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“Let’s both steer clear of the subject of sex,” Alberto the blob says, “and focus on what brought me here.”

I sigh.

“I guess I can try.”

“Even though for someone as morally bankrupt as yourself, every topic of conversation leads inexorably to your depraved proclivities.”

“Yes, it’s like pulling yourself off the edge of a cliff when every fiber of your being urges you to leap headfirst into the void. But I did offer you my cooperation. So, why would a vile creature such as yourself crawl out of some cesspool to take refuge in this dimension? Go ahead and spill a viscous and revolting tale.”

“I came to pay you a visit partly because you invited me,” the blob says smugly. “Some time ago, as you sat in your car, you yelled that the fucker with the car messages should just pop up and talk to you face to face. I believe you also called me a pussy. Even though I, magnanimous fellow that I am, wanted to spare you the sight of this oozing guise, our troubles have continued to worsen, so here I am.”

I rub my forehead. The outburst to which Mr. Blobby over there alluded sounds like something I might have croaked while fuming.

“I used to be an ordinary car owner, wasn’t I…? Wh-what was that about a message?”

The blob’s bulk lurches, making the snot-like ropes of goo that dangle from his bottom jiggle, or drop to enlarge gloppy puddles on the carpet.

“You have forgotten that too?!”

“Forgive me, Arachne, for my blundering lack of awareness. That happened a long time ago! My brain had weeks to edit it out. Besides, I care very little about my life.”

“Do you recall that you abandoned your car, a Renault Laguna, with the keys inside, on the parking lot of a coffee shop in the outskirts of Irún?”

“That does ring a bell. Why do you bring it up? Are you planning to steal it?”

The blob groans.

“I’m beyond expecting you to act like a decent human being, but still: some hoodlum could have broken into your car and discovered that he could rotate buildings by turning the steering wheel.”

“Stated as if you weren’t responsible for fucking up my car. Wouldn’t your actions and mine overlap in a Venn diagram?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Venn diagrams are a bunch of circles which overlap to represent sets that share elements. I suggested that we were similarly negligent in handling the Renault. And who cares anyway! These days I roll around Donostia in mommy’s sweet ride. I sit in the passenger seat too, so my intrusive thoughts about veering into oncoming traffic don’t matter. Let my shitty old chariot rust to the ground, or become a homeless shelter. Who knows, maybe that car exploded soon after my departure.”

“It didn’t explode. I cleaned up after you.”

“Meaning?”

“When I realized that you had abandoned your car, I killed it. No need to thank me.”

“Killed it?”

“Yes, I couldn’t figure out how to repair the car, so I decided to destroy it down to its gears and circuits. The city likely towed it away. That car of yours must have ended up crushed to a cube in some junkyard, if they still do that kind of thing. Your shitty Renault ceased to be a problem.”

“You should have fucking torched the car with me inside,” I blurt out grimly.

“What’s with that sudden urge for self-destruction?”

I rub my eyelids and take a deep breath. I want to lie down and shut off my senses until I find a way to suppress my reckless impulses.

“I apologize, my subconscious spoke through me,” I say in a tired tone. “I’ve dealt with some rough experiences of late. Anyway, what kind of message did you intend to convey by tampering with my now defunct Renault Laguna?”

“That wasn’t the message. Initially we tried to reach you by… Well, our first communication effort failed. Then I intruded upon this dimension long enough to write a couple of words across the dashboard of your car. That message should have awoken in you a sense of urgency, the need to pay more attention to your surroundings, and once we figured out how to present ourselves physically without making you go bonkers, we’d explain what was going on. Unfortunately, any cross-dimensional interaction can result in chaos. To plaster that message inside your car, I had to mess with its properties. The damn process was like controlling a thousand-stringed puppet while preventing those strings from twisting around each other. A painstaking business. As you know, back when I had hands, I worked as a programmer, but my skills barely extend to that precision job of interfacing with another dimension, so I ended up imbuing your vehicle with an assortment of undesirable traits.”

“I suppose that can be forgiven since you, an asshole and an amoeba, are just an amateur.”

The blob sighs like a beached whale.

“This is what we have to endure to deliver some bad news to a sentient creature as irresponsible as yourself. The universe is becoming increasingly precarious; I risked ripping a tear through the fabric of reality to send you a message that you might dismiss in five minutes. And you know what? Your misbehaving brain took in those words for a moment before you discarded them into the cosmic wastebasket. Now look at the mess we’re in! Let that be a lesson on how to properly act when you receive a warning from another dimension.”

I hunch over and hold my temples. A sudden headache is forcing me to squint, which blurs the Hadean sight of the tar-black, eyeball-studded monster that spans the opposite wall.

“That sounded like a load of dangerous shit that you shouldn’t have done,” I grumble.

“Dangerous actions are unavoidable if one wants to convey vital information through your thick skull. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

The darkness in my brain keeps swelling. The office swirls. I grit my teeth. It feels as if some buried, throbbing trauma were trying to push my eyes from inside and, once they popped out, reveal itself.

“I-I received a few calls, that afternoon when you fucked with my car.”

“You remember that, huh?”

“The display of my phone showed symbols like corrupted text,” I continue in a hollow tone. “I was driving on the highway, and I didn’t want to answer, but s-somehow the caller reached my ears. Then I passed out, didn’t I? I remember falling into a star-speckled abyss. I should have crashed my car into a truck.”

“You did pass out. At first we tried to reach you by phone, but we could only fake an incoming call; couldn’t even send a text message. And while linking the audio to your eardrums, I may have… bumped your brain a little. Once I realized that you had gone beddy-bye, I took the reins of your car and drove it like a RC toy until I parked it in the outskirts of your former city. I had fun, not going to lie. I miss playing racing games. I owned the Thrustmaster set of controllers, with the gear shifter and the pedals. However, along the way to Irún, I had expected the police to come after us; you were slumped in the driver’s seat as if dead, hands off the steering wheel.”

As the blob wobbles to the rhythm of his chuckles, and the light reflections warp into psychedelic shapes on his gooey surface, a chill crawls up my spine. My headache is ebbing in pulsating waves of pain. I scowl at the amorphous abomination that nearly killed me.

“You motherfucker.”

The blob chokes on a chuckle.

“Nothing wrong with fucking mommies, wouldn’t you say?” he retorts, annoyed. “Don’t go apeshit. I did my best to preserve your sorry ass, and a better job at handling your shitty vehicle than someone who feels compelled to drive into oncoming traffic.”

“I’m so glad you had a good time at my expense. I could have suffered a brain hemorrhage.”

“Hey, I’m sure I didn’t break in there anything that wasn’t broken before. You were already used to rambling nonsense, weren’t you? At most, I modulated your frequency.”

My stomach has contracted to a cramped lump. I clench my fists.

“That was the evening when I started seeing shadows out of the corner of my eyes,” I say in a guttural voice. “Soon enough, monsters. Next morning, as I was washing my face in the bathroom at work, I received the visit of a sentient, castrated horse. My life has been hell since you fucked with my gray matter.”

The blob remains silent for an extra beat of gloomy gravity.

“I don’t know about shadows nor monsters, but Spike showing up was unrelated. He volunteered for the mission of trying to snap you out of your stupidity.”

I lower my gaze to the goo-stained carpet.

“I’m not saying he was a bad horse. He just wasn’t qualified as a therapist.”

The blob sighs.

“A shame neither of us succeeded at convincing you of anything. I bear some responsibility for Spike’s demise, but, let’s be honest, it’s mostly your fault.”

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Planet Telex” by Radiohead.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel. A hundred and thirty-seven songs so far. Check it out.

You love AI voices, don’t you? Who doesn’t? Check out the audiochapter I produced for this part.

Leire and Alberto the blob were arguing about events contained in chapter one and chapter eight of this seemingly endless novel. I was reluctant to link chapter one; I expect to rewrite most of the first few chapters once I finish the novel, and I have to fix some continuity errors from back then.

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“I may as well come clean and admit that when we used to work together,” says the viscous mass of slime, “before I realized the gravity of your depravity, I had a crush on you.”

I snap my head back and grimace. Oil-black, putrescent gunk glides, like a slow lava flow, down the seashell-white curve of the eyeball I’m focusing on to address this horrid blob and his weighty burden of eyes. I picture an alligator-sized tongue lashing out of the wall-wide expanse of goo to lick that sclera clean.

“As in you masturbated to me?” I ask in disbelief.

The sticky mire shifts like a vortex of spaghetti on a plate.

“Well, yes. A harmless habit, as long as nobody discovers the evidence.”

“As in you hoped that someday you’d witness my pussy dripping with your ejaculate? As in you craved to thrust your scummy cock down my throat so that I’d gag on your noisome seed? As in you wished I had a unibrow so that it would inspire strange and forbidden fantasies?”

The blob emits a spluttering gurgle.

“Why would I want to involve a unibrow?”

“Are unibrows not beautiful in their own way?”

“When you say beautiful, you mean repulsive to anyone with eyes.”

I shake my head.

“You’re an obscene creature, and your soiled mind is beyond redemption. What’s next, a taste for zoophilia, necrophilia or coprophilia?”

“Listen, even though you have the face of a woman on the brink of a nervous breakdown…”

“And you the ass of a man in need of a shower!”

“Yes, we’re both grotesque monsters. As I was saying, I thought you were cute, you seemed to be on the quirky side of crazy, and I’d often fantasize about your tits. You can’t compete with Jacqueline’s juggernauts, but your knockers contrast nicely with your skinny frame.”

I look down at the twin bulges in my shirt. Although I adore breasts so much that my brain may be made of breast, I’m used to concealing mine under loose hoodies. Other women with my assets, the only parts of me that I appreciate, would parade them around for the world to ogle and degrade.

My outrage has deflated. I purse my lips and nod.

“Your carnal proclivities are cultured. I must commend you, sickened ooze, for admitting that you’ve fallen prey to your libido’s prurient compulsions.”

The blob chuckles, which sends ripples through his flabby bulk.

“We are both fans of the kind of rack that turns even hard-boiled assholes into slobbering zombies.”

“That said, amorphous blobs of gloop that want to fuck are bad news. I would never have sex with you, even if I worked myself into a frothing sexual frenzy, even if you became the last gelatinous creature on Earth. I still feel bile burning in my throat due to your stench of stagnant sewage. What woman would get aroused by a slimy blob with toxic halitosis and the purity of a mound of excreta? Those are automatic deal breakers. However, I admire your self-esteem; few people could get familiar with the unholy abomination in the mirror and come to harbor the demented illusion that anyone would want to mount them.”

“This conversation is driving me insane,” the blob grunts, sputtering gelatinous globs on the carpet. “I guess I have to remind you that I used to inhabit a warm-blooded human body; you may have forgotten that already. Besides, your nerdiness was more awkward and unappealing than mine.”

“Now, a tentacled crotch? That I could work with. Blasphemous tentacles twist around my arms and legs, squeezing my flesh. They lift me off the floor as they spread me open. Two other appendages slip their tips under the waistband of my trousers and panties, and tug them down. I struggle while a fibrous, slimy tentacle squiggles against my labia. Others probe my mouth and asshole. The squirming invaders snake inside, stretching me wide. At first, the agony makes me bite down on a mouthful of lubricated muscle that has slipped past my tonsils. The fleshy shafts are rooting around in my esophagus, my rectum and my cervix, coiling into throbbing knots deep within me. Waves of mind-crushing bliss course through my body as the violating tentacles shoot streams of goo, filling me up.” I shiver, then press my thighs together. “Damn, I’m getting hot. Arachne knows I have diddled myself to nastier stuff than tentacle rape.”

The viscous, oozing muck, which was once a man, heaves with a squelching noise.

“Would you stop rambling on, you lunatic? I wish I hadn’t heard any of that!”

“You’re the one who brought up that you wanted to defile me.”

“There was no defilement involved. But I made a terrible mistake admitting it, especially now that my current nature has kept me away from any intimacy.”

“I can picture how such an infatuation forms in a man’s mind. You stand on the train, heading to work, when the girl you were expecting steps aboard and sits nearby. You keep stealing glances of her cute face and creamy ankles. The curve of her thigh calls out for your fingertips. As you catch her floral fragrance, your heart hammers. An electric thrill races through your veins. Your erection strains against your pants with the thought of her moist lips wrapping around your cock and bathing it in warm saliva. You built the mental image of who you need this girl to be: someone who would listen to you, understand you and love you. She’s been glancing at you, you’re sure of it, even though you’re ugly and slimy as pond scum, your life’s a train wreck, and most people who know you are relieved that you won’t reproduce and contaminate the gene pool. This girl is waiting for you to make your move, so you can finally leave a more lasting legacy than shit stains on a bathroom wall. One day you dare to get off at her station. Your heart beats wildly as you follow the girl, that swaying skirt of hers that barely covers her sweet derrière, eager to approach her in a darkened alley and confess your grotesque love. By the time you realize how wrong you were all along, you have ended up blind and with a dildo stuffed up your ass. Moral of the story: don’t make others responsible for your delusions. As for me, I used to dream of frolicking in a cosmic web strewn with the desiccated husks of untold species, where I’d suck on succulent spider tits. Anyway, who would want to have sex with a stinky, hairy dude when luscious, big-breasted women exist?”

The blob burbles like boiling tar.

“I wish I had known that you’re a clit licker,” he says, sounding pained.

“Hey, I happen to be a woman in love with another woman. No need to herd people into categories.”

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Author’s note: the songs for today are “Gronlandic Edit” by Of Montreal, “Another One Goes By” by The Walkmen, “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “Isn’t It a Pity” by Galaxie 500, “Pink Triangle” by Weezer, and “Kids” by PUP (also this live version).

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. A hundred and thirty-five songs so far. Check them out.

Do you enjoy Eleven Labs’ artificial voices as much as I do? I doubt it, but here’s the audiochapter I produced for this one.