An electronic harp glissando startles me. My phone is vibrating on the desk, next to my revolver. I grab the phone and light up its touchscreen.
“Oh shit, mommy has written to me!” I utter in a merry voice as a smile spreads across my face. Then I remember that dozens of eyeballs are observing me from the occupied wall, where the blob hangs like a festoon of sludge. My smile curdles. “I-I mean, my actual mother sent me a text message from hell.”
The blob snorts.
“I know you’re dating Jacqueline, you doofus.”
I shudder.
“Thank you for cutting that thread of deceit. I made myself feel ill.”
I read the message contained in a canary-yellow speech bubble.
Are you okay, baby girl? I can’t believe this thunderstorm! It must be setting records for the number of lightning strikes.
She’s worried about my well-being! My heart swells with gratitude and warmth, then melts into the depths of my belly.
I had tuned out the noise of rain pounding on glass, a primordial drumbeat, as the torrential downpour lashes against the windows, sending cold drops streaming down the panes. Thunder is bellowing like a dragon. Engulfed in water, this office building, along with the rest of Donostia, has become a boat adrift amidst gale-driven spume in a tempest-tossed ocean.
I picture Jacqueline stepping out in her fuzzy slippers onto her privileged balcony up in the hills. She has donned a chiffon-and-satin kimono robe, black like the lustrous locks cascading down her shoulders, and embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis. Her wrists are sheathed in bangles adorned with pink coral and turquoise gemstones. As she crosses her arms to counter the cold, the sleek collar of her robe slides over those magisterial breasts, that are bolstered by a heavy-duty bra whose taut front straps threaten to snap from their anchorages and allow the mommy mammaries, sprinkled with errant droplets of rainwater, to bounce under gravity’s sway.
Goosebumps ripple along my arms. Damn it, I need to press my wet lips against Jacqueline’s silky boob-flesh and feel it yield beneath my ravenous licks. Then I’d latch my mouth on to her breastplate-stiff nipples.
Anyway, the rain rages down in sheets, and a gust plays with Jacqueline’s tresses, while my queen surveys her domain: a sodden dreamscape. Flashing rivers and tributaries of white electricity carve paths across the gloomy sky, probing for prey to blast apart below, in soaked passageways of citrine-yellow glow.
I’m typing a reply to Jacqueline’s message when the wall-spanning lump of gunk, who resembles a sewage spill, interrupts me.
“Would you mind leaving the phone alone while we’re talking? We were getting down to the meat of the matter.”
“Yes, I do mind, you gelatinous blimp!” I hold up the phone towards him. “Are you kidding me? This is Jacqueline!”
My throat itches, and a coughing fit assaults me. My mouth is parched as if I had chewed down on sandpaper. I must have become dehydrated from vomiting and sweating and shouting.
“So disrespectful,” the blob complains in a voice like the gurgling of a clogged pipe.
I clear my throat.
“Imagine that the police have caught on to my countless crimes and they’re chasing me through the streets. Then I receive a message from Jacqueline. She doesn’t know whether I’m alive or dead, or how many people I’ve stabbed along the way. Would you stop running to text her back? I would, because she’s the most important person in the universe. Even if texting her became my last act before I got blasted in the face with a shotgun at point-blank range. So quit bitching and let me assuage the worries of my beloved.”
The blob blows squelchy bubbles like a supersized snuffling pig.
I send my reply:
I’m fine, as fine as I can be in this nightmarish dimension and away from your loving embrace. I miss you so much, mommy. I wish I were kneeling at your feet and serving you with my mouth, my tongue, and whatever other body parts you’d prefer.
My tongue, a wrung-out piece of leather, flutters around my dry lips, attempting to moisten them. Water. Water can refresh every fiber of one’s being.
A bottle of mineral, tear-colored water has been standing for days near a filled notebook and some printouts of code. The bottle’s water level has sunk below halfway. When I put down my phone on the cluttered desk, I notice the desiccated carcass of a fly that’s lying supine. It must have asphyxiated from the stench. The bristling legs, bent at obtuse angles, resemble burnt-black chenille stems. On the ventral plate of its exoskeleton, I glimpse the hint of a nipple.
I picture myself biting off the fly’s membranous wings, which would crumble and sprinkle my taste buds with grit and bits of chitin. I look away in disgust, then take a deep breath. With my forefinger’s nail, I tap the insect’s corpse in case it revives. Nope, dead as dead. I pinch the fly by a wing and drop it in the mantle of vomit that has covered the heaped garbage in my wastebasket. The desecrated corpse gets swallowed up by sludge.
The water bottle beckons with its glistening liquid, clear as melted quartz. I grasp the bottle and unscrew its cap. I take a sip; the water, trapped in a cycle of despair, has turned tepid, stagnant. It tastes slightly chemical. I swill a mouthful around my oral cavity to rinse the residual taste of rot. After I swallow that water, I quaff the remainder of the bottle’s contents, that cascade down my gullet. Refreshed, I exhale in relief.
The squelchy blubber starts spewing verbal sewage from his vantage point.
“Speaking of thirst, you have some nerve for lambasting me, murderously so, because I keep tabs on your sorry ass from another dimension. Weren’t you stealing glances at Jacqueline up until you two started doing the nasty? Whenever she chose to exhibit that bouncy, motorboat-worthy rack of hers in a business setting, you turned into a slobbering creep-fuck. If you could have gotten away with it, you’d have gaped like a fish hooked on a line. Both of your coworkers would have noticed, but they were busy focusing on Visual Studio Code and Excel, respectively.”
“Oh, so you even spied on us during office hours, you dickweed?”
“Mind you, I’m not disparaging your taste in women; Jacqueline became prime office bait.”
“Thanks a bunch, asshole. You had the good sense to clarify that point. My revolver remains loaded, you know, and I might decide to drill holes in the blighted, blubbering face of your existence.”
“You are one twisted cunt.”
“For now let’s pretend that whoever I ogle at concerns you: I merely admired a natural wonder, mommy as a whole as well as the various parts that comprise her body, from her succulent lips and shapely ass to her jiggly jugs. I needed such dopamine kicks to mitigate my suicidal despair. And if I could have gotten away with it, I would have nibbled on Jacqueline’s nipples in front of our piggish boss like the starving feral monkey I am. Full-on nip-snarf, chomp chomp!”
“You’re closer to a rabid raccoon.”
A harp glissando alerts me that Jacqueline has graced my phone with a fresh message. What took her so long, though? Was she diddling herself?
I hold the water bottle aloft and upside down. The last few drops run down its curved interior until they drip on my outstretched tongue. I put the bottle down on the desk and pick up my phone.
“Anyway,” I continue for the blob’s benefit, “I was forced to steal glances of mommy because I dreaded looking deep into those cobalt-blues of hers, and experiencing existential vertigo akin to gazing down from the top of Mount Everest into the depths of an abyss.”
“Or the view through a microscope of a sperm cell’s nucleus.”
I sigh.
“Whatever. My point is that my legs could have started to wobble. I could have broken into sobs, or lost control of my bowels like a bum with diarrhea. If our secretary realized that she made me squirt and as a consequence she mocked me, I would have stabbed my eyes out with scissors. Jacqueline is a woman, while I’m an amalgamation of spiders that somehow retains a human form. For this disaster you can blame a certain goddess with webs between her thighs, from whose loins we spawned and into whose copious arms we’ll return once we’re done with this earthly farce, where we become entangled in the nets that we weave for each other.”
“I should stop listening to your babbling.”
I pull up Jacqueline’s message.
What have I done to deserve such a devoted sweetheart, always so eager to pleasure mommy? I wish we were cuddling at home like kittens in a basket. Please let me know if you need me to rescue you from that office-hell. I’d hate for a lightning bolt to strike your pretty head; you would be of little use to me as a ghost.
Her voice as I remember it, along with her sweet talk, pours into me like kaleidoscopic honey. I glance bitterly at the conquered wall, where an oil-soaked bulk of jellylike matter flutters as he stares back with his multitude of gleaming eyes. I want Jacqueline to come get me before I shoot myself in the skull. I want her to save me from the blob, from this office, from my mother’s dead eyes, from the apocalyptic horror show into which the cosmos vomited itself. Mommy and I would return to her cozy den. Inside, she would feed me kelp and raw clams, and afterwards we’d cuddle naked and warm under her downy comforter. She would press her snuggly, succulent tits against my face. Her heartbeat would echo in my head. I would breathe in her heady aroma as I fell into a languid trance, ready to sleep and never wake up. From a basement dungeon, in the flickering light of a lantern, I would watch a procession of gowned women emerge from violet clouds on wings of moonlight. Gone would be the stories and the pain and everything else to endure.
After I blink away the honey-haze, I start typing a reply to Jacqueline’s message, but the blob breaks my flow by complaining.
“Sure, keep chatting with your girlfriend while ignoring me. Is that how you treat someone who sneaked into this reality to help you?”
“What, so you can attempt to capture me in a web of words that drip with putrefaction? You needy puddle of pus! How much of my time have you stolen already? I stuck around after hours to catch up on work!”
“There’s more to life than one’s job, Leire.”
I clench my jaw through typing the rest of my response to Jacqueline.
I will return home as soon as I’m done with a last inescapable matter. The wet air, along with the bus ride, shall calm down my frenzied mind, so you can stay home taking care of our antediluvian marvel.
I’m tapping my foot while three animated dots reveal that my beloved is writing her reply.
Alright. We both miss you lots, baby. I have a big surprise for you tonight.
Spark-like tingles burst in my crotch. My heart rate rises as I tap letters on the phone screen.
“Enough, damn it!” the blob snaps. “XOXO and goodbye!”
My eyelids twitch.
“Get thee gone, wretched gloop! Go stalk an empty hallway!”
I send a text:
Does your surprise involve sex?
Oui, mon cher. Plenty of hot sweaty sex. But that alone wouldn’t be much of a surprise, so I’ve got a special one. Now put down that phone and get back to work. I’ll be waiting for you, sweetie.
As a parting gift, she attaches a round, yellow emoji that winks and blows a kiss.
A wave of heat suffuses my body. My mouth is flooding with saliva. My breasts grow tender, my nipples erect. As if possessed, my right hand drifts toward my pussy to rub it through my trousers and panties, but I halt the move halfway through even though I want my middle finger to circle around my moistened cleft, while the rest of my digits probe and knead in rhythmic massages. I yearn to scratch this primal itch, but if whenever I molest myself in the future, I suffer searing flashbacks of that many-eyed abomination, I may slit my wrists.
The blob clears his concealed throat.
“I get the feeling that I should be glad I can’t read your messages. In my opinion, your sexual urges overpower your judgement.”
I put the phone down on the desk, then I straighten my back and inhale slowly to steady my heartbeat.
“You should know by now that I’m solely motivated by carnal cravings and sordid perversions.”
Author’s note: the three songs for today are “My Dream Girl Don’t Exist” by Neutral Milk Hotel, “Pictures” by Galaxie 500, and “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste” by Galaxie 500.
I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this series. A hundred and twenty-five songs so far. Check them out.
Did you know that one particular AI service can produce humanlike voices? I forced them to act out this chapter! Check out the result.
Would you enjoy seeing AI-generated pictures of Leire’s lovely mommy? Here’s the link.
This has been the longest chapter since chapter 83. Just two years ago, I could churn out five thousand words-long chapters in a day, and now it takes me several days to produce two thousand words. Either my standards have grown or I have become dumber.
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