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A South American man with toffee-colored skin, whose hair is shaved on the sides in zigzag lines that resemble the heartbeat on a monitor, is tending to the fryer, a contraption of polished steel. Using a pair of tongs, he plucks churros out of the bubbling oil and drops them into a paper cone, then he seizes a shaker of cinnamon sugar and sprinkles a dusting over the piping-hot, golden-brown pastries. The fry cook flashes a broad, white-toothed smile as he offers Jacqueline the bouquet of churros, but she’s busy rummaging through her purse for bills.

“Ma chérie, please grab it for me, will you?”

I stand on my tiptoes to receive the oil-stained cone, whose heat begins to seep into my palm and fingers. As I step back from the counter, the plume of steam that rises from the churros fills my nostrils with the aroma of fried, cinnamon-coated dough.

Jacqueline slips folded-up currency into the main snackman’s hand. Her fingers must have grazed his palm, because I sense him vibrate on an atomic level. Jacqueline, in turn, remains unfazed, as if accustomed to brushing up against filth.

The snack booth lord slides coins across the counter.

“Your change, miss. Thank you for gracing my stand with your beauty.”

My eyelids twitch. I’m tempted to slap the snackman in his stubbled face, but a criminal like that might pummel me back, so I focus on the cone of churros that burns in my grasp. I grab one of the cinnamon-dusted wands and bite off its end. As I chew on the crunchy crust, the soft interior melts on my tongue in a gush of sugary sweetness. Other than sex, such treats are the closest I will get to nirvana on this mortal plane.

From behind, an arm snakes around my waist and steers me toward the corner of the snack booth where Nairu, our Paleolithic child, is kneeling on the pavement in front of the bear-shaped garbage bin. The tip of her tongue protrudes from between her lips as she sketches in her sketchbook. When she notices us, she scrambles to her feet, flashes a triumphant grin, and holds out her drawing for us to behold.

Nairu’s fingers have smudged the black crayon across the page in rugged and earnest strokes, leaving rough-hewn edges and hasty shading, as if she had grappled with the concept of a bear-bin, trying to pin it down before it vanished forever. But unlike the resigned garbage bear, the eyes of her creation reflect wonder at the amusement park around it, and its mouth gapes in a frozen, silent laugh.

“Oh, that’s the loveliest garbage bin I’ve ever seen,” Jacqueline says.

“You have a keen eye, miss Paleolithic,” I say. “Each time you look at the drawing, the bear comes alive.”

Jacqueline’s fingers, tipped with almond-shaped nails, pinch the end of a churro. As she draws it out of the paper cone that I’m clutching, a miniature cascade of cinnamon sugar showers down.

“Here’s to our girl who sees art in every corner.”

Nairu’s eyes widen and her lips part at the sight of the approaching fried pastry. She exchanges the black crayon for the churro, then sinks her tiny teeth into the crust. As she chews, the pearly band of a smile spreads across her rosy cheeks. Given how we’re habituating her to pastries, in the future we may have trouble preventing her from rolling downhill.

We walk away from the snack booth, though my instinct urges me to hurry away like from a crime scene. The tattooed, ex-con concessionaire must be salivating at the masterpiece of Jacqueline’s derrière, because his voice follows us.

“Do come again.”

I throw a glance over my shoulder, ready to scowl at the snack-vending con-man. I’m searching for a sharper retort than “Not any time soon” when I realize that the stallman has ducked behind the counter, out of sight, as if struck by the weight of his sins.

We pass in front of a booth where two girls are leaning over to chase bobbing rubber ducks with hooked rods. On the interior walls, glossy plastic trinkets and plushies clamor for attention, forming a dense collage.

Jacqueline’s shoulder nudges mine.

“Our friend back there was quite taken with me,” she says in a teasing lilt. “The perils of making oneself devastatingly attractive.”

I want to scoff at the notion that such a lowlife, who probably served time for assault and robbery, could have become a friend of ours, but instead I gulp down the last of my churro, then suck the sugar clinging to my fingers.

“I can’t help feeling fear whenever someone flirts with my polymorphous girlfriend.”

Jacqueline lifts a hand to stroke the underside of my chin.

“If you could read my mind, love, you wouldn’t be insecure about it.”

Flushed with emotion, I fiddle with a button of my corduroy jacket.

“I don’t know if I would enjoy the attention from random, shady men.”

“It makes life much easier, that I can assure you.”

Clusters of fairgoers navigate the midway between carnival games and children’s rides: couples shepherding pre-teens, exchange students carrying backpacks and smartphones. The November sunshine glints off the screen at the end of a selfie stick. To the throng belongs the chatter, the click of shoes, the childish shouts and giggles of those who have grown accustomed to, and even thrive within, our shambling zombie of a civilization. In front of a bar, around a row of barrels used as standing tables, the patrons are brushing elbows, unaware of the looming apocalypse about to swallow their world. Who would listen if I were to explain, or scream, that the stars will fizzle out, that space-time will collapse on itself, that everything they know and love will be erased unless I stop it?

Some of the human beings present in this amusement park, let alone those I’ve come across since I was born, could be bosses who stress and overwork their employees; kids who torment other children out of boredom, or to exert dominance; parents who created life only to neglect it or even abuse it; modern marauders who stalk the streets to rob, rape, and kill; those who betray and destroy their own kind for power and profit. This world is filled with monsters, yet I must save them all.

How did Alberto, my former co-worker turned colossal blob of black sludge studded with eyeballs, put our problem? That I would come across the reality-altering machine, and I would recognize it. Those were his actual words, right? Damn it, why didn’t I write them down?! Surely I realized that to prevent the end of the universe, every word of the warning from that swamp-born bastard mattered. He did say, I’m almost certain, that I would recognize the machine as capable of tearing apart reality, so that excludes cars, computers, coffee machines, and whatnot. Ever since Alberto nauseated me with his presence, I’ve gone out of my way to suspect any device that may harbor gears or microchips, but the universe remains unsaved.

Let’s recap what I know: the professor, whom I’ve dubbed Dr. Weasel for all this rabbit-brained fuckery, must have constructed a labyrinthine construct where organic life is enmeshed with gears and cogs. Branching pipes terminate in leaves or in flasks bubbling with effervescent chemicals, while at the core of the contraption-organism rumbles a spider-legged mechanism wrought from neon-colored gems and spinning axles.

My chest constricts, a band of anxiety tightening around my ribs. I loosen my jaw, and find myself reaching for the comfort of a churro, but I grasp air. Did I drop the paper cone? Wait, where are mommy and my antediluvian daughter?

I’m standing close to a postcard rack that belongs to the souvenir stand. Up ahead, between the hotel and the stairs that lead to the rollercoaster, I spot Jacqueline’s figure, wearing a camel-colored suede blazer along with dark denim jeans that accentuate her curves. She’s nibbling on a churro while her other hand holds the remaining bunch. Beside her, Nairu, the sketchbook tucked under one arm, is mouthing words as she points up toward the tower.

When I take a step forward, a current crackles up my limbs, igniting every nerve. The cacophony of the amusement park stops, making my ears ring with sudden quiet. The brightness of a clear morning has switched to night as if cosmic spider legs had plucked the sun out of the sky.

I’m standing at the back of a sunken, circular enclosure about twenty meters in diameter, whose walls are made out of stacked, rough slabs of stone. In the center, between a pair of towering, T-shaped pillars, an old man’s white hair and beard catch the sway of torchlight. He’s addressing the group before him as he gestures toward the night sky, a canvas sprawled with a myriad stars, in which the full moon casts a silvery glow. The men are garbed in animal hides and furs, and as necklaces, they’re wearing threaded beads and fangs.

Closer to me, sitting cross-legged by a crackling campfire, a wiry young man is scraping a hide with a flint knife. Kneeling on the other side of the fire, among strewn bones, a man wrestles with the heat and bulk of a huge bull’s innards. He’s scooping out glistening clumps of viscera and dropping them onto a steaming pile. The butcher groans, pushes himself upright, and takes a gulp from a swollen waterskin while thick blood and fat dribble down his arms. Above, perched upon the earthen rim of the enclosure, a male silhouette outlined in silver, etched against the splash of stars, leans on his spear, surveying the horizon.

The cold air carries the thick smells of burning logs, animal hides, sweat, damp earth, fresh rain on stone, nearby flora, and blood.

Rising five meters high at the center of the enclosure, the pair of T-shaped pillars are painted malachite green, their surfaces carved in relief with humanlike features: from the upper portion of the broad sides, deep-red arms reach down to rest their hands on the narrow side, above a belt adorned with black and white patterns that cinch the stone’s girth. Flickering torchlight pools shadows in the grooves of the reliefs, making the humanlike features pulse in a chiaroscuro effect.

The silhouettes of smaller pillars stand as sentinels around the perimeter of the enclosure, and on those bathed in torchlight, a menagerie of animals emerges: jet-black bulls, rust-red foxes, burnt-orange felines, alongside snakes, gazelles, vultures, scorpions.

I notice a statue to my right, tall as a basketball center, close as if it had sneaked up to me in the darkness. The eyes of that bearded face stare blindly from their sunken sockets. In its emaciated torso, the artist has sculpted each rib of the protruding ribcage. The statue’s hands are clutching its erect penis.

My insides explode with a surge of adrenaline and dread.

“Fuck no,” I blurt out.

The old man falls silent, and breath steams from his agape mouth. The group before him scrambles about, colliding with one another. Their torches send across the enclosure waves of light that elongate and warp human shadows into grotesque shapes. Pairs of eyes reflect the flames before fading into the darkness as their owners turn their heads in shared bewilderment. The silhouetted guard on the earthen rim brandishes his spear, whose point glints in the moonlight. The wiry man, frozen mid-scrape, stares up at me with wide-eyed awe. The butcher, his face a grimy mask of ash, tries to back away but slips on coils of intestine, crashing onto the carcass of the bull in a spray of gore.

“I ain’t doing this shit again,” I say. “Later, you guys. Good luck with civilization.”

I step back, and static electricity zaps through my body. The amusement park engulfs me in a burst of colors and noise.

I squeeze my eyes shut to shield them from the morning sunlight. My face has gone cold, my arms tingle with pent-up energy.

“There you are, mon amour,” Jacqueline says, her voice tinged with relief. “We lost you for a moment.”

When I open my eyes, I see Nairu with her cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk’s. Sugar-glaze clings to the corners of her mouth. I struggle to speak; my throat is tight and my face stiff. While Nairu chews the churro into a manageable bolus, she arches an eyebrow at my stunned expression.

“You look like a fish,” she says through the mush. “Were you swimming in your head?”

Jacqueline’s fingers trace the contour of my cheek, bringing a warmth that seeps beneath my skin.

“Leire, what’s the matter?”

Her motherly tone calms the pounding in my chest, but I avoid facing her concern. As I blink away the glare of sunlight, behind the row of carnival games, the rattling rollercoaster crests a ridge. During its zooming descent, the children shriek with joy, some passengers’ hair streams in the wind. If I were to look into Jacqueline’s cobalt-blues, I may confess that the universe and the human race are fucked unless I locate a reality-collapsing machine and tear it out by the roots.

“Ah, you know,” I utter in a strained voice, “just an intrusive daydream regarding one of my many traumas.”

“Ma pauvre chérie…”

I shake my head.

“No, no pity today. We have the right to enjoy a carnival of treats on a sunny November morning without the looming threat of an apocalypse.”

“Right you are. Our girl has expressed an interest in the tower, so how about we check out the most enchanting view of Donostia?”

I follow her pointing finger. Perched atop Mount Igueldo against an expanse of azure, the tower stretches upward, its sand-colored stones and arched windows washed in the sunlight, its crowning battlements and crenellations speaking of the days of yore.

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Sycamore” by Bill Callahan, and “Nantes” by Beirut.

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

How about you listen to this chapter instead of reading it? Check out the audiochapter.

I went out of my way to write an essay regarding Leire’s trip to the past. Read it, will you?

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The crown of the carousel dazzles with old-world charm thanks to its miniature spires and ornate curlicues in a pastel mix of golds, greens, and blues. As the ride revolves, trembling, creaking, and squeaking rhythmically like a mechanical cricket, the carriages pass one after another: a steampunk-esque submarine, complete with riveted plates, portholes, and a periscope; a hot-air balloon that features an intricate imitation of a wicker basket; a cherry-red car modeled after early 20th-century automobiles, whose varnished surfaces glimmer in the November sunshine; a tram-like carriage reminiscent of traditional streetcars, a green-and-white cabin inside of which stands Nairu, our émigré from the Ice Age, wearing a quilted, burgundy jacket. While clutching the brass railing, she’s goggling around at the other carriages, at the gilded ceiling of the ride, and at us, her adoptive mothers, in mesmerized confusion.

Next to me, Jacqueline chuckles. Then she presses the tips of her fingers against the curve of her smile, trying to contain her outburst. Mommy’s gaze, anchored on Nairu amidst the whimsical carriages from L’Ère des Visionnaires, brims with warmth as if absorbing our daughter’s antediluvian wonder.

“She doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on, the poor thing.”

“To be fair,” I say, “neither do I. But I hope she has realized that she’s supposed to stay inside her carriage.”

The carousel lurches, creaks, and grinds to a halt. Nairu, already beaming at Jacqueline and me, pushes the swing door of her carriage open. She hops off the round platform. As she bounds towards us, her eyes twinkle, and her chestnut-brown hair bounces with each joyful step. I’m tempted to warn her about running in those baggy jeans; she could trip over a loose hem and smash her face on the pavement. But how do you communicate such concerns to a child who grew up among ground sloths?

Nairu flings herself at me like a bear cub. She hugs my waist, pressing her face against my corduroy jacket. I pat the soft hair on the back of her head.

Whenever this child clings to me, a soothing warmth bubbles up from deep within. I want to mirror her smiles and laughs. Above all, I desire to protect her from the ravages of the world. With Nairu in my arms, I am no longer a freakish, masturbating mess, but the guardian of a vulnerable, Paleolithic orphan.

Jacqueline wraps an arm around my shoulders, resting her hand on the strap of my backpack.

“What a lovely day it turned out to be with my two girls by my side. Anyone else’s stomach singing for some grub or is it just me?”

“Oh, you know I’m a bottomless pit.”

She rubs my earlobe between her thumb and index finger.

“Of course I do, ma poulette gourmande. Allons-y.”

We stroll down the expanse of paved flooring. On one side, a row of children’s rides stands silent and still. On the opposite side, a sturdy railing guards against a steep plunge, beyond which the spiky tops of pine trees stretch towards a cerulean sky. The crisp fall breeze rustles the needles, causing them to bristle and sway.

Nairu has hurried ahead, skipping and spinning around to take in the 360-degree spectacle.

The bumper car ride is playing a jaunty tune that features trumpets and an accordion. Under a translucent roof supported by a rusted frame, a father in his thirties and his pre-teen daughter, lacking any opponents, are steering their bubblegum-pink car in a figure eight. From the rear of the vehicle, a metallic rod juts up; as its brush grazes the electrified grid overhead, sporadic sparks burst like tiny fireworks.

A gust of wind sweeps over the amusement park, ruffling Jacqueline’s raven-black tresses. I fasten my woolen scarf, pulling it snug against my skin. The hickey with which mommy branded me has faded from a mottled purple to a faint brownish-yellow, and no longer feels tender.

Jacqueline leads us to a snack booth, its counters cluttered with donuts, waffles, slices of pizza, and serrano ham sandwiches. The smell of fried dough wafts up my nostrils, complemented by the buttery scent of waffles. As we draw closer, the tangy smell of tomato sauce and melted cheese blends with the aroma of cured meats. My taste buds awaken in anticipation of the textures and flavors: the fluffiness of a powdered donut, the crunch of a toasted waffle, and the salty richness of serrano ham. I wish I could decimate the snack landscape, stuffing myself until my stomach expanded into a basketball, or even a beach ball.

We line up behind a redhead who’s holding a toddler. The concessionaire’s face is stubble-crusted, his arms sleeved with tattoos; maybe a former convict turned snack vendor.

To my left, Nairu emits a lilting sound, a cross between a gasp and a hum. With her back to me, she squats to be at eye level with a garbage bin. She tilts her head first to one side, then to the other, as if scrutinizing an unknown creature. I sidestep until I catch sight of her quarry. The garbage bin is molded from sturdy plastic to resemble a deep-brown, plump bear sitting on its haunches, whose oval eyes avoid Nairu’s gaze as if ashamed; its gaping mouth has been reduced to an entryway for trash.

A yellow-and-black insect, a wasp, hovers near the bear-bin’s open maw while another wasp scurries over the lower lip. As Nairu reaches to touch the bear’s ebony-black snout, her motion jolts the wasps. They flit into the air, then zigzag drunkenly.

I bend down to gently pull Nairu away from the bear-bin.

“What are you up to, my little adventurer? You wanna get stung by wasps?” I pantomime a jab on my own hand. “Better leave the bear to its shameful fate.”

Nairu straightens and half-smiles, revealing a glint of teeth. Her eyebrows have arched as if saying, “Bitch, I grew up having tea parties with sabertooth tigers.”

“What can I get you, gorgeous?” the concessionaire says in an Andalusian accent tinged with awe.

The former convict turned snack vendor has pulled his shoulders back. He’s making a show of wiping his hands on a paper towel, trying to present a more respectable version of his tattooed, stubble-crusted self, but his eyes, locked on Jacqueline, remain widened as if his brain needed a reboot. This stallman must have been working on autopilot, fantasizing about his next score or prison sentence, when the hottest bombshell alive materialized before his counter, and now he’s considering if he should abandon his snack booth empire to shrink to the size of an ant and crawl inside her pussy.

“Ten churros,” Jacqueline says, “s’il vous plaît.”

My nostrils have flared. In my mind, this guy flashes a lecherous smile and utters, “It’s a privilege to serve you, goddess on Earth.” I’m about to shoot a warning squint at the ex-con when a child’s hand tugs at the sleeve of my corduroy jacket, jolting me out of my murderous haze.

Nairu is gazing up at me with her pair of monolid, almond-shaped eyes, that brim with the wonder of a naturalist who has discovered a new species.

“Eide, Eide.”

“Close enough.”

She scribbles in the air with an invisible pencil, then jabs a finger at the bear-bin.

“Crayon!”

A surge of warmth floods my chest.

“When you look at me, of all people, with kindness in your eyes, you know I must oblige. Want to transform that garbage bear into art? Be my guest, child of the Ice Age.”

I kneel to rummage through my backpack. I pull out Nairu’s sketchbook and hand it over. I take out the pack of Crayola crayons and fold up the cardboard flap, revealing a rainbow of waxy peaks. Nairu’s fingers hesitate above the red, green, and blue, before snatching the black crayon.

As she grasps the sketchbook and crayon, her arms go slack. She turns her head to fixate on the bear-bin. Her flawless, peach-orange skin reflects the November sunbeams, but her eyebrows are furrowed as if her thoughts have drifted millennia away. Windswept and wild, her chestnut-brown locks dance and shimmer.

The ambient sounds of children’s laughter and mechanized rides fade into a muted hum as the universe holds its breath.

“I was wondering, Leire,” Nairu says, “what could be the meaning of that creature.”

“It’s called a garbage bin. We use them to dispose of the detritus of modern civilization. In summer, when the weather’s hot, flies and gnats swarm around to lay eggs in the trash.”

“It doesn’t look like any garbage bin that I’ve encountered in all my wanderings through this bewildering age. Is it a type of animal punished for some sinful transgression? Is it perhaps a deity who presides over the discarded remnants of humanity, collecting them until the day of reckoning?”

“No, it’s a human-made object, designed to save us from drowning in our own filth and disease.”

“But why does it have a funny shape and face?”

“Because humans like to turn mundane objects into something amusing or unusual.”

“What a strange people you are, to take an inanimate object and make it into a creature, thus defacing the very fabric of nature.”

“We are strange, indeed.”

“You create a million diversions and amusements to distract yourselves from the void.”

“We don’t always give our creations a fair shake. But we do our best to make sense of the world and our place in it.”

“Well then, I will document this garbage bear’s existence before it vanishes like a footprint in sand. However… should we draw anything at all? Don’t our efforts only add to the muck of human creation?”

As the bear-bin stands in the periphery of our minds like a dark monolith, Nairu’s gaze drifts to the pavement, and her lips curl downward as if a sudden pain had stabbed her through.

I swallow the lump in my throat. Nairu, my adopted Paleolithic child, who roamed a glacier-encrusted world of ground sloths and woolly rhinoceri until her family vanished in the flood of time.

“Do you miss the Ice Age and your dad?” I ask.

“Every day. Sometimes I imagine I hear the crunching of their footprints in the snow. I imagine I hear my father calling me through the trees, and I want to run towards him.”

“I wish you didn’t have to leave everything you knew behind. I wish the ice and the animals returned.”

“What if the universe ends before I get to experience good things?”

“I promise, I won’t let the universe end.”

“But you can’t, can you? It’s all so massive, and you are a speck of dust.”

“Even so.”

“Still, I don’t belong anywhere. No one wants me, no one needs me. I am alone.”

My chest clenches as if my ribs were caving in. I lay my hands on Nairu’s shoulders, sinking my fingers into the padding of her jacket.

“I understand you. Even though having to travel five days a week to that soulless office, where I program websites for a piggish boss, made me want to hang myself, I used to work overtime into the evening because I dreaded returning to my empty apartment in Irún, where no one had ever said my name or hugged me. Did I matter? Was I real? For all my masturbation and my angst and my demons, I have never grown up, and my struggles to paint a pretty picture in this ugly world were doomed from the start. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, because the emptiness in my chest feels like a bottomless hole sucking me down, down, down. Why don’t you let me help you? Why don’t you let anyone help you? Maybe because you’re not used to asking for help, because nobody ever offered you any. Maybe you’re scared of what happens when you open yourself up to another human being. You’re on your own, fending off the world and its terrors, and the pain in your heart just builds and builds. It’s hard to let go of control, to let someone else in. You wish you could float away into the vacuum of space, where you would die silently, and be forgotten forever. But I have found that life isn’t as scary as I imagined. Neither are people. There’s beauty in this world that we can’t grasp with words, and we need to embrace it and let it guide us. Do you believe me? I’m here, Nairu. We’re here. You will never lack for a home. We’ll protect you with our lives. I will give you the world and everything that shines in the universe.”

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Now It’s On” by Grandaddy, “Summertime Clothes” by Animal Collective, and “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” by Iron & Wine.

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

Do you want to hear Nairu’s tomboyish voice saying Nairu things? Check out the audiochapter.

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The cluster of faux-fur pillows at the head of mommy’s bed prop up my shoulders and the back of my head. My knees part wide in obedience.

The mattress rustles and dips as Jacqueline climbs on. Her twin miracles of motherly craftsmanship, whose supple curves are wreathed in the lace of a plunging bralette, sway hypnotically. Their pair of pink buds stick out like bullets. Framed by the meshlike lacework of her garter belt and the straps suspending her stockings, her blood-engorged hunk, an iron rod cast in flesh, bobs and bounces like a rabbit on springs, aching to bury itself hilt-deep inside my womanhood.

My beloved settles herself between my legs, overlooking me. The candles illuminate her from below: their honeyed glows are dancing on her voluptuous, sweat-sheened form, and casting a looming silhouette onto the ceiling. As she gazes down lustfully upon her bounty, she bites her plump lower lip, then slips her right hand under the left cup of her bralette to cradle that breast, whose smooth mound spills over her palm, and dimples with indentations of her fingers while she caresses, kneads, and squeezes.

Jacqueline slips her right hand out of the bralette, and as she lets herself fall forward, she plants both hands on either side of my abdomen. She nips at my navel. She sticks her tongue out and trails a hot and wet path towards my chest as she prowls up, as her raven-black tresses brush against my skin like fingertips. Her tongue flicks my left nipple; the sensation sends a ripple of electricity through my spine, that arches my back and draws a gasp from my lips. When Jacqueline is about to reach my neck, the satiny touch of her stockings glides over the underside of my thighs. They get parted further.

Aching to fondle her warm flesh, I reach for her shoulders, but she grabs my wrists and drags them towards the headboard, resting my arms on the pile of pillows. I have become a shackled maiden, the vestal sacrifice in a primitive rite. Mommy can adjust the size of her muscles at will, so I would waste my energies if I struggled against her grasp. Besides, why would I resist? I need her to fuck me until the relentless buzzing in my brain ceases. At least for a moment, I need a respite from the agony of the outside world. Please inject a dose of heroin straight into my pussy.

Jacqueline bears her weight down on me, mashing our breasts together, pinning me to the mattress. Her stiff buds sink into my tit-meat through the lacework of her bralette. Her bountiful bosom, her abdomen, her hips, they mold around my thinner frame, and their radiator-like warmth seeps into my organs as if we were merging into a singularity of flesh. Squashed between our bellies, her cock throbs with solid heat.

As she lowers her head, her hair curtains my features, cocooning us from the candlelight and creating a pocket of gloom between our faces. Her warm, moist breath fans over my lips. I gaze into her dilated pupils encircled by cobalt blue, a color that has haunted me since our eyes first met and in their depths I recognized my reflection: that of a scared, lonely, and dejected creature.

Jacqueline rubs her nose against mine.

“In the office,” she whispers, her voice thick and husky, “whenever anyone approached you, you would grow tense and uneasy. It made me think, ‘Here is a woman who has never been loved like she should.’ You didn’t know how it felt to be cherished, how it felt to trust anybody in this world, even yourself. Born to be put aside as an afterthought; was it like that, mon bébé? I pictured myself carrying you to bed, warming you in my arms, and filling you up with love from within. Now, aren’t you glad that we belong to each other?”

As Jacqueline’s words reverberate in my gut, my chest constricts. If I fail to restrain the rising tide, my chin will tremble, and tears will roll down my temples. I open my mouth to squeak out that it’s true, that I’ve always been a pariah, a freak, a stain on the fabric of humanity. But my throat clamps shut.

Jacqueline shushes me gently.

“Ne vous inquiétez pas, mon coeur. It’s okay. The world can be cruel, but here you are safe with me.”

She backs up on her knees and elbows, pulling my pinned arms towards the top of my head, to position her pelvis between my legs, angle her hips, and aim the tip of her cock at my opening. I hold my breath. When her glans nudges my clit, a jolt of electric ecstasy shoots through my core. Jacqueline rubs her scalding, throbbing column of meat up and down the slick divide, lubricating her cock with my juices, making me wetter than a tropical rainforest: fluid seeps out of my depths as if a plug had been pulled.

The breath from her panting mouth mingles with mine. In obeisance to the flesh-staff of a goddess, I’m aching for mommy to spear my personal sanctum, that awaits her plunder and pillage.

The bulbous crown presses against my folds, parting them. It sinks in with a shock of wet, hot friction that causes me to spasm and the air to escape my lungs. She burrows deeper and deeper into the sheath of my vagina, stretching and straining its elastic walls, carving the contours of her cock along the undulations of my inner flesh. Over my blurring and fraying thoughts, Jacqueline’s sultry voice pours into my ears.

“Oh, how I wish that everything were built as pleasantly as the insides of your pussy.”

With a steady pressure, her glans forces my cervix open until she plunges into the empty, spongy space of my womb. I let out a squeal. Jacqueline releases my left wrist, and her hand sweeps down in a swift arc to cover my mouth, silencing me.

“I’m sorry, love,” she whispers, “but we can’t be as loud as we want.”

She frees my mouth only to seal it with her full lips. Her tongue snakes in to twine and dance with mine. Electricity flows through our joined organs while her saliva streams down my throat. Her throbbing cock is buried to the root, her ballsack nestled against my buttocks.

My heated blood roars like a raging river as it rushes down toward my groin. I’m burning up, cooked from within.

Jacqueline’s breasts heave as her pelvis jackhammers at me and her cock pistons in and out of my pussy with squelching slurps, in forceful, stabbing thrusts that pound and pound and pound through my flesh, crushing things unnameable deep inside. Her ballsack, heavy with a seething brew, is smacking against my tailbone with meaty claps that echo in the bedroom. Clinging to her like a tree to the earth, I have wrapped my arms around her torso, and I feel her ribs expand and contract with every breath, and also the flexing and tensing of her muscles as she rocks her hips forward and back, forward and back, but I wish that I could reach lower and sink my bitten fingernails into her ass cheeks, ripping open furrows. Out would gush a spray of rainbow-colored butterflies.

She props herself on her sweat-slicked arms, that gleam in the candlelight like wet, polished stone. Her straining muscles bunch up in knots. As mommy’s form hovers over mine, casting me in the shadow of her majesty, drops of sweat fall from her skin and splatter onto my face and chest; the heat and dampness of those warm, salty beads seep through my pores like the sun’s rays on a beach towel. Jacqueline has turned her body into a war machine, a juggernaut of raw, pumping energy, with every joint and sinew attuned to the rhythmic slamming and splitting of vaginal tissue.

Under my head and shoulders, the cluster of fuzzy pillows keeps shifting. The bed frame creaks and shudders amidst the squelching of sodden flesh and the smack of balls. My face is wet with sweat and saliva, my tongue tingles from the vigorous massages. The friction of her cockhead and shaft against my inner walls has worn their membranes into ribbons that spill out of my depths in red-tinged strands.

I’m adrift upon a haze of lust. The candlelit bedroom, its walls painted with undulating shadows, blurs into a wash of dim orange as my head lolls about feverishly. I breathe in the sweet, earthy tang of mommy’s sweat, and the pheromones seeping out of her pores like honey from a comb. I’m headed into a whirlpool of ecstasy that threatens to pull me under. Fuck me and fuck me and fuck me to oblivion and beyond, until my last heartbeat gets squeezed out, until I’m sucked out of this world and hurled into the infinite blackness.

Jacqueline’s tresses, the feathers of a raven, fan out across my shoulders as she nestles her face in my neck. She presses her cushiony lips against my throat and plants a lingering, suctioning smooch, rolling her tongue over my jugular. My nerve endings spark and pop. With my head turned to the nightstand, I let out a shuddering sigh that extinguishes that candle: its flame winks out, a puff of smoke rises from the wick, and an acrid, sooty aroma drifts through the honey-colored gloom.

She nibbles at my neck, digging into the yielding skin and sinew with a gentle pressure that stings like the prick of thorns. Yes, carve bloody, flowery poetry into my flesh with your teeth; pain is a shard of glass that grinds against my tongue so I can taste life. Sink your incisors deeper and deeper, my goddess, until they puncture through, then tear off a chunk of my tissue. Out of my ruptured carotid will spurt liters of crimson love, hot blood that will pulsate and burble and flow down our throats. In the last seconds before my body starts cooling, as I gaze into your cobalt-blues that brim with the radiance of stars, I will gurgle my final ‘I love you.’ I’m ready to be reborn. Gorge yourself on my meat, scrape my bones clean, so my substance nourishes and melds with yours, becoming one flesh in the darkness. Then scatter my pulpy remains over the faux-fur pillows like a sacrifice at an altar.

With her iron truncheon lodged in the pulsing grip of my vagina, Jacqueline’s thrusting grows erratic and savage. Her face is hovering so close that I could count every strand of eyelash. Those irises have broken down into intricate hues: apart from the dominant cobalt blue, streaks of cerulean blue radiating from the pupil; flecks of indigo near the halo that encircles the black center; a navy blue rim that frames the iris. Both eyeballs are coated with a film of tears that reflects the candlelight in shimmers of yellow and gold.

Her shaft is swelling and throbbing like a dam struggling to contain an overflowing lake. Her gaze grows hazy, her cheeks blush scarlet, her breath comes in panting bursts: Jacqueline is ready to explode like a firework on New Year’s Eve.

I hook my ankles around her lower back.

Jacqueline’s pupils constrict as her gaze snaps into focus, locked with mine. The watery film on her right eyeball beads into a crystalline tear and drips onto my left cornea, blurring my vision.

A thunderclap rumbles through Jacqueline’s core, shaking her tits, making her knees tremble. Her thighs and abs clench, her pelvis jerks and bucks. Here it comes: a frothy white tsunami that will devastate a distant shore. A massive backdraft that will burn me and this apartment building with white-hot flames. A galaxy-wide stream of plasma unleashed from a crack in space-time.

She’s blasting and blasting me with jets boiling with microscopic life, that slop around my inner walls and flood my womb, inflating it with the pressure of a balloon. My abdomen bulges, my internal organs shift. A surge of shuddering, twitching, and spasming has made me go cross-eyed. I’m getting sucked deeper and deeper into a vortex of bliss, beyond reason, beyond myself, toward a light too bright to behold or understand.

Where am I? What happened? What is this serene calm? I feel like honey melting in a scorching summer noon. Gone are the spiders scuttling through my nervous system, gone are the monkeys pushing and pulling random levers in the projectionist booth of my mind-theater. The demons are snoring on their cots like babies, their claws folded over their eyes. Is this what normalcy feels like? Is this why those idiots whose smiles come easy enjoy being alive?

As I raise my eyelids, I find myself in a bedroom bathed in flickering candlelight, a stark contrast to the harsh fluorescents of the office. I’m lying supine on moist bedclothes, with a cluster of fluffy pillows cushioning my head and shoulders. I smell a mix of hair shampoo, shower gel, woodsy candle scents, sweat, and the musky tang of coitus. The hot, meaty bulk that weighed me down gets lifted: Jacqueline has pushed herself upright to sit back on her heels. With a slurp, she yanks out of me her glistening, blood-caked dick, whose cockhead squirts a few leftover droplets of cream onto my pubes.

She bends down to scoop up some of the discharge dribbling out of my stretched-out vagina, then she shows me those fingers coated in a pearlescent swirl of cum and blood.

“Mon bébé,” Jacqueline purrs in a throaty voice, “you know I went through the trouble of having my sperm tested at a lab? Turns out that this magical plumbing works. Isn’t it a miracle?”

My groin thrums and shivers with the ghost of mommy’s manhood, and a trail of her semen is trickling down the crack of my ass. I have become raw and tender as an inflamed wound: every whisper of emotion overwhelms me, swelling like a tide from all directions.

As I gaze upon Jacqueline, whose face is flushed with a rosy afterglow, her features blur like viewed through a waterlogged mirror. A burning ache creeps up my throat, accompanied by a throbbing in my heart. Before I think of blinking away the moisture, thick tears are rolling down my temples and soaking the hair around my ears.

“Jacqueline,” I say, even though I knew I would never speak again, “if the universe ends, you and Nairu will die.”

Jacqueline takes a deep breath, then scoots closer and lays herself beside me, resting her head on the crook of her elbow. She drapes her other arm around my midsection and pulls me close so that her lace-adorned breasts smush against my side. Our sweat-slickened skins fuse.

“Oh, ma petite chouette, fucked back to basic truths.”

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Fineshrine” by Purity Ring, “I Bet on Losing Dogs” by Mitski, “Have One on Me” by Joanna Newsom, and “Atlantis” by Donovan.

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

Did ya know that I spend hours after each chapter to produce an audio version of it? Well, I do.

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As the plush fabric of the rug yields under my kneecaps, even if I had lost my sense of sight, I would feel the heat radiating from the beast that Jacqueline is pointing at my face. I would feel the tension in its shaft, the thrumming of blood in its veins. I would smell its sharp tang that tugs at my ovaries and sends a tremor through my bones, an iron musk that triggers the urge to inhale a lungful as if I were a cokehead seeking her fix. But my eyes present me with the sight of the crimson crown: it hovers near my nose, so close that, through the slit gaping like a toothless mouth, I can peer down the bore of that flesh barrel.

I imagine the moment of release akin to a dam breaking or a volcano erupting: as the pressure within the shaft builds to a boil, a torrent of scorching, frothy white would gush forth from Jacqueline’s towering meat-mast. The first surge, like fired from a firehose, would imprint a goopy starburst onto my chest, smearing my skin from sternum to chin. The next volley would whack me square in the face and splatter my hair, coating my eyelids and nose and mouth with its gummy texture as if it were sunscreen. The thick seed would cling to my features like a layer of rubber: a demon’s mask melted onto my skull. The cock, with its remaining load, would spurt and pulse, spurt and pulse. My goddess of debauchery has become a fireman in a world ablaze; if left to her whims, she would keep spraying, spurting, and spewing until the global sea level swelled to new highs, surpassing the hundred and twenty meter increase observed since the last ice age, flooding cities to the rooftops, drowning whole species in her sticky deluge.

Jacqueline is stroking my scalp, but I wish she would clasp my head and yank me so that her engorged cockhead kissed one of my corneas. The hot, solid pole, throbbing and vein-crisscrossed, would push against the yielding jelly, whose vision would spiral into a chaos of flashing colors and pinprick spots. An icy jab of pain would escalate into a maelström of agony, causing me to thrash and shriek, as the flesh-spike squashed the eyeball with a sickening squelch against its orbital socket: the blood vessels would rupture, the nerves sever, the vitreous humor discharge. Once her cockhead nestled against the orbital rim, Jacqueline, rocking her pelvis with stabbing thrusts, would drive her meat-truncheon like a chisel until the wall cracked. Prying apart the bone shards with wet crunches, she would plunge into the sinus cavity. From there she’d breach into the cranial vault. Her member would shred through the fibrous meninges amidst which cerebrospinal fluid ebbs and flows, to reach the frontal lobe. As an alien warmth rent my brain tissue like pizza dough, seizing my synapses and firing off sparks of ecstasy, the world would shatter into disjointed fragments. A black void would expand within my self, swallowing chunks of who I was and could have become. Jacqueline’s cock, lodged snugly between the convolutions of my gray matter, would unleash a viral payload that would rewire my neural pathways. Who’s to say what sort of madness would bloom?

Her corona, a bulb of pulsing meat, prods my cheek as if vying for my attention. I’m breathing shallowly, my vagina is clenching with the urge to be filled. I tilt my chin upwards and behold my beloved past the meaty obelisk. Trails of sweat like rivers on a map are shimmering white upon the sculpted landscape of Jacqueline’s abdomen, its peaks and dips highlighted by the honey-golden glare of the candle flames. High on her torso, the plunging lace bralette encases her pair of bronze-tinged flesh-boulders, whose nipples are pushing the intricate, wavelike patterns. Nestled in the valley between her breasts, mommy’s glorious visage gazes down at me with a look that would enchant anyone into a willing slave. Her hooded cobalt-blues are swimming in lust, and her cheeks blushing with a powder-pink aphrodisiac glow. I wish this giantess would scoop up my unworthy form like a doll, then pop my head into her mouth and suck me dry.

“Balls first, mon coeur,” Jacqueline purrs.

Her sac, bloated with a seething, sloshing broth, hangs heavy as a ripe peach. If I were to prick that taut skin with a needle, her salty seed would erupt with the strength of an industrial-grade waterjet cutter, carving through my face like the jet slices through centimeters of steel. Down the corners of my lips dribble rivulets of drool.

“Leire,” Jacqueline says in a husky voice, “tilt your head back and open that sweet little mouth, like a good girl.”

My head falls back and my jaws part as if I were a newborn chick waiting for a worm to fall out of the sky. Jacqueline steps closer and lowers her hips until the hot, leathery pouch lands on my tongue. As its weighty load presses down, a shiver jolts through mommy and escapes her throat in a groan.

“You’re salivating so much, my delight, it’s like dipping them in a hot bath.”

I close my eyes. With the adoration and reverence that a priestess would bestow upon a sacred artifact, and with her throbbing shaft draped over my forehead, I lick my goddess’ scrotum in languorous, rolling sweeps, kneading its fatty bulk. The wrinkles and ridges come alive, quivering and tensing.

Jacqueline’s fingernails are scratching my scalp. I grab onto her thighs with both hands, some of my fingers digging into the firm, tensed-up muscle, the rest into the lace band of her stockings.

I engulf her swollen ballsack in my mouth, and trace the shifting, squirming nuts inside. One of my hands has drifted to my vulva. The middle finger runs up and down the slick divide before diving into the sopping depths. I need to sink my teeth into the flesh-rind of these balls, peel the scrotum open like a ripe fig, and munch on her spongy orbs as I savor their juices.

I pull back, allowing mommy’s scrotum to slide off my tongue and sway freely. My saliva is accentuating the wrinkles and folds with a glossy sheen. Along its bottom, beads of fluid morph into shimmering threads.

“Jacqueline…” I murmur.

Honey-golden specks dance in mommy’s cobalt-blues as a coy smirk crawls over her lust-drunk face.

“What is it, my love?”

“Me laisserez-vous mordre vos couilles?”

Jacqueline gasps, her eyes widen. The predator inside her recoils as if realizing it risked snagging its ballsack on barbwire.

“Tu veux les mordre?”

“Oui, maman,” I whimper.

“So, once again, I miscalculated the depths of your appetite. Détendez-vous, ma petite chasseuse. You can’t bite mommy’s balls. Think about how painful and messy it would be.”

I swallow the lump in my throat, and I lower my gaze. My fingertips disappear in the fuzzy rug. This heat and humidity are smothering me like a wool blanket in summer.

Jacqueline’s bare feet step forward. She grabs her dick and presses its weeping crown against my forehead, branding me with a fiery imprint, before she starts rubbing her glans over my skin, spreading a wet and warm layer of slime in vertical, diagonal, and horizontal streaks. She steps back as if to admire her work.

“Do you know what I’ve written on that pretty forehead of yours, ma chérie?”

“N-no.”

“I have etched in ‘MINE.’ Do you know why?”

A bonfire flares up in my loins, one that could melt steel and rock alike.

“Yes.”

“Please share.”

“Because I’m yours.”

Jacqueline crouches before me, and cradles my face in her hands as if it were a cracked teacup that she wished she could repair.

“That’s right. My little doll now and till the end of time, are you not? And I will take care of what belongs to me.”

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Debaser” by Pixies, and “Flame” by Sebadoh.

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

Do you want to relive this chapter but in an audio format? No? Well, here’s the link anyway.

Only slightly related to this chapter, and for those of us who have been interested for years in the demise of the Ice Age, I recently came across this small article: Comet impacted Earth 12,800 years ago and changed human history. Similar articles have been showing up this past week on my Google Alerts feed.