Jon Ureña's Blog, page 62

Odes To My Triceratops, Pt. 1 (GPT fueled short)

NOTE: this version is outdated. Follow the link below for the current one.

Link for this short on my personal page, where it looks better

---

As the boy's loved ones feared, on April 8, 2009 the Santa Cruz County Coroner ruled the 17-year-old's death a suicide. His name, William Griffin, didn't mean anything yet to the public at large.

On April 16, 2009, at the funeral in Watsonville, William Griffin's parents Lisa and Ken welcomed two strange new visitors to their family's life: the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog along with his wife Angela. Many have seen this as a sign of fate, but the Griffins did not. And a few days later, on April 21, 2009, William's mother Lisa was brutally murdered.

William Griffin lived in a rough inner-city suburb in Grand Rapids, MI. When he was ten he got accidentally sucked into a TV during the sitcom called ‘Garfield’. The episode in question featured a new character, the Triceratops named Lorenzo (Triceratops being a large, sharp-toothed, three-horned dinosaur). William therefore met not only the major characters of the ‘Garfield’ series, but also the aforementioned Triceratops named Lorenzo, who would end up exiting the TV along with the boy and becoming another member of his family. Out of respect for William Griffin’s passing, the episode where Lorenzo the Triceratops was introduced didn’t air until about a year after William died.

The surviving family wished to leave behind painful memories, but as they hurried to move they discovered William’s treasure trove of poems and cassette tapes. William’s step-father Ken made them available to the public. It didn’t take long for the lives of not only Will, but also his neighbor Claire Javernick and William’s best friend, the Triceratops named Lorenzo, to come into focus as they were featured in documentaries.

The following texts were composed by a fourteen years old William, some as lyrics for his songs, others as simple poems, or both.

LORENZO by William Griffin

He has a small black mouth
Like a bottom
His skin is brown
Like a beet
His horns are round
Like a pepperoni pizza
He's just twelve
He's just eleven
He's just my best friend
My favorite friend
He's just twelve
He's just eleven
But he's also twelve

His horns are round
Like a pepperoni pizza
And they grow in the middle
And they're as big as cans
They're aching for a fight
He's just eleven
He's just ten
He's just my best friend
My favorite friend
He's just eleven

LEMONADE AND WILLIES by William Griffin

Lorenzo is so proud and tall
He walked by me at the school gate
He pointed at me and said,
"I am a triceratops. I am so cool!"

A ponopodon is what he found inside his throat
He swallowed it and out came light
He gave me another ponopodon and said, "Have a bite!"
But the ponopodon was horrible
And it bit me
And gave me the willies

MY FRIENDO LORENZO by William Griffin

Lorenzo is a triceratops
He eats clams and lobsters
Laughing crocodiles and lions of hell
He's eating me to bits
Mister fish, he's eating me
Lorenzo is a triceratops
In the basement of his throat
Inside of hell
You will find a baby doll

BETTER DEAD THAN BLIND by William Griffin

My friend's name is Lorenzo
He’s a three-headed Triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat

When I'd sit around and play
I'd play my guitar
And he'd come over and sit down by me
I'd play a song

My neighbor she is a blind girl
And she can't read nor write
We are just like friends
We'd sit on her front porch and talk

While I sat on her front porch and talked
She said her name was Claire
And she said her daddy and mommy died
And she said she'd rather be dead than blind
Then she went into her house

I said, what was that?
Then she came out and asked me
If I'd like to go home with her
I said, what the hell?
I said, what was that?
She said her daddy and mommy died
She went in and closed her door

I said, what the hell?
I said, what was that?
She said her daddy and mommy died
She went in and closed her door
Closed her door

CLAIRE WITH A C by William Griffin

Me and my friend Lorenzo left on a motorbike
Toward the woods of the North
We lived in a house
Filled with all the old books

Claire (Claire with a C) lives next door
Lorenzo (who's a Triceratops) with his green eyes,
Purple skin and parrot-red hair
I'm William, fourteen years old
I can read and write, I'm terrified of my sister
(We have the same mother, our father is deceased)

Claire (with a C) she can’t read and she can't write
I don't think she knows how to shave
Lorenzo (who's a Triceratops) takes care of our parents
Claire (Claire with a C) never comes to our house
She eats everything in her mama's pantry

Lorenzo (who's a Triceratops) drinks blood to eat
We watch Stephen King movies every Saturday
On our projector screen

Claire reads scary stories to me
Or she’s making them up because she can’t read
I found out Claire is a vampire
I couldn’t care less

FAIRY TALE TOO REAL TO BE by William Griffin

Claire is Claire is Claire
She walks and talks and wears a dress
Claire’s a fourteen years old
Fairy tale too real to be

Lorenzo is Lorenzo is Lorenzo
With a portal to hell inside his throat
Lorenzo is the Devil’s spawn,
Is the beast that does not eat

It’s hard to describe Lorenzo
What a stunning day that was,
The day Lorenzo came to us,
Came to us from God above

Lorenzo is sweet and sappy,
Has a voice that chimes like the bells
Lorenzo’s tongue is sweet like honey
Lorenzo lives on old tobacco leaves

I AM YOUR STEGOSAUR by William Griffin

I am a Stegosaur and so is you
A piece of me in every creature,
Like you and him and all the people
We all have a heartbeat
And a soul inside

We like you, Claire
And since we're here we might as well be glad
And say a prayer, for just because you're blind
You don't have to be stuck in a place
Where there's nothing to see

There's lots of beautiful things in the world
Lots of beautiful people
You're one of them

When the sun comes out,
The grass shakes off its dander
When it rains, the clouds roll in and out
The mountains and the rivers
The sky and the earth
The stars and the planets
One big beautiful living organism
Beauty never dies
We will never see each other die

The color's gone from your eyes
But not your heart

FOR CLAIRE, WHO CAN’T READ by William Griffin

You know, you're the special one
The one who took a gander
You're the love of my life
And you're a girl that's cute
She's just fourteen years old
And the words we write together
That I write I mean
Because she can’t read
Are nothing but lies

She's seen the future
And the past is past
I said to her, "Don't forget your roots"
Because I learned you gotta grow
So you ain't no bigger than a matchstick
But you still got your roots

A girl, she's got a good heart
She's just fourteen years old
And the words we write together
That I write I mean
Because she can’t read
Are nothing but lies

You know you're the special one
The one who took a gander
You're the love of my life
And you're a girl that's cute
She's just fourteen years old
And the words we write together
That I write I mean
Because she can’t read
Are nothing but lies

And we only make each other up
Never gonna be the truth
So you know that you're the special one
The one who took a gander
You're the love of my life

MY NEIGHBOR, THE DRAGON by William Griffin

Hello, my name is William
My best friend, I've known him all my life,
He is called Lorenzo
I'm not sure how to pronounce it,
Since he talks with horns

I'm writing this letter to Claire, she is my beloved,
I love her with all my heart
My love is deep and everlasting
She's beautiful
She is the smartest girl I have ever known
She's fourteen,
With hair of pink,
Skin of chocolate,
And eyes of grey
She's a dragon,
Instead of a Triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat

Every morning she wakes up on the couch
In her underwear
She grabs her backpack
And walks in the direction of school
I’ve never seen her there
I call her a dragon
Because she’s not a Triceratops
And her lunchbox is inside her throat

Her name is Claire
She has black hair
Her skin is golden
And her wings are purple

LET ME EAT YOUR STUFF by William Griffin

Claire, so beautiful
With such a sweet smile
Even at 14
She's in love with me
We spend every minute
Like lovers do
She takes me to a place
Where no one can see us

I saw her first!
It was last Thursday
In my backyard
When I was doing chores
And I saw my friend Claire
For she was standing there
She was so beautiful
Such a beautiful smile
And I just couldn't resist

She made me this toast
With strawberry jam and butter
And made me some cookies too
Sweet cookies I've never had
I ate all of her food
Even her share
I watched as her eyes
Lit up like a candle

PART GOLDFISH by William Griffin

She must've been part goldfish and part salt lick
Because she could swallow letters and numbers

My friends told me they had seen her pet goldfish grow
Just six inches long, it could read and write

She carried a paperback to school in her backpack
The letters and numbers had traveled through her mouth

Other kids wondered why she couldn't read and write
Even though her eyes were clearly dead

She would just say that's alright to all of her friends
'Cause I can read and write, that's my only friend

Claire is gone and I miss my beloved friend
Because she has her eyes open just for me

BELOVED LOVER by William Griffin

Her skin is white as paper
Like a pearl
Her body is flawless
And she's just fourteen
But she's already so much
She's the love of my life
She can't read
She can't write
She's just fourteen
She's so much more
And she's my favorite day
My favorite friend
My favorite day

NO MAGIC POTION by William Griffin

Triceratops, I love you more than anything
(But I'm the only one who sees your white behind)
All the girls adore you
And they want to touch you

Claire, if you want to, you can have me
For I'm not ashamed
I hope you’re not ashamed

Triceratops, there's no magic potion
To chase off
Those lonely feelings

Claire, there's no such thing as eternal bliss
Or a hell of aces
Only eternal regrets

WAIT ABOUT A MONTH FOR LOVE by William Griffin

It's not like my heart has ever been full
In all my life
Until I met your two eyes
It's a matter of fact that I'd like to have you
And that I'd take any length of time
I'd take it all if it means
I can lay my head on your breasts

But what would I think, if you should tell me
That you'd prefer if I didn't come at all
Can I tell you how scared I was, how scared I've been
Every time I thought about you
My step-father told me don't play around,
Go for what's worth having
He said when a man has a real woman
He's got to wait a while
He said it was about a month

I asked my step-father, what do I owe to you
He said the man who says I ought to settle for I love you
Is the man who can't make me quit
I asked my step-father, what am I missing
He said, there is a place where the most evil men are
And they just laugh at us down here on earth

And what's going on in heaven, I don't know

HELPLESS AND PURE by William Griffin

Claire's a girl so helpless
Claire is blind
Claire's a girl so pure
Claire is blind
This love won't end in pain

PLEASE, PLAY WITH MY GUITAR by William Griffin

Claire's really a sweetheart
As pretty as a picture
She just doesn't wanna get wet
But wait and see

She's a human,
But what's behind
That painted
Fake face

If Claire had eyes
She would look into mine
I'd let her see

I'll teach her to read and write
I'll teach her how to play
With my guitar

This is from William's diary:

So I look at Lorenzo and I'm just mad 'cause he's gross. All I know is that he has the Mark of the Beast inside his throat. When he laughs it's rancid and crumbly and when he cries it's just creepy. Lorenzo's ugly and he makes me afraid. When he's with me, he uses his fist as a piano. I try to pretend that I don’t care when he stares at me like that. Deep down inside, I wish that he would leave me alone, but every day when I look up, he's there. Lorenzo is worse than a dog, because he can think as well as show his affection. Now he leaves pictures on my pillow every morning. I can smell him.

THE BURNING HEART INSIDE YOUR THROAT by William Griffin

We'd go underground in a coffin
Dressed all in black
We would hug and kiss the stars
With our heads in a casket
And in her worst dreams
We would dance in the dark

Lorenzo wears a Jesus apron
Claire's belly button is her heart
Now he's missing his eye
My fault

Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah ah ah

I'm shaking off the free rays of dying stars
I am trembling at the breath
Of the burning heart
That's inside your throat

Like time, like the cosmos
This eternity with a physical body
Will one day become a tear
In the eyes of the deepest heart

I know you're in my head
I know you are alive
I'm shaking off the free rays of dying stars
I am trembling at the breath
Of the burning heart
That's inside your throat

Oh aah, hey aah aah
Hey aah, aah, aah, hey aah
Oh aah, hey aah aah
Hey aah, aah, aah, hey aah

We'd go underground in a coffin
Dressed all in black
We would hug and kiss the stars
With our heads in a casket
And in her worst dreams
We would dance in the dark

Oh

I know you're in my head
I know you are alive
I'm shaking off the free rays of dying stars
I am trembling at the breath
Of the burning heart
That's inside your throat

'Girls Are Made For Walking' by The Huntmasters

Hot women and crazy girls turn on everything
I'm in love with hot women and I'm addicted to girls
Crazy women and girls are like cigarettes
I can never get enough

I've never understood the attraction
between girls and guys

Girls of the '80s
Sweet little girls
All the '80s chicks
Possibly crazy chicks
I'm guessing crazy chicks

Went to my local shopping centre
This girl came right to me
Had some light coloured jeans
"Do you want to look around?"
"OK, sure"

The next day at work
She came right to me again
Had some blue and white stripy socks
"Can I show you around?" I asked her
"OK, sure"

And another day
Her sister came to see me
Had a red T-shirt
"Will you show me around?" she asked
"You know, I'd rather not do that"
'Cos then I'd probably get hurt

Girls of the '90s
Hot little girls
Huge things and fat things
Loud little things
Waves of blonde hair

My brother picked up this chick
She was my size
She asked, "Do you want to go to a club?"
"Yeah, sure"

We went to this place
And you'd be surprised what went on
She stripped naked
It was as if I'd known her all my life

And then she sat down next to me
Just like that
I looked at her and all I saw was jelly
I don't remember how I got to that bed

There was a girl in the pool
And she wasn't wearing any clothes
And I looked at her and the hairs on my body just stood up

Girls of the '00s
Sexy little girls
Lazy little girls
Girls with perfect teeth
I'm feeling like a king

One day I found myself
In the bar of my local shopping centre
There was a girl standing next to me
She had blonde hair
I asked her, "Do you want to go somewhere?"
"I'd rather not"
"OK"

Then I went and had a burger
And it was fantastic
"You should go out and do something," my mum used to say
"No, no, I'd rather not"

Girls of the '10s
Sweet little girls
I'll give you one thing about them
They're still sweet little girls

I'll look at a girl
And all I see is clothes
And hair and fat things
And of course... she's got a nose

On the way back to my hotel
I was walking along this street
It was a nice little street
There were cars and people
And then I noticed this girl
She had a red T-shirt

"Are you OK?" I asked her
"Yeah, I'm OK"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you"
"That's alright, I don't mind"
"Would you like a drink?"
"Sure, I'd love one"

She looked at me
And she smiled
Her eyes were blue
Her teeth were nice and white
And then I looked at those cheeks
And I checked out the rest of her face

We drank this cool soft drink
We walked along a bridge
It was a really nice bridge
It was around 8 pm
And then I went back to my hotel
I never saw her again

Back in the day,
When I went out with my friends
I could always pick out the girls who wanted me
So my mum would ask,
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going with the girls"

Nowadays, I get to choose who I want to go out with
And I don't feel like I'm always on the losing end
So I don't give a shit if I'm late
Or if I don't go back home
When my friends ask, "Who did you go out with?"
I just say, "Oh, my mates"

I find girls very exciting
I just love girls, I'm a girl lover
Girls are just so pretty
I love the way they walk

Girls are made for walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking

Girls are made for walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking

Girls are made for walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking

Girls are made for walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking

Girls are made for walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls are made for walking
Walk, walk, walk, walking
Girls

The single 'Girls Are Made For Walking' was recorded as the winning entry in the 2003 "MTV Push Artist Of The Year" competition. In 2004, the song won "Best New Artist Of The Year" at the TopOfThePops.com Awards, and for four consecutive years (2005 to 2008) the song was voted number one in MTV's "Fantastic Four" contest. 'Girls Are Made For Walking' was also awarded "Single of the Year" in the 2003 NRJ Music Awards, was chosen by British Radio 1 as their "Record of the Week" and also earned "Bowler Of The Year" in the UK's Mojo Awards in 2003.

Albums
-Darkening Day (2001)
-Motionless and Invisible (2003)
-14 (2006)
-Silent Places (2012)
-Through My Eyes (2014)

Final cover for my latest novel "My Own Desert Places"

The contest for the cover of my latest novel, "My Own Desert Places", has finished, and only one nailed for me its odd tone, a mix of dark comedy, drama and supernatural.



Now that I don't have to worry about the cover any longer, I will continue with my first full-length revision of the novel, which is close to the size of 2,2 novels. Revising texts you haven't read in a while is a good way to get reminded of how stupid you are, because I average around 70 notes to change stuff by chapter. I also found three places so far in which I will need to add further details from zero. Revising the novel until I'm happy will likely take me a couple of weeks. Then I'll have to figure out how one self-publishes stuff to Amazon and the likes these days, and whether I'll need to market it somehow. What a bother.

My mood has only worsened since I stopped writing frantically every day, so I'll also need to deal with that shit.

My current favorite submission for the cover of my latest novel

With one day and eighteen hours to go in my contest for the cover art of my latest novel, "My Own Desert Places", this is by far my favorite at the moment:

Ongoing contest for the cover art of “My Own Desert Places”

I’m already in the process of revising the e-book version of my recently finished novel “My Own Desert Places”, which will remain online.

I have started the contest for talented designers to figure out what cover would be appropriate for this strange tale. You can folow the contest in the following link:

Contest for the cover art of “My Own Desert Places”

Post-mortem for "My Own Desert Places"

I have finally finished my favorite story of all I have written. It took nearly 179,000 words, which I have written frantically in slightly more than a month. If one considers the average length of a novel to be 80,000 words, this story ended up reaching the length of 2,2 novels.

The concept and the few associated notes for this one had been waiting in my archives since maybe 2013. I knew it was about a ghost who falls in love with a living woman and that possesses someone else’s fresh corpse to date her. Beyond that, I was sure of two things: the ending, which I have dreaded writing from the very first part, and that the protagonist’s new life was a mess he would need to navigate, due to how the previous owner had screwed it up.

During creative periods, I tend to come up with quite a few interesting concepts which I’m quick to write up and archive for whenever I end up using them. Sometimes my brain works in the background some more details about those stories. It just happened that most of the details that my subconscious came up with for the initial iteration of this story didn’t excite me. I pictured Asier’s life as being involved with some sort of drug ring, gambling, or some similar illegal enterprise. I believed that the story needed that kind of external pressure, because the protagonist would be focused on seducing slash deceiving the so called impact character, which in narrative terms is the character that changes the protagonist the most. However, I just wasn’t interested in figuring out how to pull off Asier’s previous life convincingly, and I had more pressing stuff to write.

However, after I finished writing my last short story, “A Poor Player”, I browsed through my notes to figure out which concept grabbed me enough this time. I figured that I could test the concept of “My Own Desert Places” for a single part and see if I enjoyed it enough. In that first part not only I fell in love with Irene’s personality, which was tremendously fun to act out, but I also thought of Asier’s particular sins which had ended up wrecking his life. I’m someone who has always had a terrible trouble connecting with others, so when I got to trust someone a little, the notion that they could betray me, and the fact that some did, ruined me significantly for future relationships. I loved the idea of Irene having to bear the burden of a behavior (serial cheating) that I despise, and it allowed to flesh out Irene’s behavior during her first life, mirroring Asier’s: the protagonist hadn’t been a cheater, because she technically never dated any of the girls she pursued, but she only cared about short-term pleasures, not thinking a bit about the long-term misery she caused not only to others but also herself. I have always avoided getting too attached to people, so performing this narrative could work out my personal issues, which is a significant part of why I have always needed to write.

In my original notes, the protagonist was a man. However, I have loved every single story involving body swaps (one of the last of those stories I’ve experienced being Shūzō Oshimi’s “Inside Mari”), so I wanted to contribute to that, and I think that the notion of a woman being in love with another woman but using a man’s body to seduce her, because that’s what the other woman is into, is inherently compelling. I knew very little about Irene when I wrote that first part in the last day of April 2021, but an inherent law of narrative is that most, or ideally all, of the symbols form a pattern that justifies why each of them is there. The symbols either complement each other or offer a distorted mirrored image of others. Usually the subconscious mind works this out in the background during the period when you are writing a full-length story, and you need to be alert and write those notes down. So Irene’s behavior could have been compared to Asier’s because that bastard needed to be a serial cheater, and Irene felt isolated and freakish and killed herself because she needed to connect with Alazne. Kateryna’s suicide was a case of mirroring: she trusted too much, was too good, but people fucked her over anyway. Ainhoa’s inability to accept whatever didn’t contribute to normality, and her implosion when she finds out ghosts are real, plays out differently in Alazne, who eagerly welcomes Kateryna’s ghost. There was also an unexpected mirroring in Kateryna’s brothers Oleksiy and Hadeon: the big brother was the tall, big one with anger issues, same as the protagonist, and Hadeon was the withdrawn person with troublesome fetishes and who loves anime, same as Alazne. I’m not sure what that means. In any case, there are tons of these symbols connected throughout the story, which I’m sure I will enjoy, or even fortify with further details, as I go through a full revision.

I write for fun, whether it involves silliness and acting out ridiculous scene concepts, or for the inherent fun of writing a compelling scene, even if it’s as depressing as they come. Because my brain doesn’t allow me to detach from my obsessions, for the time it takes me to write a full story I live vicariously through it. It feels as if I’ve constructed false memories. Related to that is the fact that Alazne’s demise has lodged a cold ache in my heart. I have always preferred imagined people to flesh and blood ones, after all, so I guess I fell in love with her along with the protagonist. Even before I wrote the first part of this story I knew how Alazne’s arc was going to end, but finally acting out those two scenes that encompass the climax of this story was one of the hardest creative endeavours I’ve gone through. Throughout this last month I tried to think of any other way it could end, but I never figured out any ending that felt more powerful and fitting.

This version of Alazne wasn’t my first iteration. After I self-published two books of novellas written in Spanish, my native language, I jumped into writing a far more complicated story that would end up having to be split into two books, not only because of the length but because its narrative allowed it. That story was about a guy who experiences hallucinations and who befriends a reclusive writer who is trying to write a novel which is barely more than fanfiction about someone she’s obsessed slash in love with. That reclusive writer was named Alazne, and was an Ukrainian refugee from Chernobyl who had been adopted by a childless local couple. There was plenty of stuff about her failing to connect with others, feeling permanently alienated, etc. Ironically, the person that Alazne was in love with was a woman. Anyway, the story was a novel within a novel, because the story that the co-protagonist was writing was also fleshed out. I ended up writing a whole first draft, a very loose one, of what should end up becoming the first book of two. Writing the second book would have required me succeeding even minimally with the two books I self-published (both for scenes involved in the narrative and because I couldn’t imagine this new story selling otherwise), but I sold close to nothing of those two books. In the end, after I finished the first draft of the last scene of that book, I realized that it hadn’t been fun. I had writen that book to work through some troubles of mine, but I wasn’t enjoying it, and I didn’t want to revise that whole novel and then handle the second one. I never reread any of those drafts.

That first iteration of Alazne was Ukrainian originally because I had that connection from high school. For a while I hung out with a guy who was blond and blue eyed, and although there are virtually none of those around in my province, I didn’t think much of it. It was strange that the guy preferred to hang out with outcasts and losers like me. One day we went to his house and it only took me glancing at his parents to realize that the guy had been adopted; his parents were tanned, dark-haired, dark-eyed, probably from the south of Spain. Then someone told me that the guy had been involved in the Chernobyl incident as a baby or a toddler, which matched his age, and that his biological parents either died or gave him up for adoption directly. I never figured out anything more about that background, not even if it was true, but it remained as a cool story for the purposes of me becoming creative with it.

Plenty of Alazne’s issues are or were mine, of course. Her musical tastes belong to me, and I also love to play the guitar. For example, during the writing of this story I became temporarily unemployed (although I’m going to be recalled for the summer), which meant I turned into a recluse except for the times that I went out to the woods to play the guitar. In my mid twenties I also was diagnosed with clinical depression, along with Asperger’s syndrome (now considered merely high-functioning autism), and for many of my earlier years I had a terrible time handling the depressive aspects. Irene’s demise, that of failing to connect with people, dropping out of college, having an abusive job (which was worse in real life) and then wanting to jump off a cliff, were mostly my background as well, except that I stepped back and went to the library.

What comes next is me going through the thirty five parts and fixing minor issues like punctuation. Then I’ll have to figure out how one puts together an epub file these days. Afterwards I’ll spend some time walking around with the digital version of my story to perform a major revision, which will likely involve adding a few descriptions here and there and strengthening symbols. When I consider that done, which might take me a couple of weeks, I’ll spend 150-200 euros to commission the cover art, and I’ll upload the digital book to Amazon and similar services. I have no fantasies that any traditional publisher would want to bother with this story, not to mention that I despise the process of selling it to people who don’t care.

I have no clue what I might write after this. Maybe I’ll try to generate a bunch of new concepts through freewriting (asking myself about my likes and dislikes, what I’m passionate about, what bothers me, what I hate, etc.). What I have always had clear is that I shouldn’t bother writing a story unless I find the concept compelling enough by itself, and even then I wouldn’t invest my energies in writing it unless the process is fun. I have started and abandoned quite a few stories because they sounded good in paper, but they simply didn’t work in practice.

In any case, if anyone is reading this and has read some of “My Own Desert Places”, I hope you got something out of it.

My Own Desert Places, Pt. 35 (GPT-3 fueled short)

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

---

In Alba's final hour, she's kneeling with her back to the window of her bedroom while the noose she made out of a sheet is folded over her shoulder. The other end of the sheet is tied to the handle of the window. Under her ink black, greasy hair that she chopped off short, her snow white skin seems bloodless, as if every cell of her body had given up. Her umber brown eyes are downcast and sunken, emptied of tears, and her mouth is pale and droopy. None of her facial muscles move; facial expressions are meant for communication, and she has long resigned from mankind. Her ribcage stands out like a giant, bony insect trapped under her skin. Beneath the costal cartilage, the abdomen seems hollowed out. Her yellowed cotton briefs haven't been cleaned in a week. On her spindly and feeble limbs, horizontal, pearl-colored scars cover her wrists and forearms as well as her inner thighs, like scratches on the walls notched by a feral beast trapped in a cage. The self-harm scars on the inside of her left arm are crossed from the middle of the forearm to the wrist by a glistening, punch pink scar from when she cut her wrist artery, ruining her nerves and tendons.
Alba never noticed us, or only the same as other shadows haunting her mind. After all, it's already too late.
Her parents had painted her bedroom a lemonade pink. They had filled her shelves with plush toys. They had hung posters that read 'there is always a reason to be happy', 'be kind to yourself', 'run your own race', 'if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging', 'learn to love yourself', 'choose life', 'this too shall pass'. Alba had taken advantage of the time between the instances when either of her parents or her siblings would check on her, and she had worn herself out pushing her wardrobe and her table against the door. The furniture that block the entrance tremble along with the door as her family members pound on it and push it. Their cries for Alba to let them in reach me dulled as if I were floating underwater.
Alba closes her eyes. She grabs the noose with both hands and passes her head through it as if crowning herself. Then she tightens the noose around her neck and leans forward until the rope is taut. Alba lets her body hang limply, resting the backs of her hands on the floor.
We stand on both sides of Alba's dangling body as her face goes purple and snot flows out of her nose. Her breaths are heavy and shuddering, and her eyes tremble behind their lids. Her heart must be beating rapidly. Her flesh will bruise as the blood pools in her body.
Her ghost slides out onto the floor, falling from a tipped container. Alba is paralyzed for a moment, but then she props her forearms on the floor and looks up. She notices me first. Calmly, she lowers her gaze to her shadowy hands. She raises to her feet. Her ghost remains tethered to her hanging shell by shadowy filaments.
Her parents are screaming her name. The wardrobe and desk shake under a persistent assault.
"Hello, Alba," I say casually.
The newbie stares at me as if catatonic. I had wondered how she would react when she finally discovered that the afterlife exists and that a myriad of ghosts are trapped here. She cares as little about this new world as she cared about the previous one.
"So I'm dead?" Alba asks in a weary, monotone voice.
"Not yet. It will only take time, though."
Alba looks over her shoulder towards her body, and then she turns slightly when she notices the filaments that keep her attached to the plane of the living.
"How much time?"
"As long as those threads remain."
When Alba holds my gaze again, her indifference makes me narrow my eyes. She may as well be looking at a rock. Still, I know she has never been able to help it. I did hear her mother mention that even as a baby, Alba barely cried.
"Are you a ghost?" she asks.
I nod.
"Did you die in this house?" Alba asks in the same dull voice.
"Oh, no. We have been hanging out here ever since we came across you."
Her shoulders droop and she tilts her head as if I'm presenting her a tiresome riddle.
"You were waiting for me. So, do you have a name? Do you use names in this place?"
"Sure, we can still talk, right? We need a way to refer to each other. I'm Irene."
Alba's face twitches, a precursor to a frown. She's had enough of interacting, and she hadn't prepared herself for meeting new people. She nods towards the third ghost in the room.
"Who is this one?"
"My best friend," I say.
Kateryna bows slightly, and I can make out the faint traces of a kind smile in her veiled face.
"My name is Kateryna. Nice to meet you, Alba, even if it had to happen like this."
"Where are you from? That accent is Eastern European, right?"
Kateryna exhales a chuckle.
"I've existed in plenty of places. I was born in a city that the living built, and that's as much as it matters now."
Alba keeps staring at Kateryna, expecting my friend to elaborate further, but in the end the newbie takes a deep breath as if to recharge her voice, and addresses me.
"What's this about? Why were you waiting for me to die? Are you my guardian angel?"
"I'm everyone's guardian angel. We first met you in the hospital, when they were treating the nasty vertical cut along your inner forearm. A great attempt, but that family of yours loves you so much that they can't bear the thought of you winning at the only game you've been playing for years. They are annoying like that. Still, if you had succeeded, we wouldn't have been here to welcome your ghost."
Alba closes her eyes and breathes slowly.
"I guess that ghosts need some entertainment."
"That's part of it, sure. There's not much we can do here. So you see, you were one of our most interesting cases in a long time. You yearned to be admitted to our faded plane. Anyway, we followed you and your family home, where we got to listen to your parents and siblings as they talked in hushed, pained voices about your previous attempts. That paracetamol overdose that nearly ruined your liver. That time you tied a plastic bag around your head. You are so determined that you fooled those psychiatrists at that facility so they would release you. They must have been idiots, right? Who takes a look at you and thinks you are fine? Also, you truly fucked up that jump from the bridge, huh?"
Alba lowers her head as if she's being admonished for a poor performance.
"It's not like I could have trained properly. Even after the surgeries, my legs only added to the daily pain. I was an idiot."
One of the threads tethering Alba to her dangling body has already dissolved, and two are fraying as each individual shadowy fiber snaps silently.
"Don't be so hard on yourself, kid," I say. "After all, you've reached the happy place for suicides now."
Alba's shrouded eyes dart around as she shakes her head.
"It's no different here."
"You get it then. I was disappointed as well, so many years ago."
"Alright, ghost, I'm tired. Now what? What's going to happen? Why did you two bother to wait for me?"
"Don't be so negative!" I say sarcastically. "We can still get on rollercoasters. We three can ride them all day and night if you want!"
"Or we can go on the water slides," Kateryna adds. "They are my favorite. The speed bursts through your body, and then that drop makes you feel like you are freefalling."
Alba rolls her eyes.
"You two are fucking weird, you know that?"
"Yeah, we are weird, and we're also here for you," I say. "So what do you want to do?"
Alba sighs.
"In case you hadn't noticed, I intended to die. Am I dead now? It doesn't feel like it."
"I always offer the choice, if it's still possible: either take advantage that you remain tethered to your body and return to it, or wait until those filaments dissolve. Then you'll find out whether you are cursed to roam through the afterlife for eternity, or you move on to the beyond."
Alba looks at her dying body. Her face has reddened, the eyes are bulging. The wardrobe and the desk keep shaking while her family members shout as if Alba ever cared to listen.
"Why hasn't my heart stopped already? Hasn't enough time passed?"
I shrug.
"Don't ask me. I'm not in charge of the afterlife. Find a ghostologist."
Alba's eyes flick between me and Kateryna.
"Alright, so what's in that beyond? It sounds like oblivion."
The old, cold pain spreads through me, making me shiver. I want to turn around and leave. I take a deep breath, but my voice comes out hollow.
"The beyond is where the people you love wait for you. If you are lucky enough that you have gotten over your regrets, I'm sure that when they let you in they will provide you with as many of your preferred books as you want. Thacker, Bernhard, Ligotti, Schopenhauer, Cioran... But they weren't enough, were they? Even though they held the attention of someone who doesn't care about anything. Maybe you want to check out new stuff."
Alba looks at Kateryna.
"They have the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, right?" she asks acidly.
"I was never into reading, I'm afraid," Kateryna answers.
Alba closes her eyes and lets out a long breath that she has been holding in. She raises her eyebrows and turns her head to me.
"They weren't enough, you said. Enough for what?"
"To keep you alive."
"You are an idiot, aren't you? After all, you are one of the damned. I bet you don't know what's that so called beyond. You have no clue if another level of the afterlife exists. Maybe ghosts just vanish into nothing, their particles return to the universe, the consciousness is erased from existence. Pure oblivion."
My rotten insides ache. I swallow without a throat.
"We can hope, though."
"Hoping doesn't lead you anywhere, does it? Every person hopes for their life to improve, for the world to stop bleeding, but they don't. Everything ends in pain."
Kateryna steps closer to Alba and gestures for her to stop.
"Hey. Just... leave her alone," she says in a pained voice.
Alba merely stares at my friend for a few seconds, and then her gaze falls on the trembling furniture that barricades the door.
"I yearned for blackness. No, I didn't want to register a blackness. I wanted oblivion, and yet I find myself wasting my energies to talk to you both. I don't want to be the target of other people's expectations, even if those people are dead. I don't want to be seen nor heard. I don't want to think and doubt and struggle and dread. I don't want to exist. None of us should have ever existed. All of this... was a mistake."
Kateryna lowers her gaze. I sigh.
"I have heard it all before, Alba. We have welcomed quite a few. The stories get stale quick."
"Stale?" she asks as she raises an eyebrow. "Stale is a word used to describe flat bread and ale that's gone sour. This is our damnation. We do not have the luxury of describing our suffering with bland words. No, we are not stale. We are rancid."
"Alright, Alba."
"Don't patronize me. Tell me, what makes you think that you are any different? You're stuck here, too."
Stop looking at me like that, kid. I don't want to bother any more than you do.
"I want all of it. All the lives, all the love. As you said, I am damned."
"You're here because you want to be saved," Alba says as she shakes her head.
"I'm here because I was too proud to admit that I had wasted the time I spent in my body. I was too stubborn to ask for help. But you know what? When I was alive, I believed that I didn't need to be saved. Now look at me. I will never move on to the beyond. If you have made your choice, Alba, rip apart those remaining, fraying filaments coming out of your dying body. Fuck them up as if you were floating in your mother's womb and you had the chance to cut off your umbilical cord. Maybe you truly meant your words and you'll dissolve into nothing. Or maybe you are just a fool who has no clue what's waiting for her."
Alba narrows her eyes.
"I'm ready for it, alive or dead. Do you think I care?"
"I don't claim to know what goes on in the festering recesses of your mind. What are you waiting for, then?"
Alba twists her torso around to grasp a shadowy filament coming out from under her right shoulder as if it were a cancerous growth. She lifts her gaze towards me.
"You are tired too," she says.
"I am. But I also have messes to clean up."
Alba sighs. She yanks on the thread. It breaks, then disappears like a warm breath in winter.
"Goodbye, Alba," Kateryna says kindly.
"Maybe we'll meet again one day, sister," Alba says as she ruins another fraying filament. "Depends on how lucky I am."
Alba focuses on snapping off the two remaining threads. Once the last disappears, a look of relief flashes across her face. It doesn't take a second for her shadowy figure to brighten, for her features to start getting erased. Alba looks down at her vanishing hands, and she chuckles.
Alba is gone. I sigh, then hurry up to orient my body so I can crouch into her fresh corpse. Kateryna stands in front of me and smiles warmly. She always knew how to keep me going.
"Be strong, Irene," she says.
I wiggle until I only see the dark insides of Alba's corpse.
"I'll procure some ouija boards soon. This family will be a mess to handle."
"Even if they send you to another facility, I'll be waiting here," Kateryna says. "Now hurry up, my baby."
I possess Alba's fresh corpse, and her feeble heart beats again. The pain sieging this body bursts in my consciousness like a wave slamming me against a wall. The noose is digging into my neck. My tongue is swollen and filling up my mouth. My face is burning up as the blood roars in my eardrums. My body spasms while every nerve sends messages of agony to my brain.
I struggle to move my new hands so I can push myself off the floor, but they are too numb, this body is too weak. The fire in my throat intensifies like it's being burned with hot coals. I try desperately to move my legs so I can get enough momentum to slip off the noose, but I can barely twitch them. My vision goes blurry as the cells in my brain are starved of oxygen. All I can see are blobs of colors. My brain is shutting down.
I hear the sound of something heavy scraping the floor. The furniture that was blocking the door, and that now only look like pulsating, blurry blobs, is being dragged away from the door by an invisible force. Suddenly the door bursts open, hitting the back of the wardrobe, and a big man runs into Alba's bedroom. Other people follow him. Their footsteps are loud as their soles slap the floor. Although this body is numb, I feel the pressure in my chest as the big man, Alba's father, holds me upright, and then someone else loosens the noose and slides it off my head. My chest heaves up and down as I gasp for air. It feels like knives are stabbing into my throat.
"I got her," the father says in a weary and distraught voice.
"Why are you doing this?" Alba's teenage sister mumbles as she cries.
Alba's mother only repeats her daughter's name as she buries her face into my hair. She rocks my body back and forth, holding me in her arms. Alba's sister clutches onto my opposite arm while her warm tears sprinkle the bare skin of my chest. The numbness in my face begins to wear off as pins and needles jab into my cheeks, my eyesight sharpens as the blood flows into my brain.
Alba was going to stick into each of their hearts a poisoned dagger. Those organs would have rotted slowly until the day they stopped beating.
"It's alright," says the new voice coming out of me. "I'm still here."

THE END

My Own Desert Places, Pt. 34 (GPT-3 fueled short)

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

---

The jarring ringing coming from our empty living room makes both Oleksiy and Hadeon crane their necks, as if to figure out whether they had missed a third person living in the house. The ringing stops, but its echo spreads throughout the hall. Hadeon turns his head sharply towards his brother Oleksiy, expecting for the big man to decide what to do, when the call bell rings again. In the living room's dimness I can't see the bell's button being pushed down. Kateryna is waiting for us to approach the dining table.
"I-it's that bell over there, right?" Hadeon asks, both on edge and excited. "But there's nobody ringing it! It must be Kateryna!"
Oleksiy exhales sharply through his teeth.
"Hadeon! Our sister is dead! That must be some kind of alarm!"
"No, that's truly Kateryna," I say, and cough some of the blood dripping down my throat from my split lip. "We set up call bells in a few rooms of the house so she can notify us whenever she wants to talk through the ouija boards."
"Oleksiy, come with me, p-please," Hadeon says. "Kateryna did kill herself here, and people who commit suicide are known to leave their ghosts behind, right? We need to contact her, perform an incantation!"
"What the fuck, man," Oleksiy grumbles while staring at his younger brother as if Hadeon is embarrassing him.
Hadeon stops restraining my girlfriend, who falls to her knees. The younger brother makes a frantic pleading gesture with his hands towards his brother, but as he opens his mouth, the call bell rings. Hadeon shakes his head, turns around and runs into the living room. He switches the light on. Once he stops next to the ouija board, he observes the bell as if witnessing a miracle. The bell keeps ringing almost as if transmitting a morse message, but I know that Kateryna simply intends us all to gather there.
"O-Oleksiy, someone is pushing the call bell's button!" Hadeon shouts in a high-pitched voice. "It's getting pushed down!"
Oleksiy frowns. He lowers his baseball bat absentmindedly from his shoulder so the end touches the hardwood floor.
"What? What fucking nonsense is this?"
"Come, damn it!"
I haul myself to my feet, although I'm getting dizzier by the minute.
"As I told you goons, I only learned about Kateryna's existence when I first came to this house, a few days after I possessed Asier's body. Your wonderful sister threw some shit at me with her poltergeist powers, because she thought I was Asier. And I meant the adjective 'wonderful' honestly, even though back then Kateryna almost destroyed my testicles. But the three of us are best friends, now that she knows I'm some other ghost occupying that rotten bastard's body."
Oleksiy looks at me with his eyes unfocused and his lips parted. He seems as overwhelmed as I guess the average construction worker and Real Madrid fan must be in the sudden presence of a ghost. But then he raises his baseball bat to point at the living room.
"You two, get over there," he says in a hollow voice, then glares at me. "And don't try anything, because I will fucking crack your skull."
I stagger forward quick enough that I reach Alazne, who has her back turned, and I put my arm around her waist. When she feels the contact she flinches, but then realizes that it's me. It takes her one look at my damaged face, with a likely bruised cheek, a swollen upper lip and a split lower lip, for her face to scrunch up in pain and for some more tears to fall. She raises a trembling hand to stroke my unscathed cheek.
"My love..." Alazne whimpers.
I feel a cold pain in my chest, as if my heart had snapped, but I force myself to smile confidently.
"It's alright, sweetie. Kateryna knows what she's doing."
A few seconds later the four of us are standing in front of both the ouija board, with the planchette waiting at its center, and the call bell, which has stopped ringing. Hadeon lifts his gaze towards me as if eagerly seeking my advice. He reaches with his shivering hands, the index fingers outstretched, to touch the planchette with his fingertips.
"I-I need to keep my fingers on this, right?"
"No, you don't, actually," I answer. "Kateryna can move it by herself without issues. She's one of the most talented poltergeisters I have ever seen, and I knew plenty of them in my twenty years of experience as a ghost."
Oleksiy covers half of his face with his free hand, then he shakes his head.
"I don't like this. I don't like this at all, Hadeon."
I have no clue why Kateryna hasn't introduced herself already by moving the planchette. That would astonish her brothers for sure, which would make it more likely that I would survive this day to keep loving my girlfriend. I clear my throat.
"Hey, Kat. I suppose you are expecting us to ask, but just say anything, so your brothers understand that I wasn't bullshitting."
As soon as Hadeon turns towards the ouija board again, the planchette starts sliding to spell out something. Both brothers flinch, but I don't want to tear my gaze away from what Kateryna is sharing.
"Holy shit, it's moving!" Hadeon cries out.
The planchette spells out YES ITS ME YOU PAIR OF IDIOTS.
Despite my pain, I burst into laughter, which showers the call bell with spittle and blood.
Oleksiy crouches to look under the table, as if I had installed some convoluted fraud to deceive them through magnets. When he straightens his back again, the big guy opens his eyes wide, and a bead of sweat rolls down from his light blond hair.
"This is some vedma shit..." he mutters.
Hadeon keeps staring at the ouija board, spellbound. His lips are quivering. The planchette slides again, now spelling out OLEKSIY AND HADEON DONT HURT MY FRIENDS ANYMORE.
Oleksiy nearly jumps as if he had been pricked by a scorpion. He points his index finger at me and starts jabbering.
"What the fuck have you done?! How are you moving that thing?!"
I narrow my eyes.
"Are you seriously this thick? Can't you see that ghosts are real, you motherfucking thug? That's your dear sister over there, telling you to stop screwing with us."
Oleksiy's face is losing its color. He raises his fist to hit me as if by reflex, but Hadeon quickly lays his hand on his brother's shoulder. Oleksiy freezes with his fist raised as if saluting.
"P-please," Hadeon says. "The board hasn't confirmed yet that it's Kateryna!"
I groan.
"What else do you need?"
Hadeon begins stammering an answer, but he notices the planchette moving.
I AM KATERYNA DAMN IT KATERYNA ZARETSKY YOUR SISTER.
Hadeon and Oleksiy step back.
"T-that's her, it's her!" Hadeon cries out.
I'm rubbing Alazne's back, which trembles through the bones in my arm. I can't bear to look at her pained face.
The planchette keeps sliding, and it spells out ALAZNE ITS TRUE YOU ARE LOVED ASIER DIED IN CAR CRASH AND WHEN BODY CAME BACK HE WAS SOMEONE ELSE.
Alazne sobs. She lifts a hand to her mouth, then nods as if she can't push words through her throat. I can tell that Kateryna worded it that way, instead of saying 'she loves you', because she knows I haven't confessed to being a woman. I have burdened my best friend with all these lies almost from the first time we met.
Oleksiy exhales noisily. When I turn my head towards him I meet his stumped expression, as if he's beginning to understand that not only his sister's consciousness has survived, but that he has attacked a ghost possessing a dead man's corpse.
"What if this is some demonic shit...?" he mutters.
I take a deep breath through my teeth.
"Oleksiy, you are the fucking worst. Why don't you start lifting weights with your brain for a change?"
"What the fuck do you mean?"
The thug has gone wide-eyed. I don't know how much he will understand of anything I bother to explain. I recall the day when Ainhoa came to my apartment possibly to cheat on her husband, and she found out that ghosts existed. She imploded in a panic attack. Oleksiy's mind might be unable to integrate such a far-reaching new concept.
I sigh.
"This is not demonic shit. This is a ghost who has survived and wishes to communicate with the people she cared about. Well, at least with the two people who broke into our house to attack me. And she's not any average ghost, but the sister you wished she hadn't killed herself!"
Hadeon looks guilty, but Oleksiy's nostrils dilate, and his Adam's apple bobs in his throat.
"Ghosts are fucking demonic," he states confidently.
I'm displeased with this stereotype.
"A ghost is the imprint of a deceased person's soul. It's not demonic."
"Demonic shit," he whispers to himself.
"What the fuck would you know? Until five minutes ago you were sure that ghosts didn't exist!"
Hadeon groans. A solitary tear is sliding down his cheek, but his stubble ensnares it.
"Please, stop it." He stares down at the board. "Our beautiful Kateryna, say something more. I beg you. I want to feel your voice through your words, even though I can't hear it anymore."
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY TO YOU.
"I-I don't know... Are you happy in the afterlife?"
NOT REALLY IF I KNEW I WOULD REMAIN HERE AND HAVE TO SEE OTHER GHOSTS I WOULDNT HAVE KILLED MYSELF.
Oleksiy steps forward and grabs his younger brother's shoulder. His eyes are alert, as if he expects a sudden poltergeist to shake the entire house and collapse it on him.
"You have no clue what we might be dealing with," he says in a raspy voice. "It could be some demon pretending to be our sister."
"Hadeon," I start, "you need to start thinking for yourself, man. You have the opportunity to talk with your sister, and you aren't pressed for time either, because Kateryna lives here. I'm sure she would... Well, she may be open to talk to you some other day as well!"
Hadeon's gaze looks at his big brother and then at me, standing a few steps behind him.
"I feel that it's really Kateryna. O-or maybe that's what I want to believe. But if this is some demonic trick, I-I couldn't forgive that."
"Ever since you two idiots harassed me at that coffee shop and left with Kateryna's laptop, I wanted to invite you home so you could talk to her and get some closure. People who kill themselves don't think enough of the grief with which they infect others."
Oleksiy stares at me with his bloodshot eyes, but his gaze is different from how he was scowling while he beat the shit out of me. That was an angry thug aching to beat up some stranger who might or not deserve it. Now he's on edge as if I may pounce on him and tear out his throat.
Hadeon nods. He's come to a decision.
"Alright, I'll test if this is truly our beautiful Kateryna." He straightens his back and clears his throat. "Please, ghost, could you prove that you are who you claim to be by revealing some information only us siblings would know?"
YOU REALLY WANT TO GO DOWN THAT PATH, the planchette spells out.
Hadeon steps back as if he felt threatened.
"O-of course! We need to be sure, r-right? Please!"
IF YOU PREFER I WILL GIVE YOU MY PANTIES SO YOU CAN JERK OFF INTO THEM.
Hadeon gasps. The skin of his face suddenly looks like it belongs to a desiccated corpse. Although he remains paralyzed, the tears, which had been building up, overflow their banks and stream down his cheeks.
"You walked right into that one, buddy," I say.
His head jerks towards me. He realizes that I know as well, that his sister's ghost lives here, and that she has shared his sins with anyone who might listen.
"You know, what you did to her was unforgivable," I say lowering my voice. "I'm sure Kateryna was thinking about you too when she swallowed all those pills."
Hadeon's jaw trembles. I wouldn't be surprised if he dropped to his knees and asked for forgiveness.
"N-no, I don't..."
Oleksiy puts a hand on his younger brother's shoulder.
"Hadeon, stop crying! What the hell does that mean? What's this about masturbating into panties?"
"Maybe you shouldn't have led with that," I say. "Ghosts aren't meant to be confrontational."
"Shut up!" Hadeon wipes the tears off his face, then attempts to walk towards the doorway into the hall, but his brother blocks the path. "Let's leave, Oleksiy! There's no point in us being here."
Oleksiy snaps his head back and grimaces.
"What the fuck are you talking about? We are not done yet!"
"We are too!" Hadeon whines. "Asier was already dead. Kateryna is dead, and she won't forgive either of us, ever."
"Shut up, Hadeon. You don't know what you're talking about." He points at the ouija board. "You were going to test the demon to figure out if it was pretending to be our sister, right? And what was that about some panties?"
"I... I did something stupid."
Oleksiy shakes his head and frowns.
"Did what? Having to do with panties?"
Hadeon hangs his head low. His tears are forming puddles on the hardwood floor.
"I-I was... lonely, okay? I was so lonely that I couldn't take it anymore. I-I didn't mean any harm..."
Maybe I'm being too harsh on this incestuous fucker. I remember what it was like to be terminally lonely, and the lengths I went to achieve some semblance of happiness. Granted, I never resorted to incest as a way of escaping the cold embrace of isolation, but I didn't have Kateryna for a sister.
"I'm not following," Oleksiy complains. "What does this have to do with panties?"
Hadeon sobs into his hands.
"Allow me to clarify it, my simple-minded nemesis," I say. "Kateryna told me all about her little brother's escapades. He used to watch her while she changed her clothes so he could catch a glimpse of her glorious breasts and pussy. He even took pictures of her naked. Kateryna woke up some nights to find this little creep standing nearby with his pants down and pulling on his possibly little dick frantically, no doubt while he imagined himself exploding into his supermodel sister's womb. He also stole her panties, sniffed them, masturbated into them as he whispered Kat's name, all that good stuff."
I can't tell if Hadeon's sobbing is increasing or if it's starting to give way to hysterical laughter.
"You're lying! You're such a dirty fucking liar!" he shrieks.
Oleksiy uncovers his brother's face forcefully, and then grabs him by the collar. The big brother's face is twisted in cold disgust.
"Hade, you better tell me that's some lie," he says almost in a whisper.
When Hadeon shakes his head, some of his tears fly away. His gaze is unfocused.
"S-she was so pure..." he mumbles. "So luminous.... She was... a g-g-g..."
Oleksiy lets go of his brother's collar and slaps him across the face with a wet smacking sound. Hadeon reels back, but prevents himself from falling on his ass by leaning against the dining room table.
"Hade... You haven't answered me," Oleksiy says monotonously. "You didn't defile our sister like that, did you?"
"No! No, brother... The things he described..."
Oleksiy turns his head slightly while one side of his lower lip remains raised. He stares unblinkingly into his incestuous brother's eyes.
"You wanted to fuck our Kateryna?"
Hadeon opens and closes his mouth a few times.
"N-not like that... I wanted to take care of her... I loved her!"
"Did you want to fuck her?" Oleksiy repeats as if he can't comprehend that he would have ended up associating such a concept with his little brother.
"I... I..." Hadeon's voice falters.
I witness his animal instinct taking over. His gaze focuses on his violent brother's eyes, and faces that he may become the new target for Oleksiy's fists. And then his pupils slide to the left corners of his eyes, as if contemplating whether Kateryna remains a bigger threat. He blinks, then turns around sharply and glares at the ouija board.
"T-this is a demon! It's fucking with our minds!" Hadeon says as he points with a trembling finger.
"She's not," I say sternly. "You wanted to make love to your sister."
"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" Hadeon screams.
The planchette is sliding towards the left side of the ouija board, but Hadeon slaps them both away. They land on the coffee table, hitting a vase that shatters against the floor.
Oleksiy straightens his back and lowers both his fist and the baseball bat, which he had angled up.
"Of course, it had to be a demon," he says hoarsely, speaking to himself. "That couldn't be true."
Hadeon breathes hard while he rests his hands on his knees. He's deathly pale.
"S-sorry... I think I need to vomit."
He throws up on his sneakers. Both Alazne and I step back reflexively. Oleksiy looks like he may end up vomiting as well. Suddenly both the ouija board and the planchette lift themselves into the air as if Kateryna had picked them up with each hand, and they float while bobbing slightly as they return towards the dining room table.
"You annoyed your sister," I say. "That's her only way to communicate with the living effectively."
Oleksiy opens his eyes wide, then turns his body sideways to defend himself. Hadeon, still bent over, was following the board's movements, which were about to pass him by, when both the ouija board and the planchette dart towards Hadeon's face. He makes a gagging noise as he raises his palms, which block the projectiles.
"Fucking demon!" Oleksiy shouts.
He wields the baseball bat, ready to whack any projectile coming his way. I grab Alazne by her arm so we can retreat towards the doorway, but Oleksiy notices me and turns around as if I were about to ambush him. Those pale blue eyes now belong to a cornered beast.
"Asier, you fucking bastard!" he shouts.
I was about to speak when Oleksiy twists his torso, charging his bat for strike, and I barely begin to realize what's coming when the thick wooden barrel bashes the left side of my face, crumbling most of it. I land onto the hardwood floor with a thud. I quickly prop up my elbows, fearing I will need to defend myself from another strike. The left half of my lips, which were already injured, feel numb and detached from my gums. I spit out pieces of teeth, which clatter on the floor. My nose has squirted blood, it hurts like hell and I can hardly breathe, so it may be broken. I shake my head to avoid fainting.
I hear Alazne's muffled yell over the ringing in my ears. Oh no, she was standing close enough to that motherfucker that he might strike her too. But Oleksiy is entirely focused on me. He's breathing hard while he holds his bat, which is dripping my blood, expecting me to leap to my feet and charge against him.
Alazne's eyes go wide as the tears stream down her cheeks. She releases a guttural scream, then she raises her fists, separates her feet and twists her body to kick Oleksiy's right leg, which bends slightly inwards.
I cough up a mixture of saliva, blood and mucus as I haul myself to my feet. I need to get between him and my girlfriend, or he will bash Alazne's brains in.
Oleksiy has lowered his bat to the point that the bloodied end is resting on the hardwood floor. He's staring down at Alazne with a perplexed expression, as if a stuffed animal had sprung to life and had kicked him with the same strength. He seems to have forgotten about ghosts and demons for a moment.
"What the hell are you doing...?" he mutters in disbelief. "Stay back."
He keeps holding his bat with his left hand, but with the back of his right one he slaps Alazne across the face. My girlfriend's head snaps back and to the side as if it was hit by a hammer. She stumbles backwards, hits the console table and falls on the floor.
A rush of blood roars in my eardrums. My vision gets constrained to a tunnel with the edges blurred. Oleksiy's bust is tinted crimson red. His face is turned to the right and slightly down as his gaze remains focused in that direction. His lips move, forming words. My whole body burns as Oleksiy's face grows closer. He turns his head sharply, alerted by something happening in front of him.
Both his eyes and his mouth open wide in a panic, but before he can react, a fist enters the frame from the right side and crashes against Oleksiy's mouth. A tooth and a fountain of blood shoot out as he's launched backwards. He must have dropped the bat, because he reaches out with his arms to grab something for support, but his lower back hits the edge of the dining room table. I feel the damage in the knuckles of my right hand as if they were a line of four burning spots in my consciousness. I draw back my fist and thrust it with all my strength against Oleksiy's face. It crushes the bridge of his nose with a wet crunch of shattering bone and tearing cartilage. An electric burst of pain shoots through my entire right arm, but I launch my fist against the thug's face again. This blow smashes his nose into his skull, crushing his upper jaw, caving in that part of his face. A fine mist of crimson blood spurts out of his nostrils as it mixes with the saliva pouring out of his mouth, which hangs open like a grotesque broken trap door. I see the splintered edges of his teeth. My shoulder hurts, I feel as if my right scapula has popped out. The fingers of my right hand have gone numb. I draw that fist back and propel it against Oleksiy's face. I feel his jaw break, and his mouth becomes a toothless cavern as the force of that blow causes his head to snap backwards. His eyes roll up into the back of his head, then he slumps down in a sitting position as if the thin cord that connected his upper body to his lower one had snapped.
My body only waits until I take two steps back to inform me about the battering I have received. Most of the left side of my face below the eye feels gone: it burns where it doesn't feel numb and unresponsive. I takes me probing with my tongue to prick it with the jagged remains of some teeth, either chipped or broken off at the gum line. Warm, metallic tasting snot keeps flowing down from my left nostril, forcing me to breathe through my mouth carefully, because some of the blood from my busted lips is pooling around my tongue and dripping down my throat. My skin feels clammy with cold sweat, and I feel that if I allow myself to close my eyes for a few seconds, I will pass out.
The muscles of my right arm are sore from the hand to the shoulder, and I may have pulled a muscle near my scapula. When I try to move those fingers, except for the thumb the other four merely twitch, and remain half-closed like a dead tarantula's legs. The four knuckles are swollen and rosewood pink, encircling bleeding lacerations.
Alazne. I look over to where she last fell on her ass. She's leaning sideways with her back against the console table, propped on one elbow. Her left cheek is bruised near the mouth and the skin is grazed in two spots. No lasting damage. Her glassy eyes are staring up in alarm at a figure that has sneaked in between us. I first catch a glimpse of black drawstring pants, but then Hadeon's blocky head appears as he crouches to pick up the baseball bat. He straightens his back wearily as he holds the bat by the grip, letting its end rest on the hardwood floor. Hadeon looks down at his unconscious, bloodied and disfigured older brother.
"Did you kill Oleksiy?" he asks in a shuddering, pitiful voice.
I cough out blood.
"I hope not. I don't want a ghost roommate who despises me. Other than that, he fucking had it coming, didn't he?"
Hadeon's widened, emerald eyes, a near copy of his sister's, slide to stare at me with a resigned sorrow. He keeps his mouth closed.
"It's my fucking house, ever since I stole it from Asier," I say sternly as I eject droplets of blood with every exhalation. "You're the ones who broke in here to assault me, not the other way around. How do you want to play this? Because both your brother and I need to get to a hospital, and you know that the guy who led to our dear Kateryna killing himself has already moved on to the beyond."
Hadeon's face darkens with rage. He opens his mouth to shout, but only a groan comes out as he shifts his jaw.
"Y-you have messed up everything," he mutters.
Alazne has snapped out of it, and is moving on her hands and knees towards the backyard door. I need to keep distracting this underling.
"Me? Motherfucker, you were the one who chose to pretend that the sister with whom you were unhealthily in love is now a demon. How fucking insulting! That was your decision, which led to your unsophisticated brother getting his nose pushed into his skull. Own up to your actions. It's about time, don't you think? You should have confessed to Kateryna formally, in case there was the slightest chance you had a love story in your hands."
A pained gasp escapes Hadeon's lips as he shakes his head in shame. Alazne has stood up. She opens the backyard door forcefully. Hadeon, startled, grabs the handle of the baseball bat with both hands and lifts it slightly. I see my girlfriend's profile as she stands on the grass and looks up towards the neighboring house.
"What is going on with all those noises? What the hell are you doing?"
I recognize that the raised voice belongs to our middle-aged male neighbor, whom I have only spoken to twice because he seemed to be spying on me.
"Please, call the police!" Alazne pleads. "Our house was broken into by two men who are trying to kill us!"
"Really? Well, I already called the police. You were making too much noise."
"Thank you!"
Hadeon snaps his head towards me. I can tell that he fears getting caught. Today he may be facing the consequences of his actions for the first time.
"What's your name, ghost?" he asks me in a hollow voice.
I smile with my bloody mouth, which hurts like I'm tearing my lips further.
"No, that part was a lie. I'm actually the devil."
"You're a bitch," he snarls as if imitating his collapsed older brother. "If I'm going down, you are going down."
I turn my body sideways so I can defend myself with my intact arm.
"Out of general principle, huh? Alright."
Hadeon's face twists in rage as he raises the bat to throw his entire weight into crushing my head.
"Go to back to hell!"
An invisible force yanks the baseball bat backwards from his grip. Hadeon twists around and gapes at the bat, which floats as if Kateryna was holding it by the barrel over her head. Then it drops onto the dining table with a thud and rolls slowly.
"Ah... K-Kateryna, I'm s-sorry," Hadeon whimpers. "I-I'm sorry that I called you a demon, and that I d-defiled you..."
Our surroundings remain still. Hadeon steps back and looks around, expecting the ghost of his sister to manifest herself. He looks down towards his big brother to receive instructions, but Oleksiy's ajar eyes are white.
"N-no..." Hadeon whimpers. "I didn't mean to... I'm sorry that I hurt you... I want to go home..."
Hadeon's head snaps back, and suddenly something is protruding from his left eyeball. The tip of a pen is lodged into his pupil to the extent that the emerald iris is ringing the barrel of the pen. Hadeon staggers backwards while he moves his eyes around as if to figure out what has shut off half of his vision, and the pen swings along with the left eyeball. Hadeon tries to scream, but he cannot find the air to do so.
He clutches at his face only to push the pen with the side of his left hand. He yelps, then probes the foreign object that has blinded him in one eye. As he realizes what has happened, he yells in feral terror. He rips the pen from his eye, which leaves a perforated hole where most of his pupil used to be. His whole body trembles. He turns around and vomits onto the console table.
Alazne has stepped back into the living room, and is frozen midstep between one of the sofas and the coffee table. I want to tell her to return to the backyard or even climb that fence, but I fear Hadeon's reaction.
The younger brother looks up with his healthy, bloodshot eye towards the front door, and as he wails he lurches up to it, opens it enough for him to pass through the doorway, and closes it behind him. I hear a muffled, angry scream.
"Well, I guess that's that," I say feebly.
Alazne snaps out of her trance and runs up to me. She holds me in a tight embrace.
"I'm so sorry for lying to you," I say, pained.
Alazne pulls back to check out the wounds on my face. She grimaces in empathy. Fresh tears start coursing through the wet paths that previous tears had imprinted on her cheeks, but she looks determined.
"You need an ambulance."
"To be honest, sweetie, I need a new body. The next time I should try to figure out first if the previous owner had ruined his own life."
Alazne holds my face in her hands and kisses me softly on the unscathed half of my lips, but my blood stains her mouth anyway. I feel so relieved that my adrenaline may wear off, which would cause me to collapse.
"You need to lie down," she says. "I should have told that neighbor to call an ambulance as well..."
I pat the right pocket of my pants, then pull out my cell phone. I push the button to wake the screen up. It works. I hand it to Alazne.
"Pretty sure it's 112, but I can't be convinced of much right now," I say wearily. "Too many hits to the head."
My girlfriend finishes dialing the number, and raises the phone to her ear. As she waits with her head lowered, I sigh.
"By the way, Kateryna, thank you so much," I say. "Sniping your creepy little brother to save my life... I'll have your back forever."
Kateryna's voluptuous self is standing next to her broken older brother. She holds my gaze warmly with her slightly slanted, feline eyes, and her full lips curl up in a smile. The sunlight flows along her luxurious, sunflower-colored hair.
"My baby, I'll always protect you," she says with a slavic accent.
My vision blurs in and out. I blink, and Kateryna's image disappears. I'm losing it, likely because of the blood loss and my rattled brain and the terror. But Oleksiy's hands are waking up. He lets out a zombie-like groan. Alazne, who was talking on the phone, turns around startled. The both of us back away. Blood keeps pouring from Oleksiy's mangled, toothless mouth, dyeing the front of his shirt red. Some pieces of teeth are glistening, caught in the wrinkles of the fabric.
"Oh shit," I say.
The big brother is already shaking his head slowly, and his eyeballs have rolled down to the extent that the lower half of his irises peek out from under his upper, half-closed eyelid. The bat rests on the dining room table that Oleksiy is sitting against. The smell of his mouth, pooled with blood and bits of broken teeth, wafts over.
"Alazne, let's get out of here," I say. "He can wander around the house in a daze if he wants."
My girlfriend nods nervously, then hands me the phone.
"Yeah... The ambulance is coming. They said they'll also make sure to send the police, in case the neighbor was lying."
I nod, then put down the phone and grab her hand.
"Let's go," I say anxiously.
I open the front door of our house and take four steps when the both of us stop abruptly. Oleksiy's brick red Toyota 4Runner is waiting near the side wall of the community, facing our front door in a thirty degrees angle. It looks like an invading army's battering ram. Hadeon is sitting behind the driver's wheel, and is glaring at me with his remaining eye as if nothing remains in his life except for flattening me against my house.
"Alazne," I say in a thin voice, "get out of here. Run to a neighboring house, one of the next column of houses. Now."
Alazne gasps.
"What about you?"
She attempts to grab my arm, but I push her hands away. The Toyota's engine growls as the vehicle accelerates towards me. I shove my girlfriend, and she stumbles towards the space between our house and the next, but she doesn't fall.
By the time I look back at the Toyota, it almost fills my vision. I leap out of the way and I feel the wind as the Toyota passes me by and smashes into the front wall of my house in a thundering crash. I have landed poorly. My ankle hurts, but I stagger away from my home in the direction of the first column of houses. I hear the thuds of falling bricks as the Toyota backs up with a roar. Hadeon is turning the steering wheel frantically so the crumpled front, which is blowing white smoke, faces me. He doesn't slow down fast enough, and the back of the Toyota slams into the wall of our gated community, which collapses that stretch and shakes both the car and Hadeon.
I see movement out of the corner of my eye. A white car with an azure blue hood is entering the community through the gate. A police car. Its lights are flashing silently. As they maneuver towards the destruction, Hadeon leans back to wedge the gas pedal against the floor of the Toyota. He's gritting his teeth, and nothing remains in his surviving eye but bloodthirst. The engine roars as it tries to propel the heavy Toyota at the highest speed towards me while the car trails white smoke.
Time crawls to a near standstill. I can't run. I know that if my ankle doesn't fail me, my weakened body will. If I try to jump out of the way, Hadeon just has to swerve a bit to the side to ram me. It will hit me anyway. I should jump onto the hood at the right moment, and I might be able to bounce off the roof of the car, or at the worst, break the windshield with my body. It may knock me unconscious. If I hit my head wrong, it might shatter my skull and kill me instantly. But I'll have better chances jumping than if the car runs me over.
Hadeon's bust is so close that I can make out his whitened knuckles as his hands clutch the steering wheel. I turn sideways and bend my knees slightly to charge the jump, but a force that hits me from behind knocks the wind out of my lungs. I've been shoved out of the way. Someone has saved me.
The car hits my legs and my body swirls as I hear a crunch of metal and shattering glass. I fall on my back. The car's tires are screeching to a stop, but a body is hurtling through the air, as rigid as a mannequin. I spot the light brown hair trailing behind the head, the Wings of Freedom logo in the hoodie, the cloud grey sweatpants. The body lands face first, and for some meters it keeps sliding while prostrated like a contrite sinner as the asphalt burns off the fabric and rips off the skin. The body comes to a halt.
I hold my breath and jump to my feet. I hobble towards the body as quickly as my stolen muscles allow me. There's a splatter of dark blood where the head landed, and a skid mark of fabric and blood and skin leads to the splayed, facedown body. When I reach it and see half of Alazne's face, her mouth bloodied and broken, her eye ajar and empty, I fall to my knees.
I want to embrace the body, scoop her up, feel her blood seeping through my clothes, cradle her to my chest. But I don't want to store in my mind for the rest of eternity the image of the other half of her face. I don't need to touch her body to know that she isn't inhabiting it any longer.
I raise myself to my feet. Tears are jumping from my eyes, my teeth are chattering and my throat is closed shut, but I swallow and force myself to speak.
"Don't be afraid, sweetie. Wait right there."
I turn around and limp towards the blurry vision of two cars, one a crumpled Toyota and the other a police car with its lights flashing and parked close. I hear two strangers shouting at the driver of the Toyota, telling him to raise his hands, to get out. The corners of my eyes tingle as a new wave of tears wells up. I blink rapidly to focus my vision. A deadly anguish is spreading throughout my body, rotting every organ it reaches. I want my heart to stop.
The closest officer is a woman with black, curly hair. She's wearing the denim blue uniform, with a bulletproof vest that on the back reads 'ERTZAINTZA', and a bulky belt with equipment. The officer has drawn her gun out, which she's pointing at Hadeon. The weapon trembles with every barked order.
Although I don't know why, I look at Hadeon. He's still clutching the steering wheel, but he has raised his one-eyed gaze towards me. Streams of tears are flowing from his eyes, snot is running down his nostrils. He grimaces as if apologizing.
When I reach the police officer, with my healthy hand I grasp hers, which are closed around the grip of the gun, and yank her hands towards me, twisting her torso. It startles her so much that for a second she doesn't react. I squeeze the thumb of my ruined right hand between the trigger guard and her thumb that she's resting on the trigger. The woman's face is tanned and angular, and her dark eyes widen and tremble as she faces a monster.
"W-what are you doing?! Stop!"
I lean my forehead into the cool, solid muzzle. The officer's nerves tremble through my skull as I push my right thumb against hers.

I'm lying face up. My eyes are closed. Two people are shouting, but they sound wrong, as if coming from a slighty detuned radio playing in another room. I don't feel any pain. No, that's not true. I don't feel any physical pain. I haul myself to my feet, and I open my eyes.
The world arounds me looks muted, like a two hundred years old painting that nobody has bothered to restore. In some time I will forget how the colors are supposed to look, how vibrant they should be. The same for the smells, the tastes, the feeling of temperature.
A shadow is standing next to Alazne's corpse. It retains her outline, even that of her hair falling loose around her shoulders, but it's fuzzy as if I'm watching through unfocused lenses. A pang of pain in what used to be my heart, or the mental image I retain of it, makes me hunch over. The shadow hurries up to me. She reaches with her hands to put them on my arms, but the contact feels wrong, just a nebulous echo of what touching someone else used to be, as if her energy was passing through mine. I lift my face. Hers is so close that I should be able to tell all the details of her angelic, pale, freckled face, but the shadowy veil conceals it.
My consciousness allows a realization to pass through, even though it would have stopped my beating heart. I will never touch Alazne's warm skin again. I won't run my fingers through her soft hair. I won't hold her naked body in my arms. I won't caress her tongue with mine. We won't make love. We will never become a family. I had yearned to save her, but I have caused her to die. I want to fall to my knees. I want to scream and wail until my mind cracks. I want to disappear from this world.
"You have breasts," Alazne says matter-of-factly. "I didn't know you were a girl."
I can make out her hazel eyes holding my gaze, her slightly furrowed brow. I nod.
"I can't see your face clearly, but I have seen it before, haven't I?" Alazne says. "What's your real name?"
If I had a jaw anymore, my teeth would keep chattering.
"I-Irene."
Alazne snaps her head back. I see her eyebrows, thin and curved, and her nose, which is small and cute, with its bridge just beneath her eyes. Her lips curl up in a soft smile.
"Irene, huh? I see... I'm glad to finally meet you."
Her freckles pop up. They spatter her upper cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the skin around her eyebrows. I want to say sorry, but I can't speak.
"Irene, you fucked up my life," Alazne says nonchalantly.
What remains of me runs cold. I finally see myself, straight through her eyes.
"Yes... That's what I do."
Alazne stands on her tiptoes and cups my head with her hands like she used to do to run her fingers along my scalp. Now her palms pass through my skull. I feel a tingling sensation as her fingertips brush my spine.
"But... I had so much fun," Alazne says.
My girlfriend narrows her big, hazel eyes, smiling with the surrounding skin as well as with her grinning mouth.
As her face whitens and blurs, her freckles fade out one by one. Her hazel eyes and her smiling mouth get rubbed out.

My Own Desert Places, Pt. 33 (GPT-3 fueled short)

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

---

When it would only take Oleksiy three strides to reach me, I snapped out of my paralysis, jumped back into the hall of my house and I closed the door. The last image of Kateryna's older brother remains in my mind: the downward diagonal of his eyebrows, the reddened sclera, the rouge pink bags under his eyes as if he has barely slept a few hours a night during the last week, the creases in his stubbly cheeks as he grits his teeth.
I have leaned my back against the front door for a second when Oleksiy bangs on it, making it tremble through my bones.
"Come out here to talk this out like men," Oleksiy growls.
"No, thank you. I'd rather hide. I'm sure you intend to let your baseball bat speak for you."
He says something in Ukrainian. I had forgotten that Alazne was standing in front of me, and when I lift my gaze to her face, I wish I had never brought her to Asier's house. She has turned slightly sideways, her eyes have gone wide, she has narrowed her shoulders and she's holding her hands over her chest as if she wished she could turn invisible.
"W-what's happening...?" Alazne says quietly in a high-pitched voice.
"These are the brothers who punched me in the guts the day before we left for Asturias," I answer in a thin voice. "The whole reason we left. They must have followed us home some day."
Alazne blinks, then straightens her back. She raises her voice to address the two brothers through the door.
"Please stop this. Whatever you're fighting about, just... talk it out! We don't have to fight."
The brothers stop squabbling in Ukrainian.
"What Asier has done to our sister can't be resolved by talking," Oleksiy says harshly. "Your boyfriend knows this."
"I wouldn't do it anyway," I add, "because I don't negotiate with terrorists."
My heart is beating too fast. I try to project confidence to Alazne through my steady gaze, but she can tell how serious this has become.
"Alazne, where have you left your bike? Go grab it, throw it over the backyard fence, and climb it. Ride out of here."
Alazne gulps. Her eyes are glistening in fear.
"I will not leave you alone."
I open my mouth to answer her, but Oleksiy either punches the door again or hits it with the end of his baseball bat. In either case, I wonder how long he can keep doing this until some of our neighbors peek out from their doors and windows.
"Yes, you will," I say lowering my voice. "I intend to keep you safe. I can't do it here anymore. Just go, and I'll call you later."
Alazne begins to weep silently, her shoulders heaving. I want to hold her in my arms, but I feel that the moment I stop putting all of my weight in the door, Oleksiy will burst through it.
"I won't go anywhere," she says.
"Alazne, this is no time for--"
"You still don't understand? When you met me I was already dead. This new life you gave it to me."
My girlfriend's voice is like honey, and I can't help but weep a little too. I have no doubt that those two intend to kill me. Dying would mean severing the only bright thread of hope in the dark tapestry of Alazne's life. I have to survive for her, but I can't bear the thought of her getting hurt.
"Y-you've only had a taste of what being dead is like, just a few days out of the month, at worst most days out of a given week, but not every single hour of your existence. You can't sleep, so you can't escape from that nightmare for a second."
Oleksiy hits the door again. It felt like the whole house shook. My girl's lips are trembling.
"Damn it, Alazne," I whisper. "There's no pride among ghosts. Every one of them wishes they could live again."
"I-I don't. N-not if it means I have to lose you."
She furrows her brow as she steps back and pulls out the phone from a pocket of her sweatpants.
"What are you doing...?" I whisper. "Ah, I guess we can call the police."
I realize that for a few seconds I haven't heard the brothers talking. Almost at the same time I spot some movement in one of the windows of the hall, which face the wall that encloses our community. The blinds are lowering themselves awkwardly, falling a little from one end and then the other, as if trying to shield the window from something happening behind it.
With a spine-chilling crash, the glass of that window shatters inwards, and the sharp pieces scatter across the hardwood floor. Half of the baseball, held sideways, lingers in the empty frame until it jerks out of view.
Oleksiy's tall and wide figure appears in the window. He hits with his hand the fragments of glass stuck in the frame so they fall onto the hardwood, clearing a path for him to climb through. I push myself away from the front door. Alazne is paralyzed, the phone halfway to her ear as she stares wide-eyed at the imposing intruder who has bent over to step on the window frame.
"Alazne, run!" I say in a stern whisper.
Oleksiy's head snaps towards us as his foot lands on the floor, crunching glass. Some embedded piece of glass on the frame has scratched the man's forearm, and the wound is beading with blood. He lunges at Alazne and snatches her phone from her trembling hand.
"The police has nothing to do with this," Oleksiy says while she glowers at me.
He drops the phone to the floor, and as soon at it hits the ground, Oleksiy crushes it with his heel. Behind him, the baseball bat plunges through the empty window frame, hits the hardwood loudly and rolls over the pieces of glass. Hadeon appears in the window, and while he supports himself on the sill he tries awkwardly to pass a leg through the empty frame.
"Don't move," Oleksiy says as he takes a step towards me, daring me to try something.
"A-are you Ainhoa's brothers?" Alazne asks in a faltering voice.
My beloved girlfriend must be losing it. There's no genetic combination that would have produced Ainhoa's raven-haired self as well as these two blonde bastards, let alone their respective eye colors.
Oleksiy relaxes his brow slightly as he looks at Alazne.
"We could have been some Ainhoa's brothers, or the brothers of many other women this son of a bitch has ruined," he stabs his finger in my direction without turning his head. "But no, I don't know any Ainhoa."
Hadeon jumps into the house and drops gently on the floor, crunching glass under his heels. He hurries up to pick up the baseball bat, which had rolled close to the doorway into the living room. Once Kateryna's scrawny brother straightens his back, he taps his other palm with the end of the bat as if imitating threatening behavior from movies. The bags under his eyes are even more pronounced than Oleksiy's, and the scar with the shape of a slim crescent moon almost blends with the darkened skin. He's breathing through his mouth, showing that most of his lower teeth are misaligned.
As Alazne wrings her hands, she takes a step back towards the console table.
"W-what happened to your sister that you hate my boyfriend so much?"
Oleksiy shakes his head slightly at Alazne.
"You poor woman. You can't see that your man has done nothing but bring dirt to many women's houses."
"W-what does that mean...?"
Oleksiy sighs.
"He brings dirt and shame on their houses. He's an adulterer, a cheater. But that's the least of it."
Hadeon holds the bat with his left hand while he points at the chest of my girlfriend's hoodie with his right.
"Do you even know what that is?"
Alazne looks down at the prominent logo on the grey fabric.
"T-the Wings of Freedom from 'Attack on Titan'..."
Hadeon raises his eyebrows, and his face lightens up as if he had forgotten why he and his brother have invaded my house.
"Really? What's your favorite character?"
Alazne looks at both brothers before answering.
"Uh... A-Annie..."
Hadeon purses his lips and nods enthusiastically.
"Good choice, but I prefer Erwin. He's just so cool, the perfect mix of a soldier and a scholar."
Oleksiy rolls his eyes as he grits his teeth, and then pats his brother on the shoulder with the back of his hand.
"What the fuck are you going on about now?"
Hadeon shrugs at his brother's outburst.
"I wouldn't have expected any woman that bastard dates to be interested in high culture." Hadeon turns his attention back to my girlfriend. "You know what else I like about 'Attack on Titan'? The intrigue. It's a war show, but what sets it apart from other war shows is the mystery and intrigue."
Alazne tilts her head to the side while her expression suggests she's anticipating getting punched. Oleksiy groans. He grabs his brother by the shoulder.
"We don't need to know about Asian cartoons now," he mutters through his teeth.
"I'm just saying that the lore of 'Attack on Titan' is really interesting. It's a shame that you're not interested in such things, Oleksiy."
Oleksiy pats his brother on the chest.
"Let's deal with this."
Hadeon nods towards my girlfriend.
"But she's cool, right?"
Alazne shudders under the big brother's gaze. Oleksiy seems to be considering her role.
"It's good that Asier's new piece is present, because we get to teach her a lesson."
My muscles tense up, my eyes twitch, I feel spines shooting through my skin. I ball my hands into fists and shout.
"Hey! If you hurt her, Oleksiy, in this life or the next, I will fucking wreck you!"
Oleksiy turns his head sharply towards me, but his expression is one of stunned confusion, as if he had expected me to try to sacrifice Alazne to save myself. I suppose that Asier would have done it. The big brother barks out a laugh and turns to Hadeon.
"You see what I have to put up with? He threatens us."
"I threatened you in particular," I growl.
"She doesn't know you like we do, Asier," Hadeon mutters. "She thinks hurting you is a big mistake."
Oleksiy glares at me. His expression darkens and his nostrils dilate as if allowing me to keep breathing means insulting his ancestors.
"Why would I hurt this woman? She's not at fault for anything. She will end up suffering like all the others. What she will get is a lesson on the kind of devil you are. A lesson that our sister should have gotten before you ruined her."
What is Kateryna doing right now? Is she merely standing nearby, witnessing the scene as if it belonged to a reality show? Seeing her brothers again must have shocked her. I have no doubt that if some random men broke into our house, Kateryna would rain hell upon them with her poltergeist powers, but these two goons are her brothers, no matter how much Kat claimed that she didn't give a shit about them. No, I can't rely on my ghost friend for me to survive what's coming for Asier.
Alazne sniffles.
"Y-you intend to beat my boyfriend, the love of my life, because he cheated on your sister before his car accident...?"
Hadeon rubs his eyes, as if the reality of his sister's death is hitting him again.
"You don't know what kind of monster Asier is. He ruined our sister's life. He drove her to kill herself."
"I bet he hasn't told you that," Oleksiy says while smirking bitterly.
Alazne snaps her head back, and shoots me a shocked look.
"A-Asier, do you remember any of that?"
"Makes no difference whether he remembers it," Oleksiy growls. "He did it."
"I wouldn't remember it," I say, "because I didn't do it."
Oleksiy shudders in rage as his eyes show the reddened sclera over his irises. He balls his hands into fists, cracking his knuckles, and walks towards me. I remain stone-faced, and don't budge an inch. Kateryna's big brother stands in front of me while his big chest raises and falls. Then he pulls his right fist back and launches it at my face.
Oleksiy's big fist hits my cheek with a solid thunk, snapping my head back. I felt the bones in his hand impacting my skull. I black out for a split second as my legs tremble, and the next thing I hear is Alazne yelping. Oleksiy had drawn his fist back to hit me again, but my girlfriend runs to me and hugs me from the side, grabbing the chest of my tracksuit. She's sobbing.
"L-leave him alone!" she cries, her voice reflecting her terror.
Oleksiy stands to the side as he breathes heavily. He looks like he intends to kill me. He hugs his right hand with his left.
"Woman," he says in a cold voice, "get out of the way."
Alazne shakes her head.
"No. I'm not letting you hurt Asier anymore."
My left cheek is burning up, and red splinters are ringing the vision coming from that eye. It's okay, it's just pain. It can't compare to what I have done, to what I'm doing to Alazne, the love of my life. She's sobbing in terror because I couldn't deal with Asier's responsibilities well enough, and the consequences ended up involving her. If it wasn't because I can't die and abandon Alazne, I would welcome getting beaten to death. I do deserve it.
Oleksiy shoots me a hateful look, then his gaze flicks over to Hadeon.
"Hadeon, grab her."
The scrawny brother hesitates, as if he doesn't want to hurt or even inconvenience Alazne, but Hadeon relies on his brother, so he nods grimly and grabs my girlfriend by her wrist. My ears ring as I hear her muffled complaints and feel her lose her grip on my tracksuit. My stomach feels hollow.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Alazne getting dragged towards the doorway to the living room, but I am staring straight into Oleksiy's vengeful, pale blue eyes.
"You need to blame Asier entirely, but you read your sister's suicide note. She considers you both pieces of shit. She knew she couldn't return home nor rely on you both because she would get hurt again."
Oleksiy's face twitches. It pains him. He must have chastised himself for allowing Kateryna to think that of her brothers. He takes a deep breath.
"None of that business of speaking about yourself in the third person. You are Asier. You don't remember it, but you did it. People don't change that much. And our sister was just... confused. We are her brothers! Family is the only thing that lasts for a lifetime. We were there for her, she just needed to reach out for us."
I feel sick.
"What, so you could go back to telling her what to wear, when she should come home, what boys she's allowed to date? You would tell her again to cover up because every man would want to fuck her? Would you slap her again if she contradicted you?"
Oleksiy lowers his head as he covers his face with his palm. When he composes himself, he shouts at me, showering me with spittle.
"We would die for our little Katya!" Oleksiy's voice risks breaking, as if he's holding back tears. "She was the best thing in our lives! She... she..."
"Everybody failed her," I say somberly. "It's too late for any of this."
The big brother grunts and grabs me by the collar. I can see the pores on his nose. His warm breath touches my face.
"You motherfucker. You were lying. Maybe not about all of it, but you do remember her. You know what you did to her."
"No, I wouldn't remember it, because I wasn't there. Your sister told me after my accident."
Oleksiy's eyes narrow as the skin around them twitches.
"After your accident...? When she was already dead...?"
"That's right," I answer in a thin voice.
Oleksiy pushes me hard against the front door, rattling it, and then he strikes me in the mouth with all his strength. My head bounces against the door. My legs fail me, and if Oleksiy hadn't been holding me up, I would have slid down to the hardwood floor. Warm blood is mixing with my saliva. Without thinking I probe my lower lip with my tongue where it hurts the most, and when it touches the raw, burning flesh of my lip, I can tell that the punch has split it. My upper lip is pulsating, and feels swollen over my teeth. I can't tell if I have lost any.
Oleksiy snarls at my face.
"You do nothing but lie. That's how you broke all those women, how you took our sister from us."
Oleksiy holds me up by the collar with one hand and slaps me hard across the face with the other, which snaps my head to the side. Half of my face is burning up, I feel those pores pulsating. I'm getting dizzy. I slump in his grip and find myself coughing up blood, which is trickling down my chin. I'm twitching like a worm on a hook.
The big brother slams me against the door one more time before tossing me aside. I nearly hit my head on the console table. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and I gasp for air as I prop one elbow on the console table to keep my torso upright. Blood is dripping down my throat. The hall is starting to spin, and when I close my eyes for a moment, I hear Alazne bawling. My mind must have blocked it out so I could face Oleksiy while remaining sane. I can't take her pain. I want to tear out my nerves.
I wish I got through this without daring to look at my girlfriend, but I dare. Her torso is convulsing, her eyes are narrowed as if squeezing out those constant streams of tears, her mouth is locked in an upside down smile of terrified impotence. The pained noises coming out from her throat don't resemble those of a human being, but those of a weeks old wild animal who has witnessed her mother die and now has to be alone in this world.
I feel her agony in every fiber of my body. I need to run up to her and hold her, but I stand paralyzed not because I'm scared of how Oleksiy would react, but because I don't deserve to touch her. Ever since I bumped into Alazne so I could save her from the noose, I have grappled with doubts and guilt and the belief that my new life would come crumbling down if I confessed to Alazne about who I truly am. I wanted to love Alazne and keep her safe, give her a place where she could be herself, but if I had confessed, Alazne would have been so disgusted that she would have left me, so she wouldn't have been here to suffer even more. I had only been thinking about what would benefit me.
"It's true, I have been lying the whole time," I say while I stare at Oleksiy's murderous eyes, but then I force myself to hold my girlfriend's gaze. "Alazne, I haven't suffered any memory loss. I lied to the doctors, who just bought it. But I also don't remember anything about Asier's life before the accident, because I have never been him. I'm only wearing his body and living his life."
Alazne's face loses all signs of life, just like it had when I watched her as she was about to hang herself. Her body keeps shuddering with dry sobs. She's falling apart right before my eyes, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it.
"What the fuck does that mean?" Oleksiy grumbles, too bewildered to be angry.
I keep looking straight into Alazne's eyes, and I continue talking even though I have to push the words through my tightened throat.
"I had gotten on a bus headed to Donostia when Asier veered his car into our lane to kill himself. He hit his head hard enough that his ghost was temporarily ejected, so I got to meet him on my plane, what breathing people call the afterlife. I informed him that he remained attached to his body, that he could still return, but he must have pictured the mess he made of his life, because he turned tail and ran. He dissolved into the aether. Not once in my twenty years of experience I had thought of taking over a living person's body right after the original owner's ghost left, but I did, because I wanted, needed, to meet you, Alazne."
"Are you saying that you were a ghost?" Hadeon demands to know in a low rumble as he restrains my girlfriend.
Alazne's facial muscles are paralyzed, her eyes open wide although they keep pouring tears. I can't read what's going through her mind.
"I was a ghost," I affirm without shame. "I am still a ghost, I just happen to be permanently possessing someone else's corpse. I can't get out of it even if I wanted to. Just as Kateryna has poltergeist powers, a few ghosts have the ability to possess breathing people. I always thought I had gotten the short end of the stick, because possessing a living person under normal circumstances only annoyed and disturbed me. It felt as if every cell of those bodies attempted to push me out. But now I've found out that I can return to life if I steal someone's fresh corpse. That's who I am, Alazne. I'm someone originally smaller trapped inside this big, manly beast. That concept should be easy to grasp for you."
"You're a monster," Hadeon declares.
I don't want to look at his face, so I can't tell if he believes me, if he considers me monstrous for making this up, or if he's just alluding to Asier's involvement in his sister's suicide.
"A monster? Why? Because I didn't want to be dead? I'm not the one who killed himself because he had done nothing but ruin other people's lives. Ever since I took control of Asier's life I've tried my best to solve the messes he caused. But I only did that because I intended to use Asier's body to meet you," I say while staring into Alazne's watery eyes. "It wasn't a coincidence that we bumped into each other. One day I was roaming through Belaskoenea as I would have done anywhere around, just to ease the unending nightmare of being trapped in the afterlife by checking out the sights and snooping into the affairs of breathing people, when I heard your song. You were playing the guitar in your bedroom, and the music flowed from the window as if you were sitting on the sill. I remember it as the most momentous instance of my strange existence. You were playing Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea', hitting the chords as if you wished to break your hand, singing with a despairing voice as if you didn't believe anyone could hear you and you wished to learn how to see the beauty that the song promised. I pictured a tiny, defenseless creature trapped at the bottom of a murky well, and the creature had learned a long time ago that it wouldn't be able to climb out."
"You... you were there?" Alazne murmurs, faint for my decaying ears as a ghost's loudest scream.
I smile, which feels like I'm about to tear my split lower lip further. My girlfriend remains here. She can listen to me.
"Yes," I answer her. "I followed the music until I reached your apartment on the third floor, and I passed straight through the door. My first sight of the love of my life was you sitting on the edge of your bed, undressed down to your panties, your hair disheveled, the guitar wobbling against your thigh given how hard you were playing. From then on I haunted your house as much as I could bear it. Many times I watched you return exhausted from another worthless day at the office and then collapse onto your sheets. I heard you breaking your silence from time to time just to declare to the universe that you wanted to die. I loved to watch you sit on your shower stool under the warm water and pleasure yourself slowly. I stood behind you as you watched one YouTube video after another, or opened incognito mode on the browser to look up porn videos, even though nobody else entered your apartment. I learned from your favorite videos that you yearned for some big, imposing man to treat you like his little girl and hold you in place with his strong arms as he plunged his thick cock into you. I watched you roll in bed for hours at night, some of them only getting an hour or two of sleep, the rest of the time curled up and crying, having no clue that I was lying next to you and wishing with my entire being that I could hold you in my arms. I was waiting for you at your apartment the day your lost your last job and you slid down the door until your ass hit the floor, and then begged for some invisible presence to help you. I had to witness you searching painless ways to kill yourself on Google. I saw you make a rope out of an old sheet, tie one end around the doorknob of your bedroom door, pass your head through the noose and lie face down to test which positions would allow you to choke to death even if you fell unconscious. From then on I knew I had to save you. I would drink your tears and give you a place to be in this world."
It seems like the four of us are holding our breaths, and I break the silence by laughing as if forty years worth of worry and suffering were spurting out of me.
"What in the fuck..." Oleksiy mutters.
"You said Kateryna has poltergeist powers?" Hadeon asks in disbelief.
The brothers have turned into background noise for Alazne and I. She's holding my gaze firmly as if trying to read in my expression how much of my confession is true, coming from a liar. But I have revealed many details about her private life that nobody else could have known, so she understands that however unlikely as it may sound, I must have been a ghost just like Kateryna.
"T-then who are you...?" Alazne asks in a vulnerable, teary voice.
I want to confess. I would just need to say the five letters of my name, of my original name as a woman, and I would witness my beloved girlfriend's eyes lighting up with the epiphany that Irene kept popping up everywhere in our relationship because she's the person with whom Alazne fell in love. But maybe I would end up facing her disgust.
"If you fell in love with this tall, big, decaying body, with its already greying hair and its thick cock, and my personality is just an accessory, then I'm fucked, but if you love me because of my words and my actions, then just consider this new body of mine a permanent Halloween costume."
"Like a trick or treat fuck?" Hadeon asks.
Alazne's face has loosened into a resigned sadness, as if she woke up from a beautiful dream only to realize that her brain had hallucinated it.
"Is our love even real?"
A sudden anguish makes me tremble. I can't bear that she doubts that. I swallow so I can push the words through my throat.
"It's the only true thing. The column on which the rest of this mess has grown."
"In your Asier body. In your Asier life. I wanted to be with the real you, not some weird imposter. I thought we had opened up fully to one another."
"I wanted to confess everything, but I was terrified of losing you!"
"I feel like I'm losing myself. You said you want to have a family with me... How am I supposed to trust that? You've been lying to me from the start. You're not who you've shown to me."
"I mean, I literally cannot show you who I am because I'm trapped inside this man-body!"
Alazne shakes her head. She sniffs, then bites her lips as if she is trying to hold back tears.
"Let me come with you."
I struggle to understand what she means.
"Where?"
"Whatever there is when this life ends."
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
"Don't say shit like that, Alazne," I want to say firmly, but it comes out breathless. "You need to live a long life."
"If we are to love one another we should meet face to face."
"You truly do not understand how the afterlife is."
"Asier's dead, and a monster. He didn't deserve us loving each other through him."
My head is buzzing. Even though I can't figure out what to say, I open my mouth, but a sudden movement from Oleksiy makes me look up at him. He has rolled his eyes and is covering his face with one hand. He seems fed up with everything.
"What the fuck did I do to deserve getting tangled in this crazy shit," he mutters.
He walks calmly up to the console table and grabs the baseball bat that his brother had left there. Alazne yelps.
"H-hey, you two guys can just leave," I say while the big brother examines the length of his bat as if suspecting it had gotten damaged. "We won't call the police or anything. I would be that murderously angry at Asier as well, but he's already dead. You could say I'm spitting in his rotting face every day by wearing his body."
Oleksiy shoots me a dark look.
"You think I fear the police, huh? The local policemen are wimps. And we live so close to the border that we can just drive away into France. By the time the police or the politicians or whoever gives out the order to the French police to go after us too, we will have reached our home already. And I mean our real home, not this shit place that couldn't keep our sister safe."
"With all due respect, your sister should have picked a better man," I say meekly.
Oleksiy waves the bat menacingly.
"She was only twenty four years old, and she got tricked into submission by a lying sociopath like yourself," he roars.
"It was your fault she killed herself," Hadeon says nervously and as if he may break into tears. "Our beautiful Kateryna... You had no business being inside her in the first place."
"You shut it now, Hade. And don't you fucking cry."
"W-wait, Kateryna is your sister?" Alazne asks, startled. "Our Kateryna?"
"Yes," I say somberly. "These are Kateryna's siblings."
Oleksiy frowns at Alazne.
"What do you mean 'our'? What do you know Kateryna from? I thought Asier would have kept the previous women he ruined a secret."
"You already know I'm not Asier," I say, but Oleksiy just frowns harder while keeping his gaze fixed on my girlfriend.
"Kat is our g-ghost," Alazne says. "I mean, she's our roommate. She lives here. She's likely witnessing this right now."
"She's a ghost, and she's your roommate..." Oleksiy trails off as his hands start trembling. He squints. "How the fuck did you people come to be this crazy? Do they put something in the water?"
Hadeon frees one of the hands with which he was restraining my Alazne, and raises a palm towards his brother.
"W-wait a second. If Kateryna, our beloved sister, is still here, it should be easy to prove, right?"
"Don't fucking start," Oleksiy says. "This is just craziness!"
"K-Kateryna, if you can hear us, please give us a sign," Hadeon pleads as he closes his eyes.
I swallow the blood pooling in my mouth. The pain is making me dizzy.
"Yeah, Kat. If you intended to interrupt us at any point, please do so now."
Hadeon retracts his free hand but instead holds it in front of him as if offering it for a handshake.
"Kateryna, if you're here, please take my hand."
She wouldn't want to do that, not Hadeon's. The guy might not have washed it since he last touched her panties. As I was wondering with what Kateryna was busying herself, all four of us hear the living room call bell ringing insistently.

My Own Desert Places, Pt. 32 (GPT-3 fueled short)

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

---

As our taxi passes in front of the airport, heading home, I keep looking at the narrow vegetable gardens that compose most of the field between Irún and Hondarribia. Tiny greenhouses built with plastic tarps, homemade A-frame trellises on which nothing has grown, rectangular patches of khaki dirt empty except for scattered tufts of weeds. I spot a couple of old men; one of them has bared his tanned torso and is bending over to tend to his tiny farming estate.
A couple of minutes later we reach Hondarribia itself, with its mostly white two to three story houses, but our driver exits a roundabout into a road that follows the outskirts. We leave behind apartment buildings surrounded by low walls and hedges, so peaceful and close to parks and playgrounds that any young couple should want to move there. The taxi passes by a pelota court, located inside a bland building that would otherwise contain offices. The streets are quiet and empty save for a couple of elderly women sitting on a bench in the shade, reading magazines. They look like they're waiting for something to happen. A roundabout later I see the coffee shop where I had sat down to write my memoir peacefully, only for Kateryna's brothers to harass me and Oleksiy in particular to strike me twice in the guts. Alazne and I wouldn't have gotten tangled in a trip to Asturias if I hadn't wanted to flee from Asier's responsibilities.
This city should feel familiar. I'm quite sure it did before our trip, and yet it now looks small and out of place. To the few people walking along the sidewalks at this hour, when most are eating their meals at home, I want to ask them whether they know what's out there in the wide world. Take a train or a bus in any direction, except in one that will end up with the vehicle plummeting into the water, and whole new worlds open up. One is forced to reframe their thoughts, to ponder one's troubles even if that person had grown used to their way of life. But I knew all this, didn't I? I spent my first years as a ghost travelling throughout Europe. Very few memories remain of those days during which I tried to add some color to the faded, odorless, tasteless afterlife. I suppose that in the end similarly threadbare memories will remain of my time with my girlfriend in Asturias: just some images here and there, or if I'm lucky, sequences of a few seconds. Maybe none of the contents of my conversations with Alazne will survive beyond how they made me feel. If we lost the pictures that my girlfriend took, we would forget most of the details as if we hadn't been there.
The countryside on the left of our taxi resembles the wide open spaces between cities, with no hint that if one looked to the right he'd face a row of apartment buildings. At the end of this street that our car is climbing up, we'll get to see our house again.
"Where exactly do you want me to leave you both?" our driver asks. "Around here there's only a graveyard."
"We get that all the time. You guys need to update your maps!" I say amiably, relieved that I get to return home. "Just keep going. Past an ivy-covered wall there's a gate that leads into our community."
The driver frowns as if he believes I'm pulling his leg, but when he finds the gate, he veers to the right onto the asphalt that paves most of the ground except for our backyards. The man looks around confused, as if he had visited the graveyard recently and he shouldn't have found these rows of two-story houses here.
"Just stop the car," I say. "We'll walk the rest of the way."
After I pay the guy, Alazne and I drag our luggage towards the second column of houses while the driver pulls around. Once the house in front of ours stops blocking the view, I realize that I had been holding my breath. I guess I had expected our house to have gone up in flames, or to have blown up to the extent that only charred rubble remained. But it looks as undamaged and palatial as it used to, with its tawny bricks and the ornate cast iron balustrade that surrounds the huge balcony on the second floor. We are home, and we can rest.
"It feels so odd to be back, doesn't it?" Alazne asks tiredly.
"Well, I did fear that I wouldn't be able to tolerate the bus ride a second time."
Alazne laughs.
"But you did, with only some weird complaints. I'm proud of you."
I pull out my keychain and I was reaching towards the lock when I hear it turning from inside. The door opens decisively to reveal an empty, darkened hall. I get goosebumps, but then I chuckle and step onto the hardwood. As I leave my suitcase next to the console table, I grin at the invisible presence.
"Thank you for the warm welcome, Kateryna."
"I have missed you," Alazne says, then closes the front door. "I think you would have enjoyed Asturias."
"If only because some parts of it looked like Soviet Russia."
"Hey, what parts of Asturias reminded you of Soviet Russia?" Alazne asks, amused, as she takes off her cardigan.
"Those that seemed like the outskirts of some medium-sized factory town. It was like travelling back in time to the Cold War."
Alazne rubs my shoulder.
"They made me feel safer somehow. Maybe because they reminded me that some people are working hard to keep things going." As she shuffles by, she lets out a long sigh. "I need to take off these boots. My poor feet..."
The living room call bell rings twice. Alazne stops and turns towards it. Kateryna had rung the bell impatiently, so we hurry up to the ouija board. The planchette was already twitching when I see it from up close.
PLEASE DONT EVER LEAVE FOR SO LONG AGAIN, the planchette spells out.
"We'll try not to, I promise," I say with a lump in my throat. "All along I had thought you would have tolerated, or even welcomed, some quiet days..."
THE WORLD OUTSIDE IS FULL OF GHOSTS AND I WAS ALONE.
"You're not alone anymore. We'll be here for you, Kateryna."
"W-what do you mean full of ghosts?" Alazne asks, worried. "Did you see lots of ghosts surrounding our home?"
NO I DIDNT SEE ANY BUT I MEANT IN GENERAL. The planchette hesitates for a few seconds. I DONT LIKE BEING ALONE.
I shake my head.
"The whole world is a ghost town. We thought we saw some people in Asturias, but they all turned out to be ghosts."
"Well, I guess they may as well be dead to us, all of them..." Alazne says sadly. "It's not as if we are likely to see them ever again."
I coordinate my stiffened arms to take off my jacket. I don't want to get on another bus for months. When I fold the jacket over a chair, I look down at the board to let Kateryna know that I'm about to address her, although our ghost roommate is standing in front of it.
"I had thought of buying an answering machine so whenever I want I can call home and share my thoughts with you. Maybe they can be programmed so they replay the message a few times, in case you have wandered to another room, or even the second floor."
SOUNDS GOOD I DO FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU TWO REMIND ME I STILL EXIST.
"You'll have to remind me to change the tapes for you, just so you know. Unless modern answering machines don't come with tapes... The times have changed a lot."
"Don't worry, Kat," Alazne says while smiling warmly. "Now that we are here, we'll return to spending hours together, the three of us."
The planchette is quick to spell out YES WE WILL LIVE TOGETHER FOREVER AND NEVER BE LEFT ALONE.
Before I know it, Alazne stands on her tiptoes, crosses her arms behind my neck and kisses me on the lips. We embrace and I hold her tightly, losing myself in the warmth of her lips. I would have gladly carried her like a princess to our bedroom, but she pulls away from me.
"My love," Alazne says, "I will grab my notebook and a jar of water and I'll spend some time writing on the balcony of the second floor. I'll be there if you need me."
I SHALL BE THERE WITH YOU IN SPIRIT, the planchette spells out.
As Alazne strolls down the hallway towards the bedroom, where she left her notebook, I feel that I need to improve Kat's mood. I'll spend some time with my suicide sister.
"Let's go to the kitchen, Kat. I'll tell you all about Asturias, their gigantic armadillos, iron trees, fish-men, black metal, futuristic spas, highwayman taxi drivers, nightmarish factories, rotting old bastards, sooty kings and flame-throwing smokestacks."
I HAVE MISSED YOUR NONSENSE IRENE.

Alazne walks out of our bedroom into the hallway, and when she realizes I'm standing close by, she grabs the fabric of her hoodie with both hands.
"These are the sportiest clothes I have," she says apologetically.
Alazne is wearing her beloved grey hoodie that features the azure blue, white and grey Wings of Freedom logo, along with cloud grey sweatpants, and she has tied up her light brown hair in a loose ponytail that leaves two locks framing her face. The coffee she drank has barely worked yet, because her eyes remain sleepy.
"You look cute," I say. "I have missed you wearing some of your old clothes. But more importantly, they will do just fine for this morning's purposes."
"I wouldn't call my clothes sporty normally, though, because I wore them to feel more comfortable at home during the chilly days. You are the one who is used to working out, and your tracksuit suits you."
I cup her angelic face with my hands and smile warmly as I look down at her hazel eyes.
"We'll turn those clothes into proper sporty ones, and you for that matter. You need to keep healthy."
Although she blushes, she doesn't avert her gaze at this point.
"Alright, but I doubt I will be able to run for more than five minutes."
"We aren't running, though. Let's go to the backyard."
We exit through the living room into the backyard, and Alazne spots the bikes that I had left leaning against the fence. The one I bought for her is a cross hybrid, or at least that's how the guy at the store called it, because I hadn't ridden a bike in more than twenty years nor would I have cared then about the terminology. The bike is black except for bands of bumblebee yellow in the saddle, the handlebars, the top tube and the forks that hold the wheels in place.
I gesture towards her bike.
"Pretty badass for what it is, right?"
Alazne narrows her shoulders as if she wants to look smaller, and her gaze sweeps the grass.
"Yeah, they look cool, but... Asier, I-I don't know how to ride a bike. I have never even touched one yet."
I raise her chin with my hand and lean in to kiss her lips. I let my mouth linger for a couple of seconds. When I straighten my back and open my eyes, Alazne is looking up at me tenderly.
"I suspected that was the case. That's great, sweetie, because I'll get to teach you! And you'll reward me for it, let's say with some activities that involve you taking off your sporty clothes."
I hand Alazne her bike, and she holds it in front of herself as if it were a giant sea shell. She seems unconvinced that she'll be able to learn.
"As if we wouldn't do that anyway. So this is what those two giant boxes contained. I knew you intended to surprise me with something, given how shady you were being with them, but I never thought they would be bikes..."
"Well, at first I was surprised that I hadn't found one in this house. I guess the previous me before the accident wasn't fond of aerobic exercises. But my main purpose is for the both of us to go on some lovely rides together."
Alazne's face brightens, and she grins. The morning sun is lightening half of her facial features, making some of her beautiful freckles disappear. If I allowed myself to be fully motivated by causing as many of those grateful smiles as possible, I would dilapidate my fortune in a year.
"I think you will have a hard time teaching me how to ride this thing..." Alazne says as she probes the handlebars. "And where can we do it without bothering anybody?"
"Why, we only have to walk up our street to stroll along a picturesque, albeit narrow, concrete path that cuts through the countryside, passing in front of farms and grazing fields and whatever shady stuff those isolated people do. I'm sure some of those stretches of path will be deserted enough, because I gather that you will be embarrassed about your biking abilities."
"Sure, about my lack of them. But h-how narrow is that path? What if I fall?"
"I'm sure some bushes or plants can catch you."
Alazne frowns, but as if she were about to pout.
"That can get serious! Some of the bushes around these parts can cover you in scratches. And with my luck I might fall on nettles."
"If I get to lick the irritation away, I hope you strip naked and disappear into a bed of nettles."
She chuckles and pushes my arm.
"I was about to say that no licking today, but I'd be shooting myself in the foot. Let's go, then. The sooner I learn how to ride this thing, the less embarrassed I'll be."
I grab my bike's handlebars and begin rolling it into the living room, so we can exit the house through the front door, but behind me Alazne complains. She's staring puzzled at her bike.
"What? It doesn't move. Aren't the wheels supposed to keep turning even though I'm not pedalling?"
"You are squeezing the brake. Just hold the grip."
She blushes.
"Oh, got it. I'm such an idiot..."
"It's alright. Now you know."
We push the bikes forward and leave our house through the front door. I end up holding Alazne's bike upright as she locks the door. Then we carry on past the gate of our community.
"What a beautiful morning," I say as I take a deep breath of fresh air.
"A bit chillier than one would expect with a clear sky, but I guess it's good enough for biking..."
We walk a bit further to the right until the full view of the countryside opens up beyond a barbed wire fence.
"Look at those hills, the healthy trees, the random sheep, and the conspicuous lack of factories," I say merrily. "We are so lucky."
"Yes, it is beautiful, Asier."
"I guess when you stop considering the myriad of things that makes the world horrible, it is quite pleasant."
We push our bikes on the side of the path, in case a farmer's car drives down and we end up having to move aside anyway. We pass by a gated farming estate with fruit trees in bloom. A house we come across is so close to the path and so unguarded that we could just walk straight into their yard. Some of the sheds are rusted, and I wonder when they were built. As we climb up the path, it now borders flimsy barriers that should prevent the cows and sheep from escaping. One of the cows, mostly white with black spots, looks up at us while it ruminates grass and swats flies with its tail. The animal gives off a pungent smell of dung.
"She looks so innocent," Alazne says. "Cows always make me sad, for some reason."
"Maybe because the person who owns them may end up butchering them?"
"I guess so. Do you think the people who live in these rural places are happy, Asier? I mean, they have a kind of freedom that most people will never experience. They can open their front door and go wherever they wish. No cars, no trains, no trams, no buses, no police. They can walk for long stretches without seeing another soul. They aren't crowded on top of each other like most of humanity."
"They're not free, though. If they have cows and sheep, then they have to tend to them every day of their lives. Maybe some don't own their property, the government does. They're paid little for their milk and meat. Their children might end up working in the farm as soon as they're able."
"I suppose that's true."
"But I'm painting their life much harsher than I should. I'd rather slip and fall in cow shit and get headbutted in the nuts by a ram than work at an office five or six days a week. Those are the people you should pity."
"Yeah, I can't say I want to remember my days at the office..."
The path becomes steeper until it reaches a plateau covered in a threadbare sheet of shadow, thanks to some big oaks that have grown next to the path. I stop.
"This looks perfect. No nettles around either, just ferns."
"A-alright. What do I do then?"
"First, straddle the bike. That should be easy for you, as you've become a pro at straddling."
"Shut up," she replies, but does what I said.
I chuckle.
"Those things to the side of your bike are called pedals."
"I know what they are called," she says, embarrassed.
"Hey, I don't like assuming things." I stroke my chin for a moment as I look to the side. "We better start with you getting comfortable with the brakes. Just push the bike forward slowly as you keep straddling it, and squeeze each break lever to get a feeling for how hard you should squeeze them according to how much slower you want to go."
"Got it."
Alazne totters forward while her ponytail sways, and amorphous spots of light slide down her back. That ass of hers looks so cute in those sweatpants. I'm glad that we stopped at the top of this hill; any steeper and she may have fallen off.
She comes to a stop as she leans into the brakes, both feet spread wide.
I push my bike up to her.
"You good?"
Alazne smiles at me and nods as she stretches her fingers, her palms resting on the handlebars.
"Yeah."
"Alright, now comes the hard part. Lift one of the pedals with your foot until reaches the apex of the circle it makes, and then push it forward slightly. The idea is that when you are ready you will push that pedal down fully as you put the other foot on the opposite pedal, because the rotation of the wheels will keep the bike upright for a couple of seconds, which will give you the opportunity to start pedalling normally."
"Okay..."
Alazne teeters as she balances all her weight in her right leg to lift the left pedal. However, after she pushes it forward slightly, she raises her face towards me.
"But how will the rotation of the wheels alone keep the bike upright?" she asks as she furrows her eyebrows.
"Magic, probably. Who the fuck knows. Maybe nobody. But the fact is that the faster you pedal, the steadier your bike becomes. You don't have to pedal that fast for most rides, though."
She nods, then she bites her lower lip. She balances herself on her feet evenly as she grabs both handle bars. She bends her left knee, but for a couple of seconds her left foot can't locate the pedal.
"Now for the last, most vital piece of advice," I say. "The moment you push down that pedal, the bike is going to thrust in the direction the front wheel is oriented at, so before you push down you have to turn the wheel in the opposite direction. In this case, to the right."
"That makes sense. I would have never thought of that."
Alazne turns the handlebars to the right, then pushes down the left pedal with her foot. Her face becomes a mix of fear and exhilaration. The chain rubs against the cogs as if it were an oversized zipper. However, Alazne's determination only lasts a couple of seconds until she loses control of the front wheel in a panic, which begins to turn to the left. I drop my bike and hurry up so I can catch my girl, but I don't reach her in time and she falls face up onto some ferns.
I stand over Alazne, blocking the patches of light that had been brightening her body. She's breathing through her mouth, and she seems disappointed.
"You look so cute lying on the ferns and the grass like that," I say. "Can I take a photo?"
Alazne shrugs.
"Sure, why not."
I take out my phone. I move around my girlfriend to find the best angle of the sunlight filtering through the gaps of tree branches as it falls on her face and upper body. I snap a few shots and then show them to her.
"Just like a forest angel," I say proudly.
"I think those are called dryads." She sighs. "Anyway, I fucked up the bike riding."
"But you didn't get hurt. I'm impressed that you were able to turn the handlebars and fall like that. It was like you were doing parkour or something."
Alazne props herself on her elbows.
"I think I'll get the hang of it, though. Let me try again."
I grab her hands to help her stand up. As she turns around to lift her bike, I pat her ass to brush the dirt off, and also because I wanted to touch her butt.
Alazne chuckles.
"Now you are just feeling me up."
"Just a bit. Let's start over."
I stand further back as my girlfriend balances her weight in her right leg again to lift the opposite pedal. She bends her neck to the side for a moment as if to crack it, and then takes a deep breath.
"Alright, here we go."
She leans forward and pushes the pedal down. Less than a second later she steers the bike to align both wheels. She snaps her head back as if surprised, but then she pushes the other pedal down, which allows her to keep pedalling.
"I did it!"
I roll my bike quickly, because a bend on the path up ahead would make Alazne disappear past a mound.
"Yes, but stop for now, turn the bike around and do it again in the opposite direction. You need to get comfortable with it."
"Sure."
I stand on the grass to the side of the path. I lean the kickstand of my bike with my foot so I don't need to keep holding the frame. I watch Alazne ride past me. She's balancing while turning the pedals with little issue. She looks over her shoulder towards me and waves.
"Hey, look at this! I'm actually doing it!"
"You are, but don't take your hand off the handlebar!"
She breaks to a stop and then swivels the bike around awkwardly, wobbling, so she can ride in my direction. She then bites her lower lip, lifts the left pedal and pushes it down almost in the same movement. She steers the bike to approach me while patches of light slide up her body. Alazne grins, which brightens her angelic face.
"This is so cool. I know how to ride a bike!"
A warmth fills up my chest.
"Yes, you do."

We return home around midday, still riding our bikes. We veer into our gated community, then turn until we reach the front of our house. We get off. Sweat shimmers on Alazne's face as she takes out her key.
"I'll open the door. And I'll need to take a shower. I haven't sweated this much outside of a bedroom in many years. My legs are burning."
"A good burn, though."
Alazne opens the door and rolls her bike into the hall. I'm picturing my beloved naked in the shower when something vibrates in the pocket of my tracksuit, then plays the short melody indicating that I have received a message. As I struggle with the narrow pocket to pull my phone out, it vibrates and plays the same sound twice. I open the messaging app. All three messages are from Oleksiy.
My whole body tenses up and freezes. My vision goes blurry. For a moment I can't even breathe.
The first two messages only contain a photo each. The first thumbnail shows a hand holding an A4 page that features printed text, but just the upper half of the page. The second image shows the lower half. The third message just contains words, and it says 'read it and call me'.
My breathing becomes labored. I touch the thumbnail of the upper half of the page, then turn the phone around for landscape mode so I can read the text better. Even before I read the first words I know that I'm staring at Kateryna's suicide note.
I can't take it anymore. I'm sick of putting faith in people only for them to turn out to be shit. One after another, all pieces of shit. You said you would make me happy? How can a human being say those words when they know that they have done nothing but ruin other people's lives? Even when those two exes of yours confronted you, I defended you. Although I understood you had been a cheating piece of shit with them, I told those women, and myself, that you had left it in the past, that you were someone new. That's what you kept repeating to me, after all. I have always been too eager to trust people and see the best in others, that's why I didn't realize what you were doing. Even when someone slaps me, I prefer to put the other cheek, because deep down I know it must be my fault. Those times when you left for hours only to return and go straight into the shower without touching me, I didn't think anything of it. You should know that I have so little support, because I have lost my friends and I can't return to my family, that even if you cheated in my face I would have preferred to stay. Even after you tore my heart out by fucking other women, I would have remained by your side.
My hands are trembling. My heart hurts for how much Kateryna suffered during her last days, and my frayed nerves tell me that the Zaretsky brothers will want to beat me to a pulp. I keep reading, ready to touch the second thumbnail when the text reaches the end of the first photo.
But what goes through the mind of someone not born in hell when he knows that he's fucking everything that moves and still offers to marry the girlfriend he's lying to? Not just that, but puts a baby in her. What was growing inside me wasn't a clump of cells, you son of a bitch, but our daughter. In my mind I still called her Bohdana even though you insisted she should have a Basque name. You came into my womb without giving any thought that it could make me pregnant, as if you couldn't care about the consequences. Although you were becoming shittier and shittier, for all those weeks I was sure that I would end up giving birth to our baby. I was sure even the day you finally broke me down, as you had been doing bit by bit, saying that it was too soon to become a family, that we would try again in the future, that fetuses aren't alive at that point and that I wouldn't be murdering her. After I killed Bohdana and I lied in bed for days as I cried and cried, you couldn't have cared less. You got what you wanted, which was to never become that attached to me or anyone. You sell lies so naïve women will open their legs for you, and then you throw them away. What I would have never expected from any person is what you have done to me now. I'm glad that I'm not the kind of human being who would have imagined it. I still see you there, standing near my bed in the dark, caring nothing that I'm weeping, and telling me that I have become too annoying and whiny, that you have been dating other people, and that I should leave the ring on the nightstand and get the fuck out of your house before the end of the day. Where would I go? I have nothing anymore. I don't want to keep struggling. I feel it, my heart is broken. From now on I would have to carry this pain and this regret for as long as I lived. I am through being kind, I need to feed this rage with which you have infected me. I want to grab every beautiful girl you flirt with and lock them in a dungeon. I want to cut your throat and feel you choke as I watch your life fade out. So before I become a monster like you, certain as I have never been, I've made my decision. By tonight you will find me still here, lying in your bathtub. I hope there is a hell and in the end I find you there.
Oleksiy won't be content with giving me the beating of a lifetime. He must want to torture me to death. I would too. But I'm not crying out of fear, but because I can't comprehend why someone would hurt my sweet friend like that. Her unborn daughter upon dying floated on to the beyond, blissfully unaware of how close she had been to being born in this horrible world. But the regret for aborting her daughter has chained Kateryna to the afterlife, and because she can't get pregnant anymore, Kat is fucked. She better sit tight and get used to the dark.
Kateryna's brothers already know that I have read their messages. The messaging app sent them the notifications. Either I call him now or I call him hours or days from now, but I better do so immediately as he demanded. And not only I have to fear them both, but also the police. If the law gets ahold of Kat's suicide note, they'll want to throw me into a jail cell.
The phone is already connecting to Oleksiy's number before I have thought of what to say. And how would Asier have defended himself? I would be cheering for him to get fucked.
Oleksiy is on the other line, but I just hear him breathing, as well as the hum of an engine.
"Oleksiy," I begin, "I'm sure we can--"
"Don't fucking speak, you fucking bitch," he interrupts with a growl. "Now that you have returned from your trip, we can get justice for Kateryna. I want you to know that it's coming."
"Oleksiy, there's no need for violence. Asier's dead. He can't be brought back, so it's pointless."
"I don't care that you lost your memories. You did it. You have a debt to pay."
"I just want your forgiveness and a friendship between the two of us."
He's quiet for a moment, then he lets out a creepy laugh.
"I don't think so, monkey. Look up and wave."
A brick red car is entering the community through the gate. Its bulky, the armored version of a regular car. The bumpers, the wheels and the lower half of the doors are splashed with dirt, as if the owner had driven over muddy puddles and hadn't bothered to clean the damage. As the car turns towards me and slows down, I notice the Toyota logo, and even though the windshield shadows the two people sitting in the front seats, I make out their blond hair.
"What's wrong?" Alazne asks from the hall.
She's approaching me cautiously. Her light brown hair is falling loosely around her shoulders.
"Why were you crying...? And who is that guy who looks like Reiner Braun?"
I turn my head sharply towards the Toyota 4Runner. Oleksiy and Hadeon have already exited their car and are marching side by side towards my house. Hadeon is wearing the same crimson hoodie with the prominent image of an anime girl, as well as some black drawstring trousers, while Oleksiy is wearing a worn, short-sleeved shirt, pine green and slightly dirtied with white paint, along with coffee-colored cargo pants. Neither of the brothers have shaved for a week. Hadeon is looking towards the neighboring houses as if he fears getting spotted, while Oleksiy is scowling unblinkingly at me with his pale blue eyes, while with his right hand he's holding upright a baseball bat against the side of his body, as if hiding it.
I speak to Alazne with a guttural voice.
"Stay inside."