Tales of The Lost: Monsters of the Amazon

Photo by Persephone Bolero

Chapter 2: Angels
By Persephone Bolero

(Tales of the Lost is loosely based on actual roleplay adventures in the Amazon in Second Life. To start at the beginning, go here. Photos courtesy of unsplash.com.)

When I arrived at Aries’ house, he wasn’t there. Inexplicably, I still ached for him after the nude, eight-mile hike from the cenote. Prepared to wait as long as I needed, I sat in one of the tattered plastic folding lawn chairs on his makeshift porch, the plastic strips pressing into my ass as they sagged. I pulled my knees up against my body, covering my nakedness as best I could with my legs.

He lived in an old thirty-foot Airstream camper perched on a hill above the river. Its chrome exterior rusted in the rainforest climate. The tires sat deflated beneath it, overgrown with broadleaf vines. How he got the wheeled abode into this remote location without roads to access it, I couldn’t begin to guess. And I had never bothered to ask.

A frayed awning rolled out from the top of the facade upon diagonal arms. Between lawn chairs were TV trays covered in shotgun shells and gun enthusiast magazines. A stack of worn paperback novels filled a milk crate turned on its side. Tools, buckshot, and jars of gun powder scattered over a coffee table, marked with a few circular water stains. Two plastic pink flamingos stood guard in the front yard.

I picked up one of the magazines and fanned myself as I tried to breathe in the dense humidity. I was growing thirsty, and whenever I felt thirst, I would think back to those first days in the Amazon. Time in this sweltering jungle moves like amorphous reflections on the flowing river, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has been about ten years since I was first cut off from civilization and encountered the monsters of the Amazon.

Some are violent and controlling, like Miss Shards; the others are just cruelly indifferent to other people’s suffering.

I had been lost for three days, with nothing more than a shoulder pack and the clothes I wore. The trickle came out of the base of a thin crack in the rock, and a tablespoon of water collected on the shin-high ledge. The moment I spotted it, I dropped my shoulder pack and got down on my knees. I planted my lips on the ledge and sucked on the meager offering. And when I’d sucked the water away, I licked the wet rock ravenously.

It was nowhere near enough to keep me alive, and the drops replenishing the puddle were agonizingly slow. My throat felt as if it were lined with sandpaper, and flakes of skin clung loosely to my cracked, bleeding lips. My tongue, coated in a thick paste, felt larger in my mouth.

I collapsed onto my stomach and my heart pounded rapidly against the soil beneath me as I gasped for breath. My strength was gone, and I could no longer walk more than forty or fifty feet before I had to rest. I was constantly swarmed by insects feasting on my exposed skin like buzzards.

I had awoke in the hotel three days before, the beaches of Ipanema radiating through the balcony’s sliding glass doors. My head throbbed from a hangover, and I could still feel in my bones the bass thump from the clubs we hopped into the early morning hours -- a dozen twentysomethings from Los Angeles tearing up the night scene of Rio de Janeiro.

My boyfriend, Wesley, was in the shower. I checked the time on my iPhone 3G, pushing my uncombed hair off my face with the other hand. It was nearly eleven in the morning. There were multiple text messages from the friends I’d taken with me on this vacation in Brazil.

“Wake up, princess!” Brad had texted, followed by some smile emojis.

“Come have breakfast w/us,” Tina wrote an hour before.

I dropped the phone back on the nightstand and got to my feet. Stepping on a used condom did not help my nausea any. I lifted it by my toes, peeling it off the carpet, and dropped it in the trash can.

“Wesley,” I grumbled.

I slid my arms into a robe, tied the belt at my waist, and shuffled over to the dresser, upon which sat eight dollar bottles of water next to the television. As I drank away the alcohol-induced dehydration, I read through the pamphlets in a display stand. “Hike the jungle!” one title read, the black letters animated upon a verdant green background. It had seemed like a great way to spend the afternoon before we hit the clubs again.

Now dying of thirst, I was fading in and out of consciousness. I’m not sure how long I laid on the ground before I heard the voices. The language was primitive, exotic. After listening longer, I confirmed I wasn’t hallucinating. There were people near -- a man talking, a woman laughing.

“Help,” I cried out. My weak voice was just a raspy whisper. I took as deep a breath as I could and called out again, louder, but there was no response.

I struggled to stand up and lift the shoulder pack, which contained an empty bottle of water, the wrapper of a protein bar I ate before I got separated from the tour group, and my battery-dead iPhone. I staggered in the direction the voices came. My mind was jumbled with fear and exhaustion, and my vision was blurred. I kept calling for help in gasps as I pushed languidly through grasses and vines in the shade of the jungle canopy.

I finally emerged from the tangle of vegetation into a small clearing and stumbled towards the couple. So eager to find help, I didn’t register what was happening until I was within ten feet of them.

She was on all fours, and he was kneeling behind her. They were both nude, except crude jewelry. The man had a bib of bones hanging from his neck, which rattled as he thrust his hips forward. His long, black hair draped over his muscular arms. The woman was adorned with stone and beaded jewelry woven in her hair and wrapped around her arms. Their cheeks were smeared with red paint, and they both had black tattoos all over their dark brown skin. I averted my eyes.

“I’m sorry. Please help me. I need water,” I begged. With my tongue dry and swelling, I spoke with a lisp.

He continued to thrust into the woman and grunt, undeterred by my presence. His hand was planted on the small of her back, and he slapped his pelvis against her backside repeatedly. Her breasts swung beneath her as she turned her head to look at me.

Assuming they didn’t understand what I was saying, I pulled the empty water bottle from my shoulder pack and gestured as if drinking from it.

“Please. Water. I need water,” I tried to explain. “Wa-ter.”

The woman twisted her head to look back at her lover and said, “Hele i kēia wahine.”

“I’m really sorry to intrude. I am just so thirsty.” I clasped my hands together pleadingly.

The man stopped thrusting and sighed. As the woman stood up, his engorged, uncut cock flopped out of her. Twigs and dried leaves hung from her knees. She started to walk toward me, her brown skin glowing with sweat, her unsupported breasts sagging. She made no effort to cover herself, anymore than the man did.

“Thank you so much,” I said with relief. “Again, I’m really sorry--”

The woman narrowed her eyes and snapped at me, “Aʻole ʻoe ʻoe ma nēia, e ka ʻūnania.”

I shook my head with confusion, unsure what she was trying to say. She then shouted the same phrase again, her arm extending out with a jerk as to shoo me away.

I stepped back and held up my hands defensively. “I’m sorry I invaded your privacy. I really am. I just need water, please. Where can I find it? I’m dying--”

“E hele ʻoe, kēkia!”

“I’m sorry. Please help me.”

The woman then swung her fist and struck my right temple. I fell to the ground, holding my hand over the cut she gave me. The man stood behind her, his erection pointing at me mockingly. A guffaw erupted from him as he watched his lover attack me, his contemptuous grin bearing large, crooked teeth.

The woman kicked me in the thigh as I scrambled backwards on my bottom, trying to get some distance from her. She then grabbed my hair, and threw her fist into my nose. I screamed, my eyes closed tightly as the sting consumed my skull. She pulled her other hand from my hair, keeping strands of it locked in her fist. I turned over on my hands and knees and crawled away frantically, my nose leaving a trail of blood behind me.

“Aʻole ʻoe ma ʻaneʻi!” she shouted before she stopped chasing me. The man was doubled over with laughter.

I crawled through high grasses, their sharp blades leaving thin cuts on my hands, legs, and arms. I didn’t go far before exhaustion overcame me. I flopped down prone, and as I lay there trying to catch my breath, bruised and bloodied, I could hear the couple had resumed again, him grunting and her moaning. Nausea washed over me, and I heaved dryly, coughing through the convulsions as my conscious slipped away.

I awoke sometime in the middle of the night. My skin was cool and dry, my nose sore and clogged. I shivered weakly. My tongue had swollen to the point it had little space to move in my mouth. The effort to set my shoulder pack aside and roll over on my back left me breathless. The mosquitos covering my sweatless skin stirred and swarmed before they settled back down on me to feast.

As I lay there panting, I gazed up at a moonless night sky. It was the first night that clouds had not hung over me, promising rains that never came.

The stars were bright and distinct, and there were so many of them. A thick band gathered at at the middle of the sky. All my life, I’d slept under the neon glow of megacities. I had never seen the natural night. It had always been there, hiding behind the electric glare of a billion lights. Sadly, this spectacular display would be the last thing I’d ever see.

I wondered how long it would be before my remains became skeletal, requiring weeks of forensics to identify before my parents and friends were notified. Would animals scatter my parts, making them harder to find? Would I just vanish without a trace?

I thought of my father, whose meteoric success in entertainment litigation always eclipsed my dismal performance as his daughter. Would he mark my disappearance as the last of my failures to embarrass him?

My mother, Dr. Gertrude Vogel-Bolero, the renowned UCLA mythology professor who chose my name over my father’s objections, would work my tragic disappearance into her career. I could see the cover of her next book, “Demeter cried: How Pagans Grieve.” The readings at bookstores would be well attended by her army of Wiccan admirers.

My friends would sincerely miss me. They would have alerted authorities in Rio about my disappearance by now, and maybe search helicopters had been dispatched. But even if searchers had flown directly over my head, they wouldn’t have seen me through the jungle canopy.

If I had thought to bring a lighter, I might have lit a fire. If I hadn’t wandered off with Wes for a surreptitious tryst, I wouldn’t have gotten separated from the tour group. If I wouldn’t have blown so much of my trust fund on a vacation to Rio for me and all my friends -- immediately after my twenty-fifth birthday granted me access to it -- I’d be safely cruising Ventura Boulevard.

Looking up at the twinkling sea, I connected a group of stars into a constellation that looked just like the face of my father peering down at me, as he always did, with humorless disappointment.

“Well, daddy,” I rasped sadly in the darkness, “you were right. About me. About everything.”

What a truly fitting end for the master underachiever I am. I began a hard sob as I surrendered to a lonely death laden with regret. My hand flopped over my face. My dehydrated body could produce no tears, and my eyelids stuck together when I shut my eyes. My fingers curled into the soil beneath me, grasping at the Earth I was soon to leave.

There was rustling near me, and at first I thought a boa constrictor had come to squeeze the life from me. I was too weak to fight, scream, or escape, and perhaps it would be quicker than dying of thirst. Then the figure in the darkness began to sniff at me. The animal, whatever it was, started to drag my shoulder pack away. I grabbed it, but the animal easily pulled it from my weakened grasp.

“Kee kees,” the thing said. It was a girl’s voice.

“Help me,” I moaned. “Water….water.”

“Kee kees,” the girl repeated. And then she moved away into the darkness. My hand reached out toward her, feeling blindly and touching only air. I faded again into unconsciousness.

I awoke to the splash of water on my face and shook my head reflexively. My eyes had stuck shut, and I had to force them open again. The early rays of dawn were warming the jungle, and I could see the girl. She leaned back skittishly as I looked her over. She was completely nude, a young girl in her teens. She had African features, a flat nose, and dark skin. Her head was covered in an untamed nest of dreadlocks tangled with twigs, leaves, and petals. My shoulder pack was wrapped around her leg, and she drug it behind her as she crawled. She had filled my water bottle and was holding it over my face.

“Oh god, please,” I begged, lifting my head and extending my tongue toward it.

Cautiously, she tipped the water toward my lips. I lapped desperately at the spill. And when I managed to sit up, I took the bottle from her and gulped it down.

“Thank you,” I said as I cried with relief, water dripping from my chin. “Thank you.”

“Taa yoo,” the creature replied slowly, watching me with interest.

“Thank you,” I said again.

“Taa yoo.”

I realized she was just trying to repeat what I was saying. Of course, this native girl wouldn’t speak English. I smiled at her and held up the bottle. “Thank you,” I said slowly.

“Taa yoo.” She smiled back.

I tipped the bottle back and gulped every drop away, and just as quickly I threw it up again. Desperately, I lowered my face into the pool of clear vomit and lapped it up, dirt and all. The girl watched me with a curious stare.

I looked up, my cheeks dripping. “I need more water,” I told the girl. “Please. Water.”

“Waa...waaher,” she said.

“Yes, water. Please.” I shoved the empty bottle at her and repeated, “Please, water.”

“Plea...waaher.” She took the bottle and started to crawl away. I reached for my shoulder pack dragging behind her, and she jerked it away.

“Kee kees,” she said insistently.

“That’s mine,” I said.

“Kee kees.”

“Okay,” I said as I flopped back down. If she could save my life, she could have my damn shoulder pack. “Just bring me water, please.”

She darted off into the jungle saying over and over, “plea waaher...plea waaher.”

I fell back to sleep and awoke to her dribbling water on my face.

“Plea waaher,” she said and handed me the bottle.

To avoid throwing it back up, I sipped intermittently. As I gradually hydrated, the naked, feral girl pulled and tugged at the zipper tab of my shoulder pack, as if she’d never seen such a thing. I showed her how to open it, and she zipped and unzipped the pack over and over, captivated with this trivial thing.

When she found my dead iPhone 3G inside, I reached for it. She cradled it close and said, “Kee kees.”

“No, you can’t have that. That’s mine. I need it.” I placed my hand on my chest and used her word. “Kee kees.”

She nodded her head agreeable. “Kee kees.”

“No, it’s mine,” I said. “Kee kees.”

“Da. Kee kees.”

It then dawned on me. “You’re name is Kiki.”

“Da,” she replied and gave a single nod. She apparently understood some English.

“I’m Persephone,” I said and coughed. I took a sip of water and then repeated my name a dozen times for her as she struggled to pronounce it. The most Kiki could manage to say is “Per.” It was likely her native language contained clucks and chirps, and the sounds of the English language would be too foriegn for her mouth to easily produce.

“Kiki,” I began to explain as I snatched the phone from her hands. “I need this to find rescue, to call for help.” I then twirled my finger to illustrate a helicopter. Kiki just looked at my hand with confusion. I slid the phone into my back pocket, and Kiki’s face held her pouting moue.

“You can have the shoulder pack,” I said and patted it. “But the phone is mine.”

She then went back to opening and closing the zipper, forgetting the phone entirely. Over two hours, I sipped, and when the bottle was empty, I could stand again. I asked Kiki where I could find water.

“Plea waaher,” she repeated again and again and started running, on all fours, to the east.

I staggered behind her, trying to keep up and having to rest often. She led me to the source about a mile away. It was a clear pool near a small stream in the network of waterways that braided through the jungle.

The water was sweeter than any bottle of Evian I’d ever had. By the time the sun set, I could blink easily again. My tongue had shrunk down to its normal size, and my skin began to sweat profusely, even as the air began to cool.

Kiki foraged some wild mangoes for us to eat, and I gorged on them. I smiled at her, my cheek bulging with mango. “Thank you,” I said, pulp shooting from my mouth.

“Taa yoo,” she replied and took a bite of her own mango. She then laid her sticky hand on my arm and said, “Per fren.”

“Per fren?”

“Da.”

“I’m your friend? Friend? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Da.”

With a delighted smile, I nodded. “You’re my friend too, Kiki.”

That night, I curled up under a tree by the gurgling pool and slept peacefully. Kiki woke me up near dawn. She tugged excitedly at my arm hard enough to drag me a few inches.

“Kiki, stop,” I whined, but she insisted I follow.

As annoyed as I was in my tired state, I didn’t refuse my rescuer’s request. Perhaps she was leading me to help.

With my shoulder pack dragging behind her, she led me a half mile away to the edge of a cliff where the stream tumbled into the jungle four hundred feet below, dissipating into a fine mist. Before us, stretched miles of lush, unbroken jungle. The rainforest climbed hills on the other side of a vast valley probably forty miles from where we stood. Small clouds hovered over the jungle canopy, and the dawn light shot yellow rays over the endless greenery.

“It’s pretty,” I said, bewildered. “Absolutely beautiful.”

“Pitty,” Kiki said, kneeling beside me on the edge of the cliff. She looked up to me. “Per pitty.”

I smiled down at her. “Kiki is pretty,” I replied.

“Taa yoo.”

I took the last mango from the shoulder pack, sat down, and sunk my teeth into the flesh of the fruit. Kiki extended her hands, palms up, a sweet gesture asking to share in the meal. I offered her the fruit, and she took a bite before handing it back to me.

We sat for hours, watching clouds drift down the valley. Birds swooped over it all, as animals in the trees leapt from branch to branch, most moving too fast to be seen by anything other than the shake of the leaves they disturbed. For the moment, everything was right with the world, and I forgot how lost I was.

And that’s how I’ve managed to survive so long in a jungle full of monsters. The Amazon has its angels too.

I was asleep when Aries finally came home. I stood up and his tall stature cast a long shadow down over my naked body in the light of dusk. I didn’t know what to say, but I guess my hopeful gaze conveyed the reason for my visit. He bared a wicked grin as his leer drank me in.

He walked past me and unlocked the door. Holding it open, he said, “Come on in.”

As I stepped up the extendable metal stairs and crossed the narrow threshold of his camper, he smacked my bare bottom.

“You have any water?” I asked.

“There’s plenty,” he answered. “Help yourself.”


(To be continued….)