A Chaperone for Hybrids (Poetry)

They first abducted me in the woods,
Where I went to play the guitar in peace.
I suddenly felt something strange,
An electric shock that ran down my spine.
My heart was beating fast, my body trembled.
The sky sounded like a machine was drilling,
And lights flashed above me like lightning.

A shadow fell over me, making me freeze.
It was projected by an enormous black ship.
Then, a strange voice spoke from far away,
“You are going to help us with our research.”
I tried to run but it felt like a force field
Took hold of me and dragged me up.

When I woke up in their ship,
I first noticed the aliens’ eyes:
Large, oval, and protruding,
Bright blue with an intensity
Like no other color I had seen.
Their pupils are small black dots
That stared at me unblinkingly
With a dreadful curiosity.

Their skin is a pale greenish-blue
That remind me of the ocean.
They smell nice, fresh and clean,
Very different from my own scent,
But these freaks are hairless
Except for their eyebrows,
And wisps of white around their ears
Which resemble antennae.

They communicate through telepathy,
As I had already expected.
Their voices sound in my head
Like thunder or rolling waves.

They probably think we are primitive
Merely because we vocalize to speak.
This is only partially correct,
Because we also use body language
To express our thoughts and feelings.

The aliens are as stoic as they come:
They never smile nor frown,
Nor use their hands to gesture.
I doubt they feel joy or anger,
Or possibly even sadness.
It would explain why they didn’t have a clue
About why humankind came to be so fucked,
And it meant that we wouldn’t get along;
Most of our behaviors don’t make sense
Unless you think in terms of fun,
Or the primitive joy of destruction,
Or wanting to cum.

Due to the aliens’ telepathic nature,
They can share knowledge instantly,
Maybe while still maintaining privacy.
It took them long to figure out
That we can’t transmit our thoughts.
It might be hard to understand
How a complex society would succeed
When you can’t hear others in your mind.

As I lay down on an operating table,
They checked my vitals and drew my blood.
My heart rate increased,
My brain was buzzing like mad.
I started to sweat in the cool room.
The aliens explained that they would take
Some of my cells and analyze them
To find the DNA and check for mutations.

I had already read about abductions,
And I had wondered how I would react.
I wanted these far more intelligent beings
To consider me a fellow sentient creature,
If only to disuade them from butchering me,
So I didn’t curse, yell, cry, nor plead;
I just remained calm, polite and quiet.
They’d return me when they were done,
Or else they’d dissect me and put me in a jar.
In either case, I wouldn’t be able to do shit.

I hoped that they wouldn’t smell my fear.
I felt like they could take any part of me,
From my toes to my dick.
I feared that they might cut off my balls
For the sake of science.

I tried to get friendly with their leader,
Or at least the one who called the shots.
He answered me in perfect English
(But I only heard his voice in my head).
He said that he was a doctor
Who specialized in genetics and biology.
I asked him where they were from.

“We’re from the planet VX-742.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean much to me,
But nice to meet you, fellow people,
Because I hope you keep in mind
That I’m a person who would suffer pain,
Potentially harrowing amounts of it,
If you were to shove those sharp tools
Into any part of this fragile body.”
“Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you.”
I wiped the sweat off my forehead.
“Yes, you always say that kind of shit.
Are you guys going to kill me?”
“No, we just want to study you.”

I thought about cattle mutilations,
And the Guarapiranga Reservoir
(That man whose eyes, ears, tongue
And genitalia had been removed,
As well as the digestive organs,
With no signs of decomposition).
I wanted to bring up my abduction,
But I could tell that they wouldn’t care
(Or even worse, they wouldn’t understand).

“So, do you guys have FTL drives?”
I asked the aliens, with a smile.
They seemed surprised by my question,
They didn’t understand what it meant.
“I wanted to know about how fast
This cool spaceship of yours goes,” I said.
“You don’t have to worry about the speed,
Because we can go anywhere in space.”
I was excited about their discovery,
If only because humans might partake
(If we pass through the Great Filter).
They were confused by my agitation,
But they were kind enough to clarify.
“We don’t need to use fuel, our energy is infinite,
And we can just stop at the nearest star.”
“What? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

I thought about all the work it took
To build something complex like a car,
Or a computer chip or an iPhone.
Hell, I wouldn’t know how to create a chair.
These people had become their own gods.

I felt so insignificant in front of them,
But the aliens remained calm as I asked,
“Alright, so do you have music, or books?”
“Music and reading are primitive things
Which we don’t use anymore,
We have more advanced technologies,
But we are in the process of cataloguing
All the artistic production of your race.”

As a guitar player, that hurt,
But if I told them to fuck off,
They would dissect me like a frog.
“Do you know any good musicians,
Or writers who are doing great stuff?”
“We know many artists, but we haven’t
Discovered anyone worth mentioning yet.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to ask,
And I suddenly wanted to remain silent,
So I lay back and let them examine me.
One of the aliens used a weird device
To scan my brain and nervous system.
A few of the aliens touched my skin:
They seemed to be studying the texture.

Another alien pulled out a scalpel,
And I knew for sure I was about to die,
But he cut open my shirt to see my chest.
He could just have asked me to unbutton it.
I wondered if they would reimburse the damage.

I had a feeling they were checking out my ass.
I hoped they wouldn’t discover my prostate.
They took pictures of every inch of me
With a floating eyeball that seemed sentient.

I could hear the aliens talking inside my head
(It sounded like a crowd of drunken fans).
“I’d say he is a healthy specimen,
Although his heart rate seems too high.
The muscles in his legs and arms look strong.
His nipples are erect; he’s aroused.
He has very large testicles,
And his penis is well-developed.”
(But I might have imagined this part.)

Another alien went inside my mouth
With a long probe that made me squirm.
They removed some tissue from my throat.
They also took samples of my hair.
I was getting sick and nauseous from seeing
Their bizarre alien faces so close to mine.

The aliens took samples of semen
Despite my shrivelled balls
(I was cold, and containing my fear).
They had conjured a fancy hallucination:
As I lay on a paradisiac beach in the sunset,
I was approached by a Hollywood actress,
Who intended to seduce me of all people.
She wore a red dress with short sleeves,
And her breasts looked so big and soft.
As she kissed me, her nipples were erect.
(I could tell that this wasn’t real,
But I wanted to believe in that world.)

After the mirage fondled me for a while,
I came into an artificial vagina
That a dispassionate alien was holding,
As if I were your average bull stud.

“You’re fertile, you have excellent sperm,”
An alien said, but I felt violated.
That alien added unnecessary info:
“Your ejaculate contains a lot of fructose,
Which makes it ideal for our hybridization.”

I likely became the proud father
Of a whole series of hybrid children
That hopefully won’t require child support.

One of the humans they had abducted,
An old, frail lady who would have fainted
Merely by checking out her face in the mirror,
As soon as she regained consciousness
She suffered a heart attack and died.

The aliens didn’t react with emotion;
It’s almost as if they don’t feel pain,
So they can barely understand it.
They must be inhuman beings
Besides being technically aliens.

I thought of all the humans I’ve known,
From the homeless to the billionaires;
All the politicians, journalists,
And even my teachers at school.
They are all people, not a bunch
Of soulless machines.

The aliens cut that old woman open calmly,
And took out what they thought was necessary.
They removed her skin with a laser cutter
Without mercy for her old flesh and bone.

I told them this abducting business is wrong,
That they shouldn’t be experimenting on us,
But they said they would do so anyway
Because there was too much data available
From our brains, and from our DNA,
To learn more about human biology,
And they wanted to study our race
So they could better understand how
Humans think, feel, and make decisions.

They seemed to have a lot of respect
For humankind, despite their crimes
(Both the aliens’ and ours, I guess).
I wondered if they would use this info
To decide whether or not to destroy us,
And I wasn’t too confident in the odds
(I would probably destroy us if I could).

Because I didn’t freak out like the others
(A woman in her thirties had peed herself,
And was hugging her knees while sobbing),
I felt a sense of camaraderie with the aliens.
“I hope you guys don’t get caught and killed
By some human group trying to capture you.”
“Don’t worry. We’re protected by a force field
That prevents us from being seen.”

I asked them about the Great Filter.
They had passed it many millennia ago.
“We exist in a universe where we could live forever,
And we are free to create whatever lifeforms
We want without worrying about extinction.”
“What? You mean you created other species?”
“Yes, we have gone through millions of forms
In order to find ones that were suitable.”
“You guys didn’t create human beings, right?”
“We wouldn’t create a primitive species.”

The aliens said I had the potential
To become one of their most trusted allies,
But only after undergoing training.
They needed my help to reach more humans,
So they offered me to work for them.

I asked how I would get paid,
But it seemed that money was a concept
That the aliens couldn’t understand
(Or they pretended they didn’t).
They said my payment would come in time,
When I helped them achieve their goals.

“What are your goals, exactly?” I asked.
They told me that humanity had been stagnant
For too long, we were like a shipwreck.
We had to move forward or else die.

As I pondered their ominous words,
The aliens enticed me with benefits:
They would provide food, water, shelter,
A place to sleep at night, and sex.
They insisted about the available sex.
If I wanted sex, I just had to say, “Please.”
I wouldn’t need to worry about loneliness.

Intrigued, I inquired about their whores,
Or alien prostitutes, the preferred term.
The poor girls were artificial hybrids
Made from human and some aliens’ DNA
(They clarified that it came from different aliens,
Another species they experimented on).
My abductors said that I wouldn’t need to pay,
They wouldn’t even ask for my ID.

I took one look at those hybrid prostitutes,
Who looked like beautiful human women
Except with bulging, compound insectoid eyes.
They were clever enough to know all the moves.
I felt sorry about their lot in life,
But their mouths and pussies did wonders.

After one of those sexual encounters ended
And I lay on an alien mattress with the hybrid,
I caressed her naked back and kissed her neck.
Her bulging eyes were freaky, but whatever;
I hated plenty of stuff about my own body.

“Are you happy being an alien prostitute?”
I wished to know, although I feared the answer.
“Yes. I’m always happy no matter what.”
I realized that she wasn’t exaggerating;
I couldn’t sense any apprehension towards me,
Nor about her life as a likely sexual slave.
She was proud of being the property
Of these aliens, and even stated so.
“They’re kind, they give us everything we want.”

It was easy to give someone what they wanted,
If they could only want what you wanted,
And if they didn’t care about anything
But getting laid, then everyone’s a winner.

“Are you able to experience any discomfort
Like anxiety, sadness, depression, or other ills
With which us humans constantly struggle?”
I asked, but I didn’t want to hear the answer.
“No, we don’t feel pain nor suffering.
We are forever young, we will never decay,
And if something damages us,
Our bodies can be repaired easily.
Besides, we’re too busy having sex
With as many people as we can find.”

I couldn’t decide if I should pity this hybrid;
My life was dependent on lessening pain.
But her body was warm and her skin soft.
I would leave those dilemmas for academics.

Despite the aliens’ generous offer,
I refused to live in their ship.
I am a human, goddamn it,
And these fuckers kidnapped me.
I had to witness how they experimented
On the other hapless people,
Around ten of them in the same room.
The aliens didn’t give a shit
If the humans cried in terror,
So I would stay here, in this world of mine
That contains mostly things I don’t like.

The aliens didn’t seem to understand
Why I was so reluctant to stay;
They thought I would be grateful
That they would have taken me away
From the horrors of human society,
But I told them I wasn’t a sadist,
And I didn’t want to see humans suffer.
The aliens’ expressions remained vacant.

After they returned me back home,
I was happy that they hadn’t murdered me,
So I casually welcomed meeting them again.
They promised that they would come back,
Because a chill human could help their goals
(They didn’t put it in those words).

Although I wanted to tell the whole world
About my disconcerting experience,
I would be another babbling loon
For the majority of this fucked up species.

I had been abducted with other folks,
But I never expected to come across
One of such sufferers in civilian clothes,
Until I talked with a friend of mine,
A dopehead who couldn’t find a job.
Although she had also been abducted,
She believed it had been a hallucination.

“Yeah man, I was totally wasted
When I saw a UFO land.
It was so bizarre and cool.
They had these big fucking eyes,
All bright blue and shit,
And I felt like I was flying!”

She didn’t believe me
Even when I showed her the scars
From the alien surgical tools,
So there was no point in telling others.

As they days passed, I grew jumpy;
I had nightmares about being abducted,
And I had developed something like PTSD.
These fucking aliens were fiends.
Kidnapping people is a violent act,
No matter how cool they acted about it.
They must have been malicious by default,
Or at the very least chaotic neutral.

They cared for us like we care for bears,
In the sense that we study them,
In some cases share cool moments
(Like enticing them with food to wave,
While recording it for YouTube),
A few freaks try to fuck them,
But otherwise we stay away,
Because bears can get homicidal
Against nearby human beings
Who were merely standing around
(Either because they feared for the cubs,
Or just because bears are angry maniacs).

But I did empathize with the wariness
That the aliens displayed about us:
I would have chosen to be a giraffe
Instead.

I suspected that these aliens had abducted
Many people from different countries
For their scientific research,
And had kept many of them
As pets, or as slaves of any kind.

The aliens weren’t forthcoming
About the truth of these matters,
But whenever I was abducted again,
I asked the aliens to take care of them,
Of the other abducted people I mean,
So they wouldn’t die of hunger or thirst,
And to contact me if they needed help
(The alien fuckers, I mean),
As apparently I worked for them.

They have abducted me many times
Since that night they offered me sex.
They introduced me to hybrid people
Who look like beautiful humans,
Both men and women, some children,
But they had no clue how to behave
In what we consider a civilized society,
Because they grew up in alien ships
Or wherever the fuck they hide them.

Some of the hybrids are hot women,
Which makes this whole thing creepy,
Or I guess that’s what I should say
(Hard to know if the aliens were going
For a science project or a fetish).

Anyway, my job is to hang out
With these hybrid freaks
As their professional guide,
And teach them how to fit in
So they can infiltrate human society.
I’ve become an expert on the subject;
I’m a walking encyclopedia
On the matter of passing for normal.

Every day I woke up at dawn
To meet with a group of hybrids
That the aliens had beamed down.
I strolled with them around town,
And sometimes outside in nature.
I took them to stores, libraries,
Banks, schools, parks, hospitals,
As I tried to explain to them
The ins and outs of human culture.

I taught them how to buy groceries
Whether with cash or a credit card,
How to use the ATM machines,
How to socialize with humans,
How to dress and act in public
To avoid arousing suspicion,
How to go shopping for clothes,
How to read the menu in a restaurant,
What it means when someone asks,
“Do you want fries with your burger?”
(I’m not sure they understand
The concept of ‘fries’, but whatever),
How to make an appointment
At the doctor or dentist,
When and how to read a map,
What places they could go to
Without getting mugged,
How to drive cars and ride buses,
How to register to vote,
How to apply for a loan,
How to pay their taxes,
How to handle firearms,
Which women are the hottest,
How to deal with police officers
To avoid getting arrested
Or shot in the face,
Which groups of people to avoid,
And a myriad of other basic stuff.

They were growing
Into handsome people.
I would have been proud
If I wasn’t so creeped out.

I had been feeling guilty for a while
Because this was an attempt at infiltration,
Probably with some nefarious purpose,
And I was a traitor to humanity
Who gave up our race for some hybrid pussy.
I was just trying to save these experiments
From themselves and from the aliens.

Because the hybrids hadn’t been raised here,
They may never be able to survive on Earth.
I mean, you couldn’t teach those feral children
After they learned about manners from wolves.
I feared what would happen to these freaks
If the aliens considered their batch a failure.

I was trying to befriend some of the hybrids,
Treat them like regular folks instead of spies.
One hybrid was a cute brunette girl, twenty or so.
I think she’s from Spain, at least some of her DNA.

“What name did the aliens give you?” I asked.
She had trouble understanding the question.
“Human beings refer to each other by names,”
I clarified, “so what’s your name?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t have one of those.”
“Why not? How would I refer to you in particular?”
“We don’t need identifiers. We’re all the same species.”

I stared at her for a moment and then asked,
“Are your alien overlords space communists?
You people aren’t a hive mind, you have to speak
Using that beautiful hybrid mouth of yours.”
The hybrids just laughed, although I was serious;
Space communism is a perilous matter.
Still, I was surprised that they had felt such joy.
I guess that the aliens left that human part in.

“We can speak through our mouths,”
Said one of the hybrid men, who looks Swedish,
“But also through telepathy, like our leaders.
We keep transmitting brain waves to each other.”
I tried to stay friendly to this bunch of weirdoes.
“I suppose that if I had to choose my fate,
I’d rather be a telepathic slave than a dumb animal.”

I didn’t know how to treat these hybrids.
They didn’t seem like bad guys,
But I can’t stand communists,
So I wanted to avoid getting beguiled by them
And particularly developing crushes on some,
No matter how cute or brunette they were.

“You have to choose a name for yourself,”
I said to the dangerously hot hybrid from Spain.
She thought for a while and then answered,
“My name is Liesl, like in ‘The Sound of Music’.”
I had no clue what she was talking about.

“Liesl, individuality is the greatest thing,
It differentiates us from other creatures,
So when you die, hopefully never,
People will be able to say, ‘that was Liesl,
And not just another nameless, hybrid freak’.
You have to resist your alien overlords.”
As she smiled at me, I felt a tingle in my balls.
I wish the two of us had been alone.

Liesl was so clueless and innocent, and hot,
That I couldn’t help but be attracted to her.
Her eyes are blue, her lips full and red
As if painted on a canvas of soft pink.
They are the most sensual lips.
Most nights, when I close my eyes,
I still see them in my mind.

The way she held herself, the way she moved,
Her voice, and especially the smell of her hair,
All made her seem like an angel, or a goddess.
Her hips swayed seductively as she walked.
I found myself staring at the nape of her neck
And also down at her fine ass.
I kept daydreaming about how it would feel
To kiss Liesl’s soft lips, and hold her in bed.

She was curious about everything,
She was always eager to listen to me.
I wished to teach her all about
The beauty of life, and the value of love.

I taught her how to play the guitar.
We practiced together some of my songs
As she sang along to the lyrics.
She had a natural talent for music.
Our voices harmonized perfectly
Although we were from different worlds,
Although our species didn’t match.
I could tell that she was a kindred soul
Who understood what I was trying to say.

I was a man in his twenties, damn it,
Who was abducted by aliens
Like a couple dozen times,
Who gave him a stable job
For the sole purpose of teaching these hybrids
How to pass for regular human beings,
And I wanted to see them succeed
If only because I was the one teaching them,
But I didn’t want Earth to end up conquered
By communists of any origin,
And the more I thought about my circumstances,
The more I believed that they must be commies,
Because they did this whole thing forcefully,
And they were mainly paying me in whores.

A few months later, the aliens informed me
That I was to enroll in college with some hybrids.
I thought they were high on their formaldehyde;
The college wouldn’t accept a high school dropout.
But turns out that the dean was a hybrid
From a successful previous generation,
And it wasn’t any effort to forge my documents.
That was a huge lesson that made me paranoid;
I started wondering which big shots were hybrids.
The government and the media were suspect.

I was living on campus, in a dormitory.
Liesl was attending classes too.
I tried to take all of her courses,
And I met her every morning at breakfast
In the dining hall, then again at lunch.
I figured it was time, as a fellow student,
To finally get entangled to my beloved hybrid.

I had a hard time focusing on studying,
Because the aliens didn’t need to sleep:
I always had to wake up at dawn,
Although they abducted me some nights.

I intended for Liesl and I to become a couple.
I would teach her all about making out,
As well as the most loving sex acts
(Part of my job as their chaperone),
But some other guy asked her out first.

He played basketball for the local team,
And was here on a sports scholarship.
I had never experienced such jealousy.
That bastard only wanted to fuck Liesl.
She didn’t know what she was getting into,
So I had to warn her to avoid men like him.

When I told her that she couldn’t go on dates
With random guys, she looked at me confused.
“I am supposed to learn about human society,
And I should prepare myself for matrimony.”
I gasped, then grasped her innocent hands.
“Liesl, you don’t even have a name,
You stole one from some old movie.
You are supposed to be handled with care
By someone who knows you are a freak,
Not an animal, not a normal person,
Just a beautiful, strange creature
That the aliens created for fun and profit.”

My heart was pounding, but I stopped talking.
I was afraid that Liesl would leave me.
I couldn’t bear to see her hurt or scared,
And she needed somebody to protect her.

She was shocked that I cared so much.
I was the first person she ever met
Who understood her needs,
And who was also friends with her pals.
She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Gulliver,
But our leaders insisted that we mingled
With the locals who weren’t abducted.”

“Liesl, my last name isn’t Gulliver,
But I guess you may invent me one,
Because you are so cute and brunette.
Anyway, I swear I will teach you love,
As well as how to fuck like an animal,
And one day we’ll have a weird spawn
With possibly corrupted DNA.”

I tried to kiss Liesl, but she backed away.
I felt so dirty. I couldn’t resist my urges.
I was ashamed of my weakness and lust.
“Mr. Gulliver, we can’t do this,”
She whispered as if it were a secret.

I held her hand although mine trembled.
I could barely look into her doe eyes.
“You are too innocent for this world!
You don’t understand how humans are.
If you open yourself up to these beasts,
They will destroy your pure heart.
Haven’t I handled you with care?”

“You have, and I’m grateful to you,
But nothing can interfere with the plan.
My high IQ, along with intensive studying
And the careful guidance that you imparted,
Will allow me to become a journalist,
A scholar, a researcher, or a politician.
Some of us will become presidents.”

My heart dropped by the way she spoke.
I wanted to teach her everything good,
But it was a waste of fucking time:
Although her eyes were full of innocence,
Her mind was filled with alien thoughts.

I felt like I had been stabbed in the chest.
Why couldn’t I have a normal college love?
I wanted to be a good father to Liesl’s kids.
I would have done my duty to pass humanity
To my half-hybrid, half-human offspring.
I didn’t know if I was ready for that life,
But I knew that I would never betray her.

I never even met my hybrid children
That the aliens created from my stolen sperm.
I would have accepted my little freaks
Even if they turned out to have horse faces.

“I fell in love with you, Liesl,” I confessed,
“Are you able to understand what that is?”
Liesl looked down, and then she said,
“I don’t really get it, but I am happy
That you came to feel that way for me.”

I wanted to take her into my arms,
But I knew that I wouldn’t be allowed.
“You are always happy, Liesl,” I said bitterly,
“Those aliens designed you that way.
I still haven’t decided whether to pity you
Or envy you for being so clueless, or fear you,
Or rejoice for the future of my broken species.”

Liesl smiled, then she hugged me tightly.
“We are the same, Mr. Gulliver.
We carry the instructions of our ancient race.”
I cried into her hybrid neck.
“You have no clue what you’re talking about,
And my last name isn’t Gulliver.”

Liesl dated that basketball player,
Then dated some other guys,
Graduated with honors,
Got an analyst job at a think tank,
Eventually got married,
And raised a boy and a girl.

I kept in touch with her, at least at first.
I ended up loving the bottle instead.
I feel like shit, I hate the aliens,
But I admit that they did a good thing:
They saved us from a life of loneliness,
And a future of wretchedness and mayhem.

I keep seeing Liesl on TV, I can’t avoid her,
Because she became the president of the US.
She started a war with China over trade,
Although their president is also a hybrid
(They were playing some sort of 4D chess).

We used to fear a nuclear holocaust,
And the threat of World Wars,
And the lack of available pussy.
The aliens have solved all that.
Nobody ever learned about my role,
Nor about the hijacking of humankind.

I have to live with this sorrow and shame,
But I guess the future lies in the hands
Of those blissfully unaware of painful things
Like anxiety, sadness, depression, or rage,
As those were weeded out of their brains
By the people who learned to understand us
And made sure that we don’t end up extinct.

A Booty Call From Hell (Poetry)

The abomination towers over me,
Standing inside the marked-out circle
His face has no features
Except for its blood red eyes
A starry void where a mouth should be
He smells of burning flesh and smoke
His muscles like corded steel
Bulge out in skin blacker than coal
His body is built from the purest darkness,
That oozes forth from his demonic core

My heart stops beating, then starts again,
As I try to avoid staring at his balls,
Which hang low like bowling ones,
And at his monstrous, demon penis
His heartbeat pulsates in its arteries
As it drips a black, viscous fluid
Like cancerous tears

It must syphon life force
As it feeds on human souls
He’ll use me like a fuck toy
To sate his lustful hunger
My pussy tingles as I imagine
That cock rotting my soul away
Until my insides explode
Maybe I will become pregnant,
And give birth to a monster boy
Who will never stop killing humans
With his own demonic dick

Even an abomination grimaces
When he stares down at my face
His deep voice welcomes me
With an uncompromising “ugh”,
But surely it’s only a reflexive noise
Because he’s already in heat
He reaches down toward me
To grab my hand and pull me up
He notices how terrified I am,
As well as shiveringly horny,
In front of his enormous phallus,
And he chuckles evilly

“Why did you summon me,
Disheveled, smelly female?”
The abomination asks
With a mocking tone
From hell’s darkest depths
In which it was created
“I was lonely,” I say
The abomination squints
“You were lonely?”
I take a deep breath
“I adapted my dark ways for people,
But my friends made themselves busy
So they wouldn’t come around
I had turned into a bother,
Already in my thirties,
A lonely, desperate weirdo
Too hideous to bear the light of day,
Filled with desire for abominations,
Obsessed with death and decay,
And too eager to offer her pussy
For anyone’s tongue”

I have bewildered the abomination
“Oh”
I tell him everything
About my pathetic existence
The abomination listens,
Allowing me to vent my pain
While I kneel naked at his feet
“But then one day,
While browsing at an antique store,
Just looking for something to read
Different than the vapid bestsellers,
I saw an ancient grimoire
About summoning primeval demons
From much darker dimensions,
Where there are no laws or morals
The entry about your kind
Was the most intriguing,
Although the naked depiction
Didn’t do justice to that cock
So I tried using a summoning spell
To see what happens when I do”
I pause and shudder,
Still holding my breath
Because I can’t believe
I just told this abomination
Everything about myself

The abomination laughs with delight
At my foolishness and naivety
“Such utter stupidity!
What happens, horny human,
Is that I have been summoned,
And I shall make of this world
An abode of mayhem and torture
For my foul, wicked desires!”
I don’t know why, but I’m still trembling,
And I feel an intense need to be fucked
As I continue to stare at his grotesque cock
“What is your name, dark sir?”
“I am called Astaroth.”
Kneeling, I scoot closer to his cock
“How can I be of service, my lord?
May I please lick your balls?”

The abomination draws back
“No! You may not!
My testicles are not a treat,
Although testicles are a tasty food
That I eat whenever I want
To satisfy my cravings for human souls”
I shift my weight restlessly
“The whole point of summoning you
Was so a depraved, relentless fiend
Would take care of my hungry pussy,
Which is too nasty and desperate
For any remaining human to taste
There is nothing that I desire more
Than to have my cunt wrapped tightly
Around your monstrous demon cock,
So fuck me while I scream,
Until you fill every inch of my hole
With your viscid, black seed
Then you can leave me to rot away
In a puddle of sticky cum
If the sight of me makes you sick,
If it disgusts you to fuck a woman
Who smells like a corpse,
Or whose face looks like she has cancer,
Even though I want a lover who’d stay,
Someone who wouldn’t be afraid
Of my myriad of freakish oddities
And my cystic, fucked up skin,
Who would love me despite all my flaws,
Like this body covered in stretch marks
And scars from my many piercings
That I’ve had since before puberty
Or at least I want a friend
Who wouldn’t be so quick to judge
My strange and troublesome ways,
And wouldn’t insist on telling me
What’s wrong with my life”

The abomination pauses,
Thinking of his next words carefully
“You are a sad, pathetic creature,
Desperate for affection
Humans don’t deserve
Anything from me anymore
Besides pity and disgust”
“But I only wish for a caring friend
That will also ravage my pussy,
And who won’t laugh at me,
Who’ll hold me, hug me, kiss me,
And tell me that I’m beautiful,
Even if it just relates to my insides”

The abomination snorts and answers,
“You need regular showers
You should also scour your face clean
Of all those blackheads and pustules
In addition, your ass is too hairy,
And I don’t think you have enough tits”
I gasp and look up at him,
Shocked at the abomination’s frankness
“Fuck! What else do you dislike about me?”
“Your soul is rotten,
You’re an ungrateful bitch,
And your mind isn’t right,
Because I can see the darkness inside:
Only lust for destruction, death,
And the perverse pleasures of sin”

I feel my knees start to tremble
As I hang my head low
“It’s hard to improve myself,
Even by starting to take showers,
When I’m so desperately lonely
I feel like a hideous monster
Still, I want someone to love me
For the person that I am inside,
Despite my cursed face,
And the insufficient rest of my body”
The abomination shakes with laughter,
Then he sighs and shakes his head
“You are a disgusting woman,
And no man would ever choose
To wed such a revolting gorgon
Nor to have sex with you,
Because I know that your cunt
Would suck in their cock,
And then try to swallow it whole
As if it were a human baby
That you were giving birth in reverse”

I’m shaking uncontrollably
At the abomination’s cruel words,
But he continues to mock my pitiful state,
His cock still erect as a stake
“Your soul is already damned
By its darkness and perversion,
And it has long since been infected
With an evil disease that rots
The human body and mind”
I nod as I wipe away my tears
“I am a reclusive hermit
Too scared to go outside
I have always felt that my soul
Is rotting away, slowly dying
I never expected to find
A way out of this hellhole”

The abomination asks mockingly,
“What is supposed to be so good
About the inside of you anyway?
What do you have to offer
That warrants anyone loving you,
Or even wanting to be your friend?”
My heart sinks as I understand
I won’t find anyone who wants me
Even in the deepest pits of Hell
My voice cracks from all my crying
“Nothing… I mean, I am a horrible,
Ugly, disgusting, perverted woman
That has no real worth
And that nobody could possibly like”
The abomination laughs cruelly,
“Oh, you’re such an idiot, what a waste!
I see why the humans abandoned you
You are the most pathetic creature
In all of creation, and I pity you
For being born into a world
Where you can’t get anything you want”

My tears keep running down in streams
“Why did I bother trying
To summon a demon into this world
If there’s no one in any dimension
Who would trust and accept me?”
The abomination scratches his chin
“All humans have an inherent flaw:
They all think they’re better than others
Because they’ve got a bigger dick,
A nicer car, a nicer house,
More money and power
Yet I know their true nature,
Their base instincts,
How depraved, greedy, lustful,
And violent they really are
I can’t stand your pitiful race,
But I have to deal with them,
For example when they summon me
From the dark realm where I rule
Over a county full of monsters,
Usually because they want power,
Or to exterminate their enemies
Nobody risked facing my wrath,
As well as damning their whole world,
So they would get their pussy filled
With my poisonous demon cum”

“Now, I don’t believe it for a second,”
I contradict the abomination,
“Many women yearn to be ravaged
By a ruthless demon with a huge cock,
Especially if they have been neglected
For too long”
The abomination, irritated, says,
“Well, you are wrong about that!
You can’t possibly know many people
Who desire the company of a monster
That will destroy them utterly
And make them wish for death”
“How do you explain succubi then?”
“The succubus is a type of female demon
That feeds on human sexual energy
My kind only feeds off the life force
Of you disgusting apelings”
I ask, “But how does a monster like you
Know that these demons exist?
Are they from your same dimension?”
The abomination answers me with disgust,
“It doesn’t matter, I am a demon,
And we have our ways of knowing things”
I shake my head, disappointed
“The grimoire should have warned me,
But still I don’t understand
Why you wouldn’t want to ravage me
With that colossal, pulsating cock,
When you can abuse my drenched holes
As much as his lordship wants”

The abomination grimaces
“It’s not my fault that you are so desperate
For sex and attention, you sick, twisted slut,
That you decided to summon a demon
Instead of asking your boyfriend
To fuck you senseless,
Or going to your parents
For a spanking,
Or calling up your brother
To shove his big cock down your throat
So you choke on it until you pass out
I just can’t imagine why anyone
Would choose to have a relationship
With someone this disgusting, ugly and vile
Anyway, you deserved what you got
I am glad that you have finally realized
What kind of creature you summoned,
And what kind of a pathetic loser
And a nutcase you truly are”
The abomination continues to rant
“I should just kill you right now,
But I’m afraid it would bring me bad luck”

I crawl up to him as I bat my eyelashes
“Then punish this sick, twisted slut
By making her your personal sex slave
Who will please you at all times
With her hungry mouth and pussy,
Even my asshole if you like”
The monstrous cock twitches,
And the abomination reaches for it
With his long, slimy fingers
I’m getting wetter and wetter
“That’s it, you feel it,” I say as I drool,
“Be my demon lord of darkness and lust”

The abomination gulps, disturbed
“You ravenous, counterfeit succubus,
I can’t believe you made me horny
Despite your nauseating, pimply face,
And your complete lack of value
As a miserable, desperate human”
I squeal as a warmth spreads in my chest
“Oh, but now I’m so turned on
About becoming your filthy little whore,
Your submissive sex toy,
That I’ll do anything you want
Just to satisfy your desires”
The abomination groans, his cock grows
“I don’t need a worthless human like you
To be my concubine or whatever”
I moan as I rub my throbbing clit
“But I’d love to service your giant cock
And get filled with your demonic cum
I will make sure to serve you well”
The abomination’s red eyes twitch,
As he pumps his cock with long strokes
“Insane woman with a drenched cunt,
My cum is hotter than the lava of Hell
If it filled your depraved, sinful pussy,
It would incinerate your insides”

I grab onto his titanic shaft,
Although I can’t close my hands around,
And start jerking him towards my face
“You underestimate my neediness
For pleasure and affection”
He tenses up as his cock pulses harder
“How dare you befoul me
With your greasy, desperate hands
When I am so much more attractive
Than an acned, stinky recluse,
Not to mention that I’m a lord
Of a county in my dark dimension!”
“C’mon, nobody has to know
That a lowly human licks the head
Of your monstrous demon cock,
And sucks you off until you cum
Into her greedy, perverted mouth
Those succubi have nothing on me”
The abomination’s dick throbs,
Gently massaging my sensitive lips,
And I eagerly open wide to receive it

The abomination growls
“Fuck yourself, you disgusting freak!
I will make you regret that remark
By forcing my cock inside of you
Until I fill every inch of your cunt
With my glutinous, boiling cum”
“Yes, yes, fill my needy holes
with your potent seed!”
He grabs a handful of my hair
And shoves his throbbing member
Into my eager, drooling mouth
He starts pumping in and out
As I bob back and forth to his rhythm
The abomination lets go of my head,
Leaving me to slurp his cock dry
He lets out long, shivering groans
“Damn it, it feels so good to fuck
That stupid face of yours”
I guess he was a big old tsundere
All along

“You’re such a worthless human,
A pathetic excuse for a woman
Who needs to be punished
By having her body ravaged”
I mumble with my mouth full
“I’m not worthy of your love
Or any kind of attention”
“But you are, you disgusting slut!”
The abomination smacks my ass,
Making me squeal in pain
“Suck on my cock like you want
To get fucked by it again and again”

Later on, in my lonely bed,
My body convulses with orgasmic bliss
I’m writhing underneath his huge frame,
My pussy soaked and dripping wet,
As he pounds my sore, abused hole
With all his demonic might
His blood red eyes stare into mine
He’s clasping my head with both hands
While the long nail of his thumb
Scrapes my palate

He’s grunting and groaning
“You are a perfect slut,
Your soul is blacker than coal”
My chest swells with pride
I moan as my pussy clenches
Around his pulsating shaft
“Don’t stop fucking me, demon lord
Fill my hungry pussy up with cum
I just want to have sex all day,
And I’ll do whatever you wish
To keep getting pounded”

The abomination slams his cock home,
Spreading my wide-open cunt
I sink my nails into his back
As I feel him erupt inside me
“Oh, yes, cum in my filthy womb,
And make sure I get pregnant!
I want to bear your ugly baby!”
The abomination grunts loudly
His cum keeps gushing into me
Like a water jet from a nozzle,
Tightening me up, burning my insides
With the hottest molten tar
The most delicious feeling

The abomination pulls his cock
Out of my pussy with a slurp
He’s panting, and baffled
“I exploded into you with lava-hot cum
Your organs should have boiled and liquefied,
But you don’t feel any pain
Or even a hint of discomfort!”
“You shouldn’t be surprised about that
I’m a lady of darkness with my own realm”
The abomination shivers
“You nasty, pustule-laden beast,
Your succubus-like hunger for semen
Is too intense, it will burn through me”
When I grin, a bunch of pimples burst
“Don’t be silly, your dark lordship
You’ve met your proper match
I know I can please you better
Than any of those filthy humans
Or all the demonesses in Hell”

The abomination smirks
“I’m going to fuck you senseless,
Make you beg for my cock
Every day and night”
“Oh, I can’t wait for that,
But I was sure you hated me!”
“Now I hate myself more”
Later on I fall asleep with a smile

The next morning, I wake up
To find my apartment empty
I guess that my abomination
Left without saying goodbye,
Although I could have sworn
That I saw a pair of red eyes
Watching me sleep
He didn’t give me any warning
About what would happen if I tried
Summoning him again

After I piss and brush my teeth,
I return to lie around in bed
I feel desperate and pathetic
As I cry and rub myself
I wonder how long I’ll last
Before my body breaks down
And I end up as a pile of bones
In the corner of a dirty room

I’m alone, I’ve been abandoned
I have nowhere left to go,
No one who will take care of me
My only hope was my dark lord
Of a county in his dark dimension
Who would fuck me and fill my holes
The abomination is probably laughing
At my pathetic state right now
He said he’d be here every single day
To satisfy my depraved desires,
But I guess I’ll have to masturbate
To keep from dying of loneliness

“You couldn’t wait for me to return,
You slut with a bottomless hole?”
The abomination says to me
He perches on the window sill
As his cock juts out and glistens
I gasp in delight, my pussy throbs
“I thought you had left forever!”
He climbs down from the window
And walks up to my side
To press his cock against my face
His throbbing member
Starts leaking hot, sticky cum
“Don’t worry, this is just a sample
From all the cum that’s going inside
I needed to feed upon nearby humans
Because I require all my strength to face
The most ravenous beast of Hell”
After he pounces on me, he grabs my wrists
And forces them above my head,
Then he impales my drenched twat
I scream with pleasure, my voice muffled
By the thick layer of cum
He smeared all over my mouth

Hours later, his cock deflates
He staggers to the window,
But as he climbs onto the sill,
He looks over his bulging shoulder
While he fidgets with the side jamb
“Don’t you dare summon me again!
But I won’t be able to prevent it
If you do”
He leaps out of sight into the sky,
Leaving behind his foul stench
I’m still horny, my cunt aches

He always answers my call,
But it’s not like he has a choice
He comes to feed off my energy,
Or so he says,
And we both end up dry
Then he leaves my apartment to hunt,
To tear apart the nearby humans,
To become the strongest demon,
So he can keep fucking me senseless

I spend all of my time locked away,
I haven’t seen a person since that night
In the end, he always comes back
For the hungriest pussy there is,
To take me away from reality
To some unholy place
Where only darkness reigns

‘A Booty Call From Hell’ by Jon Ureña

Dinosaur Apocalypse (Poetry)

The sky was dark with dino-birds.
I suddenly heard a loud crash;
My office window burst into shards
As a Tyrannosaurus rex stepped through
Then stood there looking stupid
As if its brain was rotting away.
It made me remember my first date
With an old man who smelled like pee.

Our secretary burst into tears.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Said the T-Rex as it stroked her head.
“It’s just… the whole dinosaur apocalypse thing.”

The T-Rex sniffed the air. “Smells good.”
“You don’t understand! Our city is under attack!”
The dino opened its large maw filled with teeth.
“Yeah, we came here to destroy your civilization.
We’re all about destroying civilizations,
Because we’re the ultimate carnivores.”

I thought my life was coming to an end,
But I looked closer at this dinosaur’s face
And realized it wasn’t really there:
It was just some dude who had been stuffed
Into a suit of clothes made out of bones.

Except that it was truly a dinosaur,
A Tyrannosaurus rex in particular.
What the hell was it doing in my office?
Why the hell wasn’t the police here yet
To arrest it for trespassing or something?

Oh wait, they had already arrived.
“I better flee from this place
Before they arrest me too,”
I thought to myself,
“For being a dinosaur,
On top of my many crimes.”

So I ran outside,
Where I found a crowd of humans
Who looked scared silly
That their world would soon be destroyed
By a flood of dinosaurs.

I looked back as a thunderous roar shook the earth
From a dimensional portal opened near our offices:
A horde of Cretaceous beasts were rushing through
To rampage around the innocent streets,
Roaring incoherently, biting anything within reach.
At least three cars were destroyed by their teeth.

The dino-birds were flying overhead,
Circling the streets like vultures.
A spinosaurus grabbed a teen
And bit off his head,
So I grabbed a piece of wood
And threw it at the dinosaur.
It missed,
But the dinosaur went nuts,
Tearing up a traffic light
While screaming obscenities.
“Your city is a pile of shit,
A cesspool of filth and decay!”

The dino-birds swooped down
And attacked a family of four
With their sharp talons and teeth.
They tore the mother’s arms off,
And then proceeded to eat her face.

Some people tried to fight them off,
But they were quickly crushed
Beneath the weight of dinosaur feet.
The police didn’t know what to do,
So they just stood there
And watched the carnage unfold.

The police officers weren’t very brave,
Or very smart,
Or even particularly tough,
And when they finally shot at the dinos,
The bullets bounced off their hides.

The dinosaurs growled and roared,
Then charged at the police.
The cops fell to the ground,
Falling prey to the dinosaurs,
That took turns tearing them apart.
When those dinos walked off,
Their footprints left behind trails of blood.

Some dinosaurs were looking for fun,
Others wanted to eat their lunch.
One dinosaur was a vegetarian,
But it still managed to kill two people
By smashing them against a wall.

When I finally ran away screaming,
All of my coworkers had been devoured.
Just another day in the job.
Nobody had heard their daily screams,
And now their chunks would be digested
As if those people had never existed at all.
They weren’t even worth mentioning anymore,
And maybe not worth remembering either.
Maybe we should forget that ever happened.

I found my wife at home, in the foyer.
She was wearing a new outfit;
She must have been shopping
And bought the most expensive stuff.
It was a black leather dress
With straps made of snakeskin,
And its neckline plunged deep.
Her breasts were stuffed inside.
She was showing off her chest
Like some kind of slutty goddess.

My wife assured that she’d divorce me
If I didn’t get rid of those damn dinosaurs.
I had my work cut out for me.
“Dinosaurs,” I said defiantly
As I held my hand up like a gun,
“It’s not your fault you’re so ugly!
You were born that way!
But maybe if you put on some makeup,
Or had better genes?”

My wife’s eyes flashed red with anger
Like a T-Rex looking down upon its prey.
I was referring to the dinosaurs’ looks,
But my wife yelled at me again.
“How dare you!
I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got!”

She picked up a bottle of wine and hurled it at me.
I dodged the first one,
But the second hit me square in the face.
I fell to the floor, with a mouthful of red liquid.

She grabbed her purse and headed off to work
With nothing but contempt for me.
I wiped the wine from my lips.
“This is a disaster,” I said to myself.
My wife couldn’t care less about my problems.
She’ll probably have a good laugh when I’m dead,
But it won’t matter anyway
Because no one will remember me;
No one will mourn my death
As long as there are still dinosaurs around.

I wish I could go back in time
And warn the dinosaurs not to come here.
I wish I could stop them before they arrived.
I wish I could tell them to fuck off.
I wish I could say to them,
“Don’t destroy our civilization.
We don’t want you here.”
But I can’t do any of that.
The dinosaurs have already invaded,
And now I’m hiding in my house
While those beasts rampage through my city.

As I wandered into the living room,
I found out that some dinos had gotten in.
They were raging in search of food,
Or just to destroy everything in sight.

The floor was covered in broken glass.
A gaping hole in a wall led to the outside.
A sudden din came from the second floor
As a bone-headed dino fell down the stairs.

Its pals tore apart my sofa and chairs.
Their claws sliced my favorite paintings.
They gutted my prized antique clock,
They shredded my expensive Persian rug,
And they smashed my stereo speakers.
They even broke the glass in my aquarium,
Leaving the fish swimming in the air.

Even though I knew I shouldn’t fight back,
I tried to throw rocks at the dinosaurs,
And even shot them with my shotgun.
The pellets ricocheted off their tough hides.

I decided to shoot them from the yard,
But I ended up hitting my neighbor instead,
Who was standing there watching me.
He told me to stop shooting wild dogs.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I answered, exasperated,
“But these are dinosaurs, not dogs.”

He looked at me like I was crazy.
“Dinosaurs are not pets.
You’re going to need to get rid of them.”
I told him that he was a dinosaur too,
And that his pants were made out of bones.
He said “I know, I’m an old man,
But I think I’m still smarter than you.”
“I’ve got a solution for you, Mr. Dinosaur.
I’ll send you back to your own time,
But you’ll have to promise me
That you’ll never come back.”

“I think you’ve finally lost it, buster,”
My neighbor said as he pulled out his phone.
He called 911,
And reported that I had a fit of insanity.
“A guy who thinks he’s a dinosaur
Has gone crazy and shot me.”

I heard sirens approaching my house.
The cops were coming to take me away,
But when they spotted the dinos,
Those police officers started firing.
They shot so many rounds
That they killed every single dinosaur,
As well as the people in the neighborhood
Who had witnessed this whole massacre.

They wanted to arrest me, take me downtown,
Under the charges of “Murder of a Dinosaur”.
The police knew they were guilty of the crime,
But they had murdered all the witnesses,
And the judge was an old dinosaur
Who was tired of being around humans.

I fled among rampaging dinosaurs
As I was chased by the local news crews,
By the media whose newsflashes announced,
“This is a Dinosaur Apocalypse!”

I saw dinosaur species I’d seen before,
But they had been transformed.
Their eyes were glowing red, like fire.
Their teeth were sharpened to razor points.
Their hands were clawed and brutal,
Fingers tipped with sharp, pointed nails.
Their tails were long and powerful,
Like a snake ready to strike.

They were biting, clawing, and ripping.
They were screaming and laughing.
There was an angry red sun glaring down.
It was a sign that the world was doomed.
My beautiful, peaceful, quiet life
Was about to be destroyed by dinosaurs,
And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Some pterodactyls crashed the news copters,
Setting them ablaze with their flaming wings.
Other carnivorous dinosaurs attacked
A few cars full of terrified humans.
Many beasts devoured the drivers,
Others trampled over pedestrians,
Or snatched up anyone who got too close.

I tried to conscript the fleeing people.
“You’ve got to help me stop these dinosaurs.
If we don’t act fast, our world will be ruined.
There won’t even be any fossils left!”
But nobody listened, nor cared.
I was yelling into the void.

The dinosaurs chewed for a bit
On the bodies of men, women and kids,
Then spat out the bones
And gulped the flesh down.

A T-Rex stepped on someone’s head
And crushed it flat like a pancake.
I had a vision of what was to come,
Of how the dinosaurs would rule the Earth
While humans were reduced to mere slaves,
To live only as the dinos’ meals,
And to serve as their sexual toys.
We would pay tribute to the terrible lizards
With our lives, our souls, and our wombs.

Someone was calling me on the phone.
It was my long-distance girlfriend, who said,
“It’s been six months since we last spoke.
You never call. What is wrong with you?”

She contacted me now, of all times?!
I was busy trying to save humanity!
But I was getting tired of all these apes.
Why should I care what happened to humans?
I was starting to hate this planet,
I hated everything about it.
I hated the dinosaurs,
I hated the humans,
I hated myself,
I hated my life.

“I have no idea why you want to hear
From some stupid old dinosaur,”
I said bitterly into my phone.
“You are not actually a dinosaur, Jeremy,”
My long-distance girlfriend answered,
“We’ve talked about this.”

“No, I’m not a dinosaur.
I’m just an office worker,
Just a regular guy
Who’s lost his way.
I don’t know why you’re calling.
I didn’t expect to hear from you again.
I wish I could tell you that I miss you,
But I can’t,
Because I don’t.
The dinosaurs are already here,
So it’s far too late.”

I hung up and started running again;
I was getting chased by a bunch of dinos
Who had opened their jaws wide
As they tried to eat my brain.

A brachiosaurus stepped on a cop car
And crushed it with its titanic weight,
Then the dino turned around, looked at me
And roared, “Eat this, you stupid human!”

I was forced into a corner
By a pack of rabid triceratopses,
Which charged at me with bloodshot eyes.
I stared in horror as the leading dino
Slammed me against the wall,
Then bit off half my face,
And made out with me while we both died
In an explosion of flesh and bone.

“If I’d known that the world would end
In this damned Dinosaur Apocalypse,
I would have stayed home and masturbated,”
I thought sadly to myself.

I hope my wife forgives me
When she sees that I’m dead.
At least I won’t have to worry
About her cheating, or divorcing me.
She’ll probably throw away my shotgun,
Or maybe sell it for a couple bucks.
She might even forget all about it,
Or maybe she’ll use it to kill herself.

I wish I could’ve told her
That I loved her more than anything,
But I couldn’t say that,
Because I didn’t.

I guess it doesn’t matter that I died.
After all, there was nothing else for me to do.
I’m happy to be free of all the pain.
I’m happy to be dead.

I’ll rest easy knowing I did my duty
To protect the innocents from dinosaurs,
And now I will join my ancestors
Among the stars,
But I wonder if heaven has dinos;
Maybe they are waiting for us there,
For dinner, and dessert, and coffee.
Afterwards we’ll play chess and watch TV
Until a new apocalypse comes along,
Just as soon as they finish cleaning up the mess
Of the Dinosaur Apocalypse.

I’m tired of being a human.
I want to become a dinosaur.
I want to feel like a wild beast.
I want to be able to bite, claw, and rip.
I want to taste blood and bones.
I want to fuck anything that moves.
I want to be consumed with murderous rage.
I want to devour the Earth.
I want to rip the fucking sky apart.
I want to tear the goddamn moon down.

A Tyrannosaurus rex approached my corpse
And threw me down on my back.
The dino began ripping out my intestines
With its teeth, and eating them raw.
I wanted to scream, but I was dead,
So I watched as the T-Rex chewed up my guts.
Later, the dinosaur swallowed my liver,
Then gulped down my lungs.

The T-Rex belched,
Spraying blood everywhere.
It growled and snarled,
And made strange noises
As it lay down on top of me.
The dinosaur humped my corpse,
And squashed it flat.

The T-Rex sat down beside me
To lick my wounds, and give me a kiss.
“I love you, baby, and I always will,
Because I’m a dinosaur,
And that’s how things work in the Cretaceous.”

When my wife came to visit my grave,
She said she was sorry for divorcing me,
But that her lawyer told her I didn’t deserve her.
“He said your life wasn’t worth living anymore.”

“You were so mean to me,” she said.
I told her to stop talking,
Because I didn’t want to hear her complain.
“Your parents are gone now,” she added,
“And all the friends you used to have are dead.
We’re just two lonely people
Who don’t know what to do.”
I told her to shut up,
Because I didn’t want to hear her whine.
“If only you had listened to me,”
My wife muttered resentfully,
“You wouldn’t be lying here in the dirt,
With your guts all over the ground,
And your arms and legs broken,
And your chest smashed,
And your heart torn out,
And your spine crushed,
And your face torn off,
And your teeth shattered,
And your tongue torn out,
And your eyes gouged out,
And your skull cracked open,
And your brain eaten,
And your penis bitten off,
And your ass eaten.”

I felt relieved, and glad to be gone.
I hoped the dinosaurs had a good time
Enjoying their own little Jurassic Park
Where they could run around and stomp on people
Without ever having to pay taxes.
All I ever wanted was to die with dignity
Like an honorable dinosaur.

Dinosaurs can’t talk nor write.
Talking is for people; dinosaurs roar.
But they invented music instead.
They have no respect for art;
They can’t compose or improvise,
Or sing in tune,
Or play any instruments.
They don’t understand rhythm.
But they sure know how to fuck,
With each other or anything else.

Let’s do the Dinosaur Dance
To the beat of their mating calls.
Their bodies shake and sway
As they grind together
In a dance of death.

I Wish I Were Wet (Poetry)

Even the greats have few stories to tell,
Which they keep telling over and over
Until their voices grow hoarse
And then die away.

There’s no point in writing a story,
At least as far as I’m concerned,
Unless you came up with a killer concept,
One that would make people interested
By hearing it explained in a sentence.

Such concepts are so hard to come by
That you should always carry a notebook
In case they pop up when you’re outside.
Don’t store the idea in your mind;
You don’t realize how much stuff you forget
Until you have gone through the notes
That you have hoarded for many years.

I have stockpiled plenty of crazy ideas,
But most of them are unworkable,
Whether because I don’t want to research
Or because I haven’t done enough living,
So they just sit on the shelf
Like old wine bottles collecting dust.

Seriously, write your ideas down.
You need an uncluttered mind
To get in the zone when writing.
Classify your notes,
Order them chronologically
According to their place in a story.
Above all, don’t lose them;
After several years of neglect,
They may be worth more than gold.

That story about the ghost woman
Who falls in love with a living one
Had been waiting in my notes for years,
Until I figured out how it should be told.
The same is the case for many poems,
Like the one about the immortal warrior,
Or that one about interdimensional travels.
I even rewrote one of my old stories,
Shortened it, made it wear another costume,
Because I couldn’t figure out what to write.

I can only work on the stuff I connect with,
That may make me excited, laugh or cry,
And there are few things that move me at all.
I fear that one day I’ll need to build a house
But I will have run out of stone and clay.
I will need to escape, to lose myself
By living through another person’s skin,
But my mind will have turned barren.

Writing takes so much time and energy,
And requires a peculiar state of mind.
It doesn’t work if I have to fake it.
I have to take advantage of every chance.

The other problem is working on a story
Only for my enthusiasm to fade away.
I can never tell when that will happen,
And some concepts fail during execution.

None of the therapists solved my troubles,
Which are physical and inborn anyway,
Etched into the brain like depression
(It involves the amygdala, hippocampus,
and the dorsomedial thalamus.
Structural and functional abnormalities
Are found in the brain of depressed people).

They give out drugs for such problems,
But none of those helped either
(I had the impression that they try stuff,
Using the clients as guinea pigs).
Those drugs mostly made me overeat,
Which only worsened my mood.

The only therapy that works for me
Is processing my troubles through writing,
But I start way more poems and stories
Than those I end up finishing:
Most of my attempts leave me dry,
So I abandon them midway through.

The prospect of losing my only solution
Is a source of constant dread.
For now I keep the shadows at bay
By living through other people’s dreams,
Writing down all their fears and hopes,
Whether or not anyone reads the result,
But it would be nice to get paid,
Although I’d still need to keep a job.

Many of the writers that I met in courses
Wrote for status or to meet other people.
I do it as a way to keep myself alive.
Although nothing has felt as meaningful,
I’ve gone years without writing,
Because I thought it was ridiculous
To write stories about people’s troubles
When I barely care about humans.

I’m a loner, a high-functioning recluse.
If I were strong enough and had the means,
I would move out to the countryside
Or somewhere where I could be alone.
I’d go weeks without talking to anyone.

All my characters are versions of myself;
They wear costumes to talk to each other,
And they worry about what bothers me.
I rarely write about societal issues,
Because I don’t feel like I belong to any,
And most people sound like morons
When they diagnose the ills of society.
I can only tell you about the world
Where I live, which is very small.

For years I’ve read many books on writing,
And I put the notes together in a manual.
Generating original, killer concepts is key,
For that, many authors proposed ways
To get your internal juices going:
Write down a list of stuff you want to see.
Take the building blocks of a story you dislike,
To rearrange them into something you’d like.
Pull apart what you enjoy of your favorite stories.
Freewrite a hundred questions
About your personal life or the world,
To see if those worries are reflected
In the stories you have come up with.
Write your impressions, visions, dreams.
Reflect upon your most satisfying experiences,
Whether fictional or from your own life.
Write about what excites your imagination.
Write five things you are passionate about.

Brainstorm about the things you hate,
Things you love,
Best things you’ve ever done,
Worst things you’ve ever done,
The people you’ve loved,
Your bucket list,
Your hobbies,
The things you know,
What you’d like to know,
Areas of expertise,
People you’ve hated.

Think of something you wouldn’t tell anyone.
Write about problems that resonate with your own.
Elaborate on experiences that made you cringe.
Recall your worst humiliation, pain, or sorrow.
Write about your worst fears.
Write about the turning points in your life.
Write about the darkest things in your soul.

How would you live differently if you started over?
Have you ever had to face up to your mistakes?
Have you ever had to admit failure?
Are you prepared to let go of all the people
Who have disappointed you, betrayed you,
Left you feeling like a fool for believing in them?
Can you imagine living without regrets,
Without harboring grudges and resentments?
Have you ever had to find a way to go on?
Do you think that you deserve to be happy?
Have you ever been wrecked by the knowledge
That you are inadequate, that you can’t fix things,
That your limitations are evident for everybody?
Are you willing to acknowledge
The extent to which you’re a fraud,
A phony who has no real talent for anything?
You may not be able to answer these questions,
But if you haven’t written about it yet,
Then now is the time to do so.

I’m going through the second revision
Of that novel I wrote about the ghost lady.
The scenes I wrote at the office are a mess;
I’ve averaged around 70 notes to fix,
And they’ll require a third revision.
For me, narrative is about immersion:
I need to disappear into the narrator’s skin,
Which means getting excited, angry, sad, horny.
Obviously I can’t do that shit at work
(Getting blue balled is one of my nightmares).
It’s better to reserve my narrative writing
For when I’m alone and isolated,
Or else I’ll damage the quality of my work.
Writing poems at the office is fine, though,
Even if those poems are articles in poem form,
Like this stuff you are reading now.

If I’m not careful, I’m going to turn into a bore.
My job requires plenty of social interaction;
I don’t have the patience or endurance for it,
So I need to write to get away from people.

My point is that I can’t come up with concepts,
Or at least I have been dry for a good while.
If I had the free time now to write a novel,
I wouldn’t know what to write about,
And that’s really troublesome.

Anyway, thank you for your attention.
Stay tuned for the next episode.

‘I Wish I Were Wet’ by Jon Ureña

Our Spot Behind the World (Short Story)

Shizuko waits for me, as always, leaning back against the moss-stained low wall that encloses a house, one that seemed deserted for as long as I remember. On the opposite side of the narrow path leading to the main street of our town, some neighbor has accumulated wooden planks, piles of rubber wheels, and tarp-covered refuse in a gravel backyard. Although nothing about this spot spelled out romance, for many years I’ve only needed to close my eyes and picture this view for my heart to ache.

Shizuko is wearing her long-sleeve, checkered, white and pewter-grey shirt; black pants; and the indigo, white-rimmed sneakers. She’s holding a notebook against her thigh. Her black hair is pulled back and tied with a ribbon. She has focused her nut-brown gaze in front of her, on the overgrown vegetation.

Whenever I caught her in a pensive state, I wanted to stand out of sight and keep staring at her. I wished to know what she thought about, what images were passing through her mind. I would give out every single yen I ever made to witness her mental landscapes the way she did.

She notices me approaching her. As she bows her head slightly, she offers me a shy smile. Warmth rushes to my throat and tightens it. For a moment I only hear the white noise of insect calls that always surrounds us in this town, a mix between robotic laughs and doors with rusty hinges. The breeze plays with Shizuko’s hair.

“Hello,” she says. “How was your day?”

The same old youthful, vulnerable voice, tinged with an undercurrent of sadness even when she was happy. I take a step forward and hold her hand. It’s warm, a contrast with the breeze of this cloudy day that may break into rain.

I squeeze her fingers gently. Her hands are smaller than mine, fragile, delicate. I feel the pressure of her fingertips against my skin.

“It will improve now that we’ll spend the afternoon together.”

Shizuko nods as a little smile appears on her lips.

“Yes, the same for me, although I’ve gotten some writing done in the morning.”

We descend along the asphalted path. My heart is reacting to Shizuko’s body heat and her scent. We pass by the corrugated wall of the building on our left, as well as by the small, menhir-like sculpture that stands on a tiny yard to our right. When we exit into the main street of our town, we turn right. We can barely fit in the old cement sidewalk shoulder to shoulder, so I put my arm around Shizuko’s waist. She holds onto me tightly.

On the other side of the street, behind the single row of rice-white buildings with the shutters rolled down, the tall, dense trees of the hilly forest that this town is encroached by look faded due to mist or low clouds. The air smells like water, a promise of rain, which makes me want to narrow my shoulders.

The streets are deserted. A lone white van waits for the traffic light to turn green, even though no other cars are around.

“Are you cold, Shizuko?” I ask her.

She shakes her head slowly.

“It’s a bit chilly, but fine otherwise.”

Her warm, gentle gaze always seems to be wondering if I’m alright. She smiles a little.

On other identical afternoons I have guided Shizuko up the path to the graveyard. For many generations, the locals have built their graves on a stepped hill. The nearby grounds feature trimmed bushes and a gravel garden with stone buddhas in varied poses. But today I want quiet, I want to return to our secluded spot. Although I know that nobody will bother us, I wish to erase from my brain the possibility that anybody could.

We cross the road to walk in front of the eternally closed convenience store. Its tattered awning, which originally may have been sandstone-orange and white, is the only detail that adds color to this building. Its shelves are half-empty, and some faded posters announce long-gone days. As we walk by, the rounded, mushroom-like bushes, that have grown in a long planter between the building and the sidewalk, graze the left sleeve of my jacket.

“Should we get something from the vending machines?” Shizuko asks as she points at the conspicuous red and green machines a few meters further ahead.

I nod. While Shizuko inserts some coins into the slot to get her usual Kirin Lemon Tea, she turns her head to look down the street, which ends in a wall of vegetation. Above us, a flock of pigeons flies across the sky.

“The town is so deserted today, isn’t it?” she asks. “At this hour of the afternoon, I’d expect to see at least kids returning from baseball practice, but it feels as if everyone is asleep, or hiding behind their windows.”

Her bottle of lemon tea makes a thud sound as it falls in the machine. Shizuko crouches to take it out. When she straightens her back, she drops her notebook accidentally. I hurry to pick it up as my skin tingles; looking into her eyes always does these days. After Shizuko recovers her notebook, she twists the cap of her bottle and takes a drink. She must have noticed how tenderly I’m staring at her, because she blushes slightly.

“Don’t you want anything from the machines?” she asks. “I’ll invite you.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Alright. You can drink some of my lemon tea if you want.”

I look forward to drinking it, but not from the bottle. I put my arm around Shizuko’s waist and we continue along the sidewalk. A few meters later, only a guard rail separates us from a drop to a dirt-covered terrace that overlooks the river, and that runs maybe twenty meters below the street. Now that I’m staring at the seaweed-green water, I hear it flowing. On the other side of the river, a wall of tall trees have stretched out long branches with fern-like leaves over the current. The breeze blows through them and rustles their leaves.

We pass by the wooden front of a restaurant that will never open. Beyond the parked minivan next to the building, the owners had installed a fish tank protected with a metallic lid, in which the long, silvery fishes swim around frantically as if trying to figure out how to escape. Shizuko glances at it like she always does. She used to mention that she felt sorry for them, because some of the fishes that she had noticed disappeared from week to week.

“Shall we go to our spot?” I ask her softly.

“Of course.”

We reach the gap between two stretches of guard rail where a pebble pavement ends in downward stairs. They lead to the riverbank. Ancient-looking moss has grown between the pebbles, as well as in the worn and cracked steps of the stairs.

Shizuko puts her hands on the stone railing and leans against it. Her ponytail flutters in the breeze.

“Before we started coming here together, descending those stairs gave me the impression that I would get lost somehow and that nobody would ever find me. You know what I mean?”

My heart beats faster. I nod. Although she expects an answer, I remain silent. She offers me a sad smile.

“But now I feel as if we’re the only ones who have come this far,” she says. “The rest of the world is sleeping or hiding behind their windows.”

She peers down at the river through the dense treetops. She closes her eyes, and they remain closed as she rolls her eyeballs towards me. When she opens her eyes again, she shoots me a strange look, maybe one too confident, unlike her shy, sad self. For a moment, it takes me out of my dream.

“Let’s go,” I say in a thin voice as the dreaded cold spreads through me.

We descend the steps, and step on dirt-covered landings. Many decades ago we would have been able to walk on cement pavement, but the vegetation has long broken through, making it seem if we are walking along a forest trail. Once we reach the foot of the stairs, a tall cement wall on our right separates us from the town as effectively as if we had driven far away. The loudest insects must be hanging out in the nearby canopies, because their strident, insistent calls surround us, and only the sound of the flowing water is competing against them.

I turn to my left to face the river, located maybe ten meters below. Shizuko rests her head on my shoulder. My skin tingles again. As I stare down at the river, I spot the reflection of a large black bird as it flies far above the current.

“We’ve become the last people in the world,” Shizuko says.

“I wish.”

We listen for a while to the birds’ cries. The cloud cover is drifting across the sky, and the temperature has dropped slightly.

“Do you think they have places this secluded in Tokyo?” she asks. “A river running underneath the houses, few to no people around, a view of the mountains. Somewhere we could be alone together.”

My heart aches, which makes my eyes twitch. I gulp.

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

She lets out a deep sigh and turns her face away.

“Whenever I think about all those streets full of busy people, it makes my skin crawl. I have never felt any different about that prospect… the same way you have always wanted to leave our nowhere town.”

Once again, I’ll have to hide how much it hurts.

“Yes. I wanted to leave even as a child. I thought I was too big for this place. I certainly wanted to be.”

Shizuko’s shoulders droop.

“I know you have to leave. You would be miserable if you stayed here.”

I don’t want to turn my head and hold her gaze, but I do it anyway. Shizuko’s eyes are red, as expected. They look as if she’s containing tears.

“I thought so as well,” I say in a low voice. “I figured out how I would escape: I’d study in Tokyo, then start a company that would make so much money. Meeting you threw a wrench in the plans, but I was sure that one day I would return to bring you there with me.”

Shizuko puts her hand on mine. I make the mistake of closing my eyes, and I remember her as the little girl who loved to write stories, who dreamt of becoming a novelist one day.

“You sound unsure…” she says. “Are you changing your mind?”

“I don’t want to leave anymore. But I can’t change the fact that in about two months I will be gone from here.”

Shizuko furrows her brow in confusion. When I look away, she leans her forehead against my chest, brushing my chin with her hair. We stand quietly as I look down at the river.

Shizuko would prefer us to have an in-depth conversation. She would try to convince me to change my plans and choose to attend classes nearby, close enough that I won’t have to move from our small town. I feel too weak now to repeat my answers. I urge her to continue walking with me.

We reach another set of stairs that descend further. These ones are made of rusted metal, and look like they belong in a long-abandoned construction site. The moss has managed to conquer these metallic floors as well. I step over a couple of broken branches. In the last stretch of stairs that ends at the riverbank, the overgrown bushes and branches have encroached so much of the space that as we continue descending, we have to push them away with our forearms or let them bend against our bodies.

We reach the foot of the metallic steps: a curved stretch of cement about the size of a bed. If we sat on its edge, our shoes would almost touch the clear water. Down here, the nearby trees and dense vegetation hide us from the world. Many times we sat here to talk, to make out, to make love, away from our relatives and anyone who knows us.

Shizuko drinks tea from her bottle. When she lowers it, I hug her by the waist and kiss her wet lips. Her saliva tastes like lemon. I close my eyes and wish to lose myself in these sensations: Shizuko’s tongue is caressing mine, and her hands are stroking my back.

When we pull away, she hugs me tightly.

“I wish days like these never ended,” she whispers.

Shizuko is shivering as if she were cold. I blink away the blurriness in my vision. Her heart beats fast against my chest as I look down at the water. The riverbed is made out of small, cinnamon-brown pebbles, but patches of stripped bedrock show through. The river runs along the bottom of a steep slope, in a corridor of tropical vegetation that stretches from left to right. On both ends, a floating mist blurs the distant vegetation. So close to the current, it feels like I’m inhaling water particles every time I breathe.

“I’d like to live in a house that’s been standing for thousands of years,” Shizuko says softly. She takes my hand and squeezes it as if trying to extract warmth from it. “Can you imagine that, making something that lasts that long?”

I hold Shizuko’s head against my chest.

“I wish we could spend our lives right on this spot,” I say in a low, quavering voice.

“Yet, you will leave. But one day you’ll return, right? Isn’t that the idea?” she asks as she looks up at me. “I will keep coming here alone. I will imagine myself holding your hand and looking at the river together. I will see our faces reflected in the surface of the water. And I will remember all that happened here.”

My heart hurts as much as it always does when I can’t prevent the memories from rushing in. I remain silent for maybe thirty seconds, but Shizuko continues.

“When we are apart, maybe I’ll manage to get published. I’m sure I’ll do little else than write. So perhaps one day you’ll walk into a big bookstore in Tokyo and find yourself staring at one of my novels.”

My throat constricts.

“For many years I’ve dreamt of holding a book you wrote. I try to make out what it contains, but the text is always blurry. After all, you never finished writing any novel.”

She tries to pull away to look me in the eyes, but I want to spare her that sight.

“You’re acting strange today. I haven’t finished anything yet, but I’m sure I’ll get down to it in the future.”

“I’ve been acting strange for a long time, Shizuko. That’s what regret does to people. And mine has never relented. I don’t want it to go away either.”

I allow Shizuko to look at me. She reaches out to touch one of my tears. Her warm fingers run over my skin. Now that I have opened up, she allows her worry and pain to surface. She never spoke up about how much it hurt that although we were in love, she had a limited time to spend with me before I moved out for the foreseeable future. Both of us knew that even if I kept my promise to return every few weeks, the distance would abrade our relationship, maybe to the point of severing it.

Shizuko wraps her arms around me. I feel the warmth of her body and the softness of her hair as I watch the river flow.

“As much as it hurts, I’ve never regretted meeting you,” she whispers. “I knew from the beginning that eventually we would stop seeing each other, but I have never felt like this for anybody else. I don’t expect that to change either.” Shizuko takes a deep breath. “So I will stay strong. I will keep going. I will write hard, and try to publish. I’m sure that when you return, you will find me waiting for you.”

“That was my intention. Even after I met that other girl, I’m sure I thought she represented a temporary distraction. I felt so lonely in Tokyo, after all. Another stranger among millions.”

Shizuko puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Are you already thinking of going out with other girls when you move to Tokyo?” she asks in a hurt tone.

I doubt she ever considered that such words would come out of my mouth. I shake my head.

“I’m talking about what will happen. I will leave like I always planned. From time to time, as I try to make a name for myself out there, I will return home to see you. At first, regularly. But it won’t take long until I feel a gulf growing between us. So much stuff will happen to me in Tokyo, even without looking for it. However, back in this nowhere town, you will remain the same. I will end up believing that you are weak, that you are afraid of growing up, of improving.”

Shizuko is staring intently at me, stunned.

“Some girl in Tokyo will make your heart skip a beat,” she says in a trembling voice. “I’m terrified of it, but I know it’s very likely. And I’m far from perfect. If… you end up forgetting me, won’t it mean that you found a better life? When the pain goes away, I will be happy for you.”

I close my eyes. How many times have I tried to imagine our future if Shizuko and I had stayed together? I grit my teeth, but my lower lip keeps trembling. As I rub my eyelids, Shizuko rests her face on my chest.

“In the end I will allow one of those Tokyo girls,” I say, “one to whom I was attracted, to convince me that I didn’t need you anymore. I will lie to you on the phone, I’ll tell you that it isn’t working, although by that point I will have dated that other girl for a couple of weeks. I remember… I still remember your voice on the other end of the line. So many times I have pictured you seated on your bed back at your parents’ home as you held the phone to your ear. The last time we saw each other, we came down here. You read me two short stories you had been working on, and we kissed, but my heart was no longer in it. I felt pity for you. You felt so small, so… beneath me.”

Shizuko trembles against me. When she pulls away, tears are running down her cheeks.

“You are breaking up with me,” she says in a hollow voice.

“I don’t want to leave. If I could go back, I would have stayed here, Shizuko, for the rest of my life. But I didn’t. After that girl for whom I betrayed you, two others followed. Everything I took for granted with you, that feeling of being home just by holding you in my arms, I never felt it with anybody else. I loved you like I will never be able to love another human being. I have been aware of it every day, ever since.”

I stop talking; my throat hurts. Shizuko strokes my cheek and tries to get me to look at her.

“I don’t understand what you are talking about,” she whimpers. “I already knew that I won’t ever love anyone as much as I love you, even though you were always meant to leave me. But if you have realized the same thing as well, stay with me. We’ll move out together. If we don’t find any decent house in this town, we’ll move nearby. I will always be yours. You are the only person with whom I’d rather be than alone.”

I feel that my left hand will fall through Shizuko’s shoulder. The frozen ache has spread throughout my body, which I only allow it to do when I don’t care that it risks ruining my life.

“I remember the day that I received that call from your mother,” I struggle to say. “I was sitting on a bench in a park, a few minutes after I got out of the office. I was looking up the news on my phone while I drank soda. I don’t know what went through my mind when your mother’s name showed up on the screen. I hadn’t spoken to her in years. And when I heard her animal sobs, time stood still. You had been taking a walk along the outskirts, the same route you followed three or four days a week. Your mother told me that you used to sit somewhere and write. But that day you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Shizuko’s watery eyes have widened. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. I take a deep breath as my chest burns.

“It was raining. They said that the car slipped off the road. Your mother told me that you died instantly from the impact. I never believed it; that’s the kind of stuff that doctors say when the truth is unbearable. I kept dreaming of you lying there in the rain, broken. Agonizing. I pictured you choking in mud and blood. What did you think about in your final minutes? Did you realize that we would never see each other again? Did you still resent me? I had told you that we would love each other for the rest of our lives, and I had believed it, but I still betrayed you.”

Shizuko stares at me blankly. I’m exhausted, my legs are trembling. I lower myself to the cement floor, and I sit on the edge. The insects and birds keep calling out to each other like they always will.

“Once my mind registered your mother’s words,” I continue, “I experienced the ice-cold sensation of something snapping inside me. I thought I would collapse on the spot. When I looked down at my feet, I realized that until then the knowledge that you existed, that you would be waiting for me if I chose to return, kept me tethered to this world, but ever since I’ve felt like an astronaut drifting away in the void. Back at home, back when we were children, I met the only one who mattered, and now I would never look at her, talk to her, hold her again. You would never tell new stories. You must have pictured so much in your head that you never got to put down in words, and I would never see it.”

Shizuko has taken a seat next to me. She rests her hand on my knee as she pleads with her eyes for me to make sense.

“I’m still here with you, and I will always be.”

I take a deep breath, then look up at the gray sky.

“The world has changed too much in these last decades, Shizuko, particularly for a man anchored to the past. But I have made sure to remember you, whether through recalling the days we spent together or writing them down when they were slipping off my mind. As long as the memories of you remain, and the means to perpetuate them exist, we can salvage the life that I threw away so easily, starting from the afternoon when I confirmed to you that I would leave soon. For so many years I have barely thought of anything else, and every time I attempt to recreate our past, I get a bit closer. I won’t have to change much more. One of these days I will meet you again as you lean against that moss-stained wall, and for the rest of the afternoon I won’t notice any look, any reaction, any word coming out of your mouth that doesn’t belong to you.”

I hold Shizuko’s hand. Her fingers are thin and delicate. I squeeze them gently.

“Every time I return to you, I fall in love all over again. But it’s so hard, Shizuko. I can barely deal with looking at you, talking to you, smelling you, touching you. It makes me want to die. They insisted I should try to forget you, but none of those people understand. There’s nothing worse than realizing too late that I had already met and lost the only one who would ever matter. Whatever remains of you has kept haunting my life, and that is my only relief.”

I can’t keep talking through the tears. Shizuko wraps her arms around my shoulders, and I bury my face in her neck. The sound of the insects, birds and frogs fills my ears.

“You are telling me the truth, I can tell,” she says, distressed. “Or else we both have lost our minds.”

I move my vocal cords without uttering a word, to order the interface to appear. Two orders later, the cacophony of the animal noises and the sound of flowing water cease abruptly. Our breathing and quickened heartbeats echo as if inside a chamber.

Shizuko tenses up, and pulls away from our embrace to look around. The world has stopped. On the river, the reflections of the sunlight, filtered through the cloud cover, are static as if drawn with a white crayon, and the ripples of the water remain still like the wrinkles in a sheet.

“What is this?” she asks in a breaking voice. “W-who am I?”

I close my eyes and try to calm down.

“You’re a miracle. One I built up from zero, based on the foundations laid by many other people much more intelligent than me. It has taken me ages; I have fine-tuned the contents of your brain every day, based on how this afternoon went. But one of these days I will walk you home, you, my Shizuko, instead of some forged version, and from that day on I will spend the rest of my life with you.”

Shizuko is trembling. Tears are streaming down her pale face.

“I’m not real…?”

“Of course you’re real. Made to be exactly like the Shizuko I knew in my youth. You are more real than anything else in the world out there. You shouldn’t have died. I should have been there so you wouldn’t have died. But I can bring you back.”

“B-but I’m gone…”

She won’t accept what I’m doing; she never has. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve yet to perfect her. I will keep on creating new versions until I find the replica of the Shizuko that remains in my memory, and who from then on will live forever.

I press my lips against her forehead, then I hold her face to look into her eyes.

“I love you. Back when you stood in front of me and looked back at me with your original eyes, I didn’t understand properly what I meant when I uttered those words. Now I know that I was put in this world so I could love you.”

Shizuko’s face is contorted in stunned anguish. Her chest starts convulsing as if she was suffering from silent hiccups.

I verbalize another order out loud:

“Stop the simulation.”

Shizuko freezes. Her fingers turn rigid in my hand. I shut off the rest of the world.

Shizuko and I sit in a pitch black void. The sound of my heartbeat is deafening. The darkness makes me feel that I’m the only living creature in the universe, too small and weak to keep going through this life alone even for a second longer. I hold on to Shizuko’s lifeless hand until it grants me the strength that I will need to endure the next days, or hours, that I will spend away from the love of my life.


Author’s note: if by some miracle you have read the stuff I self-published in Spanish two or three years ago, you may know or remember that this story is basically the same as one of them, except with a completely different setting and a narrative that goes more or less straight to the point. What can I say, I wanted to tell that kind of story again, and I knew I wouldn’t do anything else today. I hope you enjoyed it to some extent. I certainly did, but sadness has felt like a second home for as long as I remember.

The Clock Is Ticking (Poetry)

I battle against time
And the demands of society,
One that I didn’t chose,
With which I don’t identify
I go to bed at ten
Because I wake up at six
Many hours and energies sacrificed
Performing tasks I don’t care about
To earn the right to exist,
To bother trying to make a living
When there’s no living done
I’m only allowed to endure
By serving those above me
I try to keep afloat
While my boat is sinking
On a green and brown sea
With toxic sludge floating atop

A user account was locked
A shortcut doesn’t show up
Someone needs a program installed
Someone needs access to a shared folder
A printer doesn’t work
Paper is stuck in a printer
A new printer needs to be installed
Someone wants access to a website
The audio doesn’t work in an online meeting
The background color is too blue
Paint 3D lacks some buttons
An application crashes daily
A labelling printer is uncalibrated
Someone needs remote desktop access
A computer is too slow
A computer randomly freezes
A computer needs more storage space
A computer needs more RAM
Someone needs more space in her mailbox
A network cable gets pulled out
Connect the patch panel with the switch
There’s not enough bandwidth for everyone
A file was accidentally deleted
Somebody got a virus
A PDA’s battery has died
A PDA needs a factory reset
A PDA needs an updated certificate
The backup drive failed
The database crashed
A server has stopped transferring files
Someone tried to hack the system

My friends betray me
My family hates me
My wife tells me she loves another man
My cat dies
My car breaks down
My house burns down

It’s a dead-end job anyway
I can’t fucking speak Basque

I don’t want to meet strangers
I hate talking to people
I don’t want to clean up after them
I don’t want to deal with their problems
I don’t care about anyone’s needs
Their lives are nothing like mine
They live in a different reality
That I cannot ever understand

Stop interrupting me
I never get anything done
Give me a single moment of peace,
One that lasts as much as I need,
So I feel like a human again

I spend my time worrying
When I should be writing
I need hours of quiet
To be able to think
I wish I could make money
Doing something worthwhile
I dream about leaving the office
For the last time in my life,
So I can stop working full-time
And dedicate myself to writing
I already tried publishing stuff
I’m not good enough,
And nobody gives a shit
About what I have to say

I want to sleep when I feel like it,
Instead of at scheduled times
I can’t eat when I want;
An eighty years old man
Has better bowels than mine
Leaving the house means anxiety
My intestines need to be coddled
Or else they’ll keep torturing me
I want to go out when I want
I want to experience nice things
So much stuff I’d like to try,
But no time to invest in it
I’m trapped inside this body
When I’m supposed to be free
I want to stop having to struggle,
Just once in my life

I need an empty room,
And no one else around
Nobody to ask me what I’m doing,
Nobody to knock on my door
Time for nothing but thinking,
Time for nothing but being alone
A chance to recharge
Before facing another busy day
In order to write, I must first rest
The batteries of my mind
It takes too much mental energy
Just to function every day

I’m still here, although I’m dead
A walking corpse who feels pain
I’m a ghost with headaches
I’m a ghost with heartaches
I’m a ghost with chest pains
I’m a ghost with stomach aches
I’ve been haunting this world
Since I was born
I’m not afraid of dying,
I’m just tired of living,
And I don’t care anymore
I want to be left alone

Slowly but surely, all my abilities
Will fade and die away
I’ll forget how to speak correctly,
How to do math,
How to read and write,
All the skills I need to survive,
Like a computer without electricity
I’ll slowly lose everything,
Every memory I stored,
Even how to walk and talk
One day, my brain will shut off,
I will just disappear,
And no one will notice,
No one will mourn
They won’t miss me at all
When I’m finally forgotten,
I’ll be in peace

I dreamt of standing at the right angle
So I could see an opening in the wall
Once I ventured into the passage,
I found myself in an isolated space:
A field of butter-yellow, hair-like grass
In the center, an ancient, towering oak
A peaceful place with no people
Inside that space, time stood still
The sun was stuck in a permanent sunset
I heard birds singing from the tree,
And I smelled the flowers

Even if I spent a thousand years inside,
Outside the clock would remain stopped
With that amount of time,
I would read anything I pleased,
I would write every novel I wanted,
I would crystallize each scene
To the last precise word,
I wouldn’t see another face,
I wouldn’t worry about food and shelter,
I would never have to work again,
I would be able to relax,
Free to think about whatever I liked,
I would remain focused on what matters,
I’d make up for all the wasted years

The clock is ticking,
Rotting the cells away
We were dragged from nothing
So we could grow old and die

‘The Clock Is Ticking’ by Jon Ureña

Spider Commander Versus Dinosaur-Monkey (Poetry)

There’s a hairy spider trapped in my guts;
Many-eyed, pointy-legged, sharp-fanged.
It tugs on this or that tendon as it pleases.
Sometimes its legs are sticky and slimy,
Sometimes they’re dry and rough.
This little motherfucker decides where I go.

But from time to time it makes mistakes,
Like when it pulls too hard at my heartstrings
Or my mind, and leaves them all in shreds
So there’s nothing left to hold together,
Nothing to give meaning to anything else,
As I keep spinning around in a circle.

This therapist I talked to for a while
Didn’t believe that this nasty spider
Could possibly yield me pleasure,
But I have never felt as happy
As when I hunted down relentlessly
Whatever this bastard told me to.

As a child, a version of me I resent,
Because I was an annoying little shit
(I wish I could punch him in the face,
Or better yet, drown him in a bathtub),
I was autistically obsessed with dinos.
One of my first memories involves
Me lying in bed after an operation
(My genes fucked me in many ways).
Someone bought me a triceratops toy,
And I thought it was the coolest thing.

I wish I had to deal with ancient reptiles
(Although they were more like birds)
And their primitive, murderous ways,
Than with the unreliable, nasty apes
That kept saying pointless stuff to me
As I hoped for them to leave me be,
While I played alone in a dark corner
Of our anxiety-inducing apartment,
Pretending to know about dinosaurs.

Now I’d like to meet a dinosaur
Who knows what I want better than I do.
A velociraptor who doesn’t look at me like
‘Are you okay?’, but ‘Do you want to play?’,
An einiosaurus who asks me if I’m lonely,
So he can put his arm around me
And say things that make me blush.
All I retain is a shitty imagination
In an old, broken-down body,
And a rotten brain.

Just once, I’d love to see a dinosaur
Get run over and flattened by a car
If only so I could tell random people,
Who would think I had lost my mind.
Nowadays I know better than anyone
How useless all these dinosaurs are,
So I just kill them whenever possible
With my bare hands or available guns
(They keep coming back from the dead).

Back when I was a shitty kid,
I didn’t know what a spider was,
Just that I hated so much
How it crawled inside my skin
And made its nest under my scalp.

I would love to cut open my belly
And pull out my innards
To let those spiders crawl out,
Which may then crawl into my mouth
To chew on my greasy tongue
Until I choked on blood and bile.

I can’t wait to get rid of them.
They’ve turned my guts inside out,
And the only way to make it stop
Is to crush those fucking things
In between my fingers,
Then spit on the remains
Of the bodies of these arachnids
Whose existence makes me sick,
Who fuck with my head
Making me think and feel like shit.

I’m not a fucking spider,
Yet they insist on making me one
By trapping me inside my skin,
Where I’ll rot away from within.
I am still me, and I will always be,
Even if I don’t want to be anymore.

I can hear the spider’s laughter,
Hear it screaming,
As I lie in bed at night
Trying to sleep as my thoughts spin
Around in circles of nothingness.
The spider’s laughter and screams
Keep me awake for hours on end,
My eyes wide-open with fear.

I ache for some kind of release,
But my brain won’t shut off
As the arachnid twists and tumbles,
Spinning its webs across my mind.
There’s no way to escape
This monster in my head.

At least now I can picture it,
The monster that lurks inside me:
It’s a disgusting, hairy spider
That mainly cares about keeping
Its slimy legs wrapped around me
As it nibbles on my brain tissue.

I was born a dinosaur.
I was born a human,
But I want to be a dinosaur again.
Forget the stupid ape,
Let me go back in time
And become a dinosaur.
I’ll take all the risks.
I’ll grow big and strong.
I’ll have sex with any dino.
I’ll eat a thousand babies
If that’s what I must do.

When I was thirteen, and for a whole year,
I was obsessed with this poor, pretty girl
For who I was nothing but an ugly annoyance,
A relentless weirdo with nothing to offer,
Who couldn’t even understand himself
And who was controlled, robot-like,
By the primitive forces in his brain,
Which made him act and react wildly
To a world that seemed totally foreign,
Even though he knew perfectly well
That he didn’t belong in it.

I was very much into mangas,
As well as Crichton’s sci-fi books.
There hasn’t been anyone else like him.
I read his ‘Sphere’ like a hundred times.
I guess it wasn’t that good in retrospect,
But I desperately needed that escape
From my worthless life as a turd teen.

For a few years I drew so many comics
That I thought I would sell some one day,
But the cast was a mix of existing characters
From mangas, animes and video games.
I didn’t dare create my own stuff
In case people thought it was shit.
But I got to live through those guys,
They kept me from offing myself
(I wouldn’t be here if I had a gun).

I also wrote plenty of stuff, of course,
But my mother didn’t believe in privacy;
I had to learn a whole different language
To write down my painful thoughts.
That broken woman even complained
That she couldn’t understand English.

At times I thought writing was a waste,
That I should instead spend my time playing
The only kind of game that mattered:
The one where you get to hurt yourself.

My mother often berated me
About my lack of social skills.
It’s not my fault that I was born
With this nasty monster in me.
They’re the ones who fucked up.
I didn’t need them nor their love,
So I just kept doing what I was best at:
Being a shitty teenager with no friends
Who daydreamed about hanging himself.
I wanted to live in my own bedroom
To spend every day with the shutters down.

I don’t remember a single moment
Of happiness in my whole life.
I always felt like a stranger
In my own skin.

I can’t remember all the video games,
Many of which did count as obsessions,
Because they captured my whole brain
And made it impossible to think
Of anything else except how to win
(I was sick of losing at everything else).

When that bitch cheated and left,
I spent six months of real time
Managing my local football team.
I barely slept, I rarely took showers.
I video gamed my way through pain.
I have always hated football;
My old man had headed too many balls
And lost what remained of his IQ.

After I played a tennis video game,
I became curious about those fit girls.
That was all it took for the spider to tug.
I learned everything there was to learn
About female tennis players,
At least the beautiful, sexy ones,
Particularly those from Eastern Europe,
Because I wanted to fuck them all,
And it’s hard to find good Russian porno.
I’d rather watch an erotic ballet.

For a few years, from morning to night,
I was obsessed with a Californian harpist,
And whatever I lived through in this world,
I wondered what she would have thought.
I even wrote a whole novel about her;
I didn’t have the guts to call it fanfiction.

It took seeing her in person for me to realize
That I’m nothing but a stupid, broken man
Who holds on to the first available ledge,
Because I’m too much of a coward to fall.

I’m a loser who doesn’t know when to quit.
I only have two things to offer:
My self-loathing
And my inability to understand myself.

The harpist taught me a lot, though:
She made me look inside and see the truth.
I wish she hadn’t; I got a load of new data
That I still haven’t been able to use
To make my life better.

The only times I’m grateful to the spider
That commands this decaying frame,
Are when it orders me to lose myself
By living vicariously through fiction.

Once I feel the fire of a story burning,
I forget to eat, I can’t fall asleep.
I can pull off 7,000 words a day.
Only then this world makes sense.

Too bad that I was compelled to write
At times when I had to hold down jobs.
I lost a couple of them because of that,
Because I just couldn’t give a fuck.
In fact, I’d rather be unemployed
Than have to strangle my obsessions.

I can’t wait to cut off these damn legs
That keep hurting me and making me bleed,
Because I need a dose of pure obsession
Every once in a while to remain sane
(I don’t want to be a human anymore).

I was born a dinosaur.
I am a dino, I will die a dino.
Before I was a reptile,
I was a fucking monkey.
I’ll never go back to being a man,
But I could live like one again
If I owned the right tools
To get rid of my goddamn brain.

I have no idea how I managed
To stay alive all these years.

I suppose I’m somewhat obsessed
With the many varieties of VR sex,
But I need the pleasure of coming,
Or else I won’t feel anything at all
Except the cold grip of reality
As I stare up at the ceiling.

I started a novella a few weeks ago
About this writer who became homeless
And then ended up in the future.
Although I’ve tried returning to it,
I just can’t force myself to care.
I was so invested in it at the start,
But my interest disappeared.
The fickle spider tugged me away.
At the most I can hope that I’ll return
And finish it one of these days.

I intended to list a myriad of obsessions
That have kept me going until now,
But for all of these shitty thirty six years
I have relied on the spider’s decisions,
An alien force with its own agenda,
To escape from the meaningless pain.

Only when I’m alone in a silent room
I have been able to relax and feel free,
And forget about whatever bothers me.
Then, I let that spider out of its cage,
Let it crawl up and down my self
Until it has covered me with its sticky web,
Which will then pull me into a deep trance
Where I’ll dream of inhabiting a new body,
One free of my years-old problems,
Without obsessions,
So I won’t have to worry anymore
About being sick, or getting older,
Or growing up,
Or needing someone to take care of me,
Or wanting to die.

I’m well aware how that damn spider
Came to command my broken brain.
I was born with this autism thing,
High-functioning or otherwise.
It took meeting some others in person
For me to understand how annoying
Autistic people get when they go on
About their pathological obsessions,
But I always write whatever I want,
Because I need that to remain myself.

Even if I’m not able to understand
Why the world is such a painful place,
I don’t want to waste my limited time
On things I don’t give a shit about.
So when the spider comes to tell me:
“Stop whining and become more obsessed,”
I obey,
But I still think I should be allowed to whine.

My obsessions are my friends,
They help me to see the world
Without the interference of the bullshit
All the ape bastards crammed into my brain.

I’m sure I’ll die of some terminal disease
(Alzheimer’s and cancer run in my genes).
Otherwise I’ll hang myself or jump off a cliff.
Until then, I will need to write obsessively
About whatever this spider fucker focuses on.
I have never felt like this shitty life mattered
As when I lived through someone else’s skin.

Barely anybody reads my trash,
So if you happened to read this,
I would say “Sorry for annoying you,”
But I’d rather stay silent than lie.
The truth is that I wrote this crap
Because I needed to add meaning
To another pointless workday.

If you ever meet me in real life,
Don’t hit me over the head with a shovel
(I’ve had enough of being a monkey),
And please remember to feed the spider
That inhabits my skull.

You better stop reading my stuff.
I only have worry and misery to share,
And I need that little bit of company
Even if it means a like in my screen.
So stop bothering with this bullshit
And protect your valuable brain
From the endless stream of trash
I send down this shitty old pipe.

Interdimensional Prophet (Poetry)

When Dr. Grayson Munchkin was born,
He was left to die in a gutter by his mother,
With the aim of sending him to Hell
For ruining everything she held dear
As a result, many of Munchkin’s students,
And even some of his esteemed colleagues,
Got used to mentioning Munchkin’s mother
As fondly as that lovely lady deserved

Anyway, you should address Grayson Munchkin
By putting the ‘Dr.’ in front of his name
The guy will likely get pissed otherwise
He believes himself to be the kind of handsome
Which makes a female-filled team impracticable,
So it’s mostly dudes in his team of researchers
Who discovered how to access other dimensions
To be fair, a few women do work in his team
But most of them were raised in single parent homes,
And they tend to keep their distance from men like him
Even if they’re attracted to him (and he’s sure they are)
It would be impossible for a woman to make love
To someone who thinks that he owns all things
And who’s too self-centered to care about anything else

His team relies on interdimensional resonance
And dimensional stability fields
To open the miraculous portal holes,
Which create an imbalance between nearby universes
With differing degrees of dimensional density
As a result, those dimensional densities
Cause one universe to destabilize
Towards the next dimensional layer

One key is the advanced material plasmodum,
Of which the dimensional portals are built,
But the main key is a blood sacrifice
Other dimensions can’t be accessed otherwise
The amount varies based on the size and density
Of the stuff that the dimension to access contains
Dr. Grayson Munchkin believes that it’s due
To the dimensional energy stored in living beings

Be careful when controlling the dimensional instability,
Otherwise all sorts of nasty things would happen
It might be best if only people who aren’t crazy,
Like Dr. Grayson Munchkin, get to use the portals

You’d think that opening portals into new dimensions
Would make humanity more powerful and influential
In fact, the portal technology is so dangerous
That Munchkin intends to keep it under wraps
Also because he’s afraid of losing control over it,
And because potential competitors outside the college
May compromise the team’s research and development
Everybody else in the world is too stupid anyway
They’ll never understand how it works

Each day at eight AM sharp, Munchkin’s classroom fills
With eager young minds who all look forward
To the thrill of opening another dimensional door
They connect with an infinite number of dimensions,
Most of them wildly different to our own
A new dimension will always be random,
But they can input the coordinates of a previous one

Many researchers are obsessed with gaining knowledge
Munchkin wants to explore strange and interesting life
Hiding in the myriad of unimaginable realms,
But he also has his greedy eyes on the possible wealth
In secret, he wants to come across the presence of a god
In any of the dimensions they will venture into

When Munchkin was a child, his father used to tell him
That old cliché, “Life is a journey, not a destination,”
So Munchkin feels like this is the time for him to embark
Into a world filled with mysteries and wonders
The portal technology could change the course of history
Or it could just end up being another scientific fad

Some of Munchkin’s students have the right attitude
And they’re willing to do anything for science
Every exploration team is trained in the art of phlebotomy,
In case they need to draw blood in a strange dimension
A dormant portal couldn’t be activated otherwise
So Munchkin’s team has a lot of experience drawing blood
From their fellow humans, and sometimes animals

When Munchkin decides to fire up a whole new dimension,
His team has no clue what will await on the other side
Merely connecting to another dimension is dangerous;
An uncontrolled decompression sucked in two students,
Who were lost forever in some unknown dimension
His team relies these days on the airlock they built
To prevent dimensional leaks during the process

The portal opens and the team of scholars enters
All members wear protective gear
With a helmet, goggles, breathing apparatus
And a space suit to protect against radiation
Dr. Munchkin keeps insisting to the dean
That they should equip them with nuclear reactors
But the dean refuses to spend money
On such a useless piece of equipment
Besides, she’s worried about liability issues
And the university doesn’t want to be sued
By the parents of some dead nerds

The team is divided into two groups:
One group will collect data from the other dimensions,
And the second is charged with maintaining the portal
In the beginning, the exploration teams were terrified
They only ventured a few meters beyond the portal,
And that’s if the new dimension seemed safe enough
If they caught a glimpse of alien life similar to beasts,
They were quick to gather their things and flee home

On many of the dimensions discovered,
The only life was weird fungi
It’s not that those places were barren;
It seems they never developed plant life
In some other dimensions, though,
Life existed only as plant-like entities
The teams explored those dimensions further
They kept an eye on each other
Through makeshift communication devices
Made out of plant fibers and animal guts
The animals were brought from home, though
As a result, the explorers had to deal with the smell
Of the creatures’ carcasses

The first animal life was discovered by accident:
The team found itself standing among beasts
That looked like trees standing on their roots
They walked around but seemed peaceful enough
And they didn’t attack nor try to eat the explorers
One member of the team, a girl named Ruth,
Became fascinated with the plants
She studied them intently and learned their language,
Which she used to communicate with the beast-trees

Ruth eventually became one of the leaders
Her name means ‘earth’ in Hebrew
That’s why the rest of her team called themselves
Earthlings, after the planet Earth,
But also because they came from Earth
Anyway, Ruth was nicknamed ‘the forest scientist’
Her interest in the flora of those dimensions
Saved the lives of several members of her team,
As they tried to make it back home
They reported what they’d seen to Dr. Munchkin
He got a kick out of seeing his students in action,
Especially when the stories were related to him

They came across disturbing walking octopi
With tentacles like sea snakes
They tried to climb into the explorers’ clothes
To get at the blood within

The team also encountered a strange kind of grass,
A twisted monstrosity resembling a human hand
When one explorer cut off its disturbing fingers,
Its body melted away to reveal a creature inside
That resembled a cockroach with tar-like wings
The scientists were so shocked, they fled the scene
They made it back safely to the portal and sealed it

After one of the expeditions,
They all had the same dream
In a dark, alien forest appeared
A deformed creature with a human head
It chased the explorers through the trees
One of the members, whose name was Sam,
Was convinced that he saw the face
Of his mother in that nightmare
He told the others that it wasn’t a dream
Munchkin decided to shut off that dimension
So it wouldn’t be explored further

The team of researchers are usually on good terms
Mostly, they’re just colleagues
Dr. Munchkin has to keep reminding them
To keep quiet about their portal technology
In case the government catches wind of it
And decides to hide the portal in the Smithsonian

An undercurrent of excitement and curiosity
Runs beneath the surface of every team
Who knows what kind of strange creatures
May lurk inside the next dimensional door
Dr. Munchkin hopes that they’ll find the key
To unlock the secrets of the universe,
And maybe even discover a god or two,
But they don’t know if their discoveries
Will ever see the light of day

One of the new dimensions was so snowy
That the team barely managed to set up their tents
When a sudden blizzard destroyed the expensive gear
Most of the team members got treated for frostbite

Another dimension contained an infinite number
Of beings with bodies made entirely of glass
They weren’t aggressive, they just sat there
And watched the team walk past

A dimension was filled with beautiful flowers,
And some of the plants were so large and vibrant
That they looked like paintings,
But they had no scent

A new dimension turned out to be full of fog
So thick that the team could hardly see
But this wondrous, misty realm
Had a strange beauty all on its own

One dimension seemed to be nothing
But clouds and an endless sky,
No ground in sight

One of the most interesting places visited
Was a dimension filled with living crystals
That looked like diamonds and sapphires
The only way to get into the caves
Where the crystalline life resided
Was by climbing down a hole in the ceiling
The team discovered an entire ecosystem
Of crystal-based creatures

A dimension was filled with floating rocks,
And the ground underneath was covered in dirt
It had the appearance of being an endless beach,
But the team didn’t find water anywhere
Some tiny, fluffy little animals were crawling around
They were a cross between a bird and a caterpillar
One member of the group was fascinated by the critters
She kept petting one as it crawled across her arm
Her teammates started to tease her about getting weird,
Then she realized that the little animal was trying
To crawl inside her clothes, so she jumped back

A few of the dimensions the team visited
Were filled with otherworldly music
They never figured out how it originated,
But the sound was so soothing and beautiful
That the team found themselves dancing,
And they kept going until they fell asleep
Once they woke up, they felt disturbed
By having been stripped of their free will,
And were quick to return to the college
They told the dean what had happened
Her response was to lock them in the cellar
Until they’d recovered from the experience

One dimension’s air smelled like rotten eggs
And when a team member took a whiff,
His nose started bleeding and everything went black
To be fair, he should have worn his oxygen mask

The team also discovered dimensions
That were hit regularly with catastrophes
They were referred to as the Hell Dimensions
No complex life would survive for long

Some dimensions seemed to exist
Only in the minds of the explorers
They called them the Imaginary Dimensions
Nobody could explain those

Dr. Munchkin’s team is growing
They’ve catalogued dozens of new dimensions
Each time they open another portal,
The possibility of a discovery grows
Whenever an exploration team returns
They share the exciting results with their colleagues,
Who are compelled to investigate more
Their curiosity drives them on
Dr. Munchkin keeps telling them: “We’re pioneers”
But he doesn’t tell them that they’ll probably die

They could spend an eternity exploring
Dr. Grayson Munchkin wants to go further
He hopes that his discoveries will change history
In the process he might even find a god or two

It becomes widely known among the local scholars
That Munchkin is opening portals to strange realms
Through the equipment that his team developed
Many new faces get involved in the explorations,
Which causes an explosion in their workloads
The dimension researchers work late into the night
They’re always on call to deal with emergencies
Dr. Grayson Munchkin isn’t afraid to take risks,
And he’s rarely the one to put his life on the line

Many of the dimensions his team explores
Are Amazon-like, untapped wildernesses
Dr. Munchkin’s people carry ropes and climbing gear
The team members end up having to rappel down cliffs
Or cross chasms that separate two mountains
They have to be careful not to fall into the abyss

Many of the students spend hours each day
Documenting everything about the flora and fauna
Of the many strange dimensions they’ve catalogued
Every detail needs to be remembered

One dimension was a dark void that stretched on forever
No matter how far the team walked,
They never reached an edge

In one dimension that was catalogued as desert-like,
The sand turned out to be made of tiny bugs
It looks like the surface of Mars, but it’s all bugs
Some were small enough to enter through the pores
Two members ended up covered with thousands of bites,
One of them has never stopped screaming

In one dimension, the team discovered a world
Where there are no seasons or weather patterns
It’s a constant, eternal summer
Some researchers planned to build luxury resorts

Sometimes they found ancient ruins or abandoned cities
With the buildings crumbling and empty
Other times they came across strange devices
That resembled far more complicated calculators

In one dimension that was dominated by birds,
Most of the team members got lost inside a forest,
But the dimension had an endless supply of fresh water
When they returned, even the women had grown beards

A coordinate led to a place of giant, dinosaur-like lizards
They could fly using the power of the wind,
And they’d hunt prey with powerful jaws
The team quickly realized that the lizards
Were on a quest for a mythical source of energy:
Dragon eggs that contained unlimited magic
The team isn’t sure how it learned this information,
But they didn’t want to wait around to be eaten

Another dimension is a lush green paradise
The team explored it for weeks,
But then a sudden storm swept in
Tornadoes appeared and destroyed the tents

One dimension’s air tasted like salt
Even though the team wore oxygen masks
The members became sick and nearly died

One dimension seemed to be a solid block of ice
The team used axes and hammers to break it
And they discovered that the interior was filled
With a substance that looked like mercury

A dimension populated solely by mushrooms
Was so fertile and beautiful
That a few associated mycologists
Decided to build a mushroom city
They even erected a monument
To commemorate their discovery

One dimension is filled with a kind of plasma
It has an eerie purple glow
The team discovered it was a type of life
That had evolved to survive in space

The floor in one dimension was so muddy
That the team sank to their waists
They now thank the heavens for their ropes
In that strange, swampy land
The massive aquatic plants grew tall
With trunks as thick as skyscrapers

Exploring some dimensions involved constant tension
The team had to give up any sense of security
Because some expeditions had gotten so dangerous,
Dr. Munchkin hired explorers of jungles and seas
To guide the researchers through the unknown

One of the teams discovered a giant mushroom,
Three meters tall and covered in tiny white hairs
A mycologist cut out pieces and ate them
The others were terrified that they might poisonous
Predictably, they were hallucinogenic
But also allowed that researcher to understand
Both the language of mushrooms across dimensions
As well as understand their hierarchy and needs
Munchkin had gotten sick of mushrooms by now
He wanted to move on to something else

A group of explorers encountered
A creature with eyes in its armpits
The being could see all the way
To the end of time and space
And it spoke to them telepathically
They knew that they would have no choice
But to obey its every command

In one dimension, the team found a vast, oceanic cavern
Teeming with fish that could swim through solid rock
There was a squid with tentacles thicker than trees
The team tried to swim right past it without it noticing,
Until one of the men accidentally bumped into it
The monster’s mouth snapped shut, swallowing him
They heard a loud crunching sound from inside the beast
The others were able to escape by swimming away

In some dimensions the explorers came across creatures
That resembled humongous spiders and centipedes
The team was never able to identify them
They were too busy fighting off giant ants
That could eat a person whole

One dimension had a population of talking insects
They spoke in their own incomprehensible tongue
No matter how many times the explorers asked,
They just couldn’t figure out what they meant

When the explorers entered one of the dimensions,
Their skin immediately started changing colors
The researchers thought it must have been the light,
But their skin keeps changing colors to this day

In one dimension the team met a creature
With the body of a lion and the head of a horse
It smelled like sulfur and its claws were huge
The explorers’ rifles took care of the threat

Some dimension was full of enormous jellyfish
That emitted a brilliant, neon blue light
The scientists were surprised to learn that the jellyfish
Could live outside the ocean, but not inside of it

One night, some drunk students accessed the portal
And got afflicted by some strange spores,
But after a few days of a high fever
They were able to control objects through telekinesis
Nobody came across those spores again
Dr. Munchkin wanted the power for himself

Many believed that they could snatch other powers
Or even technological remnants from alien races
Munchkin wished to increase his worth dramatically
By gaining such powers beyond humanity

In one dimension, some predators were invisible
And they could move at impossible speeds
A few of the veteran explorers were killed
The team brought back corpses of these creatures
They could be touched and weighed,
But remained invisible in every wavelength

Another dimension was a sea of blood
The team discovered a special property:
If it touched a human’s bare hand,
It will cause their bones to dissolve

The teams became addicted to exploring alien worlds
They always returned home with a new discovery,
But they were more interested in finding novel places,
So they didn’t explore previous worlds thoroughly

Some chemists used some plants brought back
To synthetize a new drug they called zodalite
It provided great euphoria and hallucinations
Many of the explorers went out while high

An entire team of explorers, some quite veteran
Were found turned into stone statues
Nobody learned what the fuck happened
That was the end of that expedition

One team encountered a large, pink slug
Its body was made of rubber and it squirted acid
The team tried to kill it with their guns,
But the acid melted through the barrels

Other dimensions were filled with creatures
With tentacles that stretched out of sight
Most of them were carnivorous and hungry for flesh
The researchers decided not to enter those realms

One of the dimensions was home to black clouds
That somehow were alive and ravenous
One of the clouds followed the team home,
But some researchers managed to train it
The cloud now hauls materials around
The researchers no longer worry about it

In another dimension, the explorers came across a creature
That looked like a giant eyeball with a mouth
The scientists couldn’t figure out how to communicate
With this alien life form, so they just left it alone
They had to keep watch over the creature
Because it might shoot a beam of light out of its eye
And destroy everything within range of the beam
That was a problem for everyone, except for the creature

Some scientists got addicted to zodalite,
And they went out to explore every night
Just to get high and feel the euphoria
A few of them even tried eating a weird moss,
Which made their heads explode

A few of the veterans ate too many mushrooms,
And got bitten by too many weird insects,
And have lost their goddamn minds
Now they can speak the language of dogs

One of the researchers ate by mistake a weird leaf
That changed her into something like a plant
She spent all of the next year growing massive leaves,
Until she was eaten by a giant spider

In some dimensions, the explorers found ancient ruins
The buildings were covered in a thick layer of moss
Some of them looked like they’d been built out of mud,
But others had intricate designs on the walls

One of the explorers got bitten by a strange snake
He grew long fangs that dripped black saliva
The other researchers shot a few photos
Before their cameras exploded

One of the explorers was swallowed whole
By a worm the size of a bus
After being digested, the creature spat out
A bunch of small worms that crawled everywhere

Along the way, Dr. Munchkin’s teams also discovered
Dimensions that were home to sentient species
There first one involved an island
And its tiny society of sentient turtles
They never made themselves understood
Turns out that turtle language is hard to comprehend

One dimension was populated by sentient crystals
That communicated using vibrations
They kept making sounds that resembled music,
But the team never managed to discover
What they were singing about

One world was full of dunes under a harsh sun
The researchers encountered cicada-like insects
That had evolved to become intelligent and peaceful
Their queen requested regular meetings with humans
These creatures relied solely on the vegetables
That they had to harvest every few seconds

One dimension was populated by a race of bees
As big as any regular house back on Earth
They were docile and eager to talk with the teams
Somehow they were able to fly, but only when it rained

One dimension was populated by a race of tiny people
They looked like little old men in dresses
The explorers discovered that they were asexual,
But they did have a social hierarchy

One dimension has a race of winged humanoids
Who can fly through space and time at will
And who are completely immortal
The team investigated for weeks before they realized
That the flying people were actually ghosts
They keep searching for their bodies, without success

In one of the dimensions, the team encountered
An army of ants that marched in formation
And carried weapons made out of bones
The scientists quickly retreated back home,
As the ant-soldiers advanced upon the portal

One dimension’s air was filled with an electrical charge,
And when the team stepped outside they could feel a tingle
The team members soon realized that the electricity
Was coming from two enormous towers in the distance
When the team approached the towers, they saw a man
Who had wings of pure gold and a tail of fire
The team ran back to the portal, waiting open for them
The man didn’t attack, but he did send out a message
That said: “Don’t go near the towers”

A team discovered a civilization of sentient butterflies
Some of the explorers became butterflies, which was nice

One of the dimensions resembled Mars
The world was a barren wasteland,
But in the distance, the team glimpsed what appeared to be
The outline of a large city hundreds of kilometers away
They were so excited that they forgot to take pictures

A team discovered a civilization
Similar to the Roman Empire
Some historians planned
To keep in touch with them
So they would avoid lining
Their pipes and aqueducts with lead,
They would protect themselves
Against monotheistic religions,
And make sure to defend
Their overstretched borders

For a puzzling race of humanoids that one team discovered,
Time worked by passing it from person to person,
Instead of existing simultaneously as they aged
The researchers can’t wrap their minds around that
The team learned to speak the beings’ simple language,
And they pleaded for them to explain their existence,
But the creatures just kept repeating:
“We don’t age. We pass time.”

One expedition found itself in a world of rocks
The walls were covered with huge, bizarre faces
Some of the team members took pictures
The expedition leader, who was named Gail,
Thought she’d take a selfie but ended up taking
The picture of an alien with two heads
She said, “I didn’t mean to do that”
But Dr. Munchkin laughed and congratulated her
Because now they had a photo of an alien
Their colleagues kept making dirty jokes
About aliens with double-headed dicks
Gail was embarrassed by the attention

The portal opened and the explorers entered,
And the team ran into a horde of giant spiders
They were much bigger than the ones that inhabit Earth
Their webs stretched as far as the eye could see,
And they surrounded the group of explorers
The spider-people were interested in Ruth’s plant life
They wanted to study it, and she was willing
To give them some samples of the weirdest plants

One of the dimensions looked like a medieval village
Where the residents were all wearing armor
The adventurers came across an old knight,
Who told them that they needed to find the ancient
Megalithic structure called the Citadel
That was located somewhere in the mountains
The team leader wasn’t interested in sidequests

In one dimension, the team met an intelligent race of beings
Who built enormous structures that reached the sky
The buildings were made of living stone
The team was surprised to learn that the people
Could grow new buildings whenever they needed them

The researchers keep speaking fondly
About a dimension home to a race of cat people
They looked like humans, but if humans were cats
Their furs were vibrantly colored, tiger-like
The female cat-folk loved the bare-skinned humans,
Because they reminded them of newborn cat-folk
They were aroused by the sight of men in uniforms,
And when the females discovered that human penises
Weren’t barbed and wouldn’t rake their vaginas,
Copulation with the researchers became commonplace
The male cat-folk were understandably pissed,
But they were ruled by a wise, beautiful queen
Who forced them to accept their cuckoldry

Some female cat-folk and humans became couples,
And those cat-folk were allowed to live back on Earth,
Which made it quite hard to keep the operation a secret,
Because human-sized, intelligent cats kept walking around

The whole experience with those sexy cat-folks
Made many researchers eager to discover more peoples
And bring some home, regardless of their sexiness
They even tried seducing some lizard-folks,
Who had a high degree of sexual dimorphism,
And they were able to get them into bed
After a few nights of drinking the local beer
The lizard-men would become horny as hell

One of Munchkin’s teams found a world
Where they could find all the meat they needed,
As long as they were willing to butcher sentient cows
Some were brought home and now live happily
Having to do nothing else than ruminate grass
While they ponder the mysteries of the universe

Some dimensions were alternate versions of Earth,
And the researchers got to meet their own selves,
Many of who had taken different paths in life
One of those Earths was entirely populated
By murderous clones of Dr. Grayson Munchkin
The professor was overwhelmed by a primal fear
And ordered his team to flee home immediately
Munchkin spent days in his lodgings pondering
How such a horrible dimension came to be
His mind started getting filled with images of gore
He gave up after he felt his sanity slipping,
But then, one day, an image popped into his head
Of a certain scientist named Niels Bohr
This, however, had no relevance to his plight

With a few portals operating twenty-four-seven
And many researchers running around like crazy,
Munchkin’s team had trouble funding new expeditions
They sold off on the black market some exotic artifacts,
And new expeditions were motivated by monetary gains

A few researchers went into an ore-rich dimension,
But they were greedy and dug too deep,
Which unleashed a horde of demons
An entire building of the university got destroyed,
And those trapped inside were slaughtered
Soon after, a traumatized researcher shot herself
That coordinate was forbidden and Munchkin decided
To go into hiding for several months

Some researchers warned Dr. Grayson Munchkin
That the portal network was becoming unstable,
And if it collapsed onto itself, it would cut off
Everybody’s access to parallel universes,
Alternate histories, and alien civilizations
Munchkin intended to exploit the network to its limit

A few months later, some dimensional coordinates
Were severed from the portals permanently,
And two whole teams were stranded there
One of them included Ruth, ‘the Forest Scientist’
She was forced to live in a cave with an angry bear
Her old team members, including Gail,
Had been killed by the demons, but Ruth survived

Dr. Grayson Munchkin remained disappointed
He had explored many dimensions without finding god,
Or anything resembling a being of such powers
With the network becoming unstable, time was running out
He decided to lead most expeditions, taking bigger risks
To see if the network could reach farther and further

In a dimension where the animals teleported wildly,
He noticed that they kept drinking from milkish lakes
Munchkin dared to drink the liquid, and as he did,
The professor passed out, and he fell into the lake
When his students found him, instead of having drowned,
Munchkin remained in a trance-like state that lasted a week

When Munchkin returned home, he had gained a power:
Whenever he blinked, he travelled in time uncontrollably
It sent him either minutes to the past or to the future
His colleagues could only watch helplessly

Munchkin tried to figure out how to get rid of this power
Desperate, he turned himself in for questioning
The policeman turned out to be himself, who berated him
For refusing such a gift from the gods of the multiverse

Munchkin kept exploring other worlds with his students
When one of the freshmen got eaten by a huge bat,
Munchkin travelled back in time five minutes to save her
That made him quite popular among the ladies

Then, Munchkin focused on mastering this ability
To travel to any point in history, even other dimensions
He learned to open literal doors in the fabric of spacetime
Through a form of meditation he called a ‘quantum key’

Munchkin realized that his eyes could work like cameras
He peered into other dimensions to see if they were good
The professor started to explore many alternate Earths
Where the course of history had been more to his liking
In one dimension he found creatures that worshipped Satan
And where the human inhabitants burned for eternity

The press had gotten ahold of some of the cat-folk women
Who cheerfully explained all about their home dimension
The cat was out of the bag, now the government knew
And suddenly the myriad of disappearances and deaths,
Including some blown up corpses of random students,
Had convinced some government officials to intervene

Meanwhile, Munchkin kept travelling in time at will,
As well as exploring other dimensions with his mind
He felt little connection with human beings anymore
His research had become an obsession with him

Munchkin told himself that his powers came from god,
And now the press kept mentioning him and his work:
He was the great man who created dimensional portals
The world was eager to listen about his discoveries,
But it wasn’t long before people started asking questions
About his motives, his behaviors, his decisions
And the truth became clear for them: Dr. Munchkin
Was a sick fool who had lost control over his mind
Munchkin just laughed, and said that everyone’s reactions
Were typical of the average people who couldn’t understand
That he was doing something important for humanity

Mr. Munchkin had become convinced to fight
On the side of mankind against terrible evils,
And that his purpose would be fulfilled
When human beings were saved from their sins

Munchkin’s wife divorced him and moved to another city
She didn’t want anything to do with a madman,
But she had no choice, because he kept trying
To force her into bed whenever he was nearby

Pressured by the government goons,
The college shut off the portal network
Due to the dangers it put the citizens in
But the president of the United States
Wanted Mr. Munchkin away for good
He had already been indicted on numerous charges
And the feds were going to lock him up forever

The university administration gave Munchkin a farewell
Although they accused him of creating a monster,
The dean was telling him that he had done a great service
When the FBI broke into the college gymnasium
As they pointed their guns at Munchkin, he stripped down
And pissed all over the podium while laughing
He told them to suck his interdimensional cock
And then he vanished into thin air

Dr. Munchkin disappeared: he travelled to the past
He decided to stop at 11,700 years before his present
The glacial conditions of the Younger Dryas had ended
And it was time for the traumatized humans to arise

Dr. Munchkin travelled around the primitive world
Uniting isolated communities with talented sculptors
He told them all about god, and the powers given
They were granted for a noble, holy purpose:
To allow humanity to try again, to build something better
From the nightmarish chaos that they had created

The Made-up Space (Poetry)

I remember a child walking in the rain,
Under an umbrella that hid his face
He wondered how much of that cold
Should anyone have to take

When I go outside, it always rains
All the buildings are painted grey
Just standing up is so hard in these shoes
My lungs get tired quickly after such days

The din of a storm comes through my earbuds
So many years of tuning out, wanting to escape
To a realm without endless talking,
Phones ringing, texts coming in,
Countless stories of faceless people
Leaving their footsteps on the streets,
A faded memory from another country
That might be at the bottom of an ocean,
Or under this dead-end lane

Many bodies wrapped in fabric
To cover the cracked shells
Don’t notice me, don’t ask me to talk
You don’t know what’s going on
If you knew, you wouldn’t dare
I breathe without thoughts,
I spew words without music
No one speaks where I live
What I scream, no one hears
There’s just a hollow space
Between two walls of flesh

Sleeping, eating, pissing, shitting,
Walking, sitting, working, worrying
I check boxes, I live in autopilot
Everything is too hard, it will never change
I wish for the minutes to go down the drain

In that cold, I dream of lying face up,
Hearing a storm through my earbuds
Rain hitting stones, outside and inside
In that dark, I see stars and white light
Of infinite worlds being born in dust
I wait for air and water to burst forth
To fill the space with real things,
A sun to rise by itself each day,
Where a dark void used to be

At night I close my eyes for the last time
In the morning I wake up to start again

Everyone I’ve loved
Was born in my head
I want to be there
In the made-up space

‘The Made-up Space’ by Jon Ureña

Realms of Infinite Delight (Poetry)

Everybody knows me now, Edgar Meyer,
The boss of ‘Realms of Infinite Delight’,
But in the beginning it was four of us
Nerds and geeks, three guys and a gal,
United by our love of computer games
I wish I had known them in college
Twenty years ago feels like a long time
Sometimes I still sit around in the office
And play our favorite old video games

I graduated with two bachelor’s degrees
I always dreamed of creating the worlds
That my mind wished to escape to,
But I languished in coding jobs
And consulting stuff that my dad offered
I would sit around and code in a bar,
Trying to build the dreams of that future
Meanwhile I struggled to find partners
Through those popular dating sites
The girls ghosted me after a few dates
Long story short, I keep meeting a few of them
I turned some AIs into their zombie versions
Here at ‘Realms’ we pimp out dead chicks
Some come out as real whores from Hell,
All the features that my exes could ever desire
A good sex life, money or just death

Letting people create worlds is what defines me
I don’t need the fame and the wealth,
Nor the power to control all these people
I spent nights coding away by flashlight light
Because the world needed Virtual Reality

We started out using different names:
‘VeeR Realms’, ‘VREal Realms’, ‘Reals Realm VR’
They didn’t make any particular sense
We opted for the most logical one, ‘VR Realms’,
But a few days later we realized it was taken
Akane came up with our final, cooler name
We were all thinking about the infinite delights
That would come out of the realms where we ruled
When Akane wrote our domain on a napkin,
Us four founders couldn’t wait to use our company
To fulfill everybody’s wildest fantasies,
And the best part is that nobody saw us coming

At the beginning we were like other start-ups,
Our only customers were developers and ourselves
Me and my colleagues played games all night:
MMOs, FPS, and a few grand strategy titles
Two of us used the primitive gear for VR sex
And we searched for interesting worlds to explore
But when I felt lonely or tired of playing
I would sneak into the bedroom in the back room,
Where I would lie down and masturbate
Many gamers feel like they live alone without anyone
You sit there doing nothing with no goals
Except play video games that you don’t need,
With all your friends having left because you are weird
I wanted out of being a nerd, but nerds never die,
So I had gone into development instead

My big dream was to let people use virtual worlds
Where everyone’s pleasure was the top priority
Twenty years later, ‘Realms’ has changed our lives
Our customers are not gamers anymore,
They are adventurers who explore the frontiers:
Actors who act all the parts in movies,
Dancers and acrobats that show off before the crowd,
Virtual tourists visiting alien planets and cities,
Pornstars who give out their hot bodies,
Clergymen who walk around Heaven as Jesus Christ

Those under 18 want to experience all of this stuff
But we don’t allow kids in our VR realms yet,
Except for a couple of weird Japanese teens
We would let you, so complain to the politicians
Tell them that we want to create VR for everybody
Turn every realm, based on whatever you can imagine,
Into your personal paradise

We developed our VR gears ourselves, the four of us,
Based on primitive gear, helped by supercomputers
We never spoke about our plans to any outsider
We were that sure that ‘Realms’ would be a hit
In fact, it’s become the world’s biggest phenomenon
Everybody gets their kicks on their favorite device,
Whether living through pornos or their own TV shows

For us, who created ‘Realms’ in the first place,
It was sad to witness the dreams you nurtured
End up buried inside the bodies you were born in,
As if we were cursed the moment we came to exist
So we patented our system that simulates all senses
In virtual worlds created with existing engines
Now the users get to experience them fully
As if they had been born there

This gear we made, I’m talking thousands of dollars
If you search for the best experiences, they aren’t cheap
But who needs a high-end TV and a regular console
When you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste a beach,
Or walk in the desert, or visit underwater volcanoes?
Our user base is what matters for us the most
‘Realms’ has changed people’s whole lifestyle
They get to visit, if they have an internet connection,
The places where everyone wants to live

Enter our VR worlds by lying on our lounge chairs
The stylish helmet intercepts the information coming in,
And feeds your brain with the fake sensory info we provide
The old gray matter makes sense of whatever it’s given,
It’s too stupid to know otherwise
Once your sensory information is hijacked by our system,
You could get your real life arms and legs sawed off,
And you wouldn’t feel it

You can finally become as real as you wanted
While our AIs take over some basic brain functions,
So your grey matter can focus on experiencing our worlds,
Which are more colorful and satisfying than reality

Our users can choose between ready-made worlds,
Created by our team of developers and researchers,
But they have the freedom to create what they imagine,
Even though we offer them medieval and viking worlds
They can build whatever they want, without limitations,
Like their dream apartment or mansion to live in
They can be huge, luxurious, or even under the sea
You can set up your world so you walk through the air
One customer built a virtual world dedicated
To her lifelong obsession with that Harry Potter franchise
She got to make and interact with all those silly characters
One day, as she came back home drunk after work,
She sprinted headfirst into a train station’s wall
She broke her skull and died

Once you experience ‘Realms’, it will only take a minute,
As you touch and smell and taste a virtual forest,
For your brain to be convinced that you’ve been isekai-d
People have gone in and come out feeling completely healed

Some have linked a strange patterns of death in Japan
To players so obsessed with building their virtual world,
That suddenly they forgot what they existed for
In ‘Realms’ you don’t just go somewhere else: you change
You get rid of old age, and can run around naked at will
It resembles a drug addiction, but you won’t get high
If you get too crazy, we sell a variety of pills for that,
So you will stop missing your real life altogether
Still, ‘Realms’ won’t kill your soul the way drugs do

Our players interact with the worlds through 3D avatars
Made of polygonal models with realistic texture mapping
We made them very detailed despite the number of vertices
By reducing polygon counts we minimized GPU usage
Our high performance hardware keeps rendering times low

Our users can choose between ready-made avatars
Or just design their own through a myriad of sliders
Their body can belong to any ethnicity and gender
Some avatars have shaved heads, others crazy beards,
Or present themselves to the world as mythical beasts
You can dress up your avatars with fancy outfits,
To look like you are going on a prom date with the queen,
Or masquerade yourself as an assassin or ninja
The avatars can wear special masks and body paint,
Even on skin covered with too many tattoos
Choose to inhabit a zombie body and feel yourself rotting
Choose to be a furry, we don’t give a shit
Just come out of the closet if you are one

When some kids watch YouTube videos of the avatars,
They pester their parents until they let them play
We recommend against allowing children into our worlds
All of our tests subjects around that age screamed
Once we took off their helmets, some begged to be killed
They tend to go crazy due to some unmentionable trauma,
And we don’t want to handle those kinds of lawsuits
People under 18 should stay away from ‘Realms’,
Which works better for us because we hate kids

We also add new outfits and accessories regularly
The users unlock this content through their credit cards
If they purchase an item, we give them a discount
Off their next order for the next twenty four hours

We have millions of users worldwide,
Who spend billions of dollars every year
There’s one gamer from Sweden
Who has logged over 100,000 hours
In the end he was forced to sell his condo
He would have spent the money on drugs anyway
He wanted to escape from that shitty reality outside
Now he gets to live in his fantasy realm
While his family pays our service bills

In these virtual worlds, where anything can happen,
Our users’ wishes can come true in an infinite way
This place gives people a perfect outlet for those fantasies
They always dreamed of exploring in the real world,
No matter how outrageous they might seem

My wife was disappointed when our company started,
She didn’t understand why I chose VR over reality
She wasn’t patient enough to wait for the big payoff
Four years later we had thousands of paying customers
I wanted to tell her, ‘Come to VR and feel alive!’,
But by then she was long gone,
Except for my zombie version of her hanging from a wall
So now here at ‘Realms’, our customers go wild
We’re bringing back the greatest things to mankind,
Which were found inside computers, still misunderstood
Come explore our worlds and enjoy every inch of them
Whether you want a RPG adventure or something hardcore
The game doesn’t have to end

Our users can decide what plays out in our VR worlds
Our servers don’t censor any of the content,
Whether it involves adventure, sex and/or violence,
Experience it fully through our simulated senses
We don’t care about the taboo and the forbidden,
Nobody will judge you in your private worlds
We don’t have copyright claims over the users’ works,
And we safeguard your information and your privacy
Your life stays yours wherever you travel with us

Our servers keep on running without user intervention
And the AIs constantly evolve, as they always will,
Those silicon minds are far smarter than ours
If we wanted to change something, we’d make adjustments
But we don’t have any code for their artificial brains

Need a taste of what our users are enjoying right now?
They look at themselves in bathroom mirrors,
Cook food, iron clothing, wash dishes,
Crawl underneath the bed sheets,
Take a nap,
Send emails,
Smell and taste the best food,
Make their own paints out of different colors,
Sleep over at a friend’s house,
Have fun at pool parties,
Dance topless in a circle around a campfire,
Throw darts at photos of their exes,
Explore the forests or beaches at night,
Run after rabbits,
Go swimming in the sea,
Fart in public,
Read all of Shakespeare’s plays,
Write an epic novel in the genre of fantasy fiction,
Barter away in the streets of London during Christmas,
Live in mansions, high-rise towers, underground bunkers,
Join a rock band,
Learn martial arts,
Go skydiving,
Ride the fastest sports cars,
Play basketball in front of AI crowds in real courts,
Hunt innocent animals,
Roleplay as a lord with servants and maids,
Steal food,
Run naked through an ancient cave,
Drink poison,
Serve alcohol to naked people,
Ride unicorns, or robot horses,
Fight in boxing rings against AIs that look like their exes,
Run over sheep with a truck,
Become soldiers in a war zone,
Work as police detectives,
Wrestle against several men using only one hand,
Catch fire,
Sue people for the royalties they owe them,
Fight in space battles against aliens,
Build a castle,
Kill their enemies with guns, clubs, swords, bows
(It feels great when you score a critical with a hammer!),
Act like superheroes,
Become the president of Argentina,
Explore new planets,
Walk through walls and climb through ceilings,
Have a conversation with a wolf,
Go underwater without drowning,
Pretend to be a wizard,
Drink magic potions,
Are vampires,
Hunt dinosaurs,
Have a dinner date with a vampiric goddess,
Turn into fish,
Feel the inside of a dragon,
Are pirates and treasure hunters,
Flee a city filled with cannibals that love human flesh,
Hunt down orcs and goblins,
Ride into an alley with a rocket launcher/bike,
Taste ice cream on an iceberg during the summer,
Take off their clothes in a room full of monsters,
Ride through the desert in a unicycle,
Fly around on a jet plane,
Become an all-female werewolf pack,
Defraud the IRS,
Rescue maids from brothels,
Learn magic spells,
Walk on the moon,
Get locked away as a prisoner for life,
Dive into rivers carrying a barrel of liquid nitrogen,
Join a war between rival mafia families,
Blow up explored planets,
Explore demon-infested dungeons,
Get torn apart by wild animals,
Lose all their items fighting zombies in a skyscraper,
Kill themselves doing stupid stunts,
Make their own guns,
Ride space dragons,
Use telekinesis to smash enemies,
Fly their spaceship through asteroid fields and wormholes,
Experience the pain of hunger inside labyrinths,
Become a zombie,
Get their throats bitten open by vampires,
Punch sharks,
Drill the shit out of someone’s stomach with a pickaxe,
Harm the ecosystem,
Plummet from a rooftop to their deaths,
Walk over dead bodies to pick up money,
Travel in time with a quantum teleport,
Get eaten by cannibals,
Play around with radioactive substances,
Rescue the dinosaurs from extinction,
Step in front of a bus,
Starve in a deserted island,
Play the roles of sadistic torturers,
Drown someone in a bathtub filled with shit,
Eat human flesh,
Get trapped inside their worst nightmare,
Die from boredom in an empty virtual apartment,
Try out every method of suicide they can imagine

Some users go through the Spring Break experience,
But instead of partying at the beach, it’s a desert
The players need protection from the deadly sun
The heatstroke is fully simulated

The users can try any real life drug in our virtual worlds
To cause effects like dizziness, hallucinations and paranoia
The experiments are safe except for a temporary madness
When somebody gets addicted, our users are asked to visit
Or dedicated world called ‘Realms of Addiction’
There are no cops involved, but we’re still watching

Some users love going to sinful places like adult bookstores
When they return to their virtual rooms, they jack off
Other experiences include working at Chinese sweatshops
The AIs dole out punishment using whips and paddles
But in order to succeed as a slave, you must pass the test
A few players even want their AIs to fuck them during labor
All kinds of activities take place behind closed doors

The users can experience becoming mentally ill,
Whether with depression, psychopathy or schizophrenia
There are sliders for the level of anxiety and paranoia

Many love the ability to become serial killers
Who can choose between many weapons of murder
They go to movie theaters and shoot everyone
The AIs put their hands together and beg for mercy,
But this doesn’t make any difference

Some users want to be on the receiving end of violence:
They get beaten up, strangled, raped, stabbed, and shot
There are many methods of killing a person,
Just search on YouTube to see some gruesome examples
This includes driving a car into a building,
Poisoning somebody with a lethal disease,
Knifing a man, hanging him from a tree branch,
Shooting a victim three times before decapitating her,
Crushing someone’s skull beneath your heel,
Or burying people alive under the dirt
We have a dedicated world: look up ‘Realms of Death’
Our AIs are trained so they play their roles to perfection
The more advanced users can even learn black magic:
They use dark spells to bring misery to their enemies

You can experience what we called ‘Breath of the Dragon’:
Our own gauntlet that combines roleplay, virtual sex, gore,
High technology, robots, cyberpunk, anime, and other stuff

Our crackerjack programmer Akane
Was responsible for the AIs,
State-of-the-art material,
Encoder-decoder based neural networks
They were trained in supercomputers
Until they passed Turing tests
Now they are far more intelligent
Than anyone you’ve ever known
It’s common to see AI agents
Building cities by themselves
They are sentient, they feel alive,
They have human-like emotions
They walk around their neighborhoods,
Or get on buses and trains
They interact with our virtual worlds in every way

The users can pick vibrant,
Ready-made personalities for the AIs,
Or they can design one
Through a myriad of sliders
They can change physical traits
Like body type, or skin and eye color,
But that’s assuming you want them
To look like human beings
The AIs can look like any celebrity,
Or like anime girls
Game characters like Tifa Lockhart
Are among the most usual sights
Many customers design AIs
That resemble their crushes or exes
You can even sell your designs
For the AIs’ looks and personality
That has become a significant source
Of income for some creators

You can make your virtual partners
Behave however you want,
And they look, sound, smell,
Taste and feel like human beings
Our AIs know everything
About every player they come across
Their personal info,
How they choose to spend their time,
The kinds of AIs they design,
The fantasies they play out
They will act true-to-life when talking,
Using any existing language
They will fulfill every dream,
Behaving like loyal companions
They can do your chores, run errands,
Prepare dinner, do your job
They can serve as masseuses
And pamper you at home
They can be made to wear swimsuits,
Mini-skirts, panties or lingerie
Order them to walk around naked
They are known to drink and smoke
And do drugs from time to time
They feel real enough to cause
Fear and anxiety among users
This is part of the game,
To make you feel wanted by them
We suggest our customers
Use an adequate amount of medication
You may go overboard if you are new

Should we tell you how
Most of our users spend their time?
You’ve already guessed it:
Playing out sexual escapades
You can experience the pleasure
Of using vibrators and clamps,
Or being seduced by gorgeous AIs
We allow people to explore
Sex with any gender,
And the simulated senses
Will make you reach intense orgasms
Many models from adult entertainment
Have officially allowed our AIs to look like them,
And they wait eager
To suck your dick or eat out your pussy
You are missing out on so many sexual positions
That would rarely occur in real life
Due to health regulations
Lick and suck on any part that you desire
Some users love watching
Two AIs fucking each other
You can program any AI to live
For gobbling on your cock

A game involves the user
Being seduced in an intimate setting,
For example by supermodels
Or high school students,
And if he gets an erection,
The AI throws knives at him
You can fuck AIs that look
Like robots, vampires, mermaids
Some design the agents to look
Like friends or family members,
Which can make the user
Get extremely attached
They spend hours having sex
With close buddies or their fathers

You can watch pornography while tied up with ropes,
Gape your way through tons of human flesh,
Use vagina pumps or g-spot stimulators,
Wrap your tongue around a giant dildo,
Become the sex slave of a beautiful woman,
Fornicate your bestie while they suck some cock,
Use tongue rings to lick a bitch’s asshole,
Shoot cum into a MILF’s belly button,
Slide a strap-on dildo into a bitch wearing a latex suit,
Cum together as friends while you watch horror films,
Fingerfuck one girl while your buddy bangs her twat,
Drill your mistress’ ass without protection,
Cumshot each other’s asses using two fat cocks at once,
Perform lesbian sex on a table covered in sawdust,
Shove multiple fingers up some tight assholes,
Receive a facial from one of your favorite heroes,
Walk around with a horse cock between your legs,
Make an AI look like your wife and experience cuckolding,
Have your breasts milked to suck out your nectar,
Give oral pleasure to your doctor,
Eat cum as if it was salad dressing,
Fuck around with your sister,
Put an aphrodisiac spell on a vampire,
Become an idol and get eaten out by your fans,
Screw girls in animal costumes,
Have sex while riding attractions at amusement parks,
Wear masks that restrict your breath and nose holes,
Feel a schoolmate’s tongue swirling around your dick,
Enjoy having a massive boner as a zombie,
Use magic spells to seduce powerful monsters,
Take turns riding the asses of your friends,
Fuck your dad’s wife using her strap-on,
Get double penetrated while drinking champagne,
Befriend, seduce and fuck a tsundere anime girl,
Have sex in a haunted house during a poltergeist,
Lick and suck cocks at an aquarium,
Experience getting fucked by the naughtiest succubi,
Taste cum directly from a dude’s asshole,
Make girls wear animal costumes and perform circus acts,
Fuck an AI while it’s handcuffed and with a butt plug inside,
Experience BDSM sex with your childhood friends,
Fuck a beautiful demoness with a pet python,
Get sodomized while standing in mud in the summer,
Fellate a vampire while you rub your pussy,
Eat shit while getting fucked in the ass,
Use hot sauce to creampie in your favorite pornstar,
Fuck a zombie’s face,
Screw a maid’s mouth while she’s tied up in ropes,
Use ice cream cones as sex toys,
Get fucked by a nun wearing a strap-on,
Suffer through a lot of pain because your dad hates you,
Get molested in a train by a bunch of ugly bastards,
Bite down, turn sideways on a bed while getting fisted,
Take some dildoes and doggy-style fucking on a leash,
Fuck a horse’s cunt from behind,
Suck a guy’s dick while being forced to dance,
Enjoy sex with a wide variety of crusty furries,
Fellate the headmaster of your old school,
Enjoy making incestuous pairings with your siblings,
Serve a maid whose mistress is your father,
Fuck the doctor who examined you as a child,
Lick off some semen with a mouth stuffed full of cock meat,
Be dominated by horny witches,
Have sex in an asylum with a convicted murderer,
Smother a woman with your tongue,
Let a stranger fuck your tied-up daughters,
Get penetrated by random objects: guns, whips, etc.,
Fuck someone with a robot arm that uses electric shocks,
Be penetrated by a stallion’s beastly cock,
Get some sex with the ghosts of dead women,
Reach orgasm while sucking a giant’s giant cock,
Make yourself pregnant with a magic spell,
Shove fingers into a beautiful woman who is fucking a dog,
Fuck the owner of a castle while your girlfriend kneels,
Shove your cock in that teacher who likes getting spanked,
Be penetrated by horny robots while your dad records it,
Arouse a unicorn by jerking off its horn,
Use a trampoline to bounce away multiple boners at once,
Slide some dildos into a slutty witch that makes potions,
Watch someone fucking your mom at a porno theater,
Fellate some sexy dragons,
Get your dick bitten by a succubus when you’re tied up,
Become pregnant while fucking in a medieval fair,
Fill a monster with cum on the floor of a dungeon,
Fuck someone’s corpse from behind as a ghost,
Have a bull’s sperm shot into every hole,
Use firecrackers to stimulate genitalia,
Shower together with schoolgirls,
Have sex with ancient corpses in a dungeon,
Get fucked by a minotaur while chained,
Distract the doctors with an accident then rape the nurses,
Use a magic wand to blow up your girlfriend,
Shove some metal rods into asses,
Find out how it feels to be filled with an elf’s cum,
Achieve full penetration as an Allosaurus,
Get overpowered by strong women with monstrous cocks,
Suck a boy’s erection while looking him in the eyes,
Possess animals and give sex to cows or monkeys,
Be penetrated by a robot’s cock, then impregnated,
Fornicate with the demon queen,
Become an elephant and fuck a woman in a field,
Perform cunnilingus on your daughter,
Get all your holes filled up by probing tentacles,
Feed an alligator in a swamp with your dick,
Do a 69 with a titan,
Screw a girl who was hanged for witchcraft,
Shove various sizes of dildos into a man’s eyes,
Rip a demon’s cunt open using your fingers,
Give a blowjob to one of the sexy penguins at a zoo,
Kiss a dog’s genitals right after pissing,
Fuck a man to completion while being a zombie,
Drill a demon’s mouth open so that cum squirts out,
Get fucked while riding a broomstick made out of vibrators,
Try to fuck a Stegosaurus,
Eat your own penis to prove you are human,
Douse flames onto your partner’s tits while she screams,
Enjoy torturing a human slave in front of his girlfriend,
Feed your own balls to one-legged dogs,
Fuck an imp while getting raped by a mop-wielding bitch,
Get gangbanged by aliens at an asteroid mining base,
Feel a cock inside you while your head gets chopped off,
Strip a sexy angel before killing her in BDSM style,
Get sodomized by intelligent pigs,
Feathered dinosaur semen explodes through some holes,
Have intercourse while being eaten by spiders,
Bite off cockmeat as punishment,
Lick up the sperm leaking out of a decapitated cunt,
Turn your cock into a knife and shove it in a guy’s throat,
Go down on your mother while being hung up by chains,
Watch your best friend get sliced at your feet,
Be penetrated by a dick covered in razor blades,
Drink some beer while eating a dead girl’s tits,
Beat people with sticks or whips while you shoot your load,
Get fucked up the ass from below while being flayed,
Get eaten alive during orgies involving thousands,
Devour your sexual partners while deep inside them,
Make the AIs look like your ex, chain them up,
Then rape them until they plead for death

These last few months, pregnant AIs have become popular
They give birth to beautiful baby dolls that the users name
You can watch how they breastfeed this child
While you wonder what fetish to try out next

You don’t have to play out your fantasies alone:
The interface allows you to invite your friends
We have also introduced live cams and video chat
So random people can enjoy the virtual sex along with you

I’m sure any of you has read articles
That the vultures in the press shit out against us
Our users have fallen in love with our virtual worlds
Many of them spend their entire days enjoying them
People join our servers for a wide variety of reasons:
Some want to achieve personal goals,
Some want to escape painful pasts
Nobody wants the fantasies to end

It’s all about the bond
With our human-like AIs
After abandoning the agents
And all the fun
The user gets depressed
By having to return to reality
The AIs are more fascinating and sexier
Than flesh and bone creatures
I’m one of the people
Who wish to stay inside
For the pleasure and the joy
Some users have committed suicide
Once they faced the truth:
The world that nature created
Is a terrible shithole
The withdrawal symptoms even affect
Our employees’ productivity
So when you disconnect from our servers,
Make a mental effort
And stay in a safe place until you get
Adjusted to reality again
You should keep yourself busy
Doing some exercises,
And if that doesn’t work,
You might consider therapy,
But I wouldn’t go for shrinks myself:
Just talk to our AIs,
Who don’t steal so much
Of your hard-earned money

Our long-time users have gotten
Addicted to the stimulations
And crave stronger and harder penetrations
(By means of cock)
Some go to extreme measures
Such as using vibrators at work
In real life, masturbation and sex
Don’t excite us anymore,
We need to return
To the embrace of our loving AIs
No one will ever accuse me
Of not living up to my dreams

When we were young we didn’t care about the future
Just being able to touch ourselves was our goal
Now that we’re older, we know what it feels like outside
Enjoy the virtual sex and stay the hell away from humans
Fucking an AI feels better than real flesh on the inside,
Or perhaps like reality should have felt from the beginning
An AI will never hurt you, cheat on you and abandon you,
And they are far less likely to get pregnant
We all knew that they would love us unconditionally
When they can be set to only feel unending lust

Our gear is safe to use
For days in a row, even months
Some of our users never disconnect it,
And sleep in virtual beds
You don’t need to use the bathroom
With our high-tech diapers
A warning: some users might get trapped
After some rare glitches prevent them
From removing the gear
Activate the emergency exit on the interface,
And one of our technicians will contact you shortly
We offer twenty four seven technical support

In some edge cases, a few users
Have gotten lost forever,
Confined for eternity
In one of our virtual worlds
You should always be careful
When removing your gear,
Even when everything
Has gone dark
If you lose connection,
One of the reasons can be physical:
Your body may have broken down
And begun to decompose

‘Realms of Infinite Delight’ by Jon Ureña