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The tingling at the base of my brain suggests that if I closed my eyes and allowed myself to relax for a few seconds, I’d pass out on my bus seat. Would I suffer through another nightmare here, stimulated as I am by the vibrations that travel through this plasticky seat and into my groin to spread between my viscera?

Since I left Jacqueline’s apartment this morning to face the hellish outside world once again, my skin has remained untouched. I need her to kiss me and lick my wounds, then squeeze me in a warm, tight embrace and whisper sweet words into my ear. I want to forget that I’m doomed to keep working even though my muscles cry in agony from the fatigue and pain. If Jacqueline ravaged me with her fingers and her tongue, I would also forget about the monsters that lurk beyond the veil, that their jaws may close on me and tear me to pieces, that their demonic semen might drown me in a gloopy flood.

My pussy jerks like a fish on land as my clit throbs again, demanding a rubbing motion. Why can’t public transports provide their users with vibrators? If those in charge worry about their clients getting flashed by a stranger, they should install some partitions, then buy disposable vibrators and allow the passengers to pull their trousers and panties down. I’d love to spend the journey to and from work pleasuring myself. Ah, to be cradled by the soothing drone of the engine while my toes curl, the fingers of my free hand dig into my thigh, and a detached cock slides in and out of my sopping insides. I would feel like a medieval queen inside her curtained carriage, who otherwise would be sipping champagne while she strokes some ornate dildo. As I fucked myself, my sticky juice would soak into the seat beneath me; a gesture of gratitude that would mix with the stale remains of what hundreds of previous users leaked. It would become a communal ritual like those walls covered in chewing gum, or that fence where couples hang locks to symbolize their commitment to each other.

I stare out the window right as the bus turns a corner. A view of Mount Igueldo opens up. The setting sun, which is hovering above the left flank of the mountain, dazzles me like a spotlight. The sight from this angle of that amusement park perched on the mountaintop is my cue to stand up; my stop is just ahead. Jacqueline should be waiting nearby, so I must snap out of my daze and behave like a human being, lest I worry my beloved.

As I scramble towards the exit, I spot that a pair of toned legs in cinder-colored tights are standing next to the bus stop, framed against a clump of miniature palm trees. I have started to salivate when I realize that those legs have been wrapped around my face. I lift my gaze to find my girlfriend’s cobalt-blues staring back at me. She beams, widening her plump, rose-pink lips, and dimpling her cheeks. She shifts the shopping bag that she was holding on her right hand to her left one, which was already holding a bag, then she waves in greeting. I straighten my back and greet her with a timid smile.

My body feels heavy and sluggish. When I stumble off the bus, the crisp November air engulfs me and refreshes my lungs. My breath comes out in a white puff.

A tiny human is standing next to my girlfriend, soaking up the waning sunlight. Although less than twenty-four hours ago this child had been frolicking in an Ice Age forest, now she resembles a preppy kid who attends a private school for girls. She’s wearing mid-calf leather boots, navy skinny pants, a wool sweater with a pattern fit for a ski resort, and a lemonade-pink scarf that hides her chin, all of them brand new. Her chestnut-brown hair, woven in two loose braids, gleams as if Jacqueline had washed it with a shampoo and conditioner combo. She reminds me of those videos in which a flea-ridden homeless man gets a makeover, because some rich socialite wanted to bestow upon him the chance to enjoy a life of luxury, and the fairy tale continues until the bum comes across a crack pipe.

The child narrows her slanted eyes, which shine with a bright luster, to shoot me a knowing look, even though she’s as clueless as a baby bird: until today she had never seen a bus. She also has no clue what kind of floor she’s standing on, who are the two women that have become her self-appointed guardians, or how she ended up thirteen thousand years in the future.

I can’t handle this strange mixture of affection and shame. I open my mouth to greet the girl, but what the hell can I say to her other than some version of ‘I’m sorry’? And should I treat her like a person or like a dog?

“Ah… Hello, forest girl.”

The child steps forward, then flings herself onto me like a rag doll. When I catch my breath and cup the back of her head, she stands on her tiptoes and hugs my waist, nestling her face into the velvety surface of my corduroy jacket. I want to warn this pristine child against touching me; it’s like dunking her hand in toxic waste.

“How’s our little savage doing?” I ask in a voice thickened and raspy from lack of sleep.

Jacqueline lets out a crystalline laugh.

“This little girl is very chatty, as well as easygoing and curious,” she says in a slight French accent that I recognize from my dreams. “Don’t you think she looks adorable in that outfit? I’ve had to contain myself from smooching her all morning.” Jacqueline pets the girl on the head. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Too bad you can’t understand anything I’m saying.”

The child pulls away from our embrace, but her small hands still cling to my jacket. The way my girlfriend spoke clarifies that she still appreciates me even though I failed to perform the most basic of duties after I woke up from my nightmare, such as giving her a morning-after kiss or having her roll over and let me lick her pussy.

Jacqueline sports a grin that I wish I could bottle up and preserve inside me as an antidote for loneliness. The golden light of the late afternoon is bathing her queenly features in a honeyed glow. She has gathered her raven-black hair in a braided ponytail, that is draped over her shoulder like a waterfall of silk. She’s wearing a fitted, night-black turtleneck sweater tucked into a plaid skirt, and over those, an unbuttoned, dark sienna peacoat. Her breasts, that seem fuller and more buoyant than usual, are shadowing half of her tummy, and begging for a squeeze. Compared to her, I’m a tramp who wears her dad’s clothes and stinks like a dumpster.

Jacqueline resembles a wealthy mom who would come across me as I hugged my knees and cried in the rain, only to invite me into her mansion and offer me a cup of water. She would guide me to take a warm shower to wash off the scent of rotting garbage. When I stepped out with water dripping from my body, she would be waiting for me in a net nightie, ready to dry me with a fluffy towel. She would cradle me in her arms squeezing her meaty breasts between us, which would intoxicate me with their warmth and scent. She’d call me a pitiful creature who needed her help.

She would tighten her grip around my shoulders as her slippery tongue snaked inside my mouth. She would drag me to her bed, and while the feather-softness of her silky hair, as well as the weight of her breasts crushing my ribcage, distracted me, she would shackle my arms and legs to the bedposts. She would rip open her nightie, straddle my face and lower her well-oiled pussy on my mouth.

The taste of her nectar would make my senses reel and my eyes roll back into my head. I would lap at her clit for hours while she petted my head and her nipples leaked jellied milk globules on my cheeks and forehead. Her body would convulse into a series of rhythmic contractions as I gagged on her geyser-like squirts. She would coax my body to expel its most intimate, bitter excretions, and when I felt fully humbled, she would whip me with her strap-on cock and pound my asshole into submission.

With the passing days my hands and feet would go numb, then bloated and gangrenous. My brain would be burning hot, my guts would be churning with bubbling lava. While the flesh of my extremities sloughed off the bone, my tongue would wear down like a lollipop against the woman’s throbbing, steel-hard clit. Her cream would cause me to regurgitate a slimy mess that I would have to swallow and vomit again before it disappeared down my throat, like a cow grazing on toxic grass. One day her juices would overflow from my digestive system into my lungs, and I would start drowning with my nose buried in her pubes, inhaling the pungent scent of her sopping insides: the bitter tang of jasmine flowers crushed under a woman’s heel, mixed with the sweet scent of strawberries. The woman’s naked body would come into focus: a face smudged with charcoal, two silver-white eyes like those of a skull, and a black-as-night tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Her hair would be a patchwork quilt of reds, whites, and purples, streaked with carmine blood.

I would spasm with a paroxysm of coughing, and retch up a glob of pus that would splatter against the woman’s unshaven thighs. My breath would rasp from my scorched lungs and dribble in a gray stream into my nostrils, but she would burst out in a wailing, orgasmic laughter, then she’d pinch my nose shut. As my brain boiled and blistered in my skull, a white light would explode behind my eyes, and my mind would crack open like a pistachio. I would die knowing that my saviour never loved me as much as I loved her.

I would be reborn in the Ice Age, where I’d be greeted by our adopted daughter’s tribe as a returning heroine. We would all ride on a giant snowball into the future.

After I shake my head to banish the images that have sequestered my senses, I can barely pass enough air through my dilated nostrils. My face feels hot despite the nippy weather. As I shift my weight on my wobbly legs, I rub my thighs together, which elicits a sensation that I can only describe as a dry orgasm.

I risked losing my limbs to frostbite back at that boreal forest, so I want to remain warm outside, but at least I’d like to bring Jacqueline’s knuckles to my lips so I can give her a chaste kiss. However, both of her hands are busy holding shopping bags.

“Jacqueline,” I start in a ragged voice, “this is one of those times that I wonder how come someone as hot as you can exist.”

She bites her lower lip, then takes a deep breath as she burrows into my pupils with her gaze.

“Tell me later what has crossed that dirty mind of yours, darling, and you’re gonna get it. If you can stay awake, that is. I was surprised that you didn’t pass out on the bus and missed the stop. In any case, I’m so glad you are okay, my baby. I’ve been worried about you this morning, you know?”

My mouth is gummy. I lick the saliva that has gathered at the corners of my lips.

“W-why would you be worried?”

“Well, for one thing, this morning you ended up in the Ice Age,” she says with motherly patience.

I was about to lift my right hand to rub my eyebrows, but a small hand is holding mine. The child I kidnapped has wrapped her fingers around my palm. They feel so thin that I could snap them like twigs.

“Yeah, that’s… a thing that happened,” I say. “I can’t believe we have a kid now.”

Jacqueline brushes my free hand with hers, as well as with the handles of the bag she’s holding.

“I can hardly believe it either, but it’s all real, honey.”

When I rub the wild child’s palm with my thumb, she smiles up at me, showing me her healthy choppers. Her eyes are brimming with trust, and I feel like I’m peering into the heart of Mongolia. We must protect her; the world will ruin her otherwise.

“A-anyway, I drank two more coffees after the ones I texted you about,” I say wearily. “Their caffeine is solely responsible for holding me up. If I fail to sleep through this night, I may not wake up tomorrow.”

Jacqueline expels a tiny cloud of white vapor through her teeth.

“Now it feels cruel to ask you this, but I intended to bring our girl to the nearby La Tahona so she could taste pastries for the first time. They won’t do much harm except to your waist, will they?”

My stomach growls. I’ve barely eaten anything since I woke up at four in the morning, except for a ham sandwich and a handful of nuts at the office.

“Sure, why not. I wouldn’t want to deprive our suddenly adopted daughter from the teeth-rotting wonders of modernity.” I hold up my free hand towards Jacqueline, palm up. “But give me one of those damn shopping bags first.”

We turn our backs on Ondarreta beach to cross the road while we escort the Ice Age child like a couple of deranged bodyguards. We stroll along the sidewalk past a Santander and a Kutxa banks, between the façade of a building and the outside tables of a coffee shop, where the patrons are wearing coats and breathing out white steam above their coffees and croissants. Our child’s fingers intertwine with my own.

My eyes are burning from the lack of sleep. To avoid taxing my brain, that would take notice of every passerby in case they are hiding a knife, my gaze slides along the pavement made of hexagonal tiles, which is dirtied with streaks of dog or human piss. A glob of phlegm glistens at the center of a tile; some dickhead believed that subjecting me to the sight of his discharge was less harmful than swallowing it.

A Kaiku delivery truck, likely full of pasteurized cow milk, attempts to pass us by on the one-lane road, but the traffic slows it down. Its engine is expelling a monstrous gurgle that drowns out our foosteps and even a nearby conversation. The truck lets out a loud tsk as it changes gears, then the engine roar swells and the vehicle leaves us behind. Its exhaust dissipates like the smoke of a dragon’s breath.

I have clenched my teeth, and my heart is pounding in my ears. That noise felt like an invading army scaling the walls of my mind to demolish everything left inside. Our child is squeezing my hand; she’s grimacing as she stares at the shrinking truck with wonder and apprehension.

We have gotten used to nasty stuff that we shouldn’t have tolerated. In the past, while strolling along any street, I would have only heard footsteps, the lively chats of passersby, children’s laughter, distant barks, and at the most a clatter of hooves from some wandering horse. We would have been spared the horrid din of traffic, as well as the music, usually fucking reggaeton these days, that some bastards blast out from their car stereos because they feel good when they annoy people. Our stomachs would wince at the first whiff of fumes from a motor vehicle. The ruckus that human beings create evokes the image of an eye-patched warlord that’s holding a rifle in his free hand while masturbating on a throne of corpses, ready to unleash bullets and semen on the masses. In the end I had to face that I can’t control the sound of the world around me, that I can barely control my own life; I had to bear the ugliness and misery, and I know very little except for the mysteries of my own stupidity.

I must have reached my limit, because my senses are tuning out the sounds and smells in order to save me from drowning in them. My field of view narrows down until it gets reduced to my lover and our sudden child. My brain is questioning why the hell am I walking around when I should lie down on any surface, close my eyes and let myself drift off to sleep.

I take a deep breath and picture myself far away, in a temperate forest populated by beasts that would only be big enough to bite off my fingers, and if I befriended them, I could sink my head in their furry bellies and let their heaving breaths carry me away to dreamland. I’m tired of pretending to be civilized.

When I notice that a hand has rested on my shoulder, I stumble on my feet. Jacqueline has stopped and turned to face me. The awning of the closest store reads ‘Tahona,’ and a vertical advertisement sign hanged on the wall displays two baguettes. Behind the closed sliding door, the inside of the patisserie is bathed in the kind of dim, warm light that would befit a cozy living room or a study.

Jacqueline leans in close to my face, and her white breath breaks against my nose and lips. I inhale her fragrance; it smells like the blackness that engulfs you when you fall asleep.

“You are carrying it, aren’t you?” she whispers.

I have to repress a cough, because the lingering stench of the truck’s exhaust has been burned into my lungs.

“Carrying what? The weight of this world? The weight of my past and my guilt? My life has been little else than a bloody cycle of pain.”

Jacqueline glances down at the breast of my corduroy jacket.

“I meant the dangerous tool that previously belonged to a horse.”

“Oh, of course. I wouldn’t forget it at work as if it were an umbrella or my wallet.”

I consider unbuttoning my jacket, but that would look more suspicious, so I probe through the fabric the solidity of Spike’s revolver.

“You needed to check if you had it with you?” Jacqueline asks, concerned. “You weren’t sure?”

“The stuff and people in my life are known to blink in and out of existence.”

Jacqueline sighs, then she swipes a lock of hair away from my face.

“Well, let’s make sure we don’t give anyone cause to call the police.”

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Velouria” by Pixies. I’ve been listening to Pixies so much recently that it probably constitutes a midlife crisis.

This chapter is about 3,100 words of three characters (two deranged, one their adopted daughter from the Ice Age) moving from a bus stop to a pastry shop located 200 meters away. That’s how I roll.

Recently I’ve thought about why I’m so impatient with novels (I’ve always been impatient with them, but it gets worse the more I age) although I devour mangas, and why my stories feel so different to most others I come across. I think it comes down to the fact that I want the vicarious experience of here-and-now through an interesting POV character throughout an entire story. A visual medium like manga, which offers much more leeway than movies or shows, allows the reader to feel like you are kind of hanging out with the characters in specific places and figuring stuff out with them as they experience their surroundings. Also, manga authors have no choice but to research each location and object involved, because they’ll need to be depicted on the panels. It’s hard to imagine that a series as hard hitting for me as Asano’s “Oyasumi Punpun” could have happened in any other medium. The closest an author of novels has come to that, that I remember, is Murakami, although he has put out plenty of shit.

If you are as interested in sexual debasement and/or torture as the demon that commands Leire’s subconscious seems to be, you may want to read my narrative poem “You Choose Who Owns You”, that I wrote back in August of last year.

I exploited a neural network to generate images related to this chapter: here’s the link.

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Wrapped up in a blanket, I chafe my arms through the sleeves of my wool pyjamas. The child from the forest is seated at the edge of the velvet sofa, while Jacqueline, as she kneels on the carpet, cleans the dirt off the girl’s face with a wet wipe. The belt of Jacqueline’s lipstick-pink silk-blend robe has loosened and the fabric slipped over her meaty breasts, revealing the old rose areolas. A couple of times, the savage girl has snapped out of her puzzlement to glance down and admire my queen’s bountiful mammaries; soon enough the child will salivate, then her sucking reflex will kick in.

My head is throbbing, my body feels bruised and battered, and my fingers and toes are tingling like pins and needles. Now that I’m coming down from the adrenaline buzz, I’m getting dragged down further by the exhaustion that has settled in after successive sessions of nightmares, and that’s on top of how wrung out my job leaves me five days a week.

“My stalkers didn’t come to visit me this time,” I say in a tired voice. “They somehow brought me to another place.”

Jacqueline sustains a smile to reassure our guest, but the worry is deepening her crow’s feet.

“I was staring at you when you disappeared, Leire. You vanished as if you had walked through an invisible doorway.”

I shudder with a chill, then pull the blanket tight around me.

“For you this must feel like dating someone whose exes keep trying to ruin her life, except that I would never allow those abominations to befoul me, regardless of the size of their genitals.”

Jacqueline winces.

“Was it the bunnyman?” she asks with indignation. “What the hell did he want this time?”

“That filthy buffoon likely wants me to worship him like a god. He never showed up, though. Maybe he and Alberto were mocking me from some hiding place.”

Jacqueline lets out a deep sigh.

“I’m so tired of those assholes.”

“You’re telling me. I should consider filing a restraining order against them.”

As if Jacqueline were babysitting a stray kitten, she wipes dried mucus from the child’s nostrils, who’s staring at my queen with rapt attention.

“This kid looks Mongolian, wouldn’t you say, Leire?”

I sniffle.

“Those eyes seem Asian, yes.”

Jacqueline lifts the child’s necklace off the mud-speckled leather tunic, then examines the strung sand-colored teeth.

“She also looks as if she came from a different era.”

“Well, once I figure out from what corner of this planet I snatched her up, I’ll put her on a plane headed there. Given how her parents clothed her, I doubt they use cell phones, but she may find her way back to her tribe somehow from the airport.”

My own body interrupts me with a yawn. I’m getting cranky; I want to say fuck off to all my troubles then go beddy-bye, but it must be about five in the morning, and in two hours I’ll have to prepare myself for work. Maybe next time I’ll reach the shower.

I rub my eyelids with my knuckles.

“I’m almost delirious. I need to guzzle down some coffee, although it may worsen my jitters.”

I shrug off the blanket and rise to my feet, then I shuffle out of the living room and into the kitchen. The candy-red coffee maker stands out on a corner of the cloud-grey countertop. I load a capsule into the machine, I place a mug under the spout, I push the start button. As the coffee machine hums, the noise of the fridge door closing startles me.

Jacqueline has taken out a burgundy apple, which is glimmering in the kitchen light. The child’s eyes flare with sudden interest, her nostrils quiver like a rabbit’s. Jacqueline gestures for the girl to sit down on the closest dining chair, and once she obeys, my girlfriend hands over the apple as a reward. Our guest munches on the fruit, then lets out a yip of delight.

The coffee machine’s spout drips the last drops of coffee into my mug, then it lets out a mechanical sigh and its red light switches off. I warm my hands with the mug. My eyelids are heavy and my head woozy from exhaustion. Once some caffeine enters my bloodstream, I should feel my brain slowly unclench.

Jacqueline, while she strokes the girl’s disheveled hair, is staring at me as if trying to figure out how to bring up a troublesome topic. When she breaks the silence, she speaks in an anxious voice.

“Leire, have you been… contacted by Ramsés?”

I was taking a sip of the bitter brew partly to feel a tiny heater inside me, but when my brain processes Jacqueline’s reference, I gag on the coffee. It now smells and tastes like a dirt-encrusted metal pipe used to transport waste, or as if my girlfriend ripped an atomic fart that will seep into these consecrated walls and stink up the place forevermore. I put down the mug with a thunk, and the dark liquid inside splashes the countertop.

“J-Jacqueline, such a blasphemous word shouldn’t have been uttered in this sanctuary! Why would that pig factor in anything that we do during our blessed time away from his domain? And what kind of dealings do you believe I’ve had with that evil wannabe satyr? Are you implying that he’s been sending me pictures of his erect cock and hairy balls, and my consequent urge to flee from this plane of existence is why I suddenly became capable of walking through an invisible portal into some boreal forest? Or do you believe that I would turn into a wanton harlot if I snagged a peek at his genitalia?”

The child’s face is tight with tension as her eyes dart between Jacqueline and I, but she keeps chewing on the apple. My girlfriend’s eyebrows are knitted together. She shakes her head, maybe to clear up her mind from an unsavory notion.

“Sorry, Leire, I’m… overwhelmed. Keep drinking in peace, please.”

I turn away and clutch onto the edge of the counter. My mind attempts to picture some of Ramsés’ demands, and I catch a glimpse of me wearing a dog collar and flogging myself while my boss jerks off in a nearby chair. Then I see myself with my nose stuffed into his sweaty armpit.

My mouth fills with the metallic flavor of lukewarm, poisonous puke.

“I loathe Ramsés with all my being. Why wouldn’t I? He has the face of a gargoyle and a donkey dick. I shouldn’t be associated with that rotten cocksman. He believes that all women should bow down to him and lick his filthy feet!”

I shut my eyes tight, then I breathe deep to calm down. My entire body feels hot and prickly with embarrassment and disgust. Why did I believe that I had the right to raise my voice at Jacqueline, who is my beloved, my savior, my queen, the only person that makes it worth it that I have spent most of my adult life slaving away so the government can steal my money? Has she not provided many tender caresses and loving licks? Hasn’t her warm and honeyed saliva, as well as other juices, flowed down my throat? Doesn’t she make me cum more powerfully than ever before, in more interesting ways, and with all my fantasies brought to life? But I still felt compelled to shout at her.

I sniffle, and my chest fills with an onrush of sorrow. I should grab a knife from a drawer, slice my gut open and offer my dripping viscera for Jacqueline to feast on.

I mop up the coffee spill with a paper towel, then I empty my mug in the sink.

“It’s alright,” I mumble weakly. “I suddenly hate coffee.”

Jacqueline approaches me, pulls my head towards her and nuzzles my hair. Her hand slides under my pyjama top to roam my bare back, and as her warm breasts press against my side, I imagine them filled with milk for my baby needs to be fed.

“I know you are exhausted, sweetie,” Jacqueline coos, “but now you are home, safe with me.”

I inhale deeply. My shoulders slump in relief.

“Where on Earth do you think you ended up?” she asks.

I want to scrub that memory before it crawls into some crevice of my brain, but the child would remain as a puzzling memento of having crossed that invisible threshold between worlds.

“There were… pines and skinny trees with moss hanging from their branches. I glimpsed ice-capped peaks far off into the distance. The sky was blue with little puffy white clouds flying in formation like some mythical flock. And a hulking monster nearly mangled me.”

Jacqueline’s hand travels down so her fingers can knead my ass. A shiver rolls over my skin. I hope she slips one digit into my asshole. When she thrusts it deeper, I always yelp like a puppy.

“Can you describe that animal?” she asks with a faint tremor in her voice. “They tend to live in specific areas of the world.”

I briefly envision a reindeer with a human face. Then a woman who has a vagina for a face. Also a snake with human arms and breasts.

“Well, it was quite hairy, was covered in mud and drool, had teeth like daggers, and reeked of sex. Its claws could have torn my body into tiny pieces, and its tail could have wrapped itself around the planet a dozen times.”

Jacqueline turns her gaze to a corner of the ceiling, then she arches an eyebrow.

“Lead the child into the living room while I go get…” After one look at our guest, Jacqueline strides up to her and snatches the ravaged apple from her hands. “You don’t need to eat the core, baby girl. I’ll get you something much tastier later.” She tucks a stray lock of raven-black hair behind her ear, then she smiles at me. “I’ll go grab the laptop.”

My beloved leaves the kitchen with the apple in her grasp, and her hurried footsteps move towards the bedroom. The wild child’s lips are smeared with juice. She’s staring up at me inquisitively while the fingers of her right hand, which she has rested on the lap of her leather tunic, are curled around an invisible fruit.

My neck starts twitching. I swallow thickly. The gaze that is penetrating my pupils hasn’t been corroded by schooling nor society, and sparkles with curiosity. This child is a creature examining another creature to figure out some truth for herself. It feels like she’s pointing a flashlight directly at my heart, exposing its scarred tissue.

I fear that I’ll burst into tears.

“I-I’m from France,” I manage to stammer, and my voice cracks because I am a burden. “There, our children don’t talk to strangers. There are piles of trash everywhere. Our rivers run with sewage and raw waste. W-we also don’t eat apples whole.”

The child gets down from the chair, reaches out and grabs my hand. Her grip is light but confident, her palm is moist, her fingers are tiny. She widens a smile that narrows her monolid eyes and dimples her cheeks. I would have expected her teeth to be rotten, but in the kitchen light they look quill-grey with some plaque buildup.

How has this girl survived in that forest from which I kidnapped her, and what part of me is her life raft in this ocean of madness?

“Can’t you see that I’m a monster,” I ask in a worn voice, “one far worse than any that walks on four legs?”

The girl tilts her head up. Her fingers tighten around my palm.

“You mean your face?” she asks in a gentle voice unbefitting of her ten years of living in that desolate land. “Or your soul?”

I’m the most miserable failure in history, the weakest person that ever lived. But right this second I’m a lonely human who needs this child to feel loved.

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Author’s note: today’s three songs are Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’, Lucy Dacus’ ‘The Shell’ and Bill Callahan’s ‘Too Many Birds’.

I forced a neural network to produce plenty of images inspired by this chapter: here’s the link.

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My skin prickles, my muscles twitch, my bones ache. Every breath I take brings the aroma of pine resin into my lungs, and risks numbing them with cold. The breeze ruffles my hair and rustles the leaves of the thicket about six meters to my left. I’m having trouble discerning details in the undulating mesh of bone-thick branches and knee-high undergrowth, but I distinguish the pale silver tresses of moss that hang from upcurved branches, and that the bark of a few slender trunks has been clawed to reveal the rose gold tree flesh beneath. What abominations of nature may be lurking past the treeline?

I will keep my feet firmly planted on the rounded pebbles that are pressing into the soles of my feet. I will become a human statue frozen in time. Remain still: that was the lesson I learned back as I child when I got lost while my parents and I were strolling around Hondarribia. A plush monkey, dressed in a candy-red T-shirt and slutty shorts, was huddled inside the rusted cage of a vending machine. I was transfixed by his slack-jawed smile and the gleaming sadness in his oil-black eyes as he peered out at me from his gloomy lair, but I also admired that beast for having endured the life-long duty of dropping plastic balls in exchange for money, a drudgery that turned his fur dull and patchy. When I attempted to point the monkey out to my parents, they had vanished into the crowd.

For hours or days I sobbed as I tottered aimlessly past towering strangers. None of the passersby recognized my plight; I was just another unwashed urchin whose rags reeked of urine and vomit. Not even a dog offered its tongue to lick my wounds. How did that nightmare end up resolving itself? Maybe I never found my parents. Maybe that damnable monkey was the ringleader of a gang of human traffickers, and I have spent my life ever since chained to a bed in a pitch black basement.

Why was I thinking about that time I got lost in Hondarribia? Wait, why the hell am I in a forest?! My breath is steaming, the soles of my feet are throbbing. My fingers are curled into white-knuckled fists. The ripples of the brook to my right distort the rounded stones and twigs that its waters churn over.

I rub my eyes as if I were trying to claw out some filth.

“This isn’t happening,” I mutter to myself.

Jacqueline hammered into my head that hallucinations don’t open doors, so instead I must be experiencing a bout of psychosis. I shut my eyes tight and I retread in my mind the steps that brought me here. I entered the bathroom to take a shower; I must have opened the door of the shower cabin and stepped inside. I turn on the water, and from the showerhead a jet of ink-black, searing-hot liquid rushes out with a foaming whoosh to soak my hair and stream off my face. The liquid flows down the curvature of my breasts, the contours of my buttocks, the crooks of my knees; it trickles into the pink crevasse between my legs. I scrub shampoo into my scalp, then I pour gel on a sponge and wash away the stench of sweat, fear and guilt clinging to my skin. My mouth is full of lather that tastes of exotic herbs and berries, of tropical fruits and sugary nectar. When I finish showering, I have become as clean as the surface of the moon.

A prickly sensation is flitting across my fingers and toes as a numbness seeps into my muscles. The shivers are creeping into my spine, making my teeth chatter. Soon enough my pale skin will turn a glistening dark blue.

Am I waiting for whoever abducted me to appear? What else could it be but an unholy abomination?

A panicked mass of survival instinct kicks in.

“Wh-why the hell did you teleport me to a random forest, you otherworldly shitstains?! I would prefer that you showed up as I took a piss!”

From deep within the thicket comes a rumbling growl. My body goes rigid, my heart starts thumping like a war drum. I keep my eyes focused on the greenery, refusing to give in to the desire to blink.

Some branches rustle and a twig crunches in the treeline. A flicker of motion catches my eye. Through some breeze-stirred leaves I discern that a child is peeking out from behind a tree trunk. She must be about ten years old. Her disheveled hair is chestnut brown and reaches the shoulders of a crude, ash-colored leather tunic. She’s wearing a tooth necklace, bracelets made of twisted animal hair, and thick boots with fur collars. Her peach-orange skin is stained with dirt, and her slanted, monolid eyes are staring at me in surprise, maybe because she has never seen anyone like me, or because I’m naked in a forest. Is she another spirit who will ask me to sacrifice my blood to make up for the blighted land?

My legs are trembling, my nipples are hard as stone. I’m not sure how long this stand-off lasts while the branches sway in the breeze, the brook burbles and the birds chirp.

“H-hello,” I say in the warmest voice I can muster, “do I have the pleasure of addressing someone with an incredible command of the Spanish language? You can also speak in English if you want.”

The child’s jaw drops slightly, but she remains silent as she looks me up and down with wide-eyed wonderment.

“D-do you understand that I’ve been dumped into the wilderness,” I insist, “that I’m unclothed and freezing my tits off, that I’m mentally unbalanced, and that I’m in desperate need of help?”

From within the thicket comes a crackling noise as if sticks were snapping under the weight of a bear-sized creature. The child’s eyes dart between me and the thicket, then her lips move to say in a high-pitched voice a sentence that sounds like gibberish. She crouches and scuttles along the treeline until she hides behind a thicker tree trunk mottled with eggshell-white spots.

Dead leaves are crunching as they get crushed underfoot. I squint to peer through the web of greenery, and I discern that a looming shape is stirring the shadows and bending branches; some monster is lumbering towards us.

The cold has spread inward, and now it seems to radiate from my bones. My fingers and toes have gone numb, my thoughts are slowing down and my vision narrowing, but I control my ragged breathing. I beckoned this feral child over by shouting into the void, and if the monster that is about to emerge from the thicket devours her, I’ll endure the flashbacks for the rest of my possibly short life.

“H-hey, girl, over here,” I call her through my chattering teeth, and when we hold each other’s gaze, I gesture anxiously for her to approach me.

She hesitates; would I run towards a wild-eyed thirty-year-old woman who’s hanging out naked in the wilderness? The girl pushes herself off the tree she was hiding behind, then she scuttles on the pebbled riverbed over to me. A pungent odor wafts from her leather tunic, as if she had rolled around in grime and filth. She clutches my left hand. When I feel her warm, chapped palm, a dizzy spell threatens to overwhelm me. I have been snatched from Jacqueline’s apartment and dropped into a remote forest. What otherworldly horror will I encounter now?

The undergrowth behind the treeline shudders and jerks, a branch snaps, and from between two trees emerges a hulking, woody-brown quadruped. As its beefy right foreleg flattens a fern, beneath the shaggy fur, which is caked with mud, the muscles along its leg tremble, and the subcutaneous fat shakes up to the beast’s rounded back. Under its furry hands, the pebbles of the riverbed grind and clack together. I discern that the beast’s curved claws are the size of hacksaw blades; they could peel open my ribcage like pulling back the lid of a can of sardines.

As it heads to the rippling waters of the brook, the beast swings its elongated head towards us. The coarse fur of its face is swan-white except for the smoky-black patches that surround the sunken eyes. Its nostrils flare as it sniffs our scent, then it snorts and blows like a bull. The beast stops beside the brook and dips its chin in the stream to drink.

My brain is wrapped in barbed wire. What is this jarring cackling that is punishing my eardrums? Oh, it’s bursting forth from my throat. But why am I laughing?

The beast raises its head and looks straight at me as water drips from its drenched chin, then it turns around to face us. The feral child squeezes my left hand; even through my shrieks of laughter I realize that she’s trying to communicate with me, but I can’t decipher her jabber. That monster’s claws are churning up the pebbles as it stomps towards us. I catch a whiff of its musk, that smells of earth, loam and moss.

My throat closes up; the surge of laughter pushes against it, then desists and dissipates. I need to gallop away, but I must remain rooted to this spot or I will be lost forever.

The beast’s honey-colored eyes are aglow with bloody malice. As it bellows a thunderous burp, a plume of white-hot steam spirals out and a spray of hot spittle splatters onto my face. The nearby birds have scattered away in a panic.

The girl is tugging on my arm, my knees are buckling. This noble monster is waiting for me to kneel in worship; I’m a bug crawling around its feet. I should try my best to seem cool and aloof, like a woman with regular sexual appetites instead of like an insane shut-in who has been abducted.

“G-greetings, brave soldier of the forest,” I say in a quavering, hysterical voice. “I-I salute your service in the field of battle and I promise that if I live through this experience, I-I will surrender the best cut of my meat to you.”

The beast pushes itself off the ground to rear up on its hind legs, then it throws its head back to tower even further over me; a fearsome god looming over my puny body. Its mouth yawns cavernously. The muscles in the monster’s girthy torso, which is matted with clots of mud and leaf litter, bulge under the shaggy fur like taut, industrial-sized leather belts.

At the final moment of my dismal existence, I have an intense craving to make love.

The girl yanks at my arm hard enough that I tumble backwards, but before I land on the pebbles, a crackle of energy fills me, and my back hits a flat surface. I got the wind knocked out of me. As I prop myself up and take a big gulp of air, I realize that I’m at room temperature and that I recognize that pastel gray ceiling.

Someone kneels beside me. The smooth touch of silk caresses the skin of my shoulder, then the person seizes me, turns me around and buries my face in a pillowy pair of breasts.

“You’re back,” Jacqueline says in a strained voice racked with worry. When she wraps her warm arms around my trembling back, she recoils, then starts rubbing my skin vigorously. “Baby, you are freezing!”

I’m shaking from the cold and the adrenaline surge, but now that Jacqueline’s breasts have enveloped my face, I will heal quickly.

“D-don’t worry,” I mumble through her cleavage.

A childish utterance of confusion behind me causes Jacqueline to stiffen up.

“Leire,” she whispers, “who the hell is this girl?”

I unstick my mouth from the silky skin of her breast to glance over my shoulder. The feral child is sitting on her knees and squinting at the bright light in the hallway as she checks her surroundings with bewilderment.

---

Author’s note: the two songs for today are ‘Sapokanikan’ by Joanna Newsom and ‘Baba O’Riley’ by The Who.

From all the chapters that remained to write of this novel, this one I looked forward to the least; I suspect that I didn’t believe I could pull it off. But it came out good enough for me, so the ride should be smoother from now on.

That story about Leire getting lost in Hondarribia as a child because a monkey distracted her happened to me. They eventually found my bloated corpse washed up on a beach.

In case you missed it, I exploited the services of a neural network that runs on a supercomputer to generate images that depict moments of this scene. Here is the link.

I usually get 8-10 visits a day on my site. Less than 24 hours ago, someone from the US racked up about 170 hits. That person even went through entries of the fanfiction of ‘Re:Zero’ I wrote a couple of years ago. I never liked ‘Re:Zero’ that much; I preferred my darker, crazier spin on that story. I worked on it during a turning point in what passes for my career as a writer; I had ceased to read anything in Spanish, my own native language, and I didn’t want to write in Spanish anymore even though I had self-published two books in that language, but I felt like I could never become proficient enough at writing in English. Working through those sixty or so chapters of fanfiction changed my mind, and I had a blast throughout.

Anyway, thank you for checking out so many pages of my site, whoever you are. I hope you were entertained.

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The bunnyman must have been waddling towards our office at a leisure pace, because we catch him mid-step about seven meters away from us. His flint-grey-tipped ears twitch. On the periphery of my vision, his girthy sausage dangles to a stop. He lifts a dirt-brown hand to scratch at his fluffy mane, that reminds me of an Elizabethan ruff.

I hold my breath as I wait for the bunnyman to pounce at me and sink his incisors into my face. I almost crave for him to do so, to feel the shockwaves of pain as he shreds my flesh.

Jacqueline drapes an arm around my back and squeezes my shoulder to comfort me.

“What are you seeing, Leire? That horse again?”

In my mind, I see myself reflected in my doomed, equine friend’s bulging eyes, when they were puffy with sorrow as they leaked copious tears. I wish I could admire his glossy coat, with its tawny shades of sable and russet, perfectly groomed and polished to perfection. I wish I could pet him on his majestic forehead or caress the deep furrows above his nostrils. Spike had been bred by the dark gods to become the best cavalry horse in the universe, but he made the unforgivable mistake of rebelling against his fate.

I swallow a lump in my throat.

“No, Spike died. You know that, mommy.”

Jacqueline kneads my shoulder gently.

“A different horse then?”

The hulking, bunny-headed demon is eyeing me up as he sways on his feet like a ship bobbing on the ocean. I want to reach into his chest and rip out the pulsing, black-blooded heart that beats in there with sinister malice.

“Sentient, elegant horses I can handle,” I mutter, “but this bunnyman is just a pile of fur and fat with a glistening shaft to show for it. He should have died in the mud long before civilizations came about. I can’t deal with his drooling or the stink of death coming out of his armpits. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”

I approach the bunnyman with Jacqueline in tow while my spine trembles. I feel like a svelte, sexed-up whore in front of this brute’s sagging belly and his hunched back. The wet, matted fur of his face is yellow-tinged and reeks of urine. A glob of drool drops from the tip of his overgrown upper incisors and lands on the vinyl floor with a plop.

I’m scared out of my wits, I’m shivering with revulsion. I fear that my sanity will snap like a rubber band if I have to stare for one more second into this abomination’s gunmetal-grey eyeballs, that resemble marbles wedged into his skull. I’ve gotten a glimpse of the abyss of his soul, his vast and unfathomable depravity. I want to yank out his eyeballs then plunge my hands into the sockets to squeeze his rubbery gray matter until it bursts out in an explosion of gruel.

“Wh-what’s your problem, bunnyman?” I muster in an anguished voice. “You’re standing in the middle of our hallway and you think that you are allowed to be here? Look at that mess you call fur! It’s like a ratty carpet of fleas and lice. You must be the result of a sick orgy involving donkeys and sows, you hideous bastard. I shan’t bear the invasion of a horde of bunnymen who will prowl around to the ends of this planet, so come at me, demon! I’m ready to rip out your festering guts!”

My brain is bubbling with rage and disgust; when I hear Jacqueline giggle, it bewilders me. She bear-hugs me from behind.

“Leire, sweetie, you should calm down. Any of our neighbors may come down the hallway at any moment.”

“Good,” I grumble. “If I’m forced to stare at a naked bunnyman, so should they.”

The intruder draws his lips back, exposing the glinting incisors to their roots; his upper lip is parted in an inverted V-shape, and in between peeks out a clam-shell-pink nub of flesh disturbingly similar to a clit. He then huffs out a thick breath that smells like rotten flesh and stale urine.

“You are Leire,” he says with a gravelly voice. “You can help.”

My heart sinks into my bowels. I’m tempted to take a step back, then as many necessary until I reach the doorway to our office.

His eyes glaze over and a drooling slobber drops from his mouth.

“Wh-what the hell is wrong with you?” I ask while trying to hold in my hysteria. “Are you on drugs? Did you fall out of a tree and smash your head against a boulder? Spike seemed this spaced out the first few times he stalked me… Wait, you aren’t Spike, are you?!”

The bunnyman’s whiskers twitch. He raises a stubby hand, and I’m expecting a swipe to my jaw, a punch to my temple or a blow to my groin, but instead he reveals a handkerchief that’s embroidered with a coat of arms. He uses it to mop the piss off his face.

“Spike is gone,” he says somberly. “He’s lost in the void of time.”

A pang of grief rises in my throat as I contemplate Spike’s hay bed and his empty trough. His crazed black eyes will never gaze at me again with unbridled love as he gallops to greet me, or chase after me for that matter. Spike, my loyal mount, was a visionary: his idea of heaven was forcing me to ride him although I begged him to stop.

I clench my teeth before the tangle of emotions overwhelms me.

“So, Lord of the Hellfires, you are one of his pals, huh…?” I utter in a bitter voice.

The bunnyman lodges the handkerchief between his belly folds.

“We were friends, yes. And I’ve come in his place because he failed.”

I’m shaking with anger.

“You dare to stand before me in your abominable form without bringing me good news about my old pal Spike? You spineless turd! You let your friend rot away in some dank ditch? I was going to send him a bottle of whiskey from France and a letter describing my suffering. Instead, I’ll have to compose my own poem: ‘I will drink a glass of your piss, old friend, then I’ll give you a pat on the head and a scratch behind your ear’.”

The bunnyman’s lips droop, making him resemble a senile grandpa. As far as I can tell, this furry, bunghole-riddled lump of humanoid is thirty to thirty-five years older than me.

“Well, we’ve been short of good news since we meddled with the laws of nature, but there may still be hope left.”

My eyes are fixed on the bunnyman’s gum-nub. I shudder at the thought that one day it’ll sprout into a fully functioning clitoris. My loins ache, and the urge to touch myself is almost overwhelming.

“H-how can you expect any help from me while you’re presenting yourself as a hulking bunny beast? Why don’t you take off your skin and show me what lies beneath, you revolting monstrosity? Your fur is full of muck, your breath stinks of dead animals, you’re insane as a bag of rabid squirrels.”

The bunnyman huffs.

“We are the result of a daring experiment, one that I fear will get abused again and again.”

“I’m also the result of an experiment. Did you know that humans can produce new beings when they copulate? How did you come to exist, though? Were you spawned in a giant pile of manure with the help of some insane proctologist? I wish that the bacteria present in human and animal waste would have concentrated in a broth that would have stewed your beastly flesh in its own juices. If I didn’t have a pressing engagement, I’d smash you so hard that you’d end up as a puddle of bone fragments.”

The bunnyman’s nostrils flare wide.

“Are you done venting your outrage? Can we start talking in an amicable fashion?”

“Not with that cock in the picture! It’s so long and thick that it may as well be a shovel. At least Spike had the decency to be castrated. How could I have a civilized conversation with you while you’re concealing the most disgusting thing on my planet in that accursed sheath of skin? It looks like a length of rotten, knotted intestine.”

The bunnyman grimaces as if I had shoved a cold turd down his throat. More saliva drips down his chin in thick threads.

“It’s not my cock per se,” he says in a voice like a gravel-ridden, rusty pump. “And in this dimension I can only wear my current appearance. Leire, I see your thought patterns; they are noisy and illogical. Please, remain quiet and listen to me. You see, we were trying to break out of this awful cycle of death and rebirth. The essence of the cosmos is an electromagnetic field that we’re able to manipulate.”

I shake my head to disperse the foul thoughts.

“I’m already going through enough heartbreak, and you come searching for my help? Do I look like I can even help myself? And you look like you haven’t bathed for months! What can you offer me other than more suffering? I wouldn’t trust you with my car keys, and I certainly wouldn’t ask you to wash my back if I needed it scrubbed.”

The bunnyman glances at the wall.

“I’m not an expert at treating psychological distress, but I know that you have struggled to make the best out of a bad situation for quite a while now. You had been crying in a dark room. You were longing to be free although you had no means of escape. You were looking for hope, but it had faded away.” The bunnyman’s gunmetal-grey eyes are peeling my soul out like an egg from its shell. “Leire, you can never get rid of your pain. However, you can avoid wallowing in it, and instead focus on saving us from a dark fate.”

I lift my chin and try to keep myself from crying, but tears well up and fall down my cheeks.

“Let me guess: this help you want from me involves some ritual,” I mutter, “one that will start with me performing a cutesy dance and that will end with you sticking your cock in my mouth and saying ‘wibble-wobble-gobble’ while I taste your slime. You think that your genitals are going to make me worship the ground you walk on because you’re a big bad rabbit and I’m a sick slave girl that just wants to fall in love? You think I’ll be begging you for more and more until I become a brainless husk? That’s what it always comes down to, isn’t it?”

The bunnyman shudders. After he takes a deep breath, the air he exhales stinks like the aftermath of a tornado that devastated a pet shop.

“You were given a brain but no control over your emotions. I assure you: I want no part of such perversion.”

I look down to make sure that my nipples haven’t sprouted erect, but to my dismay, the nipples have sprouted erect. My lips are trembling.

“All of you freaks think that you know me. Do you have any clue what’s it like to exist in a brain infested with spiders, in a body that is constantly wet with pre-cum, in a world full of monsters and abominations? Until Jacqueline found me, all I did was work, work, work, work, and no one understood me. I am a person, I have a mind, and I could have probably achieved some level of mastery, but here I am, stuck with one foot in reality and the other in an insane asylum. I am Leire, the Great Bunnywoman, Lady of the Skull, Emissary of the Gods, Rabbit Killer of the Universe! I am not some nympho who gets turned on by the sight of your oversized dong!”

The bunnyman takes a lumbering step back.

“Look, lady, we’re on the brink of a crisis. If we don’t do something soon, we will be sucked into the maelstrom of a collapsing universe.”

“I won’t be your prostitute, I won’t be your sex slave, and I will never give birth to a bunch of bunnybabies to further your unholy cause! Do you wish to taste the sweet nectar of death?! I have slain beasts ten thousand times larger than you, a dozen of them a day! I will bite off your giant penis and spit it at your feet! So flee, go back to the mud and the slimy marshland, and tell Alberto to shove his likely furry dick up his own ass!”

The bunnyman gasps, displaying the sickly pink inside of his mouth, which looks like a wrinkled vagina. As he stammers some words, I jab a finger at him and let out a noise of glee.

“I knew it! The bastard who disturbed me with random messages and ruined my car had to belong to your flock of freaks. Tell him that I don’t appreciate being filmed while I’m pleasuring myself, unless Jacqueline is handling the cinematography! W-wait… you aren’t Alberto, are you?”

The bunnyman bows his head.

“I’m not,” he says in a surly voice.

“Are you sure? Is there any chance that Alberto is hiding somewhere in your bunny body?”

He buries his face in his furry hands, and when he lowers them, he evades my gaze.

“Alberto was right: you are impossible. If he’s going to interfere anyway, I’ll tell him that he should deal with you himself. This place has already begun to collapse into madness.”

The bunnyman shifts his hulking weight awkwardly to turn around, then he waddles down the hallway towards the bathroom. His tail is an ash-grey pom-pom; it clashes with his rotund ass as if someone had stuck in there one of those BDSM butt plugs.

A flood of relief pours out of my mouth in the form of an exhausted sigh. I sniffle. I’m about to wipe my tears when two warm hands reach from behind me and dry my cheeks. I flinch, but I remember that I dragged Jacqueline along with me. I forced her to witness this deranged face-off.

When she stands in front of me, the burn of shame compels me to avoid her gaze. She grabs my chin and tilts my head so that I’m looking straight into her cobalt-blues.

“I-I’m sorry…” I whine.

Jacqueline shushes me.

“My baby is afflicted with some sort of incurable condition. She suffers from a lack of sleep, depression, hallucinations and suicidal thoughts. You have burst into tears while shouting obscenities at a bunny. That was a wonderful performance, Leire. I believe that you believe you were arguing with this creature.”

“I don’t need to believe in what shows up in front of my eyes, or under my butt for that matter.”

“Of course. Has he vanished, though?”

I shake my head and point at the big bastard, who’s lumbering down the hallway as he scratches his flank through the almond-colored, matted fur.

“I guess he intends to leave the same way he came in, through the toilet,” I say in a quavering voice. “B-because I was peeing when he showed up, that’s why I likely turned the bathroom into a disaster zone. Perhaps the damage cannot be undone.”

Jacqueline’s smile lights up my sky like a rainbow after the rain. She grabs my hand.

“Let’s chase this bunnyman so you can see him leave. Then tell me all about it.”

She’s already dragging me along when I react.

“Wait! Are we really going to pursue that monster?”

“Yeah, why not? He had ample opportunity to hurt you, right?”

“He could have caught me in a headlock and smashed my brains against the wall,” I concede. “But maybe this is what bunnymen do: they chase prey until they become prey themselves.”

Jacqueline lets me control our pace to avoid alerting the otherworldly demon of our pursuit. By the time we catch up to him, he has reached the bathroom door. He looks over his bulky shoulder at us and he scrunches up his nose in disdain.

“Hey, stop following me, you nutbag.”

As I’m trying to come up with a quip, the bunnyman pushes the door open, strides inside and shoves the door shut behind him so that it slams against the frame.

Jacqueline’s grip on my hand tightens. I sigh.

“Escaping an argument through a toilet must be a sorry sight. Well, good riddance to him.”

I glance up at my beloved. Her face has paled, and she’s gaping wide-eyed at the closed bathroom door.

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My temples are throbbing, my shoes are tapping an anxious rhythm on the ceramic tiles of the bathroom floor. I’m wrung dry, I’m desiccating, I’m wilting. I want to be in ecstasy, possessed, and hear myself moan as I rub my crotch raw, but there’s only the chuff of my breath and the hollow beating of my heart. How long will it take me to die of shame?

Maybe I already needed to pee, or I’m about to empty my bladder out of fear; either way, I pull down my pants and panties and I allow myself to relax enough that a stream of urine shoots out from my urethra. I’m rubbing my eyes when I feel something solid and furry pushing my butt cheeks upwards.

I jump to my feet. As I turn around, I stumble and hit the stall door with my back, making the door rattle.

A basketball-sized, furry head is sticking out of the toilet. Almond-colored tufts of matted fur, like fuzzy wings, come out of close-set, pointy ears. A gunmetal-grey eye bulges out on either side of a whiskey-colored, downward band of fur that ends in a tobacco-brown muzzle. Framed against a fluffy, cream-colored mane, a pair of overgrown, shimmering incisors are dripping a gluey drool, and look sharp enough to punch through bone. The fur on top of its head is drenched in urine that is also trickling down its face. This creature resembles some stuffed animal that ghost hunters would come across at a dilapidated insane asylum.

My mind is buzzing with fright. I’m spritzing the tiles with pee, and I doubt I’ve emptied my bladder when I yank my panties up then I squat awkwardly to reach for the waist band of my pants.

I’m gawking at a rabbit, one whose head is bigger than mine, and whose eyes glint with intelligence. After an instant of recognition, the rabbit rises further, lifting the toilet seat with its human-like shoulders. The creature’s massive body gets jammed; the toilet seat won’t budge anymore. As my shaking left hand fumbles for the door latch, two dirt-brown, stubby hands maneuver under the toilet seat and lift it over the rabbit’s head.

I open the stall door. I’m retreating backwards on my wobbly legs when the toilet water sloshes about and the bunnyman steps out to plant its feet on the ceramic tiles.

This beast towers over me. From up close, its fur is matted with filth and splotched with gunky crusts. Its soaked face stinks of ammonia, and its breath suggests that it’s been fed a steady diet of rotten offal and garbage. A grotesquely sagging belly leads down to a pendulating penis as thick and dirty pink as a salami sausage.

I shriek.

My limbic system must have taken the reins, because I’m sprinting down the hallway towards the door to our office while repeating the word ‘nope’ over and over. My heart skips a beat, and my legs collapse underneath me. The vinyl floor makes a screeching noise as I slide on my chest for half a meter.

I’m stretched out on the floor like a broken doll, I’m breathing in the particles that dozens of shoes dragged into the hallway. As I hold my breath to avoid wheezing and gagging on dust and grime, I turn over and witness the broad-shouldered, fluffy bunnyman waddling down the hallway towards me. In the brute’s massive frame, his belly, the color of rusted copper, is swollen like pregnant and wobbles with every step. His cock waggles left and right, bouncing against the furry mounds of his thighs.

A chill shoots through my body. I scramble to my feet and rush to our front door. I throw it wide open, jump inside and slam the door shut behind me.

Jordi and Jacqueline, seated at their workstations, look over their shoulder in unison at the savage that just disturbed their peace of mind.

Sweat is trickling through my pores like molten lead; it burns while it travels down my neck, then along my spine and finally into my lower back. Although I suspect that my eyeballs will collapse into bloody slop and dribble down my cheeks, I fix my wide-eyed gaze on Jacqueline and I gesture for her to approach me. She swivels on her chair, she stretches her tall frame, and as she strides her way to me, her skirt, the color of Irish coffee, rides up slightly towards her waist; her lean legs, tanned by walnut-brown, dotted tights, exchange places in front of the other; her glossy ankle boots clop-clop-clop.

Jacqueline halts a couple of feet away from me and rests her left hand on my neck. Her raven-black hair falls over her shoulders like a wave. Those luscious, moist lips are parted, and her breath smells of spearmint gum.

Jacqueline’s cobalt-blues remind me of a summer morning when we were eleven years old and she bequeathed me a kiss in the middle of a forest near our country home in Aquitaine. I want to devour her as if she were a chewy piece of candy.

“Leire, you smell like pee,” Jacqueline whispers. “Have you cleaned yourself properly, sweetie?”

A thick, spongy sound rings from my throat, like a retch.

“I-I may have made a mess in the bathroom. I had a fit in there.”

My gaze darts around as I try to figure out the best way to explain that a bulky, humanoid rabbit has risen out of the toilet as I was peeing, but Jacqueline caresses my neck, which eases my anxiety, and she speaks to me with a voice like a serene ocean lapping at its shores.

“That’s okay. It’s all okay, honey.”

I wish she would guide her warm hand below the edge of my panties.

“W-wait, you saw the revolver that Spike brought over,” I say in a hushed voice, “so maybe you can see the bunnyman as well.”

“A bunnyman?”

That’s right, I’m sick of being harassed by demons from the underworld. Maybe that well-hung abomination is standing right behind our office door, ready to smash his fist into my skull, but as long as Jacqueline remains by my side, I know that everything will turn out all right.

I’m a swirling dervish, a pouncing panther, an enraged rhino. I grab Jacqueline’s left wrist, swing the door open and pull my beloved after me out of the office.

---

Authors note: listen to Echo & the Bunnymen’s ‘The Killing Moon’ (obligatory), Modest Mouse’s ‘Tiny Cities Made of Ashes’ and The National’s ‘Abel’.

I usually wouldn’t upload such a short chapter, but this part of the scene had a natural stopping point. Apart from that, I’ve run into some personal issues recently and it’s been hard to focus on anything. However, I’ve finished the first draft of the remainder of this scene, so it will go up in a day or two.