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Jacqueline’s grip slides in an upwards motion along the length of her cock. She twists her wrist gently at the apex, then she thrusts her hand back down to the base, flexing and curling the ropy veins that bulge beneath the skin. Her shaft pulsates in the rhythm of a serpent struggling to ingest a mouse.

While she strokes herself faster, the column of blood-engorged tissue swells as if inflated by a bellows, acquiring the consistency of a wooden beam, and a thickness that could choke a horse. From the slit of the bulbous, waxy dome oozes a pearl of pre-cum. Rubbing her thumb, Jacqueline smears the slimy fluid around, making the glans gleam in the candlelight like a fresh bruise.

Mommy’s breaths become rapid and shallow. Wet squelches fill the bedroom as her right hand, its fingers fighting to encase even half of the girth, pumps up and down the tumescent meat-tower, from the leaking tip to the root and back, over and over. Her firm grip must feel like she’s holding onto a pillar of lava, whose throbs and twitches bespeak of a hidden engine roaring and revving, that risks spilling its white-hot fuel. The glans has blossomed to an eggplant shade of purple. Those bulky balls clench, about to cough up a glittering stream. I’m gawking at a pole that would support a flag. At a missile poised to launch. At a war club forged by the gods to break down the gates of Olympus. This abomination of a dick, an insult to the reproductive organs of mankind, could breed the planet to overflowing, turning the solar system into a generational cradle for its progeny.

A sheen of perspiration has sprouted over Jacqueline’s body. Beads of sweat gather at her hairline and dribble down her forehead; some drip onto the ruffles of her choker, where they twinkle like crystals, and others fall onto her tits, where they streak over those twin hills of bouncy flesh and cling to the lace of her bralette like dew on spiderwebs. The physical exertion has etched a grimace onto her flushed face: her eyebrows are furrowed, her jaw clenched, her nostrils flared. The light in her cobalt-blues is dimming like a dying star.

I picture a crimson-tinted niche in which a heart struggles to beat as its muscle fibers strain, until the organ pops like a water balloon, spraying out gobs of flesh, blood and gore. A cold jolt of fear shoots down my spine.

“Jacqueline, stop!”

The shout that has shattered the midnight silence ricochets off the walls. My hand rockets to my mouth. I’m shown a close-up of Nairu startled awake, her chestnut hair mussed. As she rubs the sleep out of her eyes, she climbs down from her unicorn-themed bed, leaves her bedroom, and bursts through our locked door like a cannonball, to find me as naked as when we first met.

“What sort of maniac has desecrated my slumber?” demands Nairu.

The antediluvian waif stands with her face contorted into a scowl, and her tiny fists balled. My gaze travels from her wild hair to her sleepwear: a fuzzy, mint-green onesie sprinkled with stars and moons.

Jacqueline, the goddess whose radiance elevates us from the squalor and strife of this planet, and who has tucked her still-raging penis away, steps forward and bows in supplication before our adopted child.

“Je suis désolée, mademoiselle. Mommy and mommy were enjoying some adult time.”

“You people make such a racket, I cannot rest in peace!”

“Th-this is merely a misunderstanding,” I say. “It must have been a rat.”

My heart shrivels with remorse and shame as the child squints at me, perhaps expecting me to strip off my skin and reveal the hideous gargoyle underneath. I’m reminded of her Paleolithic upbringing: those cavernous dens crammed with stalactites, reeking of offal and guano. Every night she must have slept with a knife in her hand.

“Why would a rat scream like a lunatic?”

“S-some vermin are nocturnal.”

Nairu arches her eyebrows, then a yawn ripples through her mouth. She shrugs.

“That’s a fact, so I consider the matter settled. But please put a cork in it, oui? Otherwise I’ll have to search for a new dwelling free of rats and nutcases.”

She turns towards the exit and navigates her way over the jagged fragments and splintered shards of the door, heading back to bed.

Jacqueline’s chest heaves with ragged pants. Her gaze has locked on me, and the grimace of exertion has given way to bewilderment. My brain sizzles and crackles as my neurons reconnect. I had forgotten to breathe while mommy flirted with the edge.

“Are you enlarging your heart as well?” I ask in a controlled tone. “The same way big wings require strong back muscles, such a gargantuan dick must demand an elephant’s heart to pump it full of blood. Hell, maybe even a whale’s, with arteries wide enough to slide through. Your shapeshifting power may let you stay forever young and fit, but I’m quite sure that if your heart were to explode, you’d drop dead like any random pleb.”

Jacqueline pales. She presses her index and middle fingers against her carotid to check her heart rate. The mammoth dick, as it flops about, deflates in fast motion to a flaccid state and the girth of a beef sausage: its veins recede into the flesh, its crown shrinks and retreats into its sheath. Her engine must be cooling off, because her shoulders sag, and she lets out a long sigh.

“Even in the best of times,” I say, “men’s cocks exert an undue influence upon their minds, so a dick that size must operate like those zombie-raising parasitic fungi.”

Jacqueline wipes a lock of sweat-tangled hair away from her forehead.

“It’s not just the dick’s fault, ma chérie, it’s yours. You have hypnotized me with those enchanting eyes and that sweet little mouth. Your aura, your presence, it all makes me want to spend my seed in a deluge, to impregnate you with a hundred babies.”

A flush crawls up my face.

“S-see, that’s the cock talking.”

She hefts her flaccid, wrinkled member and waggles it back and forth.

“I did go above and beyond. I wanted to impress you, darling.”

Jacqueline slumps next to me on the edge of her bed, causing the mattress to sink under her weight. She examines the palm of her right hand, whose pads and creases glisten with moisture. Mommy, adorned with a choker, a plunging lace bralette, a garter belt, and sheer stockings, looks like a high-class escort who’s reconsidering her life choices. Even a goddess with a magical penis may harbor the shadows of our frail and ephemeral existence.

I wrap my left arm around her back, then nuzzle against her temple. She smells of fresh sweat, musky and salty.

“You may have a cock,” I whisper, “but you’re all pussy.”

Jacqueline chuckles.

“That feels good to hear, mon chouette.”

“And I was beyond impressed with you even before you grew a penis that would make the rest cry in shame.”

Jacqueline’s warmth seeps into me like the heat of a hearth; it penetrates my bones and dissolves my aches. She’s the tether that keeps me from falling into the abyss, from drifting off into my inner wilderness and never returning. As the fingers of my left hand drift over the bumps and ridges of her vertebrae, as my mouth kisses and nips the delicate flesh of her ear, I reach down to caress her belly. The abdominal muscles tense up. I slide that hand to her lap and take hold of her flaccid member. Jacqueline’s breath hitches. With my touch and a surge of blood, the organ twitches, swells, and lengthens, pushing against the confines of my fist: the shaft stiffens, the veins bulge, the crown emerges.

The flickering flames, like a fading sunset, are casting dancing shadows over my right hand as it glides up and down the silken skin of the meat-rod. A vulture of desire settles in my gut, stirring my insides with its fluttering wings, aching for me to satisfy its craving for flesh and blood.

My nipples grow hard, my nethers wet. I lick my lips. I’m tempted to lean down and swirl my tongue around that slit to lap up the salty liquid, like licking the tears of a weeping god. I imagine myself closing my mouth around the glans, slathering it with saliva, then gulping down the shaft centimeter by throbbing centimeter, swallowing her in a wet, tight sheath of velvet. I’d let her use my mouth as a cocksleeve until she detonated in a steaming jet that could fill a trough.

Jacqueline swivels her face towards me, pressing our cheeks together. Her warm breath puffs into my mouth.

“You’re drooling like a hungry puppy, my naughty little slut,” mommy purrs, her voice thick with lust.

She’s sporting a predatory grin that exposes the razor edges of her pearly teeth. Those eyes, pools of cobalt-blue fire, sting me, sear my flesh and soul as if she were scorching a hole in my psyche, implanting her mother-shaped presence in the dark, fathomless abyss of my mind, where I keep my demons locked away.

The heat emanating from her mouth reaches out for mine in tendril-thin, invisible tentacles. A shiver races down my spine. She engulfs me in the fiery warmth, the velvety interior of her cheeks, the rough edges of her taste buds, the lubricating essence seeping from her glands.

Mommy releases my mouth with an audible pop. A strand of saliva stretches between our tongues, glimmering in the candlelight, before breaking.

“Oh, ma petite puce,” she breathes out, “the same person who used to hunch over her computer and rarely spoke. Look at you playing with my dick like it’s your favorite toy. I want to awaken you to the delights of licking balls, sucking cock, and swallowing a rich and creamy load. That’s what a horny little slut deserves, n’est-ce pas? So now I’ll stand up, and you’ll kneel before mommy like a servant before her queen.”

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Gold on the Ceiling” by The Black Keys, and “You Just Want” by King Creosote.

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

Wanna feel this uncomfortable again but in an audio format? Check out the corresponding audiochapter!

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

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

“M-mon dieu,” I mumble.

A smirk blooms on Jacqueline’s lips.

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

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

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

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

“Y-your pussy is gone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t have a penis,” I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, please drown yourself in a puddle.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My poor chérie.”

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

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

“A real shame, bien sûr.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It would punch apart and pulverize my guts.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I-I am starving.”

She winks at me mischievously.

“Let’s get on to it, then.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about Nairu?” I blurt out.

The rustle of fabric stops.

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

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

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

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

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

Jacqueline’s chuckle echoes in my ears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sources of endless wonder, of worshipful awe, to my eyes and lips and tongue, the thought of their satiny and succulent surfaces, their elasticity and heft in my grasp, has haunted me from the moment I first caught a glimpse of them at the office, and ever since I kneaded and caressed their velvet texture, inhaled their intoxicating fragrance, and savored their creamy taste, I have yearned to be swallowed up by that warmth again, like a woman stranded in a blizzard seeking the hearth and blankets of home. Oh, my blessed Jacqueline, mommy dearest, may Arachne’s silken threads weave me a cradle within your heaving milk-tanks!

As the flames of the candles flicker and dance, they splash their honey-golden glow upon the ivory statue that stands before me proud and nude. A demigoddess. Jacqueline-but-French.

My skin crawls with an icy sensation. In those shimmering eyes that have always seen through me, the collarettes, crypts and striations that paint the irises cobalt blue, do they belong to yet another character in a shapeshifting play?

“Is this… you?” I ask.

Jacqueline’s shoulders droop, and she glances down at the rug.

“Ah, je savais que ça viendrait. I can transform into different people, so what are the odds that the way I present myself in my everyday life can be considered ‘me’?”

“I suppose that’s what I meant.”

She combs a hand through her raven-black tresses, then fans them out to cascade over her shoulder in a lustrous curtain.

“The body you’re looking at, and that you adore, is the closest to the one that my parents’ genes crafted, and with which I identified growing up. Not the original, though, because I enhanced it, with my own spicy seasoning added in, to match the woman that presented herself in that darkness: my mental self-image. You could call it mon vrai moi, one free from the ravages of time, other than minor imperfections that would be hard to justify lacking at my age.” She raises her hands to her eyes and touches the hints of crow’s feet.

So Jacqueline also hated her body, although likely not to the extent that I do of wanting to vomit every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror. Yet another evidence that our fates were following parallel paths of angst and neuroses that would end up with us entangled and sweaty in her queen-size bed.

“Even before we met each other,” I say wistfully, “you and I were both misfits that society disdained. Lonely wolves prowling on a frozen continent of their own to keep sane.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But I’m forty-four years old, darling. Forty-goddamn-four. No idea how that happened. Anyway, even far richer women, with millions to spare, couldn’t afford the kind of upgrade I’ve given myself. You’ve known my age; how did you rationalize that I looked this fresh?”

“Privileged genetics? I mean, that’s what you told me.”

Jacqueline’s cobalt-blues frost over as if clouded by turmoil. Her statuesque posture deflates.

“Oh, mon petit chou, forgive me for the little masquerade. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I was scared whether you’d still adore me.”

“I’m not running out of adoration any time soon. I do wonder how you used to look like, though.”

She grimaces, then sighs.

“Darling, I’ve consigned that version of me to history. Even your charms cannot resurrect it. Let me put it this way: if you had suffered through your teenage years with a face ravaged by acne, you wouldn’t want to go back, would you?”

“My goodness, that bad?”

“Heureusement non; those poor kids end up traumatized. I was lucky as far as adolescent skin goes, just a little zit here and there. I’m talking about the ‘growing old’ version of that: wrinkles, gray hairs, a flabby stomach, sagging boobs, cellulite. Yuck, I’d rather keep my mind clean. You wouldn’t have swooned and drooled over me, I promise.”

I picture Jacqueline’s hair thinning as the blackness gives way to strands of cottony white. Her cheeks and chin sag into a jowly, hound-like shape, dissolving the jawline. Her ivory-white skin turns leathery and splotchy. Her mighty breasts, their once-full contours collapsed, wilt into two droopy pendulums. Her ass becomes a bulging, cottage-cheese-like mass. Maybe my shoulders should shudder at the image of Jacqueline, the voluptuous goddess that has rocked my world and inflamed my lust, transformed into a crone with withered teats, wreathed by a halo of spiderwebs.

“But I’m into mommies.”

“I wouldn’t want you to associate this mommy with that whole getup, mon trésor. Still, it isn’t just about wrinkles and cellulite. It’s also about the diminishing sands in the hourglass, the knowledge that the world is erasing us petit à petit. Our health and youth are crumbling away with every breath. We are aware that this road ends in pain, and yet we keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

I rub the back of my neck, where a patch of prickling heat has erupted under my skin.

“Sure, people are good at believing two opposite things at once, even when neither of them makes sense. We’re wired to fool others as well as ourselves; otherwise we wouldn’t have made it far as a species.”

“Nobody should have to grow old, Leire.”

“The stars also burn out,” I say in sympathy. “Perhaps I find comfort in the inevitability of it all.”

Jacqueline pauses, her fingers lingering over her eyelids. When she speaks again, her voice carries a weight.

“That’s the thing: I may be the first person in history who can remain forever young, at least on the outside.”

My right hand clenches and unclenches the bedclothes. So mommy can dodge the ceaseless march of time and stay ever-delectable. I’m in love with an evergreen blossom amid the dust and ruin.

“As long as maintaining these forms doesn’t exhaust you more than reverting to your original self, then great.”

“I don’t need to concentrate, ma chérie. It’s like flipping a switch.”

“And the celestial vision with which you brighten my life is a testament to your healthy self-esteem. If I could shapeshift into my mental self-image, you’d never stop screaming.”

Jacqueline chuckles through a pained grin as she brushes a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Oh, choupette. You have become more confident and composed than the withdrawn mouse you were before we started dating.”

“Even so, it’s due to your motherly influence, your encouragement, and your relentless pursuit of pleasure. I have done nothing to deserve an improvement.”

For years, my mind has felt like an outdated computer: slower over time, lagging in memory retrieval, prone to glitching out and needing to restart. One day, a silhouette will stand shin-deep in a shapeless pile of bones and rotting flesh that once gave shape to a human being. Watch me grow old and die.

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Broken Chairs” by Built to Spill.

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

Want to listen to this lovely couple’s philosophical discussion? Check out the audiochapter.

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A flicker, like a glitch in a high-res display, crosses the Asian features of my beloved Jacqueline. In a heartbeat, I find myself staring into slate-blue irises encircled by bold rings of black, round eyes that stand out in a heart-shaped face whose skin, pale and luminous as a pearl, is dotted with freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. The plumpness of her lower lip stirs a desire to draw close and savor its sweetness. In the glow of the candlelight, her wavy, copper mane comes alive with streaks of tiger-orange, as if the strands were catching fire.

Her mouth stretches into an impish grin. She shifts her body, making her copper waves ripple, to strike a pose: legs slightly apart, fists on her hips. Her bare chest, pushed out, is scattered with freckles like a constellation of brown stars.

“Alive and kicking, as you can tell,” she says in a high-pitched voice and an effervescent lilt.

A vision from the Celtic folklore, a sunburst in the honey-drenched darkness. The way the colors fade from pink to orange to red, she reminds me of a summer sunrise.

“Irish Jacqueline,” I mumble.

Jacqueline-but-Irish sweeps the tumbling tresses away from her freckled shoulders, so she can cup the slight slopes of her breasts, squeezing them gently with her slender fingers, pressing and molding her flesh into rounder mounds. She rubs the areolae with her thumbs, then coaxes her nipples into thickening peaks.

“In my mind, I refer to this body differently, but… Ah, it always makes me feel so naughty.”

As Jacqueline caresses her midriff, her other hand twists and curls a copper lock that resembles a wave of living flame. The candlelight flickers in her eyes, which are blue like glacier ice, their depths shimmering with lust.

A nervous energy ripples through me, triggering tingles throughout my body. I’m getting hungrier.

“Of the many forms I have conjured up,” Jacqueline says, “this is my second favorite. Aren’t most people suckers for redheads? Imagine this colleen, with an appetite for mischief and debauchery, approaching you on the street.”

“O-on a dockside pub or a foggy moor. Stargazing and witchcraft in the moonlight.”

Her eyelids dip halfway.

“Wherever, her black Mary Janes click as she saunters over. She’s wearing a white blouse that shows off her freckled cleavage, a short plaid skirt that hugs her hips, and knee-high socks with frilly edges. Her red hair is tied in two braids that fall over her shoulders. Your senses are overwhelmed by her sweet and woodsy aroma. What wouldn’t this little vixen, this wood nymph from the deepest forests of Éire if you prefer, do to warm your dead, shriveled heart? You might struggle against her allure, but in the end, no fruit tastes sweeter than the forbidden.”

This pagan beauty must have stirred in many people the yearning to bury their faces in her fiery hair, to trace her freckles with their lips, to get drunk on her taste, to quench the firestorm within them by piercing her maidenhead and filling her with creamy seed. Oh, she could burn the world’s eyes out, and lure any hapless soul to drown.

From the base of my spine to my skull, a shockwave-like chill courses through my body, raising goosebumps on my arms and nape. In the aftermath, my skin still crawls with tiny sparks. I lick my lips and swallow past the lump in my throat. My hand has drifted to my inner thigh, seeking the warmth radiating from my core, the moisture gathering between my folds. I’m resisting the urge to rub myself, maybe in part to avoid tainting my fingers with my own filth.

“C-crack a pint and sing a few shanties before you bang the flesh off my bones.”

Jacqueline’s smile deepens, and her eyes, two sapphires set in her freckled face, sparkle as she ogles my exposed crotch. I look down. A rivulet of clear fluid is trickling out of my vulva and dripping onto the cloud-white bedding, staining it with a widening lust-blotch as if the comforter were a canvas and I the artist spilling paint. I smell the scent wafting up from my pussy, a primal musk, along with a metallic tang reminiscent of blood.

“You’d like me to assist you with that,” Jacqueline surmises, “wouldn’t you, darling?”

Jacqueline-but-Irish strides toward me with catlike grace. Her copper waves bounce as she leaps onto my lap, straddling me, gripping my hips with her thighs. She slings her arms around my neck and tugs me into an embrace, squeezing her hardened nubs against my tit-flesh. I feel her warm skin and the way her heart races. A surge of desire crashes against the shore of my libido like a wave, one that seethes with foam and carries the briny aroma of the ocean.

The world shrinks as if a wall of brambles and ferns had sprouted around us. Her hair caresses my cheek and tickles my throat. Her lips brush the lobe of my ear as she whispers words of fire.

“I can hear your thirsty heart, babe. Let it pump those hot and heady juices.”

Jacqueline, thrusting her hips, grinds her slippery mound against mine, her swollen bud against mine. A jolt of electricity arcs through my nervous system, igniting my synapses, causing me to gasp and shudder in her arms. She purrs. Her mouth closes around my earlobe, which she nibbles. My clit throbs with a heartbeat-like rhythm while I bask in the smooth, oily friction of our pussies rubbing together, along with the wet noises and juicy squelches. I grasp Jacqueline’s buttocks and squeeze them, digging my fingertips into the tender flesh. As my arousal rises like a hot-air balloon, the syrupy heat that has replaced the blood in my veins threatens to immolate me.

Her visage, sprinkled with cinnamon-like freckles, fills my field of vision, framed by wavy copper tresses. She’s staring at me with the blushing countenance of a Renaissance painting, her half-lidded gaze like the blue flames of a gas-powered stove. Her glossy, Irish lips pucker as she leans closer, wanting us to merge into a kiss. I’d only have to breathe out an invitation for her mouth to meet mine, our tongues to entwine, our saliva to mingle. She will taste like honey and wine.

I’m breathing air thick with the aroma of melting wax mixed with that of rose, jasmine, and sandalwood. Within the jitterbug of hormones and this lust-laden gloom, my brain has liquefied, and I feel like a puddle of sparks. Yet, I turn my head away.

Her moist lips press against my left cheek, and when she draws back, her warm breath tickles my skin.

“Oh? You don’t want to smooch?”

“That’s cheating. I’m a one-woman-at-a-time gal.”

As she giggles, her stiff tit-tips graze mine, which sends a heatwave through me.

“But grinding our pussies together is fine?”

“S-somehow that’s different.”

Jacqueline-but-Irish cradles my head between her palms as if it were a sacred relic.

“Ma coquine bien-aimée, you think this was a test? You’d be making out with mommy no matter what body I’m wearing.”

“Sorry, Jacqueline. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the display of shapeshifting. I’m blown away but also scared and horny.”

“Je te pardonne, bébé. Let me assure you that you don’t need to be afraid.”

Her arms unwind from the embrace around my neck. She places the palms on my shoulders and, as her copper locks sway like a waterfall of flame, she shifts her weight off me, dismounting from my lap onto the plush comfort of the bedside rug. The sudden absence of her heat leaves me desolate.

Under a strip of fiery copper fuzz, almost scarlet, Jacqueline’s vulva glistens pinkly in the candlelight, slathered with a glaze. Her nectar has trickled down the crease and slickened her inner thighs.

Jacqueline-but-Irish inches her right hand down her stomach, past the navel, and runs those fingers through the patch of copper curls. She strokes herself, sliding her middle finger along the wet groove and over the engorged berry. After she widens her stance, she teases the soaked petals apart, and her ruby-hued insides blossom. She dips a finger into the velveteen depths. When she pulls it out, her digit emerges with a glimmering thread.

“Isn’t it exquisite?” she asks breathily. “The rosy sheen of this soaking honeypot, the juicy scent, the sluttish mess of it all. Don’t you want to find out what a teen’s pussy tastes like?”

My pulse is hammering. My brain still burns with the friction-fed flames of lust. I won’t deny it to myself: I want to fall to my knees before Jacqueline-but-ginger. I want to bury my face in her damp snatch and feast on the clitoris of Ireland. I want to slurp up the salty tang of this druidess’ nectar, to suck out the sweetness of her womb like through a straw plugged into the fountain of youth, until she forgets her Celtic chants and the screams of banshees.

Liquid beads that cling to Jacqueline’s fingers reflect the candlelight in a rainbow shimmer. The air is saturated with a musky-sweet aroma like the fragrance of a ripe peach that has split open in the heat, dripping juice onto the sun-baked grass. I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, gazing down at the roiling sea that crashes and foams against jagged rocks. The sparkling spray shoots upward and outward in fan-shaped mists. My palms sweat, the wind whips my hair about my face. I’m afraid of landing on the sharp teeth of the reefs far below, where the waters would boil with a froth of blood.

“Another time,” I whisper. “Right now I need you as you are.”

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “Look” by Sébastien Tellier, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel so far. A hundred and seventy-six videos so far. Check them out.

Taste this chapter in an audio format through this link.