Jon Ureña's Blog, page 47

We're Fucked, Pt. 49 (Fiction)

Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better

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The stench of rotten eggs has blocked my nose, and an acidic taste lingers in my throat. Instead of standing in the pitch-black corridor, I should be lying on the floor and vomiting my guts out.

I grope blindly for the light switch, sliding my fingertips over the bumpy wallpaper. I locate a smooth, familiar shape. As my hand hovers over the switch, my heartbeat pulsates in my throat. A thousand shades of darkness await me on the other side of the beam of illumination.

During my absence, my apartment must have gotten infested with pests, mutated ones that grew resistant to bug spray. If I had been cursed with rats, I could learn to cohabitate with them. Although they would feast on my furniture, scratch my monitor's screen with their claws, and make the crumbling plaster crackle as they gnawed through the walls, I could come to love those tiny, long-whisked furries. They would lie on my lap while I petted their fuzzy bellies. I would let them suckle from my bosom. I would take care of their offspring until they learned to fend for themselves. My biggest threat would consist in sleeping with my mouth open, as I may end up choking on a rat.

When I was younger and stupider, I used to dream about being a cat. I would cuddle up with a warm blanket and sleep at my leisure. My claws would dig into the hardwood floor while I basked in the sunlight. I would hide away in dark crevices. I would slink through tall grass in search of prey to kill and devour. Whenever anyone approached my hideout, I would hiss at them and spray them with a ferocious flow of piss. But I have grown old and wise. My eyes burn and my hands shake. I wish that I had never returned to my apartment.

What if I flip the light on and discover that swarms of invertebrates have overrun every corner of my abode? Dozens of cockroaches, those love children of giant beetles and flies, are clinging to the wallpaper of the corridor; they are scrunching themselves together as if intending to coalesce into a single exoskeleton. The floor is covered by a carpet of centipede corpses, their gray bodies bent at awkward angles from the holes they drilled into their own carapaces to escape into oblivion. The toilet bowl is coated with a layer of slimy slugs. The bathtub is festering with bluebottles that must have laid their eggs before they drowned in the mildew-ridden water. A lone scorpion scurries out of the bathroom, its stinger raised in the air. The desiccated carcass of a cat-sized tarantula is sprawled over the kitchen counter, and the penny-colored paste that the critter contained has seeped down the drawers. The bedroom has turned into a nest of spiderwebs, living tissue of sticky gossamer strands, and thousands of arachnids are crawling over my sheets as their eyes flash like alien stars. In my wardrobe, clusters of wasps are feasting on my hoodies and sweaters. At least a dozen ants are marching across the hardwood floor towards some unknown destination. Once the horde of invaders sniffs out my disdain, they will throng to my frame and burrow into my flesh in droves. The scurrying arachnids will embed their legs in my bones, and my hair will become a mass of cockroach antennae.

My limbs are turning into wings, my fingertips and toenails are growing into scythes. I hate insects and arachnids, and I'm sure I'm despised by them. As the only exception, a female praying mantis is one of the most beautiful creatures on Earth; she looks like an artist's rendition of an angel, with her translucent wings and those bulging eyes that resemble fern green gems. Otherwise, I never learned to like the creatures that I find horrifyingly disgusting.

As a child, I witnessed my mother transform into a black widow spider. She had consumed a bowlful of canned peaches, and she was lying on her bed. Her abdomen swelled until it split open, revealing her viscera and a single black egg as big as a pigeon. It hatched: a huge black widow crawled out of the eggshell, then it sprang at me. Its fangs poked into my skin and broke through my sternum and sank into my heart. The venom erased every good memory, and although I continued to live, I forever wished I hadn't.

I've hesitated in this opaque darkness for so long that the world may have ended. I shake my head as if I could dislodge all the filth from my mind, and I steel myself for the upcoming war between insects and a human. As soon as I find a machete, or maybe a hammer, I'll manage to massacre any number of creepy-crawlies.

When I flick the light switch on, the corridor gets filled with light as if a flashbang had burst into it. I squint my eyes at the glaring brightness, and when they adjust, the illumination provided by a single flyspecked lamp reveals a hellscape: my apartment. Instead of an insectoid invasion, I find myself facing the eggnog yellow wallpaper. It drags me back to an era during which people believed in a future of prosperity and plentiful sex; if they had envisioned our harrowing present crammed with vermin, they would have chosen different colors for their walls.

As I rub my gummed-up eyes to recover from the assault of light, I hear a muffled rumbling that comes from the living room: the snoring of some hibernating beast. I totter towards the source, tracking the noise as well as the stench of festering flesh.

I peek into the living room. The moonlight pouring through the window traces the contours of the room's bleak contents: the haphazard pile of board games that occupies the gap in the middle of a birch wood cabinet, and two empty ramen cups I left on the coffee table. A boulder of meat and bones is lying across the sofa, snoring heavily as it dreams of slaughter.

Some foe of mine must have discovered my terror of whales, and has heaved the beached carcass of one of those fiends of the deep into my apartment. My enemy may have timed the build-up of gases inside the bloated corpse so it would reach its peak at the moment of my entrance. The blast will obliterate me in a Big Bang of entrails.

My heart is a drum about to burst, but I shan't face my death in the dark. I flip the light switch on.

The bulky mass of a sleeping horse has occupied my sofa. Its malformed skull has caused its eyes to protrude as if they were about to pop out of their sockets, and its long, droopy ears look like they're melting. The muzzle is drooling mucous saliva onto an oily puddle on the hardwood floor, maybe due to the phlegm this beast accumulated from gobbling up my rotten foodstuffs. The strands of hair of its shaggy mane seem clotted with mud and blood. Its forelegs are retracted and atrophied as if evolution had forgotten to uproot them from its torso. His horse dick and balls have been removed and replaced by a jagged scar like a sword wound.

Although the living room stinks as if I had dived into a full dumpster that everyone forgot for a decade, and any glimpse of this horse-mongrel would suggest he has escaped from a nightmare, I loosen the grip on my nostrils and grin like a child. Only one castrated horse that I know would cloister himself in my apartment: my personal equine stalker, Spike.

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Author's note: this is just half of the scene I'm working on, maybe even less, but I won't be able to write at all tomorrow.

Spike's last appearance was back in November of last year, precisely on the 20th chapter of this idiotic tale. At least that's the last I remember of the guy.

I have kept track of word counts. This novel is already about 125,000 words long, and it will easily go as high as 160,000. It's a good thing that I will only release it as an ebook that nobody will buy; if I bothered to produce the physical edition, like I did for a couple of books I wrote in Spanish like four years ago, I would hate to carry such a brick around.

I'm on phone duty this whole week, and my next week is six workdays long. I hate it all.

We're Fucked, Pt. 48 (Fiction)

Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better

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The scrolling, corn yellow text of the LED screen displays the word 'station' in Basque, in Spanish, in French, and in English. We are approaching Gaintxurizketa, but I must take the screen's word for it: the world outside has drowned in a coal-colored blackness. I discern the faint shapes of skeletal trees.

Seated opposite me, a woman in her early forties, who's sporting a few grey hairs and wearing a duffle coat over a turtleneck sweater, has crossed her arms and hidden her eyes with sunglasses to doze off, although a reprobate slumped near the exit door, of whom I can only see the shaved head, is blasting reggaeton through his phone's speakers. Even this late, most of the seats are occupied; the train must pick up those that work the afternoon shift.

Inside this container with plasticky, frost white walls and bent grab poles that reflect the artificial light, the passengers look drained and dazed as if they were woken up in the middle of the night for an adventure. However, a nearby trio of college-aged girls have been babbling for half of the trip. The only one seated facing me whom I can see fully is wearing a loose sweater and ripped skinny jeans. The artificial light dances in her long, neartly parted, chestnut brown hair. She's flaunting the lively eyes and the easygoing smile of those too young to realize that the world is aching to spear us through the heart. People like her represent temporary smudges on the canvas of reality, dirty little stains of light, but they brighten up this otherwise cold wasteland.

The girl's gaze locks on mine, and her smile wanes as if I had offered her a front row seat to watch a stranger lose her mind. After she shifts her weight, she leans towards her friend and speaks in a hushed tone, but she has miscalculated the volume, because I understood her: she mentioned that I look sick. Soon enough I'll have to tune out the whispers of my fellow passengers.

I am sick, though. Sick at heart and sick to the bone. This world has drained all color from me, and I'm growing more fragile every day. I'm a cracked critter who was already crumbling before she boarded this train of madness. I wish I had gotten accustomed to a steady diet of psilocybin and psilocin, but instead I'm haunted by otherworldly visions synthesized by my brain as it slides slowly down the event horizon of a black hole.

I want to lean back in this rigid seat, shut my eyes and feel how the living nightmare recedes into a dull throb. However, only the naïve expose their unconscious self to these human beasts. I take a deep breath and focus on the isolated light sources that zip past our train in the encroaching darkness.

Such rides used to make me envious of the lives I came across. I would have loved to lose myself in the colors that played in so many strangers' irises, to figure out what strange beauty lit them up. On many nights I wished that someone would lean close to me and whisper magical words into my ear while the train rocked back and forth with its steady motion, but instead I suffered the unrelenting screams of my own mind. I wanted to grab strangers and shout that I love them, that they shouldn't feel bad because they're alive, that I should be the one to disappear instead.

Thankfully, now that I've tasted Jacqueline, all other human beings become blurs in my peripheral vision. Their faces feature two dots where eyes should reside. Their mouths are uninviting voids. When they speak, their words sound like a hollow mockery of human speech.

Nobody, nothing can compete with my depraved queen. I need the touch of her fingers as they comb through my hair, I need the pain of her nails digging into my back while I grind myself against her warm anatomy. When she kisses me I feel a taste of the end of all things, like a cup of bitter, caustic liquid that if I drank it I would turn into a black bird. I'd commit any evil to make love to her again.

Blood rushes to my pussy, bathing it in a velvety tide, as my genitals pulsate to the beat of my jittery heart. I yearn for mommy to rub out with her wicked, wet tongue every one of my worries, blanking my mind and memories like those of a newborn baby. My right hand trembles as it struggles to overcome my resistance; if I let go, it will grip my sex in a vice-like hold.

I press my knees together and rub my thighs against each other. I should give in to my urges. Why would these public transports vibrate and sway seductively except to seduce perverts into pulling down their trousers and relieving their tension on the spot? People only reveal their true nature while naked from the waist down and molesting themselves. Those who would resent your public display of self-love weren't meant to stick around, and who knows, through your bravery you might find the unique souls who would cherish your true self.

I bet that if the sapped office worker seated opposite me, whom life has worn down to the extent that she naps on the train, awoke to find my trousers and panties bunched up around my ankles, and me lost in the throes of lust as my oiled fingers polished my throbbing clit, her heart would flutter like a hummingbird's wings. While the wheels of the train clacked against the track in an ethereal hymn, she would gawk at the spectacle and slowly remove her sunglasses. Inch by inch, a child-like smile would crack the mask glued to her face that had helped her endure an everlasting routine of stress and disappointment. Once the mask shattered she would burst into hysterical giggles, which would make her breasts jiggle like two pudding cups filled with caramel. Having witnessed someone escaping the suffocating walls of a cage, the office worker's soul would flare up as if she were born anew. While the juices bubbled out of my groin, I would grin back, tightening the string of saliva that linked my mouth to my crotch. I would rejoice in the knowledge that thanks to my bravery, someone else's heart warmed up in such a hibernal night.

I'm freeing the top button of my trousers when a recorded voice announces that we are arriving to Irún. On our right, past some leafy greenery, the working-class apartment buildings of López de Becerra street, with laundry draped over the balcony railings, loom ominously, sending the first signal that those witless enough to seek residence in this city will soon find themselves like critters that have fallen into a septic tank, helplessly flailing their limbs in the slurry to avoid drowning in shit.

I wipe my forehead. I'm dripping with desire; I must reek of sweaty vagina. I shove my right hand in the pocket of my corduroy jacket to caress the casing of the external hard drive. I can bask in the knowledge that tonight I'll plug the drive into my computer, lie in bed and diddle myself at my leisure as I enjoy a nostalgic look back at our encounters.

Once I disembark at the platform along with the rest of the damned, I hurry up the stairs to reach the Colón promenade. The cold wind that was blowing in Donostia has followed me over here, seeking refuge under my clothes. My bowels are rumbling, my limbs feel heavy as stone slabs, my breasts seem to have lost a cup-sized chunk of flesh. I steel myself for the eight minutes long walk to my apartment, during which I'll need to elude thugs, drunks and other vermin, sights more revolting than any slimy blob lurking at the entrance of my office building.

After I cross the bridge over the railways, I venture through a sidewalk in which only two people can walk abreast. A pigeon lands on the pavement next to me, and the street lights glimmer in the bird's eyes as if it intended to make conversation with a friend. I hurry past darkened apartment buildings like mausoleums where the living are entombed. I scurry across the cracked pavements and narrow roads. I'm a mouse sneaking around a maze of underground chambers, afraid of being spotted by some sinister vagrant. I'm shaken by an urge to pull down my trousers and hump some rusty lamp post until the skin of my vulva peels off. In the infinite blackness above, the moon's craters are crammed with trash and corpses.

I pass the dirty brick wall of the Uranzu market as well as the homeless men that roam around it like a pack of stray dogs. When I lift my gaze, I certify that the cinnamon brown building I chose to inhabit still stands at the end of the street in its grimy, monstrous glory, although one of these days it will collapse under the weight of its own decrepitude like some gargantuan stalagmite.

While I make a beeline for the front door, a lanky familiar figure exits the building: a neighbor in his early fifties who looks like a grey-haired teenager. He's lugging bulging garbage bags to deposit them in the container across the road.

I've spotted this guy dozens of times when I returned from my self-imposed overtimes, because he made a habit of throwing out the trash at night. He should consider throwing out his clothes as well. He must have been present during the few tenant meetings I dared to attend, although I wouldn't have retained anyone's face from the terrified glances I shot at the gathered beasts with whom I'm forced to share this hovel.

As the guy passes me by, he pierces my face with his gaze.

"Hello, hello," he says.

I lower my head and nod. I pull the keys from my pocket, but when I reach with my free hand to grab the handle of the front door, I find myself holding air. Only the escutcheon remains, as if the handle had been unscrewed. Stunned, I gape at the absence.

I'm suddenly sniped by a memory: my mother is fumbling with a handful of keys to open the front door of our old apartment. She's swaying from side to side. Her jacket is half off and her skirt is hiked up to her hips, exposing her knickers. She smells of piss and sour milk. I'm dancing around her while I laugh and repeat, "The lock's busted! The lock's busted!"

My lanky neighbor has returned from his nightly mission and is standing nearby, trying to get my attention. I step aside and shoot him a wary glance in case he wants to persuade me to get naked. I'm in no mood for a session of sex on demand from any brute.

"Someone stole it," he says in a resigned tone.

"H-huh?"

"The door handle. Someone stole the damn thing."

I narrow my shoulders and tremble at having to interact with this creature.

"Well, I didn't do it," I mumble.

The guy chuckles nervously; his crooked smile suggests that he can't tell if I was joking.

"I wasn't accusing you. I know none of us did it."

"Who on earth would steal a door handle?"

The guy smacks his lips and shakes his head.

"Oh, don't get me started. They do it for the same reason they steal copper wire, copper pipes... Unfortunately some local fence must be buying that stuff from the thieves."

A black market for door handles. I'm living through the apocalypse.

"Wh-what should I do?"

My neighbor draws his head back, then he lets out a bitter chuckle.

"You? What the hell can any of us do? Call the cops?"

The city that welcomed the disaster of my birth has decided to add yet another torture to my life.

"I should start sleeping with a knife under my pillow," I utter gravely.

"Good luck! If you defend yourself, you'll end up in jail."

I shudder.

"You're right. If I had a knife, I would cut my own throat."

My neighbor wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.

"Have you heard that a couple of nights ago two men broke into an apartment in Lekaenea street?"

I picture the scene: the victim had just moved into the block, and he had yet to buy most furniture and knick-knacks. The thugs failed to find any valuables apart from underwear, so they went into his kitchen and ate a couple of olives and a baguette. Then they set fire to his fridge.

The guy nods at my puzzlement.

"The police arrested them only to make a report, and thirty minutes later the criminals were caught trying to break into another apartment!"

"I hope nobody died in the fire."

"I swear, this city is turning into a war zone. Let's hope that those responsible also end up disappearing, if you know what I mean!"

Against my better judgement, I must empathize with one of these humans when they peer through the façade of society and flinch in disgust at the festering rot that hid beneath.

"These streets have degenerated into anthills, and any wrong step will make us slide down their insectoid nightmare."

My neighbor knits his brow and squints as if his brain had gotten stuck processing my words.

"They are working you to the bone, aren't they?" he says carefully. "I hope you get some rest."

My fingers tremble as I tighten my fist around the key ring. Why do these strangers care about whether I have a good weekend or rest enough? I'm a lost soul in a sea of wickedness, and nobody on earth can reach me. I've spent most of my life wishing that I could sink into the ground and disappear. If the sight of my worn-out self bothers any human being, they should pretend I never existed.

"I suppose that I'll sleep at least a couple of hours," I mutter icily.

I unlock the front door. The absence of a handle weighs me down as I push my way in. The lights of the hallway switch on automatically and shine mercilessly at me, as if they had been expecting this chance. I wish that my neighbor had waited until I disappeared out of sight to enter the building himself, but his footsteps are following me. The guy says goodbye. I mumble incoherently over my shoulder. At least he takes the elevator instead of ogling my ass as I drag myself up the stairs.

Now that my neighbor has retreated to his garbage-filled world, I must focus on the task at hand. I'll need to fill a backpack with enough changes of clothes for a couple of weeks, but tomorrow I'll meet with my beloved for our date, and it shouldn't seem like I'm moving into her apartment. There, Jacqueline and I will talk for hours, we will shower together, we will sleep in the same bed. I will stay away from this hellhole for days at a time. However, my body feels like it's been beaten up, so for the rest of the night I'll just grab a snack and masturbate myself to sleep.

When I reach the landing to my apartment, I trudge until my tingling fingertips touch the door that separates the outside world from my sombre shelter. I rub my eyes and try to shake off my lethargy.

Why do I push myself so much? I must believe that I deserve to spend my limited life depleted, or maybe I'm doing myself a favor; who knows what illusory maelstroms my mind would weave if left to its own devising while healthy and invigorated?

I shove the door open, scoot inside, then close it with my ass. As I stand in the pitch-black corridor, I'd prefer to imagine that I'm floating in the void of space, but this mustiness reminds me of a crypt.

I make the mistake of taking a deep breath; a putrid stench assaults my nose and spreads in my head like some deadly neurotoxin. I cough, then gag on the acrid air.

When the coughing subsides and the bitter taste of vomit lingers in my mouth, I resort to pinching my nose closed. Has someone broken into my dreary sanctuary to kill themselves, and their abandoned carcass has been rotting for days?

---

I’ve been recalled to work, this time until September, potentially longer. Except for my bank account, this development represents a disaster. I revise every scene over and over until I turn each of them into an experience, a process that takes me many hours. When I’m working a morning shift, which will be the case for the rest of this month, I can only devote at the most two hours and a half to writing in the afternoons, and that’s assuming that I don’t find myself so drained after the meaningless toil that I'll want to doze off the moment I sit down. And assuming that I don't end up swamped in another period of tarry depression. So until mid-September, I should consider myself lucky if I deliver a single scene every week. No vacations either for this old boy; I’m the guy who subs other workers so they can travel around with their families, or whatever normal human beings do.

I’ve worked in Donostia/San Sebastián at all of my jobs except one, so I’ve experienced this train ride hundreds of times. If you walked down the street on the right at this exact moment of the video, you’d come across the apartment building where Alazne, the co-protagonist of my beloved previous novel, lived. I have to promote my stuff from time to time, although one of these days I’ll likely edit that crude blurb.

Some thieves did steal the door handle of my apartment building as well as of other nearby buildings. Twice. But that’s a minor absurdity in comparison to many crimes that have been perpetrated around here. Just recently, the main suspect of a series of murders involving GHB in Bilbao has turned himself in. He was living in my hellhole of a city; most criminals want to stay this close to the border so they can step into France whenever the heat gets too hot. Bless Schengen!

Anyway, we are nearing the end of the current sequence of events in this stupid novel, and the story will only get crazier from here. I hope you are enjoying it so far, and if you haven’t, why the hell are you reading this?

We're Fucked, Pt. 47 (Fiction)

Link to this post on my personal page, where it looks better

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As I stand at the beginning of the downward slope that will lead me from the business park where I work to the Lugaritz train station, but that will involve me dragging my sore body through the cold night, hurrying from streetlight to streetlight along a route likely frequented by scurrilous strangers, I realize that I have signed up for a tortuous ordeal of Homeric proportions.

Didn't I own a car, a Renault Laguna? Why did I abandon my trusted mechanical friend, that only intended to save me from having to degrade my legs by walking all the way down this dark and forbidding road? That's the kind of villain I've become: someone who betrays a loyal partner, condemning it to become a rusty pile of scrap.

Now, as my breath puffs in white plumes, I'm forced to trudge through the bitter cold with my hands stuck in the pockets of my corduroy jacket, stepping on the remnants of puddles that may have contained human blood. Even as I slog through the underpass towards the distant tower of an apartment building, the freezing wind ruffles my hair and pricks my exposed skin, causing the wounds in my heart to bleed afresh. Why did I abandon the safety and warmth of my office for this arctic adventure?

In the stretches between the lemon-colored cones of light that the streetlights cast on the pavement, the world is plunged in a dense darkness. I'm forced to progress between a row of parked cars and the overhanging branches of a dense thicket, that exudes the pungent smell of rotting leaves and that likely hides prowling predators like sabre-tooth tigers and feral vampires. Amidst the shadowy gloom, over the sound of my footsteps, the wind whistles, and from the trees comes the rustle of their branches as they sway back and forth. The world seems barren, drained of life except for those of us that have become more ghost than human, but if I closed my eyes I would still see the many people I've hurt: the friends I abandoned, the lovers that I used and discarded, the strangers that I slashed open with my claws. I wish I could listen to the melancholy hoots of the owls as they flew across the stars in their nightly hunt, and the howls of the wolves as they roamed the darkness searching for prey. But as much as I long for the company of other creatures of the night, I must stick to the sidewalks to avoid having a pair of fangs sink into my spine.

At this stage of technological advancement, I should be able to teleport to my apartment with some app on my phone. How have we human beings kept busy for hundreds of thousands of years, or however long we've been burdened with these soggy lumps of jelly-like fats and tissues inside our skulls, that we have failed to research a way to jump from a point of spacetime to another instantly?

As I trudge through this netherworld while the wind buffets me from behind, I spot the round road sign indicating a speed limit of 30 kmh, the harbinger of the bend of the road that leads into the first residential community on this side of the outskirts.

A sudden burst of light blinds me as if someone had pointed a flashlight at my eyes. I blink and shield my vision, but it takes me a few seconds to adjust to the source of such brightness, that is hovering over the sidewalk three meters in front of me. The ivory white glow is pouring as if through a jagged hole in an invisible wall.

I close my eyes and shake my head to dissolve this hallucination, but the light passes through my eyelids. I shift left, towards a parked car, and the light disappears. I sigh in relief. When I step back to the center of the sidewalk, the light returns.

"What the hell is this?" I mutter. "A will-o'-the-wisp? The spirits of those who were murdered by crazed vampires?"

Now that my eyes have grown accustomed to the light, the trees and parked cars have become silhouettes cast in an eerie and dismal grey. I take a deep breath, then I inch closer to peer through the luminous crack. As I lean in, it breathes a tropical warmth on my face, and my nose is flooded with the pungent odor of sea spray.

Unknown colorful shapes flicker in the ivory white radiance, as if I had come out of a tunnel into the daylight, but when I focus my vision, I find myself staring at a lime green field. On the right side of the frame, a grove of palm trees stands tall. Their trunks are striated diagonally, and their fronds, that resemble feathery fingers, are bending in the breeze. In the distance the field breaks off, and a sapphire blue sea extends to the hazy horizon.

I feel like I'm inside a painting displayed in an art gallery, where the patrons would spend hours admiring such a vibrant work of art framed in gold.

On the left side of the view, about twenty meters away from my standpoint, twenty fair-haired men and women, teenagers and a few children are hanging out near an unfinished edifice made of cyclopean stone blocks. The men are wearing wool tunics, the women linen undergarments and strap dresses that reach the ankles. They are barefoot.

Their gazes are following the movements of a man maybe in his mid-twenties, who's wearing a red baseball cap, a pewter grey T-shirt and khaki cargo pants. The breeze carries his warm voice, but I can't make out the words he's uttering. He's holding a metallic staff in each hand, and with the right one he's directing through the air a megalithic, rhino-colored block of stone, that is floating as if weightless. The man tilts his right staff to aim at an unfinished wall on which blue lines of light seem to depict the outline of the missing blocks. As the floating block descends, once it touches the blue lines of light, the block rotates until its shape matches the outline, fitting with the adjoined block like a puzzle piece.

When I gape back at the urban magician, he's chaperoning the crowd of viking-looking folks in a direction close to my standpoint. I gasp, stumble backwards and fall on my ass. The light has switched off; I'm staring unblinkingly at the darkness of a cold October night.

My arms and legs feel numb and heavy as if they were made out of cement, and my thoughts are flying in circles. When was the last time that a hallucination disturbed me this much? It felt like I was intruding into a scene that I would be prosecuted for witnessing. Wasn't my mental health supposed to improve, now that Jacqueline is taking care of me?

I let out a long sigh. I should give myself a break. I'm an unstable monster who festered in a hole of solitude and despair for most of her life, only to have been rescued by a mommy eager to hold me tight against her formidable bosom. I've been deprived of Jacqueline's presence for an afternoon of overtime, so my broken brain has slipped over into psychosis.

I crawl away from the spot where the tear in reality was hovering. Deep breaths, Leire. You just need to follow the route that will get you home.

---

Author's note: this chapter ended up being the shortest in the entire novel so far. I somehow still have 13,000 words of notes waiting for me to render them into the remaining chapters. The number has kept going up consistently, which in part is a good thing (I must really want to experience this whole story, because my subconscious keeps coming up with notes for it), but on the other hand I've been dealing with this madness since October of last year.

I finished watching 'The Northman' like three hours ago. Tremendous film, one of my favorites in a while. A well-researched movie set in AD 895, when people thought very differently, and the actors don't behave like they were picked from a LA street. Also, those two moments involving a valkyrie gave me chills.

A coworker has told me that they are setting up a three-months-long contract and it will start in a week. They'll likely call me for it. Ever since I've known that, I've felt antsy and like my time is running out. I should spend most of my waking life writing, but I became an adult plenty of years ago and adults are supposed to do meaningless, exhausting shit to add more money to their bank accounts at the end of the month. Can anyone pay me a living wage just for existing, so I can focus on my obsessions full-time? I'll provide regular massages and sexual favors if you don't mind that they'll come from a bearded, unkempt crazy person.

We're Fucked, Pt. 46 (Fiction)

Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better

---

When I push open the front door of my office building to step into the night, the door leaf shoves away a bucketful of the shadowy, bunny-sized blobs that for about a week have thronged the sidewalk. I resent that through the course of my pointless existence I've come to hurt more living beings, until I remember that these blobby, gelatinous abominations have long spilled onto the parking lot and they've proven themselves impervious to being run over by a car, which would otherwise be the most efficient way of obliterating them. I wish I could witness the windshield and windows of some car crisscrossed with a trail of glimmering blobs, because this sidewalk has become an obstacle course that should encumber the workdays of every local office worker. However, these wobbly slugs only exist because I'm hallucinating.

As I trudge in the opposite direction of the row of multicolored garbage bins, that the blob creatures have climbed and turned into their abodes, I clutch my salami sandwich to my chest and huddle deeper into my corduroy jacket. The brisk wind, a vile and vengeful force of nature, is tearing at my clothes. It carries the scents of grass and soil, hints of freshness that the city can't hold for long. Although I turn my head to one side then the other, the wind does its best to tousle my hair. It's also cooling the layer of sweat and stale arousal produced by my recent masturbatory exertions, as well as my terror.

I'm about to shiver; I doubt that I'll last more than five minutes outside. When will the temperatures improve? What's going on with the weather in this cursed country? It's been October for months!

I wish I could stand instead in front of a bonfire, with my eyes closed and my arms spread out so the blazing flames would lick at my skin. If it were for me, the entire province would become a festival of fire. I'd listen to the crackle of wood and the sizzle of flesh. I'd let the hot smoke enclose me in a foggy cloud that would slowly lift me into a private pocket world of peace and solitude. Wishing to become the tastiest, most succulent piece of meat on the planet, I would step forward onto the burning, baby-sized logs. I would savor the pleasure of a fire that would make my flesh glow like a feast of crisp bacon, and my face blaze like a beefsteak. As I cried out with abandon, and greasy fat dripped out of my pores, I would capitalize on the opportunity to chew on mouthfuls of my own charred skin and tendons.

Besides the wind and fire, another force intends to hurl me into oblivion; the dark, deep waters are calling to my blood and to the bones that rest within the hollow of my skin. Its salty liquid will enfold me, smothering me with its freezing embrace, while my hair swells towards the surface. I can almost feel the dark sea's tentacles rushing into my lungs to rid me of all my fears. My eyes will grow so wide and my mouth so open that a giant squid will suck out my last breaths, and my executioner will be accompanied by a blue-green humpback whale. The more I've tried to fight the dark sea, the stronger its waves have become. The only escape would be to turn off my mind and let the glacial liquid flow through my veins.

However, I have to deal with reality, the nemesis of dreams. I'm a low-wage employee in an office building designed to block all the sunlight. The only sun I can bask in, I make it with my own hands.

My stomach gurgles. I remember that I'm holding the sandwich that I bought from the vending machine: bread of an unidentifiable origin, and salami that may have come from a cow. Wearily, I lower my sore body to the dirty sidewalk maculated with ancient chewing gum. I sit cross-legged, then lean back against the granular wall of the building. I rip open the casing of the salami sandwich. After I crumple up the plastic wrapping, likely made from the skin of some oceanic creature, I consider tossing it aside, but I end up shoving it into a pocket of my jacket; the world has already putrefied enough for me to contribute to its entropy.

As I chew on the soggy, blood-spotted meat, I focus on the details: the dry and fluffy white bread and the saltiness of the salami. I didn't expect to be surprised by the flavor, because the meat has already rotted in my mind, but for a few seconds I feel like the most well-fed creature that has ever lived, which would have contributed to soothe my senses unceremoniously dredged by a wind of horror, until a recurrent intrusive vision visits me: I find myself gnawing on a giant, yellowish-white worm that will force my jaw apart.

A pig. The salami has come from a pig, one that was born of the flesh of another pig, and that was butchered by a third pig. All of them died or will die so I would taste their rotting flesh while I felt sorry for myself, but that's alright, because I'm a pig as well. We remain united in an eternal circle of pigdom.

My breath steams in the cold wind, that tries to disperse my feeble satisfaction by fluttering at my hair and my jacket. If I had any control over the situation, I would turn into a human windmill. To prevent the wind from reaching my flesh, my arms would spin at an endless, ceaseless pace.

My fingers are getting numb. I'm waiting for a cold, nasty drop of rain to splat on my head. Soon enough I'll have to endure another torrential storm and a clammy, bitter wind, like the ones that threatened to ruin my first date with Jacqueline. The rain will come down in a deluge so thick that it will dim the streetlamps. Nature rarely ceases to torture me, like a secret admirer that wants me to achieve my full potential as a miserable wretch.

The night is filled with reptilian hisses as the gusts torment the thicket on the opposite side of the road. The gibbous, pockmarked moon casts a faint glow on the sky. I gaze at its rough, cloud grey layer of dust, and at the polished, steel grey patches that reveal the metallic hull of the observation post built by aliens who got bored of us millennia ago.

A movement out of the corner of my eye makes me glance to my left. One of the bunny-sized blobs has disengaged from its gang, and it's wobbling towards me on six legs as its feelers sway like the tentacles of an anemone. I dread that it might be looking for shelter in the shadow of my jacket.

I wipe the layer of salty grease off my lips with the palm of my free hand. As the gelatinous beast comes closer, I try to discern in its blurry frame any eyes or a slavering mouth, but I guess that it senses the world through its squiggly tentacles. Although I want to hold my breath, I continue with my meal; I need the nutrients to fuel the survival of my brain.

The blob bumps against my ankle. After a moment of awkward confusion, the creature stretches its front feelers to probe the bottom hem of my trousers. Maybe a stink of sweat, blood and salami pours out from the opening.

I wait to feel any teeth pierce the fabric and reach my skin, but the blob turns and jiggles along my side as if to circumvent the obstacle, except that in that direction it will hit the wall. I place my left hand palm-up on the creature's path. As it edges closer, I scoop the blob up.

I had expected my hand to pass through this unholy hallucination, but instead my sense of touch reports its faint presence: the squidgy skin, the bottom and side feelers fluttering on my palm, how it shifts its weight as it shivers and squirms in apparent bewilderment. It's oozing a mucous slime.

I sigh with relief.

"As hideous as you fuckers are, I bet you aren't suffocating in depressive self-disdain, hounded constantly by the compulsive urge to release your existential terror through aggressive self-diddling. And that's me at my current best! Before Jacqueline rescued me, I found this struggle meaningless. But who could take pleasure in the idea of living when there's no one to love, or to love you? What can you do when your world is empty, when all you perceive is your shit and the shit of others?"

The blob's feelers twitch as it listens to my words, and I know that it will come to love me, once it stops considering me a food source.

"I was condemned to endure as the empty, hollow shell of a human being, like my mother," I continue. "I couldn't feel my skin, I couldn't taste my tongue, I couldn't feel my stomach rumbling. I couldn't smell, couldn't hear, couldn't think, couldn't do anything at all. I had nothing but the hope that someone would come to my aid, maybe a sexy magical pixie. At times I considered getting on my hands and knees to worship some crack in the sidewalk. You understand, right? You were granted the gift of life, yet you have turned your back on the world and have given up, therefore becoming the perfect example of how we humans have degenerated. We have ceased to know who we are and who we were. We've transformed into gelatinous blobs that blunder around blindly, mindlessly."

I pet the unholy abomination, and its tentacles respond with gentle wiggles.

"To be frank with you," I continue, "I couldn't wait to be dead. I was eager to find my way out of this prison of meat, to turn myself into a squishy, pink puddle of gore, and just rot away. But then this alien, this fucking alien, with her massive tits and her bubbly smile and her plump, soft lips and her twinkling cobalt blues, appeared for me. She stuck her hand down my throat and pulled me out. So in the end, my rescue came in the form of a giant spider-woman with the head of an ouroboros, and I've spent my current life exploring the insides of her belly. If she had come to me as a slug-like blob, I wouldn't have wanted her. I would have dismissed her as an itchy nuisance to be crushed. But she held the power to change the game for me, to take me out of that sorry, loveless world. She's a tender mother, a sexual mistress of the universe. I can't fully comprehend her, but I can trust her to give my life meaning, to make me feel real again. As long as I have my mommy, I'll keep on living, I'll keep on fucking."

The blob shudders. A large, slimy glop trickles out of an anus-like orifice, as if to symbolize its passage into my world, its transformation.

"I know all this might sound weird to you," I continue, "but it feels like my skull has become a furnace in which only a white-hot light of thought remains. What I meant to say is that even a nauseating blob like you deserves to live free, without fearing that someone will snatch you and your pals up to turn you into exotic soap."

My abominable companion shimmies off my palm and plops onto the sidewalk, then it scutters under the bridge of my crossed legs.

"Alright," I say. "If you have any concerns, I'll be more than happy to talk to you about my feelings."

My nose is leaking brain fluid, my teeth are about to chatter. I heave myself to my feet. I intended to wolf down the rest of my sandwhich, but I'm only holding two half-eaten slices of bread. The salami has landed on the dirty sidewalk. The slimy blob has crawled over and it must be feasting; its feelers wriggle excitedly as the salami slides under its gelatinous body and disappears as if absorbed.

A glob of protoplasm is resting on my left palm. I wipe it on my trousers.

When the blob wobbles back towards its companions, the previous spot of the sidewalk has been cleared of salami, ready to accept cigarette butts and glass shards, ready for grass and weeds to grow through its cracks like mold or the long hair of homeless people, to better fit in with this overgrown, overpopulated garbage dump of a world.

I shove the slices of bread into my mouth, then I narrow my shoulders and eyes against the cold wind as I head to the front door.

What did my rotting brain intend by assembling such abominations? No, I should focus on my work. I'll allow my unhinged subconscious to conjure up whatever symbols it requires to express its perverse delusions, to channel its homicidal urges.

What would the extent of my psychosis matter? There are no rules. We have no god to judge us, no heaven or hell to frighten us and make us suffer. Nothing will keep the world in a state of balance, no magic will prevent us from turning the earth into a smoldering cinder or the entire solar system into dead balls of ice. It's just a matter of time.

I only needed a single person to accept me as I am. The rest of the planet may as well burn.

We're Fucked, Pt. 45 (Fiction)

Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better

---

I want to squeeze the external hard drive between my thighs and rub my pussy with it until my leaking juices ruin its internal electronics, but instead I open the drive in the Explorer window and check the contents. When I read the name of the second folder, I do a double take. Why would there be a folder named 'Misc' next to the one that contains all the videos that Jacqueline filmed of us?

I open the extraneous folder. The window displays MKV files labelled from one to eight. As the operating system generates their thumbnails, they reveal that the videos feature naked women other than Jacqueline and I. They seem to be pleasuring themselves.

I double-click on the first one. I've barely registered the stranger's long locks of buttery blond hair when I realize that I've lain on the same flamingo pink comforter.

I feel a small earthquake in my gut. My blood runs cold while I gawk at the video, unable to register the woman's languorous movements except as the random shifting of colored shapes.

Why would this woman have been masturbating on camera in Jacqueline's bedroom? No, I already know my girlfriend has fucked through the equivalent population of an entire apartment building, or neighborhood, or city. She's an omnivorous sexual beast who thrives on the pleasures of the flesh. But why would she include the videos of those people in the external hard drive she intended to give me? She must have copied the folder deliberately; she named it in relation to the one that contains the videos she recorded of us fucking.

My stomach tightens with dread. Was Jacqueline trying to hurt me, to humiliate me?

I pause the video, then I roll my chair back and take a deep breath. Tomorrow, when I meet my beloved again, she'll bring up the contents of her external hard drive, even the videos she included of other women. I suspect that she'll ask me if I enjoyed them. My girlfriend wanted me to watch, so I'll have to endure my jealousy and go through the recordings.

I restart the video and focus on the screen. This blonde, possibly of Swedish descent, belongs on a Californian beach from back in the seventies. Her tanned skin gleams in the soft lighting. She's lying on her back while she strokes her long, sand beige legs, then she moves her hands up to her chest and fondles her breasts. She rubs between her fingers the pink nipples that poke out from her pink-brown areolas.

I hear myself breathing hard as I stare at those swaying tits. I imagine her sensitive little nubs bursting with pleasure as she squeezes and pinches them.

The blonde slides her legs apart, displaying her shaved, honey-colored pussy. As her fingers circle the clit, she reminds me of a cat rubbing her whiskers with her paws. Her head lolls back for a while, then she gazes up at the camera through half-lidded eyes. She licks a corner of her mouth in a twisted smile as she spreads her swollen, moist labia for the audience.

The rest of the clip consists of the blonde in a trance, arching her back, grunting and producing swishing sounds as she fingers her pussy. The way her crotch has been dripping onto the comforter, widening a darkened patch, makes me wonder how many women's fluids that fabric has absorbed.

I close the video, then rub my eyes with my palms. My skin has heated, a drop of sweat is rolling down my back, and my crotch is tuned to white noise. I'm running a fever that only an orgasm can cure. I'd also like to eat chocolate ice cream.

I attempt to breathe through my nose, but it takes me a few seconds to calm down. Are women like this Swedish blonde the kind of supermodels that Jacqueline got used to fucking? Compared to that babe, I'm a runt. Her curves are the stuff of legends, while my body looks at best like the result of shoddy genetic engineering. I can't compete with such women. I don't even want to compare myself to them, it hurts too much. I'm just a simple spinster with simple needs: I like breasts. Big, round, juicy breasts with pointy nipples. I want to grab them, fondle them, suck them. I want to sink my face between two colossal mounds of tit-flesh, then squeeze them together so their milk gushes into my mouth until my stomach bursts.

In the second video, someone has shifted the camera tripod closer to the headboard of Jacqueline's bed, to focus on the upper half of an Asian woman's body. She's lounging back against a collection of fluffy, faux fur pillows. The turquoise one held my head during my first date with Jacqueline, when I lay sideways on her lap.

I'm admiring the woman's glossy, dark black hair, gathered in two loose ponytails that cascade down her naked chest. Her breasts are small and firm, but they stand out like two exotic fruits.

She laughs, which startles me. She grins as she speaks to someone behind and a bit beside the camera.

"Oh yeah, I love to watch them squirm," she says in Spanish.

Although she keeps talking, I can barely retain the words, as if I caught part of a familiar song on the radio but I would need a long moment to recognize it. I must have missed some context, because the woman is relating eating broccoli to anal sex.

She bends over and reaches towards the center of the mattress. Her fingernails are painted a shiny wine red. When she lies back on the pillows, she's wielding a wand-like device. She turns it on so it vibrates, then she cycles through the settings until the massager buzzes in an alternating pattern.

As if someone had asked a question, the woman smirks and answers that she'll have to cut it off in twenty minutes, because she has left potatoes cooking in the oven. She shifts her ass further up on the mattress, revealing a dense nest of pubic hair. She grabs a bottle of lube from the nightstand, then she opens the cap and squirts a dollop onto the head of her massager.

My palms have turned clammy, and my nipples are growing erect. I fast forward through the video; I fear that Jacqueline will appear and join this Asian streamer that is hotter and more confident than me. Thankfully, the remainder of the clip consists of the woman chatting with her audience, or writhing in pleasure as the vibrator glides around her erogenous zones.

I get off my chair and pace around the office to calm down. My warm pussy is aching for attention; this must be the longest that I've stared at videos of such attractive ladies without pleasuring myself. I shan't allow them to seduce me.

Once I dare to sit down and continue torturing myself, I double-click on the third video. A girl, whose body only technically could belong to an eighteen-year-old, is lying on a lemonade pink quilt, a familiar one that features unicorns in a variety of energetic poses, drawn like they would appear in a storybook. Her smooth, pearl white skin spattered with freckles clashes with her wavy mane of burgundy hair. The cluster of tiny brown spots across her cheeks would by themselves make her heart-shaped face look flushed. As the only garment she's wearing, she has enveloped the lower half of her slender legs in knee-high, striped socks, that are white and hot pink.

Lost in pleasure, the girl is biting her round lower lip or releasing high-pitched moans. A trickle of drool dribbles from a corner of her mouth. Her nipples are hard little stones. Her ass twitches as she heaves herself with the heels of her feet, arching her hips off the mattress, to ram a candy red, jelly dildo into her drenched pussy, making squelching sounds, smearing her juices across her thighs.

Although the wall behind the bed is covered in a green screen that, through computerized magic, has been turned into the bedroom of some debauched duchess, the quilt alone reveals that this video was recorded in Jacqueline's spare bedroom. I can't hold that thought; I'm transfixed by how the girl's coastal cartilages and her abs protrude from her slim tummy as she wriggles and breathes raggedly.

The girl leers sideways at the camera. When she parts her lips, a curtain of saliva slides to a corner of her mouth.

"So fucking good," she purrs. Her breath is coming in gasps. "I think I'm gonna cum. Don't you wanna see me cum?"

A drop of sweat slips into my eye, irritating it, and I realize that my right hand has pushed into my panties and is sinking two fingers into my soaked hole. My heart is racing, my legs are shaking. This girl is a goddess of porn: beautiful enough to make me nauseous, so depraved that my clit throbs.

"Wh-what should I do?" I mumble.

The girl smirks as a glob of saliva dangles from her lower lip.

"Whatever you want! Suck your own tits. Finger your ass. It's all you, baby girl."

I whimper. The musky scent of my arousal is driving me wild. My pussy is squeezing hard enough to cut off circulation to my two fingers and turn them necrotic.

The girl moans and gasps. Her glazed eyes are rolling back. Her clit has become a bumped-up nub: hard and distended and sticking up. As she thrusts the dildo inside her, the squelches of her pussy and her juices mingle into a muddled, wet sound.

"Yes, keep playing with yourself until I cum. Oh, fuck! I wanna see your fingers in your pussy while I cum on my dildo!"

Her intoxicating voice turns a light switch on in my brain. I'm aware of every quantum of the electricity coursing through my body and of the blood pumping through my heart. The hair on my nape is bristling, my free hand is gripping the edge of my seat. A drop of sweat slides from my nose and lands on the girl's open lips, a glistening bead that her tongue lazily sucks into her mouth.

Jacqueline must have made a million euros solely from this lady's videos, whose pussy I'd love to bury my face in. I'd probably lick her asshole too. I wish I could be an astronaut instead of such a pervert, but I can't get myself out of this mess.

The girl pumps the dildo faster and faster in a jerky rhythm. Her eyelids flutter, she lets out little groans of pleasure. Her face morphs into an expression reminiscent of a bucking horse.

I've lost all sensation in the fingers of my right hand. My pussy has sucked it in up to my wrist, stretching my insides into a tangle, and keeps inching toward the elbow. I feel like my waist is being torn in half.

The girl's moans and groans have escalated into wails. Her whole body shudders and contorts, and her muscles contract in spasms, as she releases the pent-up pressure by spraying her girl-cum all over her thighs. The hot, acidic fluid dissolves the skin of her inner thighs, that ooze blood. She gasps for air as the spasms of her orgasm keep wracking her body. Her wails transform into gurgling sounds, her eyes turn pitch black. The girl rolls her head back, and from her open mouth gushes a torrent of semen that paints her face and hair daisy white.

Panicked, I yank my right hand back, and with its wet index finger I push the button that turns the monitor off. I jump to my feet then stagger away from the desk. I make the mistake of closing my eyes; the girl is out cold, lying in a pool of bubbling cum, her neck twisted. If I killed this maiden with my maladroit masturbation, I'll never forgive myself.

I'm drenched in sweat, my heart is beating in my throat, and my nostrils dilate with the deep breaths I'm forced to take. I stare down at my small hand, its slim wrist and thin fingers coated in juice. I rub my sore digits to stimulate them lest they grow more numb and fall off.

Am I in a pimp-fucking, pimp-dating situation? Did Jacqueline convince these women, and girls, to come to her apartment and masturbate so she could take a cut of the profits by selling the videos online? With such goods, no wonder she could afford to move to a quiet neighborhood in the hills of Donostia. She can probably afford to buy Luxembourg.

Did Jacqueline share the videos with me because she sought my approval? Does she want an accomplice?

I wipe the juice from my fingers on the backrest of Jordi's chair. I need a break, and a shower. I want to crawl into a large, comfortable bed, but I'm far from any home.

I'll buy a sandwich from the vending machine and leave the building for some cold air. Maybe I'll forget about Californian blondes, haunting Asian beauties, redheaded teens, and monster-sized jelly dildos.

---

Author's note: I've listened to Nine Inch Nails as I wrote part of this chapter, that turned out to be maybe the most sexually explicit of all the chapters I've ever written, which is saying a lot for me.

Yesterday I was forced to remember that I was shat out into this shitshow exactly thirty seven years ago. Naturally I spent the entire day bummed out. I went out to print some dividers for the Marvel Champions card game, then I forgot to take back the pen drive from the store. I tend to forget everything if I don't write it down or attach it to my body somehow; my brain doesn't work very well. Then I sat at a coffee shop and studied for an hour or so, because I have to pass a heavy public examination in a few months that will determine if they'll keep calling me to work. Not that I want to work, but you know how it is.

I'm enjoying Marvel Champions quite a lot. Far less mathsy and punishing than the Lord of the Rings LCG, and less infused with dread and chaos than the Arkham Horror LCG (AH used to be my favorite, but I grew to dislike the way you constantly feel like you're treading water. Besides, if you leave a campaign for a while and then return, you feel lost). Marvel Champions, their third LCG, takes the best parts of both games and streamlines the general experience. They also decided to add plenty of particular cards for each hero, which gives them a lot of personality. I'm not a big fan of superheroes, particularly what Disney is doing to Marvel as part of the overall marxification of Western culture, but it's still about superpowered people punishing bad guys, which is cool.

We're Fucked, Pt. 44 (Fiction)

Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better

---

A stone with jagged edges has lodged in my throat, but I manage to let some words tumble out.

"Anyway, why am I in the office at this hour...?"

Ah, I was supposed to wrap up a couple of tickets. What a drag!

I swig down the rest of the bitter latte, and as I return to my workstation, I drop the cup into the trash can. I plump down on my chair. I switch from YouTube to Visual Studio Code, then I scroll to the unfinished Angular function I was working on before the regular workday ended.

My monitor's light becomes the only illumination in the office as the night descends on Donostia, and presumably on the rest of the country.

My concentration has gotten increasingly cloudier. I'm stuck in a portion of the code. I arch my back and stretch my arms over my head. When I open my eyes, my gaze rests on the external hard drive that I hid under the screen. Did Jacqueline cram in there all the recordings she took of us having sex?

As I stare at the black, flattened cuboid with rounded corners, my breath thickens and my heart starts pounding harder. Why am I wasting my time programming when I could be watching Jacqueline and I fuck?

I jump in my chair and hurry to connect the hard drive to the computer. Its screen shows that the drive contains two folders: one named 'Us' and the other named 'Misc'. Inside the 'Us' folder I find a dozen MKV files identified by the date and the camera that filmed them, referred to as Camera A and Camera B. I won't tarnish the recordings by playing them on Windows Media Player, so I download VLC.

I take a deep breath, then I double-click on the first video, recorded during our first date. In the center of the frame, the ass that belongs to my past self is sinking into Jacqueline's flamingo pink comforter. I'm wearing the garment I bought for the date: a high-waist, tiered dress with puffed sleeves and a green floral pattern. On the edge of its square neckline, resting against my pale skin, the brass medallion glints in the white ring lights that the cameras were staring through.

I'd like to say that the woman in the video looks like a virginal maiden who spent her whole youth secluded in an attic only to be rescued by a loving, sexy mommy, but my past self seems dazed, almost drugged-out. Those sunken eyes are underlined with puffy circles, the result of a lifetime of stress and terrible sleeping habits. The four puncture wounds from the fork I plunged into my neck stand out as if I were flaunting them.

I cringe. Who could find such a wretch attractive? And why is she licking her wet lips lasciviously? Was I ogling Jacqueline's tits?

I checked out the video to get horny, but this resembles the recording of a therapy session at some psychiatric hospital. It will end with the flesh of my past self bruised and cut up, covered in dirt and semen.

I jump to a position much further ahead in the video. My past, naked self is lying sideways on Jacqueline's lap. She has covered her thighs with a turquoise toss pillow so I would rest on it, but at the moment my beloved is holding the back of my head while I suck on her right breast. The doughy tit-meat, that shines with sweat and saliva, is bulging against my cheeks. With my face buried in the fleshy mass, I couldn't notice back then that Jacqueline's narrowed, alluring eyes observed me lovingly as she massaged my scalp with a slow, circular motion.

"You look so relaxed, Leire," Jacqueline coos. "Like a baby about to fall asleep. But not just any baby, my very own little Leire. You are the best breast-sucker, you know that? I've never seen a woman suck a pair of tits with such dedication. Have your fill until you are satisfied."

My heart is about to burst out of my chest. My past self continues to suck Jacqueline's titty trying to extract every bit of sweetness from it. She slurps with an insistent, urgent sound, like the crackling of a fire.

From that first date of ours, I remember the exertion of my tongue's movement, the hard nipple's protrusion into my mouth, and the little noises that vibrated through Jacqueline's chest as she breathed deeply. After I close my eyes, I can recreate in my mind how it felt to trace the wrinkles and bumps of her hardened areola with the tip of my tongue. I experience the intoxicating contact of her warm hand as she caresses my neck.

"Your mother couldn't protect you from this wicked world, baby," Jacqueline croons in a pitying tone. "But I can, and you will let me. You know why? Because I'm the only person that can save you. I will help you. I will heal your wounds and wash away your tears."

I take a deep breath, inhaling the sweaty scent of her breast.

"I can't stand to be here anymore," I mumble against her hardened nub. "I don't deserve to be alive. My whole life is a lie, it's been a lie from the beginning."

Jacqueline sighs. She slides her left hand up along my thigh, then she squeezes a handful of my butt cheek.

"Oh, baby. You are not sick, you are not weak. You are simply a victim of a world that is not ready for you yet. I will teach you how to become what you want to be."

I'm about to drool, so I swallow the excess saliva. I need to loop my arms and legs around Jacqueline's warm, solid body again, and while I hold on tight, some helpful soul should weld my skin to hers with a blowtorch.

"Leire, I know about your life," Jacqueline says in an ominous tone. "Your parents were clueless, but they did the best they could with someone as rotten as you. And that makes you angry, doesn't it? To know that the couple that gave birth to you were so stupid. You think they should have been able to see what was coming for you. You are angry at them for their incompetence, and at yourself for having been born worthless. I understand. You feel ashamed that you can't blame your parents entirely because your life turned out to be shit, but they are as guilty of their own weakness and ignorance as you are of your endless cowardice. We all have been forced to play the roles that our parents decided for us, but do you intend to hold on to that role for the rest of your life?"

I can't read her face because she's embracing me tight. I've turned squishy in her arms, and she seems to enjoy my trembling: she's swaying with me like we're dancing.

"If you don't want to be the timid, sickly little girl that your parents made of you," Jacqueline adds, "then I'll become your mommy. I will help you get your revenge. You will learn to use your tits and your cunt as weapons that can defeat and even castrate your enemies. I will show you how to seduce your father so that you can destroy him for ever putting his dick into your mother and making you into this pathetic creature. I will show you how to fuck your brother so that he'll feel powerless against you. You can flaunt those beautiful, sexy assets to humiliate your sister in order to drive her away from you forever. You will learn to weaponize your body to cause the suffering that otherwise people would have inflicted upon you."

I groan, then I cough to clear my dry throat.

"What the fuck am I doing?" I wonder out loud.

When I open my eyes, the video version of my beloved has slid a finger down the crease of a pussy that during that first date entirely belonged to me. I need to feel an echo of Jacqueline's fingers plunging in and out of my human frame.

I lift my ass off the chair to pull down my trousers, and as I ease my panties down, I feel the fabric stretch at the top of my ass crack. My pussy breathes free like it has so many times during my self-imposed overtimes. I smile, savoring the sensation. I can almost taste the orgasm that for a few blissful seconds will blind me and wipe out my thoughts.

My past self clenches her thighs around Jacqueline's wet hand as she strokes my clit. Her cobalt blues are glimmering like a pool of dark water. An orgasm builds up in the collection of cells I inhabited back then, and the whole frame quivers and twitches as if in the throes of a seizure.

I'm imitating Jacqueline's caress with my right hand. My free hand moves up and down my chest, mashing my tits together so they spill into a mounding mass. But when the monitor's speaker plays my recorded moans, orgasmic cries like the dying breaths of a wounded beast, a jolt akin to an electric surge shoots up my spine. I hit the space bar to stop the video.

I stare unblinkingly at the frozen picture while a bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and my heartbeat dies down. I sit upright and rub my face. For a moment I fear that over the background hum of the computer I'll hear someone else's breath as that person, likely a guy, stands close, watching me.

I can hardly stand these warm pangs of guilt and regret. I'm a disgusting, shameless slut. I've turned into my mother.

A few seconds of reflection would have been enough for me to realize how far I've gone and how low I've sunk. Although I feel Jacqueline's absence like I lost a limb, how did I dare to disrespect her by chasing with my fingers the fleeting heaven to which she sent me effortlessly with hers? I should be saving myself until tomorrow, when I'll get to snuggle in her arms like a doll. Besides, I stuck around at the office to work overtime, not masturbate.

I pull my trousers up, then I shake my head and slap my cheeks to get rid of the warm-blooded stains of my arousal. After I switch to Visual Studio Code, I try to concentrate on the blinking cursor at the end of an instruction. I'll transform my brain into a code-colored jellyfish and save this afternoon from my desperate thoughts.

I type quickly to elicit the fabled flow state from my discombobulated subconscious. When I program, I become the captain of my ship, which I steer away from the rocks of runtime exceptions and from the infinite horizon of the programming sea, where no ship has ever dared to venture. It's been a long voyage, and I've gained plenty of experience along with my shipmates: the compilers and debuggers. The virtual machine also helps, I suppose.

I make the latest unit test pass and move to committing the changes to the repository.

"Commit?" my programming soulmate, Git, prompts me after I type my commit message. "I'm a sea creature that needs a port of call to rest in."

I take a deep breath as I revise the commit message; my pig boss snoops on these. But I delete it and write a new message: 'I'm a sea creature that needs a port of call to rest in'. I like the sound of that. Romantic. If I had come up with that line, I'd have used 'seal' instead of 'sea', due to the sexual connotations, but Git, who's a kind of sea creature himself, knows best in this domain.

"What's a port of call anyway?" I ask.

Git looks at me quizzically, widening his opaque, obsidian black eyes, as if he were contemplating this question for the first time. He laughs and crosses his arms over his belly.

"A port is a place where ships dock, where they can unload the goods they brought from faraway lands. When a ship is docked at a port, it's safe from storms, and the crew can rest until they sail again."

"I've figured out my port of call, then. My current destination is unexpected masturbation." I sigh. "My masturbatory habits have gotten in the way of my work. What should I do about that, Git, old pal? I'm desperate for relief."

Git strokes his scaly chin. I always abhorred the odd texture of his outer covering; it's made out of scales of different colors and sources stacked on top of each other. In truth, his scales must be made from the fabric of the seabed. The ones on his chin are a soft white that jazzes up to a sky blue towards the edges. When he furrows his brow, his scales darken and thicken until they become black as night, making his face look like a hole caulked with teeth. But what can I say? I must accept Git as he is, for as far as I know he lacks any human ancestors, and can't die no matter how many stones I throw at him.

Git holds his claws out.

"I recommend that you turn yourself into a sea creature."

I grimace, then I consider his wisdom. After all, some quality of water makes me feel like it will ease my throbbing clit, and that's exactly what I need right now.

"Alright, what kinds should I consider? Octopuses? Merfolk? Turtles? Sharks?"

"If you turn yourself into a seaman, your masturbation will become the ship's port of call, and your rest will be its destination."

"You make some sense. But can't I become a seawoman instead? Don't they have the most magnificent breasts?"

Git scowls as if he was chewing on grit, making his face look like a puckered orifice.

"I'm afraid that won't work logistically."

Crap. I had already warmed up to such a wild future.

"How about octopuses? They're awesome, they have eight arms. You can combine four of them together, which would give you an octopus with twenty eight arms."

Git smacks his lips disdainfully.

"If you ask me, octopuses are only suitable for scaring young children and arousing people with a fetish for tentacle rape. Besides, octopuses mate with the rhythm of the waves, and the only way to stop them is by shaking a rock into their den. They'll never learn to master their urges like humans."

I should shake a rock against my clit. It's worth a try to relieve myself from my unending horniness.

"That doesn't sound bad at all," I say dreamily.

"Do you want to spend your whole existence trying to eat every other octopus you come across? In the octopus world, that's a law, not a suggestion. I recommend you don't become an octopus, woman."

"Okay, how about octopuses with eight heads instead? That's surely more than enough."

Git furrows his scaly brow.

"Octopuses don't even have two heads. Look, I don't know what you're trying to say, but you aren't making any sense."

I give him a break. Git's claws are made for scratching, not typing. He must harbor some serious resentment after a lifetime of dealing with that disability.

"So it's back to masturbating, then? I have no chance of surviving in the middle of the ocean, that's why my port of call is masturbation. It's all I have to keep me sane."

Git laughs. The mirthful sound echoes around my office like a rainstorm, and the way his body shakes makes his scales sparkle like in the time of the dinosaurs, when life was better and the air clearer.

"I'm afraid that masturbating when you are in a programming state of mind will lead to errors. You need to find a way to program without your brain being flooded with thoughts of pleasure."

"Can you offer any advice unrelated to transforming myself into a sea creature? I'd be grateful."

Git narrows his eyes as he gazes into the faraway horizon.

"You could masturbate on the train while you're commuting home."

"The train?"

"The one that takes you to your apartment in Irún."

"Oh, I can't do that! I hate crowds. People make me nauseous. Besides, I've had enough of being stared at or touched by human beings. The only person for whom I make an exception is Jacqueline."

"Oh well."

"Don't get me wrong, I thank you for your advice, my dear Git! But I'd rather keep masturbating at the office than on the train."

Git shrugs.

"As a sea creature, I'm not qualified to make the decision for you. Besides, the best place for masturbation is the ocean."

I raise an eyebrow.

"The ocean? Are you serious?"

Git nods slowly as his expression turns wistful.

"Masturbation is in truth an oceanic activity. But if you want to explore such depths of pleasure, you first need to learn how to be at peace with the world."

I attempt to picture a landlubber like myself achieving such a feat. Should people masturbate while swimming?

"Who am I kidding," I mutter morosely. "I'll never be at peace with the world anyway. I'll have to figure out some other ways of exploring the depths of pleasure, so I'll know what's like to climax like a creature of the deep."

I doubt Git paid attention to any of my words. His smile suggests he's in a reverie involving underwater masturbation.

"Often you even come across an unexpected friend," he blurts out.

I frown, unsure of what he's implying.

"Are there unexpected friends for unexpected masturbation?"

"Indeed. Whales!"

I envision myself rubbing my clit while sinking in the blue. Suddenly, a whale's gravitational pull makes me flounder about in the churning water. The whale's massive head emerges from the darkness. I struggle to swim away, but a whale doesn't let go of a human it sees as prey. It just keeps laughing at you while you get sucked into its gargantuan maw.

"I don't want whales!" I cry out.

Startled, Git draws his head back.

"Why?"

"I-I don't like their eyes."

Git stares at me for a few seconds, then he nods sagely.

"If you are afraid of cetaceans, I can give you a stick to scare the whales away. It has the ability to shoot waves."

"A stick?" I ask in disbelief. "Is that supposed to be a weapon? Do you mean a gun?"

"It's a wave stick. Anyway, when you're at your most vulnerable in the midst of your usual masturbation routine, close to the moment of release, that's when you'll discover your unforeseen friends."

After I shiver from head to toe, I bury my face in my hands and take a deep breath.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I think I'm done with the fucking ocean, thank you very much! But clarify this for me: the world's largest mammal is a whale with a penis, right?"

"A sperm whale, yes."

"Alright, moving on. I was supposed to commit my recent changes and push them to the repository."

"Indeed. This is the moment of release."

My face is flushed as the blood rushes to my cheeks. I imagine a sperm whale leering at my breasts, inching ever closer to licking my nipples. I shake my head to break the spell.

"Will you help me or not, Git?" I ask in quavering voice.

His lips curl into a satisfied smile as the smell of his body oil wafts towards my nose.

"Do you want to commit in the future or do you want to commit in the past?"

I hold my breath, then I let it out in an exasperated breath.

"Past, obviously! Way before I was born."

Git nods, then he stretches his back in a dramatic pose.

"Done! Congratulations!"

My muscles relax. I've survived another nightmare. I want to hug him, but I restrain myself; his serrated scales are covered in a layer of fish-smelling oil.

"Thank you, Git. You're a true lifesaver."

Git beams, flaunting his pointed teeth.

"Glad I could help. A human with so much potential deserves to reach the surface."

"You could help me a lot more, though. Your wisdom is invaluable."

"You're being polite," Git says as he rubs absentmindedly the oil off some scales of his arm. "I'm a sea creature. I know very little about human problems."

"I've long ceased to be a human being," I say somberly. "I'm merely a programmer who often needs to rest after her long and intense voyages. So thank you for being my home port."

Git lowers his head, then he turns on his heels. The scales that cover his back show off a treasure trove of dents and marks. As he shambles away, I step forward and struggle to formulate an apology for the unforeseen hurt I've caused him, but he stops and looks over his scaly shoulder at me. A teary glow emanates from his obsidian black eyeball.

"I've never been to the ocean," he says hoarsely.

I'm shocked by this revelation, and the depth of his trust in me.

"Neither have I. The closest I've come to the ocean is when my mother took me to the beach a few times in my childhood. That place was the end of the universe as far as I was concerned. And the only reason she brought me there was because I had to pee."

Git smiles sadly, then he sighs.

"I hold out hope, though, that one day the two of us will taste that brine."

My friend waves goodbye. As he leaves, his body shimmers with the ever-changing patterns of light on his oily scales.

I lean back in my chair and gaze at the screen, that displays my current commit: thirty or so lines changed in a couple of files. When I take a deep breath, the air tastes salty. An odor of rotting fish stings my nostrils.

I need to think about how to decouple the functions involved in asynchronous user authentication so I can write unit tests for them, but my brain refuses to cooperate. I roll my chair back and stretch my arms.

I should make my way to the bathroom and wash my face with cold water. Maybe I'll splash some on my neck. I feel like a layer of sand is stuck to my feet.

When I open my eyes, my gaze rests on the external hard drive I hid under my monitor's screen. Why am I wasting my time programming when I could be watching Jacqueline and I fuck?

---

Author's note: I've been on a funky mood ever since my last contract ended. Mostly dazed, though. I should start studying for my public examination, but there's too much writing to be done.

I may have been inspired to go on a tangent because I recently discovered Caroline Konstnar and her 'The Jellyfish Song'. I've also enjoyed this unrelated skit as well as this sillier and shorter video.

We're Fucked, Pt. 43 (Fiction)

Link to this part on my personal page, where it looks better

---

Jordi is checking the contents of his briefcase and Jacqueline is putting her designer coat on, both preparing to leave the office for the day. Although I'll stick around to work overtime, they are spreading their vibe, making me feel like the weekend has already started.

My beloved wraps her red scarf around her neck, then she leans in towards me and hands me an external hard drive.

"Here, so you won't miss me tonight," she whispers furtively. "Along with its USB 3 Micro-B cable, in case you don't have one."

I know what any external hard drive associated with my girlfriend contains, but I would have figured it out due to the look she's giving me: that of a pervert sharing naughty stuff with a fellow connoisseur. A sudden heat ripples across my skin.

"And call me tomorrow morning, alright?" Jacqueline adds.

I want to thank her for the gift, but I'm blushing, so I just nod. I grab the hard drive and slide it under my monitor screen to hide it from prying eyes.

As Jacqueline straightens her back, Jordi joins her at her side. An anchor grey, heavy wool coat covers his impeccably ironed white shirt and black pants. In the reflection of his glasses, my shy self looks like a criminal about to crack.

"I hope you manage to rest enough this weekend, Leire," he says with a warm smile.

I've whined repeatedly about the soreness in my muscles, and our intern is the kind of guy that cares about other people's pains. I shrug and smile like a kid that emptied out the cookie jar.

"I doubt I'm going to let her rest enough," Jacqueline says proudly, "because we are going on a date. But she'll be alright."

"Nothing to worry about, then," Jordi says.

Our boss exits his den and locks the door behind him. My shoulders tense up. I lower my gaze and pretend that I need to brush dandruff from my keyboard. I must appear insignificant to dissuade him from approaching me and putting a hand on my shoulder, or patting me on the back, or groping me in nastier ways.

As Ramsés passes by our table, he wishes us a good weekend in the monotone voice of someone too busy to care. I'm glad he seems as eager to part ways with his employees as I am that for a couple of days I'll be free from his enslaving ways. However, he still takes time out of his afternoon to glance at me. I feel naked.

When the last of our boss' footsteps vanishes, I exhale in relief.

Jacqueline's gaze turns from the front door to me as if she had expected our boss to return and annoy us again.

"That's our cue to leave."

She squeezes my shoulder, then both my coworkers head to the exit. Before the door closes, she shoots me an ardent look through the gap. I smile back at her.

Until tomorrow, my sexy, glamorous queen.

I slouch in the chair and close my eyes, but my mind presents me with a vision of that fiendish boss of ours moving his greasy hand down my back, then daring to fondle my tits. My cheeks burn with shame, and a rage surges up inside my belly. How many times has he forced me to visualize him fucking me into submission? He'd get on top of me, smack his lips and drool on my face. I can almost feel his weight pushing me down. His fat cock would plunge into my womb until he filled it with a messy load of baby batter. Then he would order me to clean him with my tongue. He'd make me relish in the humiliation.

I wish I could punch that bastard in the face hard enough to dislodge his brain, but I've never hit anyone in my life. I'm afraid I would get punched in return. Besides, I'm a pitiful shell of a person, ill-equipped for murder. I'm only armed with these skinny arms and legs, and a rabid swarm of depraved thoughts. To the majority of people, I must be almost unrecognizable as a human being, so the most frightening thing I could do is reveal myself to them.

I'm in deep shit, a deep shit in which I've sunk my teeth and claws as far as I can. I shouldn't have to sit at my workstation five days a week and endure this torment. I guess I need to find some other job that doesn't involve me having sex with the boss. Ramsés would replace me in a matter of weeks; plenty of women out there would love to be manhandled by that dirty pervert.

I've begun to sweat. I rub my face with both hands, then I sigh deeply.

"I'm alone," I say to the empty office.

I listen as the doors to other offices along the hallway open and shut. Streams of footsteps march out eagerly. On the parking lot, a bunch of car engines start up.

I scroll through YouTube idly while the business park closes for the day. Once the world has quieted down, I stand up wearily and leave to get a coffee from the vending machine. Now that I'm pushing my body to walk, its muscles and bones complain of soreness and exhaustion. I feel as if I've been dead for a month. Last night instead of sleeping I took two long naps; I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, but when I returned to Jacqueline's bed, her eyes were glowing like beacons of desire. They seemed to be asking for proof of my devotion. I ended up with my face buried between her thighs, blowing my breath into her hot vagina. The wetness came flooding out of her and spilled down my face and throat. If both of us had fallen asleep then, I wonder whether I would have suffocated or drowned.

Lost in a reverie involving pussy juices, I only notice that a straggler is passing by because the guy clears his throat. He caught me yawning. I cut it short awkwardly, then I lower my gaze to the faded vinyl floor, that reflects the fluorescent bulbs. Over the last few years, this floor has received plenty of my sweat and other bodily fluids. I should apologize to it.

"Have a good weekend," the guy says.

What business is it of this stranger if I'll enjoy my weekend?

"Yeah," I reply hoarsely.

My body shudders as I imagine the stranger's rough hands groping my naked flesh. He'll stroke my breasts, my hips, my belly, my inner thighs. He'll then plunge his swollen cock deep inside me, and I'll welcome it with all the gratitude of a filthy slut. His frantic panting and my whimpers will be muffled by the sound of my skin smacking against the vinyl floor.

I shake my head to make its demons dizzy, then I suck in air and quicken my pace.

When I make my way back to the office while holding a hot latte, I lock the door behind me. The fluorescent lights are beaming their pale glow on the three computer screens. I stare at the daisy white walls and ceiling, the porcelain white desk that seats three people, the row of three frost white utility cabinets, and the cloud grey worn carpet that some arcane presence vacuums regularly under the cover of darkness.

Regarding the furniture, only the three futuristic office chairs suggest that someone equipped with an ass has ever visited the room. Otherwise, this space was built for robots or monsters, or possibly robotic monsters. You could waste a thousand years here without anything of value happening, and once you disappeared, no recognizable proof of your presence would remain. It's a lair for the undead, for those who spend their lives with their eyes closed.

I turn the lights off. I've never understood why people prefer such brightness at work; I need the environment to be dark enough to promote a mental state where I can concentrate for hours on end. I'd prefer it to look like midnight in the deepest dungeon.

Now that I've turned this room into a shrine to solitude and depravity, I saunter over to the window as I hold the hot cup of latte. I take tiny sips while gazing past my reflection in the glass. The coffee tastes as good as it smells, which is to say, like mud. But the caffeine should kick in soon enough, or at least I'll delude myself into believing it does.

"What a crap latte," I say to nobody, although part of me hopes that my words will reach some ghost that will possess my body and force me to quit this job.

Above the boxy, three-story high building on the opposite side of a tree-lined path, one that Jordi and Jacqueline traverse during the lunch breaks as they head to their usual restaurant, the indigo sky of this October evening lacks any looming threats, except for a couple of cumulonimbus clouds dyed tiger orange. Such a haunting sight humbles me and risks convincing me that life can be pleasant for brief periods of time.

I close my eyes. I picture myself as a hawk soaring over a field of sunflowers. The leaves are as broad as my wings, the tall stalks as thin as my legs. I'm heading towards some snowcapped mountain peaks in the distance.

I remember that I'm supposed to sit down and keep programming. I've tortured myself by working overtime often, so why do I feel different today? I used to stick around at the office in the afternoons partly because I can only focus and relax properly when I'm alone, but I was also reluctant to return to my dreary apartment in Irún, where I would face the heap of garbage bags, as well as the dust that has gathered on the furniture and on the pile of unplayed board games.

Wasting my evenings here I communed with my natural relationship with the world, that the voice and presence of other humans would mask otherwise: under all the noise, I was alone, always and forever alone, inching ever closer to the brink of madness. I was a speck of dust drifting in the breeze. Even those who had noticed me would forget me in minutes. Once I died, I would be gone as if I had never been born; the universe would have corrected the terrible mistake of having contained me in it.

My mother had given birth to me while she was already pregnant with another child. Instead of a gift of life to be kept and treasured for years, I was always a bastard unwanted by everyone, even my own father, who only considered me for a couple of years and then forgot about my existence. He was the kind of guy who got rid of his garbage by throwing it out of the window.

The sight of my frail body sent my mother into despair, as she was cursed with a second mouth to feed. She refused to let me suckle her breast, and she hid me away in a corner of the house like a filthy rag. I spent most days locked away in an old armoire.

When I turned seven years old, my mother gave me up to an orphanage. There I contracted scabies, and my hair quickly transformed into snakes. The boys poked fun at me for lacking a dick. The matron punished me every day, by sending me to scrub the floors with my nails while wearing a black sack over my head. I grew increasingly terrified; I knew that when I turned sixteen, I'd be sent to a whorehouse to become a prostitute for old men.

A month after my sixteenth birthday, the matron informed me that I would have to become a whore to pay for my care. I refused, but she had me drugged with a large dose of valium. I was taken away in the middle of the night and dropped off at a brothel, where I was stripped and given a shower. The doctor that inspected my body declared that my genitals were useless. As the pimp shepherded me to my assigned bedroom, I heard women screaming from the nearby rooms, but the pimp said that it meant they were happy.

I wanted to cry out in rage at this universe that had stolen my life away, but instead of doing so, I injected myself with a lethal dose of horse tranquilizer. As I lay dead in a morgue, my mother visited me and told me that I was dead. After an awkward silence, she put her arms around me and added, "I'm very sorry that all of this had to happen to you, but now you'll have plenty of time to reflect on what you did wrong to deserve it."

My mother kept the promise of a small headstone on my grave to mark that I had existed. It read, 'Leire XXX. She lived only for herself, and died to prove that she didn't matter.' I had told them to write instead, 'Lived like a whore, died a free woman', but they hadn't listened.

I was never sad to die; I was never happy to live either. In the vacuum that remained, I became a drifting piece of nonsense floating in an infinite void.

The hard, sharp edges of many memories are carved into the skin of my chest, the rough ridges of a painful wound. Now I'm a miserable whore that has to keep working until death visits her again, but in between all the pain and sorrow and regret, at least someone in that putrid world out there will wait for me to rejoin her, and when I do, she'll wrap her arms around my rotten old self and suck the marrow from my bones.

Tonight I'll return to the transitory apartment for which I'm forced to pay, but tomorrow I'll go out on a date with my woman. Later on I'll sleep in a place that feels like a home. When my eyes open in the following morning, I will take in the face of the woman that I desired since I first saw her. My heart will beat in joy, my mouth will curl up in a smile. I'll gaze into those cobalt blues like a prisoner looking up at the sun for the first time after decades of confinement. I'll be moved, I'll be shaken, I'll be amazed. My pussy will get wet; I'll feel it throb and pulsate inside my panties.

The annoyance and loneliness of having to work overtime has become meaningful: it will free my mind from some of the pending tasks so I can think of Jacqueline that much more. No matter the nonsense that life slings at me, I can open up to my beloved, and she'll listen.

I wasn't a monster after all. I wasn't born from the dirt and the mud, or the darkest recess of a cave where demons live. I didn't emerge from an egg with a bloodied shell, nor was I formed from the decaying matter of a rotting corpse. It took nine months for a woman's body to grow my bones and flesh, and my birth wasn't conducted in the basement of some run-down, crumbling ruin, but in a hospital room. The mother was a human instead of some genetically engineered chimera created through an experiment that combined the cells of various animal species. I was a baby like anyone else: a daughter, a son, a sister, a brother. A human mother must have smiled down at me, kissed me, then fed me a mixture of warm milk and blood. I became a child who wanted to be held in the arms of a woman who would love me, who would cry over my grave.

---

Author's Note: as I mentioned in my previous update, I've been working on this scene for a good while. It was supposed to be at least twice as long, but when I woke up this morning I got the feeling that I could divide it into at least two chapters, because they would feel independent enough. Getting through the final iteration has proven that point, so here's the first part.

I've been listening to plenty of distinct stuff recently. Last year I listened to PUP's first five or so songs from their album 'Morbid Stuff' like a couple hundred times, and songs like 'See You At Your Funeral' are the reason why. Very down-to-earth fellow. I also love this song by Glass Animals. As I have done for literally twenty five years, I've returned to the only album in Spanish, my native language, that I have ever listened to repeatedly: Los Rodríguez's 'Palabras más, Palabras menos', due to songs like 'Diez años después', 'La puerta de al lado' and 'Todavía una canción de amor'. The whole album is timeless, though. I even dared to listen to Joanna Newsom's old stuff (whom I've long suspected to be autistic as well, not that she'd ever confirm it).

I think I went on enough in the update I've linked earlier about the recent nonsense I've had to deal with. I hope you enjoyed this one, Jen (namedropped out of nowhere!). No reason why you or anyone else would enjoy this chapter more than others; I just thought it would be fun to freak you out. Anyway, see you all later, bitches.

Life update (04/22/2022)

Link to this post on my personal page, where it looks better

---

I've been working on the latest chapter of my ongoing novel 'We're Fucked' for about a week. Maybe more, but I've also spent most of the last two weeks dazed, so I can't be sure.

Last Saturday I woke up at six in the morning to go to work. As I was traversing my city's dimly lit main street, some guy in his early twenties, with most of his head shaved except for a bun, crossed the road to my sidewalk. He was walking further ahead as he kept shouting to nobody, just to wake everyone up I guess. The only concrete utterance I recall was him yelling, "[This city] is a pile of shit!"

We were the only two people walking down main street at that hour, and when he noticed me, he turned towards me and said in a mocking tone something to the effect of, "hey you, I have a question", as if he was going to blame me for how terrible this city has become. Or maybe he intended to rob me. In any case, I quickened my pace as I ignored him. When that shithead realized that I wasn't going to pay attention to him, he followed me for a bit while calling me all sorts of names except pleasant ones. As I headed towards the train station, I turned a corner and lost him.

I agree that this city has turned into a cesspool, partially due to scum like that guy. I don't even want to get into the two rape attempts near my house (one real bloody), the break-ins (one attempt at my place, in the middle of the day), that time someone nearly broke a bottle on my head as I was reading in front of a coffee shop, etc. I would kill so many people if I could get away with it.

I don't drive; I'm such a maniac that I would likely crash the car deliberately or not in less than a week, so every workday I take a train to Donostia. After that shithead shouted insults at me, I got on my usual train car and tried to distract myself by reading some manga. I was thinking that with my luck, that son of a bitch was likely going to take this train as well. A couple of minutes later, a young guy with a partially shaved head and a bun entered my train car and sat down relatively close. I paid attention to him in case I would need to defend myself, but he was behaving normally, very unlike the hoodlum from before. A couple of stops later, another young guy with a partially shaved head and a bun got on the adjoined train car, so I figured that I must have come across three guys with the same douchey haircut in the same Saturday morning. Maybe that style has become popular for their particular demographic, but I wouldn't have had any reason to notice it until that morning.

Anyway, like last week, I've spent this one running around my hospital and having to talk to some of the doctors and nurses involved with about twenty five departments, because I was ordered to grab a tablet from each at a time, perform a factory reboot, configure it, test the apps that the medical staff use, and then return it. I couldn't browse the internet nor barely think in between each step of those tasks; configuring those tablets is a very involved process.

I had to visit the psychiatric building as part of my quest to fix all the tablets. I dislike walking into that place, because I always get the feeling that one of these days they won't let me leave. Anyway, the current nurse in charge of unlocking each door to let me into the B wing's staff room told me to go ahead on my own, because one of the nurses working inside that room would see me and open the locked door to let me in. The previous nurse left, locking me in the hallway of that wing, but turns out that the staff room was empty.

I ended up trapped in a hallway of that mental hospital during what seemed like rush hour (although I have no clue if they force the patients to stay inside their rooms at other times). I had the usual mumblers and babblers approach me to share their meaningless thoughts that their insanity didn't allow them to keep quiet. A teenage goth girl was sitting at a table near a corner of the hallway; I seem to recall that she was looking around anxiously, but on the table she had an open notebook and a book about vampires. I wish I had dated one of those when I was her age (or a bit older), honestly.

A short, middle-aged woman with grey hair approached me, looked up at my 6'1'' self and asked with a smile, "Are you an actor?" I considered not engaging, the same as with most of the others (I have more than enough dealing with my own craziness), but I answered, "Nope, just the computer guy."

Later on, when I survived the encounter, I reflected on her words and found them quite chilling. Hell, I am an actor with about thirty years of experience! A very proficient method actor, I'd say. Certainly much better as an actor than as an IT guy. But the crazy woman presumably didn't know that.

There was also this guy in his late twenties that they referred to as Hassan, who kept pacing up and down the hallway with a fiery look in his eyes. It wouldn't be the first so-called extremist that I've had the terrible displeasure of meeting, as I've been involved in the local systems of care for people with disabilities as an autistic person.

I don't know for sure if that guy was one or not, but I know that this country treats extreme religious fundamentalists, usually of the Islamic variety because they are the most murderous (overtly at least), as merely mentally ill and at risk of societal exclusion; therefore victims of the environment, their own brains or whatever. In a month-long course I was forced to attend so a center for people with disabilities would hook me up with a job trial (I ended up working for free as a programmer for six months, then they refused to hire me arguing that I wouldn't work well in a team), one of the students was a guy who admitted that he didn't have any disability, but he was as virulently fundamentalist of his particular Abrahamic curse as one can be without blowing himself and others up. He derailed every damn class by going on about how our society was rotten and we needed to convert to his religion. He got real nasty about it too. I would have sued the people who organized the course if I had the resources and/or thought that the effort would change anything for the better.

For me the most telling moment I recall from that course was a discussion in which a guy with some intellectual disability was asked if he would date a girl with a disability. He argued, very meekly, that he would rather not, because he already had serious trouble dealing with his own issues, and would prefer some support himself. A couple of women blasted him for his opinion, tagging him with a couple of -ists that, as intended, shamed and shut the guy up. The Islamist bastard spoke next, about how he went out every night to pursue girls in night clubs. "When women say no, what they really mean is yes." The same two women who had berated the previous guy now giggled at this creature's comments. For me it remains as one of many "we are utterly fucked as a civilization" moments that I've had to experience throughout my life.

How would the pre-Constantine Roman Empire have dealt with this? In a way that would have guaranteed their own survival, for sure. But the Christianized Romans eagerly opened the borders to foreign tribes because they were convinced that Christ would pacify them, and when Rome was sacked, the leading theologian/"thinker" of the time seemingly commented that Romans shouldn't care that Rome fell, because they should only be concerned about the survival of Jerusalem. I get so angry about this shit. Start your own god-fearing societal nightmare in another planet, you bunch of fucking cultists, and leave the rest of us in peace. On second thought, take the marxists with you too.

When that nurse that had locked me in that hallway reappeared and saw me standing there surrounded by crazier people, she apologized and ushered me into the staff room. The young nurse got real nervous; I guess she had fucked up bad, and if I was a tiny IT woman instead of a big guy eager for any excuse to destroy others physically, I could have gotten assaulted or molested or who knows what. Afterwards, this nurse made sure to follow me to another staff room on the opposite side of that floor, and then unlocked the exit so I could abandon that nightmarish place. I returned a couple of hours later, though. One of the babblers repeated, "Here's the computer guy again."

So much shit happens every day at a hospital that I'm well aware that any minor lapse of judgement could cause serious issues or even kill someone. One of the departments that I visit regularly killed a baby by mistake (this is a matter of public record, and there's a lawsuit pending). It seems that a recently graduated nurse injected the baby with a lethal dose of some drug. The following day one of her coworkers called our office partly attempting to blame us because the involuntarily murderous nurse had listed the dosages incorrectly in the program (grouping them by week or something like that), and she was too unexperienced and/or incompetent to realize what she was going to inject into that kid. We don't program that software, nor even have anything to do with explaining how to use it. It's one of the basic programs; it contains the databases of the medication that all patients must take, and they come preloaded in every PC and tablet hooked to the network.

As I've had to do plenty of other days, today I also entered the network closet located in the waiting room of that very department where the dead baby's parents must have received the news that a recently graduated nurse killed their spawn. I don't want to imagine that scene. I don't even want to remember many, many moments from my own life, but my brain bombards me with inopportune flashbacks regularly.

Anyway, my current contract has finally ended, so tomorrow I intend to finish the latest chapter and upload it. I can't wait to get rid of this one, honestly, because I get increasingly antsy when the days pass and I can't conclude one of these segments. Unfortunately, due to work nonsense, I've spent all afternoons so exhausted and dazed that each day I've barely managed to devote an hour and a half or two to write. My own personal standards have grown over the years, so I usually iterate on a piece until it feels memorable enough by itself; some refuse to flow properly for hours, sometimes days.

I'd love to say that now that I'm blissfully unemployed for about a couple of weeks (unless they call me in because one of my coworkers stubbed his toe or something), I'll be able to write from the moment I wake up until I collapse from exhaustion at night, but unfortunately I have to start studying for the next public examination. To keep working in the public sector I have to pass these exams every couple of years or so, until they hire me permanently, which will never happen because I can't speak Basque and I never will because I despise the fucking language (and to get half of the required certification, others have had to give up on reading or watching anything in any language other than Basque for about a year, and that would kill me, quite literally).

I'm also turning thirty seven in a few days, more than twice as old as I ever expected to become. I'm not happy about it, so to placate myself I've bought a few board games that will arrive soon enough. I picked 'Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition', 'Marvel Champions' and the second edition of 'Pax Pamir', although now I wish I had picked instead the second edition of 'Pax Renaissance', but I had already paid. They seem to have really good solo modes. Leire can't fix her own shit enough to at least play through her pile of board games, but I have a better head on my shoulders than that dreadful wretch.

Why did I write this? Why did you read it? Who cares.

A Hedgehog's Advantage (Poetry)

Link to this poem on my personal page, where it looks better

---

Throughout these pointless thirty six years of my life,
I've been amused by the strange dance people engage in
When they take a passing interest in shitty old me.
The more they know me, the more they twist their minds
To figure out how their frameworks can wrap around
The prickly, festering spherule that I represent.

Their picture of me is a mirage they conjured up
Of a prisoner who willingly keeps the world outside.
Some believe they can fix me through their efforts,
Some create elaborate fantasies to find me worthy.
So much energy wasted in hopeless endeavours
When they all get sick of me in the end.

Narcissists who want to bring me out of my shell
To gloat in their own virtue towards their inferiors,
Brainwashed social workers for whom I'm a good boy
Because I fit one of their protected categories,
Aging mommy types for whom the world is divided
Into vulnerable kids and threats to kids
(But who won't offer me their tits to suck on),
Dutiful servants of a made-up god
Eager to propagate their Abrahamic curse
(Western civilization died with Rome).

The more they know me, the more they loathe themselves.
The more they know me, the more I despise them.
They wish me to vanish from their lives,
I wish them to be erased from the face of the earth.

I'm chained to this physical frame
That I didn't choose nor identify with
(A living corpse, a lump of organic waste),
And to keep it breathing and moving,
I've had to tether myself to others,
But in my mind I've always been alone.

I've survived on my own until now,
I'll survive on my own until I die.
Through my misguided attempts at love I learned
That nothing could fill this cannonball-sized hole.

I'm a mentally ill junkie
Constantly aching for my next fix.
I'm a suicidal wannabe
Machine-gunning serial killer.
I was born to spread rot
Upon this ruinous world.
To feel okay for a single moment,
I'll betray or abuse whoever needs to fall.

I hate my mother who killed me.
I loathe my father who should have.
There's no point in any of it;
I've seen all the stars
And they're just holes.
No life before my birth,
No life after my death.
In between there's only me
In an endless stream of pain.

If anything I do, say or write
Bothers you enough to care,
Please, do me a huge favor
And go to hell.

We're Fucked, Pt. 42 (Fiction)

Link to this chapter on my personal page, where it looks better

---

The scents of jasmine and rose petals are wafting from the adjoined bathroom. Jacqueline has turned off the light, but candles are burning in crystal bowls at each corner of the bathtub. They are casting flickering shadows on Jacqueline's body, highlighting her nakedness with a golden hue, accentuating the translucence of her pale skin, as she soaks in steaming bathwater. The upper half of her thick breasts is floating like a pair of fleshy icebergs, and her peachy-pink areolas are two round lollipops.

My beloved is dripping scented gel on her bare chest with one hand as her other one smears the oily substance slowly in circular motions. Her queenly face is relaxed. Her wet hair hangs loose like a waterfall of polished obsidian. Half-lit by the candles, her cobalt blues are sparkling as if painted with stars.

"Hey, baby," she says mellifluously in her soft French accent. "I hope you are feeling better."

Jacqueline looks like a living sculpture, an angel descended on Earth just to torment me with lust. My heart is pounding like a crazy drummer, my crotch is aching with need.

"I'm hungrier now," I answer huskily. "I want to rip your tits out with my teeth. But this doesn't look like a shower scene."

Jacqueline, as she continues soaping herself gently, narrows her eyes and smirks.

"I figured that I could splurge on a full bath with my ravenous baby girl. So get in quick. Let me take care of you."

Her sultry voice makes every nerve ending in my body prickle.

"I-I hope you accounted for Archimedes' principle..."

Jacqueline's gaze roams all over my torso as I take off the tank top I grabbed from her spare bedroom. The leggings are sticking to my legs, and refuse to come off easily even as I push them with both hands. Once I'm holding my panties, I give them a good sniff until I remember that I'm not alone, then I toss them aside.

Jacqueline's bare knees emerge from the water as she spreads her legs apart. I catch a glimpse of the tuft between her thighs.

I climb into the tub, then I lower my ass carefully into Jacqueline's lap. The warm, silky smooth water feels wonderful against my sore muscles, although I wish it could wash away the shameful mess inside my head.

Jacqueline wraps her arms around me and pulls me tight against her chest, pressing our bare skins against one another. I melt into her embrace. I'm resting on the world's most comfortable pillows, except for the two hard nubs digging into my back.

My skin tingles all over. The scents of jasmine and rose petals have enveloped me, making me drowsy. I close my eyes and let out a contented sigh.

"I want to eat you like an apple," Jacqueline whispers, then she nibbles on my left earlobe. "But I also want to eat you like a taco."

"Eat me however you want, or whenever for that matter."

Her fingers trace over my ribs and hips.

"You've worked hard, you deserve this. Don't you feel much better now?"

I'm reluctant to admit it. It feels unfair to do so.

"In the same way I would feel relief after someone stopped punching me in the face."

"Except that exercise will improve your life. Sure, it can bust your knees if you are sloppy with your form. But apart from that, your body will thank you for your effort."

I consider telling her that such workout sessions will improve my life: by killing me. But the hot water and her warm body have turned the tub into a comfortable womb.

"I'll have to trust you on that, but I'm so weak that I almost died from drinking a glass of water. It will take me a while to recover from the ordeal."

Jacqueline chuckles softly. Her nose tickles my neck as she nuzzles into it.

"One of the rewards about exercising with you will be smelling this sweat on your skin. And some other day we'll just lay towels over the bed and get busy with each other right after the workout. Wouldn't you want to lick the sweat clean off from all over my body?"

I caress the hot skin of her calves.

"You are telling me about smells... Yours is so good that I risk turning wild, an animal that only wishes to bury itself deep inside your warm cunt. In turn, once you spout your hot load on my face, you'll be the one to smell the result of my labor."

Jacqueline's laughter fills the bathroom while her breasts jiggle against my back. When she responds, her breath has turned heavier and her voice has a dreamy edge.

"Tell me, how would you describe my smell?"

I lean back and take a deep whiff of Jacqueline's throat.

"It's summer, green grass and freshly-cut flowers. It makes me imagine myself living in a world of a myriad of colors and eternal sun. You're an old school rose that has survived a terrible storm, but has kept all its beauty and charm."

She hugs me tight.

"My my, I thought the workout routine had wrung you dry."

"I haven't exercised my mouth except through talking."

"Also, you were mostly describing the shampoo." I feel her quickened heartbeats, but her voice sounds sober as she whispers in my ear. "I only intend to make you healthier and stronger. You know that, right?"

"That's the only thing you intend...?" I ask roguishly.

Jacqueline giggles. Her hands slide down my hips and grope at my thighs.

"Well, I'm going to turn you into an unrecognizable beast, one that will be able to survive in the jungle of our bedroom. I will teach you how to live and thrive in there."

"Good. I was already thinking of thriving in your jungle."

"We're on the same page, then. So please, don't give up."

I can't compute how much Jacqueline must have grown to care about me. Just how many hours does she plan on diverting from her far more valuable self to improve a woman-shaped monster?

"I-I feel like it's always about my weaknesses," I complain in a guilty tone. "Let's talk about you instead, Jacqueline! What do you even do at the office? You have Excel open most of the time, but I have no clue what you put in there."

Jacqueline sighs.

"If I were to explain my job, you would find me more boring than you could ever imagine. There are no thrills, no dangers involved. My coworkers are nice, though."

"Alright... Tell me about how you went into sex work."

Jacqueline freezes.

"It's not really that much fun to talk about," she finally says.

I reach back to stroke her cheek with the pad of my thumb.

"It doesn't have to be fun. And I'm interested in everything about you, Jacqueline. You can just let it flow out."

I can tell she's smiling because that side of her mouth has contracted against my hand.

"Well, it's mostly complicated, and I can't figure out how to explain myself to you. One day you will understand why. That I can promise."

I interlace my fingers with hers, then I lift her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles.

"When you are ready to open up, I will help you walk through that jungle, just like you do for me."

Jacqueline relaxes. I hear her gulp down, then take a deep breath.

"Anyway, it's about time I clean you up," she says gratefully.

Her breasts push me forward as she reaches for a shampoo bottle at the edge of the tub. She squirts the liquid into my hair, then she slides both hands in to rub the shampoo into my scalp. I close my eyes and concentrate on the tingles that her kneading fingers are providing.

A sudden memory from childhood pops up into my mind. As a kid wracked by nightmares, my mom would wake me up and rub me down with an icy-cold washcloth. I had begged her to stop rubbing me with her fingers, because they felt as rough as the prickly surface of a cactus. Once I calmed down, she told me to go back to sleep. Half an hour or so later, if I dared to open my eyes in the darkness of my bedroom, I could make out the dim contours of my mother as she sat silently in a chair beside my bed. I always woke up with a chill on my skin and a sour taste on my tongue. I knew that if I had let her, she would have rubbed me down every night of my life until I got old. I would have grown accustomed to her cold washcloth and prickly fingers.

Jacqueline's hands won't leave any marks on my skin. They won't leave me cold and trembling. They will instead make me warm all over, dry away every drop of sadness I've carried inside me, and burn a trail of flames between my thighs.

My beloved grabs the plastic bottle of shower gel. Once the lather has covered her hands, she begins working them on my neck and shoulders. She massages my facial features with gentle strokes of her fingertips. She slides her hands down my arms, soaping them up. She asks me to bend over, then she starts spreading the gel all over my back. Her fingers slide into my ass crack and massage me there.

I'm getting drowsier. I'd love to slip under into dreamland and let my girlfriend figure out how to carry me to bed from the tub.

Jacqueline's arms wrap around my sides to cup my breasts. I flinch and let out a surprised gasp.

"What?" she breathes in my ear as her fingers knead my tit-flesh. "Don't you like me fondling this pair of beauties?"

"Maybe it's just the opposite..."

She rubs my nipples until they harden to a point that almost hurts. I'm biting my lower lip and shuddering. Jacqueline squeezes my tits together, lifts them with a gentle motion, then focuses on lathering them until they are slick.

I'm breathing deeply through my mouth and remaining still; Jacqueline should play with my body however she sees fit.

Her hands slide down my torso trailing her fingertips along my sunken abdomen, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

"You're as thin as a starved pig," Jacqueline says languidly.

"I admit that my body lacks the layers of fat required to keep warm, but did you need to compare me to a pig? Couldn't you say that I'm as thin as a ghost?"

"I won't compare you to dead things."

I sigh.

"Anyway, it's because I only ever eat sandwiches at the office. But my taste buds play a game of cat and mouse with the flavors of mayonnaise and ham as I go about devouring the stuff."

Jacqueline chuckles.

"Aren't you afraid that you might become as truly emaciated as a starved pig?"

Although I laugh, I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at the ocean that stretches for miles and miles and miles below me. The only thing that can prevent my plummet into the abyss is the strength of the rope that Jacqueline has tied around my waist.

"Before that happens," I answer calmly, "I'll eat you up."

"You may as well. I can't have you wasting away from lack of proper nourishment, can I? If you fail to eat properly with your mouth, I'll have to force feed you with my own."

After I shiver from head to toe, I squeeze my thighs together.

"You know, I might accept that kind of punishment."

Jacqueline's right hand stops at my belly button, and her index finger explores it like a wet, burrowing tongue. While I squirm, a moan escapes my mouth. I get as embarrassed as if I had burped in front of a crowd.

"So you have two sensitive little buttons, huh?" Jacqueline purrs, then she turns my head towards hers and presses her lips to mine.

My waterlogged labia must be oozing with juices. I can't wait for Jacqueline's right hand to slide between my thighs, for her fingers to make circles around the entrance of my pussy, pressing ever so lightly onto my clit as she works a digit inside me. I can almost feel my vagina tightening and spasming around the intruder.

When Jacqueline's tongue leaves my mouth, I want to cry like a baby that has dropped her pacifier.

"You have such a lovely body, little piggy," Jacqueline whispers as her cobalt blues hold my eyes in place. "But enough eroticism. You need a good scrub."

My mind's gone woozy; I can barely tell what's happening except that my girlfriend is scrubbing my skin with a sponge. The bath has reduced my pain so much that it seems almost inconceivable that twenty minutes ago I was writhing on the floor while moaning in agony.

Jacqueline turns on the shower, and begins washing my hair with the handheld head.

"Aah! You are a goddess!" I mumble against the spray of water.

She giggles as she sluices some of my hair over my shoulder.

"Are you talking to me or to the shower?"

The warm stream cascades down my face like a blessing from the heavens.

"You are the goddess of mercy, for I was dying of boredom until you came along. Also, you smell like the sea, or like the ocean itself."

"Now you're losing it, not that I mind it. But the ocean is a place filled with sorrow, isn't it? With the sadness of those who have drowned in it."

I can see them, as well as the currents that have claimed their lives. Their bodies are sinking to the ocean floor, and all the while their arms are trying to grab on to anything they can. But the ocean's scent is the reason that at times I can feel at peace. Whenever I step into its waters, my mind gets washed and cleansed from all the grime and muck that the world deposits on it every day. That's why I always wear my bathing suit on. Meanwhile, other lost souls float on the waves, their corpses rocking against the surface like empty plastic bags.

Thoroughly rinsed, the both of us step out of the bathtub. We get busy drying each other with fluffy towels while the water drains. The pleasant sensation of being so clean has made me all warm and fuzzy.

Jacqueline unhooks a white robe. I thought she would hide her nakedness with it, but she lets the garment hang from her shoulders all the way down to her ankles. The fabric slides off the sides of her jutting breasts. Her twin teats are pointing defiantly at me, as if questioning why I am gawking at them instead of latching on.

I snap out of my trance; Jacqueline has lifted my chin with an index finger. I swallow the lump in my throat.

"Jacqueline, you are more beautiful than all the paintings in the world combined."

"Truly? Don't I have the barren body of an old lady with sagging tits? Aren't you sad you fell for a woman of my age?"

"No way! You are Aphrodite incarnate."

Her long lashes flutter, and a gentle smile adorns her lips.

"She wasn't the goddess of mercy, was she?" Jacqueline sighs. "I swear, nobody loves breasts more than you do. Let's go to bed, Leire."

I want her to pick me up in her arms and carry me, but instead she holds my hand and guides me out of the bathroom into her bedroom, which I'd prefer to consider ours. The space is dimly illuminated by the moonlight that comes through the windows and the balcony door. Jacqueline lets go of my hand and sits down on the mattress. As she shifts further up towards the headboard, the way her breasts bounce sends a wave of warmth through me.

Jacqueline spreads her legs, displaying her pubic hair. It's dark, thick and silky. A stiff cock juts out from between her thighs. The mushroom head glistens with pre-cum. I blink and the cock is gone.

I imagine a purple butterfly spreading its wings from that smooth bush to make a splash of color against the pale skin of her belly.

Jacqueline pats the mattress next to her.

"Come here and give mommy a big hug," she beckons me sultrily.

A sigh escapes out of me, and with it, for a brief moment, all the troubles in my life.

I climb onto the bed. The scents of soap and shampoo and Jacqueline's own womanly musk envelop me. I lower my face to rest it on her belly. It feels hot, familiar; the center of an oven where bread dough rises.

Maybe a couple of minutes later, I shift my body up until I'm lying down beside Jacqueline, who wraps an arm around my shoulder to pull me closer.

My free hand slips down her torso to her pubes, then I venture further until I find the soft mound between her legs. I stroke the length of her silky labia. I tease them open with my fingertips. An intense heat emanates from her folds, so hot that I wish it would burn through my flesh. When I sink two fingers inside her pussy, they get swallowed whole in a velvety sea.

I need to nuzzle against Jacqueline's wetness and inhale deeply as if savoring a fine wine. I need to lap up the juices that'll dribble down her inner thighs, down to the last drop.

Jacqueline clenches her thighs together, then she closes a hand around the biceps of my free arm.

"Not now, baby," she whispers.

Her words paralyze me. My remaining strength leaves my body. Has she finally gotten sick of getting touched by my slimy self?

Jacqueline tugs on my arm gently so my fingers slip out of her insides, then she embraces me tightly and cups my head against her neck. Our bodies are pressed together from chest to belly button.

As I sink into Jacqueline's arms, I listen to the beat of her heart. Her sweet scent permeates my nose and fills my lungs. My eyes are growing heavy, and I let them flutter shut.

Right now I could use a blinding orgasm, one that would leave me panting, one that would erase everything that's happened in my life. But this warmth feels real good too.

---

Author's note: putting this chapter together has taken me an absurd amount of time in comparison with recent others. Throughout, instead of Japanese shoegaze, I've been listening to some of my favorite songs from 20-25 years ago. Songs like:

-Modest Mouse's 'Baby Blue Sedan', that, if I recall correctly, references in part Bukowski's 'Ham on Rye', my favorite book of his.
-Modest Mouse's '3rd Planet', the song that launches Brock's best album. That one remains for me one of the best breakup albums ever.
-Modest Mouse's 'Edit the Sad Parts'. This song has a special significance for me: it became the main theme song for my beloved previous novel ('My Own Desert Places'; I guess there's no harm in some self-promotion). The whole process of pushing that novel out feels now like a strange dream. I retain more vivid memories from the events in that novel than from real-life memories, and some of those moments from the novel still hurt like a bitch (I miss you, A.).
-Weezer's 'Across the Sea'. This one is unique, heartfelt, and very near and dear to my heart.
-Weezer's 'Only in Dreams', one of their best songs, particularly the final four minutes.

This last Monday I started a new contract at my usual hospital. They were in the middle of updating tablets for several buildings and virtually every medical department, so I ended up visiting I don't know how many departments, chatting enough with the local nurses and supervisors so they would cooperate, then configuring the tablets from zero, testing them and returning them back to their departments. As if that nonsense hadn't been enough, these last three days we've also dealt with three big issues that required further hours of nonsense: two lying users that didn't want to admit they had messed with a core PC in Pharmacy; a busted router in another hospital on the other side of town that the guys from HQ wanted us to go and check, although it was entirely their problem, and had already planned on sending their guy anyway; and a monitoring center in the ICU that stopped working, and that the locals also intended to turn into our problem although we couldn't do anything about it.

I only tolerate my job there because I'm not employed full-time; for example, this time they've only hired me for a couple of weeks. When I'm unemployed, I can't leave my place for more than an hour before my anxiety requires me to return home immediately, and I simply don't speak in person with other human beings that aren't providing a service. But in three days at my job I've ended up having to deal with twenty or so new people, interactions that provide me nothing but anxiety and general despair, given that I have to act my way through all of that; incidentally, acting was the only activity I remember fondly from my schooling years. I also do it all the time when I write. But as an autistic person living a non-autistic-oriented life, you either learn how to act or you don't survive. I can't simply be myself, because people don't tolerate when you remain quiet and refuse to look them in the eye.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you haven't, well, does it truly make any difference to me? Probably not.