We’re Fucked, Pt. 112 (Fiction)

On September 20, 2023September 26, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

“I-I am starving.”

She winks at me mischievously.

“Let’s get on to it, then.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about Nairu?” I blurt out.

The rustle of fabric stops.

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

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

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

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

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

Jacqueline’s chuckle echoes in my ears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Dungeon Meshi, by Ryōko Kui

On September 19, 2023September 20, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, ReseñasLeave a comment

Five stars. The title translates to “Delicious in Dungeon.”

Two long-running manga series that I had been following for a long time ended this month: the first one, Oshimi’s Chi no Wadachi, and the second one is Kui’s wonderful Dungeon Meshi. More often than not, when I finish a manga series and I’m starving for more of the peculiar joys that this format provides (far higher joys than what most of Western fiction produces these days), I check out lists of recommendations, plenty of which mentioned Dungeon Meshi. However, I always passed on it. You see, a fiction genre somewhat popular in Japan focuses on weird food-related tournaments that mostly seem like excuses to draw mouth-watering food, and print recipes. I never saw the appeal, and I wasn’t interested in a variation of that formula even with a fantasy dressing.

Big mistake. Dungeon Meshi is an exceptional story with fantastic characters, and the food-making part works as a straight-faced satire, because the vast majority of the recipes involve cooking D&D-like monsters into something resembling edible food. The whole deal about making elaborate food out of monsters could have been a gimmick, but the plot turns it into a necessary element to survive.

The tale introduces a group of adventures who don’t get along with each other very well. The leader, the fighter of the group, is an obsessive, socially oblivious maniac (could easily pass for autistic) who dreams of tasting every monster in the world, and who possibly also wants to become a monster. He’s accompanied by his sister, a laid-back, eccentric sorcerer. Apart from the siblings we have an uptight elven wizard, a pragmatic halfling rogue, and a barbarian dwarf merc.

Regarding the wizard of the group, named Marcille, I must say that I’m a big fan of that whole cute face, blonde hair, braids, and choker business. Love ya Marci.

The world of this story features dungeons as prominent landmarks. At some point in history, otherworldly creatures entered the main reality and settled in underground pockets. Their wild magic created such ecosystems, filled with strange creatures and ingredients, that farming and raiding those dungeons became the backbone of entire societies. Towns have grown around them, and the first levels of those dungeons are frequented by traders and adventurers. The careful lore involving the existence and development of dungeons, as well as the political issues they caused, is one of my favorite parts of the tale (which may not be saying much, as I love most of it).

Anyway, our main group delved into the dungeon for some important reason I forgot about, and in the process, the protagonist’s sister, that laid-back sorcerer, gets eaten by a goddamn dragon. Due to the abundance of strange magic, dungeons are the only places in the world where people don’t fully die (most of the time), and some adventurers have made their trade out of following some other group and then reviving them for a reward. More ruthless groups murder other groups, then revive them for a reward. In any case, our main characters, minus the sorcerer, leave the dungeon defeated.

The barbarian leaves the group for a better paying gig. The main dude, that fighter whose sister is being digested, broke and desperate, decides to delve again into the depths of the dungeon to save his sibling. The uptight wizard will accompany him, because she was friends with the sister, and the rogue decides to follow them as well (I don’t recall why, but likely the promise of profit). They’re broke and can’t afford provisions, so they must survive increasingly dangerous levels by foraging and hunting the local monstrous flora and fauna, which nobody does because it’s a disgusting, horrifying prospect.

I love the concept, but this story mainly triumphs in the execution, thanks to the devoted, meticulous work of the author, a bonafide craftswoman. Lesser stories would have the protagonists win by unleashing vague, convenient powers that would overcome the obstacles, but in this tale, the author puts us right then and there with her characters as they come up with clever ways to succeed. I recall now two instances in particular: they couldn’t pass through an area plagued with carnivorous, urticant vines, so they hunted some nasty frog-like creatures whose skins made them immune to the vines, and then they skinned and wore their hides as uniforms. Dealing with untouchable ghosts, they came up with the notion of making holy water sorbet and turning it into a bludgeoning weapon. The whole story is filled with shit like this; you don’t get many tales in which the protagonists truly earn what they get.

What set out to be a relatively simple tale of a group of people who don’t really get along but who end up liking each other more while trying to achieve something important, turns into a world-endangering quest in which the main characters are bound to save or ruin everything. As things got darker and darker, some of the stuff that happened, particularly the monster designs, reminded me of Berserk (which, for those who don’t know, was, for about three fifths of its run, as “peer into the abyss” as it gets).

The main group gains two new members along the way (a survivalist dwarf and a selfish cat-girl), but they also interact with other organized groups that mainly intend to hinder them. In a story with such a large cast, you could expect some significant development maybe out of the protagonist and someone else, but in this story, every main character gets a satisfying character arc, as well as some of the secondary ones. Even those who could be generally categorized as villains, and would be killed and forgotten in other stories, are treated with care and compassion by the author, who at least makes the readers understand why they’re right from their point of view in pursuing what they want.

After many wild moments and many trials and tribulations, some of which involved the main characters’ deepest pains, the story could have collapsed at the end, but it didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, the climax was brilliantly clever, and the remaining threads are tied up enough, leaving things open-ended in regards to how most of the secondary characters would progress from that point on.

I found the whole thing impeccable, a joy from start to finish. One of the best fantasy stories that I have ever experienced. If you enjoy such a setting at all, particularly if you are into D&D-like stuff, you owe it to yourself to give this a try.

The anime adaptation is in production, and will be released on Netflix. Here’s the latest trailer:

Review: Chi no Wadachi, by Shūzō Oshimi

On September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Reseñas1 Comment

The title translates to either “Blood on the Tracks” or “A Trail of Blood.” Despite the mystery or thriller-like title, this haunting story is about heredity, and how a fucked-up childhood could poison you for the rest of your life. I caught this series maybe three years ago, and read it up to the then latest chapter. This morning I have read the chapter that concluded the tale. I don’t know how to rate the whole.

I hate to review stories that I have read in a chapter-by-chapter release, because my impressions have been muddled and spread thin over time. I will make the effort, though, because I want to think about what this series left in me.

We follow a shy, withdrawn middle schooler who lives with his outwardly normal parents. His dangerously beautiful (and dangerous in general) mother overprotects him, particularly regarding the cousin that visits their home and pesters the protagonist. Although the mother doesn’t want the cousin around, it’s a family member of her husband, so she needs to keep the peace. Growing up, I used to suffer a similar cousin, someone who pushed his way into our home and demanded to be entertained, stealing my time and peace. I had no choice but to deal with the guy because my brother wanted to get along with him.

Anyway, during a mountain trip, the cousin leads our hapless protagonist to the edge of a cliff. His mother, fearing that this clown would end up causing her only son’s demise, finds them both in time to witness how the cousin trips and is about to fall. What follows is a spoiler for the inciting incident of this story, so read it at your peril. The mother hurries to save him, but in the last moment, she allows her intrusive thoughts to win, and pushes the cousin off the cliff.

The cousin survives with severe brain damage that prevents him from pointing an accusatory finger at his aunt, and the protagonist is gaslit into believing that maybe he just imagined the whole thing up, other than the fact that his cousin fell off. The protagonist’s mother unravels, not because she fears the consequences of her murder attempt, but because she may not be punished. She wants it all to break. It seems that she has been miserable forever; she had convinced herself that she ought to get married and a have a child, only to realize that she made a terrible mistake she can’t amend (other than divorcing and moving away, I guess, but she wouldn’t dare). On top of that, she’s the kind of crazy bound to drag everyone around her into ruin.

She despises her husband, whom she resents because he tied her to this miserable life, and instead she searches for intimacy in her son. She entangles him in a somewhat-chaste incestual relationship.

The kid is at times happy that this beautiful mother whose love he yearns for is treating him so warmly, but the rest of the time he feels smothered and creeped out, and wishes to escape. Most of the memorable moments of this tale involve a childhood love of the protagonist, a girl with a differently fucked-up home life, who could end up saving him from a mother that won’t allow any competitors.

As the story progressed, I wanted the protagonist to break free from his mother’s clutches and build a better life with this sweet girl who somewhat inexplicably wished to share her life with him. However, as I thought that the story was approaching its end, the author executed a turning point that sealed the fate of all the characters involved. I won’t go into details, because they would be massive spoilers, but the author forced an unlikely encounter and undid most of the protagonist’s character development. Shortly after, the story moves into a timeskip and makes you realize that the lack of mobile phones and the internet during the story up to that point wasn’t a stylistic choice.

The protagonist, now an adult in his mid-to-late thirties, deals with what remains, both physically and mentally, of his aging, miserable parents, partly hoping that before those two candles are spent, he’ll get enough of those relationships to either assuage his despair about how life treated him, or push him over the edge so he finally dares to kill himself. What I got out of that final block of the story is that some people end up so broken by nature and/or nurture that the most they can aspire for is a quiet place in which to be themselves. I had already realized that before I read this series, though.

(That reminds me of Nick Drake’s lovely song Place to Be, quite apropos:

When I was young, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I’m older, see it face to face
And now I’m older, gotta get up, clean the place

And I was green, greener than the hill
Where flowers grow and the sun shone still
Now I’m darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be)

Oshimi has created some of the most psychologically twisted mangas I’ve ever read: The Flowers of Evil, Inside Mari, Happiness, as well as this story I’m reviewing. He has also pushed out a couple of duds like Drifting Net Café and Welcome Back, Alice, with which I likely shouldn’t have bothered. In Chi no Wadachi he went further by distorting the world according to the protagonist’s disturbed mental states; for example, when he ends up hollowed out and hopeless, we experience his world as sparse sketches. Plenty of compelling drawings.

Did Oshimi succeed in writing a satisfying ending to this troublesome tale? I’m not sure. The first half was far more compelling, and I would have been more comfortable with the remainder if he hadn’t undone his protagonist’s development to twist the plot into a turning point. Still, I’m not going to forget this story, nor the protagonist’s hauntingly nuts mother, any time soon.

Life update (09/13/2023)

On September 13, 2023September 20, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

Last night, at one in the morning, I was recovering from covid by playing Starfield; I went through a compelling mission with Sarah Morgan in Cassiopeia to find debris from her past. I needed to take a shit, so I quit the game, shut off my computer, and went to the bathroom as the last thing to do before bed.

It turned out to be one of those annoying shits that I have often, and that involve wiping over and over. After one of the first attempts to stem the presence of fecal residue on the toilet paper, I noticed that it didn’t smell like anything. I thought, “Curious. How could I have eaten so differently these past few days that my shit doesn’t smell like anything?” Alarms went off in my head. I tried to smell the soiled toilet paper from an inch away. It didn’t smell like anything at all.

As someone with IBS, which has in plenty of ways ruined my life by itself, I didn’t think I would miss the smell of shit. Shortly after, I checked other normally odorous stuff around the apartment, only to further solidify the realization that, indeed, everything smells as if their “smell” property had been set to null. Realizing that I had lost my sense of smell was one of the oddest moments of my life.

It’s also very common with covid, apparently. A couple of online articles suggested that sixty percent of those infected with this bioweapon end up losing their sense of smell, only to recover it in about one to three months. About twenty percent of those who lose the sense of smell, though, apparently never recover it properly, or entirely. That would be very unfortunate.

It’s my fifth day with covid, and I’ll likely still test positive, but this is the last proper day of rest/leisure before I consider whether or not I should return to work. I don’t like the prospect of going to the office and sitting between two coworkers while I’m wearing a mask and them knowing that I can still share this wonderful gift with them. However, as much as I’d like to give myself the rest of the week off, the thought makes me feel guilty; my current contract started last Wednesday.

I’ve barely seen the light of day in five days, but thankfully I’m used to tougher periods of reclusion; during my worst times in my twenties, I think I didn’t leave the house for about three weeks. I would do quite well in solitary confinement, if any of my crimes ever land me in prison.

Anyway, Starfield is cool; the internet has been shitting on it quite unfairly. Fantastic set designs, good gunplay, better writing than Fallout 4 and most of Skyrim (except for the in-game books, which suck ass), convincing facial animations (although not remotely as good as the motion-captured ones from Baldur’s Gate 3).

Starfield lacks the magic of Skyrim, but so did Fallout 4, and over the years I’ve gotten the feeling that it’s impossible to create a “magical” game universe unless it’s literally a fantasy world that features magic. Besides, Skyrim itself wasn’t as magical as its ancestor Morrowind, which still has an active community that mainly plays through a fan-made engine called OpenMW. That damn game is twenty-one years old.

I think plenty of players just landed on a random planet, ran through a few of the procedurally set dungeons, which are bleak and generally lifeless, and let that color their impression of the whole game. Many people went to Skyrim and Fallout 4 for the aimless exploration of a county/province on foot, and that doesn’t exist as such in this game. It’s like an open-world Mass Effect but without the aliens.

Life update (09/10/2023)

On September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

It’s evening on a September Sunday, and I have covid. Turns out that covid, as far as my thirty-eight-year-old body goes, isn’t that bad. On Friday, I suffered a bit in the office; I always feel like shit whenever I leave a room where I’m the only person present, but on top of that, I had to deal with a runny nose, hot flashes, and severe diarrhea. As I was waiting for the train to carry me back to my rotting city, I suspected that the thermometer, once I made use of it at home, would have registered 37,2ºC or so (98.96 Fahrenheit), but to my surprise, I had a fever of 38,7ºC (101.66 Fahrenheit). In previous cases, a fever of 38,7ºC would have felt like I was close to slipping into delirium.

Since then, I have been taking medicine that I won’t bother to name, thanks to my ex-nurse drug dealer who also happens to be my mother. The fever has been reacting weirdly to the drugs as well; it should have decreased significantly in less than an hour, but it took like two hours and a half to react. Other than having a nasal congestion, a throat ache, and feeling a bit weird, I’m quite fine, at least when it comes to lying in bed or sitting on a chair located next to the bed.

I’ve dealt with passive suicidal ideation for as long as I can remember (thank you autism, OCD, and a shitty existence in general), so regarding surgeries and diseases, I have Ivan Drago’s attitude:

But it does seem that I will survive this one. Still, fuck you China and some Democrats in the US for creating this monster.

According to what I’ve looked up on this matter, I’ll probably test positive for about five days, so at the earliest, I could be able to return to the office on Thursday. I will have to wear a mask for about five more days or so, unfortunately. It’s funny how the entire world (or at least the “elites” and their goons) has its collective panties in a twist due to CO2, but they’re fine with breathing in your own CO2 for the length of a workday.

Anyway, why are you reading this? Don’t you have better things to do, like prancing in the sunset, making love to your partner on a balcony, or whatever you normal people do? I swear, I don’t know how I even keep the 124 subscribers with which I have ended up.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 111: AI-generated audiochapter

On September 9, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

Mistress of catfishing. This audiochapter covers chapter 111 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.

Cast

Leire: thief who offered you jobs back in a game like Starfield but in a fantasy world
Jacqueline: delectable redhead in a love triangle of sorts with a monster hunter

I produced audiochapters for the entire previous sequence, and I intend to continue until the novel ends or I die of a bioweapon developed in China and financed by Americans. A total of three hours, twenty-nine minutes and twenty-four seconds. Check them out.

Life update (09/08/2023)

On September 8, 2023September 9, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

Last Tuesday I was playing Starfield when I received a lovely call: I was needed back at the office. Ever since, I have ~~wasted~~ invested three days of my ~~extremely limited~~ life serving the province or whatever the hell I’m doing there. Some shit happened on Wednesday, but that’s besides the point today. You see, I was working the afternoon shift when I started feeling that the hours were stretching longer and longer. My nose was leaking. I was shivering. The back of my head hurt. I exploded with diarrhea a couple of times, hopefully scaring the custodians. I couldn’t wait to leave.

On the couple of rides back (a bus and a train), I felt like I was losing it a bit. Hot flashes kept coursing through my body. This decaying society loomed even more repugnant than usual. When I got home, the couple of thermometers displayed 38,7ºC (101.66 Fahrenheit). A quick test later proved that I have covid. Hey, perhaps the latest “booster vaccine” didn’t give me atrial fibrillation for nothing.

I called my mother (former nurse) for some advice. She said, “I told you to never call me again, freak.” I didn’t ask to be born.

Anyway, I’m going to steal a few phrases from Inio Asano’s magnum opus for this development: “When it’s my time to leave, I’d like to to vanish like an insignificant bubble, and fade away from everyone’s memories as well.”

I won’t be able to see the Milky Way this year or the next, and all future Tanabata nights will be too cloudy, and yet the world won’t end nor will humanity perish.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 111 (Fiction)

On September 8, 2023September 20, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

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

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

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

“Is this… you?” I ask.

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

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

“I suppose that’s what I meant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She grimaces, then sighs.

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

“My goodness, that bad?”

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

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

“But I’m into mommies.”

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

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

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

“Nobody should have to grow old, Leire.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life update (09/04/2023)

On September 4, 2023September 4, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Escritura, Slice of lifeLeave a comment

I have wasted most of this Monday morning anxiously waiting for a call from the office; last week someone took a medical leave, but they didn’t request a replacement because the secretary in charge returned to work today. However, I haven’t been recalled to work, even though I’m first in the rankings. No idea why.

It’s not like I want to, of course. In fact, even though my last contract lasted about a month and a half, it burned me out socially; either I had to tolerate the usual group that behaves like schoolchildren in recess, or else I had to deal with the fact that two people, one of them my main boss, didn’t want me there, even though I’m not sure what changed in the meantime. My ability to read the intentions and motivations of human beings is very limited.

I’m falling more and more into my old recluse slash hikikomori mindset, which is how I spent most of my twenties: I don’t want to interact with anyone, neither in person nor online, and whenever I try to push myself to leave the apartment for a walk, I do so despite the knowledge that there’s nothing for me out there. I’m a stranger in this society that is progressively getting more dangerous; today, a street away from my place, I witnessed a couple of police patrols come arrest two shirtless guys in their early twenties or so, who were yelling loudly in their language. I came in late and didn’t stick around, but the feeling of danger stands, as well as the notion that soon enough I will find myself old in a city that has gradually turned into another Marseille.

Two weeks ago, I took a bus to the opposite outskirts of my city so I could see some horses (wealthy area with private clubs and such), but the sights along the way dishearten me a bit more every time. It’s not like I could spend much time walking around that quiet neighborhood; whenever I leave the safety of a closed room in which I’m the only person present, my digestive system, due to anxiety or whatever, sets a countdown timer for the next time I’ll have to suffer in a bathroom.

It’s just more of the usual complaining. No wonder I daydream often about being someone entirely different. My need to write fiction is likely part of it. I’m done with life in general; the only reliable way I can fight against that feeling is by losing myself in artistic endeavors, which is why I’m trying to focus on starting the next scene of my novel that’ll eventually end up as a self-published ebook, so I can move on to the next project that’ll keep me going for a while longer.

Anyway, I just wanted to get this off my chest for whatever reason.

We’re Fucked, Pt. 110: AI-generated audiochapter

On August 31, 2023 By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

I forget just why I taste. This audiochapter covers chapter 110 of my ongoing novel We’re Fucked.