Recently I’ve been exploiting a neural network to generate images inspired by moments or sentences of my ongoing novel. I originally conceived what ended up being the sixty-sixth and the sixty-seventh chapters as one, but I split it because I tend to go on tangents. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this entry: the following are the images that an artificial intelligence generated for moments or sentences of those two chapters.
Jacqueline has hugged the child tighter and is rocking her back and forth. The raven-black, glistening cascade of hair conceals the girl’s face, but tears are sliding down Jacqueline’s cheeks and lingering on her chin. Although she keeps sniffling, snot has bedewed her upper lip.
I hurry to grab a couple of tissues from their box, placed on one of the shelves between the balcony doors. When I return to my beloved, I kneel next to her and squeeze the mucus out of her nose into a tissue. I trail the tip of my tongue along her cheek, swiping a hot, salty tear. Jacqueline gazes at me with her striking cobalt-blues and rewards me with a smile of gratitude, but remains silent.
I pat the back of the child’s leather tunic. It feels rough against my hand. From up close she smells of wet boar, woodland moss and apples.
“I’ll state the obvious: this is my fault,” I say soberly. “Whoever opened that invisible doorway to the Ice Age intended to target me.”
“Don’t blame yourself, baby,” Jacqueline murmurs as she strokes the child’s scalp. “We’re in this mess together.”
“This poor savage probably believes that the Megatherium, or whatever that monster was called, devoured her, that she has ended up in hell, or whatever underworld people believed in before Christianity hijacked our civilization. The Megatherium is probably responsible for a lot of disappearances, including that of my parents.”
Jacqueline arches an eyebrow.
“That’s what you call our idyllic nest? Hell?”
“Jacqueline, I stood in that boreal forest, apparently at the latest twelve thousand years ago. I took deep, panicked breaths of that cold, crisp air saturated with oxygen. The breeze whispered with the voices of extinct species. I was immersed in an ancient icebox of nature, alone except for the intrusion of that monster as well as of this girl that I ended up kidnapping, who until that point had lived in freedom.”
“I hadn’t been curious about prehistory, but those people needed to hunt to survive, didn’t they? Maybe they couldn’t farm reliably due to the cold weather. And what about disease?”
I sigh.
“You are right, but still: I snatched this child from a sort of paradise and sent her to hell.”
When I lower my head, Jacqueline frees her right hand to stroke my neck and knead the muscles that are taut beneath my skin.
“Would you like to take walks in the woods, honey?” she coos. “Did you know I have a secluded park with lots of trees right in my backyard?”
I look over my shoulder at the balcony; because I’m sitting on the carpet, the parapet blocks the view. Someone, I assume a previous owner of the apartment, arranged fernlike plants with rounded stones in a way that halves the available floor of that part of the balcony. Two spiky plants that have grown in cube pots resemble still shots of a nail bomb explosion. Above the parapet, the night is onyx-black except for the faint outlines of oil-colored clouds. A single star glows in the dark.
It must be about five in the morning. It feels like the sun will never come up again, but soon enough the old fiery pervert will peek over the horizon to bathe us all in its whitish-yellow deluge of photons.
“I’m guessing you paid premium for this balcony,” I say wearily. “However, the apartment didn’t come with a garden.”
Jacqueline chuckles.
“I meant nearby. That park is a couple of minutes away. A hidden gem, peaceful and quiet. I’d love to take you there on a lovely day when the sky is clear. At night you can gaze at the stars, and no one will disturb you.”
I take a deep breath and rub my eyes. I’m an idiot that needs to think to connect dots that for the rest of people come joined by thick lines.
“That does sound pleasant,” I mumble.
I drag myself to my feet, then as I shuffle up to the balcony door, the glass reflects my face: I resemble a wan and emaciated gargoyle, all bone and shadows, with haunted eyes and a sour expression. I rest my greasy forehead on the cold glass pane.
In the distance, the palatial building that crowns the Mount Igueldo amusement park gleams white. Along the spine of the mountain glow pale cerulean lights, maybe cell towers. Some windows are lighted on the mountainside; the rich people that live in those houses may have woken up to go to work, or are wandering around in a daze with a hangover after a night of cocaine-fueled orgies.
“Sorry, I’m falling apart,” I say weakly. “And somehow I will have to tolerate the long workday ahead of me, even though I never returned to bed after that bunnyman-induced nightmare.”
I’m about to continue when a realization bursts in my brain. I gasp, then turn around. The wild child has snuggled closer to Jacqueline, wrapping her arms around the silky back of my girlfriend’s robe. The girl has closed her eyes, and her placid expression suggests that now she doesn’t give a shit about anything but the warmth that emanates from the pair of breasts squeezed against her ribcage.
“W-wait, we’ll be away for work at the same time,” I say, lowering my voice to avoid unsettling the child. “What the fuck do we do? Is there a company at our business park that lets workers abandon their kids there until five in the afternoon?”
“You know, there may be, but this isn’t the kind of child you can drop off at a daycare center and forget about, is she? Besides, we can’t even prove she’s ours.”
“Right, because she isn’t.”
Jacqueline cups the child’s head, then plants a lingering kiss on its top. The girl narrows her shoulders, dimples her cheeks, and lets out a soft noise of contentment.
“Any nosy do-gooder out there may want to snatch her away from us,” Jacqueline says with an edge to her tone. “And look at this precious baby, she’s like a stray dog who has never been stroked. So I’m staying home today, maybe for a few days. You should too, Leire. It will be fun, just you and me and our little doll.”
My mouth hangs open.
“You know I can’t miss work! I can’t imagine how stressed I would be knowing the amount of overtime I’ll have to do when I return to the office. How would I rest if I knew I’m neglecting the growing pile of tasks and contracts to fulfill, and that the unmentionable pig will be fuming and cursing me under his breath as he digs into a bag of Doritos?”
The child’s misty-eyed gaze drifts over to me as if wondering why I’m raising such a ruckus.
“Sorry for disturbing you, daughter of the Ice Age,” I say. “I envy you: I wish Jacqueline would cradle me and run her fingers through my hair until I fell asleep in her arms, but instead I have to venture through the nightmarish modernity that awaits out there, because we need to earn our right to keep existing in a world that wants us gone and forgotten.”
The wild child tilts her head in puzzlement, but a wicked smirk spills across Jacqueline’s lips.
“I will take care of you soon enough, sweetie. If you feel more comfortable going to work, that’s fine. But I will message you often.”
“A-alright. What about our boss, though? Should I tell him that you’ve come down with diarrhea?”
“I’ll figure something out. That guy won’t be thrilled, but he wouldn’t dare to fire me. Anyway, I don’t want to think about work now. I’m going to cuddle this sweet morsel of happiness.”
A yawn overpowers me, so I nod as a response. I’m dizzy and exhausted. When I stretch my back, my vertebrae crackle like a bonfire. Every cell in my body wants to slink back to the warmth of Jacqueline’s bed.
So now what, I’ll prepare myself another coffee, take a shower, then look up on Google Maps what bus lines will carry me from the hills of Donostia to the business park where we work? I almost got mauled to death in the Ice Age. I’ve learned that we are surrounded by an invisible realm; although I would prefer to ignore it, its inhabitants will keep harassing me. That realm is separated from ours by a thin layer of glass that if it were to shatter, let’s say by a horse headbutting it, I would get sucked into the void between worlds.
Now we need to give this wild child the love she desperately needs. We’ll bathe her in a tub full of bubbles; feed her with pastries and ice cream; dress her in a pink tutu and a pair of slippers; tell her that everything she does is perfect, and that we admire her even when she breaks things in a fit of rage. Later on, when this cute kitten grows into a lovely young woman, she’ll stay at home forever, becoming our personal servant as we progress toward old age and decrepitude. That’s right: I want to grow old with Jacqueline, and this wild child will wipe my ass for me. The rest, like our world that has made us its slaves, or the creeping sickness that invades our brains, or the fact that I’m half-woman half-goat, I will gladly forsake.
How often do plans work out the way they should have, though? I never planned for such a life, one where a child born during the Ice Age has become our daughter. This child may become a powerful wizard one day, and leave us to fend for ourselves. Or she might get frozen to death at twenty-six while trying to save a baby penguin from drowning. But maybe it doesn’t matter whether this girl grows into a beautiful princess or the spawn of a fucking vampire, or whether we live in the Ice Age or in the cesspool of a modern city where strangers dump their loads on our heads. Maybe we can live for those little moments when we forget about our pain.
I’m likely going through a shock and trauma that no psychiatrist is trained to treat, not that I would rely on psychiatrists, because that industry is a scam. Apart from my usual despair at the knowledge that human beings other than Jacqueline exist and that I may be forced to deal with them, now I risk walking into invisible traps. My otherworldly stalkers sent me to a boreal forest with my tits and buttocks exposed; what if the next time they open the other end of that doorway above the throat of an active volcano? Or what if the bunnyman interrupts me as I’m taking a shit, then he clobbers me in the face with his dick? I can’t defend myself against anyone stronger than a child. Maybe I should start carrying around a flamethrower or a chainsaw.
I take a deep breath and try to keep the lump of dread from swelling inside my stomach. When I hold Jacqueline’s gaze, something in my eyes must have unsettled her, because she straightens her neck and furrows her brow.
“Jacqueline, where have you hidden Spike’s revolver?” I ask calmly.
My queen gasps. She attempts to rise to her feet, but the child is clinging to her.
I consider prying our adopted daughter away from Jacqueline. However, I suspect that the girl would bite me, as it befits a cannibal.
“From now on I intend to keep the revolver on my person at all times, even during sex,” I say. “I should order some sophisticated holster online, maybe one that also works as a strap-on dildo.”
Jacqueline’s expression has grown grim.
“Leire! Don’t you think you are exaggerating a bit?”
“Nope,” I reply with the assurance of one who knows that only bad news await us. “I usually defer to your wisdom, my beloved queen, but you haven’t looked up at the furry face of that extinct abomination as it was gearing itself up to swallow me whole. Pushing a bullet-shaped load of metal through the monster’s skull at supersonic speed would have surely saved me. Well, who knows if revolvers shoot at supersonic speeds, maybe just sniper rifles do. Am I being irrational? I don’t need rationality, I’m not running a bank. Perhaps the most logical approach would be to wipe the face of every otherworldly kidnapper with a thick coating of toothpaste, but I’m afraid that they might retaliate by drowning me in a bathtub full of semen. So I’m going to carry Spike’s revolver everywhere. If the police stops me, though, I’ll be fucked; the authorities want us defenseless so we’ll be easier to control.”
Jacqueline’s cheeks are flaming red. As her eyes lose their focus, she nuzzles the child’s disheveled hair.
My guts feel like a dead man’s hand is gripping them. I blink away a sudden rush of tears.
“I got snatched as I was walking into your bathroom to take a shower,” I say in a low, hoarse voice. “Even as a child I dreaded to shower: I feared that a demon would jump out of the tiles and pee on my head. The feeling that some fiend was crouching behind the shower curtain was so strong that sometimes I washed myself in the sink instead. Every time I walked past the bathroom, certain smells could trigger my fear: my dad’s aftershave, bleach, lemons… Even the scent of pizza became too much for me. In the end I only ate snacks that had been packed in plastic bags and stored for years. When I opened the bags, I often found them filled with sand instead of food. One time, I even ate the sand.”
Hot tears run down my cheeks. I shouldn’t be allowed to keep any pet more dangerous than a gerbil; I’m a pitiful, spineless wretch with no self-control and the brain capacity of a cockroach. I can’t even masturbate properly: I need a certain level of stress to reach an orgasm. My own family walked on eggshells around me until they couldn’t stand it anymore. Even an imaginary friend would run away from me screaming.
“When I was seven I wanted to be a ballet dancer and I begged my mom to take me to a ballet class,” I continue in a ragged voice, “but she said she’d rather die than let me take dance lessons. And she did. She did. You know, I missed you so much when I was in the Ice Age, Jacqueline. I can hardly believe that I found my way back home. In a billion parallel universes out there, I told you to look out for horses in case they barged into the bathroom, then we never saw each other again.”
Author’s note: today’s song is “Greens and Blues” by Pixies.
I used a neural network to generate images from this chapter. Here’s the link.
Some more mesmerizing masterpieces from the da Vinci of neural networks.
Jacqueline has rested the laptop on her half-bare thighs, and as she slides her fingertip over the touch pad, the order travels through an HDMI cable from the laptop to her LCD television, where the cursor moves on a vertical plane over the rows and columns of illustrations. They depict beasts that may have come from fantasy, from prehistory, or from the instructions that some paleontologist was dictating to a painter while they both were tripping on peyote.
The wild child had grabbed one of the scarlet pillows and dropped it on the carpet, then she flopped down on the pillow and curled into a tight ball with her arms folded under her chin and her knees tucked into her chest. Now she’s mesmerized by the parade of still beasts on the TV screen as Jacqueline scrolls up and down.
How would it feel to have been snatched from a boreal forest, where the comings and goings of ants may have seemed interesting, and dropped into this modern world of traffic jams and smartphones? A world that drowns us with so many choices that we prefer to slump down in a chair and let the hours pass. Meanwhile, we daydream about how nice it would be if the decay of our bodies accelerated exponentially, to free us from the responsibility of figuring out how to fill productively the time we have left until we are thrust violently into a pitch-black oblivion, where we’ll forget that we were once human.
When I return my gaze to the screen, Jacqueline has clicked on a thumbnail to load the original image: an artist’s rendition of a hulking beast with wood-brown, shaggy fur, who is standing on its hind legs, which are thick like tree trunks, to reach for a branch laden with verdant leaves. The beast’s bone-white claws are curved and solid like a sabretooth’s canine teeth. Those sunken, amber-colored eyes, that are surrounded by ovals of black fur in a swan-white face, stare at me with disdain. I escaped the monster’s grasp through a doorway between worlds, but now that it has found me, it will burst out of the screen to reduce me, as well as Jacqueline and the child, to piles of bones stripped clean of flesh.
I gasp, then spring up from the sofa and jab my finger at the TV screen.
“Th-that’s the monster that almost tore us to shreds!”
Jacqueline lets out a noise of confusion.
“It resembles a cross between a gigantic bear and a sloth. That tail looks far less impressive than what you suggested. Are you sure, Leire?”
I slide down from the sofa onto my knees and grab the child’s shoulder. She looks at me over her shoulder, open-mouthed.
“You recognize it, right?” I ask as I point at the screen with a quivering hand. “That’s the monster that wants to roast us into a meat pie!”
The child speaks nonsense in her high-pitched voice as she fiddles with one of her animal hair bracelets. I fear that she’s not quite sane.
“At least nod or something, kid,” I say, defeated.
Jacqueline clicks a link; it leads to the website that contains the original picture. The screen fills with a wall of text that imitates Wikipedia. My girlfriend narrows her eyes and pinches her lower lip.
“Megatherium? It’s Latin for ‘great beast’.”
“How can they call something with such an ugly name?”
“So they are giant sloths, right? Funny, I didn’t know they existed. Where do these animals live? Let’s see… Like today’s sloths, they were pure herbivores that ate leaves and grasses…”
I click my tongue.
“Anyone can write vile lies on Wikipedia. There are plenty of morons out there with nothing better to do than ruin everyone else’s life. I’d also bet that the scientist who first described this species had a crack pipe in his hand. I’m telling you, the child and I stood in front of that monster. It was pining for our flesh. The claws alone could have severed us at the waist, and its body could have squashed us flat as a piece of paper. Let’s name that beast… Hrafnagelr! It’s a male with two penises that he uses to hunt his prey, and he makes sure to castrate them first. It’s a shame we don’t have a picture of his scrotum.”
Jacqueline nods as she listens to my babbling.
“Once he’s satiated,” I continue, “he tosses his victim’s guts out of his cave onto the shore, so the fish can feed on them. However, that’s only the beginning of the monster’s terrorizing: he rips out the tongues of those who annoy him, and even castrates himself to find out how much pain he can endure. Everyone in the world will eventually kill themselves so they can become a part of Hrafnagelr’s fur.”
Jacqueline, focused on the screen of her laptop, snaps her head back. As she reads on, her face pales. She straightens her spine and shifts her gaze to my eyes. Any trace of my girlfriend’s self-assured self has been wiped from her expression; she looks as if someone pushed her off a platform and now her feet can’t find a floor under them.
“Leire… these animals went extinct twelve thousand years ago,” she says in a shaky voice.
After a moment, we turn our heads in unison to appraise the child. That chestnut-brown, disheveled hair has only ever been combed with fingers. Her ash-colored leather tunic is worn and scratched as if by bending branches. Her necklace displays teeth pried out from downed beasts. The twisted animal hair that she uses as bracelets may have been found on the forest floor, or harvested from corpses. Jacqueline took off the child’s crude boots, because they had been tracking mud over the hallway floor; the girl’s bare feet are dirty, and their nails jagged.
Our guest’s eyes dart like a wary beast’s between the two strangers that are staring at her, trying to decipher the meaning in this tense atmosphere. Under our focused gaze, she narrows her shoulders, her pupils tremble, and she crosses her hands over her chest.
Jacqueline puts the laptop aside, then lowers herself to the carpet. She strokes the child’s face.
“Somewhere out there,” my queen starts in a thin, quavering voice, “somehow happening at the same time, this child’s parents must have noticed her missing and they are searching for her, calling her name with desperation. But those thousands of years are already gone, aren’t they? Her parents endured the rest of their lives wracked by guilt. They never saw their precious daughter again.”
Jacqueline’s eyes brim with tears. She scoots closer to the girl and hugs her, mashing the ten-year-old’s face against that holy pair of breasts. The tit-meat bulges over the child’s cheeks while her eyeballs roll around in their sockets.
Jacqueline sniffles.
“Sorry, doll, but I doubt you will ever return home. Still, you don’t need to worry, because we will keep you safe.”
Are we now responsible for this child’s wellbeing? As the realization sinks in, a shudder shakes my bones. Until fifteen minutes ago this child had never seen a television, but forget about that tool of conformity; this girl would be unable to name a single board game. How would she ever navigate the modern world? Although she’s still a child, I recall that the first four or five years are fundamental to build the neurological pillars upon which the rest of her future depends. Isn’t she doomed to become a mental recluse forever isolated from the surrounding society, no matter how many sights and experiences we drag her to discover? And what about the damage that my manic paranoia will do to her fragile mind?
I swallow the knot in my throat.
“Are you sure about adopting this girl, Jacqueline…? Think hard, because this decision might haunt us for the rest of our days. She’s obviously mentally damaged, and I bet her eyes glow in the dark. She probably hasn’t heard of the Big Bang or the Industrial Revolution or the Spanish Inquisition. She may come from a prehistoric tribe of cannibals. And do you own any toys that she might enjoy, other than dildos?”
Jacqueline flings her head back and shoots me a teary-eyed look that shuts me up, but she must have recognized my concern. As she pulls away from the embrace, a trembling thread of saliva connects the meaty curve of her right breast to the child’s wet lower lip. Our guest is focused on the mighty pair, maybe assessing them as weapons.
Jacqueline licks her thumb and washes the girl’s eyebrows with that fingertip.
“She has lost everything,” my girlfriend says with determination. “She needs us. It will take her years to understand the world we live in, and she’ll always feel different. But anything is better than abandoning her.”
I hug my knees to my chest and rest my chin on my wrist. My brain is buzzing, my temples are throbbing. My stomach churns like an unruly tide. I should have slept for a full night; I’m unequipped to consider the ramifications of taking care of a prehistoric person who will likely live for about five more decades. But if we surrender this child to the government, they’ll confine her in some center for minors, where she’ll be preyed upon by this country’s uninvited guests, or she’ll become some politician’s plaything. Besides, the prehistoric tribes were likely as peaceful as they could, except for the occasional acts of cannibalism to replenish their stock of meat.
I lower my head in shame.
“F-fine, but make sure she keeps her hands off your tits. She’s about ten, not five.”
Jacqueline giggles like a drunk.
“Of course. My boobs are my insurance for survival.”
Alright then, we have a pet, an exotic one. I would have preferred a cat, but you gotta work with what you’re given, even if it’s a strange forest girl from the Ice Age. She likely needs a mommy as much as I do; thankfully, Jacqueline can draw upon her boundless reserves of love to provide this child with enough affection that she won’t kill us in our sleep. Along with fresh clothes, tasty food and a warm bed, the girl will forget her parents soon enough. For what remains of the night, maybe a good scrubbing in the bathtub will rid her of dirt and fleas, then we’ll put her to sleep in the spare bedroom.
Author’s note: listen to Neutral Milk Hotel’s “King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1” and The Velvet Underground’s “Oh! Sweet Nuthin'”.
My latest contract with the hospital where I work ended last Saturday, and I’m very unlikely to be recalled until three weeks from now. That means that I have spent most of yesterday, as well as this entire morning, working on this chapter and the following one, of which I’ve finished the first draft. Apart from writing, I intend to exploit these three weeks to research certain locations that my characters will visit, take walks in the sun, read manga and a few books, masturbate to VR porn, and play through my ongoing campaigns of “Arkham Horror” and “Marvel Champions”.
Minus points to Jacqueline for failing to notice immediately that the Megatherium was extinct. Leire likely knew that, but her mess of a brain failed to connect the dots and realize the ramifications regarding the child she kidnapped from the Ice Age.
I used a neural network to generate images from this chapter. Here’s the link.
A neural network generated the following images as I was working on the sixty-fifth chapter of my ongoing novel. Originally I intended to use the service to render particular moments of the chapter, but feeding specific lines from it as prompts to the neural network also produced interesting results.
Wrapped up in a blanket, I chafe my arms through the sleeves of my wool pyjamas. The child from the forest is seated at the edge of the velvet sofa, while Jacqueline, as she kneels on the carpet, cleans the dirt off the girl’s face with a wet wipe. The belt of Jacqueline’s lipstick-pink silk-blend robe has loosened and the fabric slipped over her meaty breasts, revealing the old rose areolas. A couple of times, the savage girl has snapped out of her puzzlement to glance down and admire my queen’s bountiful mammaries; soon enough the child will salivate, then her sucking reflex will kick in.
My head is throbbing, my body feels bruised and battered, and my fingers and toes are tingling like pins and needles. Now that I’m coming down from the adrenaline buzz, I’m getting dragged down further by the exhaustion that has settled in after successive sessions of nightmares, and that’s on top of how wrung out my job leaves me five days a week.
“My stalkers didn’t come to visit me this time,” I say in a tired voice. “They somehow brought me to another place.”
Jacqueline sustains a smile to reassure our guest, but the worry is deepening her crow’s feet.
“I was staring at you when you disappeared, Leire. You vanished as if you had walked through an invisible doorway.”
I shudder with a chill, then pull the blanket tight around me.
“For you this must feel like dating someone whose exes keep trying to ruin her life, except that I would never allow those abominations to befoul me, regardless of the size of their genitals.”
Jacqueline winces.
“Was it the bunnyman?” she asks with indignation. “What the hell did he want this time?”
“That filthy buffoon likely wants me to worship him like a god. He never showed up, though. Maybe he and Alberto were mocking me from some hiding place.”
Jacqueline lets out a deep sigh.
“I’m so tired of those assholes.”
“You’re telling me. I should consider filing a restraining order against them.”
As if Jacqueline were babysitting a stray kitten, she wipes dried mucus from the child’s nostrils, who’s staring at my queen with rapt attention.
“This kid looks Mongolian, wouldn’t you say, Leire?”
I sniffle.
“Those eyes seem Asian, yes.”
Jacqueline lifts the child’s necklace off the mud-speckled leather tunic, then examines the strung sand-colored teeth.
“She also looks as if she came from a different era.”
“Well, once I figure out from what corner of this planet I snatched her up, I’ll put her on a plane headed there. Given how her parents clothed her, I doubt they use cell phones, but she may find her way back to her tribe somehow from the airport.”
My own body interrupts me with a yawn. I’m getting cranky; I want to say fuck off to all my troubles then go beddy-bye, but it must be about five in the morning, and in two hours I’ll have to prepare myself for work. Maybe next time I’ll reach the shower.
I rub my eyelids with my knuckles.
“I’m almost delirious. I need to guzzle down some coffee, although it may worsen my jitters.”
I shrug off the blanket and rise to my feet, then I shuffle out of the living room and into the kitchen. The candy-red coffee maker stands out on a corner of the cloud-grey countertop. I load a capsule into the machine, I place a mug under the spout, I push the start button. As the coffee machine hums, the noise of the fridge door closing startles me.
Jacqueline has taken out a burgundy apple, which is glimmering in the kitchen light. The child’s eyes flare with sudden interest, her nostrils quiver like a rabbit’s. Jacqueline gestures for the girl to sit down on the closest dining chair, and once she obeys, my girlfriend hands over the apple as a reward. Our guest munches on the fruit, then lets out a yip of delight.
The coffee machine’s spout drips the last drops of coffee into my mug, then it lets out a mechanical sigh and its red light switches off. I warm my hands with the mug. My eyelids are heavy and my head woozy from exhaustion. Once some caffeine enters my bloodstream, I should feel my brain slowly unclench.
Jacqueline, while she strokes the girl’s disheveled hair, is staring at me as if trying to figure out how to bring up a troublesome topic. When she breaks the silence, she speaks in an anxious voice.
“Leire, have you been… contacted by Ramsés?”
I was taking a sip of the bitter brew partly to feel a tiny heater inside me, but when my brain processes Jacqueline’s reference, I gag on the coffee. It now smells and tastes like a dirt-encrusted metal pipe used to transport waste, or as if my girlfriend ripped an atomic fart that will seep into these consecrated walls and stink up the place forevermore. I put down the mug with a thunk, and the dark liquid inside splashes the countertop.
“J-Jacqueline, such a blasphemous word shouldn’t have been uttered in this sanctuary! Why would that pig factor in anything that we do during our blessed time away from his domain? And what kind of dealings do you believe I’ve had with that evil wannabe satyr? Are you implying that he’s been sending me pictures of his erect cock and hairy balls, and my consequent urge to flee from this plane of existence is why I suddenly became capable of walking through an invisible portal into some boreal forest? Or do you believe that I would turn into a wanton harlot if I snagged a peek at his genitalia?”
The child’s face is tight with tension as her eyes dart between Jacqueline and I, but she keeps chewing on the apple. My girlfriend’s eyebrows are knitted together. She shakes her head, maybe to clear up her mind from an unsavory notion.
“Sorry, Leire, I’m… overwhelmed. Keep drinking in peace, please.”
I turn away and clutch onto the edge of the counter. My mind attempts to picture some of Ramsés’ demands, and I catch a glimpse of me wearing a dog collar and flogging myself while my boss jerks off in a nearby chair. Then I see myself with my nose stuffed into his sweaty armpit.
My mouth fills with the metallic flavor of lukewarm, poisonous puke.
“I loathe Ramsés with all my being. Why wouldn’t I? He has the face of a gargoyle and a donkey dick. I shouldn’t be associated with that rotten cocksman. He believes that all women should bow down to him and lick his filthy feet!”
I shut my eyes tight, then I breathe deep to calm down. My entire body feels hot and prickly with embarrassment and disgust. Why did I believe that I had the right to raise my voice at Jacqueline, who is my beloved, my savior, my queen, the only person that makes it worth it that I have spent most of my adult life slaving away so the government can steal my money? Has she not provided many tender caresses and loving licks? Hasn’t her warm and honeyed saliva, as well as other juices, flowed down my throat? Doesn’t she make me cum more powerfully than ever before, in more interesting ways, and with all my fantasies brought to life? But I still felt compelled to shout at her.
I sniffle, and my chest fills with an onrush of sorrow. I should grab a knife from a drawer, slice my gut open and offer my dripping viscera for Jacqueline to feast on.
I mop up the coffee spill with a paper towel, then I empty my mug in the sink.
“It’s alright,” I mumble weakly. “I suddenly hate coffee.”
Jacqueline approaches me, pulls my head towards her and nuzzles my hair. Her hand slides under my pyjama top to roam my bare back, and as her warm breasts press against my side, I imagine them filled with milk for my baby needs to be fed.
“I know you are exhausted, sweetie,” Jacqueline coos, “but now you are home, safe with me.”
I inhale deeply. My shoulders slump in relief.
“Where on Earth do you think you ended up?” she asks.
I want to scrub that memory before it crawls into some crevice of my brain, but the child would remain as a puzzling memento of having crossed that invisible threshold between worlds.
“There were… pines and skinny trees with moss hanging from their branches. I glimpsed ice-capped peaks far off into the distance. The sky was blue with little puffy white clouds flying in formation like some mythical flock. And a hulking monster nearly mangled me.”
Jacqueline’s hand travels down so her fingers can knead my ass. A shiver rolls over my skin. I hope she slips one digit into my asshole. When she thrusts it deeper, I always yelp like a puppy.
“Can you describe that animal?” she asks with a faint tremor in her voice. “They tend to live in specific areas of the world.”
I briefly envision a reindeer with a human face. Then a woman who has a vagina for a face. Also a snake with human arms and breasts.
“Well, it was quite hairy, was covered in mud and drool, had teeth like daggers, and reeked of sex. Its claws could have torn my body into tiny pieces, and its tail could have wrapped itself around the planet a dozen times.”
Jacqueline turns her gaze to a corner of the ceiling, then she arches an eyebrow.
“Lead the child into the living room while I go get…” After one look at our guest, Jacqueline strides up to her and snatches the ravaged apple from her hands. “You don’t need to eat the core, baby girl. I’ll get you something much tastier later.” She tucks a stray lock of raven-black hair behind her ear, then she smiles at me. “I’ll go grab the laptop.”
My beloved leaves the kitchen with the apple in her grasp, and her hurried footsteps move towards the bedroom. The wild child’s lips are smeared with juice. She’s staring up at me inquisitively while the fingers of her right hand, which she has rested on the lap of her leather tunic, are curled around an invisible fruit.
My neck starts twitching. I swallow thickly. The gaze that is penetrating my pupils hasn’t been corroded by schooling nor society, and sparkles with curiosity. This child is a creature examining another creature to figure out some truth for herself. It feels like she’s pointing a flashlight directly at my heart, exposing its scarred tissue.
I fear that I’ll burst into tears.
“I-I’m from France,” I manage to stammer, and my voice cracks because I am a burden. “There, our children don’t talk to strangers. There are piles of trash everywhere. Our rivers run with sewage and raw waste. W-we also don’t eat apples whole.”
The child gets down from the chair, reaches out and grabs my hand. Her grip is light but confident, her palm is moist, her fingers are tiny. She widens a smile that narrows her monolid eyes and dimples her cheeks. I would have expected her teeth to be rotten, but in the kitchen light they look quill-grey with some plaque buildup.
How has this girl survived in that forest from which I kidnapped her, and what part of me is her life raft in this ocean of madness?
“Can’t you see that I’m a monster,” I ask in a worn voice, “one far worse than any that walks on four legs?”
The girl tilts her head up. Her fingers tighten around my palm.
“You mean your face?” she asks in a gentle voice unbefitting of her ten years of living in that desolate land. “Or your soul?”
I’m the most miserable failure in history, the weakest person that ever lived. But right this second I’m a lonely human who needs this child to feel loved.
Author’s note: today’s three songs are Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’, Lucy Dacus’ ‘The Shell’ and Bill Callahan’s ‘Too Many Birds’.
I forced a neural network to produce plenty of images inspired by this chapter: here’s the link.
Some neural networks have gotten so good that one of them, which runs on a supercomputer, creates masterpieces of visual art. I forced the poor AI to generate some of the stuff that came through my mind.
Once again I exploited a hapless neural network so it would render the nonsense that crosses my mind.
I had some fun exploiting the current Da Vinci of neural networks, mostly to produce silly combinations of elements. Because that particular neural network is a damn genius, I ended up with some masterpieces.
My skin prickles, my muscles twitch, my bones ache. Every breath I take brings the aroma of pine resin into my lungs, and risks numbing them with cold. The breeze ruffles my hair and rustles the leaves of the thicket about six meters to my left. I’m having trouble discerning details in the undulating mesh of bone-thick branches and knee-high undergrowth, but I distinguish the pale silver tresses of moss that hang from upcurved branches, and that the bark of a few slender trunks has been clawed to reveal the rose gold tree flesh beneath. What abominations of nature may be lurking past the treeline?
I will keep my feet firmly planted on the rounded pebbles that are pressing into the soles of my feet. I will become a human statue frozen in time. Remain still: that was the lesson I learned back as I child when I got lost while my parents and I were strolling around Hondarribia. A plush monkey, dressed in a candy-red T-shirt and slutty shorts, was huddled inside the rusted cage of a vending machine. I was transfixed by his slack-jawed smile and the gleaming sadness in his oil-black eyes as he peered out at me from his gloomy lair, but I also admired that beast for having endured the life-long duty of dropping plastic balls in exchange for money, a drudgery that turned his fur dull and patchy. When I attempted to point the monkey out to my parents, they had vanished into the crowd.
For hours or days I sobbed as I tottered aimlessly past towering strangers. None of the passersby recognized my plight; I was just another unwashed urchin whose rags reeked of urine and vomit. Not even a dog offered its tongue to lick my wounds. How did that nightmare end up resolving itself? Maybe I never found my parents. Maybe that damnable monkey was the ringleader of a gang of human traffickers, and I have spent my life ever since chained to a bed in a pitch black basement.
Why was I thinking about that time I got lost in Hondarribia? Wait, why the hell am I in a forest?! My breath is steaming, the soles of my feet are throbbing. My fingers are curled into white-knuckled fists. The ripples of the brook to my right distort the rounded stones and twigs that its waters churn over.
I rub my eyes as if I were trying to claw out some filth.
“This isn’t happening,” I mutter to myself.
Jacqueline hammered into my head that hallucinations don’t open doors, so instead I must be experiencing a bout of psychosis. I shut my eyes tight and I retread in my mind the steps that brought me here. I entered the bathroom to take a shower; I must have opened the door of the shower cabin and stepped inside. I turn on the water, and from the showerhead a jet of ink-black, searing-hot liquid rushes out with a foaming whoosh to soak my hair and stream off my face. The liquid flows down the curvature of my breasts, the contours of my buttocks, the crooks of my knees; it trickles into the pink crevasse between my legs. I scrub shampoo into my scalp, then I pour gel on a sponge and wash away the stench of sweat, fear and guilt clinging to my skin. My mouth is full of lather that tastes of exotic herbs and berries, of tropical fruits and sugary nectar. When I finish showering, I have become as clean as the surface of the moon.
A prickly sensation is flitting across my fingers and toes as a numbness seeps into my muscles. The shivers are creeping into my spine, making my teeth chatter. Soon enough my pale skin will turn a glistening dark blue.
Am I waiting for whoever abducted me to appear? What else could it be but an unholy abomination?
A panicked mass of survival instinct kicks in.
“Wh-why the hell did you teleport me to a random forest, you otherworldly shitstains?! I would prefer that you showed up as I took a piss!”
From deep within the thicket comes a rumbling growl. My body goes rigid, my heart starts thumping like a war drum. I keep my eyes focused on the greenery, refusing to give in to the desire to blink.
Some branches rustle and a twig crunches in the treeline. A flicker of motion catches my eye. Through some breeze-stirred leaves I discern that a child is peeking out from behind a tree trunk. She must be about ten years old. Her disheveled hair is chestnut brown and reaches the shoulders of a crude, ash-colored leather tunic. She’s wearing a tooth necklace, bracelets made of twisted animal hair, and thick boots with fur collars. Her peach-orange skin is stained with dirt, and her slanted, monolid eyes are staring at me in surprise, maybe because she has never seen anyone like me, or because I’m naked in a forest. Is she another spirit who will ask me to sacrifice my blood to make up for the blighted land?
My legs are trembling, my nipples are hard as stone. I’m not sure how long this stand-off lasts while the branches sway in the breeze, the brook burbles and the birds chirp.
“H-hello,” I say in the warmest voice I can muster, “do I have the pleasure of addressing someone with an incredible command of the Spanish language? You can also speak in English if you want.”
The child’s jaw drops slightly, but she remains silent as she looks me up and down with wide-eyed wonderment.
“D-do you understand that I’ve been dumped into the wilderness,” I insist, “that I’m unclothed and freezing my tits off, that I’m mentally unbalanced, and that I’m in desperate need of help?”
From within the thicket comes a crackling noise as if sticks were snapping under the weight of a bear-sized creature. The child’s eyes dart between me and the thicket, then her lips move to say in a high-pitched voice a sentence that sounds like gibberish. She crouches and scuttles along the treeline until she hides behind a thicker tree trunk mottled with eggshell-white spots.
Dead leaves are crunching as they get crushed underfoot. I squint to peer through the web of greenery, and I discern that a looming shape is stirring the shadows and bending branches; some monster is lumbering towards us.
The cold has spread inward, and now it seems to radiate from my bones. My fingers and toes have gone numb, my thoughts are slowing down and my vision narrowing, but I control my ragged breathing. I beckoned this feral child over by shouting into the void, and if the monster that is about to emerge from the thicket devours her, I’ll endure the flashbacks for the rest of my possibly short life.
“H-hey, girl, over here,” I call her through my chattering teeth, and when we hold each other’s gaze, I gesture anxiously for her to approach me.
She hesitates; would I run towards a wild-eyed thirty-year-old woman who’s hanging out naked in the wilderness? The girl pushes herself off the tree she was hiding behind, then she scuttles on the pebbled riverbed over to me. A pungent odor wafts from her leather tunic, as if she had rolled around in grime and filth. She clutches my left hand. When I feel her warm, chapped palm, a dizzy spell threatens to overwhelm me. I have been snatched from Jacqueline’s apartment and dropped into a remote forest. What otherworldly horror will I encounter now?
The undergrowth behind the treeline shudders and jerks, a branch snaps, and from between two trees emerges a hulking, woody-brown quadruped. As its beefy right foreleg flattens a fern, beneath the shaggy fur, which is caked with mud, the muscles along its leg tremble, and the subcutaneous fat shakes up to the beast’s rounded back. Under its furry hands, the pebbles of the riverbed grind and clack together. I discern that the beast’s curved claws are the size of hacksaw blades; they could peel open my ribcage like pulling back the lid of a can of sardines.
As it heads to the rippling waters of the brook, the beast swings its elongated head towards us. The coarse fur of its face is swan-white except for the smoky-black patches that surround the sunken eyes. Its nostrils flare as it sniffs our scent, then it snorts and blows like a bull. The beast stops beside the brook and dips its chin in the stream to drink.
My brain is wrapped in barbed wire. What is this jarring cackling that is punishing my eardrums? Oh, it’s bursting forth from my throat. But why am I laughing?
The beast raises its head and looks straight at me as water drips from its drenched chin, then it turns around to face us. The feral child squeezes my left hand; even through my shrieks of laughter I realize that she’s trying to communicate with me, but I can’t decipher her jabber. That monster’s claws are churning up the pebbles as it stomps towards us. I catch a whiff of its musk, that smells of earth, loam and moss.
My throat closes up; the surge of laughter pushes against it, then desists and dissipates. I need to gallop away, but I must remain rooted to this spot or I will be lost forever.
The beast’s honey-colored eyes are aglow with bloody malice. As it bellows a thunderous burp, a plume of white-hot steam spirals out and a spray of hot spittle splatters onto my face. The nearby birds have scattered away in a panic.
The girl is tugging on my arm, my knees are buckling. This noble monster is waiting for me to kneel in worship; I’m a bug crawling around its feet. I should try my best to seem cool and aloof, like a woman with regular sexual appetites instead of like an insane shut-in who has been abducted.
“G-greetings, brave soldier of the forest,” I say in a quavering, hysterical voice. “I-I salute your service in the field of battle and I promise that if I live through this experience, I-I will surrender the best cut of my meat to you.”
The beast pushes itself off the ground to rear up on its hind legs, then it throws its head back to tower even further over me; a fearsome god looming over my puny body. Its mouth yawns cavernously. The muscles in the monster’s girthy torso, which is matted with clots of mud and leaf litter, bulge under the shaggy fur like taut, industrial-sized leather belts.
At the final moment of my dismal existence, I have an intense craving to make love.
The girl yanks at my arm hard enough that I tumble backwards, but before I land on the pebbles, a crackle of energy fills me, and my back hits a flat surface. I got the wind knocked out of me. As I prop myself up and take a big gulp of air, I realize that I’m at room temperature and that I recognize that pastel gray ceiling.
Someone kneels beside me. The smooth touch of silk caresses the skin of my shoulder, then the person seizes me, turns me around and buries my face in a pillowy pair of breasts.
“You’re back,” Jacqueline says in a strained voice racked with worry. When she wraps her warm arms around my trembling back, she recoils, then starts rubbing my skin vigorously. “Baby, you are freezing!”
I’m shaking from the cold and the adrenaline surge, but now that Jacqueline’s breasts have enveloped my face, I will heal quickly.
“D-don’t worry,” I mumble through her cleavage.
A childish utterance of confusion behind me causes Jacqueline to stiffen up.
“Leire,” she whispers, “who the hell is this girl?”
I unstick my mouth from the silky skin of her breast to glance over my shoulder. The feral child is sitting on her knees and squinting at the bright light in the hallway as she checks her surroundings with bewilderment.
Author’s note: the two songs for today are ‘Sapokanikan’ by Joanna Newsom and ‘Baba O’Riley’ by The Who.
From all the chapters that remained to write of this novel, this one I looked forward to the least; I suspect that I didn’t believe I could pull it off. But it came out good enough for me, so the ride should be smoother from now on.
That story about Leire getting lost in Hondarribia as a child because a monkey distracted her happened to me. They eventually found my bloated corpse washed up on a beach.
In case you missed it, I exploited the services of a neural network that runs on a supercomputer to generate images that depict moments of this scene. Here is the link.
I usually get 8-10 visits a day on my site. Less than 24 hours ago, someone from the US racked up about 170 hits. That person even went through entries of the fanfiction of ‘Re:Zero’ I wrote a couple of years ago. I never liked ‘Re:Zero’ that much; I preferred my darker, crazier spin on that story. I worked on it during a turning point in what passes for my career as a writer; I had ceased to read anything in Spanish, my own native language, and I didn’t want to write in Spanish anymore even though I had self-published two books in that language, but I felt like I could never become proficient enough at writing in English. Working through those sixty or so chapters of fanfiction changed my mind, and I had a blast throughout.
Anyway, thank you for checking out so many pages of my site, whoever you are. I hope you were entertained.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
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