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“Let’s both steer clear of the subject of sex,” Alberto the blob says, “and focus on what brought me here.”

I sigh.

“I guess I can try.”

“Even though for someone as morally bankrupt as yourself, every topic of conversation leads inexorably to your depraved proclivities.”

“Yes, it’s like pulling yourself off the edge of a cliff when every fiber of your being urges you to leap headfirst into the void. But I did offer you my cooperation. So, why would a vile creature such as yourself crawl out of some cesspool to take refuge in this dimension? Go ahead and spill a viscous and revolting tale.”

“I came to pay you a visit partly because you invited me,” the blob says smugly. “Some time ago, as you sat in your car, you yelled that the fucker with the car messages should just pop up and talk to you face to face. I believe you also called me a pussy. Even though I, magnanimous fellow that I am, wanted to spare you the sight of this oozing guise, our troubles have continued to worsen, so here I am.”

I rub my forehead. The outburst to which Mr. Blobby over there alluded sounds like something I might have croaked while fuming.

“I used to be an ordinary car owner, wasn’t I…? Wh-what was that about a message?”

The blob’s bulk lurches, making the snot-like ropes of goo that dangle from his bottom jiggle, or drop to enlarge gloppy puddles on the carpet.

“You have forgotten that too?!”

“Forgive me, Arachne, for my blundering lack of awareness. That happened a long time ago! My brain had weeks to edit it out. Besides, I care very little about my life.”

“Do you recall that you abandoned your car, a Renault Laguna, with the keys inside, on the parking lot of a coffee shop in the outskirts of Irún?”

“That does ring a bell. Why do you bring it up? Are you planning to steal it?”

The blob groans.

“I’m beyond expecting you to act like a decent human being, but still: some hoodlum could have broken into your car and discovered that he could rotate buildings by turning the steering wheel.”

“Stated as if you weren’t responsible for fucking up my car. Wouldn’t your actions and mine overlap in a Venn diagram?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Venn diagrams are a bunch of circles which overlap to represent sets that share elements. I suggested that we were similarly negligent in handling the Renault. And who cares anyway! These days I roll around Donostia in mommy’s sweet ride. I sit in the passenger seat too, so my intrusive thoughts about veering into oncoming traffic don’t matter. Let my shitty old chariot rust to the ground, or become a homeless shelter. Who knows, maybe that car exploded soon after my departure.”

“It didn’t explode. I cleaned up after you.”

“Meaning?”

“When I realized that you had abandoned your car, I killed it. No need to thank me.”

“Killed it?”

“Yes, I couldn’t figure out how to repair the car, so I decided to destroy it down to its gears and circuits. The city likely towed it away. That car of yours must have ended up crushed to a cube in some junkyard, if they still do that kind of thing. Your shitty Renault ceased to be a problem.”

“You should have fucking torched the car with me inside,” I blurt out grimly.

“What’s with that sudden urge for self-destruction?”

I rub my eyelids and take a deep breath. I want to lie down and shut off my senses until I find a way to suppress my reckless impulses.

“I apologize, my subconscious spoke through me,” I say in a tired tone. “I’ve dealt with some rough experiences of late. Anyway, what kind of message did you intend to convey by tampering with my now defunct Renault Laguna?”

“That wasn’t the message. Initially we tried to reach you by… Well, our first communication effort failed. Then I intruded upon this dimension long enough to write a couple of words across the dashboard of your car. That message should have awoken in you a sense of urgency, the need to pay more attention to your surroundings, and once we figured out how to present ourselves physically without making you go bonkers, we’d explain what was going on. Unfortunately, any cross-dimensional interaction can result in chaos. To plaster that message inside your car, I had to mess with its properties. The damn process was like controlling a thousand-stringed puppet while preventing those strings from twisting around each other. A painstaking business. As you know, back when I had hands, I worked as a programmer, but my skills barely extend to that precision job of interfacing with another dimension, so I ended up imbuing your vehicle with an assortment of undesirable traits.”

“I suppose that can be forgiven since you, an asshole and an amoeba, are just an amateur.”

The blob sighs like a beached whale.

“This is what we have to endure to deliver some bad news to a sentient creature as irresponsible as yourself. The universe is becoming increasingly precarious; I risked ripping a tear through the fabric of reality to send you a message that you might dismiss in five minutes. And you know what? Your misbehaving brain took in those words for a moment before you discarded them into the cosmic wastebasket. Now look at the mess we’re in! Let that be a lesson on how to properly act when you receive a warning from another dimension.”

I hunch over and hold my temples. A sudden headache is forcing me to squint, which blurs the Hadean sight of the tar-black, eyeball-studded monster that spans the opposite wall.

“That sounded like a load of dangerous shit that you shouldn’t have done,” I grumble.

“Dangerous actions are unavoidable if one wants to convey vital information through your thick skull. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

The darkness in my brain keeps swelling. The office swirls. I grit my teeth. It feels as if some buried, throbbing trauma were trying to push my eyes from inside and, once they popped out, reveal itself.

“I-I received a few calls, that afternoon when you fucked with my car.”

“You remember that, huh?”

“The display of my phone showed symbols like corrupted text,” I continue in a hollow tone. “I was driving on the highway, and I didn’t want to answer, but s-somehow the caller reached my ears. Then I passed out, didn’t I? I remember falling into a star-speckled abyss. I should have crashed my car into a truck.”

“You did pass out. At first we tried to reach you by phone, but we could only fake an incoming call; couldn’t even send a text message. And while linking the audio to your eardrums, I may have… bumped your brain a little. Once I realized that you had gone beddy-bye, I took the reins of your car and drove it like a RC toy until I parked it in the outskirts of your former city. I had fun, not going to lie. I miss playing racing games. I owned the Thrustmaster set of controllers, with the gear shifter and the pedals. However, along the way to Irún, I had expected the police to come after us; you were slumped in the driver’s seat as if dead, hands off the steering wheel.”

As the blob wobbles to the rhythm of his chuckles, and the light reflections warp into psychedelic shapes on his gooey surface, a chill crawls up my spine. My headache is ebbing in pulsating waves of pain. I scowl at the amorphous abomination that nearly killed me.

“You motherfucker.”

The blob chokes on a chuckle.

“Nothing wrong with fucking mommies, wouldn’t you say?” he retorts, annoyed. “Don’t go apeshit. I did my best to preserve your sorry ass, and a better job at handling your shitty vehicle than someone who feels compelled to drive into oncoming traffic.”

“I’m so glad you had a good time at my expense. I could have suffered a brain hemorrhage.”

“Hey, I’m sure I didn’t break in there anything that wasn’t broken before. You were already used to rambling nonsense, weren’t you? At most, I modulated your frequency.”

My stomach has contracted to a cramped lump. I clench my fists.

“That was the evening when I started seeing shadows out of the corner of my eyes,” I say in a guttural voice. “Soon enough, monsters. Next morning, as I was washing my face in the bathroom at work, I received the visit of a sentient, castrated horse. My life has been hell since you fucked with my gray matter.”

The blob remains silent for an extra beat of gloomy gravity.

“I don’t know about shadows nor monsters, but Spike showing up was unrelated. He volunteered for the mission of trying to snap you out of your stupidity.”

I lower my gaze to the goo-stained carpet.

“I’m not saying he was a bad horse. He just wasn’t qualified as a therapist.”

The blob sighs.

“A shame neither of us succeeded at convincing you of anything. I bear some responsibility for Spike’s demise, but, let’s be honest, it’s mostly your fault.”

---

Author’s note: today’s song is “Planet Telex” by Radiohead.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel. A hundred and thirty-seven songs so far. Check it out.

You love AI voices, don’t you? Who doesn’t? Check out the audiochapter I produced for this part.

Leire and Alberto the blob were arguing about events contained in chapter one and chapter eight of this seemingly endless novel. I was reluctant to link chapter one; I expect to rewrite most of the first few chapters once I finish the novel, and I have to fix some continuity errors from back then.

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“I may as well come clean and admit that when we used to work together,” says the viscous mass of slime, “before I realized the gravity of your depravity, I had a crush on you.”

I snap my head back and grimace. Oil-black, putrescent gunk glides, like a slow lava flow, down the seashell-white curve of the eyeball I’m focusing on to address this horrid blob and his weighty burden of eyes. I picture an alligator-sized tongue lashing out of the wall-wide expanse of goo to lick that sclera clean.

“As in you masturbated to me?” I ask in disbelief.

The sticky mire shifts like a vortex of spaghetti on a plate.

“Well, yes. A harmless habit, as long as nobody discovers the evidence.”

“As in you hoped that someday you’d witness my pussy dripping with your ejaculate? As in you craved to thrust your scummy cock down my throat so that I’d gag on your noisome seed? As in you wished I had a unibrow so that it would inspire strange and forbidden fantasies?”

The blob emits a spluttering gurgle.

“Why would I want to involve a unibrow?”

“Are unibrows not beautiful in their own way?”

“When you say beautiful, you mean repulsive to anyone with eyes.”

I shake my head.

“You’re an obscene creature, and your soiled mind is beyond redemption. What’s next, a taste for zoophilia, necrophilia or coprophilia?”

“Listen, even though you have the face of a woman on the brink of a nervous breakdown…”

“And you the ass of a man in need of a shower!”

“Yes, we’re both grotesque monsters. As I was saying, I thought you were cute, you seemed to be on the quirky side of crazy, and I’d often fantasize about your tits. You can’t compete with Jacqueline’s juggernauts, but your knockers contrast nicely with your skinny frame.”

I look down at the twin bulges in my shirt. Although I adore breasts so much that my brain may be made of breast, I’m used to concealing mine under loose hoodies. Other women with my assets, the only parts of me that I appreciate, would parade them around for the world to ogle and degrade.

My outrage has deflated. I purse my lips and nod.

“Your carnal proclivities are cultured. I must commend you, sickened ooze, for admitting that you’ve fallen prey to your libido’s prurient compulsions.”

The blob chuckles, which sends ripples through his flabby bulk.

“We are both fans of the kind of rack that turns even hard-boiled assholes into slobbering zombies.”

“That said, amorphous blobs of gloop that want to fuck are bad news. I would never have sex with you, even if I worked myself into a frothing sexual frenzy, even if you became the last gelatinous creature on Earth. I still feel bile burning in my throat due to your stench of stagnant sewage. What woman would get aroused by a slimy blob with toxic halitosis and the purity of a mound of excreta? Those are automatic deal breakers. However, I admire your self-esteem; few people could get familiar with the unholy abomination in the mirror and come to harbor the demented illusion that anyone would want to mount them.”

“This conversation is driving me insane,” the blob grunts, sputtering gelatinous globs on the carpet. “I guess I have to remind you that I used to inhabit a warm-blooded human body; you may have forgotten that already. Besides, your nerdiness was more awkward and unappealing than mine.”

“Now, a tentacled crotch? That I could work with. Blasphemous tentacles twist around my arms and legs, squeezing my flesh. They lift me off the floor as they spread me open. Two other appendages slip their tips under the waistband of my trousers and panties, and tug them down. I struggle while a fibrous, slimy tentacle squiggles against my labia. Others probe my mouth and asshole. The squirming invaders snake inside, stretching me wide. At first, the agony makes me bite down on a mouthful of lubricated muscle that has slipped past my tonsils. The fleshy shafts are rooting around in my esophagus, my rectum and my cervix, coiling into throbbing knots deep within me. Waves of mind-crushing bliss course through my body as the violating tentacles shoot streams of goo, filling me up.” I shiver, then press my thighs together. “Damn, I’m getting hot. Arachne knows I have diddled myself to nastier stuff than tentacle rape.”

The viscous, oozing muck, which was once a man, heaves with a squelching noise.

“Would you stop rambling on, you lunatic? I wish I hadn’t heard any of that!”

“You’re the one who brought up that you wanted to defile me.”

“There was no defilement involved. But I made a terrible mistake admitting it, especially now that my current nature has kept me away from any intimacy.”

“I can picture how such an infatuation forms in a man’s mind. You stand on the train, heading to work, when the girl you were expecting steps aboard and sits nearby. You keep stealing glances of her cute face and creamy ankles. The curve of her thigh calls out for your fingertips. As you catch her floral fragrance, your heart hammers. An electric thrill races through your veins. Your erection strains against your pants with the thought of her moist lips wrapping around your cock and bathing it in warm saliva. You built the mental image of who you need this girl to be: someone who would listen to you, understand you and love you. She’s been glancing at you, you’re sure of it, even though you’re ugly and slimy as pond scum, your life’s a train wreck, and most people who know you are relieved that you won’t reproduce and contaminate the gene pool. This girl is waiting for you to make your move, so you can finally leave a more lasting legacy than shit stains on a bathroom wall. One day you dare to get off at her station. Your heart beats wildly as you follow the girl, that swaying skirt of hers that barely covers her sweet derrière, eager to approach her in a darkened alley and confess your grotesque love. By the time you realize how wrong you were all along, you have ended up blind and with a dildo stuffed up your ass. Moral of the story: don’t make others responsible for your delusions. As for me, I used to dream of frolicking in a cosmic web strewn with the desiccated husks of untold species, where I’d suck on succulent spider tits. Anyway, who would want to have sex with a stinky, hairy dude when luscious, big-breasted women exist?”

The blob burbles like boiling tar.

“I wish I had known that you’re a clit licker,” he says, sounding pained.

“Hey, I happen to be a woman in love with another woman. No need to herd people into categories.”

---

Author’s note: the songs for today are “Gronlandic Edit” by Of Montreal, “Another One Goes By” by The Walkmen, “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “Isn’t It a Pity” by Galaxie 500, “Pink Triangle” by Weezer, and “Kids” by PUP (also this live version).

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. A hundred and thirty-five songs so far. Check them out.

Do you enjoy Eleven Labs’ artificial voices as much as I do? I doubt it, but here’s the audiochapter I produced for this one.

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The heat drains from my cheeks, although my heart keeps pounding in my throat, and my nipples remain puffy and sensitive.

“I won’t apologize for my arousal. I’m a woman, I need my breasts licked from time to time. Lately I have decreased my stress, as well as the anxiety and frustration of living, by indulging in plenty of orgasms, and my regal mommy has been more than obliging.”

“Even in my diminished state,” the blob begins, “I understand the biological urge to procreate by any means necessary. So does Jacqueline. She’s a live wire, that one. Anyway, I’m glad someone’s relationship is working out, although you have the emotional capacity of an iguana.”

“You know, I could choose to get pissed off about that remark, but I’m a mature girl; I can admit my shortcomings. Yes, some accident of birth, in combination with growing up among aliens who lacked an understanding of love, has crippled my ability to connect with human beings. My neglectful upbringing also burdened me with a chronic sense of helplessness and desperation. I had accepted that some people are doomed to spend their lives alone because of what they’re born into. But one morning, as I was sobbing in the bathroom, Jacqueline came in and wrapped me in her arms, breaking down the megalithic wall of anger and frustration around my heart, sheltering me from my icy despair. Ever since, mommy has taught me how to feel like a human being again.”

The black bulk of goo shudders.

“Your words might have worked on me if they hadn’t involved your kink.”

“I put up with being conscious for a main reason: to anticipate the next time that Jacqueline will allow me to see the universe from a better perspective, that of me lying prone between her spread, thick thighs while she reclines on a heap of puffy toss pillows of faux fur. A four-strand platinum necklace graces her collarbones and glints in the ring lights of the cameras. Her fleshy breasts drift to the sides of her chest in creamy white mounds. As saliva dribbles from the corners of my mouth, I dig my fingers into mommy’s thighs and I latch on to her dripping wet pussy with my mouth like a leech to a wound. My tongue slides along her hot, velvet-soft labia. I inhale the intoxicating fragrance of her arousal while I gulp greedily on her feminine nectar in a feast of tender, pink flesh. I caress her pearl-like clitoris with flicks of my tongue. My lips pucker around the engorged nub to suckle it as mommy’s juices dribble down my chin. Jacqueline lets out little sighs. She runs her fingers through my hair while purring that I’m a good girl, which makes me forget how old and broken I am. My hands slide upwards over her toned abdomen until I reach her bountiful orbs of flesh. I squeeze them, pinching between my fingers those nipples of hers, turgid like swollen with milk, as she gasps and arches her back. I keep kneading her plump, pillowy boobs, and devouring her clit. The soft curls of her pubes are tickling the inside of my nostrils. I yearn to make mommy moan and squirm with pleasure, I yearn to propel her in a crescendo of rapture. A shudder rolls through Jacqueline, who whimpers and writhes against my tongue. Her quivering, silken thighs flex around my head as if to crush it, sealing my ears in a vice-like grip. After she digs her heels into my spine, she clamps a hand on my nape to thrust my face deeper into her muff. Her pussy spasms against my lips, so I flick my tongue furiously on her throbbing nub like a ravenous kitten, to milk every ounce of mommy’s pleasure. I picture her face flushing crimson, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, as she cums savagely, anointing me by squirting her sticky nectar against the underside of my tongue like a warm shower in a tropical sun. Some of her essence spills out of my mouth down my chin and neck, but I guzzle the rest until its spout sputters empty. After I’ve licked her clean, I laze against her thick thighs, panting and bloated, my face coated in womanly cream. Oh mommy, drown me in amniotic fluid! I adore you more than anyone else in the cosmos could.”

“You sure can ramble about pussy,” the blob says with a hint of snark. “You first met Jacqueline after she changed.”

“Changed? Are you suggesting that her twin monuments of human flesh were artificially enlarged? To be fair, I was doubtful at first, so I looked for the scars of plastic surgery. No scar tissue anywhere around the rosy globes of her breasts!”

“I know, real likely down to the DNA. This universe turned out to be disturbingly more intriguing than I imagined. Now here’s a question: would you have become obsessed with a plain-looking Jacqueline?”

“Why, did that ex-wife of yours, who ruined your life as well as your ability to trust the opposite sex, look like a purulent troll?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” says the black and viscous bulk of goo, “despite her rotten nature.”

“Then I’ll answer your insolent question with another one: who knows how much worse our loved ones could look until we ceased to love them? Speaking of nature’s devious tricks, blame it for instilling the concept of beauty in our brains, a hardwired biological bias for the eye-catching that can override logic and reason, to entrap us into multiplying endlessly regardless of what’s right for the ecosystem, or what’s left of our sanity. What better example than the beautiful butterfly? Their iridescent coloration hides a fragile existence: they live to perpetuate their genetic material as winged sperm depositories. For a tiny female butterfly, mating is akin to getting gangbanged.”

“That’s enough philosophizing,” the blob interjects.

“Those gaudy colors that we love are all too soon reduced to dust.”

“Anyway, you’ve got it easy with Jacqueline. She turned out to be a better gal than I thought, far better than you deserve.”

The hairs on my nape rise, and I shrug to contain a shiver. This gelatinous mound of blackness, that must be rotting from within as it examines me through dozens of eyeballs, has triggered my dread: I may sense my regal girlfriend distancing herself from me as if my babbling were a contagious disease.

“I know that. I’m terrified that one day she will discover my true nature, my sick soul. She’ll be disgusted by my snaky hair, by the sweat that stains my armpits, by my rancid flesh, and by the dung that oozes out of my anus.”

The viscous goo chuckles, which gives way to a gargling noise.

“It’s way too late to stop the rot, buddy. You should just enjoy the fruits of your loathsome union.”

“I’m a barren planet orbiting a sun, and astrometry suggests that the difference in our masses will end up flinging us apart.”

“So you do understand that if someone you love were to betray and leave you, it could wreck you forever.”

“Did I say anything to the contrary? If Jacqueline cheated on me and abandoned me, I would use Spike’s revolver to blast my head off. You only became an unholy abomination.”

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Author’s note: today’s songs are “We Lived Alone” by Connie Converse, “She’s a Rainbow” by The Rolling Stones, and “Dystopian Dream Girl” by Built to Spill.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this novel. A hundred and twenty-eight songs so far. Check them out.

Are you into the craze of AI-generated voices being forced to act out questionable scenes? Check out the audiochapter I produced for this unhinged conversation.

Do you enjoy AI-generated images, particularly those that involve naked ladies? No? Here’s the link anyway.

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An electronic harp glissando startles me. My phone is vibrating on the desk, next to my revolver. I grab the phone and light up its touchscreen.

“Oh shit, mommy has written to me!” I utter in a merry voice as a smile spreads across my face. Then I remember that dozens of eyeballs are observing me from the occupied wall, where the blob hangs like a festoon of sludge. My smile curdles. “I-I mean, my actual mother sent me a text message from hell.”

The blob snorts.

“I know you’re dating Jacqueline, you doofus.”

I shudder.

“Thank you for cutting that thread of deceit. I made myself feel ill.”

I read the message contained in a canary-yellow speech bubble.

Are you okay, baby girl? I can’t believe this thunderstorm! It must be setting records for the number of lightning strikes.

She’s worried about my well-being! My heart swells with gratitude and warmth, then melts into the depths of my belly.

I had tuned out the noise of rain pounding on glass, a primordial drumbeat, as the torrential downpour lashes against the windows, sending cold drops streaming down the panes. Thunder is bellowing like a dragon. Engulfed in water, this office building, along with the rest of Donostia, has become a boat adrift amidst gale-driven spume in a tempest-tossed ocean.

I picture Jacqueline stepping out in her fuzzy slippers onto her privileged balcony up in the hills. She has donned a chiffon-and-satin kimono robe, black like the lustrous locks cascading down her shoulders, and embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis. Her wrists are sheathed in bangles adorned with pink coral and turquoise gemstones. As she crosses her arms to counter the cold, the sleek collar of her robe slides over those magisterial breasts, that are bolstered by a heavy-duty bra whose taut front straps threaten to snap from their anchorages and allow the mommy mammaries, sprinkled with errant droplets of rainwater, to bounce under gravity’s sway.

Goosebumps ripple along my arms. Damn it, I need to press my wet lips against Jacqueline’s silky boob-flesh and feel it yield beneath my ravenous licks. Then I’d latch my mouth on to her breastplate-stiff nipples.

Anyway, the rain rages down in sheets, and a gust plays with Jacqueline’s tresses, while my queen surveys her domain: a sodden dreamscape. Flashing rivers and tributaries of white electricity carve paths across the gloomy sky, probing for prey to blast apart below, in soaked passageways of citrine-yellow glow.

I’m typing a reply to Jacqueline’s message when the wall-spanning lump of gunk, who resembles a sewage spill, interrupts me.

“Would you mind leaving the phone alone while we’re talking? We were getting down to the meat of the matter.”

“Yes, I do mind, you gelatinous blimp!” I hold up the phone towards him. “Are you kidding me? This is Jacqueline!”

My throat itches, and a coughing fit assaults me. My mouth is parched as if I had chewed down on sandpaper. I must have become dehydrated from vomiting and sweating and shouting.

“So disrespectful,” the blob complains in a voice like the gurgling of a clogged pipe.

I clear my throat.

“Imagine that the police have caught on to my countless crimes and they’re chasing me through the streets. Then I receive a message from Jacqueline. She doesn’t know whether I’m alive or dead, or how many people I’ve stabbed along the way. Would you stop running to text her back? I would, because she’s the most important person in the universe. Even if texting her became my last act before I got blasted in the face with a shotgun at point-blank range. So quit bitching and let me assuage the worries of my beloved.”

The blob blows squelchy bubbles like a supersized snuffling pig.

I send my reply:

I’m fine, as fine as I can be in this nightmarish dimension and away from your loving embrace. I miss you so much, mommy. I wish I were kneeling at your feet and serving you with my mouth, my tongue, and whatever other body parts you’d prefer.

My tongue, a wrung-out piece of leather, flutters around my dry lips, attempting to moisten them. Water. Water can refresh every fiber of one’s being.

A bottle of mineral, tear-colored water has been standing for days near a filled notebook and some printouts of code. The bottle’s water level has sunk below halfway. When I put down my phone on the cluttered desk, I notice the desiccated carcass of a fly that’s lying supine. It must have asphyxiated from the stench. The bristling legs, bent at obtuse angles, resemble burnt-black chenille stems. On the ventral plate of its exoskeleton, I glimpse the hint of a nipple.

I picture myself biting off the fly’s membranous wings, which would crumble and sprinkle my taste buds with grit and bits of chitin. I look away in disgust, then take a deep breath. With my forefinger’s nail, I tap the insect’s corpse in case it revives. Nope, dead as dead. I pinch the fly by a wing and drop it in the mantle of vomit that has covered the heaped garbage in my wastebasket. The desecrated corpse gets swallowed up by sludge.

The water bottle beckons with its glistening liquid, clear as melted quartz. I grasp the bottle and unscrew its cap. I take a sip; the water, trapped in a cycle of despair, has turned tepid, stagnant. It tastes slightly chemical. I swill a mouthful around my oral cavity to rinse the residual taste of rot. After I swallow that water, I quaff the remainder of the bottle’s contents, that cascade down my gullet. Refreshed, I exhale in relief.

The squelchy blubber starts spewing verbal sewage from his vantage point.

“Speaking of thirst, you have some nerve for lambasting me, murderously so, because I keep tabs on your sorry ass from another dimension. Weren’t you stealing glances at Jacqueline up until you two started doing the nasty? Whenever she chose to exhibit that bouncy, motorboat-worthy rack of hers in a business setting, you turned into a slobbering creep-fuck. If you could have gotten away with it, you’d have gaped like a fish hooked on a line. Both of your coworkers would have noticed, but they were busy focusing on Visual Studio Code and Excel, respectively.”

“Oh, so you even spied on us during office hours, you dickweed?”

“Mind you, I’m not disparaging your taste in women; Jacqueline became prime office bait.”

“Thanks a bunch, asshole. You had the good sense to clarify that point. My revolver remains loaded, you know, and I might decide to drill holes in the blighted, blubbering face of your existence.”

“You are one twisted cunt.”

“For now let’s pretend that whoever I ogle at concerns you: I merely admired a natural wonder, mommy as a whole as well as the various parts that comprise her body, from her succulent lips and shapely ass to her jiggly jugs. I needed such dopamine kicks to mitigate my suicidal despair. And if I could have gotten away with it, I would have nibbled on Jacqueline’s nipples in front of our piggish boss like the starving feral monkey I am. Full-on nip-snarf, chomp chomp!”

“You’re closer to a rabid raccoon.”

A harp glissando alerts me that Jacqueline has graced my phone with a fresh message. What took her so long, though? Was she diddling herself?

I hold the water bottle aloft and upside down. The last few drops run down its curved interior until they drip on my outstretched tongue. I put the bottle down on the desk and pick up my phone.

“Anyway,” I continue for the blob’s benefit, “I was forced to steal glances of mommy because I dreaded looking deep into those cobalt-blues of hers, and experiencing existential vertigo akin to gazing down from the top of Mount Everest into the depths of an abyss.”

“Or the view through a microscope of a sperm cell’s nucleus.”

I sigh.

“Whatever. My point is that my legs could have started to wobble. I could have broken into sobs, or lost control of my bowels like a bum with diarrhea. If our secretary realized that she made me squirt and as a consequence she mocked me, I would have stabbed my eyes out with scissors. Jacqueline is a woman, while I’m an amalgamation of spiders that somehow retains a human form. For this disaster you can blame a certain goddess with webs between her thighs, from whose loins we spawned and into whose copious arms we’ll return once we’re done with this earthly farce, where we become entangled in the nets that we weave for each other.”

“I should stop listening to your babbling.”

I pull up Jacqueline’s message.

What have I done to deserve such a devoted sweetheart, always so eager to pleasure mommy? I wish we were cuddling at home like kittens in a basket. Please let me know if you need me to rescue you from that office-hell. I’d hate for a lightning bolt to strike your pretty head; you would be of little use to me as a ghost.

Her voice as I remember it, along with her sweet talk, pours into me like kaleidoscopic honey. I glance bitterly at the conquered wall, where an oil-soaked bulk of jellylike matter flutters as he stares back with his multitude of gleaming eyes. I want Jacqueline to come get me before I shoot myself in the skull. I want her to save me from the blob, from this office, from my mother’s dead eyes, from the apocalyptic horror show into which the cosmos vomited itself. Mommy and I would return to her cozy den. Inside, she would feed me kelp and raw clams, and afterwards we’d cuddle naked and warm under her downy comforter. She would press her snuggly, succulent tits against my face. Her heartbeat would echo in my head. I would breathe in her heady aroma as I fell into a languid trance, ready to sleep and never wake up. From a basement dungeon, in the flickering light of a lantern, I would watch a procession of gowned women emerge from violet clouds on wings of moonlight. Gone would be the stories and the pain and everything else to endure.

After I blink away the honey-haze, I start typing a reply to Jacqueline’s message, but the blob breaks my flow by complaining.

“Sure, keep chatting with your girlfriend while ignoring me. Is that how you treat someone who sneaked into this reality to help you?”

“What, so you can attempt to capture me in a web of words that drip with putrefaction? You needy puddle of pus! How much of my time have you stolen already? I stuck around after hours to catch up on work!”

“There’s more to life than one’s job, Leire.”

I clench my jaw through typing the rest of my response to Jacqueline.

I will return home as soon as I’m done with a last inescapable matter. The wet air, along with the bus ride, shall calm down my frenzied mind, so you can stay home taking care of our antediluvian marvel.

I’m tapping my foot while three animated dots reveal that my beloved is writing her reply.

Alright. We both miss you lots, baby. I have a big surprise for you tonight.

Spark-like tingles burst in my crotch. My heart rate rises as I tap letters on the phone screen.

“Enough, damn it!” the blob snaps. “XOXO and goodbye!”

My eyelids twitch.

“Get thee gone, wretched gloop! Go stalk an empty hallway!”

I send a text:

Does your surprise involve sex?

Oui, mon cher. Plenty of hot sweaty sex. But that alone wouldn’t be much of a surprise, so I’ve got a special one. Now put down that phone and get back to work. I’ll be waiting for you, sweetie.

As a parting gift, she attaches a round, yellow emoji that winks and blows a kiss.

A wave of heat suffuses my body. My mouth is flooding with saliva. My breasts grow tender, my nipples erect. As if possessed, my right hand drifts toward my pussy to rub it through my trousers and panties, but I halt the move halfway through even though I want my middle finger to circle around my moistened cleft, while the rest of my digits probe and knead in rhythmic massages. I yearn to scratch this primal itch, but if whenever I molest myself in the future, I suffer searing flashbacks of that many-eyed abomination, I may slit my wrists.

The blob clears his concealed throat.

“I get the feeling that I should be glad I can’t read your messages. In my opinion, your sexual urges overpower your judgement.”

I put the phone down on the desk, then I straighten my back and inhale slowly to steady my heartbeat.

“You should know by now that I’m solely motivated by carnal cravings and sordid perversions.”

---

Author’s note: the three songs for today are “My Dream Girl Don’t Exist” by Neutral Milk Hotel, “Pictures” by Galaxie 500, and “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste” by Galaxie 500.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout this series. A hundred and twenty-five songs so far. Check them out.

Did you know that one particular AI service can produce humanlike voices? I forced them to act out this chapter! Check out the result.

Would you enjoy seeing AI-generated pictures of Leire’s lovely mommy? Here’s the link.

This has been the longest chapter since chapter 83. Just two years ago, I could churn out five thousand words-long chapters in a day, and now it takes me several days to produce two thousand words. Either my standards have grown or I have become dumber.