Jon Ureña's Blog, page 9
February 2, 2025
The Scrap Colossus, Pt. 5 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
What answer could I offer to Elena’s confession, that she harbored a malignancy in her blood from before she was potty-trained? Born with a curse, an unnamed darkness. Her experience isolated her from the untainted masses who befriended each other, dated, married. They lived in the sunlight. She could only hope to be understood by those who had begun to fathom the lonely truth: that they shared their brains with an autonomous alien no reins could hold. That one day, finding them feeble, the presence may claw its way through those spongy convolutions and jab a pen into some stranger’s eye for the sheer terror of it. Did she open up about her rot in hopes that I’d hold her pale, fine-boned hand and swear she’d be all right?
“By attending that course, you were trying to reach toward the light, weren’t you, Elena? Why else would someone that wary of the world put herself in the position of having to present her work to strangers whose minds would clash with yours? It was like throwing a shark in a fish tank. If you don’t mind me asking, and if you do mind answer me anyway because I want to know… why did you attend that class in the first place?”
Elena let her head fall back. The afternoon sun had emerged from the clouds and its warm glow bathed her face, making her eyelids droop, turning the depths of her pale-blue irises a crystalline hue. The breeze stirred her almond-blonde hair.
“Fuck if I know what I was thinking. Why did I attend that course indeed… Maybe I thought it would help me. Maybe I thought…” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes darted around anxiously. When she spoke again, it sounded like her throat had tightened and her words were being forced through a narrow gap. “Maybe I thought I’d find someone who experiences the world the way I do. Someone who doesn’t flinch away when you show them the ugly parts. But instead I got exactly what I should have expected: a roomful of wannabes more concerned with calling themselves writers than actually writing anything worthwhile. Who organized writer-themed dinners when they should’ve been down in the trenches, digging up words. So yeah, maybe I was reaching toward the light, as you poetically put it. But all I found was more proof that people like me don’t belong anywhere near normal society. Some stories need to stay in the darkness where they belong.”
Elena fixed her gaze on the school grounds across the river. On that building’s brick facade, swatches of faded paint—sun-bleached cyan, rust-red, and the ghostly remains of yellow and green—clung beneath the windows like dried blood. In my dreams, those walls loomed titanic, like a fortress of some long-dead civilization whose language was never deciphered. I had been condemned to waste half of my childhood in those repurposed ruins, while clueless adults drilled into my brain a curriculum I’d already begun to forget before the bell rang. Both Elena and I lived close enough to watch the light bleed from those fossilized bricks. We should have moved on by now.
I turned my head back to Elena, and I steadied her weary gaze as though I were holding up a feverish relative.
“You’re tough, Elena, and can survive on your own. Still, having been ousted from a creative writing course must have hurt like a motherfucker. But you did find one person drawn to your stories.”
Elena stared down at her hands, those fingers tracing the edges of the notebook. Her skin appeared even whiter against the charcoal-gray of the hoodie. The slump in her shoulders, the way her eyes avoided mine, betrayed a bone-deep exhaustion. She chuckled acidly.
“I can’t survive on my own… I can barely get out of bed in the morning without feeling like I’m dragging a corpse. Ah, somehow I can’t be bothered to put on a front for you. Jon, I don’t know what kind of connection you’re hoping to get from me. I don’t do small talk. I’m not on social media. I’m not a person you befriend, or who fits into other people’s lives. I’m not even a writer… I write the way someone sinking in a sand pit would scramble up the collapsing slope. To avoid being buried alive.”
“Darkness has its own society. So I propose the following: let’s get together from time to time. I’m interested in your writing, Elena, and in what you have to say about things. Let me be your connection to humanity.”
A flock of birds flew overhead. Their shadows swept over us, a momentary eclipse. Elena’s fingers tapped the cover of her notebook restlessly as her eyes searched mine for a hint of deception.
“Is that so? You want to read more of my stories, huh?”
“I do.”
“Fine. Here’s a story for you: once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to be a writer. She dreamed of crafting tales that would move the world. But everytime she dared to share her words with others, she was met with indifference, scorn, or outright hostility. She poured herself into her writing, only to have it thrown back in her face. Eventually, the girl grew tired of being hurt. She realized that no matter how hard she tried, no one would understand. After all, no other creature like her existed in the whole wide world. So she decided to stop trying altogether. She burned all her notebooks, deleted all her files, and vowed never to write again.”
“That’s a sad story. It doesn’t have to end that way.”
Elena narrowed her shoulders, concealed her eyes behind her palm, and drew a deep, steadying breath.
“So you want to, what,” she started with a tremor in her voice, “meet up for coffee and critique sessions like we’re normal people who can just… connect?”
“Yeah, relate to each other like two human beings, or whatever we are, during the tragically short time we’re allowed to experience this universe. We could consider it an experiment. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal. At least it’ll serve as writing material, right?”
“Jon, my writing isn’t some entertainment package you can subscribe to. It’s not even art, really. It’s more like a disease that spreads through words across every page until there’s nothing but raw nerves and exposed bone. And now you want to meet up regularly to witness the carnage firsthand.”
“You’re making it sound better and better.”
The bells of Juncal Church tolled, and Elena turned her head toward their peals. Her pale-blue eyes first unfocused, then snapped toward me. It felt as if a relentless investigator had suddenly singled me out amidst a crowd.
“I’ve never met anyone so insistent on sticking around, even though I’m the last thing anyone should want to be stuck with.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll drag you down with me. Do you understand that?”
“Bring it on. Come hauling all the darkness you can carry.”
Elena shifted uneasily on the bench, her almond-blonde hair shimmering in the afternoon sun. As she tugged at her frayed sleeve cuff, her face tightened with anxiety, like she had to leap over a deep gap.
“Tearing myself apart on paper is the only way I know how to exist anymore, and the only reason I’m still alive. I’m not being hyperbolic or self-pitying. It’s a fact. If anything ruins it for me, I’m done.”
“I’ll be mindful.”
Elena bit her lower lip and stared up at me. She resembled a traveler lost in the wilderness, who’d stumbled upon a stranger and didn’t know whether to trust them. The tension in her shoulders eased. She reached beside her to pick up the carton of orange juice. She raised it to her lips and gulped, her throat bobbing. When she finished, she lowered the carton and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A pale strand of her hair was stuck to the corner of her lip.
“Fine. I’m willing to give it a try. I’ll probably regret it, but… fuck it. I don’t know what else to do with my life. On my terms, though. I’ll text you when I’m in the mood to see you, and then… no bullshit. None of that social lubrication crap. I’m a fucking moth, not a butterfly. If you want to connect with me, you’ll have to do it on my wavelength. We’ll meet up when we have something to show each other, or to talk about something that’s not trivial. I’m not promising any friendship or even basic human decency. I’m not capable of that anymore. And remember, Jon… you’re the one who knocked on the door of a haunted house.”
“Clear as day.”
“If you turn out to be another asshole, or you betray me, I’ll fucking rip out your throat, okay?”
“Understood. Let’s exchange phone numbers.” When I shoved my hand into the right pocket of my jacket, plastic packaging crinkled under my fingers. I probed the tiny, solid shapes within. “Oh, I forgot about these. Catch.”
I pulled out the bag of M&Ms and tossed it onto Elena’s lap. She stared down at the cadmium-yellow packaging, then lifted it like a mouse by its tail.
“Candy? Really? Like I’m some child you can placate with sugar…”
“You’ve just consumed like a hundred grams of sugar with that orange juice. Keep the M&Ms and eat them whenever. Consider it a bribe. Or a symbolic offering.”
“Is this how you win over the girls you stalk? Pebbles and chocolate?”
“Only the ones who write like they’re trying to break a curse.”
Elena’s pale eyes flicked toward mine, the hint of a smirk playing on her lips. She shrugged.
“Whatever. Give me your number.”
She tucked the bag of M&Ms into her hoodie’s pocket, then reached into her joggers to take out a battered phone. She flipped it open, revealing a screen cracked along the edges. As I recited the digits of my phone number, Elena’s thumb tapped them in.
“I’ll send you a text,” she said. “Don’t spam me with memes and cat videos. I hate that shit. And no small talk. If you want to meet up, just ask.”
“I’ll be more direct than a rifle shot.”
“You’re going to regret this. When it comes to connections, I’m a nuclear reactor.”
Her thumb jabbed her phone’s keypad, and in response, my own device chimed and buzzed. My heart beat faster, as if I’d been handed the key that unlocked a secret passage to the underworld.
“I won’t regret it. In any case, I might send you links to songs I genuinely enjoy. You often understand people better through their tastes than by talking to them. Send me your own stuff if you feel like it. I’d love to find out what kind of music you’re into.”
She snapped her phone shut with a sharp clack, then stuffed it back into her pocket.
“The more I reveal to you, the more likely you are to realize what a colossal mistake you’re making by being in my life. But regarding music tastes, let me guess: you’re into that introspective indie-folk crap where some guy with a beard whines about his feelings over an acoustic guitar.”
I guffawed, throwing my head back, as if releasing built-up pressure. When my laughter subsided, Elena’s eyes, pale blue moons, had widened, and her lips parted. She stared at me as though I’d spoken an alien tongue.
“I’m a guy with a beard, and play the guitar. I’ve been known to head into the woods and offer the birds and the squirrels renditions of songs by Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Velvet Underground…”
Elena’s eyebrows lifted.
“Post-rock? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“And yes, folksy stuff like Waxahatchee and Neutral Milk Hotel.”
“Well, don’t expect me to start sharing my favorite artist’s unreleased demos with you just because you bought me candy and defended me against that phony cunt.”
“Who is this mysterious artist?”
“None of your damn business. That said, I don’t close myself off from new music, as long as you don’t send me background noise for coffee shops. In turn, you may find yourself listening to songs that’ll make you want to jump off a bridge.”
“I could use the exercise. Anyway, I’ll let you return to your notebook. I hope to interact with you soon, at least through songs. Let’s make the darkness a little lighter. Take care, Elena.”
I started walking away from the bench toward the estuary, aware of the stare poking my back. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sunlight weaving gold through her blonde hair, and the breeze rippling her hoodie. Her pale blues glinted with something fierce and untamed.
“Sure, make the darkness lighter,” she said wearily. “That’s how it works, right? Just strum a bridge across the void.”
-----
Author’s note: today’s songs are “The Mute” by Radical Face, and “Giving up the Gun” by Vampire Weekend.
What answer could I offer to Elena’s confession, that she harbored a malignancy in her blood from before she was potty-trained? Born with a curse, an unnamed darkness. Her experience isolated her from the untainted masses who befriended each other, dated, married. They lived in the sunlight. She could only hope to be understood by those who had begun to fathom the lonely truth: that they shared their brains with an autonomous alien no reins could hold. That one day, finding them feeble, the presence may claw its way through those spongy convolutions and jab a pen into some stranger’s eye for the sheer terror of it. Did she open up about her rot in hopes that I’d hold her pale, fine-boned hand and swear she’d be all right?
“By attending that course, you were trying to reach toward the light, weren’t you, Elena? Why else would someone that wary of the world put herself in the position of having to present her work to strangers whose minds would clash with yours? It was like throwing a shark in a fish tank. If you don’t mind me asking, and if you do mind answer me anyway because I want to know… why did you attend that class in the first place?”
Elena let her head fall back. The afternoon sun had emerged from the clouds and its warm glow bathed her face, making her eyelids droop, turning the depths of her pale-blue irises a crystalline hue. The breeze stirred her almond-blonde hair.
“Fuck if I know what I was thinking. Why did I attend that course indeed… Maybe I thought it would help me. Maybe I thought…” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes darted around anxiously. When she spoke again, it sounded like her throat had tightened and her words were being forced through a narrow gap. “Maybe I thought I’d find someone who experiences the world the way I do. Someone who doesn’t flinch away when you show them the ugly parts. But instead I got exactly what I should have expected: a roomful of wannabes more concerned with calling themselves writers than actually writing anything worthwhile. Who organized writer-themed dinners when they should’ve been down in the trenches, digging up words. So yeah, maybe I was reaching toward the light, as you poetically put it. But all I found was more proof that people like me don’t belong anywhere near normal society. Some stories need to stay in the darkness where they belong.”
Elena fixed her gaze on the school grounds across the river. On that building’s brick facade, swatches of faded paint—sun-bleached cyan, rust-red, and the ghostly remains of yellow and green—clung beneath the windows like dried blood. In my dreams, those walls loomed titanic, like a fortress of some long-dead civilization whose language was never deciphered. I had been condemned to waste half of my childhood in those repurposed ruins, while clueless adults drilled into my brain a curriculum I’d already begun to forget before the bell rang. Both Elena and I lived close enough to watch the light bleed from those fossilized bricks. We should have moved on by now.
I turned my head back to Elena, and I steadied her weary gaze as though I were holding up a feverish relative.
“You’re tough, Elena, and can survive on your own. Still, having been ousted from a creative writing course must have hurt like a motherfucker. But you did find one person drawn to your stories.”
Elena stared down at her hands, those fingers tracing the edges of the notebook. Her skin appeared even whiter against the charcoal-gray of the hoodie. The slump in her shoulders, the way her eyes avoided mine, betrayed a bone-deep exhaustion. She chuckled acidly.
“I can’t survive on my own… I can barely get out of bed in the morning without feeling like I’m dragging a corpse. Ah, somehow I can’t be bothered to put on a front for you. Jon, I don’t know what kind of connection you’re hoping to get from me. I don’t do small talk. I’m not on social media. I’m not a person you befriend, or who fits into other people’s lives. I’m not even a writer… I write the way someone sinking in a sand pit would scramble up the collapsing slope. To avoid being buried alive.”
“Darkness has its own society. So I propose the following: let’s get together from time to time. I’m interested in your writing, Elena, and in what you have to say about things. Let me be your connection to humanity.”
A flock of birds flew overhead. Their shadows swept over us, a momentary eclipse. Elena’s fingers tapped the cover of her notebook restlessly as her eyes searched mine for a hint of deception.
“Is that so? You want to read more of my stories, huh?”
“I do.”
“Fine. Here’s a story for you: once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to be a writer. She dreamed of crafting tales that would move the world. But everytime she dared to share her words with others, she was met with indifference, scorn, or outright hostility. She poured herself into her writing, only to have it thrown back in her face. Eventually, the girl grew tired of being hurt. She realized that no matter how hard she tried, no one would understand. After all, no other creature like her existed in the whole wide world. So she decided to stop trying altogether. She burned all her notebooks, deleted all her files, and vowed never to write again.”
“That’s a sad story. It doesn’t have to end that way.”
Elena narrowed her shoulders, concealed her eyes behind her palm, and drew a deep, steadying breath.
“So you want to, what,” she started with a tremor in her voice, “meet up for coffee and critique sessions like we’re normal people who can just… connect?”
“Yeah, relate to each other like two human beings, or whatever we are, during the tragically short time we’re allowed to experience this universe. We could consider it an experiment. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal. At least it’ll serve as writing material, right?”
“Jon, my writing isn’t some entertainment package you can subscribe to. It’s not even art, really. It’s more like a disease that spreads through words across every page until there’s nothing but raw nerves and exposed bone. And now you want to meet up regularly to witness the carnage firsthand.”
“You’re making it sound better and better.”
The bells of Juncal Church tolled, and Elena turned her head toward their peals. Her pale-blue eyes first unfocused, then snapped toward me. It felt as if a relentless investigator had suddenly singled me out amidst a crowd.
“I’ve never met anyone so insistent on sticking around, even though I’m the last thing anyone should want to be stuck with.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll drag you down with me. Do you understand that?”
“Bring it on. Come hauling all the darkness you can carry.”
Elena shifted uneasily on the bench, her almond-blonde hair shimmering in the afternoon sun. As she tugged at her frayed sleeve cuff, her face tightened with anxiety, like she had to leap over a deep gap.
“Tearing myself apart on paper is the only way I know how to exist anymore, and the only reason I’m still alive. I’m not being hyperbolic or self-pitying. It’s a fact. If anything ruins it for me, I’m done.”
“I’ll be mindful.”
Elena bit her lower lip and stared up at me. She resembled a traveler lost in the wilderness, who’d stumbled upon a stranger and didn’t know whether to trust them. The tension in her shoulders eased. She reached beside her to pick up the carton of orange juice. She raised it to her lips and gulped, her throat bobbing. When she finished, she lowered the carton and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. A pale strand of her hair was stuck to the corner of her lip.
“Fine. I’m willing to give it a try. I’ll probably regret it, but… fuck it. I don’t know what else to do with my life. On my terms, though. I’ll text you when I’m in the mood to see you, and then… no bullshit. None of that social lubrication crap. I’m a fucking moth, not a butterfly. If you want to connect with me, you’ll have to do it on my wavelength. We’ll meet up when we have something to show each other, or to talk about something that’s not trivial. I’m not promising any friendship or even basic human decency. I’m not capable of that anymore. And remember, Jon… you’re the one who knocked on the door of a haunted house.”
“Clear as day.”
“If you turn out to be another asshole, or you betray me, I’ll fucking rip out your throat, okay?”
“Understood. Let’s exchange phone numbers.” When I shoved my hand into the right pocket of my jacket, plastic packaging crinkled under my fingers. I probed the tiny, solid shapes within. “Oh, I forgot about these. Catch.”
I pulled out the bag of M&Ms and tossed it onto Elena’s lap. She stared down at the cadmium-yellow packaging, then lifted it like a mouse by its tail.
“Candy? Really? Like I’m some child you can placate with sugar…”
“You’ve just consumed like a hundred grams of sugar with that orange juice. Keep the M&Ms and eat them whenever. Consider it a bribe. Or a symbolic offering.”
“Is this how you win over the girls you stalk? Pebbles and chocolate?”
“Only the ones who write like they’re trying to break a curse.”
Elena’s pale eyes flicked toward mine, the hint of a smirk playing on her lips. She shrugged.
“Whatever. Give me your number.”
She tucked the bag of M&Ms into her hoodie’s pocket, then reached into her joggers to take out a battered phone. She flipped it open, revealing a screen cracked along the edges. As I recited the digits of my phone number, Elena’s thumb tapped them in.
“I’ll send you a text,” she said. “Don’t spam me with memes and cat videos. I hate that shit. And no small talk. If you want to meet up, just ask.”
“I’ll be more direct than a rifle shot.”
“You’re going to regret this. When it comes to connections, I’m a nuclear reactor.”
Her thumb jabbed her phone’s keypad, and in response, my own device chimed and buzzed. My heart beat faster, as if I’d been handed the key that unlocked a secret passage to the underworld.
“I won’t regret it. In any case, I might send you links to songs I genuinely enjoy. You often understand people better through their tastes than by talking to them. Send me your own stuff if you feel like it. I’d love to find out what kind of music you’re into.”
She snapped her phone shut with a sharp clack, then stuffed it back into her pocket.
“The more I reveal to you, the more likely you are to realize what a colossal mistake you’re making by being in my life. But regarding music tastes, let me guess: you’re into that introspective indie-folk crap where some guy with a beard whines about his feelings over an acoustic guitar.”
I guffawed, throwing my head back, as if releasing built-up pressure. When my laughter subsided, Elena’s eyes, pale blue moons, had widened, and her lips parted. She stared at me as though I’d spoken an alien tongue.
“I’m a guy with a beard, and play the guitar. I’ve been known to head into the woods and offer the birds and the squirrels renditions of songs by Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Velvet Underground…”
Elena’s eyebrows lifted.
“Post-rock? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“And yes, folksy stuff like Waxahatchee and Neutral Milk Hotel.”
“Well, don’t expect me to start sharing my favorite artist’s unreleased demos with you just because you bought me candy and defended me against that phony cunt.”
“Who is this mysterious artist?”
“None of your damn business. That said, I don’t close myself off from new music, as long as you don’t send me background noise for coffee shops. In turn, you may find yourself listening to songs that’ll make you want to jump off a bridge.”
“I could use the exercise. Anyway, I’ll let you return to your notebook. I hope to interact with you soon, at least through songs. Let’s make the darkness a little lighter. Take care, Elena.”
I started walking away from the bench toward the estuary, aware of the stare poking my back. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sunlight weaving gold through her blonde hair, and the breeze rippling her hoodie. Her pale blues glinted with something fierce and untamed.
“Sure, make the darkness lighter,” she said wearily. “That’s how it works, right? Just strum a bridge across the void.”
-----
Author’s note: today’s songs are “The Mute” by Radical Face, and “Giving up the Gun” by Vampire Weekend.
January 31, 2025
On Writing: Scenes and Sequels
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.
Without getting into complex structuring of a story (the act-based frameworks), you could produce a compelling story relying on a couple of alternating units: Scenes and Sequels.
I first came across the notion of Scenes and Sequels in Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, which I read back when I was obsessed with writing technique. Jack M. Bickham expanded upon Swain’s notions in the book Scene and Structure, which I also recommend. The alternation of Scenes (action-driven) and Sequels (emotionally reflective), creates a rhythm of tension and resolution. Scenes drive plot; Sequels explore consequences.
A Scene is a unit of action where the protagonist pursues an immediate objective.
Goal: The character’s concrete, short-term aim (e.g., “Find the hidden map”).
-Why it works: goals anchor the reader and create stakes.
Conflict: Obstacles blocking the goal (e.g., a rival steals the map).
-Key detail: conflict should escalate through active opposition, not coincidence. It should be easy to determine if the conflict is meaningful: it should hinder the stated goal.
Disaster: A negative outcome forcing adaptation (e.g., the map is destroyed).
-Purpose: avoids static victories; ensures ongoing tension. The disaster need not be catastrophic: it might be unintended consequences (e.g., gaining the map but betraying an ally).
-It’s important to think of a disaster instead of plain resolutions, because a story should be composed of escalating tension. Setbacks help the story maintain momentum.
-Ideally, a Scene’s disaster answers the dramatic question proposed by the goal (e.g., “Will the protagonist find the hidden map?”) with a resounding “No.” However, there are variations: “No, and in addition…” as in not only the goal fails, but something gets even worse. The disaster could be a “Yes, but…” However, you should avoid concluding a Scene with a plain “Yes,” unless it’s only a temporary “Yes” that doesn’t let the reader know what bad stuff the disaster has triggered in the future.
-Each disaster should ideally worsen an overarching problem.
A Sequel processes the fallout of the previous scene’s disaster, focusing on inner turmoil.
Reaction: The character’s emotional response (e.g., despair, guilt).
-Function: humanizes characters: show vulnerability before resilience. Offers opportunity for character development, emphasizing how that character reacts in an idiosyncratic way. Developing the emotional reactions prevents the characters from appearing robotic.
Dilemma: A problem with no good options (e.g., trust a traitor or go alone?).
-Tip: dilemmas should test the values of the character or characters involved. Offers lots of opportunity for character development.
Dilemmas are often used to explore the story’s thematic questions (e.g., “Does ends justify means?”).
Decision: A new plan emerges (e.g., “Find the traitor and negotiate”).
-Critical nuance: the decision must logically lead to the next Scene’s goal.
Alternating Scenes (fast-paced) and Sequels (slower, introspective) creates rhythm. Thrillers use shorter Sequels; literary fiction may elongate them for depth. Each Sequel’s decision becomes the next Scene’s goal, creating a chain reaction. This prevents episodic storytelling. Note: a Scene can be followed by another Scene, particularly when the context is clear, but a Sequel should always be followed by a Scene.
Keeping in mind the notion of Scenes and Sequels helps enormously when outlining a story: they force you to think in terms of goals, conflict, dilemmas, and setbacks, which are the fundamentals of a satisfying story.
In addition, knowing you’re writing a Scene helps you understand when to start its narrative: as close to the statement of the goal as possible. For example, if the character wants to convince another character to do something, you can start with the first character engaging the second, without much preamble. This is generally called starting in medias res with the goal already in motion.
Scene and Sequel ensure narratives remain driven by cause-effect logic and emotional authenticity, keeping readers perpetually engaged in the “what happens next?”
You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.
Without getting into complex structuring of a story (the act-based frameworks), you could produce a compelling story relying on a couple of alternating units: Scenes and Sequels.
I first came across the notion of Scenes and Sequels in Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, which I read back when I was obsessed with writing technique. Jack M. Bickham expanded upon Swain’s notions in the book Scene and Structure, which I also recommend. The alternation of Scenes (action-driven) and Sequels (emotionally reflective), creates a rhythm of tension and resolution. Scenes drive plot; Sequels explore consequences.
A Scene is a unit of action where the protagonist pursues an immediate objective.
Goal: The character’s concrete, short-term aim (e.g., “Find the hidden map”).
-Why it works: goals anchor the reader and create stakes.
Conflict: Obstacles blocking the goal (e.g., a rival steals the map).
-Key detail: conflict should escalate through active opposition, not coincidence. It should be easy to determine if the conflict is meaningful: it should hinder the stated goal.
Disaster: A negative outcome forcing adaptation (e.g., the map is destroyed).
-Purpose: avoids static victories; ensures ongoing tension. The disaster need not be catastrophic: it might be unintended consequences (e.g., gaining the map but betraying an ally).
-It’s important to think of a disaster instead of plain resolutions, because a story should be composed of escalating tension. Setbacks help the story maintain momentum.
-Ideally, a Scene’s disaster answers the dramatic question proposed by the goal (e.g., “Will the protagonist find the hidden map?”) with a resounding “No.” However, there are variations: “No, and in addition…” as in not only the goal fails, but something gets even worse. The disaster could be a “Yes, but…” However, you should avoid concluding a Scene with a plain “Yes,” unless it’s only a temporary “Yes” that doesn’t let the reader know what bad stuff the disaster has triggered in the future.
-Each disaster should ideally worsen an overarching problem.
A Sequel processes the fallout of the previous scene’s disaster, focusing on inner turmoil.
Reaction: The character’s emotional response (e.g., despair, guilt).
-Function: humanizes characters: show vulnerability before resilience. Offers opportunity for character development, emphasizing how that character reacts in an idiosyncratic way. Developing the emotional reactions prevents the characters from appearing robotic.
Dilemma: A problem with no good options (e.g., trust a traitor or go alone?).
-Tip: dilemmas should test the values of the character or characters involved. Offers lots of opportunity for character development.
Dilemmas are often used to explore the story’s thematic questions (e.g., “Does ends justify means?”).
Decision: A new plan emerges (e.g., “Find the traitor and negotiate”).
-Critical nuance: the decision must logically lead to the next Scene’s goal.
Alternating Scenes (fast-paced) and Sequels (slower, introspective) creates rhythm. Thrillers use shorter Sequels; literary fiction may elongate them for depth. Each Sequel’s decision becomes the next Scene’s goal, creating a chain reaction. This prevents episodic storytelling. Note: a Scene can be followed by another Scene, particularly when the context is clear, but a Sequel should always be followed by a Scene.
Keeping in mind the notion of Scenes and Sequels helps enormously when outlining a story: they force you to think in terms of goals, conflict, dilemmas, and setbacks, which are the fundamentals of a satisfying story.
In addition, knowing you’re writing a Scene helps you understand when to start its narrative: as close to the statement of the goal as possible. For example, if the character wants to convince another character to do something, you can start with the first character engaging the second, without much preamble. This is generally called starting in medias res with the goal already in motion.
Scene and Sequel ensure narratives remain driven by cause-effect logic and emotional authenticity, keeping readers perpetually engaged in the “what happens next?”
Trash in a Ditch, Pt. 11 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
Halfway to the workshop, I remembered the newspapers. The day before, at noon, I had ruminated about them, and that had convinced me I’d put the matter to rest, but today’s editions might report a child’s disappearance, or that a murderer was on the run. Should I veer around, go back to the city, and buy the local paper? Even though I pictured myself turning the wheel, in real life I was sliding a palm over my lips and chin as if probing for hair to pull. No, the afternoon shift would start in five minutes, and I was already struggling enough to focus on the assembly line.
I had flipped down the visor, but sunlight blurred the road as if a stun grenade had gone off and left me dazzled. My right cheekbone throbbed in a hot ache. Would I have to endure this peak of anxiety for the rest of my life? Is that what I’d condemned myself to by running over that boy—constantly fearing some microscopic clue, a hair, a speck of dandruff, or traces of blood, might betray me?
I parked by the fence of the empty lot next to the workshop, then got out of the car. An arid gust swept dust and blew across my bare face and arms like a hairdryer shaking itself. Dozens of workers had taken shelter from the sun under the workshop eaves, forming a colony of purple penguins.
Something must have slipped my mind. I went around to the trunk, where the sun burned a white hole. I inserted the key.
My heart pounded as if it had guessed I’d find an empty space. While I’d been eating, someone might have stolen the duffel bag, unzipped it, and upon discovering it contained a corpse, rushed to a police station.
When I lifted the lid, the trunk exhaled a breath of metal and floor mat mixed with the stench of feces and urine that might have sat in a toilet for a week. As I wrinkled my nose, I felt the outlines of the duffel bag. It held the solid shapes I expected.
And to the left of my hand, two tanned hands—short, slender fingers with dirt crusted under the nails—mirrored my movements. They ran their palms over the bag’s outlines until they found the zipper pull. They slid it open the way you’d peel off a bandage, and the zipper’s mouth parted to reveal bulges and folds of transparent plastic.
I blinked, rooted to the earth as if my bones had tangled with the soil. Caroline smelled like an animal that had walked in the sun for an hour. Some lumps and protrusions made the pockets of her coat bulge.
The woman tore the transparent plastic with her fingernails. A greenish skin emerged, covered by a slick membrane that had stuck to the plastic’s interior like mucus. The stench that escaped and crawled into my nostrils jolted me like a hammer blow. Caroline had slipped her hands around both sides of the wrapped corpse, peeling it away from the bottom of the duffel bag with a sound like a boot sinking into a swamp.
I grabbed the woman by her wrists. With a yank, I forced her to let go of the body and step back. I slammed the trunk shut, the bang echoing as if to alert every worker.
While pressing my palms against the scorching lid, I quickly scanned the yard and the workshop’s facade. Groups of workers were limping toward the entrance. A small whirlwind prowled the yard, rustling wrappers and cigarette butts.
A jolt of electricity rippled over my skin. My guts bothered me like I’d just ruined my digestion. I dared to face Caroline. To look at me, she swept aside a cascade of hair. Her dry, peeling lips had parted slightly.
I wanted to scold her for messing with my property, but the words slipped away once my shaky voice tried to release them. Caroline’s pupils gazed at me from inside two crystalline spheres. Compared to the vulnerability and transparency they evoked, every other pair of eyes I’d seen might as well have been just iris-and-pupil designs painted on wooden balls. The way she studied my face showed that she understood. She was examining me to figure out what kind of person would hide a child’s corpse.
My throat closed up. My neck quivered, begging me to look away. Like someone who’s spent a week locked in a reeking, dark cell and then stumbles on the light switch, I was blinded by the light. I had run over a boy, crushing him under my car’s wheels, then fled with his body. It felt so delirious I had to brace myself to keep from melting into a toxic puddle.
Caroline’s pupils alternated between focusing on my own and my cracked cheekbone. Her chest rose and fell in slow breaths.
When I opened my mouth, a stammer escaped.
“It was an accident.”
I was trying to muster some explanation that might justify me in Caroline’s eyes, in my own, so she’d stop seeing me as a monster. But the high-speed replay of me driving that night along the dirt road, of coming home with a corpse in the trunk, made any excuse seem absurd. An accident, Caroline might repeat. If it was an accident, why didn’t you call the police? I didn’t know. Who was this strange creature I was forced to be? A person hauling around the decomposing corpse of a child he’d killed, planning to dump it over the weekend like a swollen trash bag. Why hadn’t I realized during the night of the hit-and-run that what I was doing was wrong, just as I must have done wrong in countless moments?
I’d been invited to peer through someone else’s mind, someone who lived inside me and acted on my behalf, an enemy who hid from my attempts to understand him, and who might trick me into following any road I’d later want to walk back. Yet while that other “me” was in control, I felt in charge. How could I ever decide anything with certainty, knowing I’d reasoned that I should hide the child’s corpse? I needed to defend myself from this internal enemy, keep him away from everyone else.
Caroline slid her cascade of hair behind her ears, which flared out slightly. I had grown accustomed to women’s faces hidden behind layers of makeup, but on hers, craters from acne or chickenpox were scattered across her forehead, cheeks, and chin. A faint mustache showed on her upper lip. Caroline began to speak in a high-pitched voice, stringing together sounds resembling syllables. I felt like a blow had disabled my language center.
“I can’t understand you. I don’t recognize a single word.”
She fell silent, then stepped away from the trunk and studied the corpse through the lid for a few seconds. As if content with whatever conclusion her broken mind cobbled up, she flowed around the car like some aquatic creature, heading toward the workshop. Caroline rummaged in a pocket and pulled out some scrap. While she examined it with her head bowed, she slipped between two groups of workers and disappeared into the workshop’s shadows.
My legs gave out. I leaned against the trunk lid, which groaned under my weight. Why would I peel myself off this blistering metal?
My mind tried to exile part of itself, as though slicing the brain in half. Was this how others saw me? I understood why they’d avoid me, treat me with hostility. If only I could get away from myself. But I would never become anyone other than who I was born.
The workshop horn blared, summoning us to come inside. I straightened up and dragged myself across the yard. My feet seemed ready to turn themselves inside out. Why was I staying there, now that someone knew I was hiding a child’s corpse? It felt like I’d been bitten by a black widow—thinking I’d survive only because I hadn’t collapsed yet. But it would happen. And if Caroline hadn’t found out, someone else would have.
When I entered the workshop, the lighting affected me as if candles had been replaced by halogen lamps. I followed the path between the lines to my station. The purple backs, the brown veined wood of the tables, and the gray rubber of the conveyor belts—unshaded now that my tinted lenses weren’t blocking them—took on vibrant colors as though an expressionist painter had recreated them.
My neck had gone stiff, and I avoided lifting my head. At any moment I might burst into spontaneous combustion, leaving only a heap of ashes and a single foot inside its sock and shoe.
When I reached the line and climbed onto my stool, the stares of the three men stung my face. Héctor, facing me, was frowning, and to the right Christopher and John—or Joseph—were peering at me as if a player on their team had just gotten injured.
Ah, the dead eye. Without my glasses hiding that ruin, the novelty horrified them.
“I lost them.”
Héctor let out a derisive snort.
“Losing your glasses gave you that black eye?”
I touched my cheekbone, and a flare of pain lit up the mesh of nerves interlaced with the ones that had died when shrapnel pierced them.
A black hand settled on my right shoulder. Christopher, standing beside me, squeezed my shoulder to offer comfort.
I tensed. I opened my mouth to tell him to remove his hand, to say he should have asked permission first, but that would lead to more questions and complaints.
“Do you need a break?” Christopher said. “Go home. The three of us can handle this afternoon’s workload.”
Héctor dropped his screwdriver, which clattered against the table. He shook his head.
“Great. More work for us because you were a bastard to someone who didn’t take it well.”
My mind seethed in a static of white noise. Their attention squeezed me like the bars of a shrinking cage. If only I could swat every question and comment with a flyswatter so these people would shut up and leave me alone.
I lifted Christopher’s hand off my shoulder and set it aside. I sat up straight on my stool, then pressed the button that switched on the conveyor belt, which started rolling with the hum of cylinders and the friction of rubber.
“What happened is my business alone. Let’s just run this fucking line.”
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in a collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s songs are “Climbing Up the Walls” by Radiohead, and “Angel” by Massive Attack.
Halfway to the workshop, I remembered the newspapers. The day before, at noon, I had ruminated about them, and that had convinced me I’d put the matter to rest, but today’s editions might report a child’s disappearance, or that a murderer was on the run. Should I veer around, go back to the city, and buy the local paper? Even though I pictured myself turning the wheel, in real life I was sliding a palm over my lips and chin as if probing for hair to pull. No, the afternoon shift would start in five minutes, and I was already struggling enough to focus on the assembly line.
I had flipped down the visor, but sunlight blurred the road as if a stun grenade had gone off and left me dazzled. My right cheekbone throbbed in a hot ache. Would I have to endure this peak of anxiety for the rest of my life? Is that what I’d condemned myself to by running over that boy—constantly fearing some microscopic clue, a hair, a speck of dandruff, or traces of blood, might betray me?
I parked by the fence of the empty lot next to the workshop, then got out of the car. An arid gust swept dust and blew across my bare face and arms like a hairdryer shaking itself. Dozens of workers had taken shelter from the sun under the workshop eaves, forming a colony of purple penguins.
Something must have slipped my mind. I went around to the trunk, where the sun burned a white hole. I inserted the key.
My heart pounded as if it had guessed I’d find an empty space. While I’d been eating, someone might have stolen the duffel bag, unzipped it, and upon discovering it contained a corpse, rushed to a police station.
When I lifted the lid, the trunk exhaled a breath of metal and floor mat mixed with the stench of feces and urine that might have sat in a toilet for a week. As I wrinkled my nose, I felt the outlines of the duffel bag. It held the solid shapes I expected.
And to the left of my hand, two tanned hands—short, slender fingers with dirt crusted under the nails—mirrored my movements. They ran their palms over the bag’s outlines until they found the zipper pull. They slid it open the way you’d peel off a bandage, and the zipper’s mouth parted to reveal bulges and folds of transparent plastic.
I blinked, rooted to the earth as if my bones had tangled with the soil. Caroline smelled like an animal that had walked in the sun for an hour. Some lumps and protrusions made the pockets of her coat bulge.
The woman tore the transparent plastic with her fingernails. A greenish skin emerged, covered by a slick membrane that had stuck to the plastic’s interior like mucus. The stench that escaped and crawled into my nostrils jolted me like a hammer blow. Caroline had slipped her hands around both sides of the wrapped corpse, peeling it away from the bottom of the duffel bag with a sound like a boot sinking into a swamp.
I grabbed the woman by her wrists. With a yank, I forced her to let go of the body and step back. I slammed the trunk shut, the bang echoing as if to alert every worker.
While pressing my palms against the scorching lid, I quickly scanned the yard and the workshop’s facade. Groups of workers were limping toward the entrance. A small whirlwind prowled the yard, rustling wrappers and cigarette butts.
A jolt of electricity rippled over my skin. My guts bothered me like I’d just ruined my digestion. I dared to face Caroline. To look at me, she swept aside a cascade of hair. Her dry, peeling lips had parted slightly.
I wanted to scold her for messing with my property, but the words slipped away once my shaky voice tried to release them. Caroline’s pupils gazed at me from inside two crystalline spheres. Compared to the vulnerability and transparency they evoked, every other pair of eyes I’d seen might as well have been just iris-and-pupil designs painted on wooden balls. The way she studied my face showed that she understood. She was examining me to figure out what kind of person would hide a child’s corpse.
My throat closed up. My neck quivered, begging me to look away. Like someone who’s spent a week locked in a reeking, dark cell and then stumbles on the light switch, I was blinded by the light. I had run over a boy, crushing him under my car’s wheels, then fled with his body. It felt so delirious I had to brace myself to keep from melting into a toxic puddle.
Caroline’s pupils alternated between focusing on my own and my cracked cheekbone. Her chest rose and fell in slow breaths.
When I opened my mouth, a stammer escaped.
“It was an accident.”
I was trying to muster some explanation that might justify me in Caroline’s eyes, in my own, so she’d stop seeing me as a monster. But the high-speed replay of me driving that night along the dirt road, of coming home with a corpse in the trunk, made any excuse seem absurd. An accident, Caroline might repeat. If it was an accident, why didn’t you call the police? I didn’t know. Who was this strange creature I was forced to be? A person hauling around the decomposing corpse of a child he’d killed, planning to dump it over the weekend like a swollen trash bag. Why hadn’t I realized during the night of the hit-and-run that what I was doing was wrong, just as I must have done wrong in countless moments?
I’d been invited to peer through someone else’s mind, someone who lived inside me and acted on my behalf, an enemy who hid from my attempts to understand him, and who might trick me into following any road I’d later want to walk back. Yet while that other “me” was in control, I felt in charge. How could I ever decide anything with certainty, knowing I’d reasoned that I should hide the child’s corpse? I needed to defend myself from this internal enemy, keep him away from everyone else.
Caroline slid her cascade of hair behind her ears, which flared out slightly. I had grown accustomed to women’s faces hidden behind layers of makeup, but on hers, craters from acne or chickenpox were scattered across her forehead, cheeks, and chin. A faint mustache showed on her upper lip. Caroline began to speak in a high-pitched voice, stringing together sounds resembling syllables. I felt like a blow had disabled my language center.
“I can’t understand you. I don’t recognize a single word.”
She fell silent, then stepped away from the trunk and studied the corpse through the lid for a few seconds. As if content with whatever conclusion her broken mind cobbled up, she flowed around the car like some aquatic creature, heading toward the workshop. Caroline rummaged in a pocket and pulled out some scrap. While she examined it with her head bowed, she slipped between two groups of workers and disappeared into the workshop’s shadows.
My legs gave out. I leaned against the trunk lid, which groaned under my weight. Why would I peel myself off this blistering metal?
My mind tried to exile part of itself, as though slicing the brain in half. Was this how others saw me? I understood why they’d avoid me, treat me with hostility. If only I could get away from myself. But I would never become anyone other than who I was born.
The workshop horn blared, summoning us to come inside. I straightened up and dragged myself across the yard. My feet seemed ready to turn themselves inside out. Why was I staying there, now that someone knew I was hiding a child’s corpse? It felt like I’d been bitten by a black widow—thinking I’d survive only because I hadn’t collapsed yet. But it would happen. And if Caroline hadn’t found out, someone else would have.
When I entered the workshop, the lighting affected me as if candles had been replaced by halogen lamps. I followed the path between the lines to my station. The purple backs, the brown veined wood of the tables, and the gray rubber of the conveyor belts—unshaded now that my tinted lenses weren’t blocking them—took on vibrant colors as though an expressionist painter had recreated them.
My neck had gone stiff, and I avoided lifting my head. At any moment I might burst into spontaneous combustion, leaving only a heap of ashes and a single foot inside its sock and shoe.
When I reached the line and climbed onto my stool, the stares of the three men stung my face. Héctor, facing me, was frowning, and to the right Christopher and John—or Joseph—were peering at me as if a player on their team had just gotten injured.
Ah, the dead eye. Without my glasses hiding that ruin, the novelty horrified them.
“I lost them.”
Héctor let out a derisive snort.
“Losing your glasses gave you that black eye?”
I touched my cheekbone, and a flare of pain lit up the mesh of nerves interlaced with the ones that had died when shrapnel pierced them.
A black hand settled on my right shoulder. Christopher, standing beside me, squeezed my shoulder to offer comfort.
I tensed. I opened my mouth to tell him to remove his hand, to say he should have asked permission first, but that would lead to more questions and complaints.
“Do you need a break?” Christopher said. “Go home. The three of us can handle this afternoon’s workload.”
Héctor dropped his screwdriver, which clattered against the table. He shook his head.
“Great. More work for us because you were a bastard to someone who didn’t take it well.”
My mind seethed in a static of white noise. Their attention squeezed me like the bars of a shrinking cage. If only I could swat every question and comment with a flyswatter so these people would shut up and leave me alone.
I lifted Christopher’s hand off my shoulder and set it aside. I sat up straight on my stool, then pressed the button that switched on the conveyor belt, which started rolling with the hum of cylinders and the friction of rubber.
“What happened is my business alone. Let’s just run this fucking line.”
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in a collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s songs are “Climbing Up the Walls” by Radiohead, and “Angel” by Massive Attack.
January 29, 2025
The Scrap Colossus, Pt. 4 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
The afternoon sun lit up fine strands of Elena’s almond-blonde hair, and accentuated her high cheekbones with a warm luster. Sunlight glinted off her eyes, pale and unblinking like winter moons. She usually looked away as if evading the intimacy, but now her gaze was burrowing into my pupils. I glimpsed a heart full of broken glass. Elena could make anyone wonder if they’d been sleepwalking through life before she appeared.
A breeze from the estuary—laden with a briny tang and the pungent odor of rotting seaweed—rustled the leaves of the plane tree overhead, and fluttered Elena’s hair. She tucked errant strands behind her ear, then shook her head softly.
“You quit because of me?” The hint of a reluctant smirk tugged at her lips, a glimmer of mischief in her weary gaze. “What was the point? Just to spite that phony cunt?”
“Isabel was out of line. She had no business attacking you like that.”
Elena’s fingers tightened around her notebook. She let out a slow exhale, releasing tension.
“That’s… Look, I don’t need anyone following my lead like I’m some twisted pied piper of misery. I’m used to that kind of treatment. I’ve had a lifetime of people thinking I’m fucked-up. My parents. Teachers. Classmates. Coworkers. Therapists. Like you, I was already on my way to quitting that writing course. It’s done, I don’t care anymore. Isabel can be queen of the idiots. Let’s get back to you, Jon, who claims to be fascinated by my work. Do you get off on watching someone else’s darkness spill out? Because let me tell you something… it isn’t performance art. I write for myself.”
A passing cyclist, a girl in her twenties, shot us a curious glance as she whirred by on a pink beach cruiser, her brunette, ponytailed hair streaming.
“I’m drawn to darkness myself, as you are. Well, I shouldn’t say ‘drawn.’ It’s not like darkness floats around and you gravitate toward it, right? No, in truth you’re sitting at the bottom of a well, engulfed in darkness. From time to time you dare to look up at the distant circle of light. But you know that no matter how high you jump, that light will never touch you. So you stop trying to reach the light and instead you describe your surroundings, to paint a portrait of the darkness you’ve lived with for so long. Someone else in a dark well of their own might read what you wrote and feel less alone.”
As Elena’s pale fingers twisted the metal coils along the spine of her notebook, she chewed on her lower lip. She met my eyes directly, her stare haunted.
“Are you always so melodramatic?” she asked in a hollow voice. “Is that the amateur writer in you?”
A sigh escaped her. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs, her chin cradled in her palm. Those pale blues tracked the lazy arc of a gliding gull, wings outstretched against the cloudy sky. When Elena spoke, her voice carried an eerie calm, a sense of resignation.
“You were in class, weren’t you, when Isabel placed on the whiteboard the vibrant, drawn close-up of a girl’s face, whose big, round eyes stared at the butterfly resting on the tip of her nose? She tasked us to write an impromptu piece inspired by that image. While the other students, including you, hunched over their notebooks, scribbling away, I sat there frozen for half of the allotted time, because I could only picture a girl chained to a wall in a dark cellar, eating that butterfly to survive. I tried to think of something else, I really did. But my mind is a radio receiver tuned to a single frequency. I felt that a thin sheet of glass separated me from the normal people in that room, and against the glass pressed a wriggling mass of blackness I couldn’t let them see. But in the end, I wrote it down. The girl eating the butterfly. When I read it to the class, I felt the weight of their stares like I had sprouted tentacles. Remember Isabel’s face?”
“I was looking at you.”
Elena rubbed the back of her neck.
“She looked like she’d swallowed a bug. Her expression said it all: I had committed a sacrilege. I had taken a beautiful thing, pure and innocent, and defiled it. Isabel didn’t understand how anyone could look at that picture and not feel inspired to write something wholesome. But that’s how my brain works. If I had to write a story about Isabel finding love in a coffee shop, it would end up with her head in a blender.” Elena slumped back against the bench, slid the pen into the notebook, then closed the pages around it. She plucked at the frayed edge of her hoodie’s sleeve. “Hey, listen to this one. I must have been twelve. My parents had dragged me to some family gathering. There was this supposed cousin, right? Maybe fifteen. Sunday dress, knee-high socks. I think her father owned a business. Anyway, she approached me, the girl who had spent the entire afternoon hunched over her notebook, avoiding everyone, bored out of her skull. This cousin, she had a bright, bubbly smile as she grabbed my notebook and read a sentence aloud: ‘The only interesting thing about you ran down your mother’s thighs after she fucked your dog.'”
“Jesus. What the fuck was the context?”
Her pupils dilated slightly, the pale blue ringed with something feral, before she looked away.
“Long forgotten. In any case, her smile died. Instant fulmination. She dropped the notebook and walked away. Never spoke to me again. Can’t blame her. But think about that, Jon. What the hell did I know of cum at twelve that would make the sentence meaningful? I hadn’t even had my period yet.” She pulled down her hood, then raked her blonde hair back with splayed fingers. “And you know what? I read some of the stuff I wrote when I was nine fucking years old. It would have made A Clockwork Orange blush. Who taught me that shit? Who put it into me? No internet back then. I can tell you it didn’t come from my parents. The point is, as a little girl, my mind was already a sewer. Born with a brain full of maggots. And now I write stories that make people want to hurt me. Isabel was right: I am a freak. Even my own mother can barely look me in the eyes.”
“I can handle that.”
“Can you, now?” Elena asked, her voice strained, brittle. “I don’t think anyone can, in the end. Maybe not even me. Maybe especially not me.” She looked up with the gaze of someone crushed under a collapsed wall, who knows no help will come, yet still won’t die. “A dark thing’s living in me, Jon. It’s always been there.”
-----
Author’s note: today’s song is William Griffin’s “The Devil Inside My Throat,” from the album Odes to My Triceratops, Vol. 2 (hey, remember when I produced like seventy songs?).
The afternoon sun lit up fine strands of Elena’s almond-blonde hair, and accentuated her high cheekbones with a warm luster. Sunlight glinted off her eyes, pale and unblinking like winter moons. She usually looked away as if evading the intimacy, but now her gaze was burrowing into my pupils. I glimpsed a heart full of broken glass. Elena could make anyone wonder if they’d been sleepwalking through life before she appeared.
A breeze from the estuary—laden with a briny tang and the pungent odor of rotting seaweed—rustled the leaves of the plane tree overhead, and fluttered Elena’s hair. She tucked errant strands behind her ear, then shook her head softly.
“You quit because of me?” The hint of a reluctant smirk tugged at her lips, a glimmer of mischief in her weary gaze. “What was the point? Just to spite that phony cunt?”
“Isabel was out of line. She had no business attacking you like that.”
Elena’s fingers tightened around her notebook. She let out a slow exhale, releasing tension.
“That’s… Look, I don’t need anyone following my lead like I’m some twisted pied piper of misery. I’m used to that kind of treatment. I’ve had a lifetime of people thinking I’m fucked-up. My parents. Teachers. Classmates. Coworkers. Therapists. Like you, I was already on my way to quitting that writing course. It’s done, I don’t care anymore. Isabel can be queen of the idiots. Let’s get back to you, Jon, who claims to be fascinated by my work. Do you get off on watching someone else’s darkness spill out? Because let me tell you something… it isn’t performance art. I write for myself.”
A passing cyclist, a girl in her twenties, shot us a curious glance as she whirred by on a pink beach cruiser, her brunette, ponytailed hair streaming.
“I’m drawn to darkness myself, as you are. Well, I shouldn’t say ‘drawn.’ It’s not like darkness floats around and you gravitate toward it, right? No, in truth you’re sitting at the bottom of a well, engulfed in darkness. From time to time you dare to look up at the distant circle of light. But you know that no matter how high you jump, that light will never touch you. So you stop trying to reach the light and instead you describe your surroundings, to paint a portrait of the darkness you’ve lived with for so long. Someone else in a dark well of their own might read what you wrote and feel less alone.”
As Elena’s pale fingers twisted the metal coils along the spine of her notebook, she chewed on her lower lip. She met my eyes directly, her stare haunted.
“Are you always so melodramatic?” she asked in a hollow voice. “Is that the amateur writer in you?”
A sigh escaped her. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs, her chin cradled in her palm. Those pale blues tracked the lazy arc of a gliding gull, wings outstretched against the cloudy sky. When Elena spoke, her voice carried an eerie calm, a sense of resignation.
“You were in class, weren’t you, when Isabel placed on the whiteboard the vibrant, drawn close-up of a girl’s face, whose big, round eyes stared at the butterfly resting on the tip of her nose? She tasked us to write an impromptu piece inspired by that image. While the other students, including you, hunched over their notebooks, scribbling away, I sat there frozen for half of the allotted time, because I could only picture a girl chained to a wall in a dark cellar, eating that butterfly to survive. I tried to think of something else, I really did. But my mind is a radio receiver tuned to a single frequency. I felt that a thin sheet of glass separated me from the normal people in that room, and against the glass pressed a wriggling mass of blackness I couldn’t let them see. But in the end, I wrote it down. The girl eating the butterfly. When I read it to the class, I felt the weight of their stares like I had sprouted tentacles. Remember Isabel’s face?”
“I was looking at you.”
Elena rubbed the back of her neck.
“She looked like she’d swallowed a bug. Her expression said it all: I had committed a sacrilege. I had taken a beautiful thing, pure and innocent, and defiled it. Isabel didn’t understand how anyone could look at that picture and not feel inspired to write something wholesome. But that’s how my brain works. If I had to write a story about Isabel finding love in a coffee shop, it would end up with her head in a blender.” Elena slumped back against the bench, slid the pen into the notebook, then closed the pages around it. She plucked at the frayed edge of her hoodie’s sleeve. “Hey, listen to this one. I must have been twelve. My parents had dragged me to some family gathering. There was this supposed cousin, right? Maybe fifteen. Sunday dress, knee-high socks. I think her father owned a business. Anyway, she approached me, the girl who had spent the entire afternoon hunched over her notebook, avoiding everyone, bored out of her skull. This cousin, she had a bright, bubbly smile as she grabbed my notebook and read a sentence aloud: ‘The only interesting thing about you ran down your mother’s thighs after she fucked your dog.'”
“Jesus. What the fuck was the context?”
Her pupils dilated slightly, the pale blue ringed with something feral, before she looked away.
“Long forgotten. In any case, her smile died. Instant fulmination. She dropped the notebook and walked away. Never spoke to me again. Can’t blame her. But think about that, Jon. What the hell did I know of cum at twelve that would make the sentence meaningful? I hadn’t even had my period yet.” She pulled down her hood, then raked her blonde hair back with splayed fingers. “And you know what? I read some of the stuff I wrote when I was nine fucking years old. It would have made A Clockwork Orange blush. Who taught me that shit? Who put it into me? No internet back then. I can tell you it didn’t come from my parents. The point is, as a little girl, my mind was already a sewer. Born with a brain full of maggots. And now I write stories that make people want to hurt me. Isabel was right: I am a freak. Even my own mother can barely look me in the eyes.”
“I can handle that.”
“Can you, now?” Elena asked, her voice strained, brittle. “I don’t think anyone can, in the end. Maybe not even me. Maybe especially not me.” She looked up with the gaze of someone crushed under a collapsed wall, who knows no help will come, yet still won’t die. “A dark thing’s living in me, Jon. It’s always been there.”
-----
Author’s note: today’s song is William Griffin’s “The Devil Inside My Throat,” from the album Odes to My Triceratops, Vol. 2 (hey, remember when I produced like seventy songs?).
Life update (01/29/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
Ever since I started writing my new novel, The Scrap Colossus, that my basement girl urged me to work on, I’ve been waking up regularly at one to three in the morning, often struggling to fall asleep later. My dreams are extremely vivid; although I forget them upon waking, I remember traveling through tremendously detailed environments, meeting people I had never met before, and having coherent dialogues with them. Of course, dreams are a mystery. I have a hard time believing that the human brain is capable of sustaining such internally coherent worlds for hours every night; I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually connect to something, some other plane of reality. In any case, the increased vividness of my dreams, how I wake up spontaneously with ideas ready to be noted down, and the rest of the time I feel immersed in a somewhat oniric state, they are a testament to the fact that my brain allows my subconscious to flow mostly unimpeded at the moment, which is the best possible state of being.
Basement girl regularly knocks on the ceiling to share meaningful moments for the new novel, which I hurry to write in my growing document of material (131,839 words as of now). Recently she had been struggling to connect both storylines (the one about Elena writing her novel, and the novel-within-the-novel involving the stand-in for a certain songwriter I was obsessed with); she proposed alternatives that never quite gelled. But earlier today, as I peed at work, minutes away from sitting with my serrano ham sandwich and reading a bit more of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, my basement girl had an eureka moment and hurriedly painted a vivid daydream of how the climaxes of both storylines should merge. Obviously I can’t be specific, but the point is that the major hurdles to develop this novel have been overcome thanks to my beloved girl’s tireless work, and now I can write each scene at my leisure while tinkering with the architecture from time to time.
Artificial intelligence has been, unsurprisingly, very useful. As I improve my structure, that includes the detailed summary and purpose of each scene, I ask either OpenAI’s Orion 1 or DeepSeek’s R1 to offer constructive criticism, trying to determine the weak points. AI is “objective” (of course, each company tries to inject their own ideological bias into their AI), but asking AI for criticism solves the issue of requiring a human being to criticize your stuff, which they would almost invariably half-ass to avoid getting into arguments or hurting your precious feelings. I regularly involve AI in my interactive erotica, so I know it’s quite comfortable with being rough.
Anyway, the worst part of having regained my creative stride is definitely having to work for a living. I should be at my writing desk. But at least my job computer includes an internet connection, so I can rearrange my notes and work on development further.
Hope you’re enjoying my new story, whoever the hell you are. Yes, you. I’m right behind you. In any case, my tale is a bit of a hard sell, but it’s not like I write for others. I’m sure at least one person will get something valuable out of it.
Ever since I started writing my new novel, The Scrap Colossus, that my basement girl urged me to work on, I’ve been waking up regularly at one to three in the morning, often struggling to fall asleep later. My dreams are extremely vivid; although I forget them upon waking, I remember traveling through tremendously detailed environments, meeting people I had never met before, and having coherent dialogues with them. Of course, dreams are a mystery. I have a hard time believing that the human brain is capable of sustaining such internally coherent worlds for hours every night; I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually connect to something, some other plane of reality. In any case, the increased vividness of my dreams, how I wake up spontaneously with ideas ready to be noted down, and the rest of the time I feel immersed in a somewhat oniric state, they are a testament to the fact that my brain allows my subconscious to flow mostly unimpeded at the moment, which is the best possible state of being.
Basement girl regularly knocks on the ceiling to share meaningful moments for the new novel, which I hurry to write in my growing document of material (131,839 words as of now). Recently she had been struggling to connect both storylines (the one about Elena writing her novel, and the novel-within-the-novel involving the stand-in for a certain songwriter I was obsessed with); she proposed alternatives that never quite gelled. But earlier today, as I peed at work, minutes away from sitting with my serrano ham sandwich and reading a bit more of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, my basement girl had an eureka moment and hurriedly painted a vivid daydream of how the climaxes of both storylines should merge. Obviously I can’t be specific, but the point is that the major hurdles to develop this novel have been overcome thanks to my beloved girl’s tireless work, and now I can write each scene at my leisure while tinkering with the architecture from time to time.
Artificial intelligence has been, unsurprisingly, very useful. As I improve my structure, that includes the detailed summary and purpose of each scene, I ask either OpenAI’s Orion 1 or DeepSeek’s R1 to offer constructive criticism, trying to determine the weak points. AI is “objective” (of course, each company tries to inject their own ideological bias into their AI), but asking AI for criticism solves the issue of requiring a human being to criticize your stuff, which they would almost invariably half-ass to avoid getting into arguments or hurting your precious feelings. I regularly involve AI in my interactive erotica, so I know it’s quite comfortable with being rough.
Anyway, the worst part of having regained my creative stride is definitely having to work for a living. I should be at my writing desk. But at least my job computer includes an internet connection, so I can rearrange my notes and work on development further.
Hope you’re enjoying my new story, whoever the hell you are. Yes, you. I’m right behind you. In any case, my tale is a bit of a hard sell, but it’s not like I write for others. I’m sure at least one person will get something valuable out of it.
Trash in a Ditch, Pt. 9 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
The horn signaled our lunch break. In the locker room, I took off my work coat and gloves. When I collapsed onto the bench, my pants fused with the wood. Behind me, other workers wandered around, chatting and laughing. The rustle of clothes. Lockers slamming shut.
I braced my elbows on my thighs. Was it worth driving to Wendy’s? I’d be surrounded by another crowd, but of strangers who couldn’t care less that I existed. They’d ignore me.
I closed my eyes and painted a composite portrait of all the times I’d spied on that woman. With her face and body, she could strut around naked without anyone finding fault. The memory unleashed my imagination, and in those intervals, I convinced myself I inhabited another body, that I’d been born as a different man—someone a pain-free woman could have loved without shame.
I stepped out into the patio’s parched air. The gazes of some workers, as they held sandwiches or lunchboxes, led me toward Caroline. The flare of her dress spun into a spiral, and before it fell, another twist sent it rippling, offering glimpses of her tanned and scarred legs. Rising onto her tiptoes, she flowed, paused, and flowed again in a drunken ballet. In flashes, her luminous features peeked through her disheveled hair. Caroline grinned like a little girl on Christmas morning, clutching the bronze horse to her sternum with both hands.
I passed by the woman. When I opened my car door to let the inside cool down, the scorching frame burned my fingertips, which pulsed in a red halo.
Caroline had drifted to one side of the workshop, under the watchful eyes of the workers standing in the eave’s shade. She ran her hands over the sculpture’s peaks and curves—its mane captured mid-fling, its ribs, its galloping legs. She crouched beside the fence, set the horse on her thigh, and rooted among blades of grass, faded cans, and cigarette butts, like a lottery winner who buys another ticket minutes after winning.
I got into the car. I closed the door, stirring the hot, stagnant air. I was smiling. My lips went slack, and I glanced around to figure out if anyone had noticed.
I started the engine and drove away from the workshop. For a few minutes there was a prickling in my chest, like I’d scrubbed off part of the sludge that was choking my insides.
I reached the Wendy’s parking lot and, although plenty of spaces were free, I parked between two trucks whose trailers blocked the view like walls. Working the line had convinced me I was rid of the nausea, but when I killed the engine, I had to press my forehead against the steering wheel and take a deep breath. Any wrong movement would make vomit surge up my throat, so I waited a couple of minutes while my tongue sloshed in stale saliva.
The nausea eased. As if to demand my attention, my guts growled. I’d driven to Wendy’s; I might as well exploit the opportunity.
I followed a group entering the restaurant, using them as a screen so nobody would notice I was searching for the woman. As if reflected in a mirror, I imagined myself skulking like a vulture. Hispanics, whites, and blacks—workers and civilians—roamed the Wendy’s in shorts and T-shirts or tank tops. They threaded between tables as if they owned the place, while I had to apologize for existing.
The woman stood out like a diamond tossed in the mud. She’d braided her hair. The table hid her from the waist down, but she wore a corset-like top that fit her like a bra, and in the accentuated cleft of her breasts, perspiration gleamed.
Her boyfriend sat across from her, his back to me. He wore yesterday’s hat and a plaid shirt.
I joined the line at the counter, and as I stood impatiently, I sneaked glances at the empty table I’d occupy three spots from the couple. The people ahead of me waited for trays of burgers, fries, and drinks. Whenever they gestured and talked to each other, whenever they squeezed by behind me on their way to their seats, you could hear the jingling of the chains binding them to one another, to their friends, to their partners, to their families, to their jobs, to their political parties, to their sports teams. In their minds, layer upon layer formed a filter. Water could pass through, but the filter blocked impurities and gold alike; the gold got trapped, congealing with the grime. These civilians thought only what their attachments allowed, and for decades they’d kept themselves from knowing what they barred from their awareness. They’d honed their brains to lie to themselves about their worth and their prospects. That made them better servants of their genes, which existed only to reproduce. The human body was a supernumerary cell grown to obscene proportions. The corrosive, cannibalistic consciousness it spawned hid everything ugly and unpleasant, anything that harmed it, so each individual could march toward a future that would never arrive.
By the time it was my turn to order, my gut had gone cold. I felt enveloped in the viscous atmosphere of a tropical cave thriving with moss and fungi.
I sat at my table and unwrapped my burger. The boyfriend, left cheek propped on his left fist, lifted lettuce leaves to his mouth. His posture suggested that an afternoon of overtime waited at the office. The woman scrolled her phone with a thumb while toying with the end of her braid.
Aside from the blonde goddess, there were more couples scattered around. Some men looked mentally stable, maybe decently employed, but I could usually spot drunks, abusers, and similar losers with worse jobs than mine. They all ended up with a woman on their arm. Did any woman who glanced at me just see a throbbing lump of pus?
Strangers strolled around. They searched for open tables or emptied their trays into the trash. Two workers chattered while smiling instinctively, but when their gazes landed on me, the smiles vanished as though I’d threatened to kill them. They changed direction to avoid passing near me. Even if their conscious minds remained clueless, their subconscious minds understood. That wariness, along with other skills, had helped humankind evolve off the savannah. Their instincts recognized the rotten and kept them away.
I had killed a child. A child alive until he crossed the path in front of my car, and I’d been driving down that dirt road in the middle of the night because I was sick. People could smell it, that sickness. It oozed from my pores like tar. That’s why I rarely lasted a year in any job: I belonged to a different species. I was a beast dressed as a human.
The boyfriend stood and made his way across the restaurant to the bathroom. This was the highlight of my day, the little bracket of time in which, behind my tinted lenses, I could savor each sight of the woman, unbothered by interruptions.
She toyed with her phone while projecting that flamingo-pink lower lip like a red apple begging to be plucked from its stem. She wrinkled her nose, pressed the middle knuckle against her nostrils and shrugged, her features scrunching as if about to sneeze. She relaxed and rubbed her nose. When she pulled her hand away, she kept the palm facing up while rummaging in her purse. She came up empty. She glanced furtively around. Then, as though grabbing the table to slide her chair back, she wiped her soiled hand on one of the table legs.
I bit my burger just to fill my stomach, but it tasted foul, and every mouthful that sank into my stomach churned my discomfort. I should have stayed back at the workshop, in the locker room. It seemed idiotic that dozens of us came to Wendy’s daily, only to head back to jobs that wasted our hours. How many of these workers were living on pure inertia? Everyone got one shot, and if you’d failed by thirty, you should quit—save yourself from the pain and indignity of the decades of decline ahead. Past that age, humans rotted like overripe fruit, sliding down the chute toward disintegration. Children, teens, and twentysomethings lived out the promised life before they could even appreciate it. Those over thirty existed to raise the next generation and keep it going until it could fend for itself, but I had tricked nature and the odds, and I survived alone. How would I have brought another victim into this farce? Other human refuse found some solace in barren relationships, but I was desperate to escape. I wanted my time to pass with the least possible pain.
Thirty-seven. I should have died in a blaze of glory among explosions and bullet whistles, leaping that low wall to gun down the bearded savages on the other side. I would have emptied my M16 and taken someone out before their AK-47s riddled my torso. I would have avenged the insult my existence inflicted on nature. But I had returned home. My heart kept beating, refusing to ask why it bothered. And another workday waited to bury the certainty of my obsolescence under the roar of machines and conveyor belts.
A wave of sickly cold shuddered through me. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, and when I closed my eyes, images played across the inside of my eyelids. Soldiers in Interceptor body armor carrying M16s advanced around me. Explosions kicked up clouds of dust. Sitting in the passenger seat of a Humvee, I heard that first lieutenant praying from the back seat whenever automatic fire intensified in the distance.
I leaned over the table, took off my sunglasses, and buried my face in my hands while stifling a groan. Every day I avoided new sights; I feared something vile might lodge in my mind and ambush me, day or night, for the rest of my life. Whenever the foulness visited me, I’d tremble, double over, lose my breath. As my mind waded through darkness, those memories detonated like torpedoes, and one day the battered hull would finish flooding and sink to the depths. I needed to erect walls around myself, all while condemning each impulse and decision that let this plague of images, sounds, smells, and tastes infest me.
I put on my sunglasses again and took a deep breath. I wolfed down a handful of fries so their salty taste would wash away the flavor of rot in my mouth.
I had wasted too many years searching for my place in this world of humans whose customs and ideals baffled me. I lacked the disposition and resources to love someone, even though the need remained. A jailer opened a skylight that poured light into my cell and showed a bright landscape, but he only opened it to remind me I’d never set foot on that grass outside. I knew the tar filling humanity. I had to stay on guard, always ready to block and counter each attack. People without those drives or insights could love others, but I recognized the predators and scavengers. Every glued-on smile was a flashy warning of venom, like the gaudy colors of a tropical fish.
Was my obsession with this woman love? It was tough to pin down those impulses. Like a lion, I needed a female who would barely resist. Then, I’d lie down and sleep. I lacked the skill and taste for trickery, the art of persuasion, that might lead a woman to follow me somewhere and undress. I was left with memories of the women who’d entranced me. Maybe those were enough—one gasp of air before diving into the abyss.
No, there was another piece missing. Plenty of the men sharing this break at Wendy’s appreciated their lives even though they had no stable job, although they might be shunned even more than I was, but they believed that the lives they enjoyed, and the futures they imagined, were worth the pain of living them. They were made of different stuff. Eating, dealing with people, small victories at work—those would unleash a chemical storm in their brains, making the effort tolerable. Did they cringe at noise? Did sorrow hurt them less? Did unpredictable people drive them up the wall? Did they despair at the fact everything ends in decay? Did they realize we scurried like fleas on a speck of dust drifting through a cold, black universe—that from a human’s first to last breath is but an atom in a drop in an ocean of time?
My mind rose from its dark chamber. The woman had leaned sideways to stare at me with her lips slightly parted. Two furrows mirrored each other between her eyebrows. Across from her, the boyfriend had an arm hooked over the back of his seat, his gaze lining me up, poised to fire.
I choked down a swell of nausea. My chair scraped backward on the floor as I stood. I gathered my wrappers onto the tray. I slipped outside, passing the cabs of a line of trucks, when a man’s voice, sharp as a blade, called out to me. I stopped and turned around.
The boyfriend had tipped his hat back as if to widen his view. His left hand was buried in that pocket, his right hand swinging in a clenched fist with each step. Two strides from me, he halted. His ballerina-like girlfriend stopped two steps behind.
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in a collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s song is “Creep” by Radiohead (also this live version).
The horn signaled our lunch break. In the locker room, I took off my work coat and gloves. When I collapsed onto the bench, my pants fused with the wood. Behind me, other workers wandered around, chatting and laughing. The rustle of clothes. Lockers slamming shut.
I braced my elbows on my thighs. Was it worth driving to Wendy’s? I’d be surrounded by another crowd, but of strangers who couldn’t care less that I existed. They’d ignore me.
I closed my eyes and painted a composite portrait of all the times I’d spied on that woman. With her face and body, she could strut around naked without anyone finding fault. The memory unleashed my imagination, and in those intervals, I convinced myself I inhabited another body, that I’d been born as a different man—someone a pain-free woman could have loved without shame.
I stepped out into the patio’s parched air. The gazes of some workers, as they held sandwiches or lunchboxes, led me toward Caroline. The flare of her dress spun into a spiral, and before it fell, another twist sent it rippling, offering glimpses of her tanned and scarred legs. Rising onto her tiptoes, she flowed, paused, and flowed again in a drunken ballet. In flashes, her luminous features peeked through her disheveled hair. Caroline grinned like a little girl on Christmas morning, clutching the bronze horse to her sternum with both hands.
I passed by the woman. When I opened my car door to let the inside cool down, the scorching frame burned my fingertips, which pulsed in a red halo.
Caroline had drifted to one side of the workshop, under the watchful eyes of the workers standing in the eave’s shade. She ran her hands over the sculpture’s peaks and curves—its mane captured mid-fling, its ribs, its galloping legs. She crouched beside the fence, set the horse on her thigh, and rooted among blades of grass, faded cans, and cigarette butts, like a lottery winner who buys another ticket minutes after winning.
I got into the car. I closed the door, stirring the hot, stagnant air. I was smiling. My lips went slack, and I glanced around to figure out if anyone had noticed.
I started the engine and drove away from the workshop. For a few minutes there was a prickling in my chest, like I’d scrubbed off part of the sludge that was choking my insides.
I reached the Wendy’s parking lot and, although plenty of spaces were free, I parked between two trucks whose trailers blocked the view like walls. Working the line had convinced me I was rid of the nausea, but when I killed the engine, I had to press my forehead against the steering wheel and take a deep breath. Any wrong movement would make vomit surge up my throat, so I waited a couple of minutes while my tongue sloshed in stale saliva.
The nausea eased. As if to demand my attention, my guts growled. I’d driven to Wendy’s; I might as well exploit the opportunity.
I followed a group entering the restaurant, using them as a screen so nobody would notice I was searching for the woman. As if reflected in a mirror, I imagined myself skulking like a vulture. Hispanics, whites, and blacks—workers and civilians—roamed the Wendy’s in shorts and T-shirts or tank tops. They threaded between tables as if they owned the place, while I had to apologize for existing.
The woman stood out like a diamond tossed in the mud. She’d braided her hair. The table hid her from the waist down, but she wore a corset-like top that fit her like a bra, and in the accentuated cleft of her breasts, perspiration gleamed.
Her boyfriend sat across from her, his back to me. He wore yesterday’s hat and a plaid shirt.
I joined the line at the counter, and as I stood impatiently, I sneaked glances at the empty table I’d occupy three spots from the couple. The people ahead of me waited for trays of burgers, fries, and drinks. Whenever they gestured and talked to each other, whenever they squeezed by behind me on their way to their seats, you could hear the jingling of the chains binding them to one another, to their friends, to their partners, to their families, to their jobs, to their political parties, to their sports teams. In their minds, layer upon layer formed a filter. Water could pass through, but the filter blocked impurities and gold alike; the gold got trapped, congealing with the grime. These civilians thought only what their attachments allowed, and for decades they’d kept themselves from knowing what they barred from their awareness. They’d honed their brains to lie to themselves about their worth and their prospects. That made them better servants of their genes, which existed only to reproduce. The human body was a supernumerary cell grown to obscene proportions. The corrosive, cannibalistic consciousness it spawned hid everything ugly and unpleasant, anything that harmed it, so each individual could march toward a future that would never arrive.
By the time it was my turn to order, my gut had gone cold. I felt enveloped in the viscous atmosphere of a tropical cave thriving with moss and fungi.
I sat at my table and unwrapped my burger. The boyfriend, left cheek propped on his left fist, lifted lettuce leaves to his mouth. His posture suggested that an afternoon of overtime waited at the office. The woman scrolled her phone with a thumb while toying with the end of her braid.
Aside from the blonde goddess, there were more couples scattered around. Some men looked mentally stable, maybe decently employed, but I could usually spot drunks, abusers, and similar losers with worse jobs than mine. They all ended up with a woman on their arm. Did any woman who glanced at me just see a throbbing lump of pus?
Strangers strolled around. They searched for open tables or emptied their trays into the trash. Two workers chattered while smiling instinctively, but when their gazes landed on me, the smiles vanished as though I’d threatened to kill them. They changed direction to avoid passing near me. Even if their conscious minds remained clueless, their subconscious minds understood. That wariness, along with other skills, had helped humankind evolve off the savannah. Their instincts recognized the rotten and kept them away.
I had killed a child. A child alive until he crossed the path in front of my car, and I’d been driving down that dirt road in the middle of the night because I was sick. People could smell it, that sickness. It oozed from my pores like tar. That’s why I rarely lasted a year in any job: I belonged to a different species. I was a beast dressed as a human.
The boyfriend stood and made his way across the restaurant to the bathroom. This was the highlight of my day, the little bracket of time in which, behind my tinted lenses, I could savor each sight of the woman, unbothered by interruptions.
She toyed with her phone while projecting that flamingo-pink lower lip like a red apple begging to be plucked from its stem. She wrinkled her nose, pressed the middle knuckle against her nostrils and shrugged, her features scrunching as if about to sneeze. She relaxed and rubbed her nose. When she pulled her hand away, she kept the palm facing up while rummaging in her purse. She came up empty. She glanced furtively around. Then, as though grabbing the table to slide her chair back, she wiped her soiled hand on one of the table legs.
I bit my burger just to fill my stomach, but it tasted foul, and every mouthful that sank into my stomach churned my discomfort. I should have stayed back at the workshop, in the locker room. It seemed idiotic that dozens of us came to Wendy’s daily, only to head back to jobs that wasted our hours. How many of these workers were living on pure inertia? Everyone got one shot, and if you’d failed by thirty, you should quit—save yourself from the pain and indignity of the decades of decline ahead. Past that age, humans rotted like overripe fruit, sliding down the chute toward disintegration. Children, teens, and twentysomethings lived out the promised life before they could even appreciate it. Those over thirty existed to raise the next generation and keep it going until it could fend for itself, but I had tricked nature and the odds, and I survived alone. How would I have brought another victim into this farce? Other human refuse found some solace in barren relationships, but I was desperate to escape. I wanted my time to pass with the least possible pain.
Thirty-seven. I should have died in a blaze of glory among explosions and bullet whistles, leaping that low wall to gun down the bearded savages on the other side. I would have emptied my M16 and taken someone out before their AK-47s riddled my torso. I would have avenged the insult my existence inflicted on nature. But I had returned home. My heart kept beating, refusing to ask why it bothered. And another workday waited to bury the certainty of my obsolescence under the roar of machines and conveyor belts.
A wave of sickly cold shuddered through me. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, and when I closed my eyes, images played across the inside of my eyelids. Soldiers in Interceptor body armor carrying M16s advanced around me. Explosions kicked up clouds of dust. Sitting in the passenger seat of a Humvee, I heard that first lieutenant praying from the back seat whenever automatic fire intensified in the distance.
I leaned over the table, took off my sunglasses, and buried my face in my hands while stifling a groan. Every day I avoided new sights; I feared something vile might lodge in my mind and ambush me, day or night, for the rest of my life. Whenever the foulness visited me, I’d tremble, double over, lose my breath. As my mind waded through darkness, those memories detonated like torpedoes, and one day the battered hull would finish flooding and sink to the depths. I needed to erect walls around myself, all while condemning each impulse and decision that let this plague of images, sounds, smells, and tastes infest me.
I put on my sunglasses again and took a deep breath. I wolfed down a handful of fries so their salty taste would wash away the flavor of rot in my mouth.
I had wasted too many years searching for my place in this world of humans whose customs and ideals baffled me. I lacked the disposition and resources to love someone, even though the need remained. A jailer opened a skylight that poured light into my cell and showed a bright landscape, but he only opened it to remind me I’d never set foot on that grass outside. I knew the tar filling humanity. I had to stay on guard, always ready to block and counter each attack. People without those drives or insights could love others, but I recognized the predators and scavengers. Every glued-on smile was a flashy warning of venom, like the gaudy colors of a tropical fish.
Was my obsession with this woman love? It was tough to pin down those impulses. Like a lion, I needed a female who would barely resist. Then, I’d lie down and sleep. I lacked the skill and taste for trickery, the art of persuasion, that might lead a woman to follow me somewhere and undress. I was left with memories of the women who’d entranced me. Maybe those were enough—one gasp of air before diving into the abyss.
No, there was another piece missing. Plenty of the men sharing this break at Wendy’s appreciated their lives even though they had no stable job, although they might be shunned even more than I was, but they believed that the lives they enjoyed, and the futures they imagined, were worth the pain of living them. They were made of different stuff. Eating, dealing with people, small victories at work—those would unleash a chemical storm in their brains, making the effort tolerable. Did they cringe at noise? Did sorrow hurt them less? Did unpredictable people drive them up the wall? Did they despair at the fact everything ends in decay? Did they realize we scurried like fleas on a speck of dust drifting through a cold, black universe—that from a human’s first to last breath is but an atom in a drop in an ocean of time?
My mind rose from its dark chamber. The woman had leaned sideways to stare at me with her lips slightly parted. Two furrows mirrored each other between her eyebrows. Across from her, the boyfriend had an arm hooked over the back of his seat, his gaze lining me up, poised to fire.
I choked down a swell of nausea. My chair scraped backward on the floor as I stood. I gathered my wrappers onto the tray. I slipped outside, passing the cabs of a line of trucks, when a man’s voice, sharp as a blade, called out to me. I stopped and turned around.
The boyfriend had tipped his hat back as if to widen his view. His left hand was buried in that pocket, his right hand swinging in a clenched fist with each step. Two strides from me, he halted. His ballerina-like girlfriend stopped two steps behind.
-----
Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in a collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
Today’s song is “Creep” by Radiohead (also this live version).
January 28, 2025
Trash in a Ditch, Pt. 8 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
About five yards from the backseat where I sat, the shoulder of the road swelled like a time-lapse shot of a festering boil. Its dirt half disintegrated. The asphalt on the other half cracked and peeled away like the skin of a rotten orange. The shockwave swept over us shattering the Humvee’s windows, making the vehicle rear up on my side as though slammed by a charge, and a flash of pain tore through the right side of my face, blinding me.
Five minutes after I woke up, I was in the shower lathering shampoo into my hair when I threw up. It splattered the wall and spread around the drain in a star of bile. The running water opened channels in the vomit until the yellowish residue vanished down the pipe. I sat on the ceramic floor under the stream that drummed against my scalp. The discomfort that had kept me from sleeping erupted into something worse, and my mouth tasted of vomit and phlegm.
I dried off and got dressed. Kneeling like a penitent before the toilet bowl, I spent the remaining minutes spitting out strands of saliva.
I drove to the workshop in a heatstroke nightmare. The heat had unraveled my cells, their contents diluted into my blood. I parked amid the chaos of workers maneuvering to slot their vehicles into free spaces, or meeting up with their line-mates. Of the faces crossing my field of vision, I recognized a few, though in civilian clothes they looked more like strangers.
I waited for most of them to head into the locker room. While I fiddled with the raised details of the action-figure-sized bronze horse in my pants pocket, I approached the waste container. Inside, miniature hills and mounds like a landfill rose to the same height they had the previous afternoon. Unseen workers would empty it on Friday. I buried the bronze horse among pieces whose casings were cracked or split.
As I waded through the workshop amid the clatter of machines and the lines waking up, I held back my nausea, but the sickness reverberated through my consciousness like interference on a radio signal. Seated at the line, working at the task that added money to my bank account, between one machine part and the next I sweated out the illness in beads so large they slipped off me. They pooled in wrinkles, tangled in my eyebrows, or flowed to the corners of my eyes, irritating my tear ducts. Breathing through my mouth, I blew droplets that spattered the parts. Water was escaping me like from a piece of fruit abandoned in the sun.
By instinct, my gaze flicked up to the supervisor’s office. She had swiveled her chair toward the window to observe me.
My heart lurched as if I’d just set off an alarm while cracking a safe. That look said I didn’t belong here. I had infiltrated this workshop, convinced myself I deserved to be hired. Hidden among these dozens of workers, I silently begged them not to look at me, hoping my eyes and the tinted lenses of my sunglasses would contain my guilt for every bad decision, every instinctive reaction I’d later regret. A guilt that had haunted me since birth and would follow me till death, my body tensing against its cramps minute by minute. I preferred suffering it myself rather than passing the burden on to others, to the police, to a courtroom, so that the so-called just and humane system could decide how I ought to be punished.
And so I kept getting up early to come to this assembly line. I sacrificed my hours for a hollow, insignificant task, just to keep up an apartment I could never afford to buy. But what else did life offer? How could I be sure some other routine would rescue me from this misery, or from something worse?
The child, his very essence, like a haunted house apparition, tormented me with these waves of foulness. He kept repeating that I had killed him, and that although no one else knew, sooner or later they’d find out.
I wiped my face with a damp palm. My skin stung under my undershirt and the clinging boxers. I tugged the collar of my shirt, twisted around, and pinched at my crotch to get some relief for a few minutes. Hours remained before I could go home. Tomorrow I’d endure another workday, and the day after that as well. Then, after the weekend, five more days. The cycle repeated over and over. Over and over. Over and over. Over and over. The hours ought to collapse faster and faster, breaking the sound barrier, chipping away at the block of time I was born with, time I was forced to trade on this stupid planet. Such was the result of this slavery: it made you wish a drain would flush your life away like piss.
My hands turned the parts over and over between my fingers. I screwed some pieces together, plugged wires into the right holes. But I’d lost all feeling in my arms. I had moved into another body, I faced the world from behind a different pair of sunglasses.
Parts slid into my hands then off to the right, one after another. Once they left us, where did they go? Did they fit under a car’s hood, or into a fridge or a washing machine? Did they become part of something that would satisfy someone who needed it? This workshop existed thanks to charity, giving broken people a purpose so we could believe our lives had value, yet also to keep us under control and out of sight until we died. The work distracted us from the surrounding society, in case we ever got the urge to blow it away with a shotgun.
I asked for a break to take a leak. In the bathroom, I stepped up to a wall-mounted toilet. I’d unzipped, and was taking a deep breath when someone walked in and greeted me. I clenched my teeth. I wanted to tell him to wait outside until I was done. I wanted to wish away his existence.
He moved to a toilet on the adjacent wall. I heard the rasp of his zipper. He spread his legs into an inverted V, and I noticed the ashen-gray folds of his right arm: thick, bulging skin. He glanced over his shoulder and psst’d me. While his stream pattered against the porcelain, he held out a ticket over that shoulder with his free hand.
“One of my buddies dropped out. You interested?”
He was inviting me to a game from the sports he loved to ramble about: soccer, basketball, baseball. The modern worker’s religion.
“I’m sure someone else on the line, or in the workshop, would appreciate it.”
“But I’m offering it to you.”
“I’ve never shown any interest.”
He soured his tone like a customer-service rep forced to remind some idiot for the thirtieth time that electrical devices need to be plugged in.
“You’d like it if you tried.”
I bowed my head and stifled a scoff. I shook off the last drops and zipped up.
“Last chance, pal,” said John—or Joseph. “Eventually people get tired of offering.”
I don’t want you to offer me anything. I want you all to leave me alone.
“That stuff doesn’t matter to me.”
He turned, hiding his face behind a thicket of hair. He clicked his tongue. As he left, he tossed me some variation of Have it your way.
I took a sip of water. While drying my mouth with toilet paper, I opened the door to the hallway. Our supervisor was climbing the stairs to her office, absorbed in the documents tucked in an open folder. The flutter of her blouse covered the butt of her leggings, whose wild pattern might have camouflaged her in a psychedelic hallucination.
I passed by the stairs while shrugging like someone caught in the rain without an umbrella, but I remembered how she’d been watching me like a prison spotlight tracking escapees. I climbed two steps. The staircase—metal, ridged—trembled, and the supervisor turned around. Her lips parted half an inch, her right hand froze in the middle of flipping a page. She took a moment to smile, as though rushing to come up with a response to an unexpected event.
I cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry I was unpleasant last time we spoke. Sometimes the memories come back. It’s hard for me to… accept it’s behind me.”
The supervisor recognized the nature of my reaction: a tormented veteran. She smiled as if inviting me to a barbecue.
“I wouldn’t pretend to know how you feel. But at least you’re out of danger now.”
She wanted me to open up. I was overwhelmed by the swampy humidity of my sweat-soaked clothes, that stale stench. I turned.
“I think that’s all.”
The supervisor stepped down a stair.
“Do they organize any veterans’ groups in this city, or in a nearby one? I imagine you all must be spread around.”
Forcing out the words while I built the context, I said, “I’ve been to groups like that. They’re all basically the same. The support helps and it’s welcome, I suppose, but it doesn’t cut out the tumor, which reacts before you can think.”
“Maybe the next group will be the one. You never know what fascinating, wonderful people you might meet. Everyone needs to connect with those who’ve lived through something similar. It’d be worth the drive, even if you had to go to Austin or San Antonio.”
“You’re right.”
When someone bothered me for any random reason, giving them the answer they wanted usually made them forget about me for a while.
The supervisor touched my right arm near the elbow. I stiffened, but she reinforced her smile.
“If you need anything, just tell me, alright?”
I nodded and said goodbye while descending the steps. I was crossing the workshop toward my station on the line when a shudder rippled through me, as though a scorpion had just scurried across my skin.
-----
Author’s note: this novella, originally written in Spanish, is contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho, self-published about ten years ago.
Editing this part made me queasy, so good job, me from ten years ago. I had forgotten that whole bit with John/Joseph bothering the protagonist to get him out of his shell. It’s based on a memory that I also exploited for the first years of grief in my novella Motocross Legend, Love of My Life. When you have been burdened with such a terrible memory as mine, and you try to avoid new experiences lest you add ammo to your intrusive thoughts, you get to recycling.
Anyway, in the real-life event, the nasty two years it took to get my programming degree were coming to an end, and a smiley classmate, likely ten years older than me, offered to get together with them for a group dinner or some shit. I refused. He said, “Are you sure? It’s your last chance.” I tasted that condescension; in his mind, I was a shy guy too nervous to hang out with them. No, buddy. Your very presence worsened my day.
About five yards from the backseat where I sat, the shoulder of the road swelled like a time-lapse shot of a festering boil. Its dirt half disintegrated. The asphalt on the other half cracked and peeled away like the skin of a rotten orange. The shockwave swept over us shattering the Humvee’s windows, making the vehicle rear up on my side as though slammed by a charge, and a flash of pain tore through the right side of my face, blinding me.
Five minutes after I woke up, I was in the shower lathering shampoo into my hair when I threw up. It splattered the wall and spread around the drain in a star of bile. The running water opened channels in the vomit until the yellowish residue vanished down the pipe. I sat on the ceramic floor under the stream that drummed against my scalp. The discomfort that had kept me from sleeping erupted into something worse, and my mouth tasted of vomit and phlegm.
I dried off and got dressed. Kneeling like a penitent before the toilet bowl, I spent the remaining minutes spitting out strands of saliva.
I drove to the workshop in a heatstroke nightmare. The heat had unraveled my cells, their contents diluted into my blood. I parked amid the chaos of workers maneuvering to slot their vehicles into free spaces, or meeting up with their line-mates. Of the faces crossing my field of vision, I recognized a few, though in civilian clothes they looked more like strangers.
I waited for most of them to head into the locker room. While I fiddled with the raised details of the action-figure-sized bronze horse in my pants pocket, I approached the waste container. Inside, miniature hills and mounds like a landfill rose to the same height they had the previous afternoon. Unseen workers would empty it on Friday. I buried the bronze horse among pieces whose casings were cracked or split.
As I waded through the workshop amid the clatter of machines and the lines waking up, I held back my nausea, but the sickness reverberated through my consciousness like interference on a radio signal. Seated at the line, working at the task that added money to my bank account, between one machine part and the next I sweated out the illness in beads so large they slipped off me. They pooled in wrinkles, tangled in my eyebrows, or flowed to the corners of my eyes, irritating my tear ducts. Breathing through my mouth, I blew droplets that spattered the parts. Water was escaping me like from a piece of fruit abandoned in the sun.
By instinct, my gaze flicked up to the supervisor’s office. She had swiveled her chair toward the window to observe me.
My heart lurched as if I’d just set off an alarm while cracking a safe. That look said I didn’t belong here. I had infiltrated this workshop, convinced myself I deserved to be hired. Hidden among these dozens of workers, I silently begged them not to look at me, hoping my eyes and the tinted lenses of my sunglasses would contain my guilt for every bad decision, every instinctive reaction I’d later regret. A guilt that had haunted me since birth and would follow me till death, my body tensing against its cramps minute by minute. I preferred suffering it myself rather than passing the burden on to others, to the police, to a courtroom, so that the so-called just and humane system could decide how I ought to be punished.
And so I kept getting up early to come to this assembly line. I sacrificed my hours for a hollow, insignificant task, just to keep up an apartment I could never afford to buy. But what else did life offer? How could I be sure some other routine would rescue me from this misery, or from something worse?
The child, his very essence, like a haunted house apparition, tormented me with these waves of foulness. He kept repeating that I had killed him, and that although no one else knew, sooner or later they’d find out.
I wiped my face with a damp palm. My skin stung under my undershirt and the clinging boxers. I tugged the collar of my shirt, twisted around, and pinched at my crotch to get some relief for a few minutes. Hours remained before I could go home. Tomorrow I’d endure another workday, and the day after that as well. Then, after the weekend, five more days. The cycle repeated over and over. Over and over. Over and over. Over and over. The hours ought to collapse faster and faster, breaking the sound barrier, chipping away at the block of time I was born with, time I was forced to trade on this stupid planet. Such was the result of this slavery: it made you wish a drain would flush your life away like piss.
My hands turned the parts over and over between my fingers. I screwed some pieces together, plugged wires into the right holes. But I’d lost all feeling in my arms. I had moved into another body, I faced the world from behind a different pair of sunglasses.
Parts slid into my hands then off to the right, one after another. Once they left us, where did they go? Did they fit under a car’s hood, or into a fridge or a washing machine? Did they become part of something that would satisfy someone who needed it? This workshop existed thanks to charity, giving broken people a purpose so we could believe our lives had value, yet also to keep us under control and out of sight until we died. The work distracted us from the surrounding society, in case we ever got the urge to blow it away with a shotgun.
I asked for a break to take a leak. In the bathroom, I stepped up to a wall-mounted toilet. I’d unzipped, and was taking a deep breath when someone walked in and greeted me. I clenched my teeth. I wanted to tell him to wait outside until I was done. I wanted to wish away his existence.
He moved to a toilet on the adjacent wall. I heard the rasp of his zipper. He spread his legs into an inverted V, and I noticed the ashen-gray folds of his right arm: thick, bulging skin. He glanced over his shoulder and psst’d me. While his stream pattered against the porcelain, he held out a ticket over that shoulder with his free hand.
“One of my buddies dropped out. You interested?”
He was inviting me to a game from the sports he loved to ramble about: soccer, basketball, baseball. The modern worker’s religion.
“I’m sure someone else on the line, or in the workshop, would appreciate it.”
“But I’m offering it to you.”
“I’ve never shown any interest.”
He soured his tone like a customer-service rep forced to remind some idiot for the thirtieth time that electrical devices need to be plugged in.
“You’d like it if you tried.”
I bowed my head and stifled a scoff. I shook off the last drops and zipped up.
“Last chance, pal,” said John—or Joseph. “Eventually people get tired of offering.”
I don’t want you to offer me anything. I want you all to leave me alone.
“That stuff doesn’t matter to me.”
He turned, hiding his face behind a thicket of hair. He clicked his tongue. As he left, he tossed me some variation of Have it your way.
I took a sip of water. While drying my mouth with toilet paper, I opened the door to the hallway. Our supervisor was climbing the stairs to her office, absorbed in the documents tucked in an open folder. The flutter of her blouse covered the butt of her leggings, whose wild pattern might have camouflaged her in a psychedelic hallucination.
I passed by the stairs while shrugging like someone caught in the rain without an umbrella, but I remembered how she’d been watching me like a prison spotlight tracking escapees. I climbed two steps. The staircase—metal, ridged—trembled, and the supervisor turned around. Her lips parted half an inch, her right hand froze in the middle of flipping a page. She took a moment to smile, as though rushing to come up with a response to an unexpected event.
I cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry I was unpleasant last time we spoke. Sometimes the memories come back. It’s hard for me to… accept it’s behind me.”
The supervisor recognized the nature of my reaction: a tormented veteran. She smiled as if inviting me to a barbecue.
“I wouldn’t pretend to know how you feel. But at least you’re out of danger now.”
She wanted me to open up. I was overwhelmed by the swampy humidity of my sweat-soaked clothes, that stale stench. I turned.
“I think that’s all.”
The supervisor stepped down a stair.
“Do they organize any veterans’ groups in this city, or in a nearby one? I imagine you all must be spread around.”
Forcing out the words while I built the context, I said, “I’ve been to groups like that. They’re all basically the same. The support helps and it’s welcome, I suppose, but it doesn’t cut out the tumor, which reacts before you can think.”
“Maybe the next group will be the one. You never know what fascinating, wonderful people you might meet. Everyone needs to connect with those who’ve lived through something similar. It’d be worth the drive, even if you had to go to Austin or San Antonio.”
“You’re right.”
When someone bothered me for any random reason, giving them the answer they wanted usually made them forget about me for a while.
The supervisor touched my right arm near the elbow. I stiffened, but she reinforced her smile.
“If you need anything, just tell me, alright?”
I nodded and said goodbye while descending the steps. I was crossing the workshop toward my station on the line when a shudder rippled through me, as though a scorpion had just scurried across my skin.
-----
Author’s note: this novella, originally written in Spanish, is contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho, self-published about ten years ago.
Editing this part made me queasy, so good job, me from ten years ago. I had forgotten that whole bit with John/Joseph bothering the protagonist to get him out of his shell. It’s based on a memory that I also exploited for the first years of grief in my novella Motocross Legend, Love of My Life. When you have been burdened with such a terrible memory as mine, and you try to avoid new experiences lest you add ammo to your intrusive thoughts, you get to recycling.
Anyway, in the real-life event, the nasty two years it took to get my programming degree were coming to an end, and a smiley classmate, likely ten years older than me, offered to get together with them for a group dinner or some shit. I refused. He said, “Are you sure? It’s your last chance.” I tasted that condescension; in his mind, I was a shy guy too nervous to hang out with them. No, buddy. Your very presence worsened my day.
January 27, 2025
The Scrap Colossus, Pt. 3 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
I spotted Elena seated on a bench along the tree-lined waterfront promenade bordering the Bidasoa River, facing the grounds of Dumboa School. She wore a charcoal-gray zip-up hoodie with the hood tugged halfway up her head. Almond-blonde hair spilled over her shoulders. From the angle of her profile, I watched her right hand guide the pen in feverish strokes across the notebook resting on her thigh. She barely paused to flip the page, the motion seamless, as if her hand operated independently. Her pen kept scratching even as she reached for a one-liter carton of orange juice and tilted her head back for a hurried gulp. I pictured Elena as a child, sitting alone in a sandbox, eyes fixed on some invisible horizon beyond the gritty scatter of sand, her mind lost in a world of her own making.
I stepped onto the grass strip flanking her bench, and stood a few paces away. A voyeur trespassing in a museum of one. I wouldn’t startle her while she communed with the divine. Sparrows bickered in the gnarled plane tree overhead. Nearby, a pelota ball ricocheted off the court walls: whap, whap. Elena stopped writing. Her chin settled into her palm, the clicky end of her pen drumming against the notebook.
I crouched, plucked a pebble from the grass, then tossed it onto her notebook. Startled, her head jerked upwards. When she looked down, her gaze lingered on the pebble for a beat before she flipped to previous pages of her notebook. I threw another pebble, but this one hit her arm. Elena bolted upright and scanned the sky as if half-expecting a meteor to rip through the clouds.
With the caution you’d use to approach a stray cat, I edged into Elena’s line of sight. The afternoon light, straining through woolen clouds, gilded the alabaster oval of her face. She had sat with her back to three stories of balconies. Her hoodie was layered over a navy crewneck sweatshirt, and her black joggers bunched at the calves, revealing a slash of pale ivory skin. Her white sneakers, scuffed and worn, sported mismatched laces: one neon-green, one black.
“Nice seeing you again, Elena,” I said.
Her focus snapped to me. Near-translucent skin, bruised-pink lips like petals left too long in the sun. Her pupils dilated as if I had yanked her out of a trance. Her eyes—pale winter blue, adrift like ice floes in a sea of fatigue—held the somber, alienated gaze of someone who’d glimpsed the end of the world. She would haunt your story like the ghost of a tragic heroine, her face lingering long after the last page. She seemed less a person than an open wound: a thing of trembling nerve-endings and unstitched skin.
Her puzzled frown deepened as her stare sharpened, scalpel-like. She dropped her pen onto the notebook, then pulled out foam earplugs and pocketed them in her hoodie.
“Oh. You. That weird guy from the writing course.” Her voice emerged hoarse, as if she hadn’t spoken in days. “The one who didn’t join the lynch mob.”
“I wouldn’t call myself weird all of a sudden, but that’s generally correct.”
She reached down and picked up a pebble I’d tossed. Its dull grayness incongruous against the delicate curve of her fingertips, the fine-boned grace of her hand.
“Jon, was it? Did you throw these at me?”
“Yeah.”
“Throwing pebbles at disturbed writers… is that your thing?”
“I attempted a more interesting way to get your attention than just saying hello. Sadly it misfired.”
Elena studied the pebble before flicking it onto the grass. Her gaze darted between the river, the school grounds, and my face, as if trying to gauge how much trouble I was worth.
“An interesting way to get my attention? I don’t enjoy having things thrown at me.”
“I know you love a bit of dramatic flair.”
She cocked her head, her almond-blonde hair cascading across her cheek.
“You think I’m a drama queen, huh?”
“A connoisseur of the dramatic arts. A woman of refined tastes, who appreciates a little theater in her life.”
“Are you mocking me or trying to flatter me? I can’t tell.”
“Neither. Just saying that sometimes a girl enjoys a little pebble-tossing.”
Elena sighed, a weary exhalation that carried the weight of the day. She then rubbed at her forehead with a pale thumb.
“Sometimes a girl also enjoys being left alone,” she said, her tone dropping to an icy rasp. “But at least you didn’t try to psychoanalyze me or accuse me of lacking empathy. Seriously, what are you doing here, Jon? Are you stalking me, or is this just another cosmic joke at my expense?”
“I’ve been looking forward to bumping into you ever since the debacle at the writing course. And here you are, so I’m taking my chances.”
“What do you want, anyway? Do I owe you something?”
“Owing is not an accurate word for it. But if you feel that way, we can think of something.”
Her pale stare sliced into me. Irises like shards of glacier, sharp enough to draw blood.
“I’m tired of people. I’ve got no energy to spare.”
“I was captivated by your work, Elena. Powerful stuff, quite beautiful in an unsettling way. It has a visceral quality, a rawness that cuts through the bullshit. A shame what happened at the course. I feared that those differently-minded piling on your work would have discouraged you.”
Elena hunched forward and studied me as though I were an alien creature she couldn’t figure out. The sunlight caught her hair, turning strands of it to burnished gold.
“Powerful? Right. That’s exactly what everyone wants to read. Tales of mud, starvation, and eating salamanders. You’ll find that to survive in this world, you need to be sanitized. People want their little feel-good pieces about finding love in coffee shops or whatever the hell is considered marketable these days. They want to be told they’re good people and everything is going to be okay. But that’s not the truth. Truth is ugly. Truth is a woman eating a raw amphibian.”
“Who cares what people want? The whole thing is a hamster wheel.”
She leaned back, her hands gripping the edge of the bench.
“I don’t need your sympathy, Jon. It’s easier if people aren’t interested in me. I’m not like them. I don’t know how to act around them. I’m not good at pretending to be normal. I’m not good at pretending at all, I guess. But hey, since you brought it up… why did you defend me that day? Nobody asked you to play white knight for the class psycho.”
I could picture her as a princess in a castle of bones, her crown a circlet of thorns.
I leaned over the filigreed railing that bordered the promenade. Ferns sprouted from the cracks in the stone retaining wall, fanning outward. The opposite wall, moss-covered, darkened near its base like the stained bottom of an unwashed coffee cup. Below, the Bidasoa River, murky-teal and sluggish, carried twigs, bits of leaves, an orange peel. In the river’s dull sheen, wavy reflections caught the overcast white sky—a sheet of cotton wool pulled over a lamp. A trio of ducks glided over, their boatlike bodies corrugating the water in their wake. They stared expectantly like silent beggars. A silver grey mullet, open-mouthed and thriving even in the city’s sewage-laced currents, slipped into view, its gills pumping, then vanished into the murk. In the plane trees, sparrows chirped in a symphony of gossip over the whap, whap of a ball striking the pelota court walls.
I turned to face Elena, leaned back against the railing, and crossed my ankles.
“You read what you had needed to write, despite knowing it wouldn’t land well with that audience. I like bold people, those unafraid of getting their hands dirty. Who stand their ground. Too many bend their principles whenever society comes knocking. To be honest, I had wanted to quit the course for a while. Isabel is too much of a social butterfly for my taste. But I kept attending because I needed to know what you’d bring next. So after they lost you, I quit too. You can consider me your fellow deserter.”
-----
Author’s note: the scene will continue in the next part.
I spotted Elena seated on a bench along the tree-lined waterfront promenade bordering the Bidasoa River, facing the grounds of Dumboa School. She wore a charcoal-gray zip-up hoodie with the hood tugged halfway up her head. Almond-blonde hair spilled over her shoulders. From the angle of her profile, I watched her right hand guide the pen in feverish strokes across the notebook resting on her thigh. She barely paused to flip the page, the motion seamless, as if her hand operated independently. Her pen kept scratching even as she reached for a one-liter carton of orange juice and tilted her head back for a hurried gulp. I pictured Elena as a child, sitting alone in a sandbox, eyes fixed on some invisible horizon beyond the gritty scatter of sand, her mind lost in a world of her own making.
I stepped onto the grass strip flanking her bench, and stood a few paces away. A voyeur trespassing in a museum of one. I wouldn’t startle her while she communed with the divine. Sparrows bickered in the gnarled plane tree overhead. Nearby, a pelota ball ricocheted off the court walls: whap, whap. Elena stopped writing. Her chin settled into her palm, the clicky end of her pen drumming against the notebook.
I crouched, plucked a pebble from the grass, then tossed it onto her notebook. Startled, her head jerked upwards. When she looked down, her gaze lingered on the pebble for a beat before she flipped to previous pages of her notebook. I threw another pebble, but this one hit her arm. Elena bolted upright and scanned the sky as if half-expecting a meteor to rip through the clouds.
With the caution you’d use to approach a stray cat, I edged into Elena’s line of sight. The afternoon light, straining through woolen clouds, gilded the alabaster oval of her face. She had sat with her back to three stories of balconies. Her hoodie was layered over a navy crewneck sweatshirt, and her black joggers bunched at the calves, revealing a slash of pale ivory skin. Her white sneakers, scuffed and worn, sported mismatched laces: one neon-green, one black.
“Nice seeing you again, Elena,” I said.
Her focus snapped to me. Near-translucent skin, bruised-pink lips like petals left too long in the sun. Her pupils dilated as if I had yanked her out of a trance. Her eyes—pale winter blue, adrift like ice floes in a sea of fatigue—held the somber, alienated gaze of someone who’d glimpsed the end of the world. She would haunt your story like the ghost of a tragic heroine, her face lingering long after the last page. She seemed less a person than an open wound: a thing of trembling nerve-endings and unstitched skin.
Her puzzled frown deepened as her stare sharpened, scalpel-like. She dropped her pen onto the notebook, then pulled out foam earplugs and pocketed them in her hoodie.
“Oh. You. That weird guy from the writing course.” Her voice emerged hoarse, as if she hadn’t spoken in days. “The one who didn’t join the lynch mob.”
“I wouldn’t call myself weird all of a sudden, but that’s generally correct.”
She reached down and picked up a pebble I’d tossed. Its dull grayness incongruous against the delicate curve of her fingertips, the fine-boned grace of her hand.
“Jon, was it? Did you throw these at me?”
“Yeah.”
“Throwing pebbles at disturbed writers… is that your thing?”
“I attempted a more interesting way to get your attention than just saying hello. Sadly it misfired.”
Elena studied the pebble before flicking it onto the grass. Her gaze darted between the river, the school grounds, and my face, as if trying to gauge how much trouble I was worth.
“An interesting way to get my attention? I don’t enjoy having things thrown at me.”
“I know you love a bit of dramatic flair.”
She cocked her head, her almond-blonde hair cascading across her cheek.
“You think I’m a drama queen, huh?”
“A connoisseur of the dramatic arts. A woman of refined tastes, who appreciates a little theater in her life.”
“Are you mocking me or trying to flatter me? I can’t tell.”
“Neither. Just saying that sometimes a girl enjoys a little pebble-tossing.”
Elena sighed, a weary exhalation that carried the weight of the day. She then rubbed at her forehead with a pale thumb.
“Sometimes a girl also enjoys being left alone,” she said, her tone dropping to an icy rasp. “But at least you didn’t try to psychoanalyze me or accuse me of lacking empathy. Seriously, what are you doing here, Jon? Are you stalking me, or is this just another cosmic joke at my expense?”
“I’ve been looking forward to bumping into you ever since the debacle at the writing course. And here you are, so I’m taking my chances.”
“What do you want, anyway? Do I owe you something?”
“Owing is not an accurate word for it. But if you feel that way, we can think of something.”
Her pale stare sliced into me. Irises like shards of glacier, sharp enough to draw blood.
“I’m tired of people. I’ve got no energy to spare.”
“I was captivated by your work, Elena. Powerful stuff, quite beautiful in an unsettling way. It has a visceral quality, a rawness that cuts through the bullshit. A shame what happened at the course. I feared that those differently-minded piling on your work would have discouraged you.”
Elena hunched forward and studied me as though I were an alien creature she couldn’t figure out. The sunlight caught her hair, turning strands of it to burnished gold.
“Powerful? Right. That’s exactly what everyone wants to read. Tales of mud, starvation, and eating salamanders. You’ll find that to survive in this world, you need to be sanitized. People want their little feel-good pieces about finding love in coffee shops or whatever the hell is considered marketable these days. They want to be told they’re good people and everything is going to be okay. But that’s not the truth. Truth is ugly. Truth is a woman eating a raw amphibian.”
“Who cares what people want? The whole thing is a hamster wheel.”
She leaned back, her hands gripping the edge of the bench.
“I don’t need your sympathy, Jon. It’s easier if people aren’t interested in me. I’m not like them. I don’t know how to act around them. I’m not good at pretending to be normal. I’m not good at pretending at all, I guess. But hey, since you brought it up… why did you defend me that day? Nobody asked you to play white knight for the class psycho.”
I could picture her as a princess in a castle of bones, her crown a circlet of thorns.
I leaned over the filigreed railing that bordered the promenade. Ferns sprouted from the cracks in the stone retaining wall, fanning outward. The opposite wall, moss-covered, darkened near its base like the stained bottom of an unwashed coffee cup. Below, the Bidasoa River, murky-teal and sluggish, carried twigs, bits of leaves, an orange peel. In the river’s dull sheen, wavy reflections caught the overcast white sky—a sheet of cotton wool pulled over a lamp. A trio of ducks glided over, their boatlike bodies corrugating the water in their wake. They stared expectantly like silent beggars. A silver grey mullet, open-mouthed and thriving even in the city’s sewage-laced currents, slipped into view, its gills pumping, then vanished into the murk. In the plane trees, sparrows chirped in a symphony of gossip over the whap, whap of a ball striking the pelota court walls.
I turned to face Elena, leaned back against the railing, and crossed my ankles.
“You read what you had needed to write, despite knowing it wouldn’t land well with that audience. I like bold people, those unafraid of getting their hands dirty. Who stand their ground. Too many bend their principles whenever society comes knocking. To be honest, I had wanted to quit the course for a while. Isabel is too much of a social butterfly for my taste. But I kept attending because I needed to know what you’d bring next. So after they lost you, I quit too. You can consider me your fellow deserter.”
-----
Author’s note: the scene will continue in the next part.
Albums that marked me, Pt. 5
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
As a solitary dude, all my life I have relied on music to connect with the world at large, to feel that my feelings weren’t that unique or detached from the rest of humanity. Over the years, I’ve returned to certain albums that have spoken to me in ways that can’t be fully put into words. I love discovering new albums, and perhaps that’s also the case for whoever is reading these words, so I’ll spend some of my limited time on Earth sharing some specifics about the albums that have marked me, and that in many ways changed me.
Today I’m tackling a big one for me: Joanna Newsom’s Ys, released back in 2006. I will need to think about Joanna quite a bit in the coming year, so I may as well tackle this now. Ys, her pinnacle, and as well as I’m concerned one of the pinnacles of artistry, is a baroque masterpiece of music and storytelling, produced by a songwriter at the height of her powers, who at the time danced with her subconscious unimpeded.
Joanna changed her major from music to creative writing in college; she found the constraints that teachers put into music creation too oppresive, like straitjackets. She’s a songstress of old, the kind you could imagine traveling from town to town and reweaving her careful tales to an enraptured audience. All five songs in the album are mesmerizing.
Joanna is the kind of person who would write until four in the morning, obsessing over individual words and meanings. Added to her difficulties interacting with people, authenticity, extreme sensitivity, obsession with obscure people and topics, etc., I have always suspected she’s autistic, but I’m very biased in that respect.
In addition, this version of Joanna retained her beautiful, creaky voice, before she developed vocal cord nodules and could not speak or sing for two months; afterwards, her voice changed permanently, which made her fantastic following album Have One on Me quite tragic to listen to at times.
All the songs in Ys give me chills consistently. You can use words to justify anything, but chills don’t lie. Joanna’s music is unbridled beauty. I revere her as one of the most magnificent artists to ever live.
[check out the rest of this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
As a solitary dude, all my life I have relied on music to connect with the world at large, to feel that my feelings weren’t that unique or detached from the rest of humanity. Over the years, I’ve returned to certain albums that have spoken to me in ways that can’t be fully put into words. I love discovering new albums, and perhaps that’s also the case for whoever is reading these words, so I’ll spend some of my limited time on Earth sharing some specifics about the albums that have marked me, and that in many ways changed me.
Today I’m tackling a big one for me: Joanna Newsom’s Ys, released back in 2006. I will need to think about Joanna quite a bit in the coming year, so I may as well tackle this now. Ys, her pinnacle, and as well as I’m concerned one of the pinnacles of artistry, is a baroque masterpiece of music and storytelling, produced by a songwriter at the height of her powers, who at the time danced with her subconscious unimpeded.
Joanna changed her major from music to creative writing in college; she found the constraints that teachers put into music creation too oppresive, like straitjackets. She’s a songstress of old, the kind you could imagine traveling from town to town and reweaving her careful tales to an enraptured audience. All five songs in the album are mesmerizing.
Joanna is the kind of person who would write until four in the morning, obsessing over individual words and meanings. Added to her difficulties interacting with people, authenticity, extreme sensitivity, obsession with obscure people and topics, etc., I have always suspected she’s autistic, but I’m very biased in that respect.
In addition, this version of Joanna retained her beautiful, creaky voice, before she developed vocal cord nodules and could not speak or sing for two months; afterwards, her voice changed permanently, which made her fantastic following album Have One on Me quite tragic to listen to at times.
All the songs in Ys give me chills consistently. You can use words to justify anything, but chills don’t lie. Joanna’s music is unbridled beauty. I revere her as one of the most magnificent artists to ever live.
[check out the rest of this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
Trash in a Ditch, Pt. 7 (Fiction)
[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]
I held the machine part in my hands like it would shatter if dropped. My features had petrified; I blinked only when my one sensitive cornea dried out. The hum of the air conditioner hypnotized me as it battled to cool this box of a room beneath the sun-scorched roof. Droplets of sweat slid like snails down my back, my sides, my chest, while I inspected each part three times before passing it to Christopher.
I pressed the button to start the conveyor belt. Two seconds later I realized I’d forgotten to screw in the bolt clenched in my fist. A wave of rage hit me, sharp as the stench of burning plastic. I grabbed the piece, positioned it, and hunched over to twist the screwdriver. How had I convinced myself I’d completed this part? Why had my brain hidden the mistake? Exhaustion—the kind that comes from juggling multiple jobs at once: assembling machine parts, fixing others’ errors, tolerating coworkers stuck in fight-or-flight mode, locking my anxiety behind a mask of calm. I pretended nothing bothered me, but I was draining the energy I required to function. Soon, others would sense it—that sixth instinct for reading people—and realize that a festering abscess of dread was swelling inside me. Anxiety fissured my face. I’d need stories to explain those cracks, to pacify anyone who noticed.
Someone watched from above. Like daring to glance at a shadow that had cracked open my bedroom door at midnight, I stole a look toward the supervisor’s office window. It showed the lime-green shirt clinging to her frame, her hair loose, a vaccination scar stark on her bare shoulder. Her eyes stayed fixed on the computer screen.
The shift-end horn blared, drilling into my throbbing headache. I sank onto the stool and rubbed my temple. My mind felt liquefied, as if I’d just staggered out of a final exam.
I joined the purple river of workers flowing toward the lockers. The world had turned to glass; if anyone collided with a table edge in the chaos, both would shatter.
As I peeled off my work coat, Héctor slung an arm around Christopher’s shoulders and pulled him close. He held up his phone.
“Check this one out.”
Christopher nodded and scratched his chin. Héctor snorted. He then howled like a cartoon wolf, shaking Christopher until his head bobbed like a clapper.
“The kinda woman you have kids with,” Héctor said.
Christopher traced the arched scar on his scalp with a finger, as if tucking a strand behind his ear. My stomach turned to ice. The man began to stammer, his thoughts filtering through a drain clogged with rot.
“Doubt she’d want me. Besides, it’d ruin her figure.”
“She’d look fine after six kids.” Héctor tapped the screen. “Those hips? Fertile as hell.”
I stepped into the inferno of the parking lot. Dust choked the air as I dragged my feet toward my Chevrolet Lumina, its hood blazing under the sun. Someone slapped my shoulder. I swallowed a scowl. John—or Joseph—in a wrinkled shirt, gestured at the dent in my bumper.
“Someone did a number on you.”
“Found it like that this morning. Maybe a drunk kicked it.”
He shook his head, tongue clicking.
“Bastards slashed my bike last year. Never stick around after.”
He strode to his motorcycle, fastened his helmet, and within seconds shrank into the distance, swallowed by the engine’s snarling growl.
I slumped against my car door, waiting for the oven-like interior to cool. Héctor and Christopher, still glued to the phone, drifted toward the far fence, where Héctor had parked his car. The supervisor emerged waving goodbye, a folder under her arm. Her sister’s silhouette loomed in the SUV’s windshield.
Caroline wandered past the dispersing crowd—a time traveler stranded in the wrong era. Her sunflower-yellow dress tangled around her legs as she tiptoed toward the scrap container, moving with the tentative, wide-eyed stealth of a child sneaking into the kitchen at midnight to swipe cookies. She leaned over the edge and rummaged through broken parts.
By a smoke-gray Porsche stood the woman who picked Caroline up. Deep wrinkles suggested her forties, but her hair was silver-streaked save a few chestnut strands. She hugged herself, a trembling cigarette at her lips, coiled like a compressed spring. When Caroline pocketed a scrap, the woman shot her a look reserved for a dog with chronic diarrhea. Caroline, grinning, bent deeper into the container, her dress riding up her thighs. The woman flicked her cigarette, inhaled sharply, and barked Caroline’s name. She jerked upright and shuffled over, slippers scuffing asphalt.
I drove home through streets clogged with families, café terraces, parks where kids swung from wooden bridges. An antique shop flashed by: rows of tarnished silver, furniture styles extinct for decades. A bronze horse, no bigger than a G.I. Joe, galloped in my mind—hoof suspended, mane frozen mid-shake. Minutes later, a bag sat on my passenger seat. I had dodged the usual guilt over splurging, the fear that I had stolen from savings meant to save me when I next woke in a ditch.
I parked four strides from my apartment door. The bronze horse weighed down the bag in my grip. I circled the car, feigning interest in scratches while eyeing passersby: a twentysomething glued to his phone, a rotund woman hauling a bloated grocery sack.
The trunk key trembled in my hand as if I were descending into a haunted basement. Inside, a beast raged, waiting to claw my eyes out. I wrenched the key. The lid rose. The canvas bag lay there, stuffed like military gear.
My pulse hammered. Nausea tightened my throat. I slung the canvas bag over my shoulder, its weight yanking my collarbone. Closed the trunk.
On the stairs, footsteps echoed. I pressed against the wall, shielding the bag. Jeans and scuffed sneakers paused.
“Back from the gym?”
“Gotta stay fit.”
His laugh clipped the exchange. I hurried upstairs. All it took was to answer these intrusions with some trivial nonsense. People who actually liked human beings needed those signals—hollow small talk, rehearsed smiles—and those gestures turned you invisible. Even though I would have preferred to stay silent and vault upstairs two steps at a time.
Inside, I dumped the bags on the dining table. I stripped to my skin, then collapsed facedown on the couch, breathing dust that smelled of tinsel crushed under asses. My body vibrated like post-marathon.
I woke to rust-colored light bleeding through the balcony. Half-asleep I wandered, chugging from a plastic bottle, thumbing the warm bronze horse. I craved the night—headlights splitting oil-black roads, trucks’ phantasmal glows. But what would happen while I was gone? The landlord might storm in clutching some flimsy pretext—a leak to inspect, a vent to clean. Against all odds, a thief would ransack the apartment, find the corpse, and his conscience would claw him raw until he called the cops, even though that would fuck him over too. I was born smeared with that vile luck, a grease stain no detergent could scrub out.
I positioned the bronze horse beside the canvas bag, arranging it as if mid-gallop along the edge of an imaginary cliff. I slumped at one end of the dining table, opened my laptop, and launched VLC to play the last film I’d downloaded. Forty-five seconds of corporate logos flashed by—a gauntlet of animated studio emblems—before the film began: long shots of a car winding through pine-stitched roads, the background to a long list of credits.
Fiction used to distract me when I drowned in the molasses of monotony, but now I was just killing time. Behind the laptop screen, the swollen canvas bag darkened in the gloom. The horse clung to its bronzed hue as the apartment dissolved into blackness.
I closed the film. The browser loaded Google’s homepage, its search bar blinking a taunting vertical slash. An itch festered in my chest. Every passing minute pumped more diluted poison into my blood.
I typed “corpse decomposition process,” then hammered the backspace key. Police, FBI, NSA—they’d flag the search, log the query, trace the IP. What if I used a public library computer? I scrubbed my face. Brilliant plan: risk being the sunglasses-clad, mangled-faced freak googling how corpses rot.
I stood and snapped the laptop shut. The canvas bag, the horse, the table beneath them—all had grayed into ashen silhouettes. I gripped the bag’s zipper pull. Hesitated, no idea why.
I yanked the curtains shut, cranked the blinds down over every window. Scoured the ceiling corners. Crouched to inspect the undersides of two lampshades, hunting for hidden cameras.
Flicked on the hallway light. The zipper’s teeth split open. While pressing my lips tight, I slid my hands along the sides of the corpse sheathed in plastic. Hauled it out. It weighed like a dog. When I dropped it onto the table, the crumpled mass slid into folds and lumps.
Behind the fogged plastic blurred by condensation, I discerned the contours of the head, the half-closed eyes like those of a dead lamb. The yellowish-green skin had mottled with freckles, except for the bruises stretching from what seemed to be a shoulder down to the hip—areas where the body’s weight had pressed when I’d placed it in the freezer the night before.
I grew dizzy, like a child who had spun a dozen times in a chair. I doubled over, clutching the edge of the table. When I forced myself to look back at the body, I noticed that a band of skin on one wrist had peeled away from friction, exposing a wound that had never healed. A tight watch? No. Handcuffs? Shackles. Iron shackles that had gouged the wrists, with chains linked to a ring bolted into a wall.
I wandered the room as if in a trance. A stench seeped from the corpse, like a chunk of chicken forgotten for a week at the bottom of a trash bin. I needed it to vanish. If I shut my eyes tight, maybe when I reopened them, the plastic would have deflated into a shapeless heap. Should I drive aimlessly, fling the door open mid-road, and hurl the package into a ditch? No—I had to make identification harder, to sever any link to myself. Dismember it. Carve it apart and scatter the pieces.
I dragged my fingers through my scalp, hyperventilated to clear my mind. How had I ended up needing to decide a corpse’s fate? A growl slipped out. I turned toward the boy as though he’d disobeyed me.
“Why did you dart across the road in the middle of the night without checking for cars?”
The boy had chained me to his fate. As long as any recognizable part of the corpse existed, my life hung in the balance. I pulled the chef’s knife from the counter drawer and hefted it. Imagined slicing through an arm at the bicep. Would I need shears? I reached for them with my free hand but, revolted, hurled the knife into the sink, where it clanged against metal. Leaning my forearms on the counter, I realized I’d need workshop tools. A saw. Maybe I could find one in the job-site storage. Tomorrow, during a break, I’d slip away and look. No, no. Even if I brought back a saw, could I bring myself to dismember the body? And how would I dispose of every piece before the weekend?
I slumped against the counter’s edge and slid to the floor. Above me, the semi-transparent package lay on the table, veined with haze. Less than twenty-four hours ago, this boy had sprinted through the night, far from any house I might have glimpsed by day in those oilfield plains. Had he escaped confinement like a tiger that, finding its cage open, would leap and bolt into the thicket, driven by some genetic imperative for freedom?
How much mental disability had burdened this boy? Had he understood how others would see him? If he’d faced a mirror, would he have recognized himself, or would he have thought he stared at a monster?
-----
Author’s note: this story was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
That bit about a high-strung woman barking at Caroline to quit picking up trash and leave was inspired by an unfortunate moment I witnessed. Back when people could still smoke in bars and coffee shops, I was writing in the basement of a coffee shop I liked to frequent because the basement was usually deserted. Not that day: the sole other couple was a high-strung woman in perhaps her early thirties, who kept chain smoking while listening to a bespectacled younger woman who was clearly mentally challenged. The latter woman went to the bathroom. Once she returned and sat down, the nastiest stench of shit filled the basement, as if she had expelled the foulest diarrhea and hadn’t wiped her ass. This clearly mentally-challenged woman kept talking with a smile while the other woman, perhaps her relative, chain smoked even harder while tapping nervously on the floor with her foot. It felt meaningful, the kind of moment you can’t share in a world where the darknesses of interacting with severely disabled people tend to be swept under the rug. At least in Spain, the public message regarding disabled people is that of smiley, good-hearted, resilient folk who just happened to have been burdened with any of life’s myriad nonsenses, which of course they handle without significantly bothering anybody. But sometimes you’re burdened with someone who shits all over and doesn’t know how to clean after herself.
Sorry, Caroline, for turning you into a receptacle of troublesome qualities I witnessed in different disabled people. Even ten years later, I remember you fondly as a distant, mysterious spirit of unbridled innocence.
I’m also quite certain that if you leave a corpse in the trunk of a car in the scorching sun, in less than twenty-four hours, the plastic package would have been swarming with maggots. Just pretend that it wouldn’t, alright? We’re in the business of make-believe here.
I held the machine part in my hands like it would shatter if dropped. My features had petrified; I blinked only when my one sensitive cornea dried out. The hum of the air conditioner hypnotized me as it battled to cool this box of a room beneath the sun-scorched roof. Droplets of sweat slid like snails down my back, my sides, my chest, while I inspected each part three times before passing it to Christopher.
I pressed the button to start the conveyor belt. Two seconds later I realized I’d forgotten to screw in the bolt clenched in my fist. A wave of rage hit me, sharp as the stench of burning plastic. I grabbed the piece, positioned it, and hunched over to twist the screwdriver. How had I convinced myself I’d completed this part? Why had my brain hidden the mistake? Exhaustion—the kind that comes from juggling multiple jobs at once: assembling machine parts, fixing others’ errors, tolerating coworkers stuck in fight-or-flight mode, locking my anxiety behind a mask of calm. I pretended nothing bothered me, but I was draining the energy I required to function. Soon, others would sense it—that sixth instinct for reading people—and realize that a festering abscess of dread was swelling inside me. Anxiety fissured my face. I’d need stories to explain those cracks, to pacify anyone who noticed.
Someone watched from above. Like daring to glance at a shadow that had cracked open my bedroom door at midnight, I stole a look toward the supervisor’s office window. It showed the lime-green shirt clinging to her frame, her hair loose, a vaccination scar stark on her bare shoulder. Her eyes stayed fixed on the computer screen.
The shift-end horn blared, drilling into my throbbing headache. I sank onto the stool and rubbed my temple. My mind felt liquefied, as if I’d just staggered out of a final exam.
I joined the purple river of workers flowing toward the lockers. The world had turned to glass; if anyone collided with a table edge in the chaos, both would shatter.
As I peeled off my work coat, Héctor slung an arm around Christopher’s shoulders and pulled him close. He held up his phone.
“Check this one out.”
Christopher nodded and scratched his chin. Héctor snorted. He then howled like a cartoon wolf, shaking Christopher until his head bobbed like a clapper.
“The kinda woman you have kids with,” Héctor said.
Christopher traced the arched scar on his scalp with a finger, as if tucking a strand behind his ear. My stomach turned to ice. The man began to stammer, his thoughts filtering through a drain clogged with rot.
“Doubt she’d want me. Besides, it’d ruin her figure.”
“She’d look fine after six kids.” Héctor tapped the screen. “Those hips? Fertile as hell.”
I stepped into the inferno of the parking lot. Dust choked the air as I dragged my feet toward my Chevrolet Lumina, its hood blazing under the sun. Someone slapped my shoulder. I swallowed a scowl. John—or Joseph—in a wrinkled shirt, gestured at the dent in my bumper.
“Someone did a number on you.”
“Found it like that this morning. Maybe a drunk kicked it.”
He shook his head, tongue clicking.
“Bastards slashed my bike last year. Never stick around after.”
He strode to his motorcycle, fastened his helmet, and within seconds shrank into the distance, swallowed by the engine’s snarling growl.
I slumped against my car door, waiting for the oven-like interior to cool. Héctor and Christopher, still glued to the phone, drifted toward the far fence, where Héctor had parked his car. The supervisor emerged waving goodbye, a folder under her arm. Her sister’s silhouette loomed in the SUV’s windshield.
Caroline wandered past the dispersing crowd—a time traveler stranded in the wrong era. Her sunflower-yellow dress tangled around her legs as she tiptoed toward the scrap container, moving with the tentative, wide-eyed stealth of a child sneaking into the kitchen at midnight to swipe cookies. She leaned over the edge and rummaged through broken parts.
By a smoke-gray Porsche stood the woman who picked Caroline up. Deep wrinkles suggested her forties, but her hair was silver-streaked save a few chestnut strands. She hugged herself, a trembling cigarette at her lips, coiled like a compressed spring. When Caroline pocketed a scrap, the woman shot her a look reserved for a dog with chronic diarrhea. Caroline, grinning, bent deeper into the container, her dress riding up her thighs. The woman flicked her cigarette, inhaled sharply, and barked Caroline’s name. She jerked upright and shuffled over, slippers scuffing asphalt.
I drove home through streets clogged with families, café terraces, parks where kids swung from wooden bridges. An antique shop flashed by: rows of tarnished silver, furniture styles extinct for decades. A bronze horse, no bigger than a G.I. Joe, galloped in my mind—hoof suspended, mane frozen mid-shake. Minutes later, a bag sat on my passenger seat. I had dodged the usual guilt over splurging, the fear that I had stolen from savings meant to save me when I next woke in a ditch.
I parked four strides from my apartment door. The bronze horse weighed down the bag in my grip. I circled the car, feigning interest in scratches while eyeing passersby: a twentysomething glued to his phone, a rotund woman hauling a bloated grocery sack.
The trunk key trembled in my hand as if I were descending into a haunted basement. Inside, a beast raged, waiting to claw my eyes out. I wrenched the key. The lid rose. The canvas bag lay there, stuffed like military gear.
My pulse hammered. Nausea tightened my throat. I slung the canvas bag over my shoulder, its weight yanking my collarbone. Closed the trunk.
On the stairs, footsteps echoed. I pressed against the wall, shielding the bag. Jeans and scuffed sneakers paused.
“Back from the gym?”
“Gotta stay fit.”
His laugh clipped the exchange. I hurried upstairs. All it took was to answer these intrusions with some trivial nonsense. People who actually liked human beings needed those signals—hollow small talk, rehearsed smiles—and those gestures turned you invisible. Even though I would have preferred to stay silent and vault upstairs two steps at a time.
Inside, I dumped the bags on the dining table. I stripped to my skin, then collapsed facedown on the couch, breathing dust that smelled of tinsel crushed under asses. My body vibrated like post-marathon.
I woke to rust-colored light bleeding through the balcony. Half-asleep I wandered, chugging from a plastic bottle, thumbing the warm bronze horse. I craved the night—headlights splitting oil-black roads, trucks’ phantasmal glows. But what would happen while I was gone? The landlord might storm in clutching some flimsy pretext—a leak to inspect, a vent to clean. Against all odds, a thief would ransack the apartment, find the corpse, and his conscience would claw him raw until he called the cops, even though that would fuck him over too. I was born smeared with that vile luck, a grease stain no detergent could scrub out.
I positioned the bronze horse beside the canvas bag, arranging it as if mid-gallop along the edge of an imaginary cliff. I slumped at one end of the dining table, opened my laptop, and launched VLC to play the last film I’d downloaded. Forty-five seconds of corporate logos flashed by—a gauntlet of animated studio emblems—before the film began: long shots of a car winding through pine-stitched roads, the background to a long list of credits.
Fiction used to distract me when I drowned in the molasses of monotony, but now I was just killing time. Behind the laptop screen, the swollen canvas bag darkened in the gloom. The horse clung to its bronzed hue as the apartment dissolved into blackness.
I closed the film. The browser loaded Google’s homepage, its search bar blinking a taunting vertical slash. An itch festered in my chest. Every passing minute pumped more diluted poison into my blood.
I typed “corpse decomposition process,” then hammered the backspace key. Police, FBI, NSA—they’d flag the search, log the query, trace the IP. What if I used a public library computer? I scrubbed my face. Brilliant plan: risk being the sunglasses-clad, mangled-faced freak googling how corpses rot.
I stood and snapped the laptop shut. The canvas bag, the horse, the table beneath them—all had grayed into ashen silhouettes. I gripped the bag’s zipper pull. Hesitated, no idea why.
I yanked the curtains shut, cranked the blinds down over every window. Scoured the ceiling corners. Crouched to inspect the undersides of two lampshades, hunting for hidden cameras.
Flicked on the hallway light. The zipper’s teeth split open. While pressing my lips tight, I slid my hands along the sides of the corpse sheathed in plastic. Hauled it out. It weighed like a dog. When I dropped it onto the table, the crumpled mass slid into folds and lumps.
Behind the fogged plastic blurred by condensation, I discerned the contours of the head, the half-closed eyes like those of a dead lamb. The yellowish-green skin had mottled with freckles, except for the bruises stretching from what seemed to be a shoulder down to the hip—areas where the body’s weight had pressed when I’d placed it in the freezer the night before.
I grew dizzy, like a child who had spun a dozen times in a chair. I doubled over, clutching the edge of the table. When I forced myself to look back at the body, I noticed that a band of skin on one wrist had peeled away from friction, exposing a wound that had never healed. A tight watch? No. Handcuffs? Shackles. Iron shackles that had gouged the wrists, with chains linked to a ring bolted into a wall.
I wandered the room as if in a trance. A stench seeped from the corpse, like a chunk of chicken forgotten for a week at the bottom of a trash bin. I needed it to vanish. If I shut my eyes tight, maybe when I reopened them, the plastic would have deflated into a shapeless heap. Should I drive aimlessly, fling the door open mid-road, and hurl the package into a ditch? No—I had to make identification harder, to sever any link to myself. Dismember it. Carve it apart and scatter the pieces.
I dragged my fingers through my scalp, hyperventilated to clear my mind. How had I ended up needing to decide a corpse’s fate? A growl slipped out. I turned toward the boy as though he’d disobeyed me.
“Why did you dart across the road in the middle of the night without checking for cars?”
The boy had chained me to his fate. As long as any recognizable part of the corpse existed, my life hung in the balance. I pulled the chef’s knife from the counter drawer and hefted it. Imagined slicing through an arm at the bicep. Would I need shears? I reached for them with my free hand but, revolted, hurled the knife into the sink, where it clanged against metal. Leaning my forearms on the counter, I realized I’d need workshop tools. A saw. Maybe I could find one in the job-site storage. Tomorrow, during a break, I’d slip away and look. No, no. Even if I brought back a saw, could I bring myself to dismember the body? And how would I dispose of every piece before the weekend?
I slumped against the counter’s edge and slid to the floor. Above me, the semi-transparent package lay on the table, veined with haze. Less than twenty-four hours ago, this boy had sprinted through the night, far from any house I might have glimpsed by day in those oilfield plains. Had he escaped confinement like a tiger that, finding its cage open, would leap and bolt into the thicket, driven by some genetic imperative for freedom?
How much mental disability had burdened this boy? Had he understood how others would see him? If he’d faced a mirror, would he have recognized himself, or would he have thought he stared at a monster?
-----
Author’s note: this story was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.
That bit about a high-strung woman barking at Caroline to quit picking up trash and leave was inspired by an unfortunate moment I witnessed. Back when people could still smoke in bars and coffee shops, I was writing in the basement of a coffee shop I liked to frequent because the basement was usually deserted. Not that day: the sole other couple was a high-strung woman in perhaps her early thirties, who kept chain smoking while listening to a bespectacled younger woman who was clearly mentally challenged. The latter woman went to the bathroom. Once she returned and sat down, the nastiest stench of shit filled the basement, as if she had expelled the foulest diarrhea and hadn’t wiped her ass. This clearly mentally-challenged woman kept talking with a smile while the other woman, perhaps her relative, chain smoked even harder while tapping nervously on the floor with her foot. It felt meaningful, the kind of moment you can’t share in a world where the darknesses of interacting with severely disabled people tend to be swept under the rug. At least in Spain, the public message regarding disabled people is that of smiley, good-hearted, resilient folk who just happened to have been burdened with any of life’s myriad nonsenses, which of course they handle without significantly bothering anybody. But sometimes you’re burdened with someone who shits all over and doesn’t know how to clean after herself.
Sorry, Caroline, for turning you into a receptacle of troublesome qualities I witnessed in different disabled people. Even ten years later, I remember you fondly as a distant, mysterious spirit of unbridled innocence.
I’m also quite certain that if you leave a corpse in the trunk of a car in the scorching sun, in less than twenty-four hours, the plastic package would have been swarming with maggots. Just pretend that it wouldn’t, alright? We’re in the business of make-believe here.
