Tales of the Lost: Monsters of the Amazon

Chapter 3: Heroes
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.)

This is where the story starts to get more complicated. People gravitate toward convenient, simple ways to understand those they hate, fear, or even love, and the source of all human ignorance is the mistaken belief that anything about our nature can be understood in strict black and white terms. Not everyone is an angel or a monster. Many of those who live in the Amazon thrive in a vast, ambiguous grey swamp. Aries is one of them.

Driven by the lustful madness Miss Shards’ serum had induced in me, I threw myself at him as soon as he closed the door. He asked no questions and offered no small talk. He seemed to have no qualms about taking advantage of a florid woman showing up naked at his door. And quite frankly, in my state at the time, I would have had no patience for any hesitation. I wanted to be had.

I fell to my knees in the narrow aisle at the center of his camper, opened his fly, and removed his cock. For a moment, I quietly beheld it resting across my palm.

I was six years old the first time I saw a penis. At least that’s my earliest memory of seeing one and being cognizant of the visual differences between boys and girls. Jason and I were in first grade together at El Rodeo Elementary. He lived four doors down from me, and his family had a pool with a splash pad. His father starred in several blockbuster action films, which we used to watch together on the giant screen in his family’s guest house.

We could spend hours alone and unsupervised in that house. In the course of changing into and out of our swimsuits, we’d engage in some innocent games of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Though I’ve seen plenty of penises since then, after all this time, they still appear alien to me, like some kind of abnormal growth on the body. At the initial sight of one, I often recall Jason awkwardly pulling his swimming trunks down in front of me, and I again feel that confusing mixture of fear and captivation.

Aries swelled in my hand like a carnival balloon, and I had him in my mouth before I could talk. I set aside the plastic bottle Miss Shards had given me and brought that free hand around to the small of his back. My mouth watered profusely, and saliva dripped off his shaft onto my chin each time I pulled my head back. Murmurous breaths fell from my nose as my lips slurped over his length.

Once he’d hardened completely, he placed his large large hands over both sides of my head and held it still as he thrusted between my lips, stretching them painfully to their fullest extent. As black men tend to be harder to swallow, my eyes were watering.

Under the circumstances, I found it difficult, or more precisely, impossible to explain what Miss Shards wanted me to get from him, and by the time he pulled himself from my mouth, I’d forgotten all about it. I just wanted him in every way a man could have me.

He grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, and bent me over his bed, which sat atop built-in drawers and cabinets secured to the rear of his camper. With his hand spread across my head, he pressed my cheek into the mattress. His initial, aggressive thrust from behind was so abrupt I was seized by a sharp sting deep inside me. It was immensely satisfying.

Hours later, I was nearing my third climax. The air was warm and damp and thick with the smell of sex and sweat. Dawn was coming through the square air vent screwed open in the ceiling over Aries’ bed. I was straddling him, and there wasn’t enough room between the mattress and the ceiling to sit up. So I laid upon his chest and slid back and forth upon the sweat wetting our skin. The camper creaked metallically with my motions.

Photo by Nick Jewell

My orgasm produced a cry that was as weary as it was breathless, and as soon as it began to subside, I became uncomfortably aware of how sore I was inside. The aching desire I’d felt waiting for him on his porch was replaced with a dull ache below my abdomen.

Through the night, we’d gone through every position possible in his cramped camper, and what he’d ejactulated into me earlier had dripped out while I again took him into my mouth, thirstily trying to keep him hard so we could continue. I managed to maintain his erection and resumed my desperate, relentless pursuit of carnal satiety, prepared to catch his next spurt when it arrived. But he’d yet to come again. And I needed him to if I was to get Miss Shards her sample.

So despite the pain after my last orgasm faded, I continued to ride him. My hands gripped his shoulders; my breasts slid over his hard chest. My breathless gasps pecked at his neck. Yet, despite my efforts, I could feel he was growing flaccid inside me. I opened my eyes and could see it on his face. He was done.

Without a word, he softly pushed me off him. The sudden absence in my vagina stung for a moment, and my face held a moue. He slid down off the bed, hunching over to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling, and sauntered fifteen feet down the center of the camper. His wet semi-erection swayed in front of him as he walked.

“Come back here,” I said breathlessly, patting the mattress. “Come on. One more time.”

“Nah, I’m good,” he replied simply.

“You can’t be done.”

“Well,” he said as he rummaged through a cupboard over the propane stove, “I am.”

He sat down on one of the self-facing benches that were his dining room and pulled down the Murphy table. He shot me a smile as he peeled back the the pop-top lid on a can of Vienna sausages. He dipped his fingers into the can and pulled out a dripping wienie. He popped it into his mouth and then held the can out toward me. I shook my head.

“I need your semen,” I finally got around to saying as I pulled a sheet over my breasts. “Miss Shards is going to kill me if I don’t bring it to her in that bottle.”

He let out a quick, short chuckle and slurped another sausage into his mouth. With it bulging out the side of his cheek, he replied, “Did she make you drink something?”

I glared at him with disbelief. “You knew I was drugged, and you fucked me anyway?”

“I didn’t know for sure until you mentioned her, but I had my suspicions. Would you have been happier if I said no?”

He had a point, which was irritating. I moved on. “It was an injection. Do you know what it was?”

“Some alchemical shit,” he said. “She can make stuff that does strange things to a person.”

He maneuvered out from the confining dining table and opened one of the drawers under the bed. Digging through a disorganized assortment of junk to the back of the drawer, he pulled out a cigar box. He set it on the mattress and flipped open the lid. Nestled among rolled joints, a flip lighter, and bags of dried cannabis was a teardrop-shaped bottle. The embossed glass was murky and green, like an antique perfume bottle. The atomizer had been replaced with a mismatched cap, and inside the bottle was a clear liquid. Aries set the bottle in front of me.

“She once put that in my beer. Suddenly, my dick couldn’t get hard. And believe me I tried. I spent a whole day looking at porn and trying to get it up.”

There was a time when I wouldn’t have believed in potions and serums, but I’ve seen far more mystifying things in this jungle. It was now quite plausible to me Miss Shards would have a serum that could make me lust insatiably for a man whose name she whispered in my ear or make a wanton man like Aries lose all potency.

I picked up the bottle and examined it in the dawn light. “Why would she do that to you?” I asked, my words coming through a wide, sleepy yawn.

“You remember Anastasia?”

“The Russian girl that made rum? Didn’t her distillery burn down?”

“She was Greek or some shit, and the distillery didn’t burn down. Shards blew it up, but Anastasia somehow escaped that blast. She then went into hiding. But Shards knew Anastasia trusted me. She slipped that potion in my beer and said she’d trade Anastasia for the antidote. Until I delivered her, Aries was going to be a deflated man.”

He took a gold wedding band from the cigar box and slid it on his finger, something he stole no doubt. I took a joint from the stack and held it between my lips. He flipped open the lighter and touched it to the end. My words grunting as I held the smoke, I asked, “Why did Miss Shards want her dead?”

“Fuck if I know, but it pissed her off she survived the blast. Shards does not like losing control like that. She was determined to find the girl and punish her for not dying.”

I exhaled, and the cloud plumed through the small space. Holding the joint between my fingers and tipping it at him, I said, “Well, clearly you got the antidote, so you must have handed Anastasia over.”

“Nah, I didn’t hand her over,” he answered. He pulled on a pair of loose jeans he picked up off the floor and took a seat at the dining table. “Shards was going to do terrible things to Anastasia, and I tried to talk her into leaving. Hell, I begged her to go, but she wouldn’t do it. Not unless I went with her.”

I studied him a moment. “She was in love with you,” I surmised.

He nodded solemnly. “She was going to suffer a terrible death, all because she couldn’t let me go. So, I did the only thing I could do. I pushed her off a cliff and told Shards she committed suicide. Shards then told me the potion would wear off in a week and gave me that bottle.”

My jaw hanging and eyes wide, I peered at him with disbelief. “You couldn’t just break her heart and tell her you didn’t love her back?”

“I was a complete asshole to her, and she still loved me anyways. There was no talking her into leaving. She was convinced she could make me love her. The only way to save her was to kill her. The point is Shards has a way with her magic. And that’s why there’s no way I’m letting you give her my spooge.”

“She’ll kill me, Aries.”

“And what do you think she’ll do to me if she got my sperm?”

“Why don’t you hunt her down and kill her?”

He laughed as I drug on the joint, its end glowing. Feeling mocked, I narrowed my eyes at him as the smoke seeped from my nostrils.

“You know how many people have wanted her dead?” he replied. “Yet, with no allies, operating entirely alone, everyone who has ever come after her ended up dead or worse. I remember she hung one assassin by his ankles and flayed him.” He grimaced with disgust and shivered. “His corpse was a mess. And now, she’s killing all us Hoplons.”

“What are you talking about?”

His long arm stretched across the camper, and he pulled a box of saltines from the cupboard on the opposite side of it. He placed a cold wienie between two crackers and shoved the whole sandwich his his mouth.“That fucker Yaakov. You know him?” he asked, cracker crumbs shooting from his mouth.

Yaakov was some kind of Mossad soldier, and he had a hatred for women. The stories varied as to why he ended up in the Amazon, but after dealing for so long with fanatics in the powder keg that is the Middle East, he came to South America on some kind of covert mission with the seams of his psychology ready to snap. Something finally broke him, and he disappeared into the jungle blazing with psychotic rages.

He spoke English with a thick Israeli accent, and his breath always smelled of vodka. He had a way with traps, which he set all over the jungle. The men he captured he robbed to support himself. With the women who found themselves hanging in his nets, he took more than their valuables.

“Yeah,” I said bitterly, trying not to picture his face or the smell of his breath. “Yeah, I know him.”

“He went after Shards. I told him not to do it, but he could never stand it when someone made fun of that tiny dick of his. Shards made some joke about it, and he just stewed over it for a month. Somehow, he got her in one of his nets. Then, the dumbfuck just let her go after he was done with her. I guess he wanted her to live with the shame. When I heard about what he did, I knew he’d be dead soon. I didn’t think Shards would come after us all. We have been disappearing one by one ever since.”

“Disappearing?”

“No one has seen any bodies, but we assume she’s killing us. She’s probably just doing it slowly. And Yaakov was the first to go missing. I hate to think what she did to him.”

I slid down from the bed and dropped the end of the joint in an empty beer can. It sizzled in the little bit of beer at the bottom. I pulled the sheet around me and took a seat opposite Aries.

“Good. That fucker deserves it,” I said and took a saltine, crunched it down, and swallowed.

“Fuckin’ Yaakov,” Aries replied, shaking his head regrettably. “Never should have let him join us.”

“Isn’t it dangerous for you to be hanging out at your house? She surely knows where you live.”

“Shorty, Blane, and me, we all headed south down the river. We were boating away with a wide wake behind us. We weren’t sure we’d get out of here, but we also don’t have much to lose. Then I realized I forgot something that I couldn’t leave behind.”

No one is really sure where we are in the Amazon. Maps never match up, and compasses seem to deceive as much as guide. Somewhere in the billion acres of unbroken rainforest lies this lawless world. There are those who try to leave. Most are never heard from again, but a few return. Those who do always have a story about how they either couldn’t find what they once had in the outside world or they missed something they had in the jungle. It’s as if the jungle lets some go only so they can learn they will never truly leave this place.

“What’d you forget?” I asked.

He tapped his finger on the plastic table top, knocking the ring against it.

“You risked your life for some ring you stole?”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“You were married?” I asked skeptically.

He nodded.

“What happened to her?”

“I’ll tell you another time. Anyways, when I saw you sleeping naked on the chair out there, I knew I was safe, at least for the night. If Shards wanted me dead, she’d have been waiting for me.”

“Well, if you don’t fill that bottle up, she’s going to kill me, Aries. If you’re leaving, what difference does it make what she does with it?”

“I might want to return one day, and she might even be counting on me doing so. She’s clever that way. Why don’t you come with me?”

I shook my head and replied, “Thanks, but I can’t.”

“You won’t leave your refugees behind,” he inferred.

“They need me.”

“You need you too.”

He picked up a duffle bag from under the table and set it on top. He unzipped it and pulled the opening wide. Inside were clothes, a paperback book, a revolver, shotgun shells, and a flask. He slipped the ring inside the pocket of a pair of jeans and then added the green bottle of potion to the collection. He turned his back for a moment to grab a hoodie. When he turned back toward me, I had my hands under the table. He rolled the hoodie up, shoved it in the bag, and zipped it closed.

“You remember when we first met?” he asked.

“I’d rather not, but yeah. I remember.”

“You were wearing those Gap shorts and a skimpy t-shirt. You looked like you just walked out of a mall.”

“Blane cut those off me,” I pointed out bitterly. “They were my only clothes.”

Aries shrugged indifferently. “You found more. At first, I thought you were just another naive city girl.”

“I was.”

“You were from the city and inexperienced, but you were not just another naive city girl. When we took everything you had, there were no tears. You looked at us with those fierce blue eyes, and then you spit in Blane’s face.”

“He gave me a black eye for that,” I recalled without any humor or nostalgia.

“He’d have given you more than that if I wouldn’t have stopped him,” Aries stated before he sucked down the last sausage. “But I saw something in you. I figured if we let you go and you survived another month, you’d be ready to join us. Instead, next thing I hear about you, you’re pimping out girls to get penicillin.”

“I wasn’t pimping them out. They agreed to it. Sex is a commodity like any other, and I pooled our resources to trade for needed medical supplies.”

“You could have sold those girls off to slavers for more than a year’s supply of antibiotics and helped a lot more people,” he replied. “You are a survivor, Persephone, but you make the same mistake my wife did. You’re always trying to do the right thing, which isn’t always the best thing. You raise that monkey girl of yours--”

“Her name is Kiki,” I shot back quickly.

“Whatever,” he replied with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “You won’t flee Shards so you can run your refuge and care for your pet native. Are you still paying tributes to that chief of the Yaktoru?”

“I’m not a whore,” I answered too defensively, giving away more than the answer to his question.

“I didn’t say you were,” he replied with a slight smirk. “But Shards will find you. And when you’re dead and no longer paying the tribute, the Yaktoru are taking their territory back. Then, the refuge you built is gone and never coming back. Sometimes you have to look at all your options and make the choice that’s going to produce the best result for everyone, for the long term. That’s what I did with Anastasia.”

“You murdered her so you could get a boner.”

“I saved her from an agonizing death,” he retorted, leaning over the table toward me. “Yes, I got my dick back, but you’re missing the bigger picture. It was the best option for both of us.”

“You could have helped her escape.”

“If I’d had tried, I’d probably be dead too. You’re only a hero if you succeed at saving people, and that’s why heroes are so rare. Lots of people try to do the right thing for others at great risks that usually fail. Graveyards are full of failed heroes. They saved no one, and they all had other options. You don’t have to fuck everyone over, but you also don’t always have to be a hero. If you don’t get out of here, Persie, you will die and everything you built will be lost. Why not live unheroically for once?” He reached across the table, laid his hands on mine, and spoke earnestly. “Then maybe you can come back one day and rebuild.”

He was truly trying to save me, which was touching. It would be easy to dismiss his attitude as one of selfish cowardice, but the truth is it takes courage to live as he does -- making choices no one will every thank you for, much less sing songs about. I wish I could be like that. Maybe I’m too vain or just too weak. And maybe one day it will get me killed. But I know who I am.

“Can I have some clothes?” I asked as I pulled my hands out from under his. “I don’t want to walk home naked.”

He leaned back in his seat and sighed disappointedly. “There’s a shirt in the closet,” he answered with a nod toward it.

Inside the tiny closet was a button-up shirt on a hanger. It hung halfway down to my knees. The sleeves had blood stains on them, and and I had to roll them up to get my hands out from under them.

On the inside of the closet door, tucked into the frame of a mirror, was a photo of Yaakov, Blane, Shorty, Trey, Aries, and a few other Hoplons. In their living room surrounded by stolen furniture, tasteless decorations, and electronics, they were holding beer cans up and toasting victoriously to the camera. Trey held a chain which was connected to a collar around a naked blond girl’s neck. She was sitting on her knees, surrounded by murders, rapists, and thieves. She didn’t look particularly frightened or upset. She just stared vacuously at the flash of a camera.

When I stepped outside the camper, Aries was standing with the duffle bag at his feet. His shotgun was slung across his shoulders, and his machete was sheathed on his belt.

“I think this is goodbye, Persephone,” he said.

I walked up, slid my arms around his waist, and pressed my cheek into his chest. He returned the embrace loosely.

“Good luck, Aries.” I said and meant it.

“You too, Persie,” he said, and he meant it too.

Unsentimental as always, he then just walked off, hacking at the jungle with his machete.

When he was gone, I opened my hand and gazed the green bottle in my palm. I could have asked him for it, but he’d already refused to give me what Miss Shards wanted. I wasn’t going to risk him saying no. I guess sometimes I do make the unheroic choice.

With the potion in the green bottle, I had a way to defeat Miss Shards. I walked back home, my steps lively, and went over my plan again and again in my head. I was going to win this.

(To be continued…)