Jon Ureña's Blog, page 44
August 1, 2022
Random AI-generated images #3
Some neural networks have gotten so good that one of them, which runs on a supercomputer, creates masterpieces of visual art. I forced the poor AI to generate some of the stuff that came through my mind.
[link to this entry on my personal page; it contains lots of images]
[link to this entry on my personal page; it contains lots of images]
Life update (08/01/2022)
Link to this entry on my personal page, where it looks better
---
I’m not sure if anyone besides me cares about it, but I haven’t posted a chapter of my ongoing novel for two weeks. Although I’ve already forgotten the details of that first week, the week that just ended was hellish due to work: I spent the first half of every morning on phone duty (and by far, the worst part of my job as an IT guy at a big hospital complex is dealing with human beings), and the remaining half rushing to solve weird issues. Last Wednesday I got so stressed that if extreme anxiety was an immediate trigger for my heart issues (atrial fibrillation), by mid-morning I would have had to endure a new episode. It didn't happen, though, which saved me from another trip to the ER.
Three of those workdays, after I got home and ate, I was forced to take a nap so I wouldn’t waste the rest of the afternoon fighting sleepiness. It's a good thing that I lack a social life; back when I had to maintain a romantic relationship and a job at the same time, not only I passed out twice at my then girlfriend's place, but I also came to resent how exhausted her need to meet nearly every day made me. I can only consider this job tolerable because I leave the office at three in the afternoon (but I work some Saturdays, including this week), and because I'm not forced to interact with other human beings in my spare time.
Regarding my then girlfriend, the relationship was already doomed at that point. I think I only ever dated because I thought I was supposed to; I've never gotten enough out of intimate relationship as I assume normal people do, and sex didn't feel that great, maybe because I wasn't particularly attracted to the ones I could get. Thank the heavens for virtual reality and my right hand. I'm guessing most men are driven to pursue women because their balls are full. Once that's taken care of, I just want peace and quiet.
Anyway, even after I woke up from the naps last week, I barely managed to write a few sentences. I figured that once the weekend came I would be able to push out the current chapter, which at that point felt cursed. However, when I woke up at nine in the morning on this Saturday, I realized that I simply didn’t feel like writing. My subconscious hadn’t produced any new notes for a while, which means that the core of my being was currently disengaged from the material.
I have always had a terrible time trying to focus on anything I honestly couldn't care about; back in high school I did terribly not only because I was surrounded by savages, but because the material felt pointless to my goal of either programming or writing for a living. During my first few jobs, the tasks they assigned to me felt so boring and pointless that I knew I was wasting my life there. The whole time I was aching to sneak in as much writing time as I could to assuage my despair (which is in part how the whole deal of my current protagonist, Leire, came to be; I’m quite sure that there’s a Japanese verb that means both “to write” and “to jerk off”, which psychologically for me serves a similar purpose).
The way my brain works, I have to take advantage of what little free time I have to write as much as possible, because soon enough I’ll find myself in a blizzard in which I will feel unable to move or see anything beyond a few feet in front of me. During such periods I can do nothing but wait until the weather clears up. The circuits in my brain that produce meaning are faulty and unreliable, and of course this universe is meaningless beyond what the brains of living beings assign to certain stuff. During this last week and a half or so, it wasn’t only the act of writing that felt pointless; as I tried to fill my free time with board games, books, mangas or other interests that have satisfied me in the past, nothing felt worth the effort, so I spent most of last week at home in a catatonic state while my brain felt filled with lead. I still haven’t recovered fully; it’s taking me a lot to put my thoughts down, and I doubt I’m doing it coherently enough.
A bottomless hunger in me drives me to write every day, or else I’ll have to deal with a growing despair that may eventually kill me. This strange, somewhat demonic creative force gets bored or distracted from time to time, sometimes for a few days, weeks or even months, and abandons an obsession to sink its claws into something else. It did it again during these past two weeks: I suddenly felt an urge to get back into the COIN series of games, order the Tru’ng bot for the “Fire in the Lake” game and play it for four or five hours-long sessions on the Vassal engine.
I also got interested in Android Netrunner again, one of the most intriguing Living Card Games I have come across, but that I couldn’t play because it’s a player-versus-player game that uses hidden information and bluffing as some of its most notorious mechanics, so the game can’t be played solo. It had also been discontinued by its company despite having a loyal audience, but I was stunned to find out that a group of fans had rebranded the game, produced whole new series of cards and improved past ones while learning from the mistakes that the original company made. This rebranded version is called Nisei (this is its official page), it’s supported in the netrunnerdb page for reliable deckbuilding, and the cards can be printed for relatively cheap at a couple of partnered companies. More importantly, some hero has programmed a browser app that allows anyone to play the game against an AI opponent using the main sets of new cards: here’s the site.
I could feel my hunger wanting to sink its claws into this new subject to turn it into an obsession. How about I get back into programming and implement bots for one of my favorite games, maybe one of the COIN ones, which should be video games in the first place? Or surely I could design my own deckbuilding card game and implement it digitally. I wouldn't even need to commission the artwork now that I can exploit an AI to produce the images, and the license states that you are free to use the generated images for commercial purposes.
However, I stopped myself. I know what awaits me further down that path: programming has never fulfilled me enough, not remotely to the extent that writing does. I’d start a new programming project only to abandon it halfway through as if I had never bothered to start it. So instead I forced myself to focus on progressing through the draft of the current chapter. Thankfully, I finished it; the chapter is now at that state in which I would consider it good enough for publication, but as usual I’ll subject it to another creative pass line by line, which will take a couple of days. The events and interactions depicted in this chapter aren’t particularly hard to handle (nor that compelling, to be honest). I fear that my difficulties with it stem from the fact that I may be sliding down into another depression, even though the previous one ended three or so weeks ago.
Unexpectedly, last Thursday I received the best news in a good while. When they hired me for my current contract, I was told that it would last until October, and possibly until November if they could work something out. However, the big boss of my department called me in and told me that they had failed to mention that my current contract actually ends this Sunday (I work on Saturday), because they guy I’m covering for, who has been relieved of his tasks for an special project, has three weeks of holiday, so I can’t legally cover his schedule in the meantime. That means that I have three weeks of (unpaid) holiday as well.
That will be the first time in my adult life in which during a period of unemployment I won’t be either trying to get hired or waiting for my place of employment to call me and offer a new contract. However, I’m not guaranteed to be offered the next contract that will last until October or November; they will use the public rankings for that, which change from time to time. Some kid who just got his degree but knows how to speak Basque may rank higher than me; the regional government grants 18 points to people who can speak Basque, while I have only accrued about 3 points due to professional experience after the three or so years I’ve spent working here. We don’t even need to speak Basque at work, it’s a political matter.
The next day, my direct boss called me into his office. He told me that he wasn’t aware that I wouldn’t be working here for those three weeks in August, that he was counting on me, and asked for my permission to figure out how to secure a contract that would keep me here for those weeks. Fuck no. Emotional manipulation doesn’t work on me; these people don’t even know me, they have only interacted with the mask I’m forced to wear to survive in society. If they knew my true self, most of them would be horrified. It’s almost insulting to expect me to be grateful that I would have been “rescued” from three weeks of holiday because I would be paid in return, when my coworkers have spent the past two months counting the days until they could finally escape from this office.
I may take a trip somewhere for a few days. Apart from that, I intend to spend a whole day or two in Donostia (I live thirty kilometers away, and I also go there 5 to 6 days a week for work) to research specific locations where Leire and Jacqueline will hang out soon. Both of the novels that I have written in English (one ongoing) are set in cities or general areas that I’ve known personally; I think the farthest that my characters went was Asturias during a bittersweet sequence in my beloved previous novel (self-promotion!). Although I’ll have to study for an upcoming public examination during my holidays, I hope to cram as much writing time as possible. At this rate it will take me a whole year to write this cursed novel; I started it back in October of 2021.
Yesterday I got together with my family to celebrate my father’s birthday. He’s in his seventies. I wish I dared to avoid these reunions entirely, but I think some of my family members would go out of their way to annoy me even more in that case. I don’t have anything in common with my family beyond the genetic links. I barely got along with them before, but ever since my nephew was born five or six years ago, the experience has worsened. I can’t relate to that kid at all. I will never have children and I don’t want to deal with other people’s kids either. I can tell that the person I have to call my sister-in-law, with whom I’ve never talked more than a minute at time, resents that I refuse to accept the role of uncle. She’s also the passive-aggressive type; if I had ended up dating someone like her, let alone being married to one, I would have wanted to cut my balls off.
Anyway, we went to the Hondarribia marina for lunch (the restaurant visible to the right at this point of the linked video). Whenever I visit such places, I feel like a prisoner on a prison furlough (if that’s how they are called). The heated air of a sunny day, the smell of brine and sunscreen, the beautiful views that included attractive tourists in summer dresses… Such sensations nearly made me teary-eyed.
However, the older I get the worse my sensory issues become (mine, autism-related, have to do with noises), and as usual, human beings were the worst part of that experience. As if I didn’t find the conversation of my family members intolerable enough, other people decided to bring their screaming babies to the restaurant. I suppose they are entitled to. By the time I got back home, I was drained, crabby and sad. Fortunately I managed to finish the first draft of my current chapter by nine; by ten I need to go to bed, or else I won’t get the potential eight hours of sleep that I desperately need to avoid feeling like a zombie on Mondays.
Anyway, this whole load of pointlessness ended up longer than the chapter I’ve yet to post. I suppose that I needed to get my thoughts in order. I don’t know why you (yes, the nosy stranger who’s reading this) went through the trouble of taking time out of your day to get through this text, but I hope I didn’t waste your time as much as I’ve wasted my own this past couple of weeks.
---
I’m not sure if anyone besides me cares about it, but I haven’t posted a chapter of my ongoing novel for two weeks. Although I’ve already forgotten the details of that first week, the week that just ended was hellish due to work: I spent the first half of every morning on phone duty (and by far, the worst part of my job as an IT guy at a big hospital complex is dealing with human beings), and the remaining half rushing to solve weird issues. Last Wednesday I got so stressed that if extreme anxiety was an immediate trigger for my heart issues (atrial fibrillation), by mid-morning I would have had to endure a new episode. It didn't happen, though, which saved me from another trip to the ER.
Three of those workdays, after I got home and ate, I was forced to take a nap so I wouldn’t waste the rest of the afternoon fighting sleepiness. It's a good thing that I lack a social life; back when I had to maintain a romantic relationship and a job at the same time, not only I passed out twice at my then girlfriend's place, but I also came to resent how exhausted her need to meet nearly every day made me. I can only consider this job tolerable because I leave the office at three in the afternoon (but I work some Saturdays, including this week), and because I'm not forced to interact with other human beings in my spare time.
Regarding my then girlfriend, the relationship was already doomed at that point. I think I only ever dated because I thought I was supposed to; I've never gotten enough out of intimate relationship as I assume normal people do, and sex didn't feel that great, maybe because I wasn't particularly attracted to the ones I could get. Thank the heavens for virtual reality and my right hand. I'm guessing most men are driven to pursue women because their balls are full. Once that's taken care of, I just want peace and quiet.
Anyway, even after I woke up from the naps last week, I barely managed to write a few sentences. I figured that once the weekend came I would be able to push out the current chapter, which at that point felt cursed. However, when I woke up at nine in the morning on this Saturday, I realized that I simply didn’t feel like writing. My subconscious hadn’t produced any new notes for a while, which means that the core of my being was currently disengaged from the material.
I have always had a terrible time trying to focus on anything I honestly couldn't care about; back in high school I did terribly not only because I was surrounded by savages, but because the material felt pointless to my goal of either programming or writing for a living. During my first few jobs, the tasks they assigned to me felt so boring and pointless that I knew I was wasting my life there. The whole time I was aching to sneak in as much writing time as I could to assuage my despair (which is in part how the whole deal of my current protagonist, Leire, came to be; I’m quite sure that there’s a Japanese verb that means both “to write” and “to jerk off”, which psychologically for me serves a similar purpose).
The way my brain works, I have to take advantage of what little free time I have to write as much as possible, because soon enough I’ll find myself in a blizzard in which I will feel unable to move or see anything beyond a few feet in front of me. During such periods I can do nothing but wait until the weather clears up. The circuits in my brain that produce meaning are faulty and unreliable, and of course this universe is meaningless beyond what the brains of living beings assign to certain stuff. During this last week and a half or so, it wasn’t only the act of writing that felt pointless; as I tried to fill my free time with board games, books, mangas or other interests that have satisfied me in the past, nothing felt worth the effort, so I spent most of last week at home in a catatonic state while my brain felt filled with lead. I still haven’t recovered fully; it’s taking me a lot to put my thoughts down, and I doubt I’m doing it coherently enough.
A bottomless hunger in me drives me to write every day, or else I’ll have to deal with a growing despair that may eventually kill me. This strange, somewhat demonic creative force gets bored or distracted from time to time, sometimes for a few days, weeks or even months, and abandons an obsession to sink its claws into something else. It did it again during these past two weeks: I suddenly felt an urge to get back into the COIN series of games, order the Tru’ng bot for the “Fire in the Lake” game and play it for four or five hours-long sessions on the Vassal engine.
I also got interested in Android Netrunner again, one of the most intriguing Living Card Games I have come across, but that I couldn’t play because it’s a player-versus-player game that uses hidden information and bluffing as some of its most notorious mechanics, so the game can’t be played solo. It had also been discontinued by its company despite having a loyal audience, but I was stunned to find out that a group of fans had rebranded the game, produced whole new series of cards and improved past ones while learning from the mistakes that the original company made. This rebranded version is called Nisei (this is its official page), it’s supported in the netrunnerdb page for reliable deckbuilding, and the cards can be printed for relatively cheap at a couple of partnered companies. More importantly, some hero has programmed a browser app that allows anyone to play the game against an AI opponent using the main sets of new cards: here’s the site.
I could feel my hunger wanting to sink its claws into this new subject to turn it into an obsession. How about I get back into programming and implement bots for one of my favorite games, maybe one of the COIN ones, which should be video games in the first place? Or surely I could design my own deckbuilding card game and implement it digitally. I wouldn't even need to commission the artwork now that I can exploit an AI to produce the images, and the license states that you are free to use the generated images for commercial purposes.
However, I stopped myself. I know what awaits me further down that path: programming has never fulfilled me enough, not remotely to the extent that writing does. I’d start a new programming project only to abandon it halfway through as if I had never bothered to start it. So instead I forced myself to focus on progressing through the draft of the current chapter. Thankfully, I finished it; the chapter is now at that state in which I would consider it good enough for publication, but as usual I’ll subject it to another creative pass line by line, which will take a couple of days. The events and interactions depicted in this chapter aren’t particularly hard to handle (nor that compelling, to be honest). I fear that my difficulties with it stem from the fact that I may be sliding down into another depression, even though the previous one ended three or so weeks ago.
Unexpectedly, last Thursday I received the best news in a good while. When they hired me for my current contract, I was told that it would last until October, and possibly until November if they could work something out. However, the big boss of my department called me in and told me that they had failed to mention that my current contract actually ends this Sunday (I work on Saturday), because they guy I’m covering for, who has been relieved of his tasks for an special project, has three weeks of holiday, so I can’t legally cover his schedule in the meantime. That means that I have three weeks of (unpaid) holiday as well.
That will be the first time in my adult life in which during a period of unemployment I won’t be either trying to get hired or waiting for my place of employment to call me and offer a new contract. However, I’m not guaranteed to be offered the next contract that will last until October or November; they will use the public rankings for that, which change from time to time. Some kid who just got his degree but knows how to speak Basque may rank higher than me; the regional government grants 18 points to people who can speak Basque, while I have only accrued about 3 points due to professional experience after the three or so years I’ve spent working here. We don’t even need to speak Basque at work, it’s a political matter.
The next day, my direct boss called me into his office. He told me that he wasn’t aware that I wouldn’t be working here for those three weeks in August, that he was counting on me, and asked for my permission to figure out how to secure a contract that would keep me here for those weeks. Fuck no. Emotional manipulation doesn’t work on me; these people don’t even know me, they have only interacted with the mask I’m forced to wear to survive in society. If they knew my true self, most of them would be horrified. It’s almost insulting to expect me to be grateful that I would have been “rescued” from three weeks of holiday because I would be paid in return, when my coworkers have spent the past two months counting the days until they could finally escape from this office.
I may take a trip somewhere for a few days. Apart from that, I intend to spend a whole day or two in Donostia (I live thirty kilometers away, and I also go there 5 to 6 days a week for work) to research specific locations where Leire and Jacqueline will hang out soon. Both of the novels that I have written in English (one ongoing) are set in cities or general areas that I’ve known personally; I think the farthest that my characters went was Asturias during a bittersweet sequence in my beloved previous novel (self-promotion!). Although I’ll have to study for an upcoming public examination during my holidays, I hope to cram as much writing time as possible. At this rate it will take me a whole year to write this cursed novel; I started it back in October of 2021.
Yesterday I got together with my family to celebrate my father’s birthday. He’s in his seventies. I wish I dared to avoid these reunions entirely, but I think some of my family members would go out of their way to annoy me even more in that case. I don’t have anything in common with my family beyond the genetic links. I barely got along with them before, but ever since my nephew was born five or six years ago, the experience has worsened. I can’t relate to that kid at all. I will never have children and I don’t want to deal with other people’s kids either. I can tell that the person I have to call my sister-in-law, with whom I’ve never talked more than a minute at time, resents that I refuse to accept the role of uncle. She’s also the passive-aggressive type; if I had ended up dating someone like her, let alone being married to one, I would have wanted to cut my balls off.
Anyway, we went to the Hondarribia marina for lunch (the restaurant visible to the right at this point of the linked video). Whenever I visit such places, I feel like a prisoner on a prison furlough (if that’s how they are called). The heated air of a sunny day, the smell of brine and sunscreen, the beautiful views that included attractive tourists in summer dresses… Such sensations nearly made me teary-eyed.
However, the older I get the worse my sensory issues become (mine, autism-related, have to do with noises), and as usual, human beings were the worst part of that experience. As if I didn’t find the conversation of my family members intolerable enough, other people decided to bring their screaming babies to the restaurant. I suppose they are entitled to. By the time I got back home, I was drained, crabby and sad. Fortunately I managed to finish the first draft of my current chapter by nine; by ten I need to go to bed, or else I won’t get the potential eight hours of sleep that I desperately need to avoid feeling like a zombie on Mondays.
Anyway, this whole load of pointlessness ended up longer than the chapter I’ve yet to post. I suppose that I needed to get my thoughts in order. I don’t know why you (yes, the nosy stranger who’s reading this) went through the trouble of taking time out of your day to get through this text, but I hope I didn’t waste your time as much as I’ve wasted my own this past couple of weeks.
July 23, 2022
Random AI-generated images #2
Once again I exploited a hapless neural network so it would render the nonsense that crosses my mind.
[Link to this entry on my personal page; it contains many, many images]
[Link to this entry on my personal page; it contains many, many images]
July 19, 2022
Random AI-generated images #1
I had some fun exploiting the current Da Vinci of neural networks, mostly to produce silly combinations of elements. Because that particular neural network is a damn genius, I ended up with some masterpieces.
[read the rest of this entry on my site; it contains many images]
[read the rest of this entry on my site; it contains many images]
We're Fucked, Pt. 64 (Fiction)
Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better
---
My skin prickles, my muscles twitch, my bones ache. Every breath I take brings the aroma of pine resin into my lungs, and risks numbing them with cold. The breeze ruffles my hair and rustles the leaves of the thicket about six meters to my left. I'm having trouble discerning details in the undulating mesh of bone-thick branches and knee-high undergrowth, but I distinguish the pale silver tresses of moss that hang from upcurved branches, and that the bark of a few slender trunks has been clawed to reveal the rose gold tree flesh beneath. What abominations of nature may be lurking past the treeline?
I will keep my feet firmly planted on the rounded pebbles that are pressing into the soles of my feet. I will become a human statue frozen in time. Remain still: that was the lesson I learned back as I child when I got lost while my parents and I were strolling around Hondarribia. A plush monkey, dressed in a candy-red T-shirt and slutty shorts, was huddled inside the rusted cage of a vending machine. I was transfixed by his slack-jawed smile and the gleaming sadness in his oil-black eyes as he peered out at me from his gloomy lair, but I also admired that beast for having endured the life-long duty of dropping plastic balls in exchange for money, a drudgery that turned his fur dull and patchy. When I attempted to point the monkey out to my parents, they had vanished into the crowd.
For hours or days I sobbed as I tottered aimlessly past towering strangers. None of the passersby recognized my plight; I was just another unwashed urchin whose rags reeked of urine and vomit. Not even a dog offered its tongue to lick my wounds. How did that nightmare end up resolving itself? Maybe I never found my parents. Maybe that damnable monkey was the ringleader of a gang of human traffickers, and I have spent my life ever since chained to a bed in a pitch black basement.
Why was I thinking about that time I got lost in Hondarribia? Wait, why the hell am I in a forest?! My breath is steaming, the soles of my feet are throbbing. My fingers are curled into white-knuckled fists. The ripples of the brook to my right distort the rounded stones and twigs that its waters churn over.
I rub my eyes as if I were trying to claw out some filth.
"This isn't happening," I mutter to myself.
Jacqueline hammered into my head that hallucinations don't open doors, so instead I must be experiencing a bout of psychosis. I shut my eyes tight and I retread in my mind the steps that brought me here. I entered the bathroom to take a shower; I must have opened the door of the shower cabin and stepped inside. I turn on the water, and from the showerhead a jet of ink-black, searing-hot liquid rushes out with a foaming whoosh to soak my hair and stream off my face. The liquid flows down the curvature of my breasts, the contours of my buttocks, the crooks of my knees; it trickles into the pink crevasse between my legs. I scrub shampoo into my scalp, then I pour gel on a sponge and wash away the stench of sweat, fear and guilt clinging to my skin. My mouth is full of lather that tastes of exotic herbs and berries, of tropical fruits and sugary nectar. When I finish showering, I have become as clean as the surface of the moon.
A prickly sensation is flitting across my fingers and toes as a numbness seeps into my muscles. The shivers are creeping into my spine, making my teeth chatter. Soon enough my pale skin will turn a glistening dark blue.
Am I waiting for whoever abducted me to appear? What else could it be but an unholy abomination?
A panicked mass of survival instinct kicks in.
"Wh-why the hell did you teleport me to a random forest, you otherworldly shitstains?! I would prefer that you showed up as I took a piss!"
From deep within the thicket comes a rumbling growl. My body goes rigid, my heart starts thumping like a war drum. I keep my eyes focused on the greenery, refusing to give in to the desire to blink.
Some branches rustle and a twig crunches in the treeline. A flicker of motion catches my eye. Through some breeze-stirred leaves I discern that a child is peeking out from behind a tree trunk. She must be about ten years old. Her disheveled hair is chestnut brown and reaches the shoulders of a crude, ash-colored leather tunic. She's wearing a tooth necklace, bracelets made of twisted animal hair, and thick boots with fur collars. Her peach-orange skin is stained with dirt, and her slanted, monolid eyes are staring at me in surprise, maybe because she has never seen anyone like me, or because I'm naked in a forest. Is she another spirit who will ask me to sacrifice my blood to make up for the blighted land?
My legs are trembling, my nipples are hard as stone. I'm not sure how long this stand-off lasts while the branches sway in the breeze, the brook burbles and the birds chirp.
"H-hello," I say in the warmest voice I can muster, "do I have the pleasure of addressing someone with an incredible command of the Spanish language? You can also speak in English if you want."
The child's jaw drops slightly, but she remains silent as she looks me up and down with wide-eyed wonderment.
"D-do you understand that I've been dumped into the wilderness," I insist, "that I'm unclothed and freezing my tits off, that I'm mentally unbalanced, and that I'm in desperate need of help?"
From within the thicket comes a crackling noise as if sticks were snapping under the weight of a bear-sized creature. The child's eyes dart between me and the thicket, then her lips move to say in a high-pitched voice a sentence that sounds like gibberish. She crouches and scuttles along the treeline until she hides behind a thicker tree trunk mottled with eggshell-white spots.
Dead leaves are crunching as they get crushed underfoot. I squint to peer through the web of greenery, and I discern that a looming shape is stirring the shadows and bending branches; some monster is lumbering towards us.
The cold has spread inward, and now it seems to radiate from my bones. My fingers and toes have gone numb, my thoughts are slowing down and my vision narrowing, but I control my ragged breathing. I beckoned this feral child over by shouting into the void, and if the monster that is about to emerge from the thicket devours her, I'll endure the flashbacks for the rest of my possibly short life.
"H-hey, girl, over here," I call her through my chattering teeth, and when we hold each other's gaze, I gesture anxiously for her to approach me.
She hesitates; would I run towards a wild-eyed thirty-year-old woman who's hanging out naked in the wilderness? The girl pushes herself off the tree she was hiding behind, then she scuttles on the pebbled riverbed over to me. A pungent odor wafts from her leather tunic, as if she had rolled around in grime and filth. She clutches my left hand. When I feel her warm, chapped palm, a dizzy spell threatens to overwhelm me. I have been snatched from Jacqueline's apartment and dropped into a remote forest. What otherworldly horror will I encounter now?
The undergrowth behind the treeline shudders and jerks, a branch snaps, and from between two trees emerges a hulking, woody-brown quadruped. As its beefy right foreleg flattens a fern, beneath the shaggy fur, which is caked with mud, the muscles along its leg tremble, and the subcutaneous fat shakes up to the beast's rounded back. Under its furry hands, the pebbles of the riverbed grind and clack together. I discern that the beast's curved claws are the size of hacksaw blades; they could peel open my ribcage like pulling back the lid of a can of sardines.
As it heads to the rippling waters of the brook, the beast swings its elongated head towards us. The coarse fur of its face is swan-white except for the smoky-black patches that surround the sunken eyes. Its nostrils flare as it sniffs our scent, then it snorts and blows like a bull. The beast stops beside the brook and dips its chin in the stream to drink.
My brain is wrapped in barbed wire. What is this jarring cackling that is punishing my eardrums? Oh, it's bursting forth from my throat. But why am I laughing?
The beast raises its head and looks straight at me as water drips from its drenched chin, then it turns around to face us. The feral child squeezes my left hand; even through my shrieks of laughter I realize that she's trying to communicate with me, but I can't decipher her jabber. That monster's claws are churning up the pebbles as it stomps towards us. I catch a whiff of its musk, that smells of earth, loam and moss.
My throat closes up; the surge of laughter pushes against it, then desists and dissipates. I need to gallop away, but I must remain rooted to this spot or I will be lost forever.
The beast's honey-colored eyes are aglow with bloody malice. As it bellows a thunderous burp, a plume of white-hot steam spirals out and a spray of hot spittle splatters onto my face. The nearby birds have scattered away in a panic.
The girl is tugging on my arm, my knees are buckling. This noble monster is waiting for me to kneel in worship; I'm a bug crawling around its feet. I should try my best to seem cool and aloof, like a woman with regular sexual appetites instead of like an insane shut-in who has been abducted.
"G-greetings, brave soldier of the forest," I say in a quavering, hysterical voice. "I-I salute your service in the field of battle and I promise that if I live through this experience, I-I will surrender the best cut of my meat to you."
The beast pushes itself off the ground to rear up on its hind legs, then it throws its head back to tower even further over me; a fearsome god looming over my puny body. Its mouth yawns cavernously. The muscles in the monster's girthy torso, which is matted with clots of mud and leaf litter, bulge under the shaggy fur like taut, industrial-sized leather belts.
At the final moment of my dismal existence, I have an intense craving to make love.
The girl yanks at my arm hard enough that I tumble backwards, but before I land on the pebbles, a crackle of energy fills me, and my back hits a flat surface. I got the wind knocked out of me. As I prop myself up and take a big gulp of air, I realize that I'm at room temperature and that I'm staring at a pastel grey ceiling that I recognize.
Someone kneels beside me. The smooth touch of silk caresses the skin of my shoulder, then the person seizes me, turns me around and buries my face in a pillowy pair of breasts.
"You're back," Jacqueline says in a strained voice racked with worry. When she wraps her warm arms around my trembling back, she recoils, then starts rubbing my skin vigorously. "Baby, you are freezing!"
I'm shaking from the cold and the adrenaline surge, but now that Jacqueline's breasts have enveloped my face, I will heal quickly.
"D-don't worry," I mumble through her cleavage.
A childish utterance of confusion behind me causes Jacqueline to stiffen up.
"Leire," she whispers, "who the hell is this girl?"
I unstick my mouth from the silky skin of her breast to glance over my shoulder. The feral child is sitting on her knees and squinting at the bright light in the hallway as she checks her surroundings with bewilderment.
---
Author's note: the two songs for today are 'Sapokanikan' by Joanna Newsom and 'Baba O'Riley' by The Who.
From all the chapters that remained to write of this novel, this one I looked forward to the least; I suspect that I didn't believe I could pull it off. But it came out good enough for me, so the ride should be smoother from now on.
That story about Leire getting lost in Hondarribia as a child because a monkey distracted her happened to me. They eventually found my bloated corpse washed up on a beach.
In case you missed it, I exploited the services of a neural network that runs on a supercomputer to generate images that depict moments of this scene. Here is the link.
I usually get 8-10 visits a day on my site. Less than 24 hours ago, someone from the US racked up about 170 hits. That person even went through entries of the fanfiction of 'Re:Zero' I wrote a couple of years ago. I never liked 'Re:Zero' that much; I preferred my darker, crazier spin on that story. I worked on it during a turning point in what passes for my career as a writer; I had ceased to read anything in Spanish, my own native language, and I didn't want to write in Spanish anymore even though I had self-published two books in that language, but I felt like I could never become proficient enough at writing in English. Working through those sixty or so chapters of fanfiction changed my mind, and I had a blast throughout.
Anyway, thank you for checking out so many pages of my site, whoever you are. I hope you were entertained.
---
My skin prickles, my muscles twitch, my bones ache. Every breath I take brings the aroma of pine resin into my lungs, and risks numbing them with cold. The breeze ruffles my hair and rustles the leaves of the thicket about six meters to my left. I'm having trouble discerning details in the undulating mesh of bone-thick branches and knee-high undergrowth, but I distinguish the pale silver tresses of moss that hang from upcurved branches, and that the bark of a few slender trunks has been clawed to reveal the rose gold tree flesh beneath. What abominations of nature may be lurking past the treeline?
I will keep my feet firmly planted on the rounded pebbles that are pressing into the soles of my feet. I will become a human statue frozen in time. Remain still: that was the lesson I learned back as I child when I got lost while my parents and I were strolling around Hondarribia. A plush monkey, dressed in a candy-red T-shirt and slutty shorts, was huddled inside the rusted cage of a vending machine. I was transfixed by his slack-jawed smile and the gleaming sadness in his oil-black eyes as he peered out at me from his gloomy lair, but I also admired that beast for having endured the life-long duty of dropping plastic balls in exchange for money, a drudgery that turned his fur dull and patchy. When I attempted to point the monkey out to my parents, they had vanished into the crowd.
For hours or days I sobbed as I tottered aimlessly past towering strangers. None of the passersby recognized my plight; I was just another unwashed urchin whose rags reeked of urine and vomit. Not even a dog offered its tongue to lick my wounds. How did that nightmare end up resolving itself? Maybe I never found my parents. Maybe that damnable monkey was the ringleader of a gang of human traffickers, and I have spent my life ever since chained to a bed in a pitch black basement.
Why was I thinking about that time I got lost in Hondarribia? Wait, why the hell am I in a forest?! My breath is steaming, the soles of my feet are throbbing. My fingers are curled into white-knuckled fists. The ripples of the brook to my right distort the rounded stones and twigs that its waters churn over.
I rub my eyes as if I were trying to claw out some filth.
"This isn't happening," I mutter to myself.
Jacqueline hammered into my head that hallucinations don't open doors, so instead I must be experiencing a bout of psychosis. I shut my eyes tight and I retread in my mind the steps that brought me here. I entered the bathroom to take a shower; I must have opened the door of the shower cabin and stepped inside. I turn on the water, and from the showerhead a jet of ink-black, searing-hot liquid rushes out with a foaming whoosh to soak my hair and stream off my face. The liquid flows down the curvature of my breasts, the contours of my buttocks, the crooks of my knees; it trickles into the pink crevasse between my legs. I scrub shampoo into my scalp, then I pour gel on a sponge and wash away the stench of sweat, fear and guilt clinging to my skin. My mouth is full of lather that tastes of exotic herbs and berries, of tropical fruits and sugary nectar. When I finish showering, I have become as clean as the surface of the moon.
A prickly sensation is flitting across my fingers and toes as a numbness seeps into my muscles. The shivers are creeping into my spine, making my teeth chatter. Soon enough my pale skin will turn a glistening dark blue.
Am I waiting for whoever abducted me to appear? What else could it be but an unholy abomination?
A panicked mass of survival instinct kicks in.
"Wh-why the hell did you teleport me to a random forest, you otherworldly shitstains?! I would prefer that you showed up as I took a piss!"
From deep within the thicket comes a rumbling growl. My body goes rigid, my heart starts thumping like a war drum. I keep my eyes focused on the greenery, refusing to give in to the desire to blink.
Some branches rustle and a twig crunches in the treeline. A flicker of motion catches my eye. Through some breeze-stirred leaves I discern that a child is peeking out from behind a tree trunk. She must be about ten years old. Her disheveled hair is chestnut brown and reaches the shoulders of a crude, ash-colored leather tunic. She's wearing a tooth necklace, bracelets made of twisted animal hair, and thick boots with fur collars. Her peach-orange skin is stained with dirt, and her slanted, monolid eyes are staring at me in surprise, maybe because she has never seen anyone like me, or because I'm naked in a forest. Is she another spirit who will ask me to sacrifice my blood to make up for the blighted land?
My legs are trembling, my nipples are hard as stone. I'm not sure how long this stand-off lasts while the branches sway in the breeze, the brook burbles and the birds chirp.
"H-hello," I say in the warmest voice I can muster, "do I have the pleasure of addressing someone with an incredible command of the Spanish language? You can also speak in English if you want."
The child's jaw drops slightly, but she remains silent as she looks me up and down with wide-eyed wonderment.
"D-do you understand that I've been dumped into the wilderness," I insist, "that I'm unclothed and freezing my tits off, that I'm mentally unbalanced, and that I'm in desperate need of help?"
From within the thicket comes a crackling noise as if sticks were snapping under the weight of a bear-sized creature. The child's eyes dart between me and the thicket, then her lips move to say in a high-pitched voice a sentence that sounds like gibberish. She crouches and scuttles along the treeline until she hides behind a thicker tree trunk mottled with eggshell-white spots.
Dead leaves are crunching as they get crushed underfoot. I squint to peer through the web of greenery, and I discern that a looming shape is stirring the shadows and bending branches; some monster is lumbering towards us.
The cold has spread inward, and now it seems to radiate from my bones. My fingers and toes have gone numb, my thoughts are slowing down and my vision narrowing, but I control my ragged breathing. I beckoned this feral child over by shouting into the void, and if the monster that is about to emerge from the thicket devours her, I'll endure the flashbacks for the rest of my possibly short life.
"H-hey, girl, over here," I call her through my chattering teeth, and when we hold each other's gaze, I gesture anxiously for her to approach me.
She hesitates; would I run towards a wild-eyed thirty-year-old woman who's hanging out naked in the wilderness? The girl pushes herself off the tree she was hiding behind, then she scuttles on the pebbled riverbed over to me. A pungent odor wafts from her leather tunic, as if she had rolled around in grime and filth. She clutches my left hand. When I feel her warm, chapped palm, a dizzy spell threatens to overwhelm me. I have been snatched from Jacqueline's apartment and dropped into a remote forest. What otherworldly horror will I encounter now?
The undergrowth behind the treeline shudders and jerks, a branch snaps, and from between two trees emerges a hulking, woody-brown quadruped. As its beefy right foreleg flattens a fern, beneath the shaggy fur, which is caked with mud, the muscles along its leg tremble, and the subcutaneous fat shakes up to the beast's rounded back. Under its furry hands, the pebbles of the riverbed grind and clack together. I discern that the beast's curved claws are the size of hacksaw blades; they could peel open my ribcage like pulling back the lid of a can of sardines.
As it heads to the rippling waters of the brook, the beast swings its elongated head towards us. The coarse fur of its face is swan-white except for the smoky-black patches that surround the sunken eyes. Its nostrils flare as it sniffs our scent, then it snorts and blows like a bull. The beast stops beside the brook and dips its chin in the stream to drink.
My brain is wrapped in barbed wire. What is this jarring cackling that is punishing my eardrums? Oh, it's bursting forth from my throat. But why am I laughing?
The beast raises its head and looks straight at me as water drips from its drenched chin, then it turns around to face us. The feral child squeezes my left hand; even through my shrieks of laughter I realize that she's trying to communicate with me, but I can't decipher her jabber. That monster's claws are churning up the pebbles as it stomps towards us. I catch a whiff of its musk, that smells of earth, loam and moss.
My throat closes up; the surge of laughter pushes against it, then desists and dissipates. I need to gallop away, but I must remain rooted to this spot or I will be lost forever.
The beast's honey-colored eyes are aglow with bloody malice. As it bellows a thunderous burp, a plume of white-hot steam spirals out and a spray of hot spittle splatters onto my face. The nearby birds have scattered away in a panic.
The girl is tugging on my arm, my knees are buckling. This noble monster is waiting for me to kneel in worship; I'm a bug crawling around its feet. I should try my best to seem cool and aloof, like a woman with regular sexual appetites instead of like an insane shut-in who has been abducted.
"G-greetings, brave soldier of the forest," I say in a quavering, hysterical voice. "I-I salute your service in the field of battle and I promise that if I live through this experience, I-I will surrender the best cut of my meat to you."
The beast pushes itself off the ground to rear up on its hind legs, then it throws its head back to tower even further over me; a fearsome god looming over my puny body. Its mouth yawns cavernously. The muscles in the monster's girthy torso, which is matted with clots of mud and leaf litter, bulge under the shaggy fur like taut, industrial-sized leather belts.
At the final moment of my dismal existence, I have an intense craving to make love.
The girl yanks at my arm hard enough that I tumble backwards, but before I land on the pebbles, a crackle of energy fills me, and my back hits a flat surface. I got the wind knocked out of me. As I prop myself up and take a big gulp of air, I realize that I'm at room temperature and that I'm staring at a pastel grey ceiling that I recognize.
Someone kneels beside me. The smooth touch of silk caresses the skin of my shoulder, then the person seizes me, turns me around and buries my face in a pillowy pair of breasts.
"You're back," Jacqueline says in a strained voice racked with worry. When she wraps her warm arms around my trembling back, she recoils, then starts rubbing my skin vigorously. "Baby, you are freezing!"
I'm shaking from the cold and the adrenaline surge, but now that Jacqueline's breasts have enveloped my face, I will heal quickly.
"D-don't worry," I mumble through her cleavage.
A childish utterance of confusion behind me causes Jacqueline to stiffen up.
"Leire," she whispers, "who the hell is this girl?"
I unstick my mouth from the silky skin of her breast to glance over my shoulder. The feral child is sitting on her knees and squinting at the bright light in the hallway as she checks her surroundings with bewilderment.
---
Author's note: the two songs for today are 'Sapokanikan' by Joanna Newsom and 'Baba O'Riley' by The Who.
From all the chapters that remained to write of this novel, this one I looked forward to the least; I suspect that I didn't believe I could pull it off. But it came out good enough for me, so the ride should be smoother from now on.
That story about Leire getting lost in Hondarribia as a child because a monkey distracted her happened to me. They eventually found my bloated corpse washed up on a beach.
In case you missed it, I exploited the services of a neural network that runs on a supercomputer to generate images that depict moments of this scene. Here is the link.
I usually get 8-10 visits a day on my site. Less than 24 hours ago, someone from the US racked up about 170 hits. That person even went through entries of the fanfiction of 'Re:Zero' I wrote a couple of years ago. I never liked 'Re:Zero' that much; I preferred my darker, crazier spin on that story. I worked on it during a turning point in what passes for my career as a writer; I had ceased to read anything in Spanish, my own native language, and I didn't want to write in Spanish anymore even though I had self-published two books in that language, but I felt like I could never become proficient enough at writing in English. Working through those sixty or so chapters of fanfiction changed my mind, and I had a blast throughout.
Anyway, thank you for checking out so many pages of my site, whoever you are. I hope you were entertained.
July 18, 2022
AI-generated images of Leire from ‘We’re Fucked’
I’m still two-fifths of the way through the last draft of the 64th chapter, but I have been sending prompts to the neural network that generates images on some supercomputer; it merely requires me to input a sentence. So here are some depictions of Leire, the protagonist of my ongoing novel.
[read the rest of this entry on my personal page; it contains many images]
[read the rest of this entry on my personal page; it contains many images]
July 17, 2022
We’re Fucked, Pt. 64: AI-generated images
I have finished the first draft of the next chapter of my ongoing novel, but as I was working on it I kept generating images with the neural network that runs on a supercomputer, feeding it prompts about the images I had in my head. The results have been interesting, and some horrifying.
[check out this entry on my site; it contains many images]
[check out this entry on my site; it contains many images]
July 16, 2022
State-of-the-art AI-powered image generation
I came across a paid service that allows you to take advantage of trained neural networks that run on supercomputers and are specialized on generating images. So far I’ve been busy for a couple of hours generating masterpieces like the following: [check the rest of this entry out on my site, because it should look better there]
July 14, 2022
We're Fucked, Pt. 63 (Fiction)
Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better
---
"No, I don't want breakfast!" I shriek.
I have sat bolt upright on a mattress. The bedsheets are puddled around my waist. I'm panting, my heart is racing in my throat. It feels like the bed is rocking back and forth like a ship at sea. Although sweat is dripping down my face and naked torso, a frigid lurch runs through me and I almost vomit.
An insidious force is slithering inside me while my head buzzes with thoughts like flies trapped inside a jam jar. My mind is a pile of detritus rusting in a fetid puddle of gunk. A single tear is trailing down my cheek, and I wipe it away with the pad of my thumb. Once again I wish I would become a catatonic mute lost in my pitch-black depths.
To my left, a weight depresses the mattress, then a warm arm drapes around my tits.
"You'll be all right now," Jacqueline whispers. "Lie down, baby girl."
Her soft voice soothes my frail bones and tattered mind. I slump backwards until my head sinks into the pillow.
Jacqueline cuddles up against me, squeezing her breasts against my naked chest and wrapping her long legs around mine. Her hair is tickling my neck, and her lips are playing over the skin of my jaw as she breathes warm air into my ear. The heat that radiates through her smooth, silk-blend robe makes my despair dissipate like a noxious stench. Second by second, a quiet descends upon me like in the wake of an orgasm.
A blinding white light pierces the dark behind my eyelids in a jolt of anxiety. What the hell am I worried about now? Ah, we have to go to work in the morning. When I reach to the nightstand for my phone, Jacqueline's half-lidded gaze meets mine in the mirrored wardrobe. In the pale moonlight that streams through the balcony door, Jacqueline's skin is glowing with a silvery luster, and her cobalt-blue eyes are shining like gemstones. She embodies the serenity of the ocean on a clear day.
I hold my phone up and check the time while the device glows bright.
"A quarter past four," I say in dismay.
Jacqueline sighs and tenses her thighs around mine.
"Three hours more and we'll be forced to leave our bed."
I place the phone on the nightstand, then I stare up at the shadowed space between two hemispherical lamps on the ceiling. Jacqueline runs her fingertips over my right cheek as she nuzzles up against the crook of my neck. My nipples tingle, the hairs of my nape stand on end.
"That previous shout of yours must have woken up the neighbors," she says casually.
I guess she wants me to open up about my nightmare. I should apologize for having disturbed her sleep, but I have spent my whole life apologizing for my shortcomings.
"These nightmares..." I start in a weary voice. "I feel like I'm becoming increasingly attuned to stuff... to which I shouldn't be privy."
"Such as? What terrible vision has tortured my baby this time?"
My face involuntarily contorts into a grimace as I attempt to repress a shiver of disgust.
"That filthy, maggot-infested scumbag," I spit out.
"I suspect that for you those words could describe many people, including yourself. Are you referring to the bunnyman?"
My tongue feels like a slab of leather as I swallow the word that conjures up his horrifying visage in my mind's eye.
"That monster... was robbing a bank, but he slipped on some leaves and fell down, cracking his head open, spilling his blood on the carpet. In the middle of the crimson pool was an envelope, and when I opened it I found that it contained a letter addressed to me. The bunnyman wanted me to know that he'd be keeping me company until the end of time. He also invited me to a rabbit ranch that he owns."
My voice sounded raw and raspy. Jacqueline's left arm tightens around my ribs.
"And I guess that at some point someone offered you breakfast. He did a number on you, that well-endowed devil."
I take a deep breath, then I rub my eyelids. I'm a baby lying helpless in an oversized crib surrounded by monsters. They have smudges of grease on their faces, they're wearing rags that hang off them like flappy skin, their bellies are bulging with foul produce. They keep snorting lines of white powder off rusty spoons. Soon their bloated fingers will dig into me like grubs into a rotten corpse.
"When I was five," I whisper in a fragile voice, "I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, my first one ever. Some soft, fleshy thing was coiled around my ankle. I jumped from the bed and ran to my parents' room, because they were supposed to protect me from bad dreams, but when I opened the door I realized that the fleshy thing coiled around my ankle was my father's balls. He was sleeping on his back, and they were hanging out of his boxers as he snored like a donkey."
Jacqueline gasps, then her left arm cradles my head and pulls me in for a kiss on my forehead.
"Oh no, you are getting like that again. Shush, doll. Just fill your mind with sunny things."
My eyes are wet with unshed tears. My voice chokes.
"This world is a cold lake whose edges are shrouded in mist. The decapitated heads of everyone I've ever met bob on the water, and in the ripples they cause I glimpse my own reflection. I wonder if after death we are dumped into a desert of shiny black obsidian, a labyrinth made out of the most bitter thoughts."
Jacqueline presses a kiss against my lips, which shuts me up.
"I have no clue what you mean," she coos, "but I'll share something that I've daydreamed about recently: how about you and I go, soon enough, on a holiday to some Caribbean island? We would stay in a cute bungalow for a couple of weeks. Imagine yourself standing beside the ocean with your feet in the sand and your hair waving in the warm breeze. Think of the sunlight filtering through the palm fronds and casting golden ripples on the blue waters as they lap against the shore. The waves will wash away your despair with their frothy, salty foam. We'll laze on a hammock while we watch the setting sun turn the horizon into a blazing spectacle. We'll fuck as the night sky glitters with uncountable stars."
A wave of relief is washing over me when Jacqueline gives my neck a lick with her hot tongue, and now a tingling sensation is building in my pelvis. I close my eyes and breathe in her heady scent. In the theater of my mind, the water of a tropical sea splashes our naked feet. We're sitting in a cave hollowed out of the rock by the crashing waves. A pillar candle casts an eerie glow over the grotto that Jacqueline has transformed into a cozy bedroom, with pillows and soft sheets that the sea has delivered to us. The pounding of the surf deafens me in the tiny space, and my skin is feverish from the humid heat.
When I open my eyes, I remain caked in the stale sweat that the bunnyman induced.
"That sounds idyllic, although I'd have to shave my armpits first," I say with a shy smile. "I'd also have to trim the green scum coating my soul. But no way such a positive development could happen to me. Our plane's engines would malfunction and we would plummet to the ocean."
"We wouldn't travel in a plane, silly. I'll book a private cabin on a luxury cruise ship."
"When we get to the island, I'll fall into an open manhole. If we arrive at the resort, I'll get violently sick and vomit all over the bar area. The tropical sun will render me as black as charcoal. I'll offend a massive German man, a giant who will shatter my collarbone with a single punch, then he'll dump my remains onto a beach and spit on my corpse. While I'm lying in bed, I'll wet the bed."
Jacqueline's tits tremble against mine as she giggles.
"Oh my sweet darling, you are a complete nincompoop sometimes. Such horror stories will do nothing to dampen my enthusiasm about that dream vacation. When we get to the island, I'll make sure you drink lots of water so that you don't get sunstroke. If you have to leave the shade for even a minute, you'll be made to wear a hat so that you don't burn your precious head. I promise you won't experience any mishaps like that, none whatsoever. I'll treat you as if you were made of porcelain."
"I still believe in the ghoulish prophecies I've dreamed up for myself."
Jacqueline caresses my face with both hands.
"A nap will dislodge you from your current state of mind."
I envision a cruise ship exploding in a gigantic fireball.
"Yeah, I don't know how I would tolerate eight hours of work with all this madness in my head." I push myself up, and when Jacqueline rolls onto the mattress, I sit on the edge of the bed. "But first I have to wash the filth off my skin."
Jacqueline stretches like a cat in the sun.
"I like that humid, musty smell, though," she purrs.
"So do the sweat-eating bacteria."
I yawn widely. When I slide out of bed and plant my soles on the lukewarm hardwood floor, I'm weighed down by exhaustion. I shamble towards the hallway as Jacqueline's gaze warms up my naked ass.
"Please, don't let any horses in the bathroom," I say over my shoulder.
She chuckles at my request, which is further evidence that I'm not human.
"If you see any, yell and I'll shoo them off with a broom."
The moonlight shines through the acid-etched glass of the bathroom window, and its luminous image gets reflected in the door of the shower cabin. When I reach to switch on the light, a crackle of energy fills me. I'm engulfed in cold air as if I stepped into a walk-in refrigerator. As I blink away the whiteness that has blinded me, I feel that cool, muddy pebbles are pressing into the soles of my feet, and a couple of sharp edges are digging into my flesh. I hear a burbling brook and the twittering of birds. The air is crisp, and rich with the primeval smell of a forest.
I'm standing on the sedimentary rocks of a riverbed. To my right, the wavy surface of a brook is slate grey where it reflects the overcast sky, and otter brown where it reflects the other bank of the stream. At that woodland edge, the slender, swan-colored trunks of trees with orange-yellow canopies dominate, but above them protrude the brown, pointed tops of pines like lance tips. Beyond a forested hill I glimpse the ice-capped peaks of a mountain range.
About six meters to my left, leafy ferns sway gently in the breeze at the edge of a thicket three-stories tall, in which the trees blend into a patchwork of deep greens and onyx-black shadows. A bird flutters overhead as it wings out of the canopy and traces an arc across the grey riverbed, which is strewn with branches and leaves.
I'm frozen in place, and my eyes dart back and forth between the thicket and the rippling brook. My breaths are shallow. Goosebumps are forming along my back as the cold creeps up my spine and seeps into my toes and fingers.
I turn my head slowly to look over my shoulder. Twenty meters away, the grey riverbed gives way to knee-high grasses and thick bushes, and the brook bends between pines and threadbare canopies.
---
Author's note: three songs for today, which are 'Island In the Sun' by Weezer, 'Cut Connection' by Jesca Hoop and 'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane.
These last couple of days I've felt better. Maybe the black beast has gotten tired of my cowardice, and it has wandered off until the next time it deigns to visit me again.
---
"No, I don't want breakfast!" I shriek.
I have sat bolt upright on a mattress. The bedsheets are puddled around my waist. I'm panting, my heart is racing in my throat. It feels like the bed is rocking back and forth like a ship at sea. Although sweat is dripping down my face and naked torso, a frigid lurch runs through me and I almost vomit.
An insidious force is slithering inside me while my head buzzes with thoughts like flies trapped inside a jam jar. My mind is a pile of detritus rusting in a fetid puddle of gunk. A single tear is trailing down my cheek, and I wipe it away with the pad of my thumb. Once again I wish I would become a catatonic mute lost in my pitch-black depths.
To my left, a weight depresses the mattress, then a warm arm drapes around my tits.
"You'll be all right now," Jacqueline whispers. "Lie down, baby girl."
Her soft voice soothes my frail bones and tattered mind. I slump backwards until my head sinks into the pillow.
Jacqueline cuddles up against me, squeezing her breasts against my naked chest and wrapping her long legs around mine. Her hair is tickling my neck, and her lips are playing over the skin of my jaw as she breathes warm air into my ear. The heat that radiates through her smooth, silk-blend robe makes my despair dissipate like a noxious stench. Second by second, a quiet descends upon me like in the wake of an orgasm.
A blinding white light pierces the dark behind my eyelids in a jolt of anxiety. What the hell am I worried about now? Ah, we have to go to work in the morning. When I reach to the nightstand for my phone, Jacqueline's half-lidded gaze meets mine in the mirrored wardrobe. In the pale moonlight that streams through the balcony door, Jacqueline's skin is glowing with a silvery luster, and her cobalt-blue eyes are shining like gemstones. She embodies the serenity of the ocean on a clear day.
I hold my phone up and check the time while the device glows bright.
"A quarter past four," I say in dismay.
Jacqueline sighs and tenses her thighs around mine.
"Three hours more and we'll be forced to leave our bed."
I place the phone on the nightstand, then I stare up at the shadowed space between two hemispherical lamps on the ceiling. Jacqueline runs her fingertips over my right cheek as she nuzzles up against the crook of my neck. My nipples tingle, the hairs of my nape stand on end.
"That previous shout of yours must have woken up the neighbors," she says casually.
I guess she wants me to open up about my nightmare. I should apologize for having disturbed her sleep, but I have spent my whole life apologizing for my shortcomings.
"These nightmares..." I start in a weary voice. "I feel like I'm becoming increasingly attuned to stuff... to which I shouldn't be privy."
"Such as? What terrible vision has tortured my baby this time?"
My face involuntarily contorts into a grimace as I attempt to repress a shiver of disgust.
"That filthy, maggot-infested scumbag," I spit out.
"I suspect that for you those words could describe many people, including yourself. Are you referring to the bunnyman?"
My tongue feels like a slab of leather as I swallow the word that conjures up his horrifying visage in my mind's eye.
"That monster... was robbing a bank, but he slipped on some leaves and fell down, cracking his head open, spilling his blood on the carpet. In the middle of the crimson pool was an envelope, and when I opened it I found that it contained a letter addressed to me. The bunnyman wanted me to know that he'd be keeping me company until the end of time. He also invited me to a rabbit ranch that he owns."
My voice sounded raw and raspy. Jacqueline's left arm tightens around my ribs.
"And I guess that at some point someone offered you breakfast. He did a number on you, that well-endowed devil."
I take a deep breath, then I rub my eyelids. I'm a baby lying helpless in an oversized crib surrounded by monsters. They have smudges of grease on their faces, they're wearing rags that hang off them like flappy skin, their bellies are bulging with foul produce. They keep snorting lines of white powder off rusty spoons. Soon their bloated fingers will dig into me like grubs into a rotten corpse.
"When I was five," I whisper in a fragile voice, "I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, my first one ever. Some soft, fleshy thing was coiled around my ankle. I jumped from the bed and ran to my parents' room, because they were supposed to protect me from bad dreams, but when I opened the door I realized that the fleshy thing coiled around my ankle was my father's balls. He was sleeping on his back, and they were hanging out of his boxers as he snored like a donkey."
Jacqueline gasps, then her left arm cradles my head and pulls me in for a kiss on my forehead.
"Oh no, you are getting like that again. Shush, doll. Just fill your mind with sunny things."
My eyes are wet with unshed tears. My voice chokes.
"This world is a cold lake whose edges are shrouded in mist. The decapitated heads of everyone I've ever met bob on the water, and in the ripples they cause I glimpse my own reflection. I wonder if after death we are dumped into a desert of shiny black obsidian, a labyrinth made out of the most bitter thoughts."
Jacqueline presses a kiss against my lips, which shuts me up.
"I have no clue what you mean," she coos, "but I'll share something that I've daydreamed about recently: how about you and I go, soon enough, on a holiday to some Caribbean island? We would stay in a cute bungalow for a couple of weeks. Imagine yourself standing beside the ocean with your feet in the sand and your hair waving in the warm breeze. Think of the sunlight filtering through the palm fronds and casting golden ripples on the blue waters as they lap against the shore. The waves will wash away your despair with their frothy, salty foam. We'll laze on a hammock while we watch the setting sun turn the horizon into a blazing spectacle. We'll fuck as the night sky glitters with uncountable stars."
A wave of relief is washing over me when Jacqueline gives my neck a lick with her hot tongue, and now a tingling sensation is building in my pelvis. I close my eyes and breathe in her heady scent. In the theater of my mind, the water of a tropical sea splashes our naked feet. We're sitting in a cave hollowed out of the rock by the crashing waves. A pillar candle casts an eerie glow over the grotto that Jacqueline has transformed into a cozy bedroom, with pillows and soft sheets that the sea has delivered to us. The pounding of the surf deafens me in the tiny space, and my skin is feverish from the humid heat.
When I open my eyes, I remain caked in the stale sweat that the bunnyman induced.
"That sounds idyllic, although I'd have to shave my armpits first," I say with a shy smile. "I'd also have to trim the green scum coating my soul. But no way such a positive development could happen to me. Our plane's engines would malfunction and we would plummet to the ocean."
"We wouldn't travel in a plane, silly. I'll book a private cabin on a luxury cruise ship."
"When we get to the island, I'll fall into an open manhole. If we arrive at the resort, I'll get violently sick and vomit all over the bar area. The tropical sun will render me as black as charcoal. I'll offend a massive German man, a giant who will shatter my collarbone with a single punch, then he'll dump my remains onto a beach and spit on my corpse. While I'm lying in bed, I'll wet the bed."
Jacqueline's tits tremble against mine as she giggles.
"Oh my sweet darling, you are a complete nincompoop sometimes. Such horror stories will do nothing to dampen my enthusiasm about that dream vacation. When we get to the island, I'll make sure you drink lots of water so that you don't get sunstroke. If you have to leave the shade for even a minute, you'll be made to wear a hat so that you don't burn your precious head. I promise you won't experience any mishaps like that, none whatsoever. I'll treat you as if you were made of porcelain."
"I still believe in the ghoulish prophecies I've dreamed up for myself."
Jacqueline caresses my face with both hands.
"A nap will dislodge you from your current state of mind."
I envision a cruise ship exploding in a gigantic fireball.
"Yeah, I don't know how I would tolerate eight hours of work with all this madness in my head." I push myself up, and when Jacqueline rolls onto the mattress, I sit on the edge of the bed. "But first I have to wash the filth off my skin."
Jacqueline stretches like a cat in the sun.
"I like that humid, musty smell, though," she purrs.
"So do the sweat-eating bacteria."
I yawn widely. When I slide out of bed and plant my soles on the lukewarm hardwood floor, I'm weighed down by exhaustion. I shamble towards the hallway as Jacqueline's gaze warms up my naked ass.
"Please, don't let any horses in the bathroom," I say over my shoulder.
She chuckles at my request, which is further evidence that I'm not human.
"If you see any, yell and I'll shoo them off with a broom."
The moonlight shines through the acid-etched glass of the bathroom window, and its luminous image gets reflected in the door of the shower cabin. When I reach to switch on the light, a crackle of energy fills me. I'm engulfed in cold air as if I stepped into a walk-in refrigerator. As I blink away the whiteness that has blinded me, I feel that cool, muddy pebbles are pressing into the soles of my feet, and a couple of sharp edges are digging into my flesh. I hear a burbling brook and the twittering of birds. The air is crisp, and rich with the primeval smell of a forest.
I'm standing on the sedimentary rocks of a riverbed. To my right, the wavy surface of a brook is slate grey where it reflects the overcast sky, and otter brown where it reflects the other bank of the stream. At that woodland edge, the slender, swan-colored trunks of trees with orange-yellow canopies dominate, but above them protrude the brown, pointed tops of pines like lance tips. Beyond a forested hill I glimpse the ice-capped peaks of a mountain range.
About six meters to my left, leafy ferns sway gently in the breeze at the edge of a thicket three-stories tall, in which the trees blend into a patchwork of deep greens and onyx-black shadows. A bird flutters overhead as it wings out of the canopy and traces an arc across the grey riverbed, which is strewn with branches and leaves.
I'm frozen in place, and my eyes dart back and forth between the thicket and the rippling brook. My breaths are shallow. Goosebumps are forming along my back as the cold creeps up my spine and seeps into my toes and fingers.
I turn my head slowly to look over my shoulder. Twenty meters away, the grey riverbed gives way to knee-high grasses and thick bushes, and the brook bends between pines and threadbare canopies.
---
Author's note: three songs for today, which are 'Island In the Sun' by Weezer, 'Cut Connection' by Jesca Hoop and 'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane.
These last couple of days I've felt better. Maybe the black beast has gotten tired of my cowardice, and it has wandered off until the next time it deigns to visit me again.
July 13, 2022
We're Fucked, Pt. 62 (Fiction)
Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better
---
The dining hall is shrouded in a sweltering, bushfire-orange haze, and I feel like I'm sinking in the yolk of a room-sized egg. Above the antique cherry paneling on the walls, a continuous painting that depicts the streets of a bygone town has faded to saddle brown. I'm surrounded by canned chatter, knives and forks clinking and scraping against plates, and open-mouthed chomping on slabs of meat, although the other tables are empty and their linen napkins folded into triangles. The checkered floor is littered with glass shards, smeared with rotten food and covered in patches of mold.
A radiant chandelier is tinting the tablecloth of my round table sand-yellow. Behind two twinkling wine glasses, a swaying cord of drool clashes against the black-and-white tuxedo that the creature sitting across from me is wearing. A fluffy, cream-colored mane obscures a bowtie. I get a glimpse of the matted tufts that come out of grey-tipped, pointy ears, and of two bulging eyes on either side of a whiskey-colored patch like bruised fur, before two overgrown incisors plunge into the crunchy toast of a sandwich. A chunky piece falls onto the tablecloth as the bunnyman retracts his teeth with a slurping sound.
"A-a-ah, you're awake!" A plume of spit escapes his lips and sails through the heated air. "I thought I'd have to chew you up, you filthy shit-gobbler!"
He shovels the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, tangling slimy crumbs in the tobacco-brown fur of his muzzle. I want to wipe the droplets of saliva off my face, but I feel like my arms and legs are bound to the chair with ropes; I'd love to call the bunnyman a mendacious, mangy son of a bitch, but my vocal cords disobey me.
The bunnyman wiggles his whiskers. The black vest of his tuxedo is stretched tightly over his barrel chest, and his belly is rolling under the fabric like a raging sea.
"You've forgotten how to speak, huh? Tsk tsk tsk. I should have expected it from one of you stinking piles of bones and meat. You smell like a brood of horny rabbits having a furtive fuck session in a cage. And you are so eager to abandon your sickly life. How could anyone give up on herself so quickly?" He guffaws. "What a waste of precious meat you are! How do you expect to enjoy life if you don't live it? Don't you wish for some fangy and throbbing love meat to slurp up between your lips? Your heart and lungs are filled with muck, but I want you to live."
His voice makes my eardrums feel like they're going to rupture, and his breath reeks like a bloated corpse floating in a pool of blood. That I gave up on myself so quickly, this sow-fucking demon said? I did give up; I came so close to leaving Jacqueline behind in that barren world along with my childhood, all the books that I read and all the board games that I played. Everything was about to disappear into an infinite sea of darkness. But now I'll never escape from this shithole; I will remain a wailing, hunchbacked lunatic who screams at the sky, and not one person will remember me after I'm gone. I should spend my days locked up in some dark cave until I rot away to dust.
The bunnyman swallows down an entire glass of wine, splashes red on the tablecloth, and belches out a vine of acidy fumes. A sneering smile spreads across his lips as a thread of drool seeps out of their corners.
"You stink and you stink and you stink, so let me give you the name that you deserve: I will call you Gummo, which sounds like a dribble of phlegm trickling out of your twisted throat. Yes, that's such a fitting name for a filthy, unspeakable thing like you. Unwashed flesh lying around in the dirt." He raises his furry arms, and his fingers plump out into claws. "I'll also give you my name! It's Leopold, Leopold the Rabbit-Thing. Now, how many years have I spent stalking you? A few hundred? A thousand?" He makes a sucking gesture with his lips. "I'm no stranger to your malodorous, squeaking, demented thoughts. I've watched your anus drool as you squatted in the bathroom. I've watched you stroke yourself to a climax as you sat on an anthill. All for you, my favorite meal: a miserable human being. You're like an emaciated cow standing in a field while the flies buzz around her head."
It feels like my brain has been turned inside out and scrubbed with bleach. The bunnyman slides with his dirt-brown hand a platter to my side, making its heap of soggy pancakes tremble. The pancakes are the color of brown sugar, and they are glazed with a translucent, cloudy liquid that contains inert bubbles and that is oozing down the heap in gooey strings.
When a smell of chlorine assaults me, my stomach clenches like a fist and my mouth dries up.
"Your fucking breakfast is waiting!" the bunnyman bellows out.
He seizes a fork and sticks it into the soft, tender mass of the top pancake. He lifts the fork, and as the soggy pancake approaches my mouth, it drips the liquid onto the tablecloth, forming gluey puddles.
My body refuses to struggle against the restraints. I'm about to gag on the bile that gushes up, but my mouth opens by itself, and my tongue protrudes to collect the viscous strings of goo that dangle from the pancake.
"Your imbecile brain has started working again," the bunnyman says in a husky voice. "How lovely!"
His cackle fills my ears; it echoes in my brain like a tsunami, sweeping away every thought.
A familiar tingling starts in my fingers and toes, and as my nerves are pushed to the brink of overload I hear a faint popping sound in the back of my head.
---
Author's note: today's songs are both by Modest Mouse, and they are 'Alone Down There' and 'The Cold Part' from 'The Moon & Antarctica', which has been one of my favorite albums for about twenty years.
I've already written the first draft of the next chapter. I call a first draft that point of a text in which I consider it good enough for publication, but then I subject it to another full creative pass line by line to improve it. I've also written most of the tentative sentences of the chapter that will follow afterwards, and somehow I still have 14,000 words left of notes to render into the remaining scenes of this deranged novel.
---
The dining hall is shrouded in a sweltering, bushfire-orange haze, and I feel like I'm sinking in the yolk of a room-sized egg. Above the antique cherry paneling on the walls, a continuous painting that depicts the streets of a bygone town has faded to saddle brown. I'm surrounded by canned chatter, knives and forks clinking and scraping against plates, and open-mouthed chomping on slabs of meat, although the other tables are empty and their linen napkins folded into triangles. The checkered floor is littered with glass shards, smeared with rotten food and covered in patches of mold.
A radiant chandelier is tinting the tablecloth of my round table sand-yellow. Behind two twinkling wine glasses, a swaying cord of drool clashes against the black-and-white tuxedo that the creature sitting across from me is wearing. A fluffy, cream-colored mane obscures a bowtie. I get a glimpse of the matted tufts that come out of grey-tipped, pointy ears, and of two bulging eyes on either side of a whiskey-colored patch like bruised fur, before two overgrown incisors plunge into the crunchy toast of a sandwich. A chunky piece falls onto the tablecloth as the bunnyman retracts his teeth with a slurping sound.
"A-a-ah, you're awake!" A plume of spit escapes his lips and sails through the heated air. "I thought I'd have to chew you up, you filthy shit-gobbler!"
He shovels the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, tangling slimy crumbs in the tobacco-brown fur of his muzzle. I want to wipe the droplets of saliva off my face, but I feel like my arms and legs are bound to the chair with ropes; I'd love to call the bunnyman a mendacious, mangy son of a bitch, but my vocal cords disobey me.
The bunnyman wiggles his whiskers. The black vest of his tuxedo is stretched tightly over his barrel chest, and his belly is rolling under the fabric like a raging sea.
"You've forgotten how to speak, huh? Tsk tsk tsk. I should have expected it from one of you stinking piles of bones and meat. You smell like a brood of horny rabbits having a furtive fuck session in a cage. And you are so eager to abandon your sickly life. How could anyone give up on herself so quickly?" He guffaws. "What a waste of precious meat you are! How do you expect to enjoy life if you don't live it? Don't you wish for some fangy and throbbing love meat to slurp up between your lips? Your heart and lungs are filled with muck, but I want you to live."
His voice makes my eardrums feel like they're going to rupture, and his breath reeks like a bloated corpse floating in a pool of blood. That I gave up on myself so quickly, this sow-fucking demon said? I did give up; I came so close to leaving Jacqueline behind in that barren world along with my childhood, all the books that I read and all the board games that I played. Everything was about to disappear into an infinite sea of darkness. But now I'll never escape from this shithole; I will remain a wailing, hunchbacked lunatic who screams at the sky, and not one person will remember me after I'm gone. I should spend my days locked up in some dark cave until I rot away to dust.
The bunnyman swallows down an entire glass of wine, splashes red on the tablecloth, and belches out a vine of acidy fumes. A sneering smile spreads across his lips as a thread of drool seeps out of their corners.
"You stink and you stink and you stink, so let me give you the name that you deserve: I will call you Gummo, which sounds like a dribble of phlegm trickling out of your twisted throat. Yes, that's such a fitting name for a filthy, unspeakable thing like you. Unwashed flesh lying around in the dirt." He raises his furry arms, and his fingers plump out into claws. "I'll also give you my name! It's Leopold, Leopold the Rabbit-Thing. Now, how many years have I spent stalking you? A few hundred? A thousand?" He makes a sucking gesture with his lips. "I'm no stranger to your malodorous, squeaking, demented thoughts. I've watched your anus drool as you squatted in the bathroom. I've watched you stroke yourself to a climax as you sat on an anthill. All for you, my favorite meal: a miserable human being. You're like an emaciated cow standing in a field while the flies buzz around her head."
It feels like my brain has been turned inside out and scrubbed with bleach. The bunnyman slides with his dirt-brown hand a platter to my side, making its heap of soggy pancakes tremble. The pancakes are the color of brown sugar, and they are glazed with a translucent, cloudy liquid that contains inert bubbles and that is oozing down the heap in gooey strings.
When a smell of chlorine assaults me, my stomach clenches like a fist and my mouth dries up.
"Your fucking breakfast is waiting!" the bunnyman bellows out.
He seizes a fork and sticks it into the soft, tender mass of the top pancake. He lifts the fork, and as the soggy pancake approaches my mouth, it drips the liquid onto the tablecloth, forming gluey puddles.
My body refuses to struggle against the restraints. I'm about to gag on the bile that gushes up, but my mouth opens by itself, and my tongue protrudes to collect the viscous strings of goo that dangle from the pancake.
"Your imbecile brain has started working again," the bunnyman says in a husky voice. "How lovely!"
His cackle fills my ears; it echoes in my brain like a tsunami, sweeping away every thought.
A familiar tingling starts in my fingers and toes, and as my nerves are pushed to the brink of overload I hear a faint popping sound in the back of my head.
---
Author's note: today's songs are both by Modest Mouse, and they are 'Alone Down There' and 'The Cold Part' from 'The Moon & Antarctica', which has been one of my favorite albums for about twenty years.
I've already written the first draft of the next chapter. I call a first draft that point of a text in which I consider it good enough for publication, but then I subject it to another full creative pass line by line to improve it. I've also written most of the tentative sentences of the chapter that will follow afterwards, and somehow I still have 14,000 words left of notes to render into the remaining scenes of this deranged novel.
