Tales of the Lost: Monsters of the Amazon

Chapter 7: Redemption
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.)

With a solidly steady hand, Beth lifted the shot glass above the table. It brimmed with brown whiskey. The girl was no taller than sixty inches and couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred in ten pounds, whereas Moru was three inches shy of six feet and probably one hundred and ninety pounds. Other than the rain patting moderately upon the fabric roof over our heads, the room was silent.

Unflinchingly, Beth met Moru’s eyes across the table as she guided the glass to her lips. In a fluid motion, she leaned her head back and drained the booze into her mouth. She held it a moment before swallowing. Just as resolutely, she turned the glass upside-down and perched it atop the pyramid of more than two dozen empty shot glasses in front of her.

We had established the city a week prior, and the palisade was completed that afternoon. The farms were ready to sew, the latrines were open, and we had our first meal in our new mess tent that evening. My vision, our vision, of living beyond day-to-day survival was taking shape, and to celebrate our newfound prosperity, I’d procured a couple cases of whiskey from a trader at a market called Thor’s Place, bartering away more than I should have for the festivity. Following dinner, we all began to drink and sing, something we’d never have done in our nomadic camps, as it would have been far too dangerous in the unprotected jungle to raise such a racket.

The moment Beth saw the cache of booze, she got a mischievous grin on her face and went seeking a man foolish enough to accept a drinking challenge from her. Misjudging the small girl’s capacity to hold her liquor, Moru became her victim. Those who knew Beth’s talent, such as myself, kept quiet about it so we could enjoy the spectacle.

Sitting behind his own stack of empty shot glasses, a determined frown upon his face, Moru took his turn. Sweat shone on his forehead. He lifted his full shot glass in the air, guided it to his lips, and emptied it into his mouth. Rather than set the glass upside down on the stack, he paused. His hand shook as everyone watched intently. He then leaned forward and threw up on the table.

The tent erupted with laughter as Moru slumped over and fell off his chair. The vomit dripped off the edge of the table to join him in defeat on the floor. Though she had advised her husband against accepting Beth’s challenge, Nao rushed over dutifully to tend to him.

Beth let out a victorious cackle and taunted proudly, “Stick to your sake, Moru. Irish girls drink whiskey like water.”

Other residents congratulated the winner with pats on her back, while those who’d bet against her grumbled. With a single arm, Beth swept off the table into her shoulder pack the jewelry and coins she and Moru wagered. After drinking down no less than twenty-eight shots of one-oh-one whiskey, there was no stagger to her stride when she walked away with her winnings. Nao needed two men to help carry her husband to their tent.

Funerals always bring up random memories of the departed, and this was the memory I had of Moru and Beth -- two people I’d trusted and loved -- when we lowered their bodies, rigid with rigamortis and wrapped in tattered blankets, into their graves.

Beth had been stunned by the flash grenade Shards’ man tossed into the cave. We know this because her body was found with her pistol unsecured but still holstered. A bullet had torn away her pretty face, another had shredded her neck, and several more bore into her torso. She died in a pool of her own blood.

As the first splashes of dirt fell on Moru’s corpse, Nao collapsed and wailed with grief. Lauren tried to console her with the reservoir of compassion she carried with her, but it could not, would never, bring Nao’s husband back. Nao disappeared that night, and Thomas found her bloated body two days later hanging from a tree a mile from the city.

We dug her grave six feet down into the jungle earth next to Moru’s. Then we all endured the third funeral service in a week. I had to reach deep into my own resources not to cry through them all, as it was my job as mayor to be a show of strength. And while I maintained that stolid veneer through this dark week, I had been too paralyzed to make any decisions. I simply could not lead these people, and the catatonic wreckage of the city smoldered.

The Yakturo soldier who carried his brother’s body down from the guard tower appeared during the middle of the service for Nao, as Lauren spoke of the woman’s dedication to her marriage. He stood aside respectfully and waited for the service to be done before he approached me.

“Kartago says you and your people must leave the canyon in one month,” the soldier said in his language. I was able to pick out enough words to decipher his meaning. “He says he wishes that this will be done in peace, but it will be done either way.”
 

He then walked off toward the Yaktoru village without waiting for a reply from me. I looked back at the residents gathered for Nao’s funeral. I could see a couple of them knew what I was told. Their ability to react to bad news exhausted, they just picked up their shovels and filled Nao’s grave.

“We’ll get through this. I promise you that,” I stated loudly. I had to say something. It was part of the job.

After the grave marker was placed, a simple wooden cross, I walked up to my cave and sat on the end of the bed. The room was lit only by a single candle on the nightstand. I stared at the dark stain on the floor where Beth had fallen. My heart felt so heavy inside my chest I wasn’t sure I would ever stand up again.

How astounding life is that in the blink of an eye you can lose everything. I spoke words of assurance to the residents, but the truth was, it wasn’t going to be alright. At least I saw no way it could be. Out there in the jungle without a fortification, more of us would die. And after three years of having a place to call home, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task of surviving that way anymore.

I spotted a little cloth arm sticking out from under the bed between my feet. I reached down and picked up the little rag doll I’d given Kiki for her birthday. I wasn’t entirely sure when her birthday was, so I decided it would be on the thirty-first of October. I made the doll for her, and we threw her a party. She called the doll Day-Day, forever associating the word “birthday” with the doll. I pulled it close to my heart as I recalled Kiki bouncing around the mess tent ecstatically with the new toy clutched in her hand. I slumped over and curled up fetally at the end of the bed, whispering my sobs.

“Persephone?” Thomas called from the entrance.

I swallowed my tears and quickly sat up. “What is it?” I replied curtly, quickly wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand.

Sunlight spilled into the darkness when he pulled back the canvas curtain. He could see I had been crying, and there was no sense trying to hide it.

“I really fucked up,” I told him.

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Oh fuck off with that,” I spat, flicking my wrist at him. “Every single thing that happened followed decisions I made. I chose to keep my problem with Shards a secret. I chose to deceive Kartago to raise an army.”

“You were trying to protect your people. You can’t blame yourself for what this woman, Shards, did to us.”

“I should have been with, Kiki. It should have been me here,” I said as a tear slipped down my cheek. “Oh god, I am such a fuck up, Thomas, and it hurts everyone I love.”

He walked over to me, preparing to give me comfort. I wanted to tell him to get the fuck out, to scream at him to go away. But I had become keen to the reflexive way I resent his affections. My ambitious father had weaponized tenderness, and the distrust it provoked was automatic. Whether or not I deserved Thomas’s comfort, he never deserved my rejections. So, when he sat down and put his hand around me, I just sank into his embrace, surrendering to the respite he offered. I muffled my sobs against his chest.

“I am so, so sorry I chased you off,” I said with a deep sniffle, my fingers clutching at his shirt. I drew in a deep, wet breath. “I was so horrible to you. And I am so sorry.”

“Stop it.”

“I just fuck up everything.”

“Stop it,” he repeated louder and lifted my chin to meet his eyes. “Cry if you need to, but you got to pick yourself up and move again, girl. And you’re not going to do that if you beat yourself up over over every little thing you can think of. I’ve seen you be so strong, like no other woman. You’re going to rebuild, and if you let me, you won’t have to do it alone.”

The candlelight reflected in his brown eyes. As the wax melted down to a nub a dozen feet away, I laid my hand on his cheek and melted into his gaze. My lips found his, and he returned the kiss. He reclined slowly back, and I followed. My hand pushed up under his shirt and worked it off, and then his hands went about removing my clothes. Our passions ballooned rapidly, and in moments he was sliding his naked body over mine. My back arched with anticipation.

In the jungle, pregnancy is as much of a risky consequence of sex as any disease. Without modern medical care, childbirth can be and often is deadly. I had a large collection of condoms in a box by my makeshift vanity, but I made no attempt to get one. As I pictured myself in a post-labor sweating glow, holding a newborn with brown skin, curly dark hair, and my blue eyes, Thomas smiling fatherly over the both of us, I saw possibilities I had always dismissed without consideration. In this jungle, we live at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs, incessantly preoccupied with the need for subsistence survival and safety. The loving wholesomeness of this fantasy of motherhood perched upon the pyramid steps above me, always just out of reach.

Intoxicated by this familial imagining, I reached down and guided Thomas’ bare penis inside me. He closed his eyes as my legs wrapped around him. I lifted my hips, meeting his thrusts, and our breaths filled the cavern.

I slept only a couple hours and awoke with a head full of thoughts. The pink of dawn seeped in around the canvas curtain. Day-Day lay on the floor next to the bed, and I reached down to pet it as I would have done Kiki, when she sometimes drifted off to sleep beside the bed when the other half of it was occupied with a lover.

Thomas’ soft breathing next to me was like a metronome, its rhythmic timing focusing my thoughts into a precise meditation. It was kind of him to dismiss my culpability, but that didn’t exonerate me for what happened. Leadership, good leadership, is the act of accepting responsibility for far more people than yourself. Intentions don’t matter; only results do.

He was correct to say I was capable of picking myself up and moving forward, but any honest tallying of my mistakes would suggest I had no business leading these people. Moving forward would mean stepping aside to let someone else take the helm.

As my own emotional fragility had left me mostly ineffective since the war with Shards, Thomas had assumed much of the command of the city. He was as good at it now as he was before I ran him off. If the surviving residents were to find a new home and rebuild the city, it would be Thomas who was going to lead them, and the only way for me to abdicate the mayorship would be to leave the city I founded.

Years ago, before we established the city, Lauren, Thomas, and I scouted the lands beyond those of the Angasee, a small tribe that practiced a strict isolationism. They lived on the far eastern edge of the map, sought no alliances or trade, and only acted aggressively toward trespassers. The only people who ever ventured beyond their territory were the desperate souls looking to escape the jungle. Our hope was the area offered uninhabited territory where we could hide for a while.

Unfortunately, we discovered those unmapped lands were, in fact, occupied. We never saw the people who lived there, but what we saw suggested, whoever they were, they were best avoided. Bodies hung in the trees, splayed out and crucified. They were burnt, dismembered, and flayed. Heads were perched upon spikes along trails, and there were all manner of bones piled up in various tableaux, which seemed intended to ward off trespassers. And that explained why the Angasee didn’t expand their territory east.

Last month, while hunting boar in Hoplon territory with a miner named Jackson, I came upon such a display again. It was a headless and limbless torso nailed to a bamboo trunk. Ants scurried up and down the entrails dangling below it, and to reach the guts, the insects climbed up a pile of bones deliberately constructed beneath the mess. After learning that Shards was murdering Hoplons, I deduced these tableaux were Shards’ calling card, which meant she likely made her lair east of the Angasee.

I was fairly certain Kiki was still alive. If Shards wanted her dead, she would have had her murdered alongside Beth. There was no way I could rescue Kiki, but I could give her something. Shards would surely kill me if I located her lair, but if I could talk her into letting me see Kiki one last time, I could let the girl know I didn’t abandon her. I wanted her to know I loved her with all my heart, and I wanted to apologize for being unable to protect her. This confession would be a final act of redemption before Shards passed sentence upon me. I could see nothing else within my power to accomplish that would have as much benefit to anyone as deserving as my Kiki.

On a hill a couple miles west of the canyon, there was a tall tree that poked above the rainforest canopy. Every morning since he’d recovered from his journey back to the jungle, Thomas would sling a small pack over his shoulder, walk to the hill, and climb that tree. After a few minutes, he’d climb down and return to the city. I waited for him to wake up, and he stuck to this routine.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” he told me as he started to leave the cave.

“What do you do up there in that tree?” I asked.

“Pray,” he answered.

How someone could live in this jungle and still believe in God I couldn’t explain, but many do.

“Be safe, please,” I blurted out when he pulled back the canvas curtain. “I...I care about you. Know that.”

He looked back at me, smiled, and replied, “Of course.”

Those would be, I believed, our last words. After he was gone, I packed my backpack and wrote a quick note vaguely telling Thomas what I was doing and why. It included another apology for all I did to him, to everyone, and a request that he keep the residents safe on their journey forward.

It took a day to follow the irrigation stream down to the Sungew River, as it was called by some. Another three days by kayak down this tributary took me to the mighty Amazon, the opposite shores of which were barely visible across the wide river. I waited a day for the arrival of a patrol boat, now used to transport people up and down the great river. It was piloted by a Australian who went by Cog, and he protected his boat and his livelihood with a crew of four violent men and the fifty caliber machine gun mounted on the bow.

The price of a ticket as far east as I planned to go, Cog told me, would be two hours below deck with him and his four guards. It was, I knew, what he asked of all women. After some negotiation, I was able to talk him into taking instead some gold, a fifth of Jack Daniels, two cartons of cigarettes, and six Payday candy bars.

Another woman, however, was quite willing to pay for her fare with sex. She looked to be half native. She was slender with dark hair and fierce blue eyes. After fucking the pilot and crew, she blew a passenger on the gunner’s seat, for food and clothes. She had a confidence about her, plying her trade without shame and bartering aggressively for the highest price.

I had no judgements of her. Sex was a commodity in the jungle, and we all had to do what we had to do to survive. Though I regarded her as my equal, since I wasn’t whoring myself she regarded me with a suspicion borne upon what was basically class envy. I had something to barter besides my body -- at least this day I did -- and that put me in the camp of the haves, while she toiled as one of the have-nots. I don’t know why she felt no kinship to me. Truly, neither of us had anything at all. We just had two different means to survive.

She and I didn’t talk for the five days we motored down the river, and she disembarked at Thor’s Place, where there were two or three brothels for her to ply her trade.

Two more days downriver, Cog dropped me off at the furthest point east he was willing to go. It was a dilapidated pier sitting just past Angasee territory. Without any parting words, Cog turned the boat around and motored rapidly upriver, eager to get away from a territory that made everyone who ventured near it uneasy. I was left alone at the edge of the world with nothing more than what I had in my backpack.

Hacking inches of path through the thick, trailless jungle, maneuvering around impenetrable groves of bamboo and across fields of sharp grass twice my height, I walked north. With each step into unknown jungle, I could feel Shards’ madness closing around me like a boa, squeezing out all sanity and reason. If I had any doubts about my mission, they faded into this fog.

I didn’t need to look for Shards. If she was out here, she would find me. If not, I would just walk until I died. At night, I slept on a hammock, wrapped in mosquito netting, surrounded by the nocturnal chorus of the jungle. By day, I hacked and hacked some more, traveling north no more than a few miles before making camp again. A bottle of Japanese ibuprofen was all I had to keep at bay the soreness in my legs and hacking arm.

I finally came upon the faintest trail through a ravine, where torrential rainshowers poured down upon me every afternoon. I awoke every dawn shivering inside a cloud that settled into the gorge with me, until the moist heat rose with the sun and sucked the sweat from my body.

Exhaustion began to set in, and my steps began to drag along the trail, reducing the distance I’d cover in a day to just a mile at most. At the top of the ravine was a plateau, and there I came upon four piles of bones. I gave no sigh of relief or dance of joy. I was resigned to the hands of fate and quite comfortable letting her take me where she pleased. As it so happens, she brought me to this place. I had no more strength to carry me further, so whatever was going to happen would happen.

There were four of these bone piles. They were a few feet high and topped with human skulls. They rose in pairs that flanked the trail. Perched atop spikes nailed into the tree trunks around the piles of bones were jawless human skulls. Tied to the branches that wove a canopy overhead were dozens of mobiles made of bones, and a miasma of rancid meat drenched the humid air around me. I doubted they were all human bones, but I couldn’t be certain.

I dropped to my knees and shouted, “Miss Shards!” I drew another breath and mumbled, “I’m here,” before I fell face-first onto the mud.

I slept through the night and well into the heat of the next day. I awoke to the buzzing of insects that was so much a part of the waking jungle consciousness. There were many pairs of feet around me. Weakly and without panic, I pushed myself up on my knees to see I had been correct. Miss Shards had found me. Surrounding me were the Hoplons we all thought Shards had killed. Yakov, Blane, Shorty, Dagoon, Pip, and Trey -- all of them except Aries -- stared vacuously down at me, with Miss Shards standing at the head of the circle. She grinned wickedly.

“Let me see Kiki, please,” I begged. “Just one more time.”

In reply to my request, Shards slammed the butt of her rifle into the side of my head.

(To be continued…)