Sudden Asian woman. This audiochapter covers chapter 107 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.
Cast
I produced audiochapters for the entire previous sequence, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I drown in breast tissue, whichever comes first. A total of two hours, fifty-seven minutes and fifty-one seconds. Check them out.
Now that chapter 107 is up, my ongoing novel charmingly titled We’re Fucked has become about 241,000 words long. If you consider the average novel to be 80,000 words long, then this unmarketable, unpublishable story, about a possibly autistic OCD sufferer who struggles with compulsive masturbation as a way to assuage her despair, and who is also harassed by interdimensional horrors that demand her attention, is already three novels long. Hooray! Who would have known, back in October of 2021, that this strange tale would reach such an extreme? I certainly didn’t! If I did, would I have started it? Probably not!
Anyway, I’m barely midway through the current sequence, and there are two full sequences left to go. I doubt I’ll finish the novel this year. If you are curious about how this whole mess started, or what happened at any point of the journey, you can access the individual chapters and sequences through this link. I warn you, though: the first few chapters will require full creative rewrites.
There must be a couple of people out there who have read the whole story from the beginning. You are troopers, good sirs or madams.
Naked as I crawled into this broken world, I pad barefoot through the doorway to Jacqueline’s bedroom. The blinds have been rolled down, which would have engulfed the room in darkness if it weren’t for the lit candles arrayed on the nightstand, and on a stool at the foot of the bed. The flames, glowing gold, dance gently as they cast honey-colored light on the cloud-white bedclothes, and tint the walls and ceiling that one day we’ll repaint with the ashes of our enemies. I breathe in an aroma of rose, jasmine, and sandalwood.
Warmth permeates my skin as if I were wrapped in a blanket. Jacqueline has gone out of her way to craft this sanctuary for my sake. I’m reminded again that someone cares for me, chooses to keep me around day after insane day, even though I’m a relentless monster. I swallow hard, pushing back tears, and quietly close the door.
From behind the towering wardrobe that cuts my view, a sultry voice, soothing as a lullaby and with a hint of French accent, wafts over to me.
“Leire, be a doll and lock the door, s’il vous plaît.”
My hand reaches out, my fingers curl around the lock, then twist it into place. The metallic click resonates in the vault of my memories; how many times have I waited for that sound so I could feel safe alone, separated from the outside?
When I step past the wardrobe’s side, Jacqueline captures my attention: she’s standing by the mirrored door, between the wardrobe and the bed, like a medieval queen in her private chamber. My lover’s feminine figure is bathed in the golden hues of candlelight that makes her eyes sparkle. Her form-fitting silk robe glimmers like an oyster-pink oil slick, which accents her dark tresses. The ivory-white skin of her face and neck and chest and bulging cleavage glow. My gaze lingers on her mouth: the Cupid’s bow, the plump lower lip. I ache to feel that moist softness against me again.
“I love your fresh-from-the-shower afterglow,” Jacqueline says.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t find me hideous.”
“Hideous? Darling, you’re as beautiful as the dawn.”
I blush even though I’m disintegrating, even though the blood in my veins must have turned to sludge.
“Th-thank you for preparing this romantic setup, by the way.”
She chuckles, then gestures toward the bed.
“You’re most welcome, ma belle. Now sit on the edge. Get comfortable.”
The plush rug cushions the soles of my bare feet as I approach the bed. When I sit down, facing my beloved, the mattress dips under my weight. The lavender-scented, cottony surface feels cool against my ass and the back of my thighs.
“I’m programmed to loathe surprises, but I’m sure I will enjoy whatever you throw my way.”
“I hope so.”
Something in her voice gives me pause: an alien hesitation. Jacqueline turns away from me, drawn to the mirrored wardrobe. In the reflection, a shadow of doubt replaces the playful mischief that usually sparkles in her cobalt-blues. She presses her full lips together as the corner of her mouth twitches.
Jacqueline straightens her spine, maintaining a rigid posture. Her raven-black locks cascade down to the sash that hugs her hips. From under the strip of fabric, wrinkles in the robe fan out, mounting the swell of her buttocks. Her fingers find their way to the knot at the waistband. With gentle tugs, she draws the fabric out until the knot comes undone. Her hands part the sides of the robe, then she shrugs it off her shoulders. The garment flutters with a silky rustle down her voluptuous curves to the bedside rug, revealing a curvaceous frame clad only in a satin bra and a see-through thong.
The flickering glow of the candles paints Jacqueline’s curves in golden highlights: the elegant slope of her shoulders, the smooth expanse of her ivory-white back, the arch of her spine, the twin dimples above her coccyx, along with the rest of her physical attributes that suggest the abundance of a bygone age, such as her sculpted calves, her thick thighs, her wide hips, and the voluminous breasts that could make a corset explode. At this sight of my beloved, whose presence has rendered the universe irrelevant, a powerful sexual charge has stoked my loins, causing my breath to hitch. I want to bow down and worship her divine splendor.
The lace edging of her thong curves over her pelvis, and the back strip has disappeared in the crevice between the toned globes of that supple, fleshy bum. I lick my lips, then bite down on the bottom one. I should fall to my knees, grab mommy around the waist, and bury my face in those sumptuous globes.
She turns around to face me. Her ivory-white skin is stretched tight across the sinuous curves of muscle in her abdomen, toned abs that flex with each exhalation, whose grooves seem carved in clay. My gaze glides upward. The candlelight dances on the satin cups of her midnight-sky-black bra. Those cups encase snugly the massive mounds of her tits, an eruption of breast tissue that threatens to tear through the mesh that restrains it.
Jacqueline reaches behind her back, and unhooks her bra. As the straps fall down her shoulders and slide down her arms, the titanic breasts spill forth to first bobble then hang like twin moons. Those blessed milk-makers, immaculately-formed melons, the most mouthwatering pair of juggernauts, attract lust like metal fillings drawn to a magnet, and justify the pain of enduring this horrid life. A film of moisture glimmers on the upper slopes of those gravity-defying spheres now bathed in the color of honey, and capped with coral-pink areolas that encircle dusky-rose nipples.
A shiver courses up my back, sending goosebumps along my arms. My heart is thumping, my blood seething with arousal. I feel lifted in slow motion by a blaze that risks incinerating my sanity.
Instead of just feasting my eyes on those buoyant mountains of flesh, I must plant on them the palms of my hands, sinking them slowly. I will squeeze and knead the tender, creamy tissue for milk as the tips of her erect nipples graze against my palms. I will cup her breasts, then draw trails of saliva with my tongue on the bumps and folds of her areolae. I will kiss the stiff nubs, nibble them, tease their pliant peaks. Once I close my mouth around a nipple, the universe will concentrate on my desire to suckle the sweetness of motherhood, a taste and scent that will conjure memories of summers spent lazing about in the garden of Jacqueline’s childhood château.
My head is swimming with hormones. The feverish warmth that pulses within me, radiating outward from my core, melts the tension from my muscles like ice under boiling water. A pair of hands press the naked skin of my shoulders, pushing me back. With a slick and abrupt noise, like a wet kiss breaking, the succulent flesh that had filled my mouth suddenly leaves it. I stumble backwards onto the mattress with an inelegant flop.
Jacqueline’s cobalt-blues are glazed over and half-closed, and her pupils have dilated. Her cheeks are flushed as pink as peonies. She runs her tongue along her lower lip, moistening it. Placing both hands on her bosoms, she lifts them, then smooths and massages them as the engorged nipples poke out like flower buds, begging to be pinched and sucked.
“Of course you want to dive right into my tits,” she purrs. “And don’t get me wrong, mommy loves her baby’s attention.”
My pulse is thudding in my temples, in my throat, in my loins. My brain, fried from the hormonal onslaught, struggles to form coherent thoughts.
“Jacqueline, if you’ll allow me, I shall kneel before you, tear the thong off your body, and devour your steaming box with eager slurps.” My voice echoes within the dark chasm of my mind, my words slip out as if I were dropping them through a keyhole. “A voice is asking me if I understand what I’m seeing, hearing and feeling. It tells me that the red tide has come to consume this world, and soon enough we will be floating face down in cosmic sewage. Death will be cold and wet and lonely, so before we dive into oblivion to join everyone else in the swampy pits of purgatory, I want to squeeze every drop of pleasure from this life.”
Jacqueline chuckles throatily.
“Tu me fais trembler, ma chérie. Don’t worry, I’ll have you kneeling at my feet soon enough, but first there’s something I’d like to show you, something you have the right to know. I want you to become privy to all that makes me who I am.”
She hooks her thumbs under the thin straps of her thong, then bends over to pull the triangular piece of satin and lace down her shapely thighs. The candlelight caresses her mighty globes as they wobble and jiggle to the rhythm of her body. Once Jacqueline slides the thong off her ankles, she tosses the garment, soaked in her moisture, at my face.
Before the thong drops, I hurry to press it against my features, sticking the moist fabric to my nostrils and lips, warming them, smearing them with juices. I inhale deeply, drinking in mommy’s sexual tang. The intoxicating scent, salty and ripe with an earthy muskiness, fills my lungs and soaks into my brain like a firehose spray through the skull. I let the perfume melt my synapses while a sudden dizziness rushes through me as if I were getting high.
When I open my eyes, I find myself looking into a puddle of molten gold. I blink repeatedly until I recognize Jacqueline, whose brows are furrowed in worry as she wrings her hands.
I peel the thong off my face, then put it down beside me on the mattress.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?”
Jacqueline takes a deep breath. She combs a silken, gleaming lock of hair away from her face.
“I’m not sure, darling,” she says timidly. “What if you reject me?”
Have I heard her right? I grimace in disbelief.
“Well, that’s a silly fear for you to have.”
“Silly?” Jacqueline repeats, eyebrows raised, but the tension is easing from her shoulders.
“Jacqueline, you could reveal that you’re actually a three-eyed alien from Mars, and I’d still follow you to the end of the world.”
Her features brighten as her lips stretch into a grin that deepens her dimples, unveils her pearly teeth, and sends a wave of lust through me. Her eyes are glinting like blue fire.
“Alright. Check this out, Leire: a part of me that I haven’t shown anybody else.”
I blink. Wasn’t I staring Jacqueline in the eye? Instead I find myself looking at inky black hair with bluish reflections and parted in the middle. When I slide my gaze down, my head snaps back, and a shiver runs down my spine. Two monolid, almond-shaped eyes are staring at me from a face as pale as rice paper, that would belong in a medieval drawing of a Japanese courtesan.
Author’s note: today’s songs are “La bohème” by Charles Aznavour, “Engine” by Neutral Milk Hotel, and “Sunshine Superman” by Donovan.
I keep a playlist with all the songs I’ve mentioned throughout this series. A total of a hundred and seventy-two videos. Check them out.
Hey, I heard you enjoy audiochapters. Got a fresh one right here.
I have been sick since last Thursday, mostly an excess of mucus and feeling out of it. It’s not covid, according to a couple of tests. On top of that, I’m working full-time. Due to my permanent heart issues thanks to a certain biological/technological weapon, I can’t consume caffeine, and I’m taking beta blockers. By four in the afternoon, my head is buzzing with exhaustion. I have changed my schedule to preparing the next writing session in the afternoon, then going to sleep at nine and waking up at four or five in the morning so I can inject the needed meaning into an otherwise pointless day. My job remains as shitty as usual, or even worse, because I’m rarely in the mood to tolerate any bullshit. There’s also, of course, the issue of constant anxiety and my IBS, which keep me locked in the most basic sphere of survival.
Why am I telling you this? Who are you anyway? Whatever. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if you didn’t, go read someone else’s stuff.
I have spent most of my weekend in the capital of the Basque Country, named Vitoria-Gasteiz. I traveled there by train because on Sunday I had to pass an exam that would determine how often they would keep calling me to work as an IT guy at the local public health care organization, for which I’ve worked on-and-off since 2018.
Half of the city was upended because it happened to be hosting the Ironman Triathlon at the same time, which filled most of the hotels. I ended up spending my Saturday night in a two-star hotel with rusted lamps, and that seemed to have been built in the late sixties or seventies. Check out the photos I took:
I didn’t appreciate the whole vibe of that area, so I didn’t dare leave my valuables inside the room. That night, a couple of dickheads spent about two hours having a shouting match in a nearby alley.
Big cities make my head pound due to the noise and to being surrounded by the dangerous, unpredictable beasts known as human beings. I don’t understand why anybody would willingly want to live in such a place. Dazed, wanting to spend that Saturday afternoon productively, I made the worst mistake of my life by visiting the local museum of modern art.
I was assaulted by the muddle of abstract words grasping at coherence that passed for the exhibition labels, by doodles that an eight-year-old would be embarrassed to show to his or her parents, by sculptures that resembled refuse, etc. Most of it done with a pompous sense of self-importance, a disdain for beauty, and a rejection of meaning itself. I came to the obvious conclusion that, in my daze, I had wandered into a den of marxism. A couple of exhibitions later I was standing in a large room, empty other than for the film that was being projected and that featured footage such as a sunny sky, waves coming on to shore, a hand peeling a fruit. When the credits rolled, I turned into this GIF of DiCaprio:
The mastermind behind the video, a Basque woman, proudly identified herself as belonging to the communist party, and added that when she traveled to California, she contacted a local communist organization in part to help her put together the film. How heart-warming. Fuck you communists and your CBDC.
On Sunday I visited a museum of natural sciences, where I stared at fossils, rocks, and taxidermied animals. They had an exhibition of drawings made by schoolchildren, featuring the animals and insects they liked the most, and they were lovely.
Anyway, I passed the exam, scoring 62. Perhaps I should be content; the shitheads in charge of putting together the exams for this organization never fail to screw up somehow or pick questions that are rarely related to our job as computer technicians; it has happened for the four exams of this type I’ve suffered through. In this case it was even worse: we were given a list of 266 questions featuring laws and normatives whose contents often seemed arbitrary, and I had gone out of my way to code in Python a system that would allow me to nail them, as they would make up about twenty-five percent of the exam. It worked so well that I was regularly passing those mock exams in Python with scores of 95-100%. But the imbeciles who decided the exam questions ended up mistakenly putting in laws and normatives from a different department (stuff related to contracts and wages). All those questions ended up being invalidated. I wasted days and days studying the obnoxious 266 questions that corresponded to our department. Regarding the remaining questions in the exam, they were more often than not only tangentially related to how we spend our time at the office, but that’s par for the course.
Twenty-seven people with a disability equal or higher than 33% signed up for this exam, including myself (thank you high-functioning autism, OCD, IBS, a pituitary gland tumor, and clinical depression), and I’m proud to say that my otherwise low score of 62 bested them all. King of the retards!
The train that would carry me back home came in late. I got off at Donostia, where I waited for another train that was coming late. When we reached the Renfe station at Irún, the employees in charge of letting us pass through the gates had clocked out, and two security guards ended up helping us through. I arrived home at half past nine. Thirty minutes later I went to bed so that the next day, at six in the morning, I could wake up reasonably refreshed. New week of work and all that.
I’m beat, back at the office and being forced to listen, except when I shove earplugs deep into my earholes, to the neuron-killing conversations of my coworkers. This afternoon I hope to finally start writing the next scene of my novel. Other than that, I’m eagerly waiting for Baldur’s Gate 3 (possibly the best RPG in twenty years) to come out on the 3rd of August, and Starfield (the first single-player Bethesda RPG since Fallout 4, and their most ambitious), that comes out in September.
You do need a shower, even though you would end up as a pile of eyeballs blocking the drain. This audiochapter covers chapter 106 of my ongoing novel We’re Fricked.
Cast
I produced audiochapters for the entire previous sequence, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I suffer a heart attack and die, whichever comes first. A total of two hours and forty-seven minutes. Check them out, fool.
Adrift in a fog of hormones, unsteady as if my bones had softened to clay, I unbutton my shirt, pull it off, and toss it onto the toilet seat cover. I kick off my sneakers into a corner. I shimmy my trousers down, leaving them bunched up around my ankles, then I step out of them. I unclasp the bra and discard it atop my shirt. I hook my thumbs in the elastic waistband of my panties and tug them down. After I shed my socks, the ceramic tiles send a pleasant chill through the soles of my feet, a contrast to the heated flush lingering on my skin.
From my peripheral vision, in the mirror above the sink, I glimpse my doppelgänger. She’s daring me to confront that slimy abomination, the viscous goo dribbling down in thick trails, those gaping, ragged holes instead of eyes and a mouth.
An icy dread numbs my guts, the familiar fear that creeps up whenever I’m about to square up to my reflection. My heart is pounding. I take a deep breath that smells of floral air freshener, then I turn toward the sink. I lean forward to plant my left palm on the mirrored cabinet door, covering the reflected face. My auburn hair frames the pale hand, which has lost enough subcutaneous fat that the veins and tendons appear in relief.
The halogen glow of the lighting fixture is throwing my form, the canvas my consciousness has been bolted onto, against the glass. A pair of ample, bell-shaped breasts hang in contrast to my thin frame, swaying lightly with every breath. Protruding ribs, stark as the rungs on a ladder, curve around the torso in an exhibition of skeletal architecture. Below, my abdomen hollows into a sunken landscape, and my flesh is stretched tight across the prominent hipbones.
I’m a revolting corpse-like wreck, but at least corpses are spared from having to face the outside world again.
“Look at you,” I mutter. “An avatar of death in the guise of life.”
At the bottom of the mirror peeks out a patch of auburn curls, perhaps a symbol of my unruly nature. I push myself off the cabinet. While keeping my gaze down, I stand on my tiptoes until the glass reflects my vulva: the hood that protects my button of joy, and the vertical flat mouth, coated with glistening moisture, nestled within the untamed curls like some shell-less mollusc.
Using my forefingers, I spread my pussy open. The white light draws stretch marks on the rose-pink insides of my flesh pocket. At its bottom, two pliant folds peel apart to reveal a black void. As I caress my labia, the clitoral hood retracts, unveiling the rosy bean. Suddenly I’m worried that if I keep my pussy open, a passing mouse might leap in headfirst to build a nest inside.
In a matter of minutes, mommy will recline on her queen-size bed, her head against some faux-fur pillows, and I will lie on my tummy between her thighs to lick her pussy like a dog after spending weeks away from its master. She better be ready; the sandwich I ate for lunch ended up as vomit in a wastebasket, so I’m ravenous.
As I slide my fingers along my slit, probing its wetness, a thrilling shiver shoots through me, arching all the way up my spine. My breathing has grown shallow, and my heart is drumming against my sternum. When I press the sides of my labia together, my engorged clit protrudes from its shelter. I rub that sensitive bean in slow circles.
“Eat me up,” Jacqueline purrs in my mind, “slurp me up, my precious darling, and I’ll take care of you.”
A musky scent reaches my nostrils. The rosy flesh of my pussy, that shines in the mirror like slathered in petroleum jelly, is filling with a rush of warm juices while its insides clench around nothing, craving to be filled. I dip my index and middle fingers with a squelch into my leaking tunnel, whose slick fluids are gliding down to my ass crack.
“Oh, Jacqueline,” I whisper, breathless, as my vaginal walls clamp around my fingers. “I never wanted to be human, I was only born as one, and until I met you, I hated everything about my life, every goddamn thing. La vie est faite pour la mort. If only I could take a piece of you and stitch it into my own flesh.”
I pull my fingers back with a wet slurp. They are coated in an obsidian-black, sticky substance, and tethered to a catenary of goo that stretches out, clinging to my skin, like a thread of rotten honey.
As my feverish daze begins to lift, and the world returns in a carousel of blurred colors and shapes, I find myself gripping the edge of the ceramic basin. My body is thrumming with arousal, but I’m getting a whiff of the blob’s stench mingled with my stale sweat; I picture a wet and moldy mound of garbage crawling with worms and roaches. I was supposed to wash off the grime, not make it stickier.
Once I step inside the shower cubicle, I adjust the temperature with the metallic knob. I turn on the shower to let the water heat up, and the showerhead sputters before it begins to spray a steady stream, filling the cubicle with a rhythmic drumming. I take a deep breath, then walk into the warm flow. Its droplets burst against my chest, against my face. I tilt my head back and stand stock still, arms hanging limp at my sides, eyes closed, mouth agape, surrendering myself to the downpour. As I lean forward, the cascade bathes my scalp with a tingling warmth. Rivulets stream down my back and neck, and trickle between my breasts.
I reach for the shampoo bottle that, tucked away on the corner shelf, with its bright purple hue, stands out like an alien splotch against the tiles. I squeeze a generous dollop of cream onto my palm, and the scent wafts up along with the steam: lavender and chamomile. At first I massage the shampoo into my scalp, soaking the roots of my hair, then I start scraping the skin with my nails, trying to purge every particle of muck buried within the follicles.
I snatch a bottle of shower gel with one hand and a loofah with the other. I pop the bottle’s cap open, then I squirt enough rose-scented gel to drown the sponge. I’m scrubbing, scrubbing away, lathering every inch of my body, every crevice, to wash away the dried sweat and grime from my armpits, limbs, thighs, genitals; anyplace that may be drenched in the blob’s filth. The cascade of hot water must be washing off the grime and layers of pollution, along with the viruses, bacilli and amoebae that tattooed themselves onto my being. The stink of sewage and doom must be fading as the liquid of life glides down my slippery skin. Yet, I can’t shake the feeling of decay that clings to me, nor the black thoughts scrawled across my mind. I wish I were scrubbing myself with a wire brush, raking my flesh down to the bone.
I drop the loofah, then turn off the shower. My skin tingles. I shiver, I shrug, I press the fleshy bases of my thumbs against my eyelids.
“This is fine.” Foam invades my mouth. It tastes bitter, chemical. “You, Nairu and I can live happily on our own private moon.”
Down on the shower pan, the remnants of my day, a pit of brew turned shadow-gray, are spiraling and gurgling down the drain.
Author’s note: today’s song is “Tous les garçons et les filles” by Françoise Hardy.
I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. A total of a hundred and sixty-nine videos so far. Check them out.
Psst! Do you enjoy audiochapters? Check out this fresh new one.
I was introduced to Françoise Hardy and her music back in primary school. Our French teacher showed the music video of that song on an old CRT TV. I was enthralled, and from then on, French ladies became a matter of mystical beauty. It didn’t hurt that most of the French girls I met when going to the beach in Hendaye, or that visited our town, were usually lovely. I have to assume that Françoise Hardy inspired Jacqueline’s depiction, although I wouldn’t be sure to what extent, as I don’t plan those things consciously.
Last I know of Hardy, back in 2021 she was dying of terminal cancer, and begging the French government to euthanize her.
My septuagenarian father has covid. This Saturday I will travel to Vitoria so I can attempt to pass an exam on Sunday, that will determine how often they will call me back to work for the next few years. See you on the other side.
It’s eight in the evening and I’m stuck at work, thankfully alone because during the last two hours of the afternoon, I’m the only technician on duty. I have spent most of my spare time studying for an upcoming test on the 16th, but I have managed to pull off two full paragraphs of the next scene of my ongoing novel, which is quite a lot considering how much returning to work has disturbed me.
On the first day back, about twenty minutes from the end of the working day, I received a call. That late, we usually don’t pick up, and I seriously considered just pretending I had already left, but the call came from HQ. They told me that some technician from the electromedical service was in need of a computer technician because the monitors that handle the delivery rooms in the maternity ward weren’t “receiving data.” That’s too convoluted of an issue to start investigating so late in the evening. I considered just creating a ticket and leaving a note for my boss to decide next morning what to do; I certainly wasn’t going to interview the technician from the electromedical service so that he would rope me in past my schedule; they don’t pay me overtime. However, I ended up contacting the engineer on call.
I had tried to forget about that incident, but the following day, that engineer approached me and told me that she had been dealing with the issue from 22:00 to 1:30. Turns out that the monitors weren’t “receiving data” because none of them would turn on. It was an electrical issue. The technicians on duty from the electromedical service seemed to be newbies, and they insisted that we were responsible because a switch (related to the computer network) was nearby, but that apparently was also dead because it wasn’t receiving power. Basically, it was the same situation as complaining to your internet provider that you can’t browse the internet, even though your computer doesn’t even turn on. Eventually the engineer managed to convince an electrician to go and deal with the situation; it was their responsibility, after all.
The supervisor of the maternity ward was fuming for hours, fearing that any of the newborns may die, and had to call in additional nurses. If I hadn’t taken that goddamn call, nor called the engineer on duty, my ass may have been toast. On my first day back.
Have I stated enough times that I hate this job? I’m autistic, for fuck’s sake. What the hell am I doing dealing with constant chaos, an open plan office in which half of the people act like they’re in high school or middle school, and with such a lack of training and documentation that you must pursue other technicians around to figure out how to solve plenty of tasks? My only hope in this organization is that I may receive a call to work at a smaller hospital, and get stuck working there with an indefinite contract that would allow me to pay my bills reliably. I’m too old and generally uninterested to get back into programming, because I’d have to learn lots of shit I don’t care about (such as programming for mobile phones and websites).
This segues awkwardly into the following: a few days ago I had a conversation with an autistic gal from the US I’ve been talking to online for a while. Not sure how it came up, but I told her that when I was a kid I felt compelled to drown in cold water (not a particularly odd subject among the ones we bring up). She was stunned, because she felt the same way back then, specifically in cold water. She suggested that in a previous life we may have drowned in the Atlantic. I proposed that we may have been citizens of Atlantis. In any case, I have always felt like there was something waiting for me in the cold, black depths of bodies of water. Perhaps a kind of home.
In my beloved previous novel, My Own Desert Places, my protagonist, Irene, killed herself by jumping off a cliff, intending to crush her skull against the rocks below. Instead of that, she became crippled, and lay there until the tide drowned her. This isn’t much of a spoiler, because she starts that novel as a ghost. That was somewhat autobiographical. Back when I was twenty-one or twenty-two, I had such a harrowing experience at my first paid job, that one morning I couldn’t muster the strength to get on the bus and face my bastardly bosses and the tasks that I wasn’t trained properly to fulfill. I had survived until then by luck; middle school was bad, but I spent most of my high school years in a psychotic state. I skipped most classes to wander around town, sneaking into random apartment buildings and spending hours in the stark darkness between flights of stairs, listening to the echoes. A few of those times, I prayed for real (never again afterwards): I asked whatever omnipotent creature may exist in the vast darkness of the universe to come down and kill me. She never came. That indifferent bitch keeps herself busy somewhere out there, spinning her web.
That day, when I refused to take the bus to work, I had a realization: my life until then had sucked major ass. My longest relationship had ended with her gaslighting me about a guy who “was like a little brother” to her. She cheated with him and left. I remember vividly the humiliation I tolerated afterwards; I had no self-esteem left, so I took her calls. The whole thing was a terrible mistake; I shouldn’t have met her to begin with. I hadn’t healed from that pain, and my first job suggested that the rest of my adult life would be strewn with even worse nightmares.
I had enough. At that point I intended to head to some cliff and throw myself off. Plenty of such spaces around. In my mind, I signed off on everything. But because I’m a coward, instead of that I went to the library, and as a result I’m writing these words. I must say, though, that earlier this afternoon, as I was violently expelling diarrhea in the bathroom because my IBS wanted to ruin my day even more than usual, I lamented, as I have done often, that I didn’t kill myself any of the many, many times that I have wanted to. Hell, even as a kid I remember clearly walking alone in the rain, under an umbrella, and wondering why did I have to be born and tolerate this cold, this grating world, and the constant pain.
Anyway, plenty of my stories have involved cold water. Diving into cold water and coming across a downed UFO. Being dragged into the cold depths by a sort of siren (in a novella I wrote in Spanish). Having to rescue your suicidal wife from the cold water because she doesn’t want to live in your manufactured paradise (in another novella I wrote in Spanish). Pretty sure there have been quite a few others. I also wish I could run some LiDAR on the continental shelves that went underwater at the end of the last ice age, when the sea level rose about 120 meters (400 feet). Atlantis went to shit when the North American tectonic plate got subducted and locked like a thousand meters underwater, submerging the Azores plateau, due to the catastrophic melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Or at least, that’s what I prefer to think.
Not sure why I felt like sharing these thoughts. Maybe because I wanted to give myself a break from studying, and I needed to get some stuff off my chest. Until next time, stranger who is reading this for reasons that would likely annoy me if I ever found out about them.
Blessed be the French, at least one of them, that allow you to forget for a while that you were born to work for others and then die. This audiochapter covers chapter 105 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.
Cast
I produced audiochapters for the entire previous sequence, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I suffer a mental breakdown and give up, whichever comes first. A total of two hours, thirty-nine minutes and fifty seconds. Check them out.
Today, at about one o’clock in the morning, I was thinking about food, but also daydreaming about winning the lottery so that I would never have to work for others again (I daydream about that often). Five minutes later I received a phone call. It’s usually either a family member or spam. Today, though, the phone number was a valid one, originating from my province. The fourth and fifth digits were zeroes, which meant that someone from a government-run organization was calling me. That likely meant one thing.
Oh no.
Someone at the office where I’ve worked on-and-off for a few years had taken a sick leave, and my services were required for this very day, on the afternoon shift, and until the guy returned. I’m familiar with the particular fucker, and he’s either gone for two weeks or an entire year. I was already fifteen minutes late from when I need to start preparing myself to leave the apartment, walk through the chaotic city center, get on a train to Donostia, then take a bus to the hospital complex where the office is located.
Back to the grind, back to either waking up at six in the morning or returning home at eleven at night. Back to wasting eight hours in an office, surrounded by about fifteen people even though I’m basically a hermit, having to avoid shitting myself due to my virulent IBS (as if the universe didn’t hate autistic people enough, IBS and other disorders such as OCD are more prevalent in folks like us), and having to meet strangers to solve their issues, issues that will come suddenly, and that I will be expected to know how to solve so that the tense users can return to doing whatever the fuck they were doing. On top of that, due to my vaccine-induced heart problems, I’ll likely end up in the ER again one of these days, because stress is a trigger.
Plenty of people out there struggle through far worse nightmares on a daily basis, but working for others has been my most dreaded one. My brain and body are unsuited for office work. Programming I can handle to a certain extent (I love programming, but doing so for others is a different matter). However, those jobs ended up letting me go, or not hiring me after an internship, due to some variation of “you can’t work well in a team.” Now I’m too old, unfamiliar with most modern technologies other than Rust and Python, and unwilling to get back in the game.
Hell, in my twenties, for long periods that I can’t remember properly, I likely classified as a hikikomori. I became that sort of beast that ceases to clean itself and stores its pee in water bottles, for no reason that I could discern. It’s been about 12-15 years since then, but I’m barely keeping it together as a human being, and that’s unlikely to improve.
So I’m writing this from one of the outrageously, maddeningly slow computers we are supposed to work with (they take about 5-7 minutes on a good day to reach the Windows desktop, and this is an upgraded line of computers from three years ago). I’m on phone duty, having forgotten most of what I learned during the few years I’ve dealt with this nonsense, and dreading the next moment when the work phone will cry out for me to solve some stranger’s problem, even though most of my problems, certainly the most pressing ones, have remained unsolved for my thirty-eight years of living (not for lack of trying, but psychotherapy didn’t work for me, and neither did pills).
Some people out there can write for a living. How lovely that must be. If you are one of those lucky ones, please jerk yourself off to oblivion. You probably deserve it. I can’t even masturbate in the bathroom down the hallway, because someone may call me in the meantime. Anyway, expect a new chapter of my novel, if you care about that shit, in like two weeks or so.
Are there any rich mommy types out there that may want to adopt and feed me? I only require a bed, a computer with WiFi, and a steady supply of milk.
As I ease the door to Nairu’s bedroom open, a broadening ribbon of hallway light pierces the darkness, creeping up the child-sized bed, reaching the slumbering form of the little girl we call our own. Glow-in-the-dark stars dot the ceiling, and under them, Nairu is lying prone, covered up to her neck in a lemonade-pink quilt featuring unicorns with turquoise-blue manes and self-satisfied smiles. The white light bathes our girl’s tranquil face, as well as strands of her chestnut hair, in a milky glow. Her hands are tucked under her chin, her rosy lips parted. Her torso rises and falls with each gentle breath. Our antediluvian baby.
Nairu must have grown on me like a cluster of orchids blooming in a marsh; I want to kneel by the bed, cradle her face, and rub my thumbs along the ridges of her cheekbones. Deep in dreamland, what fantasies are dancing behind those closed eyes? Is she strolling among towering conifer trees? Is she splashing in a stream, catching prehistoric fish with her bare hands? Is she playing a game of tag with a wooly mammoth while her furry-footed, beastly father cheers her on from the sidelines? Is she riding on the back of her centaur mother, racing through a grassy plain, while sabertooths watch them in awe? Is she fleeing in panic from a stampede of ground sloths? In the frosty quiet, has she stumbled upon the lifeless forms of her mother and father, cold as the ground beneath them?
Even though Nairu has been abducted into a world irradiated with perversion, she dared to drift into dreams in the abode of two women who remain mostly strangers to her, one of whom is a dangerous lunatic. Outside our sanctuary, how many unspeakable horrors lurk in the shadows, eager to suck the marrow from this girl’s bones? I must shield Nairu from enduring the same nightmares that haunt me, but for that I’d have to clean out society one doorstep at a time. Any potential threat to our pixie child? I’d hack them to pieces with a machete.
Jacqueline’s warmth envelops me as she leans into my side, hugging my waist, squeezing her breasts against my left arm. She tilts her head to whisper in my ear.
“Isn’t she lovely, our sweet little doll?”
Her sensual voice has rolled my spine into a tight spring.
“Mh-hm.”
“I get to take care of this innocent child. We are a family.” Her whisper becomes threadbare, as if she struggled to form each syllable. “Years ago, I was so miserable.”
I want to turn my head and meet Jacqueline’s eyes, but she buries her nose in my hair. Her fingers trace a path along the back of my scalp. She lets out a sultry sigh into my ear canal, which vibrates my eardrum with a whooshing noise like wind in a microphone. Goosebumps erupt on my skin.
“And then you appeared,” she whispers, “you twisted thing.”
Jacqueline wraps me tighter. My left earlobe becomes engulfed in a heated humidity as mommy savors the rounded, fleshy part of my ear with her tongue. A purry moan escapes her throat. She laps in slow motion at the outer rim of my ear, then the inner rim, then the hollow next to the ear canal, bathing them in warm saliva. I’m curling my toes and shrugging to keep from breaking in shivers as a tidal surge of desire rises up in my gut.
Before Nairu stirs from her sleep and sees one of her new mothers licking the other’s left ear like a lollipop, I ease the door shut until the latch clicks.
I close my eyes. Jacqueline’s tongue is sliding with a sensuous motion over the cartilaginous hollows, ridges and furrows of my ear, causing saliva to drip down to my earlobe. As she shifts her weight subtly from one foot to the other, and the pressure of her breasts squashing against my left arm intensifies or diminishes, I listen to her sounds: deep breaths, wet smacks when she withdraws her tongue to wet it, throaty noises when she swallows. My bodily heat is pooling in my crotch while an increasing moisture dampens my panties.
A hand lifts the front of my shirt, and those fingers caress my sunken abdomen. I shiver. A whimper slips out of my mouth. As Jacqueline’s fingertips dally toward my pubic bone, leaving trails of warmth in their wake, my nipples stiffen.
“You want mommy to dote on her baby girl, don’t you, sweetheart?” Jacqueline’s breath kisses the inside of my ear. “Yes, you’re in dire need of mommy attention.”
A feverish desire pulses in my groin, and my pelvic muscles contract involuntarily, while Jacqueline’s left hand unbuttons my trousers. I help her lower the waistband. Her right hand slides inside my trousers and along the curve of my ass, to knead my cheeks hungrily.
A tongue is coating the ridges of my left ear in saliva. A hand glides aside the seat of my panties, then cups and squeezes my bare ass. As a hand wanders down past my pubes, two of its fingers brush against my slit through the drenched panties, that cling to my quivering pussy. Those fingers rub my sex back and forth, sending a thrill through me.
My eyes roll back. Jacqueline’s heat has sunk into my bones and is traveling through my body, setting every corner aglow. I’m feeling faint; my legs threaten to give out from under me. In the center of my mind, a chained, horned wolf bays for sex and blood.
Jacqueline removes her mouth from my ear, and pulls back. I turn my head to meet her cobalt-blues, now glassy. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips parted and wet. She’s sticking her glistening tongue out. From its tip hangs a bead of saliva that gleams like a pearl. I stand on my tiptoes, envelop her coral-pink organ with my lips, and suck on her tongue as if to drain it of nectar.
I’m dizzy, and breathing in a floral fragrance. Jacqueline’s firm hands are stroking my shoulders. The corners of her mouth have risen in a seductive smile.
“Sorry to leave you wet and ready, darling, but… c’est de mieux d’arrêter maintenant, before I fuck you in the hallway. Get that sexy body of yours to the bathroom and freshen up.”
“I-is the rot heavy on my skin?”
“I can tell you have sweated quite a bit.”
“More like crawled through shit.”
Jacqueline chuckles.
“Go ahead and hop in the shower, sweetie. Wash the grime off and feel good again. Once you join me in our bedroom, as I told you on the phone, I’m going to show you something special.”
Author’s note: today’s songs are “Forever” by Roy Harper (also this live version), “My Girls” by Animal Collective, and “Lysergic Bliss” by Of Montreal.
I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel. A total of a hundred and sixty-eight videos so far. Check them out.
Are you also in dire need of mommy attention? Then check out the audiochapter I produced for this part.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
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