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You can read this novella from the beginning through this link.

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In the chiaroscuro of the ultrasound image,
The thick, dark uterine wall encircled life within:
An oval head attached to a bean-shaped torso.
The fetus rocked softly, suspended in space-time,
Untouched by the chaos of the outside world.

In the shadowed profile of its face,
Gentle rises hinted at the forming eyes,
A nose, a budding mouth.
Trailing from the head, a line of vertebrae
Resembled a delicate string of pearls.
Under the insistent thump-thumping
That pulsed through the amniotic fluid,
A certainty branded itself on my mind:
This is my daughter.

I hovered near the ceiling of a delivery room,
Watching like a detached stranger
My wife’s sweat-sheened face,
Hair plastered to her clammy forehead,
Her chapped lips bared in a grimace.
From between the former lawyer’s thighs,
A midwife coaxed out our bloody offspring,
The seed that had germinated
From a lump of cells into a human
Destined one day to venture beyond my reach.

I paced our postnatal room
While I supported my daughter’s head.
A pink blanket swaddled her snugly.
Her skin, fresh off the factory,
Blazed with a rosy tint.
She smelled powdery and pure.
This baby resembled you, Izar:
She inherited your caramel-colored hair,
Your chocolate eyes, your carefree smile
That lightened the weight of the world.
Life still contained wondrous surprises.

In the master bedroom, while our baby slumbered,
I was drinking the sight of her flawless skin
When my aging brain craved the drug of pain.
I needed to stray out of this mundane refuge
Into the infinite darkness,
So I could resume speaking with the dead.
I slid the wardrobe door open,
Its rollers grinding against the track,
But the garments whose hems once draped
Over the moving box holding your remains
Now hung unimpeded.

I shifted aside T-shirts, shirts, and sweaters,
And found myself staring at an empty corner.

Could I have heaved the box out
Only to forget to put it back?
No, not once in all these years.
Frantically, I rummaged through the items
That could hide a moving box:
Unused bags, backpacks, travel suitcases.
I emptied the upper shelves,
Tossing aside old blankets and extra pillows.

I found my wife on the balcony,
Seated on a bistro-style chair,
Scrolling through her smartphone,
And taking a drag from her cigarette.
“Where is she?” I demanded to know.
Instead of chewing me out for my tone,
She kept her gaze glued to the screen.
The dying sun tinted her smoke blood-orange.
“Where’s who?” she asked dryly.
“You know well what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
My heartbeat rammed my ribcage.
“The box.”
“Box, what box.”
“The box containing what’s left of Izar.
The box you kept complaining about,
Arguing that it took up too much space.
The box you clearly hated.
Where the fuck is it?”

After my wife confessed,
The Earth halted its spin.
The distorted echoes of her voice
Resonated through my mind’s cavern:
“I dumped it all in the trash.”

Panic burrowed into my brain and bones.
I rushed out of the apartment,
Down the stairs onto the street,
And straight to the array of recycling bins.
No traces of you among the discarded:
A worn-out stool, a broken microwave,
And disassembled furniture.
The stench of rotting organic waste mingled
With the scents of hot dust and cardboard,
And the bins’ heavy lids clanked loud,
As I peered again and again into the gloom,
Desperatedly searching for a tape or a photograph.

“It’s useless,” my wife said.
She stood with her arms crossed,
But when our gazes met, hers flinched.
She spoke again, her voice wavering.
“I did it two days ago.”

Sharp pangs struck my racing heart,
And spread along my veins and arteries.
I staggered away from the recycling bins
As I struggled to breathe.

My wife’s caustic tone poured on my wounds.
“You’re not bringing that girl back to life.
You should have gotten rid of her stuff years ago
And allowed yourself to move on,
But it seems you derive sick pleasure
From self-flagellation.
It’s time to stop living in the past.
Focus on what truly matters, what’s real:
Your wife, your son, and your baby daughter.
I won’t stand by and watch you neglect us.”

My last vestiges of you, my Izar,
Still carrying the scent of a fallen star:
Figurines, comic strips I drew for you,
Handwritten letters, your motorcycle gloves,
Photographs, cassette tapes with our shows,
A T-shirt stained dark with your blood,
Teeth, bone shards, scraps of flesh,
Your foot severed at the ankle.

I would never hear your laughter again.

A silent bomb had exploded inside me,
Hollowing out a vast space in my core.
My knees hit the grimy pavement.
I clawed at my scalp as spasms rocked me.
“You’re gone,” my mind repeated again and again,
An alarm blaring against the bruised gray matter
Of a broken brain.

I don’t know how long it took
For me to hoist myself up,
Soaked through with cold sweat,
But now, a riot raged in my skull,
A cacophony of furious voices.
At the doorway of the nearby estate agent,
Next to its window flaunting dreams of elsewhere,
A young woman’s brow furrowed with concern.
Other stares pierced the back of my head;
In front of the mechanic shop,
Beside a car with its hood raised,
Two grease-stained men gawked at me,
The stranger unraveling in public.

If I abandoned my wife like she deserved,
I wouldn’t just break my son’s heart,
But also rob my baby daughter of a father.

Tears traced paths down my wife’s cheeks,
Leaving shimmering trails.
She controlled her outburst of genuine emotion
Behind the taut muscles of her face.
That glare alone was a silent rebuke
For managing to wring tears from her,
But I didn’t give a shit;
Whatever goodwill I had accumulated
Over years of a weary coexistence
Had switched off in an instant.
I wished I had never met her.

Despite my wife’s cracking voice,
Her words tore through the air like daggers.
“You’ve grieved for her longer than she even lived.
From the moment you first told me about that girl,
I knew I wasn’t the one you truly loved,
But I stupidly hoped I would be enough.
After all, I’m the one who stuck around,
Who gave birth to your children.
No matter how hard I tried to make you happy,
Nothing ever pleased you.
It’s always been about Izar, Izar, Izar,
That immature, reckless brat
With no care for the future,
Driven only by selfish whims.
You know it was the bitch’s own fault,
Speeding through the rain.
If she hadn’t gotten on that bike,
She’d still be alive,
Bumming off some poor sap,
And you’d have forgotten her by now.”

My body had flash-cooled
As if dunked in a tank of liquid nitrogen.
I struggled to process my wife’s words,
To believe she had uttered them.
I saw myself grabbing the abandoned stool,
And swinging it down on her forehead.
I pictured the shock in her eyes,
But before she could defend herself,
Before any onlooker could intervene,
Her skull would have cracked open,
Spraying splatters of blood and cerebral tissue.
Then I would have run, run, run away,
Fleeing from this rotten city to the nearest highway,
Where some truck wouldn’t slow down in time.

But no remnant of you existed anymore
Except in the molecules of my brain.

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Shine a Light” by Spiritualized.

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If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this novella from the beginning (link here).

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My wife unclasped her bra and peeled it off.
Her twin globes of fatty tissue
Draped, swayed, and settled.
My mouth watered and my crotch tingled
With the beastly urge to grab that flesh,
Making it spill through my parted fingers.
I needed to feel those nipples hardening
Under the swirling tip of my tongue.

My intense gaze met my wife’s,
That narrowed in anticipation
Of another verbal brawl.
Her guarded posture loosened.
“See, you can still lust.
You’re not a zombie after all.”
As she tugged down her panties,
Her silken curls flashed a glimpse
Of her slit’s pink promise.

Although we resented each other,
We both needed to escape
From our exhausting existence.
Naked save for our wedding rings,
We immersed ourselves in carnal delights
To drown our frustrations,
Exploiting the mechanisms crafted by nature
To convince its slaves wordlessly,
From humans to the most cretinous creatures,
That their lives should revolve around sex,
Sex, and more sex, lest the species perish.

Instead of making love,
We tangled, grappled, and clawed
Like starved dogs devouring a meal,
Both reduced to incoherent strings
Of grunts, gasps, and cusswords.
Flesh smacking against flesh,
Neck biting, hair pulling,
Nails raking across my back,
A hand tightening around her throat.

Once we achieved our release,
We lay on fevered, rumpled sheets
Coated in the sour smell of sweat.
My mind was bleached blank.
As my wife drew deeply on a cigarette,
I surrendered to the afterglow,
Letting it slide me into sleep.

My wife suggested a family outing
To a self-serve Chinese buffet in Oiartzun,
On a whim, I thought, without ulterior motives.
The chilled air around the food counters
Smelled of herbs and spices from meat marinades,
Complemented by the briny scent of fresh seafood.

Amidst the din of hungry patrons’ conversations
And a pop tune piping through speakers,
I fished my meal out of gastronorm containers:
Skewered meats coated with a paprika marinade,
Slices of pink chicken, fatty cuts of beef,
Squid with their tentacles entwined.

Life itself dished out pain like a relentless rain,
So we drugged ourselves with our bodies’ rewards
For stuffing nutrients into our gullets,
And yielding to the innate urge to procreate.

As my son poured soy sauce over his sushi,
My wife rested her elbows on the table.
“Haven’t you two wondered why we’re here?”
My son and I, both chewing, glanced at each other.
She smiled, and pointed at him with chopsticks.
“Little man, you’re gonna become a big brother.”

I choked on a bolus of beef,
And gulped water until I stopped coughing.
While my eyes had teared up,
Hers, hard chunks of obsidian,
Drilled into me expectantly.

I always made sure to wrap it up,
Leaving the slim chance of an accident,
Or the prick of a needle.
Regardless, my wife’s aging womb held within
A new life destined for this ruined world.

“I-Is it a boy or a girl?” my son asked.
“Too early to tell.”
“So, like, I’ll have to share my room?”
“We’ll see. Dad, any thoughts?
Are you going to congratulate us?”
I stared back in stunned disbelief
As cold panic bubbled in my bowels.
She pinched a rice ball with her chopsticks.
“I’m keeping the baby.
You can either stick around or leave.”

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Author’s note: today’s song is “Angel” by Massive Attack.

In case you have missed this story (although I doubt many are reading it), you may have noticed that I’ve been busy making songs. As an obsessive, single-minded maniac, once I sink my claws into something, it’s very hard for me to focus on anything else, even my own survival. However, I’ve made sure to progress daily on the story, and I fully intend to finish it. Besides, the AI service that allows me to produce studio-quality songs has a monthly limit that I’m about to hit, so I’ll have no choice but to return to writing fulltime something other than silly songs.