Tales of the Lost: Monsters of the Amazon
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.)
Looking into the cracked mirror, I applied the burgundy lipstick and pressed my lips together to even it out.
The cave was lit by four candles melting into sconces along the wall of the bedroom. The bed was a stack of wooden pallets covered by a lumpy mattress, as were the couches in the living room. In the kitchen, a propane stove sat atop a plastic tote. The cupboards were milk crates sitting on their side and tied together. With three rooms, it was the largest of the cave dwellings that nested in the walls of the canyon.
So scarce were cosmetics in the Amazon, my collection was pitiful compared to the L’Oreal cornucopia that covered my vanity in Los Angeles. Included in this dismal makeup collection was a bottle of Estee Lauder foundation, some Covergirl smoky eyeshadow, and a depleted bottle of eyeliner, the writing on the side so worn that the brand couldn’t be read. Lastly, I had a second tube of red lipstick, which I could also use for blush.
This sad collection of makeup was reserved for important occasions, and the night I pay the monthly tribute to Kartago was certainly one of them. “Mayor?” Beth called from the entrance.
“Come in,” I replied after I placed the cap back on the burgundy lipstick. I set the tube in the box with the other makeup, which also contained the green bottle of potion I’d stolen from Aries.
Beth was a redhead with blue eyes and so slender she appeared fragile. Despite her size and gentle demeanor, she had an uncanny ability to drink anyone in town under the table. Though she was, I estimated, in her early forties, her freckles gave her a youthful look, even as hints of crow’s feet appeared at the corner of her eyes. Carrying a bleached white chemise, she came around the canvas tarp that covered the entrance of the cave.
“It’s ready. I tried not to make a bags of it,” she said in her Irish accent, “but you didn’t give me much time for the job.”
I took the chemise and responded apologetically, “I know this was rushed. It doesn’t have be perfect. It’s only got to work for a night.”
I stepped behind a dressing screen, untied the belt around my waist, and disrobed. I slid the cotton chemise over my head, and it hung down to my ankles as if fell over my form. I examined the pocket Beth had sewn to the inside of the cuff of the bell sleeve drooping from my wrist. I slid my finger into the pouch, confirming it was just the right size for what I needed.
“Thank you, Beth,” I said with a pleased smile as I came around the screen.
“Happy to do it, mayor,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what that’s for.”
Any explanation of my plans would require me to also discuss my encounter with Miss Shards, which would only sew panic and potentially suicidal efforts to protect me. I shook my head and answered, trying not to sound harsh, “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything else I can do,” she replied with concern in her tone.
“Sure, mayor. Is she in danger?”
“Everything is fine,” I lied. “I just don’t want her running off for a couple of days.”
“She’s not going to like that, but I’ll keep her occupied. Does this have anything to do with that man?”
“What man?”
“The one in the clinic; he says he knows you.”
My forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Before Beth could explain, a familiar, high-pitched growl carried through the city up to my cave and broke the conversation. Some shouting followed after.
I sighed and excused myself. Beth stepped aside with an understanding grin as I went to attend to my motherly duties.
What I called the city was only a camp, but I insisted on the grander designation. It kept our eyes towards the future goal -- a civilized society in this lawless land.
Standing on the lip of the cave, I was about forty feet above the ground. The one hundred-foot granite walls of the box canyon circled around an acre of corrugated metal roofs pierced by smoking pipe chimneys. Vines cascaded down the top of the canyon, some reaching all the way to the ground. Right outside the town, beyond the palisade wall, were a few acres of rice paddies.
Over the gate in the palisade was a sign that read “Home is a state of mind.”
I climbed down the ladder to the ground just as Oliver began shouting again. This was followed by the cymbalic ring of stainless steel items crashing together. I made my way between the rows of small shacks toward the noise. Nao and her husband Maru, Japanese researchers whose plane crashed last month during an ecological survey of wildfires, had gathered outside Oliver’s shack, drawn to the commotion as I was. Always strict with formalities, they bowed respectfully to me as I came upon the scene.
“Give me that right now,” Oliver shouted from inside.
“Kiki’s!” was the reply.
I acknowledged the Japanese couple with a nod and entered the shack. The wooden-frame door sprung shut behind me with a clack, and the squabbling pair’s attention diverted my way.
Kiki was squatting atop a metal cabinet. Despite my efforts to acclimate her to wearing at least a loincloth, she had discarded it and remained naked as the day she was born, whenever that might have been. She was grasping a headlamp against her breasts as Oliver reached for it.
“Perrrrr!” Kiki bellowed, bouncing happily on her knees with an excited smile.
Oliver’s work shack was a collection of instruments, equipment, and tools. All of it was meticulously organized on labeled shelves and bins, except the mining pans Kiki had apparently sent crashing to the floor when she climbed on top of the cabinet.
“Oh thank goodness you’re here, mayor,” Oliver said exasperatedly. “She took my last headlamp. We haven’t got any more bulbs, and I must have it.”
“Kiki’s!” the girl hissed at him.
On one wall next to a window was a stained poster of the periodic table of elements, and on the opposite wall was a picture of Seven of Nine from the Star Trek series, a subtle smile above the actresses’ ample breasts pressing out from the fabric of her Starfleet uniform. I had traded the poster for a bottle of whiskey, to give to Oliver as a Christmas present last year. He was in his sixties and had become lost in the rain forest reconnoitering for a mining company. He was clumsy and awkward with women, admiring me dreamily from afar, while graciously accepting the attraction was not mutual. And that was fortunate. Without his mining skills, the city would lose its primary source of revenue.
Kiki fiddled with her stolen toy, looking through the glass at the shiny bulb inside, and managed to twist the cap so that it turned on. The beam slapped her face and she closed her eyes tightly. Turning her face away from the assaulting light, she snapped at it, “Kiki’s!"
Sitting on a shelf under the periodic table were three more headlamps. I pointed at them and asked Oliver, “Are any of those broken?”
“Only the one on the left, ma’am. The others just need new bulbs.”
I picked up the defunct headlamp and offered it up to Kiki. She reached for it, but I snatched it away before she could take it.
“Kiki, give me that headlamp you’re holding,” I told her calmly, “and then you can have this one.”
Oliver drug his hand over his thinned grey hair and begged, “Please don’t let her break the last one. Those are so hard to come by.”
Kiki clutched the lighted lamp against herself, the beam glowing into her chest. “Kiki’s!” she again proclaimed.
“No, that’s Oliver’s, Kiki. So is this one, but if you give me the one you’re holding, you can play with this one." I looked back at Oliver. "He won't mind, right?"
Oliver replied with a hesitant smile. Kiki furrowed her brow as she considered the offer. She looked at the one in my hand and then the one in her hand -- back and forth a few times. She then gave a suspicious glance at Oliver. Finally, deciding the trade was acceptable, she hopped down from the cabinet.
“Kiki’s,” she said as she took the one I offered and dropped the lighted lamp on the floor. I picked it up by the head band and dangled it from my index finger in front of Oliver. “Oh, thank you so much, mayor,” he said, taking it from me and shutting the light off.
“Are the bars ready?” I asked him, keeping an eye on Kiki as she sat on the floor playing with the broken headlamp.
“All five, mayor,” he answered. “They’re still a bit warm, but you can pick them up.”
He pulled a towel off the tray. There were five thin, one-ounce bars of ninety-nine percent gold, each fitting on my palm. They’d be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of four thousand American dollars.
“We have just over ten altogether this month,” Oliver continued, “and I put two into reserve, as per your wise instructions. Shall I trade the other three for penicillin and iodine?”
Having failed to make the light come on, Kiki stretched the band of the headlamp until it snapped free from her hand and slapped her in the face. She hissed at the offending object and then left it lying on the floor. She scrambled over to me, kneeling by my legs and scowling at the headlamp. I petted her head soothingly as I spoke with Oliver.
“No, give two to Lauren,” I answered him. “She needs diesel for the clinic generator. Use the other one to get yourself bulbs, if you can find them, and any other equipment that you need. The gold must keep flowing.”
“Aye, aye, mayor,” he replied dutifully.
Oliver picked up the headlamp Kiki discarded and put it back on the shelf with the others. Kiki watched him warily, moving behind my legs.
“I’m surprised to see you in your chemise,” Oliver stated.
“Why would that surprised you?”
“I thought you’d postpone the tribute to spend the night with Thomas.”
“Thomas? What are you talking about?” I asked, and as soon as I did, I connected it with the man Beth had mentioned. “I have to go,” I said before Oliver could reply.
I darted out the door and toward the clinic, breathing in the campfire air that always permeated the city. I turned a corner onto a wider corridor between the shacks and tents, which we called Main Street, and froze when I saw him. The six-foot-tall black man stood in the middle of the road, struggling to wheel the IV pole over the muddy lane. A ragged beard clung to his face and his gait was languid and fatigued. He wore only his sweatpants and his feet sank into the mud. A tube ran from his wrist to the saline drip hanging from the IV pole.
He looked up from the road and saw me standing thirty feet from him. Both of us stunned, we studied each other for a moment. The man in the road looked like Thomas, but the beard left some uncertainty.
I had one single photo of Thomas, which I would sometimes stare at with regret. In it, he’s dressed in military fatigues, standing outside a helicopter wrapped in camouflage patterns, the motionless rotor blades bending towards the ground over his head. The tear-drop sunglasses covered his eyes, but beneath them was his disarming smile.
“Hello Persephone,” he said in a strained voice with a hint of a Texas accent. Then he smiled, the same smile in the photo, which removed all doubt as to the man’s identity.
I began to walk toward him, my steps picking up their pace as we got closer. One of his arms opened to me, while the other gripped the IV pole. I fell against his large embrace, and he nearly stumbled backwards.
“It’s you. It’s really you,” I gasped, my cheek pressed so hard between his pecks I could hear his heartbeat.
“I missed you,” he said.
What he said stung, and I gripped him tighter. “I can’t believe you’re here,” I replied.
I couldn’t help but to say, “It’s a city, not a camp.” I’m not petty. It matters.
“Of course,” he said looking around at the tents flanking the road. “A city.”
I slid out of his arms and craned my head up to look at him. “Did you make it back to Houston? You must have if you were gone this long.”
“I did.” He nodded and looked down at the muddy road.
“Why’d you’d come back?”
I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to say he came back to me. Like I said, the jungle only lets a few escape, and that’s only to show them whatever they once had is gone so they never want to leave again. So, I knew why he had returned, and I needed him lie, to say he came back for me. Then, I could feel better about what happened with us.
“I…” he started to say.
“What in the Sam hell do you think you’re doing?” Lauren called from behind him.
Lauren, a nurse from Georgia, had a soft face with compassionate eyes. She also had a no-nonsense chestnut hair bob, and when she gave her patients instructions, she expected they be followed.
“Sorry, Miss Brown,” Thomas replied, always the polite country boy. “I wanted to say hello to Persephone.”
“If you and the mayor want to get caught up, you do it back in your bed,” she told him and pointed insistently back toward the clinic.
I rather liked the suggestion, though I’m certain that’s not what she meant.
“Yes, Miss Brown,” he replied with respectful compliance and turned back to me. “Come back to the clinic with me?”
“I have to do something tonight,” I said. There was no way to explain what paying our tribute to the Yaktoru involved. I couldn't even say I'd see him tomorrow, because if everything came together the way I planned, tomorrow there might be a war. All I could say was, “We’ll see each soon.”“I would like that,” he said and gave me that smile again.
I returned to Oliver’s shack to retrieve the gold bars for the tribute and then led Kiki back to our condo. As I tucked her in on the living room couch, she nuzzled my arm through the cotton chemise and whispered, “Luff.”
“I love you too, sweet girl,” I said and leaned down to kiss her forehead. I patted the floor. “Kiki where?”
Kiki patted the couch cushion and replied, “Kiki ‘ome.”
“Very good. Kiki is home,” I praised her, and she smiled proudly. “You’re going to be good for Beth tonight, yes?”
“Da,” she answered and gaped her mouth wide to yawn, exposing her crooked teeth.
While she never could quite grasp pronunciation or form complete sentences properly, I’d increased her vocabulary beyond her name to at least a few dozen words, and every month she memorized another. Kiki taught me to find water, food, and shelter, and so I taught her what the jungle never would.
Over our time together, I became a maternal figure to her. There were days I’d have happily given into the monsters that wanted me dead, but then I’d think of Kiki alone in the jungle, howling with grief. And so I fought on. In that way, she continued to save my life over and over again.
After Kiki fell asleep I pinned my hair up, strands on each side of my head left dangling to frame my face. Beth arrived to watch Kiki as I was checking my makeup one last time.
“I wish you didn’t have to do this, mayor,” she said, looking at me in the mirror.
I smiled gratefully at her reflection. “One day we’ll have and army to take the territory from the Yaktoru. Until then, the tribute has to be paid.” “One day,” she echoed, hopeful.
“Tomorrow, no matter what you hear out there, you stay in here and keep Kiki safe,” I instructed as I rose from the rickety table that was my vanity. “You understand?”
She nodded hesitantly. “You sure we're not in any danger, mayor?”
“Don’t worry. Everything will be over by tomorrow afternoon, and I can explain it all to you.”
“Okay,” she replied, though her tone was uncertain.
I made my way down the ladder, through the city, and out the palisade gate, the chemise bunched up in my fists to keep the mud off the hem. The Yaktoru village was a half mile from the city, and the path well defined. The sun was setting behind the long hut the Yaktoru chief, Kartago, called his great hall.
His Majesty, as Kartago insisted he be addressed, was sitting upon his elaborate wicker throne, surrounded by an entourage of his top warriors, his wives and concubines, and a couple trusted advisers. They were all dark natives, and their light-skinned king stood out among them.
The path to the king’s court was flanked by four guards, and they crossed spears over it, blocking the way, as I approached. As was the ritual, I removed the chemise I was wearing and folded into a creased square, the sleeves crossed at the top of the folds. Aries' green bottle of potion made a lump in the cuff of the sleeve. I placed the five gold bars upon the top of the garment. Holding it before me on top of my arms, palms up, I stood naked in the last rays of the day’s sun and waited for the king to call me forth.
(To be continued….)
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