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We’re Fucked, Pt. 113: AI-generated audiochapter

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

Send your madness, O Pan, to the ends of the earth. This audiochapter covers chapter 113 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

Cast

  • Leire: some broad named Vex who offers you jobs down at the Ragged Flaggon
  • Jacqueline: Geralt’s favorite redheaded witch
  • Spiky-hair: some goon from Yakuza (originally in Japanese)

I produced audiochapters for the entire previous sequence, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I get my skull cracked open by a dumbell-heavy cock. A total of three hours, forty-seven minutes and seventeen seconds of insanity. Check them out.

Life update (09/26/2023)

On By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

Having to work is annoying enough, but in addition, it’s come to my attention that someone in my office has stolen a juicier contract from me even though I was ahead in the rankings. These last couple of months have gone as follows:

  • On the 16th of last month I came to the office only to realize that the bastard whose medical leave I was covering returned to work without calling in advance. Fifth time or so he has done this to me. Nobody is ever sure if the worker who was covering the leave will get paid if he or she stays for the day, so I usually just left, but I get along with my boss enough that I chose to stick around and finish the few tasks I had been dealing with all week, under the assurance that he would talk with the department of personnel so they’d end up paying me for those last couple of days (a holiday and the day when my coworker returned from his leave).
  • Days later, unemployed, I called to resume my unemployment benefits. They told me they couldn’t, because I still appear in their databases as employed. Excuse me? I don’t remember how (maybe I called the hospital where I work), that issue got solved, but when I checked until what day I had worked according to the internal system, it said that my last day was the 14th, meaning that they wouldn’t pay the two days they owed me (one a holiday, the other when the shithead on medical leave returned).
  • That month I got paid as if I had worked for its entirety, even though I became unemployed midway through. Second time that had happened to me. I knew that they would deduct the corresponding sum from the following contract, meaning that soon enough I would waste two more weeks of my life working for money that I already have.
  • One of my coworkers injured his back. A new medical leave. The current contract started on the 6th of this month. Three days later I got covid and spent a whole week at home. Yesterday, on the 25th, my current coworker on the afternoon shift initiated a conversation that sounded something like this:

“Are you aware that they have screwed you over?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, bro.”
“On the 18th of last month you weren’t working, and you’re the first in the ranking, but for a new contract they ended up hiring someone who’s way down on the list. Another one of our coworkers, higher than that guy, complained to the union and got rewarded with a three-months long contract that should have gone to you, because you’re higher than both on the ranking.”
“You serious, mon?”
“And she (the coworker who complained to the union and got a contract that didn’t correspond to her) ended up calling the union because I had to bump her off another contract that went to her, even though I was ahead of her in the rankings.”
“Aw shit, son.”
“They’re always plotting, this gal and our secretary. They keep saying that they want more girls to work here.”
“That’s heavy, dude.”
“Tomorrow morning, call the union and explain the situation. That original contract from the 18th has already been corrected. They only awarded it to that coworker because she was the one who complained. When they look you up in the ranking, they’ll realize you were ahead and they’ll have to either give you her contract or pay you for those three months of work that you will have missed out on.”
“Dang, cuz.”
“The secretary and this coworker know that they have screwed you over. They’ll do it again. You either correct this or the rankings won’t mean shit here. People like this will steal contracts if they can get away with it.”

So tomorrow morning I’ll have to call the union and explain the situation. When I get to work in the afternoon, I expect the secretary and this female coworker to glare at me as if they hadn’t been the ones who screwed me over in the first place. I’m the non-confrontational type, and due to my self-destructive urges I’d rather be unemployed, but my aggressive coworker is right: if you allow yourself to get stepped on, you will keep getting stepped on again and again. If I refuse to correct this situation, it will also set a precedent for the entire office. So after I involve the union, two of my coworkers will get permanently mad at me even though it’s their fault, and in exchange I’ll either have to work for a couple of months longer, or, in case they can’t legally transfer her contract to me, receive three months of wages for diddling my thumbs.

What a convoluted, boring mess that I wish didn’t involve me.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 113 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

Jacqueline’s right hand glides smoothly up and down the length of her manhood, caressing with long and slow pumps that fearsome column, its skin flush and taut and gleaming, whose bulging veins bristle against her fingers. The foreskin slips back and forth with every stroke, revealing the ruddy, helmet-shaped bulb, a raw and pulsing crown ready to enthrall and slather in cream any feminine crease.

A tingling sensation spreads across my scalp while I ogle that monstrosity, a dumbell-heavy weapon designed to rupture flesh, an obscene member that would make a stallion envious, and weighed down by a pair of balls that would fill my palms. A wave of dizziness crashes over me as my heart drums like a bongo. To witness such a transgression against nature should perhaps make me gag with horror, and yet a pool of molten heat stirs in my loins.

“M-mon dieu,” I mumble.

A smirk blooms on Jacqueline’s lips.

“Like what you’re seeing, my little kitten?”

“So now you have a dick to whip around? A big, veiny, throbbing monster-cock?”

She slaps the rigid flesh against her abdomen, sending her tits wobbling and quivering in their black lace cages.

“Uh-huh. Quite dashing, wouldn’t you say?”

“Y-your pussy is gone.”

“Don’t worry, ma chouchoute. It will come back, eager to please and be pleased. No need to mourn its absence.”

I squint and rub my chin. That battering ram could shatter a castle gate.

“A shapeshifting dick puts you at an evolutionary edge. And somehow it suits you to wield that fleshy behemoth, despite your gorgeous face and luscious tits.”

Jacqueline cocks her hip, making one of her stockings rise like a piston.

“Can’t say I disagree. I’m a huntress. A predator, if you will. I relish in the pleasure of the chase, the thrill of the kill. However, what owner of a penis doesn’t desire to impale and empty themselves inside any pussy that struts by? The instinct to breed, to fill, to claim, is always there, simmering beneath the surface. Ever since I became the recipient of such a strange miracle, some of my most exciting times have involved seducing some innocent thing then tearing her in half with this beast.”

I swallow hard. My eyes dart over the length and girth of mommy’s weapon of mass destruction, whose sight causes my core to tighten with a throbbing ache. My gaze drops to the pair of balls suspended low and heavy: that scrotal sac stretched and swollen with seed like a ripening apricot, its urgent load waiting to erupt and paint the world in sticky white ribbons.

Jacqueline releases her cock, and the organ springs back bouncing and wagging. Instead she gropes her dense flesh-fruits as if weighing them. She rolls them, massages them, squeezes them gently. A shiver tiptoes up my spine.

“When was the last time you touched a cock, my dear?” Jacqueline asks playfully.

I recall that random, spiky-haired guy at a party. I had been huddled in a corner, nursing a bottle of vodka and wishing I were dead. Rock music thumped through me, vibrating my organs, while the alcohol buzzed in my brain. Spiky-hair swaggered over. He smelled like sweat and cigarettes. His lips parted, and it took me a second to realize he was talking to me.

“What’s a hot thing like you doing alone, eh?”

“I don’t have a penis,” I answered.

Spiky-hair, with his mud-brown eyes and patchy stubble, grinned.

“I’m not asking for your dick size, babe. I want to know why a hot piece of ass like you is sulking in a corner when you could be getting piped.”

A cocktail of vodka, acid reflux and nervous energy churned in my stomach. I should have stayed in bed with my laptop, scrolling through Pornhub, but I didn’t want to be the recluse that nobody missed. Why did I even bother? My attempts at interacting with humans only made me feel alone.

“Maybe I hate this world and everything in it.”

Although my vision kept blurring, I caught Spiky-hair’s gaze sweeping over my cleavage like a hawk eyeing a mouse, his fingers twitching to fondle, grope, squeeze. He slung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close, prodding at my hip with a hard-on. His sour breath singed my nostrils. That mouth, a crooked slash, its foam-flecked lips cracked, resembled a scabbed wound. Rather than let his slimy tongue slide into my mouth, I’d have my teeth yanked out with pliers.

“You’re a babe that’s wasting away. Women are like the ocean: mysterious and deep. But they don’t come close to men, who are like raging fires, a furnace that can’t be tamed. You might as well try to contain a star.”

As his stubbled jaw brushed against my cheek, his hand slid down to my butt and cupped it with a possessive pressure. I wished my bottle of vodka were a knife that I could sink into my heart so I wouldn’t have to endure this nightmare for a second longer.

“Oh, please drown yourself in a puddle.”

I intended to shove Spiky-hair off me and drain him away with a flood of vitriol. However, in the heat and roar of the party, I must have crumbled like a rotted tree, because he led me down a dim and reeking corridor to a stinkier bathroom, a windowless box with a broken toilet seat and a shower curtain streaked with mildew. He spun me around and pressed me face-first against the grimy tiles while tugging my panties down. I heard a zipper unzip. He hawked up a glob of phlegm, spat it into his palm, and slathered the goop on his lead pipe. He pried apart the halves of my ass-flesh. The tip tickled my hole before he plunged into me with a squelch, splitting me open. I grunted like a hurt horse. I shut my eyes and clenched my fists while my colon filled with his oafish thrusts, which I pictured as the blows of a hammer driving a nail into a coffin. My sphincter burned and stung. I wished I had shaved, trimmed, shoved in a plug or whatever to lessen the discomfort of a puffy cock spearing the depths of my bowels. The vodka along with his sweat made me feel like I was drowning in a bog of putrid slime. Would my stomach sputter up the foul mixture of alcohol and acid-drenched junk food that sloshed within? Why had I left the safety of my room, the comfort of my headphones and keyboard and screen? What did I expect from a bunch of humans? They’d sooner tear out my eyes than make me feel welcome. Why did I keep trying to fit in when I’d rather be dead?

Spiky-hair grabbed my breast as if to imprint its meaty contours on his brain. With his free hand, he clutched a fistful of my hair and yanked it, forcing me to arch my back. Saliva bubbled out of my mouth and dribbled onto the piss-stained floor. His nuts whacked against my vulva with wet claps that echoed in the stuffy bathroom. His stubble rasped and raked: a swarm of cockroaches crawling over my skin, their antennae probing my pores, their legs scritch-scratching my flesh. I prayed for his dick to burst, for his balls to shrivel and fall off, but instead his sweaty body bore down on me, he let out a shuddering groan, and his penis swelled and throbbed inside me like a tumor as it spurted a load of grime. In the aftermath, that essence, viscous and hot, had oozed out of my gaping, battered hole to crust between my thighs like dried sap, mingling with the dust bunnies and fungal growths. For days afterward, his stench, the odors of his hair grease and smoker’s breath, of his sweat and cum, had clung to me like a blanket of mold. The phantom of his phallus haunted my rectum whenever I went for a shit. I wanted to scrub myself clean in boiling water, to peel off my skin, to replace every atom of my body with ones that weren’t tainted.

Back in the present, as the warmth of a candle-fueled mood washes over me, I stop rubbing my eyelids and look up at mommy, who’s waiting for me to reply.

“Some random dude’s dick, far from your meat-log of a schlong. During my early twenties, if I recall correctly. So it’s been a while. In the meantime, though, I have messed around with plastic, rubber, and metal imitations.”

“Leire, you’re too precious to be a casual fuck. And your tone tells me that the guy didn’t treat you with the tenderness you deserve.”

“How can I put it? I was tempted to say that I couldn’t remember, because I didn’t want to. That inflamed wound took me months to heal. I doubt even a sexbot would have liked it.”

“My poor chérie.”

I nod in a continuous loop, as if my head were spring-loaded with disappointment. My walls had been breached, my treasures pillaged, my virtue trampled into the dirt.

“In general, dicks are fine. Unfortunately, they tend to be attached to dudes.”

“A real shame, bien sûr.”

“My one epiphany is that I need to hold on to tits for dear life. The more massive the better.”

“You’re in mommy’s loving arms now, ma petite étoile.” She strokes the velvety skin of her colossus, causing its pink crown to twitch. “But what do you think I should do with this novel appendage of mine, huh?”

“Well… Every time you leave the apartment, you could turn your trip into one of those shooter arcade games from the nineties. Pump that sperm launcher and fire at anything that moves and breathes. Leave a trail of hundreds of splattered faces.”

Jacqueline giggles, making her breasts jiggle like gelatin mounds. Her cobalt-blues sparkle with mirth.

“Vraiment, a project worth pursuing, but I’m more interested in how to use my jizz cannon in regards to you, ma coquine, ma douce petite fille. Don’t you want to play with mommy’s special toy?”

I sense myself liquefying at this gift from the god Pan to worship and adorn with garlands.

“It would punch apart and pulverize my guts.”

“Oh, don’t look so disturbed. I was employing a little hyperbole, darling. I can control its basic size and girth, so you’ll just need to lie back, spread your legs, and let me stuff that dripping hole like a blossom fitting snugly within a bud. You know what? Let me show you.”

Author’s note: today’s song is “Ball and Biscuit” by The White Stripes.

I keep a playlist with all the songs I’ve mentioned throughout the novel so far. A hundred and eighty videos. Check them out.

Do you wanna hear this nonsense acted out by AI voice actors? Check out the audiochapter.

Some of you that normally follow this story may have missed the previous chapter, because I forgot to attach tags to the WordPress post. Oops.

This chapter reminded me, for some reason, of my obscure free verse poem titled “The Well-Hung Duchess of Cosmographica” (that requires a couple of revisions).

We’re Fucked, Pt. 112: AI-generated audiochapter

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

Sudden dick. This audiochapter covers chapter 112 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

Cast

  • Leire: blonde thief has coin if you can work
  • Jacqueline: the OG Merigold

I produced audiochapters for the entire previous sequence, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I float away to a sheets-based tropical paradise. A total of three hours, thirty-six minutes and forty seconds of mostly fucking nonsense. Check them out.

Life update (09/20/2023)

On By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

The beta-blockers that I take for my heart issues put me out of commission by eight in the evening (if I’m that lucky). Last night I fell asleep at nine, only to wake up from a nightmare at midnight. Didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. At five I finally dragged my weary old bones to my desk and freewrote the remainder of chapter 112 of my ongoing novel. At six I prepared myself some decaf, took a shit, showered, then left for work.

Such nights, I try to force myself to sleep, but usually my brain falls into sequences of daydreams slash intrusive thoughts that I don’t recall entering. They force me to confront all kinds of nasty crap, from bad memories to hypothetical situations from which I could need to defend myself.

Among the many things that my brain bothered me with last night were a couple of questions: you’re supposed to be a novelist, right? Then how come you disdain most novels you come across? Well, brain, if you should know, I abandon most novels I start because the majority annoy the living hell out of me. The modern ones are much worse; the author is in a hurry to assure the reader (but mainly the gatekeepers) that he or she is onboard with the Sole-Allowed Ideology, the secular god of the godless (and I say that as an atheist). As many writers have said, you won’t get published these days if you don’t belong to the right demographics and don’t believe the Right Things. I’m an ethnic European dude who wishes that the Romans had never tolerated the growth of Abrahamic religions, so I’m pretty much toast. I also write smut, though, which is hard to publish.

Politics aside, I feel that most writers waste my fucking time. I’m a hedonist: I care about beauty and about having fun. That’s not to say that I elude bad thoughts (as if I could); there’s plenty of beauty in the black depths, often more than in the light. But my point is, I can hardly remember what novels gave me what I sought from them.

In my early twenties I fell in love with Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which is, curiously enough, the least Murakami-ish of his novels as far as I’m aware. Years later I found out that he got the urge to write that novel after a girlfriend he cheated on and abandoned quite cruelly ended up killing herself; Murakami was in his mid-thirties or so when he found out about her death, and it impacted him. Destroyed him, perhaps.

I’m trying to remember what other novels impacted me in a similar way. Maybe John Fowles’ The Collector, and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. To a lesser degree, Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity. Can’t remember any other at the moment. For me, they have in common that you live through those novels. You see what the protagonists see, you touch what they’re touching, you feel what they’re feeling, and they rarely pull you out of the then-and-there. That’s what I inject into my own stories: the experience of sensing the world through a peculiar person, forcing me (as the writer) to deal with their feelings, neuroses, delusions, as they try to better or ruin their life. I want to be there, mainly because I have never felt “here” in my own life. The vicarious escape allows me to forget for a while that after all this time I’m still me.

Last night’s rumination made me think about my previous novel, first one in English, titled My Own Desert Places, about some ghost who comes back to life because she fell in love with a suicidal person. I remember moments from that fictional life as if they were memories of mine, stronger than most moments I’ve actually lived through. I think that for some people, maybe just defective ones, the act of immersing themselves in producing such narratives convinces their brains to record those moments as real experiences. I remember eating a lemon ice cream with the protagonist’s beloved while staring at the bay of a neighboring town. I recall when the protagonist lost her mind during a long trip to Asturias. I remember hanging out in the balcony of a house that doesn’t exist while looking at and talking to someone who never existed. I feel pangs of pain and regret for the griefs that the story contained. In a few months I intend to revise the whole thing (mostly to catch glaring errors) and republish it, but I suspect that I will need to take advantage of a couple of weeks of unemployment to withstand the mood changes to which the process will subject me.

As I kept thinking last night, I remembered a series of books that I truly enjoyed, that I looked forward to reading as a teen: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. What a clever, funny bastard that guy was. I wanted to continue reading those novels if only to find out what witty thoughts or images he would come up with, many of which made me smile or laugh. Why did I stop reading his stuff? Back in my early twenties, it became obvious that Terry was dying of whatever brain shit ended up sending him to his grave, and that someone else, likely his daughter, was writing his books. But as an adult, I think I never returned to his works because I associated them with my miserable middle school and high school years, of which I remember very little likely due to trauma-induced amnesia. I’m not sure if I’m exaggerating with that, given that I was constantly slipping in and out of psychosis; I was an undiagnosed autistic teen who lacked a place to be himself and do the things he needed to do, and who was never left alone. I despise my teenage years to the extent that I threw away the vast majority of my writings from that era (and I was close to reaching a million words by the time I was nineteen), as well as the letters I received from people I knew. That last part I regret; years later, I wished I would have gotten further insight into some people I knew from back then (as referenced in my free verse poem “A Ghastly Scar”).

Anyway, I figured out the reading order of Pratchett’s City Watch series, and since then I’ve already read through twenty percent of his Guards! Guards!. Either Pratchett influenced what I wrote later on, or he just had the same notions about what I want out of fiction: the joy of coming across interesting “images,” and being amused and intrigued by silly and/or absurd situations. Those are what I look forward the most when I’m writing my own stuff, and I usually feel that a chapter is good enough when I have come up with a few such instances.

Tomorrow I have to visit my cardiologist for a check-up, and I’m still not sure to what extent I will share that I feel in a daze during most of my workday (even woozy at times, like today when I was fixing a printer’s network connection), perhaps due to the beta-blockers I’m forced to take in apparent perpetuity. Also, that ever since a certain jab, the pressure I feel in the area of my heart has gotten worse over time, although I don’t feel it daily. Last week, after five days of covid, when I left the house to figure out if I had recovered enough to take a walk, for a long minute I felt a stabbing pain in my old ticker. And I’m reluctant to share that with my appointed cardiologist because the fucker got annoyed at the reality that the jab caused my heart damage, which a different cardiologist confirmed. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if any of these days I simply pass out suddenly and crack my head open against the floor, or end up with ventricular fibrillation, which would drop me in seconds. Just today, one of my female coworkers was missing because her brother, as he was jogging near his home, passed out for no apparent reason and broke his nose, and now he’s in Intensive Care. Months ago, a different coworker’s brother, a football player in his early twenties who was getting regular check-ups, dropped dead in the shower. His remains were found about a week later, hot water still running.

I’ve barely started the current contract and I already yearn for it to end. I’ll never get used to the life of an adult. I want to wander around while daydreaming and scribbling nonsense in notebooks like I spent my days doing as a kid.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 112 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial4 Comments

Jacqueline’s palms, capable of untold erotic sorcery, cup my nape as she presses her pillowy lips against my forehead like stamping a wax seal on parchment, letting the kiss linger. A warm tingling spreads throughout my core.

“Let’s focus on the here and now, shall we?” she whispers.

With a finger, Jacqueline tilts my chin upwards. Her teeth are sparkling in the candlelight, her cobalt-blues claiming my eyes as if staking a territory. The breath that puffs out between her lips ghosts over my face.

“From now on, ma chérie, no more secrets. We are a family, we owe each other that much. And before the candle-fueled mood starts to stale, I’m going to prepare you a feast of flesh fit for royalty. Afterwards, once we’re done and you can move again, I’ll heat up dinner. How does that sound, baby doll?”

An image flashes in my mind: a family-size round table covered in plates of sticky ribs, crispy fried chicken, roast lamb garnished with rosemary and garlic, an array of grilled sausages, and seared steaks. My mouth waters, my stomach rumbles. Oh, how I would love to sink my teeth into a succulent drumstick and tear the meat off the bone. Or bite into a thick cut of rare beef. I want to feel its fatty, iron-flavored juices seeping into my mouth and dribbling down my chin.

“I-I am starving.”

She winks at me mischievously.

“Let’s get on to it, then.”

Jacqueline spins on her heels, and when she reaches to slide the mirrored wardrobe door open, her buttocks stick out like two firm and rosy moons, the globes touching above the tight dimpled knot that shields the portal of her soul. She closes the wardrobe and turns back. She’s holding a forehead-wide, shiny strip of black silk embroidered with the words “Fleur du mal.” A slice of a starless midnight sky.

She steps closer and raises the strip to my eyes. The silk, with its soft fibers and feather-light touch, feels cool against my skin, a stark contrast to the heat flooding my veins. I catch a last glimpse of mommy’s silhouette against the honey-colored candlelight before I go blind. Jacqueline leans in, sharing her warmth, as she knots the fabric tight around the back of my head.

“Lie back, ma petite chouette, and wait for mommy to be ready.”

I obey like a child: I stretch out my naked body, with my limbs splayed, atop Jacqueline’s freshly-washed bedclothes, an island of fabric, a pristine snowscape of a bed. My nostrils are filled with the scents of jasmine, sandalwood, rose, and candle wax, combined with the salty tang of sex. As the cloud-like comforter caresses me, a surge of bliss spreads throughout my being as if I were sinking into a warm bath. I’m submerged in blackness.

I hear Jacqueline rummage through the wardrobe: the rustle of fabric, the click of coat hangers. She’s humming a tune to herself.

I’m feeling lighter. In my mind’s eye, shadows twist and writhe, shapes shift like snakes coiling, colors melt into a swirling and spiraling haze. I see a tree with its bark clawed off. A cold breeze carries the scent of pine needles as it bites at my exposed skin. The pebbles of a riverbed grind into the soles of my bare feet. A dirty child with chestnut hair and dressed in a crude leather tunic, a waif of the wilderness, is peeking at me from behind the trunk. I once visited a forest that died thousands and thousands of years before I was born.

“What about Nairu?” I blurt out.

The rustle of fabric stops.

“You heard her wake up?” Jacqueline asks with concern.

I’d dread for our adopted daughter to make a sudden and violent appearance during this session. I hope she’s dreaming of ground sloths.

“No, I mean… Have you shown your power to her?”

“Oh, I’d love to, darling. I want to open up to her as well, but first we must figure out if she’s even capable of learning our language.”

“You insist on taking in the weird and the broken.”

Jacqueline’s chuckle echoes in my ears.

“You think I’m collecting broken things? Maybe it is so. But even the freaky and the fringe have a beauty of their own. I’m glad that the universe has thrown them my way; who else would love and cherish them how they deserve?”

I picture my goddess, Jacqueline-but-mother, draped in a flowing white gown that billows in the breeze, standing in a sun-kissed meadow, surrounded by lilies, tulips, marigolds, and roses that sway and nod their heads like worshippers gathered at her feet. She’s cradling the sleeping form of our antediluvian foundling, Nairu, whose serene face makes her resemble an infant Buddha.

“She grew up in the Paleolithic era, and I’m the first person she met from our present, so she’s already well-acquainted with the grotesque. To her, we’re two freaks with a kinky streak and powers beyond comprehension. If I were in her shoes, whisked away into a future world where ground sloths are extinct, I’d be running in circles while crying my eyes out. She may take your shapeshifting in stride.”

“Maybe. One day, when she’s ready, we’ll show her the truth and see what happens.”

My muscles have relaxed. A sweet stupor washes over me. I’m floating, floating towards the ceiling, but before I reach it, I turn myself around. Below, the candles’ amber-golden glow is tinting with a patina of oranges and yellows, like the sunset in a tropical paradise, an ocean of sheets adorned with embroidered swans and fleur-de-lis lacework.

The wardrobe door slides shut. I feel Jacqueline’s gaze on my blindfolded face.

“Take it off and have a look,” she says eagerly.

My limbs, heavy as if cast in lead, resist my mental nudges. I start by wriggling my toes, which sends ripples of sensation up my ankles. Life floods back into my fingers in a rush of pins and needles. With effort, I haul myself upright. I fumble with the blindfold’s knot behind my head, but my tingling fingers betray me, so I yank the strip of silk from my eyes and blink against the candlelight.

Jacqueline, my miracle worker with the power to shape her form, stands before me, her face framed by tresses the color and texture of raven wings. Her lower lip is caught between her pearly teeth, and her cheeks are flushed. A lacy, black choker encircles her throat. Her majestic breasts sit in the cupping of a plunging lace bralette, their creamy curves embraced by its intricate patterns, the pink buds of her nipples poking out, while a garter belt that hugs her hips holds up thigh-high, translucent stockings.

From between Jacqueline’s spaced-apart legs dangles a pair of solid, smooth testicles, and her right hand is grasping a cock as thick as a boneless limb.

Author’s note: today’s songs are “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, and “Moonage Daydream” by David Bowie.

I keep a playlist with all the songs I’ve mentioned throughout the novel. A total of a hundred and seventy-nine videos so far. Check them out.

Want to continue hearing this tale as it gets steamier (and freakier)? Check out the audiochapter.

Review: Dungeon Meshi, by Ryōko Kui

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, ReseñasLeave a comment

Five stars. The title translates to “Delicious in Dungeon.”

Two long-running manga series that I had been following for a long time ended this month: the first one, Oshimi’s Chi no Wadachi, and the second one is Kui’s wonderful Dungeon Meshi. More often than not, when I finish a manga series and I’m starving for more of the peculiar joys that this format provides (far higher joys than what most of Western fiction produces these days), I check out lists of recommendations, plenty of which mentioned Dungeon Meshi. However, I always passed on it. You see, a fiction genre somewhat popular in Japan focuses on weird food-related tournaments that mostly seem like excuses to draw mouth-watering food, and print recipes. I never saw the appeal, and I wasn’t interested in a variation of that formula even with a fantasy dressing.

Big mistake. Dungeon Meshi is an exceptional story with fantastic characters, and the food-making part works as a straight-faced satire, because the vast majority of the recipes involve cooking D&D-like monsters into something resembling edible food. The whole deal about making elaborate food out of monsters could have been a gimmick, but the plot turns it into a necessary element to survive.

The tale introduces a group of adventures who don’t get along with each other very well. The leader, the fighter of the group, is an obsessive, socially oblivious maniac (could easily pass for autistic) who dreams of tasting every monster in the world, and who possibly also wants to become a monster. He’s accompanied by his sister, a laid-back, eccentric sorcerer. Apart from the siblings we have an uptight elven wizard, a pragmatic halfling rogue, and a barbarian dwarf merc.

Regarding the wizard of the group, named Marcille, I must say that I’m a big fan of that whole cute face, blonde hair, braids, and choker business. Love ya Marci.

The world of this story features dungeons as prominent landmarks. At some point in history, otherworldly creatures entered the main reality and settled in underground pockets. Their wild magic created such ecosystems, filled with strange creatures and ingredients, that farming and raiding those dungeons became the backbone of entire societies. Towns have grown around them, and the first levels of those dungeons are frequented by traders and adventurers. The careful lore involving the existence and development of dungeons, as well as the political issues they caused, is one of my favorite parts of the tale (which may not be saying much, as I love most of it).

Anyway, our main group delved into the dungeon for some important reason I forgot about, and in the process, the protagonist’s sister, that laid-back sorcerer, gets eaten by a goddamn dragon. Due to the abundance of strange magic, dungeons are the only places in the world where people don’t fully die (most of the time), and some adventurers have made their trade out of following some other group and then reviving them for a reward. More ruthless groups murder other groups, then revive them for a reward. In any case, our main characters, minus the sorcerer, leave the dungeon defeated.

The barbarian leaves the group for a better paying gig. The main dude, that fighter whose sister is being digested, broke and desperate, decides to delve again into the depths of the dungeon to save his sibling. The uptight wizard will accompany him, because she was friends with the sister, and the rogue decides to follow them as well (I don’t recall why, but likely the promise of profit). They’re broke and can’t afford provisions, so they must survive increasingly dangerous levels by foraging and hunting the local monstrous flora and fauna, which nobody does because it’s a disgusting, horrifying prospect.

I love the concept, but this story mainly triumphs in the execution, thanks to the devoted, meticulous work of the author, a bonafide craftswoman. Lesser stories would have the protagonists win by unleashing vague, convenient powers that would overcome the obstacles, but in this tale, the author puts us right then and there with her characters as they come up with clever ways to succeed. I recall now two instances in particular: they couldn’t pass through an area plagued with carnivorous, urticant vines, so they hunted some nasty frog-like creatures whose skins made them immune to the vines, and then they skinned and wore their hides as uniforms. Dealing with untouchable ghosts, they came up with the notion of making holy water sorbet and turning it into a bludgeoning weapon. The whole story is filled with shit like this; you don’t get many tales in which the protagonists truly earn what they get.

What set out to be a relatively simple tale of a group of people who don’t really get along but who end up liking each other more while trying to achieve something important, turns into a world-endangering quest in which the main characters are bound to save or ruin everything. As things got darker and darker, some of the stuff that happened, particularly the monster designs, reminded me of Berserk (which, for those who don’t know, was, for about three fifths of its run, as “peer into the abyss” as it gets).

The main group gains two new members along the way (a survivalist dwarf and a selfish cat-girl), but they also interact with other organized groups that mainly intend to hinder them. In a story with such a large cast, you could expect some significant development maybe out of the protagonist and someone else, but in this story, every main character gets a satisfying character arc, as well as some of the secondary ones. Even those who could be generally categorized as villains, and would be killed and forgotten in other stories, are treated with care and compassion by the author, who at least makes the readers understand why they’re right from their point of view in pursuing what they want.

After many wild moments and many trials and tribulations, some of which involved the main characters’ deepest pains, the story could have collapsed at the end, but it didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, the climax was brilliantly clever, and the remaining threads are tied up enough, leaving things open-ended in regards to how most of the secondary characters would progress from that point on.

I found the whole thing impeccable, a joy from start to finish. One of the best fantasy stories that I have ever experienced. If you enjoy such a setting at all, particularly if you are into D&D-like stuff, you owe it to yourself to give this a try.

The anime adaptation is in production, and will be released on Netflix. Here’s the latest trailer:

Review: Chi no Wadachi, by Shūzō Oshimi

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Reseñas1 Comment

The title translates to either “Blood on the Tracks” or “A Trail of Blood.” Despite the mystery or thriller-like title, this haunting story is about heredity, and how a fucked-up childhood could poison you for the rest of your life. I caught this series maybe three years ago, and read it up to the then latest chapter. This morning I have read the chapter that concluded the tale. I don’t know how to rate the whole.

I hate to review stories that I have read in a chapter-by-chapter release, because my impressions have been muddled and spread thin over time. I will make the effort, though, because I want to think about what this series left in me.

We follow a shy, withdrawn middle schooler who lives with his outwardly normal parents. His dangerously beautiful (and dangerous in general) mother overprotects him, particularly regarding the cousin that visits their home and pesters the protagonist. Although the mother doesn’t want the cousin around, it’s a family member of her husband, so she needs to keep the peace. Growing up, I used to suffer a similar cousin, someone who pushed his way into our home and demanded to be entertained, stealing my time and peace. I had no choice but to deal with the guy because my brother wanted to get along with him.

Anyway, during a mountain trip, the cousin leads our hapless protagonist to the edge of a cliff. His mother, fearing that this clown would end up causing her only son’s demise, finds them both in time to witness how the cousin trips and is about to fall. What follows is a spoiler for the inciting incident of this story, so read it at your peril. The mother hurries to save him, but in the last moment, she allows her intrusive thoughts to win, and pushes the cousin off the cliff.

The cousin survives with severe brain damage that prevents him from pointing an accusatory finger at his aunt, and the protagonist is gaslit into believing that maybe he just imagined the whole thing up, other than the fact that his cousin fell off. The protagonist’s mother unravels, not because she fears the consequences of her murder attempt, but because she may not be punished. She wants it all to break. It seems that she has been miserable forever; she had convinced herself that she ought to get married and a have a child, only to realize that she made a terrible mistake she can’t amend (other than divorcing and moving away, I guess, but she wouldn’t dare). On top of that, she’s the kind of crazy bound to drag everyone around her into ruin.

She despises her husband, whom she resents because he tied her to this miserable life, and instead she searches for intimacy in her son. She entangles him in a somewhat-chaste incestual relationship.

The kid is at times happy that this beautiful mother whose love he yearns for is treating him so warmly, but the rest of the time he feels smothered and creeped out, and wishes to escape. Most of the memorable moments of this tale involve a childhood love of the protagonist, a girl with a differently fucked-up home life, who could end up saving him from a mother that won’t allow any competitors.

As the story progressed, I wanted the protagonist to break free from his mother’s clutches and build a better life with this sweet girl who somewhat inexplicably wished to share her life with him. However, as I thought that the story was approaching its end, the author executed a turning point that sealed the fate of all the characters involved. I won’t go into details, because they would be massive spoilers, but the author forced an unlikely encounter and undid most of the protagonist’s character development. Shortly after, the story moves into a timeskip and makes you realize that the lack of mobile phones and the internet during the story up to that point wasn’t a stylistic choice.

The protagonist, now an adult in his mid-to-late thirties, deals with what remains, both physically and mentally, of his aging, miserable parents, partly hoping that before those two candles are spent, he’ll get enough of those relationships to either assuage his despair about how life treated him, or push him over the edge so he finally dares to kill himself. What I got out of that final block of the story is that some people end up so broken by nature and/or nurture that the most they can aspire for is a quiet place in which to be themselves. I had already realized that before I read this series, though.

(That reminds me of Nick Drake’s lovely song Place to Be, quite apropos:

When I was young, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I’m older, see it face to face
And now I’m older, gotta get up, clean the place

And I was green, greener than the hill
Where flowers grow and the sun shone still
Now I’m darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be)

Oshimi has created some of the most psychologically twisted mangas I’ve ever read: The Flowers of Evil, Inside Mari, Happiness, as well as this story I’m reviewing. He has also pushed out a couple of duds like Drifting Net Café and Welcome Back, Alice, with which I likely shouldn’t have bothered. In Chi no Wadachi he went further by distorting the world according to the protagonist’s disturbed mental states; for example, when he ends up hollowed out and hopeless, we experience his world as sparse sketches. Plenty of compelling drawings.

Did Oshimi succeed in writing a satisfying ending to this troublesome tale? I’m not sure. The first half was far more compelling, and I would have been more comfortable with the remainder if he hadn’t undone his protagonist’s development to twist the plot into a turning point. Still, I’m not going to forget this story, nor the protagonist’s hauntingly nuts mother, any time soon.

Life update (09/13/2023)

On By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

Last night, at one in the morning, I was recovering from covid by playing Starfield; I went through a compelling mission with Sarah Morgan in Cassiopeia to find debris from her past. I needed to take a shit, so I quit the game, shut off my computer, and went to the bathroom as the last thing to do before bed.

It turned out to be one of those annoying shits that I have often, and that involve wiping over and over. After one of the first attempts to stem the presence of fecal residue on the toilet paper, I noticed that it didn’t smell like anything. I thought, “Curious. How could I have eaten so differently these past few days that my shit doesn’t smell like anything?” Alarms went off in my head. I tried to smell the soiled toilet paper from an inch away. It didn’t smell like anything at all.

As someone with IBS, which has in plenty of ways ruined my life by itself, I didn’t think I would miss the smell of shit. Shortly after, I checked other normally odorous stuff around the apartment, only to further solidify the realization that, indeed, everything smells as if their “smell” property had been set to null. Realizing that I had lost my sense of smell was one of the oddest moments of my life.

It’s also very common with covid, apparently. A couple of online articles suggested that sixty percent of those infected with this bioweapon end up losing their sense of smell, only to recover it in about one to three months. About twenty percent of those who lose the sense of smell, though, apparently never recover it properly, or entirely. That would be very unfortunate.

It’s my fifth day with covid, and I’ll likely still test positive, but this is the last proper day of rest/leisure before I consider whether or not I should return to work. I don’t like the prospect of going to the office and sitting between two coworkers while I’m wearing a mask and them knowing that I can still share this wonderful gift with them. However, as much as I’d like to give myself the rest of the week off, the thought makes me feel guilty; my current contract started last Wednesday.

I’ve barely seen the light of day in five days, but thankfully I’m used to tougher periods of reclusion; during my worst times in my twenties, I think I didn’t leave the house for about three weeks. I would do quite well in solitary confinement, if any of my crimes ever land me in prison.

Anyway, Starfield is cool; the internet has been shitting on it quite unfairly. Fantastic set designs, good gunplay, better writing than Fallout 4 and most of Skyrim (except for the in-game books, which suck ass), convincing facial animations (although not remotely as good as the motion-captured ones from Baldur’s Gate 3).

Starfield lacks the magic of Skyrim, but so did Fallout 4, and over the years I’ve gotten the feeling that it’s impossible to create a “magical” game universe unless it’s literally a fantasy world that features magic. Besides, Skyrim itself wasn’t as magical as its ancestor Morrowind, which still has an active community that mainly plays through a fan-made engine called OpenMW. That damn game is twenty-one years old.

I think plenty of players just landed on a random planet, ran through a few of the procedurally set dungeons, which are bleak and generally lifeless, and let that color their impression of the whole game. Many people went to Skyrim and Fallout 4 for the aimless exploration of a county/province on foot, and that doesn’t exist as such in this game. It’s like an open-world Mass Effect but without the aliens.

Life update (09/10/2023)

On By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

It’s evening on a September Sunday, and I have covid. Turns out that covid, as far as my thirty-eight-year-old body goes, isn’t that bad. On Friday, I suffered a bit in the office; I always feel like shit whenever I leave a room where I’m the only person present, but on top of that, I had to deal with a runny nose, hot flashes, and severe diarrhea. As I was waiting for the train to carry me back to my rotting city, I suspected that the thermometer, once I made use of it at home, would have registered 37,2ºC or so (98.96 Fahrenheit), but to my surprise, I had a fever of 38,7ºC (101.66 Fahrenheit). In previous cases, a fever of 38,7ºC would have felt like I was close to slipping into delirium.

Since then, I have been taking medicine that I won’t bother to name, thanks to my ex-nurse drug dealer who also happens to be my mother. The fever has been reacting weirdly to the drugs as well; it should have decreased significantly in less than an hour, but it took like two hours and a half to react. Other than having a nasal congestion, a throat ache, and feeling a bit weird, I’m quite fine, at least when it comes to lying in bed or sitting on a chair located next to the bed.

I’ve dealt with passive suicidal ideation for as long as I can remember (thank you autism, OCD, and a shitty existence in general), so regarding surgeries and diseases, I have Ivan Drago’s attitude:

But it does seem that I will survive this one. Still, fuck you China and some Democrats in the US for creating this monster.

According to what I’ve looked up on this matter, I’ll probably test positive for about five days, so at the earliest, I could be able to return to the office on Thursday. I will have to wear a mask for about five more days or so, unfortunately. It’s funny how the entire world (or at least the “elites” and their goons) has its collective panties in a twist due to CO2, but they’re fine with breathing in your own CO2 for the length of a workday.

Anyway, why are you reading this? Don’t you have better things to do, like prancing in the sunset, making love to your partner on a balcony, or whatever you normal people do? I swear, I don’t know how I even keep the 124 subscribers with which I have ended up.