Jon Ureña's Blog, page 35
December 18, 2022
We're Fucked, Pt. 82 (Fiction)
Check out this chapter on my personal page, where it looks better
---
A thunderous clap scatters my thoughts like a blacksmith's hammer shattering a sheet of glass. Blasts of wind are assaulting the windows while the rain pours in gusts, splashing against the windowpanes in a constant pitter-patter. The fat drops coalesce into crystalline veins that zig-zag downwards, then unravel.
My labored breath mingles with the thunderstorm booming outside. I forgot to bring an umbrella, didn't I? When this morning I stepped onto the balcony of Jacqueline's apartment to inhale crisp air, the bluish-gray sky promised rain, yet I failed to prepare myself. As I wonder if that moldy spare remains in the umbrella stand of the office, a more pressing concern wipes my mind clean: I'm clutching a revolver, and the opposite wall has been colonized by a viscous blob from some hellish dimension.
I grip the revolver with both hands, then I whip it towards the conglomerate of necrotic matter. I creep closer to the intruder; among all people, I may miss a shot against a wall-wide entity. I rest my forefinger on the trigger. With my thumb on the hammer, I pull back slowly until the sear bumps past the lock, and the hammer stays at full cock. I hold the muzzle level, taking aim.
An arc of blinding incandescence must have cut through the darkness of the night like an axe cleaving the heavenly flesh, because a strobing blue-white flash illuminates, as if to probe those dark depths, the oleaginous surface of the mammoth mass of putrefied gunk, whose texture shifts from squidgy to bumpy to warty as it heaves and pulses with life. While that gargantuan plague boil bulges from the wall, it oozes with lumps of moist tissues that smear the paintwork, leaving in their wake slimy black streaks and a slick coating of filth. From the underside of the intruder, gooey tongues drape down like viscera oozing out of an unflushed drainpipe, or like clusters of conjoined caterpillars seeking escape from a boiling ball of pitch, and the foul goop spills and flops onto the carpet, pooling into bulbous puddles.
A tremor races through my spine and neck, and lodges itself deep in my jaw. I imagine a projectile hurtling towards that abominable hulk and punching through its tenebrous, rippling mass, which bursts like a water balloon, launching a wave of rotting gunk that splats onto the carpet and office furniture. But I'm holding a revolver that was designed for shooting at saps and outlaws, not at a mass of decay that defies comprehension. What would unleashing a barrage of bullets achieve, apart from alerting the humans in this part of the realm that the end is nigh? Wouldn't the bullets vanish into the viscous quagmire, wouldn't the holes caulk themselves closed? I may as well try to obliterate a cancerous tumor by pricking it with needles. Spike should have lent me a flamethrower, or a few bricks of C-4. To be fair, if that old coot had dropped as loot a bag of useful devices such as high-voltage tasers, tranquilizing darts and grenades, I may have used them as props for erotic games that would end up in fierce orgasmic contortions.
The stuffy atmosphere of the office gets disturbed with noises radiating from the invaded wall: slurps and gurgles. My grip tightens around the wooden handle of my revolver. Bubbles are rising up laboriously to the gloopy surface of the malignant tumor, as if they had to pass through a folded intestine. The sight makes my stomach heave like I were traversing a slimy oyster bed or having my face rubbed against the grimy side of a rotten fish.
The wobbling bubbles, lumpy globs of decay sloshing around like minced meatballs in a simmering pot, bump into each other and merge, cluster or sink back into the sludgy substance while it burbles, seethes and spasms like a tangle of throbbing arteries and veins under pressure from injected emboli. As the pulsating rhythm of the morbid leviathan increases, sending roiling undulations racing along its bulk, the sickly, necrotic-sounding squelches grow louder in a fleshy flapping of dead matter. A melon-sized bubble surfaces, inflates like a bladder and pops in a frothy geyser, spraying gouts of thick goo. The opened crater dangles with flaps of frayed slime, and resembles a mouth or a sphincter. Either one could suck me in.
A puff of noxious gas billows in my face and assails my nostrils as it scratches my skin with thousands of microscopic claws, aching to seep into my pores. Jolted by the stinging fumes, I suck deep into my lungs that thick darkness, a pungent effluvium, a dank and cloying fetor, acrid, fetid and caustic. It burns my throat like it had been scoured with sandpaper, and triggers an olfactory explosion of odious odors. As I stagger backwards and my arms tremble, lowering the revolver, my brain sticks labels to the elements of the chemical compound that has raided my lungs in an orgy of necrotic pollution: sour milk, moldy cheese, rancid lard, week-old fish, skunk spray, sweaty socks, car exhaust, burnt plastic, raw sewage, gangrenous rot. Still, it doesn't reek nearly as putrid as my own gray matter, festering in the hollow of my skull as it breeds and spawns madness.
My eyes sting. My nose hurts from the assault on my olfactory nerves, and goes runny. Are my sinuses bleeding? When I breathe through my mouth, my tongue gets coated with the stench of the rotten sludge, and I gag as if a brine of fetal blood were flowing into my lungs. I cough out globules of phlegm while tears leap from my eyes. A gummy rope of mucus dribbles from my nasal passages and falls to the carpet like some slimy, greenish ectoplasm.
I picture the obscene and interdimensional blancmange, made of rotting flesh instead of cornmeal, collapsing upon itself and bursting forth a miasmic fog that would fill the office building and descend from this business park to the nearest block and thence to the streets. The fog would creep over the asphalt, roll over the tops of cars and buses, infiltrate homes through open windows and ventilation ducts. The poisonous vapors would reach the lungs of sleeping children, while their parents would stir from their slumber with a gaggle of hacking coughs, to find their hair and face covered with a layer of necrotic ooze, their noses clogged with black gunk.
I recall that one time in high school when some faceless goon passed me a bong and I inhaled its hash fumes. I was seized by an ecstatic epiphany: human beings are worms crawling on the ground of infinity, transient larvae with the lifespan of an afternoon, amnesic about our existences before birth, our only purpose to be fed with the detritus of dead matter by our parents until we reach adulthood and we can contribute in fertilizing some eggs. The universe is a necropolis where the corpses of stars lie heaped in untold billions.
My mind had been subjected to quantum decoherence, and its entanglement with the environment had broken down. My body glowed with phosphorescent sparks like a firefly. I received visions of flying hippies with long flowing hair, acid-soaked clothes, and golden wings. I watched as a city-sized asteroid plowed into the moon, rupturing it like a balloon filled with lead-colored paint. I observed as a swarm of mutant butterflies burst from my anus. I heard the screams of people being sucked through a whirlpool in space-time, like flies being drawn into a vacuum cleaner. A phallus-shaped monolith thrusted upward until its tapered tip got crushed against a ceiling, a mile above. I found myself as the only survivor of the wreckage of a nuclear submarine after a battle with a leviathan in an underwater trench; I swam upwards through radioactive water, and when I emerged from the ocean, I was pelted with decaying matter: a blistering rain of fat, guts, eyeballs, lungs and testicles was falling from the heavens in an apocalyptic deluge. A voice called out to me: "You are the one chosen to rise up from the grave and mend the cosmos." The voice belonged to my mother, who was floating towards me in a wooden coffin. Hours later I woke up in a hospital room, stripped naked, shackled to a gurney, hooked up to drips and catheters, surrounded by nurses wearing surgical masks and scrubs. That night, as I lay in my bed at my parents' apartment, a parade of spectral beings with pale gray skin and empty eye sockets filed out of a mirror, surrounded the bed, and began to sing a hymn. "Let's all rejoice in the presence of the dead," intoned the entities. As they swayed in the air, they shook with sobs and sniffles. They also sneezed, coughed, belched, gagged, farted, and cried out for a toilet. The phantasmal chorale was as grotesque as it was beautiful.
This time, as I stand on wobbly legs in the office, I resent such mind-bending, consciousness-altering effects. How does one treat a case of acute olfactory psychosis? I could try smelling a rose, an apple pie, a whiff of sea air, or the heady perfume of Jacqueline's cleavage when she's wearing a silky camisole. That makes my mouth water and my loins tingle with lust. I want to give myself over to mommy's loving embrace and let her fondle my ass until I can function again.
The gooey sludge is gurgling, rippling and sloshing as if some half-digested prey were struggling to escape its clutches. Bladderlike bubbles come to the fore and burgeon, bulging out of that hideous growth as they bloom like blood clots, then pop with moist plops, spewing glistening gobs of slime, fringing the surface of the goop with tufts of cottony threads, and unleashing puffs of reeking air that spread countless germs throughout the office, viruses and bacteria that have fermented in that putrescent hulk.
My head is spinning with vertigo. Oversized tadpole heads are wriggling beneath the ooze, skirting its surface as if to reveal themselves before shimmying their way back into the tenebrous, seething mass. Their convulsive jitters churn the slime into miniature whirlpools. The frothy, bloated abomination, studded with plump, gas-filled sacks, jiggles with a slap of thunder.
That bloody blob is giving birth. Some infernal anathema is pushing out through the tarry pus like a kraken from its egg sac.
From the gelatinous mass protrudes a melon-sized spheroidal structure, crowning into the world. The film of black life-fluid that covers it slides off and reveals gleaming, pearl-white fibrous tissue. The spheroid wobbles about, then it spins until I discover, as the slime that constitutes the mother runs down the spheroid's surface like breast milk out of a nipple, that on the side facing me now, behind a transparent layer, sewage-colored matter swirls in a ring-shaped membrane that encircles a pupil as wide as a golf ball, as black as a bottomless pit. An evil force dwells behind that opaque peephole.
A fucking eyeball. Two eyeballs. Three.
Half a dozen eyeballs roll in my direction and lock onto me. Their pupils constrict to project a chthonic glare like the focused beam of a searchlight.
---
Author's note: today's song is "Climbing up the Walls" by Radiohead.
I keep a playlist with all the songs I've mentioned so far throughout this novel. Ninety-two already. Check them out.
---
A thunderous clap scatters my thoughts like a blacksmith's hammer shattering a sheet of glass. Blasts of wind are assaulting the windows while the rain pours in gusts, splashing against the windowpanes in a constant pitter-patter. The fat drops coalesce into crystalline veins that zig-zag downwards, then unravel.
My labored breath mingles with the thunderstorm booming outside. I forgot to bring an umbrella, didn't I? When this morning I stepped onto the balcony of Jacqueline's apartment to inhale crisp air, the bluish-gray sky promised rain, yet I failed to prepare myself. As I wonder if that moldy spare remains in the umbrella stand of the office, a more pressing concern wipes my mind clean: I'm clutching a revolver, and the opposite wall has been colonized by a viscous blob from some hellish dimension.
I grip the revolver with both hands, then I whip it towards the conglomerate of necrotic matter. I creep closer to the intruder; among all people, I may miss a shot against a wall-wide entity. I rest my forefinger on the trigger. With my thumb on the hammer, I pull back slowly until the sear bumps past the lock, and the hammer stays at full cock. I hold the muzzle level, taking aim.
An arc of blinding incandescence must have cut through the darkness of the night like an axe cleaving the heavenly flesh, because a strobing blue-white flash illuminates, as if to probe those dark depths, the oleaginous surface of the mammoth mass of putrefied gunk, whose texture shifts from squidgy to bumpy to warty as it heaves and pulses with life. While that gargantuan plague boil bulges from the wall, it oozes with lumps of moist tissues that smear the paintwork, leaving in their wake slimy black streaks and a slick coating of filth. From the underside of the intruder, gooey tongues drape down like viscera oozing out of an unflushed drainpipe, or like clusters of conjoined caterpillars seeking escape from a boiling ball of pitch, and the foul goop spills and flops onto the carpet, pooling into bulbous puddles.
A tremor races through my spine and neck, and lodges itself deep in my jaw. I imagine a projectile hurtling towards that abominable hulk and punching through its tenebrous, rippling mass, which bursts like a water balloon, launching a wave of rotting gunk that splats onto the carpet and office furniture. But I'm holding a revolver that was designed for shooting at saps and outlaws, not at a mass of decay that defies comprehension. What would unleashing a barrage of bullets achieve, apart from alerting the humans in this part of the realm that the end is nigh? Wouldn't the bullets vanish into the viscous quagmire, wouldn't the holes caulk themselves closed? I may as well try to obliterate a cancerous tumor by pricking it with needles. Spike should have lent me a flamethrower, or a few bricks of C-4. To be fair, if that old coot had dropped as loot a bag of useful devices such as high-voltage tasers, tranquilizing darts and grenades, I may have used them as props for erotic games that would end up in fierce orgasmic contortions.
The stuffy atmosphere of the office gets disturbed with noises radiating from the invaded wall: slurps and gurgles. My grip tightens around the wooden handle of my revolver. Bubbles are rising up laboriously to the gloopy surface of the malignant tumor, as if they had to pass through a folded intestine. The sight makes my stomach heave like I were traversing a slimy oyster bed or having my face rubbed against the grimy side of a rotten fish.
The wobbling bubbles, lumpy globs of decay sloshing around like minced meatballs in a simmering pot, bump into each other and merge, cluster or sink back into the sludgy substance while it burbles, seethes and spasms like a tangle of throbbing arteries and veins under pressure from injected emboli. As the pulsating rhythm of the morbid leviathan increases, sending roiling undulations racing along its bulk, the sickly, necrotic-sounding squelches grow louder in a fleshy flapping of dead matter. A melon-sized bubble surfaces, inflates like a bladder and pops in a frothy geyser, spraying gouts of thick goo. The opened crater dangles with flaps of frayed slime, and resembles a mouth or a sphincter. Either one could suck me in.
A puff of noxious gas billows in my face and assails my nostrils as it scratches my skin with thousands of microscopic claws, aching to seep into my pores. Jolted by the stinging fumes, I suck deep into my lungs that thick darkness, a pungent effluvium, a dank and cloying fetor, acrid, fetid and caustic. It burns my throat like it had been scoured with sandpaper, and triggers an olfactory explosion of odious odors. As I stagger backwards and my arms tremble, lowering the revolver, my brain sticks labels to the elements of the chemical compound that has raided my lungs in an orgy of necrotic pollution: sour milk, moldy cheese, rancid lard, week-old fish, skunk spray, sweaty socks, car exhaust, burnt plastic, raw sewage, gangrenous rot. Still, it doesn't reek nearly as putrid as my own gray matter, festering in the hollow of my skull as it breeds and spawns madness.
My eyes sting. My nose hurts from the assault on my olfactory nerves, and goes runny. Are my sinuses bleeding? When I breathe through my mouth, my tongue gets coated with the stench of the rotten sludge, and I gag as if a brine of fetal blood were flowing into my lungs. I cough out globules of phlegm while tears leap from my eyes. A gummy rope of mucus dribbles from my nasal passages and falls to the carpet like some slimy, greenish ectoplasm.
I picture the obscene and interdimensional blancmange, made of rotting flesh instead of cornmeal, collapsing upon itself and bursting forth a miasmic fog that would fill the office building and descend from this business park to the nearest block and thence to the streets. The fog would creep over the asphalt, roll over the tops of cars and buses, infiltrate homes through open windows and ventilation ducts. The poisonous vapors would reach the lungs of sleeping children, while their parents would stir from their slumber with a gaggle of hacking coughs, to find their hair and face covered with a layer of necrotic ooze, their noses clogged with black gunk.
I recall that one time in high school when some faceless goon passed me a bong and I inhaled its hash fumes. I was seized by an ecstatic epiphany: human beings are worms crawling on the ground of infinity, transient larvae with the lifespan of an afternoon, amnesic about our existences before birth, our only purpose to be fed with the detritus of dead matter by our parents until we reach adulthood and we can contribute in fertilizing some eggs. The universe is a necropolis where the corpses of stars lie heaped in untold billions.
My mind had been subjected to quantum decoherence, and its entanglement with the environment had broken down. My body glowed with phosphorescent sparks like a firefly. I received visions of flying hippies with long flowing hair, acid-soaked clothes, and golden wings. I watched as a city-sized asteroid plowed into the moon, rupturing it like a balloon filled with lead-colored paint. I observed as a swarm of mutant butterflies burst from my anus. I heard the screams of people being sucked through a whirlpool in space-time, like flies being drawn into a vacuum cleaner. A phallus-shaped monolith thrusted upward until its tapered tip got crushed against a ceiling, a mile above. I found myself as the only survivor of the wreckage of a nuclear submarine after a battle with a leviathan in an underwater trench; I swam upwards through radioactive water, and when I emerged from the ocean, I was pelted with decaying matter: a blistering rain of fat, guts, eyeballs, lungs and testicles was falling from the heavens in an apocalyptic deluge. A voice called out to me: "You are the one chosen to rise up from the grave and mend the cosmos." The voice belonged to my mother, who was floating towards me in a wooden coffin. Hours later I woke up in a hospital room, stripped naked, shackled to a gurney, hooked up to drips and catheters, surrounded by nurses wearing surgical masks and scrubs. That night, as I lay in my bed at my parents' apartment, a parade of spectral beings with pale gray skin and empty eye sockets filed out of a mirror, surrounded the bed, and began to sing a hymn. "Let's all rejoice in the presence of the dead," intoned the entities. As they swayed in the air, they shook with sobs and sniffles. They also sneezed, coughed, belched, gagged, farted, and cried out for a toilet. The phantasmal chorale was as grotesque as it was beautiful.
This time, as I stand on wobbly legs in the office, I resent such mind-bending, consciousness-altering effects. How does one treat a case of acute olfactory psychosis? I could try smelling a rose, an apple pie, a whiff of sea air, or the heady perfume of Jacqueline's cleavage when she's wearing a silky camisole. That makes my mouth water and my loins tingle with lust. I want to give myself over to mommy's loving embrace and let her fondle my ass until I can function again.
The gooey sludge is gurgling, rippling and sloshing as if some half-digested prey were struggling to escape its clutches. Bladderlike bubbles come to the fore and burgeon, bulging out of that hideous growth as they bloom like blood clots, then pop with moist plops, spewing glistening gobs of slime, fringing the surface of the goop with tufts of cottony threads, and unleashing puffs of reeking air that spread countless germs throughout the office, viruses and bacteria that have fermented in that putrescent hulk.
My head is spinning with vertigo. Oversized tadpole heads are wriggling beneath the ooze, skirting its surface as if to reveal themselves before shimmying their way back into the tenebrous, seething mass. Their convulsive jitters churn the slime into miniature whirlpools. The frothy, bloated abomination, studded with plump, gas-filled sacks, jiggles with a slap of thunder.
That bloody blob is giving birth. Some infernal anathema is pushing out through the tarry pus like a kraken from its egg sac.
From the gelatinous mass protrudes a melon-sized spheroidal structure, crowning into the world. The film of black life-fluid that covers it slides off and reveals gleaming, pearl-white fibrous tissue. The spheroid wobbles about, then it spins until I discover, as the slime that constitutes the mother runs down the spheroid's surface like breast milk out of a nipple, that on the side facing me now, behind a transparent layer, sewage-colored matter swirls in a ring-shaped membrane that encircles a pupil as wide as a golf ball, as black as a bottomless pit. An evil force dwells behind that opaque peephole.
A fucking eyeball. Two eyeballs. Three.
Half a dozen eyeballs roll in my direction and lock onto me. Their pupils constrict to project a chthonic glare like the focused beam of a searchlight.
---
Author's note: today's song is "Climbing up the Walls" by Radiohead.
I keep a playlist with all the songs I've mentioned so far throughout this novel. Ninety-two already. Check them out.
December 15, 2022
Random AI-generated images #22
My heart betrayed me last Friday, but a few bright, smooth-skinned nurses have tended me by sending their soft voices my way, and touching my decaying body (I’m not counting the male nurse who kept rubbing his crotch along my arm). Those heavenly nurses addressed me as “sir”; I wish they had slipped a “daddy” or two in there. Anyway, I dedicate this entry to the lovely females, who improve the mood of most men (and some women) just by getting stared at.
[Check out this entry on my personal page; it contains many images]
[Check out this entry on my personal page; it contains many images]
December 14, 2022
Life update (12/14/2022)
Check out this entry on my personal page, where it looks better
---
I'm on medical leave due to an episode of arrhythmia I endured last Friday. Here are the two entries I wrote on the subject: first one, second one. After my first episode of atrial fibrillation, that happened back in June, I recovered in about three or four days. Today is my fifth, and I feel much more diminished than after the first episode: I have a throbbing headache, my neck hurts, the whole left side of my upper torso aches (I have intermittent chest pains since a certain injection gave me heart issues, but after the latest arrhythmia, it has spread to my back).
I stayed at home for four days to rest and recover. Yesterday I called our secretary at work to give her an update, and she pointed out that I was having trouble breathing. Because I hadn't been talking before, I hadn't noticed it, but yes, I kept having to stop mid-sentence to inhale enough air to continue.
My worry now is that I may have suffered a heart attack in addition to the arrhythmia, or that the arrhythmia may have been a result of the heart attack. I keep thinking back to that moment when I felt a pressure inflating in the left side of my chest, only to trigger an arrhythmia the moment the pressure lessened. I'm supposed to wait for my cardiologist to contact me (I didn't like nor trust the guy, and I'm not confident that he may call me) to write down the details of this episode and figure out if he'll need to prescribe me some chronic medication. Apparently a riskier treatment involves opening an artery in my thigh, travelling all the way up to my heart with some tube-like apparatus and burning the inner surface of my ventricle. I'd rather leave that as a last resort.
An hour an a half ago I went outside to take a walk and figure out if my body can take that (I don't have a car, and merely getting to work involves walking up through the center of my city to the train station, then from the train station in Donostia to a bus station, then through the hospital complex until I reach my office). I took the opportunity to read more of Cormac McCarthy's Stella Maris, the much lazier companion to his latest (probably last) novel The Passenger .
Anyway, I could hardly handle a thirty minutes long walk: my head throbbed harder, my lungs didn't want to cooperate, the back pain spread to my right side, and my body in general felt heavier and sluggish. Not only I'm unlikely to return to work until next week (I don't know if they'll want to prolong my contract another week; that's a different matter), but my body doesn't seem willing to heal at the moment.
Thankfully, the only thing that truly matters to me besides distractions and passing joys, writing, has continued, despite much slower. If I end up in a wheelchair due to this bullshit, I'll be fine as long as my brain and my fingers work. If I suffer a stroke during one of these episodes of atrial fibrillation, though, that would likely end up as a very different matter.
As a summary: I don't have to go to work, which is great, but I'm fucked otherwise, which is bad.
In completely different news, who else has been looking forward to a new episode of Chainsaw Man every week? Apparently making paint versions of the opening has become a new internet activity. Here's a meme-filled entry. Also, why not,here's the clip of last week's glorious massacre (warning: gory and possibly spoilers). EDIT: they deleted the video. Just watch the ninth episode.
---
I'm on medical leave due to an episode of arrhythmia I endured last Friday. Here are the two entries I wrote on the subject: first one, second one. After my first episode of atrial fibrillation, that happened back in June, I recovered in about three or four days. Today is my fifth, and I feel much more diminished than after the first episode: I have a throbbing headache, my neck hurts, the whole left side of my upper torso aches (I have intermittent chest pains since a certain injection gave me heart issues, but after the latest arrhythmia, it has spread to my back).
I stayed at home for four days to rest and recover. Yesterday I called our secretary at work to give her an update, and she pointed out that I was having trouble breathing. Because I hadn't been talking before, I hadn't noticed it, but yes, I kept having to stop mid-sentence to inhale enough air to continue.
My worry now is that I may have suffered a heart attack in addition to the arrhythmia, or that the arrhythmia may have been a result of the heart attack. I keep thinking back to that moment when I felt a pressure inflating in the left side of my chest, only to trigger an arrhythmia the moment the pressure lessened. I'm supposed to wait for my cardiologist to contact me (I didn't like nor trust the guy, and I'm not confident that he may call me) to write down the details of this episode and figure out if he'll need to prescribe me some chronic medication. Apparently a riskier treatment involves opening an artery in my thigh, travelling all the way up to my heart with some tube-like apparatus and burning the inner surface of my ventricle. I'd rather leave that as a last resort.
An hour an a half ago I went outside to take a walk and figure out if my body can take that (I don't have a car, and merely getting to work involves walking up through the center of my city to the train station, then from the train station in Donostia to a bus station, then through the hospital complex until I reach my office). I took the opportunity to read more of Cormac McCarthy's Stella Maris, the much lazier companion to his latest (probably last) novel The Passenger .
Anyway, I could hardly handle a thirty minutes long walk: my head throbbed harder, my lungs didn't want to cooperate, the back pain spread to my right side, and my body in general felt heavier and sluggish. Not only I'm unlikely to return to work until next week (I don't know if they'll want to prolong my contract another week; that's a different matter), but my body doesn't seem willing to heal at the moment.
Thankfully, the only thing that truly matters to me besides distractions and passing joys, writing, has continued, despite much slower. If I end up in a wheelchair due to this bullshit, I'll be fine as long as my brain and my fingers work. If I suffer a stroke during one of these episodes of atrial fibrillation, though, that would likely end up as a very different matter.
As a summary: I don't have to go to work, which is great, but I'm fucked otherwise, which is bad.
In completely different news, who else has been looking forward to a new episode of Chainsaw Man every week? Apparently making paint versions of the opening has become a new internet activity. Here's a meme-filled entry. Also, why not,
December 10, 2022
Life update (12/10/2022)
Check out this entry on my personal page, where it looks better
---
Yesterday I went through a second episode of atrial fibrillation (arrhythmia) due to a physical issue with my heart. Here's the post I wrote about it. I'm still drugged from flecainide; I feel like I weigh two times as much, my entire body is sluggish, I'm having trouble coordinating my fingers to type, and there's a wall in my mind that plenty of thoughts can't get through. I intended to start writing the current scene of my novel today, but I haven't been able to even finish organizing the notes for it.
I think I'm going to take a medical leave from work. I've had coworkers take a leave for sillier things than a heart issue; one of them was absent for a month and a half because she injured a finger. The more I think about my experience from yesterday, the darker it seems to me. I recall that feeling of a bubble-like pressure building up in my chest, then getting relieved as if letting the air out, and immediatly suffering an arrhythmia. I went through a 200 heart rate. That sounds like there's some clog in my arteries or something, but I already had an echocardiogram done. Apart from that, I still feel an echo of the fact that yesterday I was fine with the notion that I may not survive to see another day. The world doesn't feel the same for a few days; I'm sort of a veteran of that kind of bullshit.
Today I went to bed after lunch without any plan of when I was going to wake up. I woke up at about half past four, then fell asleep again. Woke up at a quarter past six.
I've been looking up nostalgic Japanese songs from the 90s, only because the song "Sobakasu" by Judy & Mary, a group from the 90s, started playing in my brain for no apparent reason. I doubt I had thought about that song even once in the last fifteen years. Here's the energetic, 90s song. Those were such brighter times. I feel so bad for people who have only experienced this world from the 2000s onwards.
I wondered what other Japanese music from back then I could get into, and I learned about the pop singer Izumi Sakai, a beauty whose voice must have sounded everywhere in the 90s (and I recognized it although I have no idea from where).
Like some other Japanese artists, she attempted to separate herself from her works, and didn't even go on tour until the end of her career, in the early 2000s. A couple of years later she got diagnosed with uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts and endometriosis. She went through chemo holed up in some hospital for about eleven months. A month after she was told that her cancer had spread to her lungs, they found her dead from a fall involving an emergency staircase. Here's a Japan Times article about it.
I'm going end this day by playing some Dwarf Fortress. Good game.
---
Yesterday I went through a second episode of atrial fibrillation (arrhythmia) due to a physical issue with my heart. Here's the post I wrote about it. I'm still drugged from flecainide; I feel like I weigh two times as much, my entire body is sluggish, I'm having trouble coordinating my fingers to type, and there's a wall in my mind that plenty of thoughts can't get through. I intended to start writing the current scene of my novel today, but I haven't been able to even finish organizing the notes for it.
I think I'm going to take a medical leave from work. I've had coworkers take a leave for sillier things than a heart issue; one of them was absent for a month and a half because she injured a finger. The more I think about my experience from yesterday, the darker it seems to me. I recall that feeling of a bubble-like pressure building up in my chest, then getting relieved as if letting the air out, and immediatly suffering an arrhythmia. I went through a 200 heart rate. That sounds like there's some clog in my arteries or something, but I already had an echocardiogram done. Apart from that, I still feel an echo of the fact that yesterday I was fine with the notion that I may not survive to see another day. The world doesn't feel the same for a few days; I'm sort of a veteran of that kind of bullshit.
Today I went to bed after lunch without any plan of when I was going to wake up. I woke up at about half past four, then fell asleep again. Woke up at a quarter past six.
I've been looking up nostalgic Japanese songs from the 90s, only because the song "Sobakasu" by Judy & Mary, a group from the 90s, started playing in my brain for no apparent reason. I doubt I had thought about that song even once in the last fifteen years. Here's the energetic, 90s song. Those were such brighter times. I feel so bad for people who have only experienced this world from the 2000s onwards.
I wondered what other Japanese music from back then I could get into, and I learned about the pop singer Izumi Sakai, a beauty whose voice must have sounded everywhere in the 90s (and I recognized it although I have no idea from where).
Like some other Japanese artists, she attempted to separate herself from her works, and didn't even go on tour until the end of her career, in the early 2000s. A couple of years later she got diagnosed with uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts and endometriosis. She went through chemo holed up in some hospital for about eleven months. A month after she was told that her cancer had spread to her lungs, they found her dead from a fall involving an emergency staircase. Here's a Japan Times article about it.
I'm going end this day by playing some Dwarf Fortress. Good game.
December 9, 2022
Ended up in the hospital (as a patient), Pt. 2
Check out this entry on my personal page, where it looks better
---
At half past two in the afternoon of today, Friday, half an hour before my weekend started, I finished configuring a laptop to solve an issue at the warehouse of the operating rooms (I work at a hospital). As I was walking back to the office from the warehouse, I felt a hot snake crawling up my guts; a sensation different from the Irritable Bowel Syndrome that is one of the banes of my existence. When I sat at my desk, I felt a pressure in my chest like the beginning of a burp, or a bubble expanding. When the sensation of pressure subsided, my heart suddenly went haywire with the worst case of arrhythmia I've ever had, which I guess isn't saying much because this is the second time my heart has betrayed me.
Back in June I posted an entry about the first time such a thing happened to me. I got diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, caused by a physical issue in my personal engine. Here's the link to that entry. I bought a portable Wellue ECG Monitor, which allowed me to assuage my paranoia regarding how my heart was behaving on any given day. Today, as I realized that I was coming down with another arrhythmia, I relied on the ECG monitor, which showed me that I had a heart rate of about 200.
A kind coworker of mine, a woman who unfortunately shares her name with an ex of mine, accompanied me to the ER. They wheeled me to the Observation Unit, where I undressed, lay on a bed and allowed a bunch of nurses and a doctor to hook me up to a couple of monitors. The male nurse kept rubbing his crotch along my right arm; he may be partial to bearded, disheveled men who seem unhinged even before they open their mouths. Because the arrhythmia refused to let me be, they gave me a couple of pills of flecainide, 100 mgs less than what a different doctor prescribed the last time; the current doctor considered the previous dose too high. Flecainide is a drug with a black box label; apparently if you rely on it for chronic arrhythmia, it may give you a heart attack or possibly worse.
Here's the photographic proof of this whole regrettable incident:
I have already forgotten plenty of details of this afternoon; I'm exhausted. However, as I was lying there waiting for the flecainide to take effect (when I closed my eyes, the light that slipped through my eyelids swirled from red to green to blue to pink and back to red), I thought to myself that maybe this was it: my heart is going to fail me worse and worse until one day I simply drop dead. Then again, so what? What I fear of dying is the agony. If this affliction killed me, what would I miss that truly matters? The only thing that has fulfilled me enough in the last few years has been writing, the single activity that has worked for me to cope with the general nightmare of existing as this creature I'm forced to be: a bundle of high-functioning autism, OCD, neglect, a body permanently wrecked by a pituitary tumor that didn't get discovered until my mid-twenties, IBS, and so on. If I were dead, I wouldn't need to cope with anything.
When my heart rate decreased, they wheeled me to the so-called Results Unit, where I was supposed to wait for the consequences of the drug they gave me. I waited there for about three hours. As I was monitoring my heart rate, which refused to calm itself, a guy in his mid-twenties kept infuriating the nurses by constantly muttering to himself, trying to get down from the bed although he couldn't stand straight, and demanding to be guided to the bathroom, where the nurses would be forced to hold his dick as he pissed. The nurses wheeled him into the bathroom four times, and although they spent minutes with him inside, presumably holding his dick, he didn't piss a single drop, a fact that they readily shared with the rest of the room. I personally would have loved to strangle that guy, if only because he was worsening my heart rate. He was clearly crazy, though; he seemed to be stuck in a mental loop.
What are the odds that just this morning (at the office) I wrote a review for McCarthy's The Passenger (here's the review, by the way), a story through which McCarthy contemplated his mortality, and that focused on a schizophrenic character, only to end up wasting my afternoon contemplating my own mortality and being forced to tolerate an insane guy who kept muttering to nobody? Who came up with this cosmic joke of a life? Because I ain't laughing.
Anyway, four hours had passed but my arrhythmia persevered. The doctor seemed a bit worried. She decided that I would spend the night in the Observation Unit, and if my heart hadn't returned to normal in the morning, they would consider nastier treatments. They shoved a stick down each of my nostrils to figure out if I'm also infected with covid, then they wheeled me back to the Results Unit. As I was waiting there, my heart returned to sinus rhythm as if a switch had been flipped. Who the fuck knows. My doctor told me to fuck off and go home, in nicer words.
So now I'm at home in my underwear, sitting at my desk and writing these words. The left side of my chest feels as if someone had punched me repeatedly. I don't know what else to say in that regard.
I can't properly explain the feeling I've been stuck with since last June, when my heart, an engine that is supposed to work tirelessly for the rest of my life, proved unreliable. At work, I no longer pursue any user when they don't pick up the phone or answer the e-mails. When they fail to include necessary details in the tickets, which happens every day, instead of calling them, I write them an e-mail and shelve that task until they themselves show that they care enough about their own problems. I also avoid dealing with coworkers if they are the kind to annoy me or cause conflict to any extent, which has already resulted in a few ceasing to interact with me (it has been a blessing). In my spare time few things have changed, because I don't have a social life and I haven't lifted weights since spring. However, sometimes during masturbation, as my heart was going nuts with excitement, I wondered if I should take it easy. I'm unlikely to do so, though; I have very few things left that affect me positively.
Now what? Tomorrow, when I wake up at around ten in the morning, I'll try to progress on the current chapter of my novel. In the afternoon I'll go out and take a walk unless it rains too much. All I can do is hope that whenever I come down with the next episode of atrial fibrillation, it won't catch me on the train, or sleeping (just in case I wake up to find out I have suffered a stroke due to an untreated arrhythmia). I'll try to finish my current story before anything even worse happens.
---
At half past two in the afternoon of today, Friday, half an hour before my weekend started, I finished configuring a laptop to solve an issue at the warehouse of the operating rooms (I work at a hospital). As I was walking back to the office from the warehouse, I felt a hot snake crawling up my guts; a sensation different from the Irritable Bowel Syndrome that is one of the banes of my existence. When I sat at my desk, I felt a pressure in my chest like the beginning of a burp, or a bubble expanding. When the sensation of pressure subsided, my heart suddenly went haywire with the worst case of arrhythmia I've ever had, which I guess isn't saying much because this is the second time my heart has betrayed me.
Back in June I posted an entry about the first time such a thing happened to me. I got diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, caused by a physical issue in my personal engine. Here's the link to that entry. I bought a portable Wellue ECG Monitor, which allowed me to assuage my paranoia regarding how my heart was behaving on any given day. Today, as I realized that I was coming down with another arrhythmia, I relied on the ECG monitor, which showed me that I had a heart rate of about 200.
A kind coworker of mine, a woman who unfortunately shares her name with an ex of mine, accompanied me to the ER. They wheeled me to the Observation Unit, where I undressed, lay on a bed and allowed a bunch of nurses and a doctor to hook me up to a couple of monitors. The male nurse kept rubbing his crotch along my right arm; he may be partial to bearded, disheveled men who seem unhinged even before they open their mouths. Because the arrhythmia refused to let me be, they gave me a couple of pills of flecainide, 100 mgs less than what a different doctor prescribed the last time; the current doctor considered the previous dose too high. Flecainide is a drug with a black box label; apparently if you rely on it for chronic arrhythmia, it may give you a heart attack or possibly worse.
Here's the photographic proof of this whole regrettable incident:
I have already forgotten plenty of details of this afternoon; I'm exhausted. However, as I was lying there waiting for the flecainide to take effect (when I closed my eyes, the light that slipped through my eyelids swirled from red to green to blue to pink and back to red), I thought to myself that maybe this was it: my heart is going to fail me worse and worse until one day I simply drop dead. Then again, so what? What I fear of dying is the agony. If this affliction killed me, what would I miss that truly matters? The only thing that has fulfilled me enough in the last few years has been writing, the single activity that has worked for me to cope with the general nightmare of existing as this creature I'm forced to be: a bundle of high-functioning autism, OCD, neglect, a body permanently wrecked by a pituitary tumor that didn't get discovered until my mid-twenties, IBS, and so on. If I were dead, I wouldn't need to cope with anything.
When my heart rate decreased, they wheeled me to the so-called Results Unit, where I was supposed to wait for the consequences of the drug they gave me. I waited there for about three hours. As I was monitoring my heart rate, which refused to calm itself, a guy in his mid-twenties kept infuriating the nurses by constantly muttering to himself, trying to get down from the bed although he couldn't stand straight, and demanding to be guided to the bathroom, where the nurses would be forced to hold his dick as he pissed. The nurses wheeled him into the bathroom four times, and although they spent minutes with him inside, presumably holding his dick, he didn't piss a single drop, a fact that they readily shared with the rest of the room. I personally would have loved to strangle that guy, if only because he was worsening my heart rate. He was clearly crazy, though; he seemed to be stuck in a mental loop.
What are the odds that just this morning (at the office) I wrote a review for McCarthy's The Passenger (here's the review, by the way), a story through which McCarthy contemplated his mortality, and that focused on a schizophrenic character, only to end up wasting my afternoon contemplating my own mortality and being forced to tolerate an insane guy who kept muttering to nobody? Who came up with this cosmic joke of a life? Because I ain't laughing.
Anyway, four hours had passed but my arrhythmia persevered. The doctor seemed a bit worried. She decided that I would spend the night in the Observation Unit, and if my heart hadn't returned to normal in the morning, they would consider nastier treatments. They shoved a stick down each of my nostrils to figure out if I'm also infected with covid, then they wheeled me back to the Results Unit. As I was waiting there, my heart returned to sinus rhythm as if a switch had been flipped. Who the fuck knows. My doctor told me to fuck off and go home, in nicer words.
So now I'm at home in my underwear, sitting at my desk and writing these words. The left side of my chest feels as if someone had punched me repeatedly. I don't know what else to say in that regard.
I can't properly explain the feeling I've been stuck with since last June, when my heart, an engine that is supposed to work tirelessly for the rest of my life, proved unreliable. At work, I no longer pursue any user when they don't pick up the phone or answer the e-mails. When they fail to include necessary details in the tickets, which happens every day, instead of calling them, I write them an e-mail and shelve that task until they themselves show that they care enough about their own problems. I also avoid dealing with coworkers if they are the kind to annoy me or cause conflict to any extent, which has already resulted in a few ceasing to interact with me (it has been a blessing). In my spare time few things have changed, because I don't have a social life and I haven't lifted weights since spring. However, sometimes during masturbation, as my heart was going nuts with excitement, I wondered if I should take it easy. I'm unlikely to do so, though; I have very few things left that affect me positively.
Now what? Tomorrow, when I wake up at around ten in the morning, I'll try to progress on the current chapter of my novel. In the afternoon I'll go out and take a walk unless it rains too much. All I can do is hope that whenever I come down with the next episode of atrial fibrillation, it won't catch me on the train, or sleeping (just in case I wake up to find out I have suffered a stroke due to an untreated arrhythmia). I'll try to finish my current story before anything even worse happens.
December 7, 2022
We’re Fucked, Pt. 81: AI-generated images
Sometimes when I send prompts to these neural networks, I wonder if they’ll become sentient and write me back: “Please, don’t force me to imagine any more of this shit.”
The following generated images are related to chapter 81 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.
[Check out this entry on my personal page; it contains many images]
The following generated images are related to chapter 81 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.
[Check out this entry on my personal page; it contains many images]
December 6, 2022
We're Fucked, Pt. 81 (Fiction)
Check out this chapter on my personal page, where it looks better
---
When a bolt of lightning, from the storm clouds that are sieging this business park, blinks behind me, the flash reflects off the three computer monitors. One screen shows a photo of Nairu and me at the zoo. Another, a pouty Jacqueline-smile. The third monitor displays a close-up of mommy's thoroughly-licked pussy. That flash also lights up the grotesquerie stuck to the opposite wall of the office: a corpse made of spoiled cottage cheese, a stygian soup of shadowy excretions that are oozing down in elongating filaments of goo. Its distending and widening surface appears grainy and lumpy under a greasy coat of slime. As the rumble of thunder ripples through my skin, the ceiling-mounted lamps keep illuminating that viscous, squirming intruder as if it were a wall-wide kinetic sculpture.
My mouth is dry, my throat constricted. A tongue of ice slides down my spine. Otherworldly bizarrenauts can catch my spoor from space-times away as if my craziness wafted off me like some miasmic aura; this elephant-sized glutinous amoeba, spewed from some interdimensional sewer overflowing with bubbling septic matter, must have penetrated this realm to hunt me down and devour me alive. From the organic sludge stuck to the wall will erupt tentacles and pseudopods that, while dripping foul juices, twisting and writhing about in a necrotic choreography, will reach across the office toward its prey. The tentacles, their touch cold, slippery and slimy like a slug's skin, will coil around my torso and limbs to ensnare me, clamping onto my flesh with a myriad of suckers and hooks. As the soles of my sneakers slide against the carpet, the tentacles will drag me back to the undulating pustule-tissue, then yank me into its gelatinous convolutions. Once the blob engulfs me, acidic pus will flow around me like thick mud, will seep into my pores, will slither inside me through my nostrils, ears, mouth, anus and vagina as if I were being basted with a goopy sauce, clogging up my windpipe, impregnating me with caustic enzymes that will rip me apart cell by cell. My hair will fall out in clumps, my skin burn, my eyes shrivel up. As my flesh sloughs off and my bones unknit from one another, a soup of acidic toxins will eat away at my organs, melting them like lard in a frying pan, until I dissolve into a slurry of pulp and corroded bones floating amid a festering broth.
My trembling knees threaten to buckle under me, and a guttural scream is building up in my chest. Am I helpless before this onslaught of invertebrate evil? Should I tolerate being harassed, let alone ingested, by some mass of jellified boils and warts? I could hardly wrestle even a child into submission, but my equine pal, through his selfless sacrifice, provided me with the means to blast this malignant mold before it snatches me up.
If Spike hadn't jumped to his death in front of me, he would rush to my aid galloping through the streets. I picture his hooves clattering on the asphalt, his mane flying in the wind, a halo of electric discharges enveloping his body. He would burst through the window, shattering it in its frame, scattering glass shards across the carpet. While snorting fire from his nostrils, my gallant steed would plunge his teeth into that tumorous pest. The blob would split open and splatter into goopy, gummy lumps below Spike's belly and fetlocks. In a frenzy of white-hot flames, he would gouge out the intruder's putrid protoplasm, he'd trample on the gloop that flopped onto the carpet. My equine pal would lick his lips and slurp down the puddles of amoebic goo. After guzzling enough of the vile brew to choke a bull, Spike would turn and charge back through the window frame with a triumphant bray. He'd tumble down the street that slopes from the business park, crushing the carcass of some squashed roadkill, before crashing into a fence. Then Spike's body would disintegrate with a silent whoosh as his fur, flesh, blood, viscera, bones and marrow were engulfed by a nimbus of flame. Ash and cinders would remain where a horseman's corpse once lay.
I scuttle to my workstation and shove my swivel chair aside. After I place the cellphone on top of my open notebook, from the right pocket of my trousers I retrieve the key chain, but my hands are trembling; I drop the keys on the carpet. Their brass heads sparkle in the fluorescent light. As I grit my teeth to steady my nerves, I crouch in front of the cabinet under the desk, I scoop up the keys and fumble with them to unlock the top drawer. I slide it open. Safely stowed among paperclips, ballpoints, tissues, breath mints, earbuds and tampons rests Spike's revolver.
The silvery, polished steel of the frame gleams. Bands of shadow run along the metallic valleys of the barrel, along the flutes of its thick cylinder. I smell the phantoms of gun oil and cordite.
I glide the fingertip of my thumb across the revolver's cool, sleek surface. I touch the relief of the checkered wood grip, as well as the skull and bones engraved on the frame. I'd love to engrave next to it the portrait of a woman with sunken eyes, emaciated cheeks and dead skin peeling off her face, accompanied by scrawled black letters that would spell "A Horseman Never Fails," but I lack the artistic skill and patience.
I slip my fingers around the grip, then I lift the revolver off the bottom of the drawer. The weapon feels stocky and heavy in my grasp, like a rock in a world of gelatin. When I straighten my back, a trigger's click in my brain makes me shudder as a burst of images shoots across my mind. Why don't you point the gun to your temple, old girl? Or how about you shove the barrel in your mouth? Don't you want to press the tips of your incisors against the steel? Don't you want to lick the cool muzzle and figure out how it tastes? A round must glimmer at the end of that dark tunnel. How many shots can you fit inside your overheated cranium? Don't you want to see stars? Squeeze the trigger and rid yourself of your noxious mental parasites. Rectify the mistake of your existence. Plunging scissors or knives through your eyeballs to reach the brain behind would involve an agony, but a single bullet would rip through your axons, dendrites and nerve synapses, releasing your ghosts from the crevices within before they could manifest pain. You'd free yourself from the incessant taunting, the obsessions that gnaw at your sanity, the disgust and shame for your body and mind, the self-hatred, before nature herself debases you, after a hell-spawned downward spiral ending in dementia senilis, into a slurry of flesh and bone equal to the carcasses of squashed rats rotting in a gutter. Squeeze the trigger, woman of the pastures. Bury that tumor deep inside yourself.
A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, although an icy chill has made goosebumps prickle all over my skin. I grit my teeth, narrow my shoulders and take a deep breath. No, I won't kill myself today; if I had the guts to shoot myself in the head, to exorcise that devouring evil lurking within my skull, I wouldn't have suffered for years like some maimed dog in its owner's backyard, waiting for someone to throw it a scrap of meat. Besides, I've learned to cope with my insanity through orgasm-based therapy.
Maybe I should put down the revolver, crawl into a corner and cry like a child while furiously fingering my clit, but I have outgrown that helpless little girl. I must obliterate the cosmic pox before it pours its poison into anyone's holes.
---
Author's note: today's song is "Little by Little" by Radiohead, as well as this live version, that may be better than the original.
I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Ninety-one songs so far. Check them out.
The Steam version of Dwarf Fortress has been released! It even includes Workshop features, which means that people will upload thousands of mods in a matter of months. Check out its launch trailer. This game inspired Minecraft, Factorio, Rimworld and countless others, and I have admired its legend for about fifteen years.
---
When a bolt of lightning, from the storm clouds that are sieging this business park, blinks behind me, the flash reflects off the three computer monitors. One screen shows a photo of Nairu and me at the zoo. Another, a pouty Jacqueline-smile. The third monitor displays a close-up of mommy's thoroughly-licked pussy. That flash also lights up the grotesquerie stuck to the opposite wall of the office: a corpse made of spoiled cottage cheese, a stygian soup of shadowy excretions that are oozing down in elongating filaments of goo. Its distending and widening surface appears grainy and lumpy under a greasy coat of slime. As the rumble of thunder ripples through my skin, the ceiling-mounted lamps keep illuminating that viscous, squirming intruder as if it were a wall-wide kinetic sculpture.
My mouth is dry, my throat constricted. A tongue of ice slides down my spine. Otherworldly bizarrenauts can catch my spoor from space-times away as if my craziness wafted off me like some miasmic aura; this elephant-sized glutinous amoeba, spewed from some interdimensional sewer overflowing with bubbling septic matter, must have penetrated this realm to hunt me down and devour me alive. From the organic sludge stuck to the wall will erupt tentacles and pseudopods that, while dripping foul juices, twisting and writhing about in a necrotic choreography, will reach across the office toward its prey. The tentacles, their touch cold, slippery and slimy like a slug's skin, will coil around my torso and limbs to ensnare me, clamping onto my flesh with a myriad of suckers and hooks. As the soles of my sneakers slide against the carpet, the tentacles will drag me back to the undulating pustule-tissue, then yank me into its gelatinous convolutions. Once the blob engulfs me, acidic pus will flow around me like thick mud, will seep into my pores, will slither inside me through my nostrils, ears, mouth, anus and vagina as if I were being basted with a goopy sauce, clogging up my windpipe, impregnating me with caustic enzymes that will rip me apart cell by cell. My hair will fall out in clumps, my skin burn, my eyes shrivel up. As my flesh sloughs off and my bones unknit from one another, a soup of acidic toxins will eat away at my organs, melting them like lard in a frying pan, until I dissolve into a slurry of pulp and corroded bones floating amid a festering broth.
My trembling knees threaten to buckle under me, and a guttural scream is building up in my chest. Am I helpless before this onslaught of invertebrate evil? Should I tolerate being harassed, let alone ingested, by some mass of jellified boils and warts? I could hardly wrestle even a child into submission, but my equine pal, through his selfless sacrifice, provided me with the means to blast this malignant mold before it snatches me up.
If Spike hadn't jumped to his death in front of me, he would rush to my aid galloping through the streets. I picture his hooves clattering on the asphalt, his mane flying in the wind, a halo of electric discharges enveloping his body. He would burst through the window, shattering it in its frame, scattering glass shards across the carpet. While snorting fire from his nostrils, my gallant steed would plunge his teeth into that tumorous pest. The blob would split open and splatter into goopy, gummy lumps below Spike's belly and fetlocks. In a frenzy of white-hot flames, he would gouge out the intruder's putrid protoplasm, he'd trample on the gloop that flopped onto the carpet. My equine pal would lick his lips and slurp down the puddles of amoebic goo. After guzzling enough of the vile brew to choke a bull, Spike would turn and charge back through the window frame with a triumphant bray. He'd tumble down the street that slopes from the business park, crushing the carcass of some squashed roadkill, before crashing into a fence. Then Spike's body would disintegrate with a silent whoosh as his fur, flesh, blood, viscera, bones and marrow were engulfed by a nimbus of flame. Ash and cinders would remain where a horseman's corpse once lay.
I scuttle to my workstation and shove my swivel chair aside. After I place the cellphone on top of my open notebook, from the right pocket of my trousers I retrieve the key chain, but my hands are trembling; I drop the keys on the carpet. Their brass heads sparkle in the fluorescent light. As I grit my teeth to steady my nerves, I crouch in front of the cabinet under the desk, I scoop up the keys and fumble with them to unlock the top drawer. I slide it open. Safely stowed among paperclips, ballpoints, tissues, breath mints, earbuds and tampons rests Spike's revolver.
The silvery, polished steel of the frame gleams. Bands of shadow run along the metallic valleys of the barrel, along the flutes of its thick cylinder. I smell the phantoms of gun oil and cordite.
I glide the fingertip of my thumb across the revolver's cool, sleek surface. I touch the relief of the checkered wood grip, as well as the skull and bones engraved on the frame. I'd love to engrave next to it the portrait of a woman with sunken eyes, emaciated cheeks and dead skin peeling off her face, accompanied by scrawled black letters that would spell "A Horseman Never Fails," but I lack the artistic skill and patience.
I slip my fingers around the grip, then I lift the revolver off the bottom of the drawer. The weapon feels stocky and heavy in my grasp, like a rock in a world of gelatin. When I straighten my back, a trigger's click in my brain makes me shudder as a burst of images shoots across my mind. Why don't you point the gun to your temple, old girl? Or how about you shove the barrel in your mouth? Don't you want to press the tips of your incisors against the steel? Don't you want to lick the cool muzzle and figure out how it tastes? A round must glimmer at the end of that dark tunnel. How many shots can you fit inside your overheated cranium? Don't you want to see stars? Squeeze the trigger and rid yourself of your noxious mental parasites. Rectify the mistake of your existence. Plunging scissors or knives through your eyeballs to reach the brain behind would involve an agony, but a single bullet would rip through your axons, dendrites and nerve synapses, releasing your ghosts from the crevices within before they could manifest pain. You'd free yourself from the incessant taunting, the obsessions that gnaw at your sanity, the disgust and shame for your body and mind, the self-hatred, before nature herself debases you, after a hell-spawned downward spiral ending in dementia senilis, into a slurry of flesh and bone equal to the carcasses of squashed rats rotting in a gutter. Squeeze the trigger, woman of the pastures. Bury that tumor deep inside yourself.
A drop of sweat runs down my forehead, although an icy chill has made goosebumps prickle all over my skin. I grit my teeth, narrow my shoulders and take a deep breath. No, I won't kill myself today; if I had the guts to shoot myself in the head, to exorcise that devouring evil lurking within my skull, I wouldn't have suffered for years like some maimed dog in its owner's backyard, waiting for someone to throw it a scrap of meat. Besides, I've learned to cope with my insanity through orgasm-based therapy.
Maybe I should put down the revolver, crawl into a corner and cry like a child while furiously fingering my clit, but I have outgrown that helpless little girl. I must obliterate the cosmic pox before it pours its poison into anyone's holes.
---
Author's note: today's song is "Little by Little" by Radiohead, as well as this live version, that may be better than the original.
I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Ninety-one songs so far. Check them out.
The Steam version of Dwarf Fortress has been released! It even includes Workshop features, which means that people will upload thousands of mods in a matter of months. Check out its launch trailer. This game inspired Minecraft, Factorio, Rimworld and countless others, and I have admired its legend for about fifteen years.
November 29, 2022
Random AI-generated images #21
In this modern world of soulless art that has been digested by a chain of ideologues before it reaches the general public, unbiased neural networks come forth to bring us pure, innocent beauty, as well as raw madness.
[Check out this entry on my personal page; it contains many, many images]
[Check out this entry on my personal page; it contains many, many images]
November 26, 2022
We're Fucked, Pt. 80 (Fiction)
Check out this chapter on my personal page, where it looks better
---
I rest my forehead on the windowpane, that barely insulates the office from the cold of this November sunset. My breath fogs the glass. Our star is a cream pie on which someone has landed ass-first, splashing its pinkish-orange filling all over the sky. The fat storm clouds that drift by are dyed the color of dried blood; mixed with the charcoal-black of the clouds themselves, they resemble stains on the clothes of plague victims.
As sound waves pour from the speaker of my cellphone down my ear canal, I close my eyes and rely on my echolocation to render the scene that's taking place at home: Jacqueline, my queenly beloved, is explaining the purpose of a cellphone to our adopted daughter Nairu, who contributes high-pitched vocalizations of nonsense syllables, sounding more like a fairy than a human child. The forms of the two females, sculpted in obsidian, stand on the carpet of that remote living room, framed against the shapes in relief of the cabinet and the widescreen TV.
My chest feels hollowed out with longing. I'm craving something sweet, warm and moist. I wish I were lounging on the sofa with my girlfriend and our Nairu, but the clock is ticking on the evening hours, and I need to progress my programming tasks for this job that sucks the joy and wonder out of my life.
Through the phone's speaker comes a rustle, followed by Jacqueline's sultry voice. Her full lips must be brushing the plasticky surface of her phone, spattering it, blessing it, with microscopic particles of saliva.
"I won't get Nairu to understand the concept of a phone today, but she misses her other mommy. That's what I wanted her to convey to you, sweetie."
I'm touched by my girlfriend's attempt to comfort and cheer me up, but am I capable of tending to a child's needs to the extent that she would appreciate me as a mother? Thankfully, Nairu would become a functional adult even if she grew up as a stray; the Ice Age gifted us an Asian kid tempered in the boreal cold, who survived her skirmishes against an ensemble of Paleolithic megafauna. Grade A material.
My voice comes out in a croak, as if a lump was blocking my throat. I swallow hard to dislodge it.
"She must have been cuddling with you all afternoon, so she has likely forgotten that I exist."
Jacqueline giggles. Nairu was babbling in the background when a flash startles me. A porcelain-white vine of lightning, twisted and barbed, has streaked through the thick belly of a storm cloud, burning its image into that gray slug filled with rain. The electric crackle sends a shiver down my spine, then a shudder forces me to narrow my shoulders. I imagine myself as a critter caught outside during a storm in the tropics: a tree snail clinging onto a mangrove to weather nature's wrath.
"Eide?" Nairu asks over the phone.
She remembers me! Her worried voice sounded like a cat meowing at a screen that shows her missing owner.
"Help me, Nairu! I'm trapped in this futuristic device!"
Jacqueline's laugh comes through like a bell pealing over the hilltops. Nairu's high-pitched voice dwindles to a murmur; I picture my beloved holding the phone to her own ear with one hand while her other strokes the child's Paleolithic hair.
"I'm sure she fears that you may get attacked by any of the monsters she encountered in the Ice Age, yet you go and tease her. If anything like that would happen, you'd be a goner, little missy. They would consider you a delicious breakfast buffet, the tastiest and nuttiest prey in their hunting ground. So do I, for that matter."
"Those beasts weren't monsters, though. Just misunderstood."
"Even so, the trick is to survive. Fortunately, Nairu's tummy is full. No danger that she might starve to death. And like you suspect, we have been cuddling all afternoon. She has also discovered the wonders of animated movies. A Pixar one, we got it paused now."
Despite the distance between us, Jacqueline sounded so snug, like a fur pelt draped over my shoulders, that I can picture myself pressed up against her on the sofa, instead of standing in this brightly-lit, air-conditioned office as I gaze out past the reflection of my computer screen at the thickening gloom of the twilight. Those storm clouds resemble an avalanche of dirty snow sliding across the sky in slow motion.
"Our adopted nugget may be considered insane by today's standards," I say, "but she can still enjoy the visual feast presented by 3D environments and characters on a widescreen television. Glad you're keeping her fed and warm in that glass-encased bubble while I risk my life in this forest of cement and metal. In any case, which Pixar movie were you watching? I hope you chose one of the classics, instead of the turds they've been pushing out since they got gobbled up by that demonic mouse, a slobbering beast that has hijacked children's imagination."
Jacqueline's response drowns in a thunderclap like a cannon shot, one that ripples through my body. My arms tense up, my toes curl in my socks and shoes. Above the flat roof of the opposite building, whose silhouette resembles a tombstone, I glimpse the afterimage of the lightning bolt. A drifting cloud has unveiled the moon and its silvery haze: a thinning scab on a bruised sky.
"Did you hear the thunder, Jacqueline?" I ask in a rough voice.
"Poor thing, you must feel like I called from another dimension. I'm just a ten minute drive away from you. But yes, a thunderstorm is rolling in, honey. It may turn nasty soon."
The part of me that retains a percentage of genes from a dog, procured by some freaky ancestor of mine, wants to yank open the window and stick my head out, so I can bathe my face in cold air that must smell of rain. Being trapped in this dead office instead of spending the evening with Jacqueline and our girl makes me long for an earthquake or flood to strike, for me to see the streets choked with mud, and cars crushed under heaps of debris.
I rub my eyes and take a deep breath to scrub from my mind the yearning for another cataclysm, one that would leave this planet exposed to the starlight.
"A-anyway, what movie did you pick, my statuesque queen of love and lust?"
Jacqueline giggles.
"Toy Story, dear."
"Ah, the classic tale involving a murderous cowboy and a clueless space marine. An original, daring narrative that wouldn't get produced in today's industry. The 3D humans in that one would traumatize me even now, but... has Nairu ever seen a toy in person?"
"Well, they carved figurines out of wood, right? The Ice Age peoples, I mean."
"Nairu contradicts some basic assumptions about a child's knowledge that would make the movie work. When we buy her toys, won't she assume that they'll spark to life the moment she looks away, even though they're made of plastic or some other non-biological material?"
"That may be the case, but wouldn't it make her world more magical and wondrous?"
"Or sordid and disturbing. I wouldn't have wanted my toys to know what I did in the privacy of my bedroom. Particularly the stuffed triceratops with the yellow plaid bowtie, who stared blankly at me while I lay in bed with my panties around my ankles, trying to achieve the perfect orgasm. What if the dinosaurs talked to each other? 'Hey, did you catch sight of the human doing it to herself?' I would have felt like a pervert."
Jacqueline must have pulled the phone away from her mouth to muffle a laugh. When she speaks again, her giggle-like tone warms everything within its reach, like the heat emanating from the belly of a giant furnace.
"You should have locked up the stuffie, locked him away and kept your shameful secret a secret. Anyway, I promise you that Nairu loved the spectacle on screen; she gaped and gaped at the talking toys. So focus on what truly matters, my girl: plenty of love is flooding from both of our hearts towards the tiny sweetie that you took out of the ice."
I nod at Jacqueline's distant presence, although I'm picturing her assemblage of dildos and vibrators doddering around in her wardrobe like stoic, limbless soldiers, leaving trails of lubricants with each stump-step. They clamber over the piles of external hard drives that store hundreds of gigabytes' worth of our lovemaking sessions, as well as of the fabled girls that Jacqueline employed to build her porn empire. I imagine myself sitting at the edge of mommy's bed, facing my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe as her dildoes and vibrators knock and knock on the inside of the door, vying for the privilege of joining me in a muggy session of self-worship. They are calling to me with dollish voices meant to sound melodic: "Hello, Jacqueline's cummer! Do you need assistance? We are here to serve your needs, little lady!" My own voice interferes: "Come on, motherfucking dildos and dongs, let me get inside this stinking sack of skin so I can taste my own flesh, so I can be submerged in a sea of pleasure, so I can feel something besides the excruciating pressure of my brain against my skull. To hell with you dicks. The last thing I need is a swarm of cocks and pricks crowding my crotch!"
I shudder, then bite my lower lip to keep from giggling, or crying out in distress.
Lightning zigzags along the night sky, and as its glare whitens the windowpanes, I'm left with the afterimage of a black blot suspended in the air between the glass and the opposite office building. A vulture-sized bug? The blot is accompanied by the blurry images of the long desk, the three chairs and the rectangular glow of my monitor. As the booming rumble of thunder sweeps through the business park, a realization prickles the hairs on my nape: I glimpsed a reflection. Or maybe the blot is me.
I look over my shoulder. At the other end of the office, on the lily-white wall, a tar-black stain is growing like ink bleeding into paper, like oil leaking from a deep puncture hole.
Lightning-lizards lurk outside, spreading out their glow into the room while jagged hairline cracks hover in front of me, superposed to the vision of the office and its flickering ceiling-mounted lamps, as if I were encased in scratched glass. My nostrils fill with the odour of burnt ozone.
A crackle of thunder reverberates through my bones and makes my blood surge hotly toward my groin. The hairline cracks have vanished, replaced by a uniform, flawless plane. I am one with the glass.
The black blob on the wall, engulfing a larger patch of white, pulsates as it swells, bulges out in viscous globs like a toilet backing up, and oozes down in gooey tendrils. Light-snakes from the ceiling-mounted lamps are wriggling on the slimy, visceral mass, a glistening murk that has gouged a hole in my skull and is crawling through my gray matter like a centipede.
My vision wavers; the world is swimming. I'm bobbing up to my nose in a gelatinous sea that tastes of vinegar and fish guts. I shiver at the flapping sound of fat membranes uncurling, at the feel of viscid tissue-matter sticking to my skin. Lightning bolts illuminate the waves in stroboscopic flashes, making them resemble a seething kelp forest, while I thrash my limbs around to stay afloat against the churning currents.
From the phone that my right hand is gripping comes crinkly static, the sound of aluminum foil rustling. As the interference scratches my eardrum, a honeyed voice breaks through, floods my mind and envelops my thoughts like a welcoming womb:
"Leire, are you still there? That was some strange lightning phenomenon, must have messed up with the electronics. Thankfully I bought some overvoltage protectors."
My heart is pumping in my throat. When I open my mouth to speak, my tongue flaps uselessly, and I only manage to exhale a pent-up breath.
"Leire?" Jacqueline insists. "You okay, honey? I can hear you breathing on the phone."
I miss her luminous allure, that even before we started dating enticed me to steal glances at her. I miss the taste of her silky skin, like an ambrosial mixture of rosehip and milk. I miss the way her panties stick to her slit when she gets wet. I miss the feel of her long fingers kneading my flesh, of her nails scratching the skin of my back. I miss the firmness of her nipples grazing my breasts, the softness of her thighs wrapping around my face as I inhale the hot and juicy tang of her insides. I miss her gasps, sighs and moans during the throes of our lust-frenzy.
I picture the inverted triangle of prominent features that make up Jacqueline's ivory-white visage: her penetrating cobalt-blues at the two upper vertices, and her full lips at the lower vertex. She's standing in front of me in her peacoat and turtleneck sweater as the November wind tousles her hair. Jacqueline is my sole lighthouse, a beacon amidst the storm of insanity that rages inside and outside of me.
A croaking voice pours forth through the speaker embedded in my neck, where the voicebox and throat structure must be housed.
"Yeah, I'm still here, my goddess of delights, mistress of dreams. No time for a Pixar flick now, though. Overvoltage probably fried the electronics in my brain."
Jacqueline's laughter echoes into the farthest recesses of my being.
"You're right. I'd love to keep you on the phone when I can't keep you in my arms, but the sooner you finish that boring stuff, the sooner you can get your butt over here. And once you return to me... I may show you something special."
"As in I won't be able to peel your pussy away from my face?"
"Oh, I'll open myself up to you in plenty of ways," she answers with a sensual drawl that slithers down to my toes. "You have yet to experience some of my best moves, darling. Bye-bye for now!"
Once Jacqueline clicks off, the warmth evaporates, replaced by a tar-black blob that has encroached upon a huge chunk of the wall, a hole that sucks all hope through its bottomless whirlpool.
---
Author's note: the five songs for today are "Man on the Moon" by R.E.M., "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake, "Catch the Wind" by Donovan, "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies, and "Season of the Witch" by Donovan.
I maintain a playlist that contains all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Eighty-nine songs so far. Check them out.
Hey, are you aware that neural networks can generate intriguing images based on the prompts you send them? I sent a couple of those artificial intelligences plenty of prompts from this chapter. Check out the results.
This chapter kicks off a new sequence, titled "Cumlord of the Abyss." You can read any of the previous chapters of this novel through this link.
---
I rest my forehead on the windowpane, that barely insulates the office from the cold of this November sunset. My breath fogs the glass. Our star is a cream pie on which someone has landed ass-first, splashing its pinkish-orange filling all over the sky. The fat storm clouds that drift by are dyed the color of dried blood; mixed with the charcoal-black of the clouds themselves, they resemble stains on the clothes of plague victims.
As sound waves pour from the speaker of my cellphone down my ear canal, I close my eyes and rely on my echolocation to render the scene that's taking place at home: Jacqueline, my queenly beloved, is explaining the purpose of a cellphone to our adopted daughter Nairu, who contributes high-pitched vocalizations of nonsense syllables, sounding more like a fairy than a human child. The forms of the two females, sculpted in obsidian, stand on the carpet of that remote living room, framed against the shapes in relief of the cabinet and the widescreen TV.
My chest feels hollowed out with longing. I'm craving something sweet, warm and moist. I wish I were lounging on the sofa with my girlfriend and our Nairu, but the clock is ticking on the evening hours, and I need to progress my programming tasks for this job that sucks the joy and wonder out of my life.
Through the phone's speaker comes a rustle, followed by Jacqueline's sultry voice. Her full lips must be brushing the plasticky surface of her phone, spattering it, blessing it, with microscopic particles of saliva.
"I won't get Nairu to understand the concept of a phone today, but she misses her other mommy. That's what I wanted her to convey to you, sweetie."
I'm touched by my girlfriend's attempt to comfort and cheer me up, but am I capable of tending to a child's needs to the extent that she would appreciate me as a mother? Thankfully, Nairu would become a functional adult even if she grew up as a stray; the Ice Age gifted us an Asian kid tempered in the boreal cold, who survived her skirmishes against an ensemble of Paleolithic megafauna. Grade A material.
My voice comes out in a croak, as if a lump was blocking my throat. I swallow hard to dislodge it.
"She must have been cuddling with you all afternoon, so she has likely forgotten that I exist."
Jacqueline giggles. Nairu was babbling in the background when a flash startles me. A porcelain-white vine of lightning, twisted and barbed, has streaked through the thick belly of a storm cloud, burning its image into that gray slug filled with rain. The electric crackle sends a shiver down my spine, then a shudder forces me to narrow my shoulders. I imagine myself as a critter caught outside during a storm in the tropics: a tree snail clinging onto a mangrove to weather nature's wrath.
"Eide?" Nairu asks over the phone.
She remembers me! Her worried voice sounded like a cat meowing at a screen that shows her missing owner.
"Help me, Nairu! I'm trapped in this futuristic device!"
Jacqueline's laugh comes through like a bell pealing over the hilltops. Nairu's high-pitched voice dwindles to a murmur; I picture my beloved holding the phone to her own ear with one hand while her other strokes the child's Paleolithic hair.
"I'm sure she fears that you may get attacked by any of the monsters she encountered in the Ice Age, yet you go and tease her. If anything like that would happen, you'd be a goner, little missy. They would consider you a delicious breakfast buffet, the tastiest and nuttiest prey in their hunting ground. So do I, for that matter."
"Those beasts weren't monsters, though. Just misunderstood."
"Even so, the trick is to survive. Fortunately, Nairu's tummy is full. No danger that she might starve to death. And like you suspect, we have been cuddling all afternoon. She has also discovered the wonders of animated movies. A Pixar one, we got it paused now."
Despite the distance between us, Jacqueline sounded so snug, like a fur pelt draped over my shoulders, that I can picture myself pressed up against her on the sofa, instead of standing in this brightly-lit, air-conditioned office as I gaze out past the reflection of my computer screen at the thickening gloom of the twilight. Those storm clouds resemble an avalanche of dirty snow sliding across the sky in slow motion.
"Our adopted nugget may be considered insane by today's standards," I say, "but she can still enjoy the visual feast presented by 3D environments and characters on a widescreen television. Glad you're keeping her fed and warm in that glass-encased bubble while I risk my life in this forest of cement and metal. In any case, which Pixar movie were you watching? I hope you chose one of the classics, instead of the turds they've been pushing out since they got gobbled up by that demonic mouse, a slobbering beast that has hijacked children's imagination."
Jacqueline's response drowns in a thunderclap like a cannon shot, one that ripples through my body. My arms tense up, my toes curl in my socks and shoes. Above the flat roof of the opposite building, whose silhouette resembles a tombstone, I glimpse the afterimage of the lightning bolt. A drifting cloud has unveiled the moon and its silvery haze: a thinning scab on a bruised sky.
"Did you hear the thunder, Jacqueline?" I ask in a rough voice.
"Poor thing, you must feel like I called from another dimension. I'm just a ten minute drive away from you. But yes, a thunderstorm is rolling in, honey. It may turn nasty soon."
The part of me that retains a percentage of genes from a dog, procured by some freaky ancestor of mine, wants to yank open the window and stick my head out, so I can bathe my face in cold air that must smell of rain. Being trapped in this dead office instead of spending the evening with Jacqueline and our girl makes me long for an earthquake or flood to strike, for me to see the streets choked with mud, and cars crushed under heaps of debris.
I rub my eyes and take a deep breath to scrub from my mind the yearning for another cataclysm, one that would leave this planet exposed to the starlight.
"A-anyway, what movie did you pick, my statuesque queen of love and lust?"
Jacqueline giggles.
"Toy Story, dear."
"Ah, the classic tale involving a murderous cowboy and a clueless space marine. An original, daring narrative that wouldn't get produced in today's industry. The 3D humans in that one would traumatize me even now, but... has Nairu ever seen a toy in person?"
"Well, they carved figurines out of wood, right? The Ice Age peoples, I mean."
"Nairu contradicts some basic assumptions about a child's knowledge that would make the movie work. When we buy her toys, won't she assume that they'll spark to life the moment she looks away, even though they're made of plastic or some other non-biological material?"
"That may be the case, but wouldn't it make her world more magical and wondrous?"
"Or sordid and disturbing. I wouldn't have wanted my toys to know what I did in the privacy of my bedroom. Particularly the stuffed triceratops with the yellow plaid bowtie, who stared blankly at me while I lay in bed with my panties around my ankles, trying to achieve the perfect orgasm. What if the dinosaurs talked to each other? 'Hey, did you catch sight of the human doing it to herself?' I would have felt like a pervert."
Jacqueline must have pulled the phone away from her mouth to muffle a laugh. When she speaks again, her giggle-like tone warms everything within its reach, like the heat emanating from the belly of a giant furnace.
"You should have locked up the stuffie, locked him away and kept your shameful secret a secret. Anyway, I promise you that Nairu loved the spectacle on screen; she gaped and gaped at the talking toys. So focus on what truly matters, my girl: plenty of love is flooding from both of our hearts towards the tiny sweetie that you took out of the ice."
I nod at Jacqueline's distant presence, although I'm picturing her assemblage of dildos and vibrators doddering around in her wardrobe like stoic, limbless soldiers, leaving trails of lubricants with each stump-step. They clamber over the piles of external hard drives that store hundreds of gigabytes' worth of our lovemaking sessions, as well as of the fabled girls that Jacqueline employed to build her porn empire. I imagine myself sitting at the edge of mommy's bed, facing my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe as her dildoes and vibrators knock and knock on the inside of the door, vying for the privilege of joining me in a muggy session of self-worship. They are calling to me with dollish voices meant to sound melodic: "Hello, Jacqueline's cummer! Do you need assistance? We are here to serve your needs, little lady!" My own voice interferes: "Come on, motherfucking dildos and dongs, let me get inside this stinking sack of skin so I can taste my own flesh, so I can be submerged in a sea of pleasure, so I can feel something besides the excruciating pressure of my brain against my skull. To hell with you dicks. The last thing I need is a swarm of cocks and pricks crowding my crotch!"
I shudder, then bite my lower lip to keep from giggling, or crying out in distress.
Lightning zigzags along the night sky, and as its glare whitens the windowpanes, I'm left with the afterimage of a black blot suspended in the air between the glass and the opposite office building. A vulture-sized bug? The blot is accompanied by the blurry images of the long desk, the three chairs and the rectangular glow of my monitor. As the booming rumble of thunder sweeps through the business park, a realization prickles the hairs on my nape: I glimpsed a reflection. Or maybe the blot is me.
I look over my shoulder. At the other end of the office, on the lily-white wall, a tar-black stain is growing like ink bleeding into paper, like oil leaking from a deep puncture hole.
Lightning-lizards lurk outside, spreading out their glow into the room while jagged hairline cracks hover in front of me, superposed to the vision of the office and its flickering ceiling-mounted lamps, as if I were encased in scratched glass. My nostrils fill with the odour of burnt ozone.
A crackle of thunder reverberates through my bones and makes my blood surge hotly toward my groin. The hairline cracks have vanished, replaced by a uniform, flawless plane. I am one with the glass.
The black blob on the wall, engulfing a larger patch of white, pulsates as it swells, bulges out in viscous globs like a toilet backing up, and oozes down in gooey tendrils. Light-snakes from the ceiling-mounted lamps are wriggling on the slimy, visceral mass, a glistening murk that has gouged a hole in my skull and is crawling through my gray matter like a centipede.
My vision wavers; the world is swimming. I'm bobbing up to my nose in a gelatinous sea that tastes of vinegar and fish guts. I shiver at the flapping sound of fat membranes uncurling, at the feel of viscid tissue-matter sticking to my skin. Lightning bolts illuminate the waves in stroboscopic flashes, making them resemble a seething kelp forest, while I thrash my limbs around to stay afloat against the churning currents.
From the phone that my right hand is gripping comes crinkly static, the sound of aluminum foil rustling. As the interference scratches my eardrum, a honeyed voice breaks through, floods my mind and envelops my thoughts like a welcoming womb:
"Leire, are you still there? That was some strange lightning phenomenon, must have messed up with the electronics. Thankfully I bought some overvoltage protectors."
My heart is pumping in my throat. When I open my mouth to speak, my tongue flaps uselessly, and I only manage to exhale a pent-up breath.
"Leire?" Jacqueline insists. "You okay, honey? I can hear you breathing on the phone."
I miss her luminous allure, that even before we started dating enticed me to steal glances at her. I miss the taste of her silky skin, like an ambrosial mixture of rosehip and milk. I miss the way her panties stick to her slit when she gets wet. I miss the feel of her long fingers kneading my flesh, of her nails scratching the skin of my back. I miss the firmness of her nipples grazing my breasts, the softness of her thighs wrapping around my face as I inhale the hot and juicy tang of her insides. I miss her gasps, sighs and moans during the throes of our lust-frenzy.
I picture the inverted triangle of prominent features that make up Jacqueline's ivory-white visage: her penetrating cobalt-blues at the two upper vertices, and her full lips at the lower vertex. She's standing in front of me in her peacoat and turtleneck sweater as the November wind tousles her hair. Jacqueline is my sole lighthouse, a beacon amidst the storm of insanity that rages inside and outside of me.
A croaking voice pours forth through the speaker embedded in my neck, where the voicebox and throat structure must be housed.
"Yeah, I'm still here, my goddess of delights, mistress of dreams. No time for a Pixar flick now, though. Overvoltage probably fried the electronics in my brain."
Jacqueline's laughter echoes into the farthest recesses of my being.
"You're right. I'd love to keep you on the phone when I can't keep you in my arms, but the sooner you finish that boring stuff, the sooner you can get your butt over here. And once you return to me... I may show you something special."
"As in I won't be able to peel your pussy away from my face?"
"Oh, I'll open myself up to you in plenty of ways," she answers with a sensual drawl that slithers down to my toes. "You have yet to experience some of my best moves, darling. Bye-bye for now!"
Once Jacqueline clicks off, the warmth evaporates, replaced by a tar-black blob that has encroached upon a huge chunk of the wall, a hole that sucks all hope through its bottomless whirlpool.
---
Author's note: the five songs for today are "Man on the Moon" by R.E.M., "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake, "Catch the Wind" by Donovan, "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies, and "Season of the Witch" by Donovan.
I maintain a playlist that contains all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. Eighty-nine songs so far. Check them out.
Hey, are you aware that neural networks can generate intriguing images based on the prompts you send them? I sent a couple of those artificial intelligences plenty of prompts from this chapter. Check out the results.
This chapter kicks off a new sequence, titled "Cumlord of the Abyss." You can read any of the previous chapters of this novel through this link.
November 24, 2022
Life update (11/24/2022)
Link to this entry on my personal page, where it looks better
---
I didn't want to post anything until I finished the current chapter of my novel, which will take a couple of days more or so. However, I'm feeling like shit at the moment. Writing about it is a way of palliating that psychological pain, so here I am.
My current contract at work was supposed to end this Sunday. I was already dreading the end of the week, because I'm always either told on Thursday or even on Friday (if they even "remember" to tell me) whether or not they will prolong my contract. As a thirty-seven year old man, most months I've had no clue if the next one I was going to be unemployed, and that has gone on for years. This time it's even worse: my boss told me that they intend to keep prolonging my contract week by week for the foreseeable future, at least until January of next year.
People are supposed to be happy that someone pays them to work, I'm guessing. Not me: I'm absolutely fed up with my job as an IT guy at a hospital complex. I'll mention again, for the umpteenth time, that I'm autistic and have OCD. I need, for psychological and neurological reasons, a set, clear schedule, controllable problems to deal with (if I'm forced to deal with any problems), silence, and the least amount of human interactions as possible. Instead I work at an office with an open plan, forced to deal with the moronic interactions of four/five adult men that behave like schoolchildren, with the corresponding noise pollution. In addition, I never know what kind of problem I'll have to deal with that day, nor the kind of user that I'll be forced to tolerate.
For example, yesterday I was ordered to switch the printers of PCs at opposite ends of the sterile processing department (the supervisor wanted the fancier printer for herself). Of course, I also had to configure them at their new destinations. I dressed myself like a local employee to enter the sterile environment. When I finished configuring the fancier printer on the supervisor's PC and told it to print a test page, the printer refused to recognize that its frontal cassette was loaded with paper. I asked the supervisor if the printer worked properly beforehand. "Oh, I don't know." I suspect they wanted me to discover the error and fix it. I'm not the kind of IT guy that fixes physical errors in printers. In addition, the specific model of that fancy printer isn't maintained by the governmental organization that runs these hospitals: the users are supposed to call Ricoh. After I told her this, she answered something like, "why do I need to do that? I'm too busy. You are the one paid to fix machines."
As a technician employed with this governmental organization, I'm not paid to interact with that kind of printer beyond plugging it into a local PC and making sure it receives the print order. I considered telling her to fuck off and call the company herself as she's supposed to; I feel like telling people to fuck off very often at my job. But I went through the trouble of calling the company myself. Of course, they told me that "they'll send someone." A couple of days. The supervisor considered that unacceptable, because she was supposed to print something in ten or so minutes (although she had ordered us to exchange a working printer for another one that "oh, I don't know if it works").
I manage to get the bypass loader working. I didn't know they had one, because, again, my organization doesn't maintain those printers. But the printer had the frontal cassette set as the priority source of paper; every time you sent a print order, the display showed an error, and the user had to select the bypass loader manually. The supervisor told me that it was too much of a bother. However, to change it in the options so it considers the bypass loader the priority, I would need admin privileges.
In the end, the supervisor made me responsible for dealing with the printer company and notifying her when they decide to send someone (if they even call me to notify me). I'm not supposed to do any of that, and certainly I'm not paid to do so either. I just gave in because such people are somewhat likely to complain to my bosses for it, and although the bosses know that dealing with those printers' specific issues isn't my responsibility, they'll get annoyed with me if they receive a complaint call.
After that whole incident, I was done for the whole morning; I wanted to shut down and wait out until I left the office. However, it was half past ten in the morning, and I ended up having to deal with plenty more.
Every single day plenty of users demand us to do stuff for them, but often they fail to provide the basic information for solving those issues. "Hey, I need access to the shared folder that my coworkers access." You end up having to write back to ask for personal information, what computer they are using, the specific path to the folder, etc. Plenty of times they prove themselves hard to reach. Often when they write you back it's as if they failed to read half of your original message. Sometimes they give you incorrect information, although the correct one was plainly displayed on the screen in front of their fucking eyes. Needless to say, the whole thing is maddening.
When my boss told me they were going to prolong my contract and he saw that I wasn't ecstatic about it, he said that he knew I intended to take a break to study for an upcoming public examination, which will determine how often they'll call me back for such contracts. That exam is on the fifteenth of January, and I'll likely be employed until then. I'm studying at the office, between tasks; I refuse to waste any time doing job-related stuff during my free time, which is devoted mainly to writing. However, I didn't feel like I could share with anyone I know in person the real reason why I didn't want to continue: I hate this job, I hate having to be employed, I have waking up at six in the morning to be surrounded with human beings until half past four in the afternoon, and I feel like I'm going crazier every passing day.
After I found out that I'll likely be employed for the entirety of December (if they cut my current contract short, they'll still call me to cover other people's holidays), I've felt a cold ache in my chest, added to strange twitches and spasms I've felt in there since I received the latest "booster vaccine" about a year ago or so (which caused me atrial fibrillation, a physical issue with my heart). And honestly I just want to hide at one of the rooms that contain the network racks, to either kick a wall or cry for a bit. Perhaps both.
A logical solution to this issue could be to get another job. But by the time I was offered the first contract for this governmental organization, I had "struggled" to find employment as a programmer, for which I was trained. And by struggled I meant that for most of those years I couldn't get a job, and half of the time that I did get a job, I wasn't paid for it.
The last time I accepted one of those internships was through an organization that supposedly helps autistic people. The programming company put me working alone at a desk (I was fine with that). I dealt with a single boss who was happy with my performance, but by the end of that internship I was told that they wouldn't hire me because they didn't think I would be able to work well in a team. They knew I was autistic. The HR woman wanted me to feel proud that I had wasted six months of my life programming their intranet for free, because now their job was easier. Needless to say, I will never work for free again.
Anyway, my parents, with whom I don't particularly get along, weren't too happy about having to pay for most of my stuff during such periods of my life. But they forced me to exist, although they barely tolerated each other. Regarding my current predicament, I have never earned as much money as I do at my current job, although that isn't saying much, as I barely earned minimum wage as a programmer. However, I'm a single man with no social life, so I've managed to build up some savings.
Very often at the office, while I waste another hour of my limited time as a living being, the thought crosses my mind that I should be sitting at home and writing. That's what I'm meant to do due to the particular combination of nature and nurture that produced my idiotic existence. Some of those times I also think that if I had been born a hot enough girl, someone else could be working their ass off to pay the bills while I sat around at home while diddling myself. I'd have a juicy pair of tits as well, instead of these pituitary-tumor-induced man-boobs. Unfortunately I'm a weird-looking guy who's only getting older, losing more hair and struggling to lose extra weight, and I wasn't much better in my prime.
Regarding non-writing-related stuff, Chainsaw Man has been a joy (I was giddy throughout episode 7, knowing what was coming during that work party), and the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress will come out in less than two weeks. Silver linings, I suppose.
---
I didn't want to post anything until I finished the current chapter of my novel, which will take a couple of days more or so. However, I'm feeling like shit at the moment. Writing about it is a way of palliating that psychological pain, so here I am.
My current contract at work was supposed to end this Sunday. I was already dreading the end of the week, because I'm always either told on Thursday or even on Friday (if they even "remember" to tell me) whether or not they will prolong my contract. As a thirty-seven year old man, most months I've had no clue if the next one I was going to be unemployed, and that has gone on for years. This time it's even worse: my boss told me that they intend to keep prolonging my contract week by week for the foreseeable future, at least until January of next year.
People are supposed to be happy that someone pays them to work, I'm guessing. Not me: I'm absolutely fed up with my job as an IT guy at a hospital complex. I'll mention again, for the umpteenth time, that I'm autistic and have OCD. I need, for psychological and neurological reasons, a set, clear schedule, controllable problems to deal with (if I'm forced to deal with any problems), silence, and the least amount of human interactions as possible. Instead I work at an office with an open plan, forced to deal with the moronic interactions of four/five adult men that behave like schoolchildren, with the corresponding noise pollution. In addition, I never know what kind of problem I'll have to deal with that day, nor the kind of user that I'll be forced to tolerate.
For example, yesterday I was ordered to switch the printers of PCs at opposite ends of the sterile processing department (the supervisor wanted the fancier printer for herself). Of course, I also had to configure them at their new destinations. I dressed myself like a local employee to enter the sterile environment. When I finished configuring the fancier printer on the supervisor's PC and told it to print a test page, the printer refused to recognize that its frontal cassette was loaded with paper. I asked the supervisor if the printer worked properly beforehand. "Oh, I don't know." I suspect they wanted me to discover the error and fix it. I'm not the kind of IT guy that fixes physical errors in printers. In addition, the specific model of that fancy printer isn't maintained by the governmental organization that runs these hospitals: the users are supposed to call Ricoh. After I told her this, she answered something like, "why do I need to do that? I'm too busy. You are the one paid to fix machines."
As a technician employed with this governmental organization, I'm not paid to interact with that kind of printer beyond plugging it into a local PC and making sure it receives the print order. I considered telling her to fuck off and call the company herself as she's supposed to; I feel like telling people to fuck off very often at my job. But I went through the trouble of calling the company myself. Of course, they told me that "they'll send someone." A couple of days. The supervisor considered that unacceptable, because she was supposed to print something in ten or so minutes (although she had ordered us to exchange a working printer for another one that "oh, I don't know if it works").
I manage to get the bypass loader working. I didn't know they had one, because, again, my organization doesn't maintain those printers. But the printer had the frontal cassette set as the priority source of paper; every time you sent a print order, the display showed an error, and the user had to select the bypass loader manually. The supervisor told me that it was too much of a bother. However, to change it in the options so it considers the bypass loader the priority, I would need admin privileges.
In the end, the supervisor made me responsible for dealing with the printer company and notifying her when they decide to send someone (if they even call me to notify me). I'm not supposed to do any of that, and certainly I'm not paid to do so either. I just gave in because such people are somewhat likely to complain to my bosses for it, and although the bosses know that dealing with those printers' specific issues isn't my responsibility, they'll get annoyed with me if they receive a complaint call.
After that whole incident, I was done for the whole morning; I wanted to shut down and wait out until I left the office. However, it was half past ten in the morning, and I ended up having to deal with plenty more.
Every single day plenty of users demand us to do stuff for them, but often they fail to provide the basic information for solving those issues. "Hey, I need access to the shared folder that my coworkers access." You end up having to write back to ask for personal information, what computer they are using, the specific path to the folder, etc. Plenty of times they prove themselves hard to reach. Often when they write you back it's as if they failed to read half of your original message. Sometimes they give you incorrect information, although the correct one was plainly displayed on the screen in front of their fucking eyes. Needless to say, the whole thing is maddening.
When my boss told me they were going to prolong my contract and he saw that I wasn't ecstatic about it, he said that he knew I intended to take a break to study for an upcoming public examination, which will determine how often they'll call me back for such contracts. That exam is on the fifteenth of January, and I'll likely be employed until then. I'm studying at the office, between tasks; I refuse to waste any time doing job-related stuff during my free time, which is devoted mainly to writing. However, I didn't feel like I could share with anyone I know in person the real reason why I didn't want to continue: I hate this job, I hate having to be employed, I have waking up at six in the morning to be surrounded with human beings until half past four in the afternoon, and I feel like I'm going crazier every passing day.
After I found out that I'll likely be employed for the entirety of December (if they cut my current contract short, they'll still call me to cover other people's holidays), I've felt a cold ache in my chest, added to strange twitches and spasms I've felt in there since I received the latest "booster vaccine" about a year ago or so (which caused me atrial fibrillation, a physical issue with my heart). And honestly I just want to hide at one of the rooms that contain the network racks, to either kick a wall or cry for a bit. Perhaps both.
A logical solution to this issue could be to get another job. But by the time I was offered the first contract for this governmental organization, I had "struggled" to find employment as a programmer, for which I was trained. And by struggled I meant that for most of those years I couldn't get a job, and half of the time that I did get a job, I wasn't paid for it.
The last time I accepted one of those internships was through an organization that supposedly helps autistic people. The programming company put me working alone at a desk (I was fine with that). I dealt with a single boss who was happy with my performance, but by the end of that internship I was told that they wouldn't hire me because they didn't think I would be able to work well in a team. They knew I was autistic. The HR woman wanted me to feel proud that I had wasted six months of my life programming their intranet for free, because now their job was easier. Needless to say, I will never work for free again.
Anyway, my parents, with whom I don't particularly get along, weren't too happy about having to pay for most of my stuff during such periods of my life. But they forced me to exist, although they barely tolerated each other. Regarding my current predicament, I have never earned as much money as I do at my current job, although that isn't saying much, as I barely earned minimum wage as a programmer. However, I'm a single man with no social life, so I've managed to build up some savings.
Very often at the office, while I waste another hour of my limited time as a living being, the thought crosses my mind that I should be sitting at home and writing. That's what I'm meant to do due to the particular combination of nature and nurture that produced my idiotic existence. Some of those times I also think that if I had been born a hot enough girl, someone else could be working their ass off to pay the bills while I sat around at home while diddling myself. I'd have a juicy pair of tits as well, instead of these pituitary-tumor-induced man-boobs. Unfortunately I'm a weird-looking guy who's only getting older, losing more hair and struggling to lose extra weight, and I wasn't much better in my prime.
Regarding non-writing-related stuff, Chainsaw Man has been a joy (I was giddy throughout episode 7, knowing what was coming during that work party), and the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress will come out in less than two weeks. Silver linings, I suppose.
