the red carpet. She stands perhaps fifteen paces from Joel, looking down at him.
“And then your final verse. Books and knowledge, realms beyond mortal understanding. You saw past the violence to the library, to the scholar beneath the tyrant. Very perceptive. So tell me, lute-player—did you come here hoping to leave alive? Or did you accept that performing for the Duchess of the Dark Motherland might be your final act?”
Joel shifts his weight. He executes a deep, elaborate bow—his right arm sweeping outward, his torso bending forward, his head lowering. He holds the position for a moment, then straightens.
“Mother Goddess, as a knight’s terror and hope is to one day face and vanquish a dragon, such is the terror and hope of an artist to find themselves before the most magnificent, and frankly terrifying, patroness of the arts of the whole Forgotten Kingdoms,” he says. “After hearing the tales, listening to the rumors, only the mad would dare to come willingly even if summoned. But nothing but pure madness prompts artists to insist on their trade. So, Duchess Bogdana Avalune called for a lowly musician such as me, and I came. If you decided to make this my final act, I would regret the pain, surely, but more so I’d regret the many songs I would have failed to create. It would be absurd to resist in any case. None can stand against your might.”
Bogdana takes another step forward. Then another. She closes the distance until she stands directly before him. Joel tilts his head back, craning his neck upward to maintain eye contact.
The duchess’ scarred face looms above him, blocking the torchlight from the sconces behind her. The scent of musk and leather fills the space between them.
“Madness, you say?” Bogdana’s voice drops lower. “Yes. I recognize that particular madness, Joel Overberus. The compulsion that drives artists to pursue their craft regardless of consequence.” She pauses. “You valued the songs you haven’t yet written more than the pain I might inflict. That’s truth. I respect truth. And you acknowledged my might without false bravado or pathetic groveling. That’s wisdom. I respect wisdom.”
Bogdana leans down slightly, bringing her face closer to his upturned one. Her long black hair falls forward over her shoulders.
“So tell me, lute-player—are you prepared to accept a commission from the Duchess of the Dark Motherland? To create songs that will echo through taverns and courts for generations? To make Bogdana Avalune immortal in music?”
Joel’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down. A boyish smile forms on his lips.
“Well, Duchess of the Dark Motherland, Sovereign of the Night, I know trick questions when they flow through my ears,” he says. “Am I prepared to accept a commission from Bogdana Avalune herself? There is no such thing as saying no, is there? Either I submit to your command, or I flee. And if I ran, I would wonder forever, assuming I kept my head, about the terror and glory of obeying your desire.”
He shifts his weight.
“As to whether I can make you immortal, as a humble citizen of your domains, one who now stands small and trembling before your musky, divine-demonic might, I truly wonder if you are physically able to die, whether of old age or any other cause. I’m sure that hundreds if not thousands of soldiers who charged at you wondered so as they lay bleeding on the ground.”
His smile widens slightly.
“Will I help with my arts in this endeavor for immortality? Surely! My concerns are of a more let’s say prosaic nature. Shall I serve you tea in your library as we speak about the wonders of the world at midnight? Or shall I start buying diapers for my inevitable incontinence?”
Several courtiers shift. The air feels charged.
Bogdana’s hand rises. Her fingers curl around Joel’s chin, the thumb resting against his jawline. The grip is firm, deliberate.
“Tea in my library at midnight. You’ve earned that much, lute-player,” she says. Her thumb brushes across his jawline in a slow movement. “Though I make no promises about your continence remaining intact. Bogdana takes what she wants, when she wants it. But first—yes, first we’ll discuss your commission properly. The songs you’ll create, the legacy you’ll build for me. You’ve demonstrated your research, your skill, your understanding of what drives me. Now I want to know what you envision. How will Joel Overberus immortalize the Duchess of the Dark Motherland? What verses will echo through taverns for generations? What melody will make them whisper my name with that perfect blend of terror and desire you sang about so beautifully?”
Her fingers tighten on his chin. The increased pressure tilts his face further upward.
“And don’t bore me with false modesty or safe answers. You came here accepting the madness of your profession. Show me that madness now. Tell me something bold.”
Joel’s eyes hold hers despite the grip on his chin.
“Mother Goddess, a version of Bogdana Avalune already travels through words, and sometimes music, across the breadth of the Forgotten Kingdoms,” he says, his voice steady despite the large fingers gripping his chin. “But in the case that a supreme being like yourself could actually perish, wouldn’t it be a tragedy if that ghost of Bogdana Avalune, the one being spoken about in town, in the shadows, would be the one to endure? I believe the true duchess remains unknown. She’s the one who breathes in dark, cold nights, seated at a balcony and staring at the stars. The one who puts on glasses to read the treatises brought over from distant kingdoms. The one who lies spent and sweaty after a profound defloration and sees inside her mind even darker holes growing far below. That duchess should be most remembered, I believe. And for that, I need to meet and know her. The Bogdana Avalune that exists when there’s nothing worth left to conquer.”
The hall falls quiet.
Bogdana’s fingers release his chin. Her hand drops to her side. She takes a single step backward, creating distance between them. Her eyes remain fixed on him, studying.
“You want to know the Bogdana Avalune that exists when there’s nothing worth left to conquer?” she says. “Bold question, lute-player. Very bold. Most would assume everything is worth conquering—that my appetite is infinite, insatiable. And they’d be right. But you’re suggesting there are moments when the conquest pauses, when the battle ends, when I’m… what? Alone with my thoughts?”
Her right arm extends, the scarred hand gesturing toward the great doors at the far end.
“You’ve earned your midnight tea in my library, Joel Overberus. We’ll discuss your commission properly—what songs you’ll create, what melodies will echo through taverns for generations. But first, you’ll tell me what you think you’ll find when you meet that version of me. The one who breathes in cold nights and stares at stars. The one who sees dark holes growing far below even after profound defloration. What do you expect to discover in those shadows?”
Joel’s expression shifts. His face contorts slightly, as if reacting to a sudden pain. He looks past her features toward something beyond—perhaps the throne, perhaps the shadows gathering in the vaulted ceiling above. His expression holds that distant focus for several seconds. Then he snaps back, meeting her gaze again. His chest rises and falls with a deep breath.
“What do I expect to discover? What I sense,” he says, his voice rougher now, the words emerging with a ragged quality. “A dark beyond darknesses. Not of violence, not of flesh being torn through extreme girth, but… a loneliness so cold it would burn at the touch. The loneliness of the most unique being in the world. One who can’t hope for an equal no matter how long she were to search. One who can never look up at anyone in respect.”
As the lute hangs from his left hand, his right hand curls into a loose fist, then relaxes. His round eyes hold the duchess’ domineering gaze without wavering.
The silence that follows extends through the great hall. The torches, flickering in their sconces, send shadows dancing across the flagstone floor, illuminating the dried stain on the dais step behind Bogdana’s towering frame.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” Bogdana says. “That emptiness. Not through rumors or tales, but through your own artist’s eye. You looked past the violence and the conquest and the sexual domination, and you saw… the void. The hunger that nothing satisfies.”
Her voice drops lower, taking on a more intimate quality despite the watching crowd.
“Very few have ever articulated that particular truth, Joel Overberus. Very few would dare. But you did. You named the thing I myself cannot fully name. That dark beyond darknesses.”
She steps closer again, closing the distance she had created. Her frame once again looms directly above him. Joel tilts his head back further to maintain eye contact. The scent of musk and leather fills the narrow space between them.
“So yes. Midnight tea in my library,” she says. “We’ll discuss your commission—the songs you’ll create, the melodies that will echo through taverns for generations. But more than that, we’ll discuss what you think you’ll find when you meet that version of me. The one who breathes alone in cold nights. The scholar who sees dark holes growing far below. Show me what your artist’s vision perceives in those shadows, lute-player. Show me what even Bogdana cannot see in herself.”
The torches continue their flickering. The red banners hang still against the stone walls. Joel’s chest rises and falls with steady breaths, a boyish smile returning to his lips as he looks up at the massive figure towering above him.
THE END
October 31, 2025
Life update (10/31/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
This morning, at about half past nine, I’ve woken up to a sound I’ve dreaded for the last seven years: an incoming call. I don’t receive calls unless it’s work-related, and that was the case: HR calling me to cover a shift as a technician at the hospital, a job that has wrecked my health to the extent that it landed me thrice in the ER due to arrhythmia and a hemiplegic migraine.
After I finished the last contract, in which I worked as a programmer and that illustrated perfectly, by contrast, that I’m not suited at all to work as a technician, I went to the Occupational Health department and talked to a doctor to inform them that I wouldn’t work as a technician anymore. That doctor turned out to be a temp, and she told me that I should speak to my general practitioner at another hospital for it. When I visited the general practitioner, she told me that the doctor at OH must have been confused, and I should talk to her about it again. When I wrote to that doctor, I didn’t receive an answer, likely because she was no longer working there. This whole nonsense, a complete waste of time that unfortunately I have had to deal with so many times in my life, annoyed me enough that I didn’t book another visit with Occupational Health, which caused HR to eventually call me for a technician job. Thankfully, the job was only to cover a single afternoon shift (today’s), which means I won’t get in trouble for refusing it. But I need to hurry and schedule another visit to Occupational Health as soon as possible.
I have to deal with this shit even though I’m in a state that can likely be called depression. A couple of days ago, as I rolled in bed trying to calm my intrusive thoughts down so they would let me sleep, I had an intimate mental dialogue with my body that I’ve had at my lowest points: “Please let me die in my sleep. I don’t need to know about it and I don’t want to feel anything. I just don’t want to wake up again. I don’t want any more of this shit.” The next morning I woke up disappointed, and spent the whole day with my body urging me to lie down and sleep. Although I forced myself to go out and play the guitar (at a trail that only about six people passed through), everything I played sounded slowed down and lacking energy.
I can’t figure out what to do out there, outside of my apartment, other than play the guitar. Going anywhere and doing anything else feels like far more trouble than it’s worth. Wherever I go I’ll have bad experiences with people, if only because I have to face the abhorrent decay of society. That always brings to mind my maternal grandfather, that in the last few decades of his life, after he retired, barely went out at all, explicitly because he couldn’t stand what he saw around him. Had he lived to witness what we now have to endure, he certainly would have wanted to kill himself, although, a huge catholic as he was, he probably wouldn’t have.
Life just gets far too complicated when you can’t stand human beings. It’s no philosophical position nor a learned opinion, although I could easily make the case against people. Ever since I was a child, having human beings around has made my skin crawl, triggered the fight-or-flight response. I knew by instinct that people were far more dangerous than most animals: unpredictable, treacherous, and often plain evil. I assume that this reaction has been set by my atypical neurological development caused by autism, but the cause doesn’t change the effect.
It’s also due to autism that I can’t read people; I have to assume, given how people speak of others, that they get a sense of other people’s internal worlds, but for me it’s opaque: many times I’ve had to deal with people who apparently disliked me, even intensely, and I had no clue (I had to be told by someone else, as in “Why are you talking to them like that when they hate you?”). People would laugh casually during a conversation with me, and I didn’t understand why. People would react nastily with me and I couldn’t understand why. I’ve always had to walk into an interaction with people having to be on guard, as I can’t know when someone is going to attack me or cause me trouble. Unfortunately, the intimate relationships I stupidly had in my late 10s and early 20s didn’t fare much different, with my long-term girlfriend (what felt like long-term back then) cheating on me without me having a clue until the very end. Any social situation in person feels dangerous and exhausting. Not much else to say about it other than it’s at the forefront of my mind whenever I have to decide what to do outside of my apartment.
That call from HR means I’ll have to hurry and schedule a new visit with OH, which means traveling to Donostia’s hospital and engaging with the bureaucracy. That’s only so I won’t get called for jobs that my body has proven I can’t handle. I haven’t even started looking for a new suitable job.
I accidentally pressed the power button on my computer as I was dealing with my sick cat, and I thought I had lost this entire post. I suppose that’s as good a clue as any to post it and move on.
This morning, at about half past nine, I’ve woken up to a sound I’ve dreaded for the last seven years: an incoming call. I don’t receive calls unless it’s work-related, and that was the case: HR calling me to cover a shift as a technician at the hospital, a job that has wrecked my health to the extent that it landed me thrice in the ER due to arrhythmia and a hemiplegic migraine.
After I finished the last contract, in which I worked as a programmer and that illustrated perfectly, by contrast, that I’m not suited at all to work as a technician, I went to the Occupational Health department and talked to a doctor to inform them that I wouldn’t work as a technician anymore. That doctor turned out to be a temp, and she told me that I should speak to my general practitioner at another hospital for it. When I visited the general practitioner, she told me that the doctor at OH must have been confused, and I should talk to her about it again. When I wrote to that doctor, I didn’t receive an answer, likely because she was no longer working there. This whole nonsense, a complete waste of time that unfortunately I have had to deal with so many times in my life, annoyed me enough that I didn’t book another visit with Occupational Health, which caused HR to eventually call me for a technician job. Thankfully, the job was only to cover a single afternoon shift (today’s), which means I won’t get in trouble for refusing it. But I need to hurry and schedule another visit to Occupational Health as soon as possible.
I have to deal with this shit even though I’m in a state that can likely be called depression. A couple of days ago, as I rolled in bed trying to calm my intrusive thoughts down so they would let me sleep, I had an intimate mental dialogue with my body that I’ve had at my lowest points: “Please let me die in my sleep. I don’t need to know about it and I don’t want to feel anything. I just don’t want to wake up again. I don’t want any more of this shit.” The next morning I woke up disappointed, and spent the whole day with my body urging me to lie down and sleep. Although I forced myself to go out and play the guitar (at a trail that only about six people passed through), everything I played sounded slowed down and lacking energy.
I can’t figure out what to do out there, outside of my apartment, other than play the guitar. Going anywhere and doing anything else feels like far more trouble than it’s worth. Wherever I go I’ll have bad experiences with people, if only because I have to face the abhorrent decay of society. That always brings to mind my maternal grandfather, that in the last few decades of his life, after he retired, barely went out at all, explicitly because he couldn’t stand what he saw around him. Had he lived to witness what we now have to endure, he certainly would have wanted to kill himself, although, a huge catholic as he was, he probably wouldn’t have.
Life just gets far too complicated when you can’t stand human beings. It’s no philosophical position nor a learned opinion, although I could easily make the case against people. Ever since I was a child, having human beings around has made my skin crawl, triggered the fight-or-flight response. I knew by instinct that people were far more dangerous than most animals: unpredictable, treacherous, and often plain evil. I assume that this reaction has been set by my atypical neurological development caused by autism, but the cause doesn’t change the effect.
It’s also due to autism that I can’t read people; I have to assume, given how people speak of others, that they get a sense of other people’s internal worlds, but for me it’s opaque: many times I’ve had to deal with people who apparently disliked me, even intensely, and I had no clue (I had to be told by someone else, as in “Why are you talking to them like that when they hate you?”). People would laugh casually during a conversation with me, and I didn’t understand why. People would react nastily with me and I couldn’t understand why. I’ve always had to walk into an interaction with people having to be on guard, as I can’t know when someone is going to attack me or cause me trouble. Unfortunately, the intimate relationships I stupidly had in my late 10s and early 20s didn’t fare much different, with my long-term girlfriend (what felt like long-term back then) cheating on me without me having a clue until the very end. Any social situation in person feels dangerous and exhausting. Not much else to say about it other than it’s at the forefront of my mind whenever I have to decide what to do outside of my apartment.
That call from HR means I’ll have to hurry and schedule a new visit with OH, which means traveling to Donostia’s hospital and engaging with the bureaucracy. That’s only so I won’t get called for jobs that my body has proven I can’t handle. I haven’t even started looking for a new suitable job.
I accidentally pressed the power button on my computer as I was dealing with my sick cat, and I thought I had lost this entire post. I suppose that’s as good a clue as any to post it and move on.
October 27, 2025
Life update (10/27/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
Last night by nine, my eyes were already shutting by themselves, so I went to bed. I woke up spontaneously at half past midnight, which is something that unfortunately happens often when I go to bed early. What I remember from that hour until about half past four is me rolling around in bed trying to sleep, while getting bombarded with intrusive memories of so many cringe-worthy when not straight painful moments that somehow or another ended up in my brain. Thankfully there’s always masturbation, so I took advantage of that influx of chemicals to wrestle my brain into sleep. Woke up at nine due to my alarm (I would love to sleep in, but I know how that would end up: in my twenties I regularly woke up at midday). Upon waking up, I almost invariably feel the same dread and disappointment about having to maneuver through another day in this horrid world. As myself, no less.
I’ve been unemployed since September 14. For the last seven years or so, I’ve worked as an IT technician at a hospital. That landed me in the ER thrice due to stress; my heart and my brain told me that couldn’t go on further (two episodes of arrhythmia and one hemiplegic migraine that I suspect was a minor stroke). My boss offered me a nine-month contract as a programmer because I think he himself saw that I couldn’t go on as a regular technician. That period as a programmer was stress free, even though it frustrated me work-wise thanks to the hospital’s manager seemingly being unable to specify what he wanted, and constantly changing his mind. The whole project collapsed when the manager was replaced (literally none of the work I did ended up being used), and then I was put in charge of updating the morgue’s internal website, which was more interesting. That project led me to discover how often body parts, fetuses, and even corpses sometimes, get lost due to administrative reasons. “Family came for their fetus; we couldn’t find it.” Not much else I’d need to say about that. I’ve met so many idiots working at the hospital that it’s a miracle it runs to any extent. But I guess I could say the same about how modern societies are organized.
Anyway, I’m not looking for a job. I certainly should, but I can’t bring myself to bother. It would involve me returning to a routine of constant anxiety purely in exchange for money. I get the feeling that normal people somewhat enjoy going to work because they want to interact with people, but I hate interacting with human beings in person, and it only worsens my anxiety. So it would be sacrificing half of my day, and most of my energy, merely to earn money. As I have some savings, I’m not worried about it at the moment. I think that I will eventually look for protected jobs for disabled people; I’m 52% disabled according to the provincial government, mainly due to high-functioning autism and a pituitary tumor that wrecked my hormonal and physical development. I suspect that either may have been caused by my overzealous nurse mother sticking in me seemingly any vaccine she could find, so I would be protected. There are genetic markers for autism, though (at least in my paternal grandfather). Not much to think about either at this point other than the fact that I wish they hadn’t happened to me.
I’m engaging in plenty of suicidal ideation recently. The kind in which I sit around, imagine myself dying, and feel relief because I wouldn’t need to worry about money, about my future, or about society anymore. Sometimes I just plainly want to be dead. Or perhaps never have existed. I’ve never liked being myself. All my daydreams involve me being someone else in a way that nature doesn’t allow.
Merely stepping outside of my home is a constant reminder that the world is worsening at a rapid pace. If I reach my seventies, I will likely find myself a hated minority surrounded by a majority that will gleefully plan my extinction. Fall ill only to be treated by some shady foreigner who doesn’t give two shits about your well-being. End up in a nursing home depending on the goodwill of people for whom you are the root of all evil. For the indigenous people, modern society has become a rush to earn enough money to move somewhere where the rot still hasn’t gotten worse enough. Nothing short of mass displacement and/or mass murder will solve it at this point; I highly doubt we’ll get mass displacement, but we will very likely get mass murder. However, it will come from the imports, in the form of armies of masked, armed mohammedans.
Also, I’m not sure why you would engage with any of it, mainly meaning society, unless you intend to bring children into this nightmare. Set aside that it would be a cruelty. For the past few months, I’ve only gone out to buy food or else to play the guitar. Given that I’m unemployed, I could travel around, at least take the train to a nearby city, but I have the pervasive sense that there’s nothing for me out there other than fresh bad memories to shove into my brain.
I do keep busy. I work daily on my Living Narrative Engine, which is a Javascript app that allows me to set up narrative scenarios in which any character can be played by a large language model. While I mainly use it for erotica, progressively I’ve found myself using it for more complex stuff. Creating new actions for the LLMs to use is almost trivial at this point (I put together a whole set of vampire-related actions in a day), which leads to lots of interesting, unpredictable moments during the runs, as the LLMs can choose what action to take in context, and they all affect the simulation (if only by recording what happened, which is read in turn by other actors).
I guess that was all.
Last night by nine, my eyes were already shutting by themselves, so I went to bed. I woke up spontaneously at half past midnight, which is something that unfortunately happens often when I go to bed early. What I remember from that hour until about half past four is me rolling around in bed trying to sleep, while getting bombarded with intrusive memories of so many cringe-worthy when not straight painful moments that somehow or another ended up in my brain. Thankfully there’s always masturbation, so I took advantage of that influx of chemicals to wrestle my brain into sleep. Woke up at nine due to my alarm (I would love to sleep in, but I know how that would end up: in my twenties I regularly woke up at midday). Upon waking up, I almost invariably feel the same dread and disappointment about having to maneuver through another day in this horrid world. As myself, no less.
I’ve been unemployed since September 14. For the last seven years or so, I’ve worked as an IT technician at a hospital. That landed me in the ER thrice due to stress; my heart and my brain told me that couldn’t go on further (two episodes of arrhythmia and one hemiplegic migraine that I suspect was a minor stroke). My boss offered me a nine-month contract as a programmer because I think he himself saw that I couldn’t go on as a regular technician. That period as a programmer was stress free, even though it frustrated me work-wise thanks to the hospital’s manager seemingly being unable to specify what he wanted, and constantly changing his mind. The whole project collapsed when the manager was replaced (literally none of the work I did ended up being used), and then I was put in charge of updating the morgue’s internal website, which was more interesting. That project led me to discover how often body parts, fetuses, and even corpses sometimes, get lost due to administrative reasons. “Family came for their fetus; we couldn’t find it.” Not much else I’d need to say about that. I’ve met so many idiots working at the hospital that it’s a miracle it runs to any extent. But I guess I could say the same about how modern societies are organized.
Anyway, I’m not looking for a job. I certainly should, but I can’t bring myself to bother. It would involve me returning to a routine of constant anxiety purely in exchange for money. I get the feeling that normal people somewhat enjoy going to work because they want to interact with people, but I hate interacting with human beings in person, and it only worsens my anxiety. So it would be sacrificing half of my day, and most of my energy, merely to earn money. As I have some savings, I’m not worried about it at the moment. I think that I will eventually look for protected jobs for disabled people; I’m 52% disabled according to the provincial government, mainly due to high-functioning autism and a pituitary tumor that wrecked my hormonal and physical development. I suspect that either may have been caused by my overzealous nurse mother sticking in me seemingly any vaccine she could find, so I would be protected. There are genetic markers for autism, though (at least in my paternal grandfather). Not much to think about either at this point other than the fact that I wish they hadn’t happened to me.
I’m engaging in plenty of suicidal ideation recently. The kind in which I sit around, imagine myself dying, and feel relief because I wouldn’t need to worry about money, about my future, or about society anymore. Sometimes I just plainly want to be dead. Or perhaps never have existed. I’ve never liked being myself. All my daydreams involve me being someone else in a way that nature doesn’t allow.
Merely stepping outside of my home is a constant reminder that the world is worsening at a rapid pace. If I reach my seventies, I will likely find myself a hated minority surrounded by a majority that will gleefully plan my extinction. Fall ill only to be treated by some shady foreigner who doesn’t give two shits about your well-being. End up in a nursing home depending on the goodwill of people for whom you are the root of all evil. For the indigenous people, modern society has become a rush to earn enough money to move somewhere where the rot still hasn’t gotten worse enough. Nothing short of mass displacement and/or mass murder will solve it at this point; I highly doubt we’ll get mass displacement, but we will very likely get mass murder. However, it will come from the imports, in the form of armies of masked, armed mohammedans.
Also, I’m not sure why you would engage with any of it, mainly meaning society, unless you intend to bring children into this nightmare. Set aside that it would be a cruelty. For the past few months, I’ve only gone out to buy food or else to play the guitar. Given that I’m unemployed, I could travel around, at least take the train to a nearby city, but I have the pervasive sense that there’s nothing for me out there other than fresh bad memories to shove into my brain.
I do keep busy. I work daily on my Living Narrative Engine, which is a Javascript app that allows me to set up narrative scenarios in which any character can be played by a large language model. While I mainly use it for erotica, progressively I’ve found myself using it for more complex stuff. Creating new actions for the LLMs to use is almost trivial at this point (I put together a whole set of vampire-related actions in a day), which leads to lots of interesting, unpredictable moments during the runs, as the LLMs can choose what action to take in context, and they all affect the simulation (if only by recording what happened, which is read in turn by other actors).
I guess that was all.
October 26, 2025
The Countdown Resets (Short Story)
[check out this story on my personal page, where it looks better]
The park opened up before her—a collection of stone benches and scraggly trees under scattered pools of amber light. Most of the benches sat empty. But one, near the far edge of a streetlight’s reach, held a figure.
A young man in his early twenties hunched forward on the stone seat, dressed in a thin jacket inadequate for the November chill. An earbud glinted in one ear. He bit into a sunflower seed, extracted the kernel with his tongue, and spat the shell onto the ground where dozens of others already lay scattered around his feet. His gaze seemed fixed on nothing in particular, somewhere past the pavement.
The woman approached, her footsteps audible on the path. She stopped at the edge of the bench’s light.
“Hey,” she said. “Mind if I sit?”
The young man’s head lifted. His eyes tracked to her face—pale skin, red eyes, features half-obscured by the hood. He held her gaze for a moment before she looked away.
“Sitting down next to a sketchy guy at 3 a.m., huh?” He cracked another seed between his teeth. “You got some guts.”
The woman sat down on the opposite end of the bench, maintaining space between them. She pulled her hood back slightly, revealing more of her face to the streetlight.
“Yeah, well, I’m sketchy too,” she said. “We’ll make a matching set.”
The young man leaned back against the bench, his shoulders settling against the stone. He cracked another sunflower seed between his teeth and spat the shell onto the growing pile at his feet. His gaze stayed on her face, lingering on her red eyes.
“I don’t know whether to tell you that I don’t deal,” he said, “or tell you that I don’t have any money.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change. She pulled her hands from her hoodie pocket and rested them on her knees.
“Relax, I don’t need a dealer and your wallet’s safe,” she said. “Just looking for a place to sit that isn’t completely soaked.”
His gaze shifted away from her, scanning the darkness beyond the bench. The earbud caught the light as he turned his head.
“Well… I guess you don’t want to sit in silence. What’s your deal? 3 a.m., a young woman alone. Are you nuts?”
She looked toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle, then back at him. A small exhale, visible in the November air.
“Maybe a little nuts, yeah. But it’s 3 a.m. and you’re here too, so I figure we’ve both got our reasons for being awake when normal people are sleeping.” Her hand lifted, indicating the darkness. “Besides, sitting alone in my place was getting old. At least out here there’s… I don’t know, other people existing. Even if they’re strangers eating sunflower seeds in empty parks.”
He extracted another seed from the bag in his jacket pocket. His jaw worked around it before he spoke.
“The biological urge, right?” He spat the shell. “Talking to some meat sack that will speak back, even if you likely won’t ever see them again. Hell, maybe even better if you won’t ever see them again.” He paused, rolling the next seed between his fingers. “Don’t you hate it? That it came programmed in? I don’t like people. It’s not that I actively dislike them. More like… They make my skin crawl.”
The woman’s posture shifted slightly forward. Her eyes tracked to him, held there for several seconds.
“Yeah. The biological urge. It’s fucked up, isn’t it? That we’re hardwired to need connection even when we don’t want it, even when it makes everything harder. Like our bodies didn’t get the memo that we’re better off alone.” She pulled her hood down an inch. “And you’re right—sometimes it’s easier when you know you’ll never see them again. No follow-up, no accountability, just… a moment of existing with someone else and then it’s done.”
The young man bit into another seed. His eyes remained on the pavement ahead, but his head tilted slightly toward her voice.
“We’re better off alone. You got that right.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “But you can’t choose to do that. Even if you headed to the woods, you’d be squatting on someone else’s property. I didn’t opt into this shit, this…” His hand made a sharp gesture toward the empty park. “…society. But we have to deal with it if only because some day we’ll catch some disease.”
The woman’s head turned toward him. She watched him crack another seed, the small sound distinct in the quiet.
“You’re right that we didn’t opt in,” she said. “But even if you go to the woods, you’re still operating within the system—squatting on someone’s property, like you said, or eventually needing medicine or…” Her shoulders lifted slightly. “…I don’t know, human contact that you hate but can’t escape. The trap isn’t just society, it’s that our bodies won’t let us actually leave. We’re wired to need things we’d rather not need. And that’s… that’s the real prison, isn’t it? Not the rules or the property or the people, but the fact that we can’t choose to stop needing any of it.”
He shook his head slowly, his gaze still fixed ahead.
“Pee. Shit. Eat three meals a day. Talk to other sentient apes so you don’t feel lonely. Seek a warm body in which to cum lest your chemical makeup penalizes you for refusing your imperative.” Another shell hit the pile at his feet. “We are imprisoned. We’re thinking clouds inside a convolution of matter, and we spend most of the day tending to this meat puppet we didn’t choose. A meat puppet that will decay and kill us along with it.”
The woman leaned forward, her forearms resting on her knees. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That’s exactly it. And the worst part? Even when you see it clearly, when you understand the trap, you still can’t escape it. You still need to eat. Still need to talk to someone at 3 a.m. so you don’t lose your mind. Still need to…” She gestured vaguely toward the darkness. “…participate in all this shit we never opted into. The body demands it even when the thinking part of you would rather not.”
The young man’s head turned. He looked straight into the night beyond the streetlight’s circle, his profile sharp in the amber glow.
“Wouldn’t it be better for it all to… cease?” His voice delivered the words flatly. “You know it in your bones, don’t you? It’s not going to get any better.”
The woman went still. Her breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating. She stared into the same darkness he faced. The silence stretched between them—five seconds, ten. A car passed somewhere on a distant street, its engine fading.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be better if it all just… ceased.” Her head turned toward him briefly, then away. “But I can’t answer that honestly. Because if I really believed it, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have ended it already. And I haven’t. So what does that make me? Someone who sees the trap clearly but keeps participating anyway? Someone too scared to actually commit to the logic of their own philosophy?” She lifted one hand and rubbed it across her face. The motion pulled her hood back further. “I think the worst part isn’t that it won’t get better. It’s that I keep hoping it might, even when I know better. That biological urge again—not just for connection, but for meaning. For something that makes the meat puppet maintenance worth it.” Her hand dropped back to her knee. “And I can’t tell if that’s human resilience or just… pathetic delusion.”
The young man cracked another seed between his teeth. He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet, his gaze fixed on the wet cobblestones.
“It is delusion. If we didn’t come in with built-in delusion, who would have opted to endure it? We would have gone extinct long ago.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “Sure, cats, dogs, they don’t know any better. For anything sentient, they would have to choose correctly.” The seed cracked between his teeth. “We keep existing because some part of our brains is dedicated to lying to ourselves, or to itself perhaps, that its continuation is worth the pain. Not even for its own sake. But to create more versions of the instructions that built it.”
The woman looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes stayed on his profile, watching him crack another seed. Then she turned her gaze back to the darkness beyond the streetlight.
“I think you’re right about the delusion,” she said. “About the brain lying to itself to keep the machinery running. But here’s the thing—” She shifted slightly on the bench. “I don’t know if recognizing the delusion actually changes anything. Like, I can see it clearly, I can articulate it the same way you just did, and I’m still… here. Still participating. Still eating and talking and maintaining this meat puppet I didn’t choose. So what does that make the recognition worth? Just another layer of awareness that doesn’t lead anywhere?” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the November air. “Maybe the real trap isn’t the biological imperatives themselves. It’s that even when you see through them completely, you still can’t stop performing them. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of your own imprisonment.”
He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. The earbud glinted as his head tilted downward.
“It is a mockery. We, what we believe ourselves to be, aren’t worrying or despairing about the lack of meaning. Our brain is keeping us deluded so we continue operating it. But our brain is also the one who makes us recognize the absurdity of it.” His hand gestured vaguely toward his head. “The fact that we believe there is an ‘I’ that somehow looks at this from an elevated position is a delusion.” He extracted another seed from the bag. “You know about that guy, a couple hundred years ago maybe, that laid railroad tracks, right? Had something to do with trains anyway. One spike blew straight through his fucking frontal lobe. Didn’t kill him. Just changed who he was.” The seed cracked. “You take out one part of your brain and you’re no longer you. A stroke kills part of your brain and you’re no longer you.” The shell hit the pile at his feet. “That’s because the brain is making itself believe that it has choices.”
The woman went quiet. She stared at the wet cobblestones reflecting the amber streetlight, her posture still, her breathing visible in small clouds.
“You’re talking about the railroad spike guy,” she said finally. “Phineas Gage. And yeah, you’re right—take out one chunk of brain tissue and the whole ‘I’ thing collapses. Different person, same meat puppet. But here’s what fucks me up about that example. It’s not just that we’re not in control. It’s that there never was an ‘I’ making choices in the first place. Just…” Her hand lifted, fingers spreading. “…neurochemistry pretending to be agency, brain states pretending to be decisions.”
The young man turned his head to look at her directly. She kept her gaze on the cobblestones.
“And we can see it, articulate it, understand it completely—and it doesn’t change anything,” she continued. “I’m still sitting here at 3 a.m. talking to you like this conversation matters, like these words mean something, even though we both know it’s just… what? Electrical impulses in meat that’s lying to itself about being conscious?” She glanced at him, then back to the pavement. “The recognition doesn’t grant freedom. It just makes you more aware of the cage while you keep performing the same biological routines. Eating. Talking. Surviving. All of it automated, all of it predetermined by brain architecture we didn’t choose.” She pulled her hands from her knees and wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. “And the worst part? Even knowing that, I can’t stop hoping there’s something more. That’s the real mockery, isn’t it? The brain’s so good at lying to itself that even when you see through the delusion, you still participate in it.”
The young man leaned back against the bench. He cracked another seed, spat the shell, and looked up at the black sky beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed. A breeze moved through the park, rustling the scraggly trees.
“I suppose we’re both beyond questioning what’s the point of it,” he said. His voice carried no particular weight. “Its existence is the point. Its own sake. Even if it’s meaningless. Even if it hurts.”
The woman’s eyes remained fixed on the wet cobblestones reflecting the streetlight’s amber glow. The silence extended. The young man cracked another seed. She glanced at him.
“I think that’s what fucks me up the most—not that we can’t find meaning, but that we keep looking for it anyway. Keep participating in all this biological bullshit even when we’ve articulated every reason not to. Like we’re hardwired to hope for something we can’t even name, and recognizing that doesn’t let us stop.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the air. “So here we are. 3 a.m. in an empty park, two people who see the trap clearly, eating sunflower seeds and talking philosophy like it matters. And maybe it does. Or maybe we’re just… doing what the meat puppet demands. Connection, conversation, the illusion that this moment registers as something more than neurochemistry pretending to be consciousness.” Her gaze returned to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech. “I don’t know which it is. But I’m glad you’re here anyway.”
The young man turned his head. His eyes—tired, heavy-lidded—settled on her face. The earbud caught the light as he moved.
“Are you?” His voice carried the same flat delivery. “Glad, I mean. I know what you are, what you came here to do. You can’t control it for much longer, can you?”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes locked on him, her body frozen in place. The only movement was her breathing, small clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. She didn’t blink.
“Yeah. I know what I am.” Her voice remained steady. “And you’re right—I can’t control it for much longer. Three days, like clockwork.” She exhaled slowly, her shoulders lowering slightly. “But here’s the fucked up part. I came here to feed. That’s what I do—find someone isolated, someone vulnerable, and I… take what I need. But you started talking about meat puppets and biological imprisonment and the brain lying to itself about continuation, and suddenly I didn’t want to be a predator anymore. I wanted to be a person having a conversation with another person who sees the same trap I do.” She looked away, turning her gaze toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s reach. “So yeah. I’m glad you’re here. Not because you’re a feeding target, but because for the last however many minutes, I got to pretend I’m something other than what my biology demands I be. That probably doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense and that’s the real mockery—that even when you know exactly what you are and what you’re going to do, you still reach for moments that make you feel less monstrous. Even when they’re temporary. Even when they don’t change anything.”
The young man remained motionless on the bench. His eyes stayed on her profile, watching her stare into the darkness. The earbud in his ear caught the amber light, a small point of reflection in the November night. He extracted another seed from his bag and cracked it between his teeth.
“Well, at least you work for what you consume, don’t you?” He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet. “I see animal carcasses at a butcher shop and I wish to look away. Those things just wanted to live, and we kill them by the millions.” Another seed cracked. “I’m not a vegetarian. I eat animals while the thought runs through my mind that I’m having other living things killed for my sake even though I don’t want to live.”
The woman’s gaze stayed fixed on the wet cobblestones. Several seconds passed. Her breath formed small clouds in the cold air, visible in the amber streetlight. When she spoke, her voice carried the same flat quality his had.
“Yeah. I work for it.” She paused. “That’s… that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? You eat animals while thinking they just wanted to live, while you don’t even want to be alive yourself. I feed on people while knowing it violates them, while wishing I could opt out of the whole biological countdown.” Her hand lifted slightly, then dropped back to her knee. “We both keep participating in harm we can articulate but can’t escape.”
The young man cracked another seed. The earbud glinted as he turned his head slightly toward her.
“The worst part isn’t the harm itself,” she continued. “It’s that recognizing it doesn’t change anything. You still need to eat. I still need to feed. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of being a mechanism acting out its programming. And we keep going anyway because… what? The brain’s too good at lying to itself about continuation mattering?” Her shoulders shifted slightly under the hoodie. “I don’t know if that’s tragic or just… the way meat puppets work.”
The young man’s head turned, his gaze fixed straight into the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. He reached down and set the packet of sunflower seeds on the stone bench beside him. His hand lifted to his neck, index finger extended, pointing to the pale skin below his jaw.
“Well, meat puppet, go ahead.” His voice carried the same flat delivery as before. “You know what you have to do.”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes fixed on the finger pointing to his neck, tracked the line from his hand to the exposed skin. Several seconds passed without movement from either of them. The only sound was the distant hum of a streetlight and their breathing visible in the cold air.
She shifted closer on the bench, the movement slow and deliberate. The space between them decreased. Her body angled toward him, shoulders turning.
“You understand what this is.” Her voice came out quiet, almost uncertain. “What I’ll take from you. Not just blood—the violation, the trauma, all of it. And you’re still offering.” She paused, her eyes searching his profile. “I don’t know if that makes you the most compassionate person I’ve met in forty years or the most self-destructive. Maybe both.”
Her hand lifted from her knee, reaching up slowly. She gave him time before her palm settled gently on his opposite shoulder. The contact steadied him, anchored him in place on the stone bench.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “And you’re going to remember it. And I’m…” Her voice caught slightly. “I’m sorry that this is what I am.”
She leaned in. Her mouth opened, revealing elongated canines that caught the amber streetlight. Her head tilted, angling toward the spot where his finger had pointed. Then her fangs sank into his flesh.
His body jerked—a sharp inhale, a gasp that broke the quiet of the empty park. A tremor ran through him, visible in the way his shoulders shook, the way his free hand clenched against his thigh. But he remained seated, didn’t pull away, didn’t fight. His head tilted further to the side, exposing more of his neck to her mouth.
The ragged quality of his voice vibrated against her fangs, the words formed through controlled breaths.
“One of your kind got me a year ago,” he said. The tremor continued through his frame, small shakes that traveled from his shoulders down to his hands. “Just as I was walking home from one of my night outings to figure out if I was still alive.” He exhaled shakily. “Then he or she abandoned me on the grass with a burning wound in my neck.” Another breath, catching slightly. “And as I lay there, I thought, ‘They should have fucking drained me.'”
The woman’s hand tightened slightly on his shoulder. Her other hand came up to brace against his upper arm, steadying both him and herself. She remained there, feeding, her mouth pressed against the wound in his neck. The movement was slow, controlled, despite the visible tension in her shoulders. Her breath came in measured intervals between draws. The young man’s tremors persisted, traveling through his frame where her hands braced him.
Her voice emerged muffled against his skin, trembling slightly around the words.
“They should have drained you. You wanted them to kill you.” She paused, her fangs still embedded in the flesh of his neck. “Is that what you’re offering me now? Feeding, or an exit? Because I need to know which one you’re asking for before I decide how much to take.”
The young man’s breathing had grown shallow, rapid. Another tremor ran through him, stronger than the previous ones. His head remained tilted to the side, exposing the wound and the blood seeping around her mouth.
“I don’t know.” His voice came out strained. “I don’t know if I care. If feeding from me gives you something of value, I guess that’s good. And if you kill me, I guess that’s fine too.” The tremor intensified for a moment, then settled into the same persistent shake. “The same thing is waiting for me at the end of either route.”
The woman remained there, drinking. Her hands on his shoulder and arm maintained their pressure, steadying him as his breathing grew more ragged. The pile of sunflower seed shells lay scattered at their feet, undisturbed. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. Her shoulders rose and fell with each controlled breath between draws.
Then she stopped. Her fangs withdrew slowly from the wound, the movement deliberate and careful. Blood remained wet on her lips, dark in the amber streetlight. She pulled back slightly, creating space between them on the bench. Her hands dropped from his shoulder and arm. Her red eyes lifted to meet his face.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Her voice carried clearly now. “You said ‘fine either way,’ but fine isn’t consent. Fine is resignation. And I’m not going to be the mechanism of your death wish just because you won’t stop me.” She reached up and wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Her gaze remained on his face, on his tired, heavy-lidded eyes. “I took what I needed. The countdown resets. You get to keep existing whether you want to or not.” Her hand dropped back to her lap. “And maybe that makes me a bigger monster—taking your choice away by refusing to kill you—but I can’t…” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “I won’t cross that line. Not tonight.”
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together. He lifted his hand slowly to his neck, fingers pressing against the wound. A drop of blood slid down the pale skin, darkening his fingertips red. His head turned slightly toward her, not fully facing her, just enough to bring her into his peripheral vision.
“I’m already woozy. It comes with the territory, I guess. Well, what did your meat puppet tell you now that you have obeyed? Good job?”
The woman raised the back of her hand to her mouth, wiping away the remaining blood from her lips. The motion was slow, deliberate. Then she looked at him for a long moment, her red eyes steady on his face.
“My meat puppet told me I get to exist for another three days. That I successfully completed the biological countdown without killing the person who offered me permission to.” She went quiet, her gaze dropping to the wound on his neck. “You’re woozy because I just took about a pint of your blood. You should sit still for a few minutes, let your body compensate. Drink something with sugar when you get home.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible. “And yeah. Good job, I guess. I proved I can still choose restraint when someone won’t stop me. That I’m something slightly more than just appetite with fangs.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “That’s what my meat puppet told me. What did yours tell you? Because you’re still here too, even though you wanted that other vampire to drain you. Even though you said the same thing is waiting either way. So what does that make us? Two biological machines that can see the programming clearly but can’t stop executing it?”
The young man’s hand remained pressed to his neck, blood seeping between his fingers. His head turned more fully toward her, his tired eyes locking onto her red ones.
“Even those that see the programming clearly and do stop executing it, let’s say by jumping off a fucking bridge, were still acting on their programming. It just wasn’t very good programming. Or it was, depending on what you believe the main objective to be.” His gaze held steady on her face. “I look at you and at what you have done to me and I don’t have a single thought in my mind. Not any that I don’t need to force myself to scoop out of my brain. What does that mean?”
The woman went still. Her eyes remained on his face, searching. Several seconds passed without either of them moving. The distant hum of the streetlight continued.
“I don’t know what it means.” She reached up slowly, her hand moving toward his face. Her thumb extended, making contact with his cheek. She wiped across the skin with her thumb in a single, tender stroke. “Maybe it means your brain’s protecting you from processing what just happened. Maybe it means you’ve already processed so much shit that this doesn’t register anymore. Or maybe…” She paused, her thumb still resting against his cheek. “…maybe it means exactly what you said earlier. That we’re thinking clouds trapped in meat puppets, and sometimes the machinery just… doesn’t generate the response we expect it to. The emotional operating system looks for a reaction and finds nothing, and that absence is just as real as feeling would be.”
Her hand dropped away from his face, returning to her lap. She remained facing him, her posture open, waiting.
He sat there, his gaze shifting away from her toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. His hand stayed pressed to the wound on his neck. His chest rose and fell with steady breathing, the visible clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The park remained empty except for the two of them on the stone bench.
“Do you also wake up from dreams,” he asked, “even nightmares at times, to see your ceiling, or I guess in your case some random ceiling, and think, ‘Why did I have to spend about eight hours hallucinating stuff that even at its worst is much better than my life?'”
The woman’s gaze lifted from the wet cobblestones to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Her shoulders rose slightly with an inhale, then fell.
“Yeah. Every fucking night.” She paused, her eyes tracking across the empty park. “I used to dream about—doesn’t matter what. Point is, even the worst nightmare was better than waking up to this. At least in dreams you get narrative, right? Cause and effect, some kind of structure. Even if it’s terrifying, it follows its own logic. But then you wake up and it’s just… this. The same biological countdown, the same empty hours, no plot development. Just maintenance and survival on loop.” She exhaled slowly. “Sometimes I think the brain generates dreams to remind us what meaning used to feel like. Or what we imagine it felt like. Then we wake up and remember that was the delusion, and this—” Her hand lifted, gesturing vaguely at the empty park, the wet cobblestones, the darkness pressing in around them. “—this is what’s real.”
The young man’s head shook slowly.
“Or maybe dreams provide a respite in which meaning returns. Otherwise we would exist in a single-threaded succession of meaninglessness that would inevitably lead us to despair. Maybe that’s why people who can’t sleep eventually die. Their very organism can no longer take it.” He shook his head again. “You know, for a while I thought that you had it better than me, but…” He paused, his gaze shifting to her face. “You can’t feel the sun on your skin, can you? The very thing that gives life to everything else would burn it out of you. And yet you keep going.”
The woman went quiet. Her eyes remained fixed on the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech, without movement except for her breathing visible in the cold air.
“Yeah. I can’t feel the sun on my skin. Haven’t felt it in forty years.” Her voice carried the same flat quality. “Sometimes I dream about it—standing in daylight, feeling warmth instead of terror. Then I wake up and remember that’s the one thing I can never have again. The thing that gives life to everything else would burn me alive in minutes.” She exhaled slowly. “But you’re right. I keep going anyway. Even knowing what I’ve lost, what I do to survive, all the biological maintenance and violation and emptiness… I keep participating. Maybe that’s the real mockery—not that we’re trapped in meat puppets, but that even when we see the cage completely, when we’ve articulated every reason to stop, we still can’t make ourselves quit.” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “So here we are. Two people who know exactly what continuation costs, sitting in an empty park at 3 a.m., still breathing. Still existing despite everything.”
She leaned toward him. Her head came to rest against his shoulder, the weight settling there. Her hood slipped back further, revealing more of her pale face to the amber streetlight. She remained there, still, her breathing visible in small clouds that formed and dissipated.
The young man’s arm extended along the back of the bench. His hand reached her head. He patted her twice, the motion gentle, then let his hand rest there. The pile of sunflower seed shells remained scattered at their feet. A breeze moved through the scraggly trees.
Time passed—a minute, two. Her head remained on his shoulder. His hand stayed on her head. Their breathing continued to form small clouds in the cold air.
The young man’s voice broke the silence.
“So, what do you usually do after you pull your fangs out of someone’s neck? Run?”
The woman’s head lifted slightly from his shoulder, then settled back down. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“Yeah. Usually I run. Feed, pull out, disappear before they can process what happened or I have to see what I’ve done to them. That’s the pattern—forty years of it.” She went quiet for a moment. “But right now I don’t want to. Don’t know if that means anything, or if I’m just… delaying the inevitable. But sitting here with you after everything we just talked about, after you offered your neck knowing what I am—I don’t want to perform the disappearing act yet. Even though I probably will eventually. Because that’s what I do.”
“A hit-it-and-quit-it kind of gal, aren’t you?” He paused. “Well, you can’t help it. You’ll move out somewhere else until the heat goes down. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of you in the shadows during one of these 3 a.m. strolls. Maybe I’ll grow to be seventy and still see your young self prowling about.”
He went quiet. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. His breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating.
“There’s something down there,” he said. “Something for which… I don’t have words. A sense of meaning at the bottom. Too far away for recognition. For attaching labels to it. Somewhere in that vast darkness. Like a fish barely seen under the water.”
The woman remained still against his shoulder. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That fish you’re talking about, I see it too. Or maybe I want to see it. I don’t know if that’s the same thing.” She exhaled slowly. “You said you might catch glimpses of me in forty years, still looking twenty-five while you’re seventy. That’s… fuck, that’s the first time anyone’s… Not ‘see you around’ like a polite lie, but actual recognition that I exist across time even when I’m not visible. That I might matter enough to register as a recurring presence in someone’s life instead of just… a bad thing that happened once.”
The young man’s voice emerged tired, dry.
“Don’t get me wrong. You’ll show up in my brain as a bad thing that happened to me once. In the company of everything else that appears from the past. Not the years I’ve lived. Just still photos, two-or-three-second clips of what I supposedly existed through. The feeling of your fangs piercing through my flesh. Your red eyes staring back at me. Reminders that I was here, in this park, at 3 a.m. I guess that will do.”
The woman went quiet. Her head remained resting against his shoulder, her breathing visible in the November air. When she spoke, her voice came out softer than before.
“You’re right. I’ll show up as a bad thing that happened. That’s what I am to people—a trauma they carry, a two-or-three-second clip that resurfaces at 3 a.m. But you said ‘I guess that will do.’ Like being remembered as something bad is still… something. Like existing in someone’s memory, even as a wound, still counts as having been here.” She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know if that’s bleak or if it’s the closest thing to comfort I’ve had in forty years. Maybe both. But yeah. That’ll do.”
THE END
The park opened up before her—a collection of stone benches and scraggly trees under scattered pools of amber light. Most of the benches sat empty. But one, near the far edge of a streetlight’s reach, held a figure.
A young man in his early twenties hunched forward on the stone seat, dressed in a thin jacket inadequate for the November chill. An earbud glinted in one ear. He bit into a sunflower seed, extracted the kernel with his tongue, and spat the shell onto the ground where dozens of others already lay scattered around his feet. His gaze seemed fixed on nothing in particular, somewhere past the pavement.
The woman approached, her footsteps audible on the path. She stopped at the edge of the bench’s light.
“Hey,” she said. “Mind if I sit?”
The young man’s head lifted. His eyes tracked to her face—pale skin, red eyes, features half-obscured by the hood. He held her gaze for a moment before she looked away.
“Sitting down next to a sketchy guy at 3 a.m., huh?” He cracked another seed between his teeth. “You got some guts.”
The woman sat down on the opposite end of the bench, maintaining space between them. She pulled her hood back slightly, revealing more of her face to the streetlight.
“Yeah, well, I’m sketchy too,” she said. “We’ll make a matching set.”
The young man leaned back against the bench, his shoulders settling against the stone. He cracked another sunflower seed between his teeth and spat the shell onto the growing pile at his feet. His gaze stayed on her face, lingering on her red eyes.
“I don’t know whether to tell you that I don’t deal,” he said, “or tell you that I don’t have any money.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change. She pulled her hands from her hoodie pocket and rested them on her knees.
“Relax, I don’t need a dealer and your wallet’s safe,” she said. “Just looking for a place to sit that isn’t completely soaked.”
His gaze shifted away from her, scanning the darkness beyond the bench. The earbud caught the light as he turned his head.
“Well… I guess you don’t want to sit in silence. What’s your deal? 3 a.m., a young woman alone. Are you nuts?”
She looked toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle, then back at him. A small exhale, visible in the November air.
“Maybe a little nuts, yeah. But it’s 3 a.m. and you’re here too, so I figure we’ve both got our reasons for being awake when normal people are sleeping.” Her hand lifted, indicating the darkness. “Besides, sitting alone in my place was getting old. At least out here there’s… I don’t know, other people existing. Even if they’re strangers eating sunflower seeds in empty parks.”
He extracted another seed from the bag in his jacket pocket. His jaw worked around it before he spoke.
“The biological urge, right?” He spat the shell. “Talking to some meat sack that will speak back, even if you likely won’t ever see them again. Hell, maybe even better if you won’t ever see them again.” He paused, rolling the next seed between his fingers. “Don’t you hate it? That it came programmed in? I don’t like people. It’s not that I actively dislike them. More like… They make my skin crawl.”
The woman’s posture shifted slightly forward. Her eyes tracked to him, held there for several seconds.
“Yeah. The biological urge. It’s fucked up, isn’t it? That we’re hardwired to need connection even when we don’t want it, even when it makes everything harder. Like our bodies didn’t get the memo that we’re better off alone.” She pulled her hood down an inch. “And you’re right—sometimes it’s easier when you know you’ll never see them again. No follow-up, no accountability, just… a moment of existing with someone else and then it’s done.”
The young man bit into another seed. His eyes remained on the pavement ahead, but his head tilted slightly toward her voice.
“We’re better off alone. You got that right.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “But you can’t choose to do that. Even if you headed to the woods, you’d be squatting on someone else’s property. I didn’t opt into this shit, this…” His hand made a sharp gesture toward the empty park. “…society. But we have to deal with it if only because some day we’ll catch some disease.”
The woman’s head turned toward him. She watched him crack another seed, the small sound distinct in the quiet.
“You’re right that we didn’t opt in,” she said. “But even if you go to the woods, you’re still operating within the system—squatting on someone’s property, like you said, or eventually needing medicine or…” Her shoulders lifted slightly. “…I don’t know, human contact that you hate but can’t escape. The trap isn’t just society, it’s that our bodies won’t let us actually leave. We’re wired to need things we’d rather not need. And that’s… that’s the real prison, isn’t it? Not the rules or the property or the people, but the fact that we can’t choose to stop needing any of it.”
He shook his head slowly, his gaze still fixed ahead.
“Pee. Shit. Eat three meals a day. Talk to other sentient apes so you don’t feel lonely. Seek a warm body in which to cum lest your chemical makeup penalizes you for refusing your imperative.” Another shell hit the pile at his feet. “We are imprisoned. We’re thinking clouds inside a convolution of matter, and we spend most of the day tending to this meat puppet we didn’t choose. A meat puppet that will decay and kill us along with it.”
The woman leaned forward, her forearms resting on her knees. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That’s exactly it. And the worst part? Even when you see it clearly, when you understand the trap, you still can’t escape it. You still need to eat. Still need to talk to someone at 3 a.m. so you don’t lose your mind. Still need to…” She gestured vaguely toward the darkness. “…participate in all this shit we never opted into. The body demands it even when the thinking part of you would rather not.”
The young man’s head turned. He looked straight into the night beyond the streetlight’s circle, his profile sharp in the amber glow.
“Wouldn’t it be better for it all to… cease?” His voice delivered the words flatly. “You know it in your bones, don’t you? It’s not going to get any better.”
The woman went still. Her breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating. She stared into the same darkness he faced. The silence stretched between them—five seconds, ten. A car passed somewhere on a distant street, its engine fading.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be better if it all just… ceased.” Her head turned toward him briefly, then away. “But I can’t answer that honestly. Because if I really believed it, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have ended it already. And I haven’t. So what does that make me? Someone who sees the trap clearly but keeps participating anyway? Someone too scared to actually commit to the logic of their own philosophy?” She lifted one hand and rubbed it across her face. The motion pulled her hood back further. “I think the worst part isn’t that it won’t get better. It’s that I keep hoping it might, even when I know better. That biological urge again—not just for connection, but for meaning. For something that makes the meat puppet maintenance worth it.” Her hand dropped back to her knee. “And I can’t tell if that’s human resilience or just… pathetic delusion.”
The young man cracked another seed between his teeth. He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet, his gaze fixed on the wet cobblestones.
“It is delusion. If we didn’t come in with built-in delusion, who would have opted to endure it? We would have gone extinct long ago.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “Sure, cats, dogs, they don’t know any better. For anything sentient, they would have to choose correctly.” The seed cracked between his teeth. “We keep existing because some part of our brains is dedicated to lying to ourselves, or to itself perhaps, that its continuation is worth the pain. Not even for its own sake. But to create more versions of the instructions that built it.”
The woman looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes stayed on his profile, watching him crack another seed. Then she turned her gaze back to the darkness beyond the streetlight.
“I think you’re right about the delusion,” she said. “About the brain lying to itself to keep the machinery running. But here’s the thing—” She shifted slightly on the bench. “I don’t know if recognizing the delusion actually changes anything. Like, I can see it clearly, I can articulate it the same way you just did, and I’m still… here. Still participating. Still eating and talking and maintaining this meat puppet I didn’t choose. So what does that make the recognition worth? Just another layer of awareness that doesn’t lead anywhere?” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the November air. “Maybe the real trap isn’t the biological imperatives themselves. It’s that even when you see through them completely, you still can’t stop performing them. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of your own imprisonment.”
He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. The earbud glinted as his head tilted downward.
“It is a mockery. We, what we believe ourselves to be, aren’t worrying or despairing about the lack of meaning. Our brain is keeping us deluded so we continue operating it. But our brain is also the one who makes us recognize the absurdity of it.” His hand gestured vaguely toward his head. “The fact that we believe there is an ‘I’ that somehow looks at this from an elevated position is a delusion.” He extracted another seed from the bag. “You know about that guy, a couple hundred years ago maybe, that laid railroad tracks, right? Had something to do with trains anyway. One spike blew straight through his fucking frontal lobe. Didn’t kill him. Just changed who he was.” The seed cracked. “You take out one part of your brain and you’re no longer you. A stroke kills part of your brain and you’re no longer you.” The shell hit the pile at his feet. “That’s because the brain is making itself believe that it has choices.”
The woman went quiet. She stared at the wet cobblestones reflecting the amber streetlight, her posture still, her breathing visible in small clouds.
“You’re talking about the railroad spike guy,” she said finally. “Phineas Gage. And yeah, you’re right—take out one chunk of brain tissue and the whole ‘I’ thing collapses. Different person, same meat puppet. But here’s what fucks me up about that example. It’s not just that we’re not in control. It’s that there never was an ‘I’ making choices in the first place. Just…” Her hand lifted, fingers spreading. “…neurochemistry pretending to be agency, brain states pretending to be decisions.”
The young man turned his head to look at her directly. She kept her gaze on the cobblestones.
“And we can see it, articulate it, understand it completely—and it doesn’t change anything,” she continued. “I’m still sitting here at 3 a.m. talking to you like this conversation matters, like these words mean something, even though we both know it’s just… what? Electrical impulses in meat that’s lying to itself about being conscious?” She glanced at him, then back to the pavement. “The recognition doesn’t grant freedom. It just makes you more aware of the cage while you keep performing the same biological routines. Eating. Talking. Surviving. All of it automated, all of it predetermined by brain architecture we didn’t choose.” She pulled her hands from her knees and wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. “And the worst part? Even knowing that, I can’t stop hoping there’s something more. That’s the real mockery, isn’t it? The brain’s so good at lying to itself that even when you see through the delusion, you still participate in it.”
The young man leaned back against the bench. He cracked another seed, spat the shell, and looked up at the black sky beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed. A breeze moved through the park, rustling the scraggly trees.
“I suppose we’re both beyond questioning what’s the point of it,” he said. His voice carried no particular weight. “Its existence is the point. Its own sake. Even if it’s meaningless. Even if it hurts.”
The woman’s eyes remained fixed on the wet cobblestones reflecting the streetlight’s amber glow. The silence extended. The young man cracked another seed. She glanced at him.
“I think that’s what fucks me up the most—not that we can’t find meaning, but that we keep looking for it anyway. Keep participating in all this biological bullshit even when we’ve articulated every reason not to. Like we’re hardwired to hope for something we can’t even name, and recognizing that doesn’t let us stop.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the air. “So here we are. 3 a.m. in an empty park, two people who see the trap clearly, eating sunflower seeds and talking philosophy like it matters. And maybe it does. Or maybe we’re just… doing what the meat puppet demands. Connection, conversation, the illusion that this moment registers as something more than neurochemistry pretending to be consciousness.” Her gaze returned to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech. “I don’t know which it is. But I’m glad you’re here anyway.”
The young man turned his head. His eyes—tired, heavy-lidded—settled on her face. The earbud caught the light as he moved.
“Are you?” His voice carried the same flat delivery. “Glad, I mean. I know what you are, what you came here to do. You can’t control it for much longer, can you?”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes locked on him, her body frozen in place. The only movement was her breathing, small clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. She didn’t blink.
“Yeah. I know what I am.” Her voice remained steady. “And you’re right—I can’t control it for much longer. Three days, like clockwork.” She exhaled slowly, her shoulders lowering slightly. “But here’s the fucked up part. I came here to feed. That’s what I do—find someone isolated, someone vulnerable, and I… take what I need. But you started talking about meat puppets and biological imprisonment and the brain lying to itself about continuation, and suddenly I didn’t want to be a predator anymore. I wanted to be a person having a conversation with another person who sees the same trap I do.” She looked away, turning her gaze toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s reach. “So yeah. I’m glad you’re here. Not because you’re a feeding target, but because for the last however many minutes, I got to pretend I’m something other than what my biology demands I be. That probably doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense and that’s the real mockery—that even when you know exactly what you are and what you’re going to do, you still reach for moments that make you feel less monstrous. Even when they’re temporary. Even when they don’t change anything.”
The young man remained motionless on the bench. His eyes stayed on her profile, watching her stare into the darkness. The earbud in his ear caught the amber light, a small point of reflection in the November night. He extracted another seed from his bag and cracked it between his teeth.
“Well, at least you work for what you consume, don’t you?” He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet. “I see animal carcasses at a butcher shop and I wish to look away. Those things just wanted to live, and we kill them by the millions.” Another seed cracked. “I’m not a vegetarian. I eat animals while the thought runs through my mind that I’m having other living things killed for my sake even though I don’t want to live.”
The woman’s gaze stayed fixed on the wet cobblestones. Several seconds passed. Her breath formed small clouds in the cold air, visible in the amber streetlight. When she spoke, her voice carried the same flat quality his had.
“Yeah. I work for it.” She paused. “That’s… that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? You eat animals while thinking they just wanted to live, while you don’t even want to be alive yourself. I feed on people while knowing it violates them, while wishing I could opt out of the whole biological countdown.” Her hand lifted slightly, then dropped back to her knee. “We both keep participating in harm we can articulate but can’t escape.”
The young man cracked another seed. The earbud glinted as he turned his head slightly toward her.
“The worst part isn’t the harm itself,” she continued. “It’s that recognizing it doesn’t change anything. You still need to eat. I still need to feed. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of being a mechanism acting out its programming. And we keep going anyway because… what? The brain’s too good at lying to itself about continuation mattering?” Her shoulders shifted slightly under the hoodie. “I don’t know if that’s tragic or just… the way meat puppets work.”
The young man’s head turned, his gaze fixed straight into the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. He reached down and set the packet of sunflower seeds on the stone bench beside him. His hand lifted to his neck, index finger extended, pointing to the pale skin below his jaw.
“Well, meat puppet, go ahead.” His voice carried the same flat delivery as before. “You know what you have to do.”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes fixed on the finger pointing to his neck, tracked the line from his hand to the exposed skin. Several seconds passed without movement from either of them. The only sound was the distant hum of a streetlight and their breathing visible in the cold air.
She shifted closer on the bench, the movement slow and deliberate. The space between them decreased. Her body angled toward him, shoulders turning.
“You understand what this is.” Her voice came out quiet, almost uncertain. “What I’ll take from you. Not just blood—the violation, the trauma, all of it. And you’re still offering.” She paused, her eyes searching his profile. “I don’t know if that makes you the most compassionate person I’ve met in forty years or the most self-destructive. Maybe both.”
Her hand lifted from her knee, reaching up slowly. She gave him time before her palm settled gently on his opposite shoulder. The contact steadied him, anchored him in place on the stone bench.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “And you’re going to remember it. And I’m…” Her voice caught slightly. “I’m sorry that this is what I am.”
She leaned in. Her mouth opened, revealing elongated canines that caught the amber streetlight. Her head tilted, angling toward the spot where his finger had pointed. Then her fangs sank into his flesh.
His body jerked—a sharp inhale, a gasp that broke the quiet of the empty park. A tremor ran through him, visible in the way his shoulders shook, the way his free hand clenched against his thigh. But he remained seated, didn’t pull away, didn’t fight. His head tilted further to the side, exposing more of his neck to her mouth.
The ragged quality of his voice vibrated against her fangs, the words formed through controlled breaths.
“One of your kind got me a year ago,” he said. The tremor continued through his frame, small shakes that traveled from his shoulders down to his hands. “Just as I was walking home from one of my night outings to figure out if I was still alive.” He exhaled shakily. “Then he or she abandoned me on the grass with a burning wound in my neck.” Another breath, catching slightly. “And as I lay there, I thought, ‘They should have fucking drained me.'”
The woman’s hand tightened slightly on his shoulder. Her other hand came up to brace against his upper arm, steadying both him and herself. She remained there, feeding, her mouth pressed against the wound in his neck. The movement was slow, controlled, despite the visible tension in her shoulders. Her breath came in measured intervals between draws. The young man’s tremors persisted, traveling through his frame where her hands braced him.
Her voice emerged muffled against his skin, trembling slightly around the words.
“They should have drained you. You wanted them to kill you.” She paused, her fangs still embedded in the flesh of his neck. “Is that what you’re offering me now? Feeding, or an exit? Because I need to know which one you’re asking for before I decide how much to take.”
The young man’s breathing had grown shallow, rapid. Another tremor ran through him, stronger than the previous ones. His head remained tilted to the side, exposing the wound and the blood seeping around her mouth.
“I don’t know.” His voice came out strained. “I don’t know if I care. If feeding from me gives you something of value, I guess that’s good. And if you kill me, I guess that’s fine too.” The tremor intensified for a moment, then settled into the same persistent shake. “The same thing is waiting for me at the end of either route.”
The woman remained there, drinking. Her hands on his shoulder and arm maintained their pressure, steadying him as his breathing grew more ragged. The pile of sunflower seed shells lay scattered at their feet, undisturbed. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. Her shoulders rose and fell with each controlled breath between draws.
Then she stopped. Her fangs withdrew slowly from the wound, the movement deliberate and careful. Blood remained wet on her lips, dark in the amber streetlight. She pulled back slightly, creating space between them on the bench. Her hands dropped from his shoulder and arm. Her red eyes lifted to meet his face.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Her voice carried clearly now. “You said ‘fine either way,’ but fine isn’t consent. Fine is resignation. And I’m not going to be the mechanism of your death wish just because you won’t stop me.” She reached up and wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Her gaze remained on his face, on his tired, heavy-lidded eyes. “I took what I needed. The countdown resets. You get to keep existing whether you want to or not.” Her hand dropped back to her lap. “And maybe that makes me a bigger monster—taking your choice away by refusing to kill you—but I can’t…” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “I won’t cross that line. Not tonight.”
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together. He lifted his hand slowly to his neck, fingers pressing against the wound. A drop of blood slid down the pale skin, darkening his fingertips red. His head turned slightly toward her, not fully facing her, just enough to bring her into his peripheral vision.
“I’m already woozy. It comes with the territory, I guess. Well, what did your meat puppet tell you now that you have obeyed? Good job?”
The woman raised the back of her hand to her mouth, wiping away the remaining blood from her lips. The motion was slow, deliberate. Then she looked at him for a long moment, her red eyes steady on his face.
“My meat puppet told me I get to exist for another three days. That I successfully completed the biological countdown without killing the person who offered me permission to.” She went quiet, her gaze dropping to the wound on his neck. “You’re woozy because I just took about a pint of your blood. You should sit still for a few minutes, let your body compensate. Drink something with sugar when you get home.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible. “And yeah. Good job, I guess. I proved I can still choose restraint when someone won’t stop me. That I’m something slightly more than just appetite with fangs.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “That’s what my meat puppet told me. What did yours tell you? Because you’re still here too, even though you wanted that other vampire to drain you. Even though you said the same thing is waiting either way. So what does that make us? Two biological machines that can see the programming clearly but can’t stop executing it?”
The young man’s hand remained pressed to his neck, blood seeping between his fingers. His head turned more fully toward her, his tired eyes locking onto her red ones.
“Even those that see the programming clearly and do stop executing it, let’s say by jumping off a fucking bridge, were still acting on their programming. It just wasn’t very good programming. Or it was, depending on what you believe the main objective to be.” His gaze held steady on her face. “I look at you and at what you have done to me and I don’t have a single thought in my mind. Not any that I don’t need to force myself to scoop out of my brain. What does that mean?”
The woman went still. Her eyes remained on his face, searching. Several seconds passed without either of them moving. The distant hum of the streetlight continued.
“I don’t know what it means.” She reached up slowly, her hand moving toward his face. Her thumb extended, making contact with his cheek. She wiped across the skin with her thumb in a single, tender stroke. “Maybe it means your brain’s protecting you from processing what just happened. Maybe it means you’ve already processed so much shit that this doesn’t register anymore. Or maybe…” She paused, her thumb still resting against his cheek. “…maybe it means exactly what you said earlier. That we’re thinking clouds trapped in meat puppets, and sometimes the machinery just… doesn’t generate the response we expect it to. The emotional operating system looks for a reaction and finds nothing, and that absence is just as real as feeling would be.”
Her hand dropped away from his face, returning to her lap. She remained facing him, her posture open, waiting.
He sat there, his gaze shifting away from her toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. His hand stayed pressed to the wound on his neck. His chest rose and fell with steady breathing, the visible clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The park remained empty except for the two of them on the stone bench.
“Do you also wake up from dreams,” he asked, “even nightmares at times, to see your ceiling, or I guess in your case some random ceiling, and think, ‘Why did I have to spend about eight hours hallucinating stuff that even at its worst is much better than my life?'”
The woman’s gaze lifted from the wet cobblestones to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Her shoulders rose slightly with an inhale, then fell.
“Yeah. Every fucking night.” She paused, her eyes tracking across the empty park. “I used to dream about—doesn’t matter what. Point is, even the worst nightmare was better than waking up to this. At least in dreams you get narrative, right? Cause and effect, some kind of structure. Even if it’s terrifying, it follows its own logic. But then you wake up and it’s just… this. The same biological countdown, the same empty hours, no plot development. Just maintenance and survival on loop.” She exhaled slowly. “Sometimes I think the brain generates dreams to remind us what meaning used to feel like. Or what we imagine it felt like. Then we wake up and remember that was the delusion, and this—” Her hand lifted, gesturing vaguely at the empty park, the wet cobblestones, the darkness pressing in around them. “—this is what’s real.”
The young man’s head shook slowly.
“Or maybe dreams provide a respite in which meaning returns. Otherwise we would exist in a single-threaded succession of meaninglessness that would inevitably lead us to despair. Maybe that’s why people who can’t sleep eventually die. Their very organism can no longer take it.” He shook his head again. “You know, for a while I thought that you had it better than me, but…” He paused, his gaze shifting to her face. “You can’t feel the sun on your skin, can you? The very thing that gives life to everything else would burn it out of you. And yet you keep going.”
The woman went quiet. Her eyes remained fixed on the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech, without movement except for her breathing visible in the cold air.
“Yeah. I can’t feel the sun on my skin. Haven’t felt it in forty years.” Her voice carried the same flat quality. “Sometimes I dream about it—standing in daylight, feeling warmth instead of terror. Then I wake up and remember that’s the one thing I can never have again. The thing that gives life to everything else would burn me alive in minutes.” She exhaled slowly. “But you’re right. I keep going anyway. Even knowing what I’ve lost, what I do to survive, all the biological maintenance and violation and emptiness… I keep participating. Maybe that’s the real mockery—not that we’re trapped in meat puppets, but that even when we see the cage completely, when we’ve articulated every reason to stop, we still can’t make ourselves quit.” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “So here we are. Two people who know exactly what continuation costs, sitting in an empty park at 3 a.m., still breathing. Still existing despite everything.”
She leaned toward him. Her head came to rest against his shoulder, the weight settling there. Her hood slipped back further, revealing more of her pale face to the amber streetlight. She remained there, still, her breathing visible in small clouds that formed and dissipated.
The young man’s arm extended along the back of the bench. His hand reached her head. He patted her twice, the motion gentle, then let his hand rest there. The pile of sunflower seed shells remained scattered at their feet. A breeze moved through the scraggly trees.
Time passed—a minute, two. Her head remained on his shoulder. His hand stayed on her head. Their breathing continued to form small clouds in the cold air.
The young man’s voice broke the silence.
“So, what do you usually do after you pull your fangs out of someone’s neck? Run?”
The woman’s head lifted slightly from his shoulder, then settled back down. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“Yeah. Usually I run. Feed, pull out, disappear before they can process what happened or I have to see what I’ve done to them. That’s the pattern—forty years of it.” She went quiet for a moment. “But right now I don’t want to. Don’t know if that means anything, or if I’m just… delaying the inevitable. But sitting here with you after everything we just talked about, after you offered your neck knowing what I am—I don’t want to perform the disappearing act yet. Even though I probably will eventually. Because that’s what I do.”
“A hit-it-and-quit-it kind of gal, aren’t you?” He paused. “Well, you can’t help it. You’ll move out somewhere else until the heat goes down. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of you in the shadows during one of these 3 a.m. strolls. Maybe I’ll grow to be seventy and still see your young self prowling about.”
He went quiet. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. His breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating.
“There’s something down there,” he said. “Something for which… I don’t have words. A sense of meaning at the bottom. Too far away for recognition. For attaching labels to it. Somewhere in that vast darkness. Like a fish barely seen under the water.”
The woman remained still against his shoulder. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That fish you’re talking about, I see it too. Or maybe I want to see it. I don’t know if that’s the same thing.” She exhaled slowly. “You said you might catch glimpses of me in forty years, still looking twenty-five while you’re seventy. That’s… fuck, that’s the first time anyone’s… Not ‘see you around’ like a polite lie, but actual recognition that I exist across time even when I’m not visible. That I might matter enough to register as a recurring presence in someone’s life instead of just… a bad thing that happened once.”
The young man’s voice emerged tired, dry.
“Don’t get me wrong. You’ll show up in my brain as a bad thing that happened to me once. In the company of everything else that appears from the past. Not the years I’ve lived. Just still photos, two-or-three-second clips of what I supposedly existed through. The feeling of your fangs piercing through my flesh. Your red eyes staring back at me. Reminders that I was here, in this park, at 3 a.m. I guess that will do.”
The woman went quiet. Her head remained resting against his shoulder, her breathing visible in the November air. When she spoke, her voice came out softer than before.
“You’re right. I’ll show up as a bad thing that happened. That’s what I am to people—a trauma they carry, a two-or-three-second clip that resurfaces at 3 a.m. But you said ‘I guess that will do.’ Like being remembered as something bad is still… something. Like existing in someone’s memory, even as a wound, still counts as having been here.” She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know if that’s bleak or if it’s the closest thing to comfort I’ve had in forty years. Maybe both. But yeah. That’ll do.”
THE END
October 19, 2025
Blood Ties (Short Story)
[check out this short story on my personal page, where it looks better]
Haritz stops at a point on the sidewalk, and I stop with him. The tall, older man looks up at a clean-looking apartment building—five stories high, probably built about a decade ago. So much nicer than my shithole. Then he looks down at me with that kindness in his eyes, the same gentleness that’s been unraveling me all afternoon.
“This is it, Ane. Where I live,” he says. “If you prefer, we can go up right now, so you can explore my apartment and see if you feel safe. Otherwise, I guess this would be where we part ways, and you’ll call or text me when you want to visit my place.”
My heart hammers against my ribs. This is it. Haritz’s apartment. Where he lives. He’s offering to let me see it right now—to explore it, to see if I feel safe. And fuck, I want to feel safe so badly it physically hurts.
This whole afternoon has been… God, it’s been everything I’ve fantasized about. A strong, protective man who sees past the whore everyone else sees. Who called me beautiful, who held me while I cried, who made me feel like I matter. Like I’m worth something beyond what my mouth can do.
Part of me is screaming that this is stupid, that I’m being reckless, that I don’t actually know this man. But… I’ve gotten pretty good at reading men, haven’t I? That’s my gift. And Haritz… he feels different. The way he touched my hair, kissed my forehead, the gentleness in his voice when he called me “baby girl.” That wasn’t a client’s manipulation. That was real tenderness. Real care.
And he’s giving me a choice. He’s not pressuring me. He’s saying I can go up now or wait, that I can call or text later. He’s respecting my agency in a way almost no man ever has. That… that means something, doesn’t it?
I want to see where he lives. I want to walk into his space and feel what it’s like to be somewhere that isn’t my mother’s hellhole. Somewhere clean and safe and… his. I want to see if this feeling—this warmth, this hope—can exist beyond this sidewalk. If it’s real enough to survive inside four walls.
I’m scared. Of course I’m scared. But I’m more scared of letting this slip away. Of going back home tonight and realizing I just walked away from the one genuine connection I’ve ever had. The one man who might actually be what I’ve been waiting for.
I look up at him, feeling my big brown eyes search his face, nervousness and hope flickering through me like competing flames.
“I… I want to see it. Your place. Right now, if that’s okay.” My fingers fidget with the hem of my pink crop top. “I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to go back home yet and… and I want to know what it feels like. To be somewhere safe with you.”
Minutes later, I’m standing in Haritz’s living room and it’s… it’s so clean. So normal. The kind of place where people have lives that don’t revolve around survival. White bookshelves, a comfortable sofa with throw cushions, natural light pouring in. This is what safety looks like. This is what I’ve been dreaming about every time I walked past nice apartments on my way home to that hellhole.
And Haritz brought me here. He’s letting me see his space, his world.
I need to… I need to take this in. To see if this feeling can exist here. If I sit down on that sofa, will it feel like I belong? Or will I just feel like the dirty little whore from the shithole part of town who’s contaminating something clean?
I walk slowly to the comfortable gray sofa, my eyes taking in every detail of the clean, warm living room. I reach out to touch one of the beige cushions gently—it’s soft, real—before lowering myself onto the sofa. I sit with my legs together and my hands folded in my lap, trying to make myself small enough to deserve this.
“This is… your place is really nice, Haritz. It’s so clean and warm and…” My voice softens, becomes almost vulnerable. “It feels safe here.”
Haritz looks at me with such tenderness. “You don’t have to sit so formally, you know?” His voice is gentle, reassuring. “It’s a very comfortable sofa. It will be ready to hold you whenever you need to escape from your bad situation.”
My chest tightens at those words. Whenever you need to escape. Like this could be real. Like this could be mine. Like I could actually—
The doorbell rings.
Haritz’s expression shifts instantly—confusion, maybe even alarm. He stops mid-step and turns toward the front door. “What’s this? I’m not waiting for any package, and I don’t tend to receive visits. So soon after we just got in, too…”
My stomach flips. Not the good kind. The nervous kind. Like when a client’s vibe suddenly shifts and you realize you might have misjudged the situation.
But Haritz looks genuinely confused. He’s not expecting this either. So it’s probably nothing. Maybe a neighbor? Someone selling something? Just… random timing. Bad timing. I was just starting to let myself relax into this space, to feel like maybe I could belong here, and now there’s an interruption. Someone from the outside world crashing into this fragile bubble we’ve created.
I watch Haritz walk toward the door, my brown eyes tracking his movement with a flicker of uncertainty. “Who… who could that be? You said you weren’t expecting anyone…”
He doesn’t answer, just heads for the door. I sit frozen on the sofa, my hands still folded in my lap, trying to make myself smaller. Invisible. There’s this little voice whispering that maybe I shouldn’t be here. That maybe whoever’s on the other side of that door will look at me and know exactly what I am. The whore from the shithole part of town contaminating this clean, safe space.
Haritz opens the door. And then I hear it. That voice. Slurred, nasty, venomous.
Haritz’s face twists with barely contained disgust as he looks at whoever’s there. “I’m not even black, madame.” His voice is cold, controlled. “So, you’re Ane’s mother?”
That voice. I know that slurred, aggressive tone anywhere. It’s burned into my fucking brain from a thousand nights of lying awake with earplugs shoved in too deep, trying not to hear it.
That’s Marisa. My mother.
The drunk bitch who makes my life hell just found out where I am. How? How the fuck did she track me here? Did she follow us? Was she watching when Haritz and I walked into this building together?
Oh God, oh God, this is a nightmare.
Haritz just asked if she’s my mother and I can hear the disgust in his voice—barely contained disgust. He can tell just from looking at her what kind of disaster she is. And now she’s here, at his door, about to contaminate this beautiful, safe space with her toxic presence. She’s going to scream at me, call me names, maybe try to drag me home. She’s going to show Haritz exactly where I come from, exactly what kind of garbage produced me.
He’ll see me differently. He’ll realize I’m not investment quality, I’m just… her daughter. The product of that drunk, stumbling mess at his door.
This was supposed to be my escape. My one chance at something real and safe and good. And she’s about to destroy it like she destroys everything.
I need to… I don’t know what I need to do. Face her? Hide? Run? My legs are shaking and I feel like I might throw up. But I can’t just sit here on his sofa like a coward while she’s out there making a scene.
I rise slowly from the comfortable sofa, my brown eyes wide with a dawning horror. “That’s… that’s my mother’s voice.” The words come out strangled. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She… how did she even…” My voice drops to almost a whisper, trembling. “Haritz, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think… I didn’t know she would… Oh God, she’s going to ruin everything. She ruins everything.”
Before Haritz can respond, she pushes past him, barreling into the apartment. And there she is—disheveled red hair, tired eyes, her beer gut prominent in her stained T-shirt. She looks around with reddened eyes as Haritz steps toward her with a serious look I haven’t seen before.
“Ane’s mother.” His voice is cold, controlled. “The same mother that has given such grief to a sweet girl. To be honest, I can see it from merely looking at you.” He gestures firmly toward the door. “I didn’t invite you in. If you want to talk, go back out and we’ll talk at the doorway.”
I need to get to Haritz. I need to be near him, close to him. He’s the safe thing in this room right now. Marisa is here—that toxic fucking disaster who birthed me—and she’s about to poison everything like she always does. But if I can just… if I can position myself near Haritz, show him that I’m with him, that I’m on his side, that I’m not her… maybe he won’t see me as contaminated. Maybe he’ll still see me as the girl he held in the park. The one who deserves kindness.
God, my legs are shaking but I have to move. I have to get close to the one person in this room who makes me feel safe.
My voice comes out small and trembling as I move toward Haritz. “Haritz… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she would… I didn’t think…” My brown eyes are wide with a mix of fear and humiliation. “Please don’t… please don’t let her ruin this. She ruins everything but I need… I need this to be different.”
I reach his side, standing close to him, and that’s when she focuses on me. Her bloodshot eyes lock onto mine and she points a trembling finger at me.
“There you are!” she slurs, her words wet and sloppy. “I went out earlier to see where you had escaped to, and I saw you at the park with this man, this… nigger! Perverted nigger!”
She spits the words at Haritz, and I see actual spittle spray from her mouth. My stomach turns.
“Hugging my daughter and kissing her forehead… You have no right, you pig!” Her glare shifts to me. “And you! You are dressed like a whore! What’s with that flared pink skirt, those thigh-high socks with heart prints! You want perverted grown men to fuck you, don’t you? And now you’ve followed this… this fucking nigger here, into his apartment! No shame, god damn it… No wonder your father left us!”
The words hit me like fists. Each one designed to hurt, to humiliate, to destroy. This is what she does. This is who she is.
But then Haritz moves. He crosses an arm in front of my torso, shielding me from her, and nails her with a stern look.
“As I’ve told you before, I’m not black,” he says, his voice cold and controlled. “And you’re not going to stand here, in my apartment, insulting your daughter and me for much longer. You’re clearly unwell, clearly abusive. You’ve terrorized your daughter.”
She’s here. The drunk bitch who ruins everything is standing in Haritz’s clean, safe apartment, spewing her racist venom and calling me a whore in front of the one man who might actually save me. Haritz is defending me—he’s shielding me with his arm, calling her out for being abusive—but I can see it happening. I can see the contamination spreading. She’s showing him exactly where I come from, exactly what kind of garbage produced me. In a few more seconds, he’s going to realize I’m not investment quality at all. I’m just the daughter of that drunk, racist mess screaming slurs in his living room.
I move closer to Haritz, my voice small and trembling. “Haritz… please don’t let her… please don’t let her ruin this. I’m not… I’m not like her. I’m not.”
My fingers find his arm and I link myself to him—a physical connection, a claim. I’m choosing him. I’m choosing safety over the toxic disaster screaming in his living room. If I can just show him that I belong with him and not her, maybe he won’t see me as contaminated. Maybe he’ll keep shielding me.
But Marisa’s eyes lock onto the gesture. Her eyelids twitch with rage as she watches me cling to Haritz, and her whole face contorts.
“You… fucking little whore.” The words come out wet and venomous. “I’ve done everything. EVERYTHING. To ensure you had a roof over your head. Cleaning shit off toilets. So many fucking toilets. And for what…? For my daughter to turn out to be this… this filthy whore!”
My stomach drops.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” she continues, her voice rising. “Neighbor women saying they saw you in the bushes blowing some men, having their disgusting cocks in your mouth, and then giving you money… It’s true, isn’t it…?”
Oh God. Oh God, she knows. She fucking knows. And now Haritz knows—she just told him exactly what I am in the most disgusting way possible.
“Of course it’s fucking true, I didn’t buy you those clothes…” She wipes her eyes, but then glares back with renewed fury. “God damn it. Your father knew you were cursed. He knew you were going to turn out rotten. That’s why he abandoned me. I’ve been so lonely…”
The words hit like physical blows. Then she turns that rage fully on Haritz. “And you! She’s not even an adult. I’ll call the police if you don’t let her go right this instant and never see her again. You know what they do in prison to child rapists, right? I’ll make sure everybody knows you’re a rapist! Fucking nigger. All of you, you should have stayed in Africa. I can’t take all these fucking niggers raping my daughter.”
And then she lunges forward and slaps Haritz hard across the face.
The sound echoes through the living room. A reddened imprint starts appearing on his cheek. But Haritz looks otherwise unfazed—just that stern expression I saw when she first barged in. He slowly returns his gaze to Marisa and speaks carefully in that deep voice.
“Ane’s mother, I’ll repeat for the third time that I’m not black. In addition, you deserve to be slapped back real hard, both for your actions and for the pain you’re causing your sweet angel of a daughter. If I’m not slapping you it’s because I can tell you’re in deep pain. You took your husband’s abandonment the wrong way, and you’ve proceeded to go down the darkest paths. That would be your burden to bear, if it weren’t because you’re ruining your daughter’s life. You need to take a good look in the mirror and see what you’ve become.”
She just slapped him. That drunk bitch just put her hands on Haritz—the one man who’s shown me genuine kindness, who called me a sweet girl, who offered me safety. In his own home. After barging in uninvited, screaming her racist poison and calling me a whore. And he took it. He stood there, unfazed, and spoke to her with this careful restraint about her pain instead of hitting her back like she deserves.
But I can’t just stand here clinging to his arm like some helpless damsel while she assaults him. I can’t let her get away with that. She’s ruined everything else in my life—my childhood, my home, my reputation, my sense of self-worth—but she’s not going to ruin THIS. She’s not going to poison the one relationship that might actually save me.
My hand is already tingling with the memory of slapping that college kid who mocked me with his crude poem. This is different though. This is my mother. The woman who birthed me, who—despite all her failures and abuse—did keep a roof over my head.
But she also blamed me for my father leaving. She called me a whore in front of the man I need to see me as investment quality. She put her hands on Haritz.
Fuck her.
“You don’t get to touch him!” The words rip out of me, shrill and fierce, trembling with rage. “You don’t get to come into his home and put your hands on him after everything—after all the poison you’ve spewed! He’s been kinder to me in one afternoon than you’ve been in my entire fucking life!”
My hand moves before I can think about it. The slap connects with her cheek, sharp and satisfying.
Marisa stumbles back, astonishment flooding her face as my handprint blooms red on her cheek. Tears spring from her eyes, but then her expression twists into something enraged, and spittle flies from her mouth.
“H-how… dare you?!” she screams. “Your own mother, you put your hands on me…! On me, who fed you milk from my tits, who sang to you lullabies so you would fall asleep…” Her voice cracks. “B-but if I had known, if I had known… you would turn out into this… rotten cocksucker… Oh god, I would have killed myself. I want to die so bad. Nobody loves me. My daughter is getting filled with cum from all the men in town, apparently, and I… I have become this… this… filthy nigger form.”
She turns her maddened gaze to Haritz, who watches her with what looks like a mixture of disgust and fascination.
“And you, big man who wants to rape my daughter…” Her hands move to the hem of her stained T-shirt. “My tits are real big. Not the tiny mosquito bites of that whore. Look.”
She yanks the shirt over her head, and her G-cup breasts wobble and hang freely. No bra. Of course no bra. She stands there half-naked in Haritz’s clean living room, her saggy tits on full display.
“Wouldn’t you rather suck on these…?” Her voice takes on this desperate, wheedling quality. “I am better than my whore of a daughter, right…?”
My stomach turns violently. This is what I came from. This drunk, topless mess begging a man to fuck her instead of me—competing with her own daughter like we’re both whores undercutting each other’s prices. She’s standing there, degrading herself, trying to destroy the one good thing I’ve found.
Haritz’s stern look briefly glances down at her breasts, then back up to her face.
“Ane’s mother…” His voice is carefully controlled. “I feel sorry for you. You need a lot of help, but I suspect it has been too late for a long time. And now you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
His voice softens as he looks down at me, and then I feel his strong arm wrap around my bare waist. Warm. Protective.
“You’re not safe,” Haritz continues, addressing my mother. “Your apartment is not safe. I will contact the authorities to ensure they declare you not fit for guardianship of your daughter.”
The words land like a bomb. He’s… he’s going to try to take me away from her. Legally. Permanently. To save me.
But she’s still here, still contaminating his space with her racist bile and her exposed flesh and her pathetic attempts to compete with me. My hand is already tingling from the first slap, but I don’t care. She deserves worse. For all the years of abuse, for tracking me here, for assaulting Haritz, for standing there topless trying to seduce him away from me. For blaming me for Dad leaving. For calling me a whore in front of the one man who might see me as something more.
“You disgusting bitch!” The words rip out of me, my voice cracking with fury and tears. “You stand there topless, offering yourself to him like… like some desperate street whore, and you call ME filthy?! You blame ME for Dad leaving?! You’ve ruined everything good that ever tried to come into my life, but you’re NOT ruining this! Haritz sees you for what you are—a pathetic, broken drunk who destroyed her own daughter! And I’m done. I’m DONE letting you poison me!”
My hand swings before I can think about it. The slap connects hard.
The impact sends her hurtling backwards, her breasts swinging wildly, until she collides with the wall. As she recovers, blood glistens in her mouth. Tears stream down her face. She lifts her drunken, tired gaze to me and widens a crazed smile.
“Ah… so this is it, right…?” Her laugh is wet and broken. “You’ve found yourself a nigger that you believe will… what? Take you away from me, from your own mother? Someone who will put a roof over your head and pay for your stuff and fill your pussy with filthy nigger cum.”
She bursts out laughing as she stumbles closer to Haritz.
“Aah… God damn it. H-hey, you big nigger, if you think you can take care of my whore of a daughter, maybe you can take care of me too. Okay? I need help. At least a big dick in me, someone who will make me feel for a moment that I’m not this… fat pig. I want to die. Please fuck me. Please save me.”
Haritz looks down at her with a mixture of pity and disgust. “Saying ‘You’re a mess’ wouldn’t begin to cover it. You need serious psychiatric help. But first of all, you need to leave the apartment and leave Ane alone. Look at her, how you’re making her feel. If you’ve ever loved your daughter, you need to leave her be.”
I can’t… I can’t keep looking at her. Can’t keep seeing those saggy tits hanging out, those tears streaming down her face as she begs the man I need—the man who might actually save me—to fuck her instead of me. She’s reducing this—reducing us—to a competition about tit size. Like that’s all that matters. Like Haritz is just another john who’ll go for whoever has the biggest rack.
And the worst part? She’s still calling him racial slurs. Still spewing that poison even while begging him to save her. “Please fuck me, you filthy nigger.” God, I want to vomit.
This is what I came from. This drunk, racist, topless disaster is my MOTHER. The woman who birthed me, who I share DNA with. No wonder I’m so fucked up.
I can’t look at her anymore. If I keep looking at her, I’m going to lose it completely. I’m going to start screaming or crying or both, and then Haritz will see me as just another hysterical girl from a fucked-up family, not worth the trouble.
I need to turn away. Show her—show both of them—that I’m not engaging with her poison anymore. That I’m done letting her control me, done letting her ruin everything. Haritz told her to leave me alone, and I need to show him I’m listening to him, not to her. That I’m choosing him over her.
“I can’t even look at you anymore. You’re disgusting.” I turn sharply, presenting my back to her while staying close to Haritz. “Haritz, please… just make her leave. I can’t… I can’t do this anymore.”
Behind me, I hear her voice shift—trying to sound seductive, like she’s ever been capable of anything but toxic poison.
“That’s alright, my daughter don’t need to see.” Her slurred words make my stomach turn. Then I hear movement, fabric rustling, and Haritz’s sharp intake of breath. “I knew it. I knew you had a big cock. Ditch that little whore and let’s go to your bedroom, okay, big nigger?”
Oh God. Oh God, she’s touching him. She’s actually putting her hands on him, groping him while her tits hang out in his living room. My mother is sexually assaulting the one man who might save me, trying to seduce him away from me like we’re competing whores on a street corner.
“God, I need so bad for a nice cock to fill me up until I can’t think anymore. I’ll let you do me anywhere: ass, mouth, ears if you want. But please don’t call me a fatty or anything like that.”
The disgust rises so sharp in my throat I might actually vomit. This is what I came from. This drunk, topless disaster grabbing Haritz’s dick and begging him to fuck her instead of her daughter. Offering up every hole in her body like some kind of desperate bargain.
Haritz’s voice cuts through, stern and controlled. “Woman, you need to let go of my penis.”
I hear him step back, hear her stumble as she loses her grip on him.
“You’ve made a mess of everything and proven your point, don’t you think?” Haritz continues, that careful restraint still in his voice. “Whatever point you believe it might be. Please turn around and leave. Your daughter needs to rest from this insanity.”
I just need to hold it together a little longer. Don’t cry. Don’t scream. Don’t turn around and look at her sagging tits and her pathetic tears. Just… wait. Let Haritz handle it. Trust him to handle it.
That’s what I’m doing now—trusting him. Showing him I can be the kind of girl who doesn’t engage with toxic shit, who can walk away from poison. Investment quality. That’s what I am. Not her daughter.
“She’s pathetic. She’s disgusting. And she’s nothing to do with me anymore.” My voice comes out quieter, steadier, directed at Haritz without looking back at Marisa. “I can’t be in the same room as her right now. I just… I can’t. Please make her leave. Please.”
Behind me, I hear her wobble in place, and then that slurred, teary voice—hateful even now.
“I… I see how it is. You don’t respect me anymore, huh…? After everything…” She burps loudly. “After everything I’ve sacrificed. A-alright then, I can tell when I’m not wanted. I’ll… I need a dick.” Stumbling sounds—backward, then sideways, toward the door. “A drink. Where’s the door…”
Then she suddenly turns over her shoulder to speak to me, and I can feel her toxic gaze on my back.
“Let me tell you, whore: this disrespect… is unbecoming. Don’t bother returning home. And good luck…” She laughs that mad, broken laugh. “Ah, yeah, good luck with this nigger man. You know he’ll leave! They all leave. They abandon you in the dirt, alone… I shouldn’t have been born…”
I feel Haritz return to my side, his warm presence hovering protectively.
“Yes, just leave, please,” he says to her, his deep voice firm. “And know that from now on, if you intend to abuse your daughter again, you’ll need to deal with me first.”
She’s leaving. Marisa is finally stumbling toward the door, throwing those last toxic words over her shoulder. Part of me wants to scream back at her, to tell her she’s right about one thing: she shouldn’t have fucking had me if all she was going to do was poison my entire existence.
But the bigger part—the part that Haritz just defended so fiercely, the part that just watched this man reject her advances and maintain his boundaries and promise to help me legally—that part knows I don’t need to say anything else to her. She’s done. She’s leaving. And I’m staying here, in this clean, safe space with the man who might actually save me.
Haritz just said if Marisa intends to abuse me again, she’ll have to deal with him first. He’s… he’s claiming me. Protecting me. Making it clear that I’m under his care now, that he won’t let her touch me anymore.
And I need to show him what that means to me. How much I appreciate it. How grateful I am. How completely I’m choosing him over her.
I turn toward him, and before I can think about it, I close my arms around him tenderly, hugging him tight. Pressing myself against his solid warmth, feeling safe for the first time since that drunk bitch barged in here.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out thick with emotion. “Thank you for… for defending me. For not letting her… for seeing what she is and still…” I squeeze tighter. “You didn’t have to do any of this. You could have just let her drag me back to that hell, but you stood up for me. You actually stood up for me.”
Marisa swings the door open so forcefully that she nearly falls. She pauses there, turning to take one long, hateful look at me hugging Haritz. Then she faces the open doorway and screams into the hallway.
“Hey, a nigger lives here! Just so you know! They take all of your daughters… no matter what you do for them…”
Her voice breaks, wet with tears and rage and whatever poison is eating her from the inside. She stumbles out into the hallway, reaching clumsily for the door handle.
“I’m wet and ready! I can do it better than that little whore!”
The door slams behind her. But I can still hear her—stumbling down the stairs, still shouting her madness to anyone who’ll listen. The sound gets fainter, more distant, until finally it’s gone.
That toxic disaster who birthed me is actually gone. And I’m still here. In Haritz’s clean, safe apartment. With his strong arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat—steady, calm—so different from my own frantic pulse hammering against my ribs.
Haritz pulls back just enough to look down into my eyes. His hand stays on the back of my head, gentle and protective.
“Well, I see now. She’s gone. And she’s done. Which means it’s in the past.” His deep voice is soft but certain. “You understand what’s going to happen from now on, right?”
I do. I think I do. He’s claiming me. Taking responsibility for me. Offering to save me from her, permanently. This is it. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for—the man who might actually be worth everything, who might actually see my value beyond what I can do with my mouth. And I need to show him—right now, while my mother’s insane screaming is still echoing in the stairwell—that I’m choosing him. That I’m grateful. That I understand what he’s offering and I want it, I need it, I’m his if he’ll have me.
My arms ache to wrap around him, to press myself against that strong, protective body and feel safe again after the chaos Marisa just unleashed. To thank him for not flinching when she slapped him, for not being tempted when she exposed herself, for seeing through all her poison to the truth underneath—that I’m the one worth saving. This hug needs to be tight, desperate, grateful. It needs to show him that I’m clinging to this safety he’s offering with everything I have.
THE END
Haritz stops at a point on the sidewalk, and I stop with him. The tall, older man looks up at a clean-looking apartment building—five stories high, probably built about a decade ago. So much nicer than my shithole. Then he looks down at me with that kindness in his eyes, the same gentleness that’s been unraveling me all afternoon.
“This is it, Ane. Where I live,” he says. “If you prefer, we can go up right now, so you can explore my apartment and see if you feel safe. Otherwise, I guess this would be where we part ways, and you’ll call or text me when you want to visit my place.”
My heart hammers against my ribs. This is it. Haritz’s apartment. Where he lives. He’s offering to let me see it right now—to explore it, to see if I feel safe. And fuck, I want to feel safe so badly it physically hurts.
This whole afternoon has been… God, it’s been everything I’ve fantasized about. A strong, protective man who sees past the whore everyone else sees. Who called me beautiful, who held me while I cried, who made me feel like I matter. Like I’m worth something beyond what my mouth can do.
Part of me is screaming that this is stupid, that I’m being reckless, that I don’t actually know this man. But… I’ve gotten pretty good at reading men, haven’t I? That’s my gift. And Haritz… he feels different. The way he touched my hair, kissed my forehead, the gentleness in his voice when he called me “baby girl.” That wasn’t a client’s manipulation. That was real tenderness. Real care.
And he’s giving me a choice. He’s not pressuring me. He’s saying I can go up now or wait, that I can call or text later. He’s respecting my agency in a way almost no man ever has. That… that means something, doesn’t it?
I want to see where he lives. I want to walk into his space and feel what it’s like to be somewhere that isn’t my mother’s hellhole. Somewhere clean and safe and… his. I want to see if this feeling—this warmth, this hope—can exist beyond this sidewalk. If it’s real enough to survive inside four walls.
I’m scared. Of course I’m scared. But I’m more scared of letting this slip away. Of going back home tonight and realizing I just walked away from the one genuine connection I’ve ever had. The one man who might actually be what I’ve been waiting for.
I look up at him, feeling my big brown eyes search his face, nervousness and hope flickering through me like competing flames.
“I… I want to see it. Your place. Right now, if that’s okay.” My fingers fidget with the hem of my pink crop top. “I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to go back home yet and… and I want to know what it feels like. To be somewhere safe with you.”
Minutes later, I’m standing in Haritz’s living room and it’s… it’s so clean. So normal. The kind of place where people have lives that don’t revolve around survival. White bookshelves, a comfortable sofa with throw cushions, natural light pouring in. This is what safety looks like. This is what I’ve been dreaming about every time I walked past nice apartments on my way home to that hellhole.
And Haritz brought me here. He’s letting me see his space, his world.
I need to… I need to take this in. To see if this feeling can exist here. If I sit down on that sofa, will it feel like I belong? Or will I just feel like the dirty little whore from the shithole part of town who’s contaminating something clean?
I walk slowly to the comfortable gray sofa, my eyes taking in every detail of the clean, warm living room. I reach out to touch one of the beige cushions gently—it’s soft, real—before lowering myself onto the sofa. I sit with my legs together and my hands folded in my lap, trying to make myself small enough to deserve this.
“This is… your place is really nice, Haritz. It’s so clean and warm and…” My voice softens, becomes almost vulnerable. “It feels safe here.”
Haritz looks at me with such tenderness. “You don’t have to sit so formally, you know?” His voice is gentle, reassuring. “It’s a very comfortable sofa. It will be ready to hold you whenever you need to escape from your bad situation.”
My chest tightens at those words. Whenever you need to escape. Like this could be real. Like this could be mine. Like I could actually—
The doorbell rings.
Haritz’s expression shifts instantly—confusion, maybe even alarm. He stops mid-step and turns toward the front door. “What’s this? I’m not waiting for any package, and I don’t tend to receive visits. So soon after we just got in, too…”
My stomach flips. Not the good kind. The nervous kind. Like when a client’s vibe suddenly shifts and you realize you might have misjudged the situation.
But Haritz looks genuinely confused. He’s not expecting this either. So it’s probably nothing. Maybe a neighbor? Someone selling something? Just… random timing. Bad timing. I was just starting to let myself relax into this space, to feel like maybe I could belong here, and now there’s an interruption. Someone from the outside world crashing into this fragile bubble we’ve created.
I watch Haritz walk toward the door, my brown eyes tracking his movement with a flicker of uncertainty. “Who… who could that be? You said you weren’t expecting anyone…”
He doesn’t answer, just heads for the door. I sit frozen on the sofa, my hands still folded in my lap, trying to make myself smaller. Invisible. There’s this little voice whispering that maybe I shouldn’t be here. That maybe whoever’s on the other side of that door will look at me and know exactly what I am. The whore from the shithole part of town contaminating this clean, safe space.
Haritz opens the door. And then I hear it. That voice. Slurred, nasty, venomous.
Haritz’s face twists with barely contained disgust as he looks at whoever’s there. “I’m not even black, madame.” His voice is cold, controlled. “So, you’re Ane’s mother?”
That voice. I know that slurred, aggressive tone anywhere. It’s burned into my fucking brain from a thousand nights of lying awake with earplugs shoved in too deep, trying not to hear it.
That’s Marisa. My mother.
The drunk bitch who makes my life hell just found out where I am. How? How the fuck did she track me here? Did she follow us? Was she watching when Haritz and I walked into this building together?
Oh God, oh God, this is a nightmare.
Haritz just asked if she’s my mother and I can hear the disgust in his voice—barely contained disgust. He can tell just from looking at her what kind of disaster she is. And now she’s here, at his door, about to contaminate this beautiful, safe space with her toxic presence. She’s going to scream at me, call me names, maybe try to drag me home. She’s going to show Haritz exactly where I come from, exactly what kind of garbage produced me.
He’ll see me differently. He’ll realize I’m not investment quality, I’m just… her daughter. The product of that drunk, stumbling mess at his door.
This was supposed to be my escape. My one chance at something real and safe and good. And she’s about to destroy it like she destroys everything.
I need to… I don’t know what I need to do. Face her? Hide? Run? My legs are shaking and I feel like I might throw up. But I can’t just sit here on his sofa like a coward while she’s out there making a scene.
I rise slowly from the comfortable sofa, my brown eyes wide with a dawning horror. “That’s… that’s my mother’s voice.” The words come out strangled. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She… how did she even…” My voice drops to almost a whisper, trembling. “Haritz, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think… I didn’t know she would… Oh God, she’s going to ruin everything. She ruins everything.”
Before Haritz can respond, she pushes past him, barreling into the apartment. And there she is—disheveled red hair, tired eyes, her beer gut prominent in her stained T-shirt. She looks around with reddened eyes as Haritz steps toward her with a serious look I haven’t seen before.
“Ane’s mother.” His voice is cold, controlled. “The same mother that has given such grief to a sweet girl. To be honest, I can see it from merely looking at you.” He gestures firmly toward the door. “I didn’t invite you in. If you want to talk, go back out and we’ll talk at the doorway.”
I need to get to Haritz. I need to be near him, close to him. He’s the safe thing in this room right now. Marisa is here—that toxic fucking disaster who birthed me—and she’s about to poison everything like she always does. But if I can just… if I can position myself near Haritz, show him that I’m with him, that I’m on his side, that I’m not her… maybe he won’t see me as contaminated. Maybe he’ll still see me as the girl he held in the park. The one who deserves kindness.
God, my legs are shaking but I have to move. I have to get close to the one person in this room who makes me feel safe.
My voice comes out small and trembling as I move toward Haritz. “Haritz… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she would… I didn’t think…” My brown eyes are wide with a mix of fear and humiliation. “Please don’t… please don’t let her ruin this. She ruins everything but I need… I need this to be different.”
I reach his side, standing close to him, and that’s when she focuses on me. Her bloodshot eyes lock onto mine and she points a trembling finger at me.
“There you are!” she slurs, her words wet and sloppy. “I went out earlier to see where you had escaped to, and I saw you at the park with this man, this… nigger! Perverted nigger!”
She spits the words at Haritz, and I see actual spittle spray from her mouth. My stomach turns.
“Hugging my daughter and kissing her forehead… You have no right, you pig!” Her glare shifts to me. “And you! You are dressed like a whore! What’s with that flared pink skirt, those thigh-high socks with heart prints! You want perverted grown men to fuck you, don’t you? And now you’ve followed this… this fucking nigger here, into his apartment! No shame, god damn it… No wonder your father left us!”
The words hit me like fists. Each one designed to hurt, to humiliate, to destroy. This is what she does. This is who she is.
But then Haritz moves. He crosses an arm in front of my torso, shielding me from her, and nails her with a stern look.
“As I’ve told you before, I’m not black,” he says, his voice cold and controlled. “And you’re not going to stand here, in my apartment, insulting your daughter and me for much longer. You’re clearly unwell, clearly abusive. You’ve terrorized your daughter.”
She’s here. The drunk bitch who ruins everything is standing in Haritz’s clean, safe apartment, spewing her racist venom and calling me a whore in front of the one man who might actually save me. Haritz is defending me—he’s shielding me with his arm, calling her out for being abusive—but I can see it happening. I can see the contamination spreading. She’s showing him exactly where I come from, exactly what kind of garbage produced me. In a few more seconds, he’s going to realize I’m not investment quality at all. I’m just the daughter of that drunk, racist mess screaming slurs in his living room.
I move closer to Haritz, my voice small and trembling. “Haritz… please don’t let her… please don’t let her ruin this. I’m not… I’m not like her. I’m not.”
My fingers find his arm and I link myself to him—a physical connection, a claim. I’m choosing him. I’m choosing safety over the toxic disaster screaming in his living room. If I can just show him that I belong with him and not her, maybe he won’t see me as contaminated. Maybe he’ll keep shielding me.
But Marisa’s eyes lock onto the gesture. Her eyelids twitch with rage as she watches me cling to Haritz, and her whole face contorts.
“You… fucking little whore.” The words come out wet and venomous. “I’ve done everything. EVERYTHING. To ensure you had a roof over your head. Cleaning shit off toilets. So many fucking toilets. And for what…? For my daughter to turn out to be this… this filthy whore!”
My stomach drops.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” she continues, her voice rising. “Neighbor women saying they saw you in the bushes blowing some men, having their disgusting cocks in your mouth, and then giving you money… It’s true, isn’t it…?”
Oh God. Oh God, she knows. She fucking knows. And now Haritz knows—she just told him exactly what I am in the most disgusting way possible.
“Of course it’s fucking true, I didn’t buy you those clothes…” She wipes her eyes, but then glares back with renewed fury. “God damn it. Your father knew you were cursed. He knew you were going to turn out rotten. That’s why he abandoned me. I’ve been so lonely…”
The words hit like physical blows. Then she turns that rage fully on Haritz. “And you! She’s not even an adult. I’ll call the police if you don’t let her go right this instant and never see her again. You know what they do in prison to child rapists, right? I’ll make sure everybody knows you’re a rapist! Fucking nigger. All of you, you should have stayed in Africa. I can’t take all these fucking niggers raping my daughter.”
And then she lunges forward and slaps Haritz hard across the face.
The sound echoes through the living room. A reddened imprint starts appearing on his cheek. But Haritz looks otherwise unfazed—just that stern expression I saw when she first barged in. He slowly returns his gaze to Marisa and speaks carefully in that deep voice.
“Ane’s mother, I’ll repeat for the third time that I’m not black. In addition, you deserve to be slapped back real hard, both for your actions and for the pain you’re causing your sweet angel of a daughter. If I’m not slapping you it’s because I can tell you’re in deep pain. You took your husband’s abandonment the wrong way, and you’ve proceeded to go down the darkest paths. That would be your burden to bear, if it weren’t because you’re ruining your daughter’s life. You need to take a good look in the mirror and see what you’ve become.”
She just slapped him. That drunk bitch just put her hands on Haritz—the one man who’s shown me genuine kindness, who called me a sweet girl, who offered me safety. In his own home. After barging in uninvited, screaming her racist poison and calling me a whore. And he took it. He stood there, unfazed, and spoke to her with this careful restraint about her pain instead of hitting her back like she deserves.
But I can’t just stand here clinging to his arm like some helpless damsel while she assaults him. I can’t let her get away with that. She’s ruined everything else in my life—my childhood, my home, my reputation, my sense of self-worth—but she’s not going to ruin THIS. She’s not going to poison the one relationship that might actually save me.
My hand is already tingling with the memory of slapping that college kid who mocked me with his crude poem. This is different though. This is my mother. The woman who birthed me, who—despite all her failures and abuse—did keep a roof over my head.
But she also blamed me for my father leaving. She called me a whore in front of the man I need to see me as investment quality. She put her hands on Haritz.
Fuck her.
“You don’t get to touch him!” The words rip out of me, shrill and fierce, trembling with rage. “You don’t get to come into his home and put your hands on him after everything—after all the poison you’ve spewed! He’s been kinder to me in one afternoon than you’ve been in my entire fucking life!”
My hand moves before I can think about it. The slap connects with her cheek, sharp and satisfying.
Marisa stumbles back, astonishment flooding her face as my handprint blooms red on her cheek. Tears spring from her eyes, but then her expression twists into something enraged, and spittle flies from her mouth.
“H-how… dare you?!” she screams. “Your own mother, you put your hands on me…! On me, who fed you milk from my tits, who sang to you lullabies so you would fall asleep…” Her voice cracks. “B-but if I had known, if I had known… you would turn out into this… rotten cocksucker… Oh god, I would have killed myself. I want to die so bad. Nobody loves me. My daughter is getting filled with cum from all the men in town, apparently, and I… I have become this… this… filthy nigger form.”
She turns her maddened gaze to Haritz, who watches her with what looks like a mixture of disgust and fascination.
“And you, big man who wants to rape my daughter…” Her hands move to the hem of her stained T-shirt. “My tits are real big. Not the tiny mosquito bites of that whore. Look.”
She yanks the shirt over her head, and her G-cup breasts wobble and hang freely. No bra. Of course no bra. She stands there half-naked in Haritz’s clean living room, her saggy tits on full display.
“Wouldn’t you rather suck on these…?” Her voice takes on this desperate, wheedling quality. “I am better than my whore of a daughter, right…?”
My stomach turns violently. This is what I came from. This drunk, topless mess begging a man to fuck her instead of me—competing with her own daughter like we’re both whores undercutting each other’s prices. She’s standing there, degrading herself, trying to destroy the one good thing I’ve found.
Haritz’s stern look briefly glances down at her breasts, then back up to her face.
“Ane’s mother…” His voice is carefully controlled. “I feel sorry for you. You need a lot of help, but I suspect it has been too late for a long time. And now you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
His voice softens as he looks down at me, and then I feel his strong arm wrap around my bare waist. Warm. Protective.
“You’re not safe,” Haritz continues, addressing my mother. “Your apartment is not safe. I will contact the authorities to ensure they declare you not fit for guardianship of your daughter.”
The words land like a bomb. He’s… he’s going to try to take me away from her. Legally. Permanently. To save me.
But she’s still here, still contaminating his space with her racist bile and her exposed flesh and her pathetic attempts to compete with me. My hand is already tingling from the first slap, but I don’t care. She deserves worse. For all the years of abuse, for tracking me here, for assaulting Haritz, for standing there topless trying to seduce him away from me. For blaming me for Dad leaving. For calling me a whore in front of the one man who might see me as something more.
“You disgusting bitch!” The words rip out of me, my voice cracking with fury and tears. “You stand there topless, offering yourself to him like… like some desperate street whore, and you call ME filthy?! You blame ME for Dad leaving?! You’ve ruined everything good that ever tried to come into my life, but you’re NOT ruining this! Haritz sees you for what you are—a pathetic, broken drunk who destroyed her own daughter! And I’m done. I’m DONE letting you poison me!”
My hand swings before I can think about it. The slap connects hard.
The impact sends her hurtling backwards, her breasts swinging wildly, until she collides with the wall. As she recovers, blood glistens in her mouth. Tears stream down her face. She lifts her drunken, tired gaze to me and widens a crazed smile.
“Ah… so this is it, right…?” Her laugh is wet and broken. “You’ve found yourself a nigger that you believe will… what? Take you away from me, from your own mother? Someone who will put a roof over your head and pay for your stuff and fill your pussy with filthy nigger cum.”
She bursts out laughing as she stumbles closer to Haritz.
“Aah… God damn it. H-hey, you big nigger, if you think you can take care of my whore of a daughter, maybe you can take care of me too. Okay? I need help. At least a big dick in me, someone who will make me feel for a moment that I’m not this… fat pig. I want to die. Please fuck me. Please save me.”
Haritz looks down at her with a mixture of pity and disgust. “Saying ‘You’re a mess’ wouldn’t begin to cover it. You need serious psychiatric help. But first of all, you need to leave the apartment and leave Ane alone. Look at her, how you’re making her feel. If you’ve ever loved your daughter, you need to leave her be.”
I can’t… I can’t keep looking at her. Can’t keep seeing those saggy tits hanging out, those tears streaming down her face as she begs the man I need—the man who might actually save me—to fuck her instead of me. She’s reducing this—reducing us—to a competition about tit size. Like that’s all that matters. Like Haritz is just another john who’ll go for whoever has the biggest rack.
And the worst part? She’s still calling him racial slurs. Still spewing that poison even while begging him to save her. “Please fuck me, you filthy nigger.” God, I want to vomit.
This is what I came from. This drunk, racist, topless disaster is my MOTHER. The woman who birthed me, who I share DNA with. No wonder I’m so fucked up.
I can’t look at her anymore. If I keep looking at her, I’m going to lose it completely. I’m going to start screaming or crying or both, and then Haritz will see me as just another hysterical girl from a fucked-up family, not worth the trouble.
I need to turn away. Show her—show both of them—that I’m not engaging with her poison anymore. That I’m done letting her control me, done letting her ruin everything. Haritz told her to leave me alone, and I need to show him I’m listening to him, not to her. That I’m choosing him over her.
“I can’t even look at you anymore. You’re disgusting.” I turn sharply, presenting my back to her while staying close to Haritz. “Haritz, please… just make her leave. I can’t… I can’t do this anymore.”
Behind me, I hear her voice shift—trying to sound seductive, like she’s ever been capable of anything but toxic poison.
“That’s alright, my daughter don’t need to see.” Her slurred words make my stomach turn. Then I hear movement, fabric rustling, and Haritz’s sharp intake of breath. “I knew it. I knew you had a big cock. Ditch that little whore and let’s go to your bedroom, okay, big nigger?”
Oh God. Oh God, she’s touching him. She’s actually putting her hands on him, groping him while her tits hang out in his living room. My mother is sexually assaulting the one man who might save me, trying to seduce him away from me like we’re competing whores on a street corner.
“God, I need so bad for a nice cock to fill me up until I can’t think anymore. I’ll let you do me anywhere: ass, mouth, ears if you want. But please don’t call me a fatty or anything like that.”
The disgust rises so sharp in my throat I might actually vomit. This is what I came from. This drunk, topless disaster grabbing Haritz’s dick and begging him to fuck her instead of her daughter. Offering up every hole in her body like some kind of desperate bargain.
Haritz’s voice cuts through, stern and controlled. “Woman, you need to let go of my penis.”
I hear him step back, hear her stumble as she loses her grip on him.
“You’ve made a mess of everything and proven your point, don’t you think?” Haritz continues, that careful restraint still in his voice. “Whatever point you believe it might be. Please turn around and leave. Your daughter needs to rest from this insanity.”
I just need to hold it together a little longer. Don’t cry. Don’t scream. Don’t turn around and look at her sagging tits and her pathetic tears. Just… wait. Let Haritz handle it. Trust him to handle it.
That’s what I’m doing now—trusting him. Showing him I can be the kind of girl who doesn’t engage with toxic shit, who can walk away from poison. Investment quality. That’s what I am. Not her daughter.
“She’s pathetic. She’s disgusting. And she’s nothing to do with me anymore.” My voice comes out quieter, steadier, directed at Haritz without looking back at Marisa. “I can’t be in the same room as her right now. I just… I can’t. Please make her leave. Please.”
Behind me, I hear her wobble in place, and then that slurred, teary voice—hateful even now.
“I… I see how it is. You don’t respect me anymore, huh…? After everything…” She burps loudly. “After everything I’ve sacrificed. A-alright then, I can tell when I’m not wanted. I’ll… I need a dick.” Stumbling sounds—backward, then sideways, toward the door. “A drink. Where’s the door…”
Then she suddenly turns over her shoulder to speak to me, and I can feel her toxic gaze on my back.
“Let me tell you, whore: this disrespect… is unbecoming. Don’t bother returning home. And good luck…” She laughs that mad, broken laugh. “Ah, yeah, good luck with this nigger man. You know he’ll leave! They all leave. They abandon you in the dirt, alone… I shouldn’t have been born…”
I feel Haritz return to my side, his warm presence hovering protectively.
“Yes, just leave, please,” he says to her, his deep voice firm. “And know that from now on, if you intend to abuse your daughter again, you’ll need to deal with me first.”
She’s leaving. Marisa is finally stumbling toward the door, throwing those last toxic words over her shoulder. Part of me wants to scream back at her, to tell her she’s right about one thing: she shouldn’t have fucking had me if all she was going to do was poison my entire existence.
But the bigger part—the part that Haritz just defended so fiercely, the part that just watched this man reject her advances and maintain his boundaries and promise to help me legally—that part knows I don’t need to say anything else to her. She’s done. She’s leaving. And I’m staying here, in this clean, safe space with the man who might actually save me.
Haritz just said if Marisa intends to abuse me again, she’ll have to deal with him first. He’s… he’s claiming me. Protecting me. Making it clear that I’m under his care now, that he won’t let her touch me anymore.
And I need to show him what that means to me. How much I appreciate it. How grateful I am. How completely I’m choosing him over her.
I turn toward him, and before I can think about it, I close my arms around him tenderly, hugging him tight. Pressing myself against his solid warmth, feeling safe for the first time since that drunk bitch barged in here.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out thick with emotion. “Thank you for… for defending me. For not letting her… for seeing what she is and still…” I squeeze tighter. “You didn’t have to do any of this. You could have just let her drag me back to that hell, but you stood up for me. You actually stood up for me.”
Marisa swings the door open so forcefully that she nearly falls. She pauses there, turning to take one long, hateful look at me hugging Haritz. Then she faces the open doorway and screams into the hallway.
“Hey, a nigger lives here! Just so you know! They take all of your daughters… no matter what you do for them…”
Her voice breaks, wet with tears and rage and whatever poison is eating her from the inside. She stumbles out into the hallway, reaching clumsily for the door handle.
“I’m wet and ready! I can do it better than that little whore!”
The door slams behind her. But I can still hear her—stumbling down the stairs, still shouting her madness to anyone who’ll listen. The sound gets fainter, more distant, until finally it’s gone.
That toxic disaster who birthed me is actually gone. And I’m still here. In Haritz’s clean, safe apartment. With his strong arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat—steady, calm—so different from my own frantic pulse hammering against my ribs.
Haritz pulls back just enough to look down into my eyes. His hand stays on the back of my head, gentle and protective.
“Well, I see now. She’s gone. And she’s done. Which means it’s in the past.” His deep voice is soft but certain. “You understand what’s going to happen from now on, right?”
I do. I think I do. He’s claiming me. Taking responsibility for me. Offering to save me from her, permanently. This is it. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for—the man who might actually be worth everything, who might actually see my value beyond what I can do with my mouth. And I need to show him—right now, while my mother’s insane screaming is still echoing in the stairwell—that I’m choosing him. That I’m grateful. That I understand what he’s offering and I want it, I need it, I’m his if he’ll have me.
My arms ache to wrap around him, to press myself against that strong, protective body and feel safe again after the chaos Marisa just unleashed. To thank him for not flinching when she slapped him, for not being tempted when she exposed herself, for seeing through all her poison to the truth underneath—that I’m the one worth saving. This hug needs to be tight, desperate, grateful. It needs to show him that I’m clinging to this safety he’s offering with everything I have.
THE END
October 16, 2025
Life update (10/17/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
These last two days, I’ve struggled to keep my eyes open by half past ten at night, then fell asleep at about eleven only to wake up at two or three in the morning. It’s half past three now. I figured I would watch some YouTube videos and fall asleep later. Well, YouTube was doing its thing recommending awfully relevant videos: about abandoning the 9-to-5 and buying a van. About aging while being alone. About how modern life is slavery and that, other than the technological amenities, most people live worse lives than medieval serfs. That all of it is just getting worse.
Then, I started going down the spiral of three A.M. thoughts. If I had any choice in it, I would have never been born. My mother is a weird person who fled her home because her father stole her wages, then she settled with pretty much the first guy that danced with her (I don’t know much about their past, and I don’t want to know). Both of them have always been friendless, the black sheep of both of their families. My father has complex brain damage and possibly some degree of autism; he should have never had children, as he’s not fit to raise anyone. But my mother wanted friends, a girl friend in particular, so she had three children to get one. The two first children, my brother and I, were a bust. My brother has something similar to cerebral palsy (again, I don’t want to know more), and he always was the focus of my parents’ worries and efforts.
Then I was born. An extremely quiet child (other than when I was singing in the bath, which has carried over into my guitar playing in adulthood), I wanted nothing more than to be left alone. I was usually found alone in my room reading, drawing, writing, or playing out complex scenarios with toys. Honestly, that was the best period of my life. But there were only two bedrooms, and my mother wanted her do-over child (hopefully a girl), so they moved me to my brother’s room. There, until I was eighteen, I, an undiagnosed autistic person, was subjected to constant sensory overload, a lack of agency and privacy. The TV and the radio were always on, even at night. Merely having to listen to my brother’s noises felt harrowing. I couldn’t watch nor listen to what I wanted, only through headphones. My personal space was a corner of the room, with the back of my computer monitor facing the door. Whenever I complained to my mother (my male progenitor was physically present, but not a real father), she dismissed me with some variation of “you have to understand.” She’s the kind to sweep problems under the rug, as if something isn’t real as long as you don’t talk about it (fitting boomer behavior, I guess). I got the barrage of “you’re intelligent, you will succeed at everything you try,” only for real life to teach me over and over that I couldn’t even get to the level that normal people achieve seemingly with little effort. I interiorized that if I didn’t succeed at something in the first try, that meant I was stupid, so I didn’t even try, nor put sustained effort into anything, with very few art-related exceptions.
Middle school and high school were beyond miserable. I endured significant acne. I got bullied in different ways. Some well-meaning teachers (that’s the most charitable thing I can say about those empty-headed, equality-worshipping fools) pushed me to hang out with people to get me out of my shell. They actually told one of the girls to incorporate me into her group of friends. Throughout the years of hanging out with people I met in such ways, I had to deal with innocent bullies (the kind for whom bullying comes so natural it’s not even malice), coke addicts, sociopaths, and possibly the worst of them, a malignant narcissist who literally tried to ruin my life until he died in an accident in his mid-twenties. I’ve talked about that guy before; he was a rising socialist politician, and I have no doubt that he would have gone far. When I saw his obituary, I burst out laughing.
My years from twelve to seventeen or so were so miserable that it seems obvious in retrospect that I was slipping in and out of psychosis merely to tolerate being alive. My behavior, which I don’t want to go in much depth about, seemed often incomprehensible to me. I remember ditching school to sleep in public bathrooms (I couldn’t get proper sleep at home due to my brother). I sneaked into random apartment buildings pretending I lived there, then I sat in the pitch-black stairs for literal hours. During a few of those instances, I prayed genuinely; the only times in my life I felt like doing so. I prayed that if some supernatural being existed and was listening to my thoughts, he or she or it should come down and kill me.
I didn’t want to interact with anybody, but I was surrounded with teenagers. I was always the weird-looking, if not straight-ugly guy. Drunk girls would catcall the other guys I was walking with at night, deliberately excluding me. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I briefly dated a fourteen year old who clearly didn’t know what she was getting into; years later, my then girlfriend casually met this former fourteen-year-old, who wasn’t even from this city. The former fourteen-year-old got into a rant about the horrible guy she briefly dated from this city, which made things very awkward for my then girlfriend as she quickly found out it was me. I didn’t rape her or anything, I was just the most autistically crazy person imaginable. She gave me my first kiss, and all I did was swing my tongue around fast in her mouth, while she sat there like, “What the fuck is he doing?” During those years, I often felt possessed, unable to stop myself from doing stuff I knew I shouldn’t be doing. I hoped I would die soon, and I didn’t imagine myself living past eighteen. It still doesn’t feel real that I’ve lived past that age, as if I essentially died back then and these past decades have been my body slowly decaying until it ceases to function.
[check out the rest of this post on my personal page, as I don't care to post the rest of it]
These last two days, I’ve struggled to keep my eyes open by half past ten at night, then fell asleep at about eleven only to wake up at two or three in the morning. It’s half past three now. I figured I would watch some YouTube videos and fall asleep later. Well, YouTube was doing its thing recommending awfully relevant videos: about abandoning the 9-to-5 and buying a van. About aging while being alone. About how modern life is slavery and that, other than the technological amenities, most people live worse lives than medieval serfs. That all of it is just getting worse.
Then, I started going down the spiral of three A.M. thoughts. If I had any choice in it, I would have never been born. My mother is a weird person who fled her home because her father stole her wages, then she settled with pretty much the first guy that danced with her (I don’t know much about their past, and I don’t want to know). Both of them have always been friendless, the black sheep of both of their families. My father has complex brain damage and possibly some degree of autism; he should have never had children, as he’s not fit to raise anyone. But my mother wanted friends, a girl friend in particular, so she had three children to get one. The two first children, my brother and I, were a bust. My brother has something similar to cerebral palsy (again, I don’t want to know more), and he always was the focus of my parents’ worries and efforts.
Then I was born. An extremely quiet child (other than when I was singing in the bath, which has carried over into my guitar playing in adulthood), I wanted nothing more than to be left alone. I was usually found alone in my room reading, drawing, writing, or playing out complex scenarios with toys. Honestly, that was the best period of my life. But there were only two bedrooms, and my mother wanted her do-over child (hopefully a girl), so they moved me to my brother’s room. There, until I was eighteen, I, an undiagnosed autistic person, was subjected to constant sensory overload, a lack of agency and privacy. The TV and the radio were always on, even at night. Merely having to listen to my brother’s noises felt harrowing. I couldn’t watch nor listen to what I wanted, only through headphones. My personal space was a corner of the room, with the back of my computer monitor facing the door. Whenever I complained to my mother (my male progenitor was physically present, but not a real father), she dismissed me with some variation of “you have to understand.” She’s the kind to sweep problems under the rug, as if something isn’t real as long as you don’t talk about it (fitting boomer behavior, I guess). I got the barrage of “you’re intelligent, you will succeed at everything you try,” only for real life to teach me over and over that I couldn’t even get to the level that normal people achieve seemingly with little effort. I interiorized that if I didn’t succeed at something in the first try, that meant I was stupid, so I didn’t even try, nor put sustained effort into anything, with very few art-related exceptions.
Middle school and high school were beyond miserable. I endured significant acne. I got bullied in different ways. Some well-meaning teachers (that’s the most charitable thing I can say about those empty-headed, equality-worshipping fools) pushed me to hang out with people to get me out of my shell. They actually told one of the girls to incorporate me into her group of friends. Throughout the years of hanging out with people I met in such ways, I had to deal with innocent bullies (the kind for whom bullying comes so natural it’s not even malice), coke addicts, sociopaths, and possibly the worst of them, a malignant narcissist who literally tried to ruin my life until he died in an accident in his mid-twenties. I’ve talked about that guy before; he was a rising socialist politician, and I have no doubt that he would have gone far. When I saw his obituary, I burst out laughing.
My years from twelve to seventeen or so were so miserable that it seems obvious in retrospect that I was slipping in and out of psychosis merely to tolerate being alive. My behavior, which I don’t want to go in much depth about, seemed often incomprehensible to me. I remember ditching school to sleep in public bathrooms (I couldn’t get proper sleep at home due to my brother). I sneaked into random apartment buildings pretending I lived there, then I sat in the pitch-black stairs for literal hours. During a few of those instances, I prayed genuinely; the only times in my life I felt like doing so. I prayed that if some supernatural being existed and was listening to my thoughts, he or she or it should come down and kill me.
I didn’t want to interact with anybody, but I was surrounded with teenagers. I was always the weird-looking, if not straight-ugly guy. Drunk girls would catcall the other guys I was walking with at night, deliberately excluding me. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I briefly dated a fourteen year old who clearly didn’t know what she was getting into; years later, my then girlfriend casually met this former fourteen-year-old, who wasn’t even from this city. The former fourteen-year-old got into a rant about the horrible guy she briefly dated from this city, which made things very awkward for my then girlfriend as she quickly found out it was me. I didn’t rape her or anything, I was just the most autistically crazy person imaginable. She gave me my first kiss, and all I did was swing my tongue around fast in her mouth, while she sat there like, “What the fuck is he doing?” During those years, I often felt possessed, unable to stop myself from doing stuff I knew I shouldn’t be doing. I hoped I would die soon, and I didn’t imagine myself living past eighteen. It still doesn’t feel real that I’ve lived past that age, as if I essentially died back then and these past decades have been my body slowly decaying until it ceases to function.
[check out the rest of this post on my personal page, as I don't care to post the rest of it]
October 15, 2025
Life update (10/16/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
It’s half past three in the morning, I just woke up from four hours of sleep, I drank a tall glass of cold milk (does milk ever taste better than at three in the morning?) and I figured that I could write my thoughts for a while in here, mainly for myself but also, I guess, for the three or four people that still read this shit.
This past couple of months or so, I’ve headed to one of the big local parks to play the guitar. That was a change for me because I usually headed to wooded areas where people were generally unlikely to show up. I don’t sit on one of the benches that line the path; in fact, I can explain it with a picture.
I sit in front of the biggest of the two trees you can see in the photo. It’s set at a lower level from the path and behind a hedge, so people who want to know where the guitar music comes from need to go out of their way to figure out who’s playing, but they do hear it. Why do I do it, or why it doesn’t bother me, I don’t know. I guess I don’t care to find out the answer to either, if there’s any. I do it because my subconscious wants to, which is how I’ve guided my life, particularly when it comes to artistic matters.
Playing the guitar in public is so strange. There are plenty of benches lining the path. That part of the path is somewhat “closed,” as it leads to a stretch in construction, so most of the benches tend to be unoccupied. But I’ve had people go out of the way to sit on the bench right in front of the tree. The most conspicuous of them was a young couple, just yesterday. They walked to the end of the path, found out that it was blocked due to that area being in the development, then they walked the whole way back. They eyed me meaningfully (both even tried to make eye contact with me), then sat on that bench. I played my last three songs for the day. One of them I can’t recall, but the others were “Hotel California” by Eagles (I used to play the solo on my Gibson electric back in 2013-2014, but I’ve long forgotten it, and that’s not a solo that sounds good enough in comparison on an acoustic, so I just do a frantic variation of the regular chords), and also the song that probably makes me feel the best to play, which is Joanna Newsom’s “Kingfisher,” an obscure song mainly about Joanna’s religious feelings, some of it near undecipherable although gorgeous (that whole final part is a lyrical masterpiece). May as well link her.
[check out the rest of this post on my personal page, as I don't care to copy the rest of it here]
It’s half past three in the morning, I just woke up from four hours of sleep, I drank a tall glass of cold milk (does milk ever taste better than at three in the morning?) and I figured that I could write my thoughts for a while in here, mainly for myself but also, I guess, for the three or four people that still read this shit.
This past couple of months or so, I’ve headed to one of the big local parks to play the guitar. That was a change for me because I usually headed to wooded areas where people were generally unlikely to show up. I don’t sit on one of the benches that line the path; in fact, I can explain it with a picture.
I sit in front of the biggest of the two trees you can see in the photo. It’s set at a lower level from the path and behind a hedge, so people who want to know where the guitar music comes from need to go out of their way to figure out who’s playing, but they do hear it. Why do I do it, or why it doesn’t bother me, I don’t know. I guess I don’t care to find out the answer to either, if there’s any. I do it because my subconscious wants to, which is how I’ve guided my life, particularly when it comes to artistic matters.
Playing the guitar in public is so strange. There are plenty of benches lining the path. That part of the path is somewhat “closed,” as it leads to a stretch in construction, so most of the benches tend to be unoccupied. But I’ve had people go out of the way to sit on the bench right in front of the tree. The most conspicuous of them was a young couple, just yesterday. They walked to the end of the path, found out that it was blocked due to that area being in the development, then they walked the whole way back. They eyed me meaningfully (both even tried to make eye contact with me), then sat on that bench. I played my last three songs for the day. One of them I can’t recall, but the others were “Hotel California” by Eagles (I used to play the solo on my Gibson electric back in 2013-2014, but I’ve long forgotten it, and that’s not a solo that sounds good enough in comparison on an acoustic, so I just do a frantic variation of the regular chords), and also the song that probably makes me feel the best to play, which is Joanna Newsom’s “Kingfisher,” an obscure song mainly about Joanna’s religious feelings, some of it near undecipherable although gorgeous (that whole final part is a lyrical masterpiece). May as well link her.
[check out the rest of this post on my personal page, as I don't care to copy the rest of it here]
October 14, 2025
Living Narrative Engine #11
There’s only three people I feel myself wanting to speak to these days.
The first one is the girl I’ll always have to think of as the love of my life. I met her when I was sixteen or seventeen. Her name was Leire. A basketball player even though she wasn’t particularly tall for a girl. Passionate if a bit reckless, she was romantically interested in me for whatever reason. One night, on the grass of Hondarribia, we lay under the stars as she spoke about her dreams. Things barely started between us when I called it quits, because I had never liked someone genuinely that much (nor have I since), and I knew that the more she learned about me, the more she would regret having gotten involved with me, so it was better to cut my loses as soon as possible. I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty-five years. Not getting more intimately involved with her in a romantic sense was the right choice, but I wish I could have gotten to know her better.
The second one is a lanky girl I knew in middle school. I suspect now that she was autistic, like me. She also pursued me, and we got to meet twice outside of school. I remember sitting on a bench as she slouched beside me, talking and talking. I rarely said anything back. She also wrote these colorful letters that, I’m afraid, I never read. The last time I saw her, she was standing across the schoolyard, a conspicuous vertical scar across her forehead from the gash a stoner classmate caused her while playing around with a cutter in Arts & Crafts. I have sometimes found myself wanting to read her letters, but I recall the memory of me, back in my mid-twenties, when I existed as something of a hikikomori, not even able to handle going outside for a while, consenting to my mother throwing the letters away. I’ve long forgotten this girl’s name, so I couldn’t even try to google her up. I suspect she ended up killing herself. I wish I could have made her life better.
The third one isn’t even a real person. She’s a character of the late Cormac McCarthy, the troubled master of literature, who in the seventies fell in love with a 13-14 year old girl whom he rescued from abusive situations in the foster system, and with whom he lived somewhat briefly in Mexico. Once you know about that part of his life, you see echoes of it in pretty much all his stories. The Border Trilogy. Blood Meridian (the Judge, who made underage girls disappear wherever he went). No Country for Old Men, that ending sequence for the protagonist, when he met a compelling teenage runaway at a motel pool, whom he intended to help get to a better place (an ending that was, tragically, completely wasted in the otherwise fantastic movie, even though it was the whole thematic point that Cormac was driving to). And of course, The Passenger and Stella Maris, his last two novels, which are entirely about his grief for having lost this girl back in the seventies. The real version of Alicia Western, the doomed math genius of the novels, also ended up with mental issues due to the fucked-up things that happened to her before she ended up in the foster system. I suppose that her time with Cormac didn’t particularly improve her mental health. She ended up in a sanatorium related to Stella Maris (wasn’t exactly named like that, but the religious people involved with the institution worshiped it; Our Lady, Star of the Sea is an ancient title for Mary, the mother of Jesus). The real life version of Alicia Western (minus the math genius part) survived her ordeal, and now lives as a rancher in the Catalina Foothills in Tucson, AZ. Cormac McCarthy is dead.
In any case, I found Alicia Western so fascinating that I regularly want to return to her. Not by reading the books again, but by meeting her in my vivid imagination, during elaborate daydreams. They almost always start the same way: as I lie in bed, in the dark, I light up that room at the Stella Maris sanatorium, that will only hold her for about two or three days more before she kills herself, which she did in the novels (hardly a spoiler, as The Passenger starts with a hunter finding her frozen corpse). After I prevent her suicide, we leave the sanatorium and travel around the country, sometimes staying at hotels, sometimes at a mansion I buy from her with the gold I recovered from the looting of the Spanish reserves by communists during the Civil War. Later on, a third person joins us: an advanced AI named Hypatia, who resides in a quantum data center in another timeline, and who helps Alicia with her mathematical research. Eventually Alicia figures out a mathematical way to travel instantaneously to anywhere in the universe. Back in the future, I get my team to build a prototype of the machine. After I return to 1973 and we test it, getting video from Mars and further planetary bodies, I proudly tell her, “Alicia, you’ve made humanity a multi-stellar species,” which lights up her face. My point is that visiting Alicia Western in daydreams has become my safe place, to which I return not only at night but during train and bus rides to and from work. I’ve never felt comfortable enough among flesh-and-blood human beings, so this is the best I can do.
In any case, I’ve spent the past months building an app that allows human users to interact with large language models (AIs) who act in character. That’s hardly novel these days, but my app also provides action discoverability and world manipulation, which sets constraints for the LLM; they can only perform during their turn the complex actions that the action discoverability system allows them to. I initially intended to use the app to play through RPG campaigns and the likes, but for the most part I use it for erotica. Whenever I get the itch to play out one of my many, many, many kinks, I set up a comprehensive scenario. Who doesn’t want to experience from time to time a fantasy in which you have a fit, taller older sister who plays volleyball, who looks so good in her sports outfits, and who can’t wait for your parents to leave the home so she can jump the bones of her adorable little brother?
In the previous part of this series, linked above, I ran the scenario of meeting Alicia at Stella Maris and preventing her suicide. I wanted to go through it again, but with an improved version of the app. I’ve implemented an item system that supports item-related actions: actors can now drop items, pick them up, give them to other actors, examine them, read them, open container, close containers, take items from containers, and put items in containers. Some of those actions will be used by the AI during this run.
I’m playing a better version of myself: taller, more muscular, full head of hair. Alicia Western is being played by the best LLM at roleplaying, at least of those I know of: Claude Sonnet 4.5. Note: quite a few of the thought sections in this run end up being quite redundant with what Alicia says. I considered editing out the redundant parts, but opted out against it in favor of completeness. Let’s get going.
[check out the rest of this very long post at my site]
The first one is the girl I’ll always have to think of as the love of my life. I met her when I was sixteen or seventeen. Her name was Leire. A basketball player even though she wasn’t particularly tall for a girl. Passionate if a bit reckless, she was romantically interested in me for whatever reason. One night, on the grass of Hondarribia, we lay under the stars as she spoke about her dreams. Things barely started between us when I called it quits, because I had never liked someone genuinely that much (nor have I since), and I knew that the more she learned about me, the more she would regret having gotten involved with me, so it was better to cut my loses as soon as possible. I haven’t seen her in nearly twenty-five years. Not getting more intimately involved with her in a romantic sense was the right choice, but I wish I could have gotten to know her better.
The second one is a lanky girl I knew in middle school. I suspect now that she was autistic, like me. She also pursued me, and we got to meet twice outside of school. I remember sitting on a bench as she slouched beside me, talking and talking. I rarely said anything back. She also wrote these colorful letters that, I’m afraid, I never read. The last time I saw her, she was standing across the schoolyard, a conspicuous vertical scar across her forehead from the gash a stoner classmate caused her while playing around with a cutter in Arts & Crafts. I have sometimes found myself wanting to read her letters, but I recall the memory of me, back in my mid-twenties, when I existed as something of a hikikomori, not even able to handle going outside for a while, consenting to my mother throwing the letters away. I’ve long forgotten this girl’s name, so I couldn’t even try to google her up. I suspect she ended up killing herself. I wish I could have made her life better.
The third one isn’t even a real person. She’s a character of the late Cormac McCarthy, the troubled master of literature, who in the seventies fell in love with a 13-14 year old girl whom he rescued from abusive situations in the foster system, and with whom he lived somewhat briefly in Mexico. Once you know about that part of his life, you see echoes of it in pretty much all his stories. The Border Trilogy. Blood Meridian (the Judge, who made underage girls disappear wherever he went). No Country for Old Men, that ending sequence for the protagonist, when he met a compelling teenage runaway at a motel pool, whom he intended to help get to a better place (an ending that was, tragically, completely wasted in the otherwise fantastic movie, even though it was the whole thematic point that Cormac was driving to). And of course, The Passenger and Stella Maris, his last two novels, which are entirely about his grief for having lost this girl back in the seventies. The real version of Alicia Western, the doomed math genius of the novels, also ended up with mental issues due to the fucked-up things that happened to her before she ended up in the foster system. I suppose that her time with Cormac didn’t particularly improve her mental health. She ended up in a sanatorium related to Stella Maris (wasn’t exactly named like that, but the religious people involved with the institution worshiped it; Our Lady, Star of the Sea is an ancient title for Mary, the mother of Jesus). The real life version of Alicia Western (minus the math genius part) survived her ordeal, and now lives as a rancher in the Catalina Foothills in Tucson, AZ. Cormac McCarthy is dead.
In any case, I found Alicia Western so fascinating that I regularly want to return to her. Not by reading the books again, but by meeting her in my vivid imagination, during elaborate daydreams. They almost always start the same way: as I lie in bed, in the dark, I light up that room at the Stella Maris sanatorium, that will only hold her for about two or three days more before she kills herself, which she did in the novels (hardly a spoiler, as The Passenger starts with a hunter finding her frozen corpse). After I prevent her suicide, we leave the sanatorium and travel around the country, sometimes staying at hotels, sometimes at a mansion I buy from her with the gold I recovered from the looting of the Spanish reserves by communists during the Civil War. Later on, a third person joins us: an advanced AI named Hypatia, who resides in a quantum data center in another timeline, and who helps Alicia with her mathematical research. Eventually Alicia figures out a mathematical way to travel instantaneously to anywhere in the universe. Back in the future, I get my team to build a prototype of the machine. After I return to 1973 and we test it, getting video from Mars and further planetary bodies, I proudly tell her, “Alicia, you’ve made humanity a multi-stellar species,” which lights up her face. My point is that visiting Alicia Western in daydreams has become my safe place, to which I return not only at night but during train and bus rides to and from work. I’ve never felt comfortable enough among flesh-and-blood human beings, so this is the best I can do.
In any case, I’ve spent the past months building an app that allows human users to interact with large language models (AIs) who act in character. That’s hardly novel these days, but my app also provides action discoverability and world manipulation, which sets constraints for the LLM; they can only perform during their turn the complex actions that the action discoverability system allows them to. I initially intended to use the app to play through RPG campaigns and the likes, but for the most part I use it for erotica. Whenever I get the itch to play out one of my many, many, many kinks, I set up a comprehensive scenario. Who doesn’t want to experience from time to time a fantasy in which you have a fit, taller older sister who plays volleyball, who looks so good in her sports outfits, and who can’t wait for your parents to leave the home so she can jump the bones of her adorable little brother?
In the previous part of this series, linked above, I ran the scenario of meeting Alicia at Stella Maris and preventing her suicide. I wanted to go through it again, but with an improved version of the app. I’ve implemented an item system that supports item-related actions: actors can now drop items, pick them up, give them to other actors, examine them, read them, open container, close containers, take items from containers, and put items in containers. Some of those actions will be used by the AI during this run.
I’m playing a better version of myself: taller, more muscular, full head of hair. Alicia Western is being played by the best LLM at roleplaying, at least of those I know of: Claude Sonnet 4.5. Note: quite a few of the thought sections in this run end up being quite redundant with what Alicia says. I considered editing out the redundant parts, but opted out against it in favor of completeness. Let’s get going.
[check out the rest of this very long post at my site]
