Tales of the Lost: Monsters of the Amazon

Chapter 8: Judgement
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.)

In the dim light of a cave lit by a single torch in a nearby sconce, I had trouble making sense of where I was when I regained consciousness. The Hoplon men stood around the room. They weren’t looking at me or at anything really. Their expressions were slack, like livestock in pens awaiting a caretaker who would either feed or slaughter them.

A deep ache rang through my skull, and blood caked in my hair. My throat burned with thirst. I tried to sit up only to realize I was bound to the low table I had been laid upon. They had taken my backpack and my clothes. My legs were spread open, and my ankles were tied to the legs of the table. Shards’ round figure stepped out of the darkness into the torchlight. She was putting some kind of harness on her pelvis. She secured it with a hard tug of a belt and took another step into the light. Then I could see the latex cock she’d strapped to herself.

“No,” I begged in a parched croak, struggling feebly against my bounds.

She positioned herself at the end of the table between my legs, the madness in her eyes sparkling back into the dark recesses of her mind. My exhausted body tensed strongly as it was seized by the painful sting of her penetration. She laid her heft down on top of me, pushing the air from my lungs. My sobs began as pained whimpers and continued as her thrusts developed momentum. I turned my head away from the Hoplons whose empty stares showed no enjoyment or horror or pity to what they witnessed.

“I told you not to follow me,” Shards hissed breathlessly in my ear, and then my consciousness slipped into a dark haze, the smell of burning tallow wafting away into nothingness.

I awoke naked upon a blanket in complete darkness. I frantically felt the floor around me, and my hand found a bottle of water, which I promptly opened and drank down ravenously. Water dripped off my chin as the last drops slipped down my throat. I strained to see the shape of the room, to get any sense of where I was. I could hear breathing somewhere nearby. I pulled the blanket around my trembling body, and scurried back away from the breaths, fearing another assault would visit me. I whimpered with terror.

“What did I say would happen if you followed me?” Shards asked, her voice reverberating off the stony walls.

The sound of it made me shiver with revulsion, and I froze where I sat. My rapid breaths fell into the darkness around me.

“Did you want Kiki to die?” she asked.

“I-I came unarmed and alone,” I pleaded. “There’s no reason to kill Kiki. Just kill me instead.” I wiped my chin with the back of my hand. “But please let me see her one more time before you do. I beg you.”

“I asked you nicely for something, Persephone. You didn’t give it to me. Why would I give you anything?”

“I tried.”

“You tried?” she repeated. She then began to mock my orgasmic cries, “Aries, fuck! Oh god. Oh god! Fuck!” Then in her normal voice she asked, “Was that you trying? You didn’t ask him for his jizz until dawn; don’t tell me you tried.”

She had been listening outside Aries’ trailer the whole night, and I wasn’t entirely surprised. She moved across this jungle like a ghost. “He knew it was you who wanted it,” I tried to explain, though she surely had heard that part of the conversation with Aries. “He was never going to give it to me. It wouldn’t have matter when I asked. I don’t understand why all this was necessary. Why put me through all this for some...some semen?”

“A man’s semen is a source of power,” she answered. “It’s his essence.”

She never answered questions. She gave instructions. Something was different.

Shards continued, “There was once an Angasee shaman who knew how to extract from a man’s seed its power and create all kinds of concoctions from it. I was able to persuade him to give up his secrets before he died. One of these concoctions went into your arm, and with a single whispered name, I could make you mad with lust for Aries.”

My stomach tightened at the thought of some semen-based drug coursing through my veins. She sparked a lighter and lit a candle. I could then see Yakov standing passively next to her.

She continued: “Another elixir made Aries and Kartago impotent for a couple weeks. And one potion made of a man’s own semen, injected up through his nose directly into his brain, can make him obey my every command, without question and without judgement, for the rest of his living days. Isn’t that right, Yakov?” She slapped him on his back hard enough that he dipped forward.

“It is true,” he said robotically in his Middle Eastern accent.

Shards then unsheathed a dagger and handed it to him. I tensed as the candlelight gleamed off the sharp blade. I anticipated my execution and could feel the slice of the blade across my throat. I started to beg again to see Kiki when Shards gave Yakov her instructions.

“Cut off the first knuckle of your pinky,” she told him.

His hesitation was fleeting. His eyes filled with a painful futility. His arm lifted slow and rigid as if he struggled against its raising. His pinky extended upward, he slashed a half inch off the digit with a quick swipe of the blade. An agonized cry followed as the pinkie bled down into his clinched fingers. The severed end of it tumbled off somewhere into the dark corners of the room.

“Good boy,” she told him and took the knife back. She sheathed it and pulled a dirty handkerchief from her back pocket. She handed the cloth to Yakov, and he put pressure on his injury. He shook, breathing erratically as sweat beads formed on his face.

I felt no pity for the rapist, a man who’d violated many women in the jungle over the years. I might have taken more pleasure in his situation, but Shards’ power eclipsed the grisliness of Yakov’s sexual predation. To see the Israeli’s savagery subsumed by a greater monster was a horror like none I seen in a jungle that was full of terrible, terrible things. A swallow broke between my quickened breaths as I watched and listened.

Shards resumed her explanations: “You see, with a man’s semen, I can make him do anything I want,” she said and then repeated it slowly, “Anything...I...want.”

“Is that what you’re going to do to me?” I asked.

“If you could produce semen, Persephone, I certainly would.”

My question answered, I followed with another. “If you could get Yakov’s semen, why not Aries’? Why did you need me?”

“With these assholes,” she replied, flicking her wrist toward Yakov, “I could capture them and cut off their balls. Would you like to see?”

I shook my head.

“One word from me and he’ll drop his pants. Nothing down there but a pucker and a hole, like and old lady’s snatch. Go on; show the girl.”

Yakov reached down with his bloody hand and started to unbutton his pants.

“I don’t need to see it,” I snapped.

Yakov froze and looked toward Shards for what to do. “Suit yourself,” Shards stated with a shrug. Yakov looked down sheepishly and rewrapped his severed pinkie with the handkerchief.

“Why couldn’t you get Aries’ semen the same way you did the others?” I asked.

“Aries, you see, he’s nice to look at, unlike this ugly fucker,” she answered, indicating Yakov. “I wanted an intact beautiful black man for my collection, like a rare edition action figure in mint condition in an unopened box. So, I needed him to cum in a bottle.”

I peered at her with disturbed bewilderment. “This was all so you could have a black zombie with a cock? That’s why you poisoned me? That’s why you killed my friends? That’s why you took my Kiki?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” she answered simply.

I fell over onto my side and curled up fetally under the blanket on the cold, hard floor. “But why did you need me to do it?” I asked, but the answer dawned on me as soon as the question left my lips. I remembered how Shards admonished me when I put my hands on her after she injected me with the elixir. I looked up to her and prodded riskily, “You can’t stand to be touched. That’s why you needed me to get Aries’ cum.”

Her frown deepened; she didn’t like the insight I had into her vulnerability. “I used to be like you, Persephone. Did you know that?” she replied evasively. “I was a Mormon missionary with three girls of my own. We were in Brazil to spread the word of Jesus Christ to the Amazon, which I now know is a load of horseshit. We left Manaus on a Saturday for what was to be a fun one-day hike. Like you and so many others, we were lost to this wilderness with no way home. A few days later, frightened and alone, we ran into a Mexican man. I don’t remember what he said his name was, and it doesn’t matter now. He had a gun and demanded we give him the food we had. I offered to share some of it with him, but he wanted it all. I told him he’d be killing us if he took it all, and that didn’t matter in the least to him, of course. Why would it?

“After I gathered all the food from our packs for him, pleading that he not to leave us to starve, he decided he was going to rape my daughter Peggy. She was only seventeen. He was a stupid, stupid man. I guess he thought I was too paralyzed with fright to do anything. He put the gun down to unzip his pants, and I grabbed it. Just like that, the gun was in my hands. I told him to just go, to leave us alone. I could have shot him dead right there, but like you, Persephone, I was far too weak then.”

She sat down next to me cross-legged, bringing the candlelight down with her. “A couple days later, I decided to try to climb to the top of a high hill to see if I couldn’t find the mighty river. We hadn’t gone far from Manaus, so I thought the river had to be close. Of course, at the time I didn’t realize we were prisoners of this place. I left the girls alone, thinking I would be back before nightfall. It was much harder to climb the hill than I thought, and at the top, I saw no river. Just miles of endless jungle. I sprained my ankle on the way down. 

“By the time I made it back to those girls the next morning, limping in pain, I found the Mexican had returned that night to take all he had wanted. I suspect he brought others with him, but they were already gone when I got back.”

There was a sadness on Shards’ face, and it was peculiar to see that kind of emotion coming from a woman who acted with such malice. I thought I saw in the flickering candlelight the faintest bit of moisture in the wells of her eyes.

“They had stripped those girls,” she resumed, her words trembling, “tied them to the trees, and had their way with them. The eight-year-old was...” She paused and looked into her lap. “They did terrible things to her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She gazed at me with spite. “Shut the fuck up,” she shot back, and I fell silent, turning my eyes downward and trying to curl up into a smaller ball under the blanket. There were so many ways this woman hated to be touched; offering sympathy was one.

After the silence simmered in the room for a long while, Shards said, “Something happened to me in that moment. I….I wasn’t….I wasn’t that Mormon missionary mom anymore. This woman, this mother, who loved Jesus and her husband and her children...this mother from Salt Lake City, lost in this jungle, she was still there. I mean, I could see her sitting in the blood-soaked dirt, weeping and weeping and weeping, with her backs to her daughters' corpses. She wouldn’t stop crying; she wouldn’t stop, Persephone. She was just so sad.

“I didn’t pity her.” Shards shook her head adamantly. “I couldn’t. To pity her, I’d have to share her pain, and I didn’t want to share her pain. I could see it was great. She finally did get up days later when she got hungry enough. She walked aimlessly and continued to cry. I began to hate that woman. Like, you’re lost in this jungle, I wanted to tell her. You have no food, and if you don’t get your shit together, you’re going to die.” Shards shrugged in the middle of her contemptuous tirade. “It’s like she didn’t care to live anymore and was just seeking out something to kill her.”

The wax dripped onto her fingers wrapped around the base of the candle. She showed no reaction to it, as if her hand were made of brass. The light softly padded her hard, fat face.

She continued: “A few days later, this sad little bunny ran into a man from New York. He told her he had become lost in the Tijuca Forest, twenty-five hundred miles from Manaus. He had good boots and clothes and an REI backpack full of food. The sad, pathetic little bunny, starving and sobbing, asked him meekly for something to eat. He refused, said he needed to keep what he had because he wasn’t sure how long it would take him to find help. He must have thought her insane, telling him they were somewhere near Manaus.

“After enough pleading from the pathetic bunny, the man opened his pack and gave her half a granola bar. She could see he had a couple weeks’ worth of food in there. Yet, he only would give her one bite to eat. And the sad, pathetic little bunny, though she had a gun, thanked him. Can you believe it? She actually thanked him. God, I hated her.”

She poked her index finger right above the bridge of her nose and continued: “Something happened to me in that moment, Persephone. It was as if a satellite from space shot a laser down to pierce my skull with a divine truth. It all became so clear to me. I could see the logic in what the Mexican and his friends did to the bunny’s children. It’s hard to comprehend that kind of savagery until you realize it’s not madness. It’s a rational choice you make in this jungle to not die, which means you no longer bear death. You give it. The kind of will it takes to transform from a sad little bunny into a monster is not something to fear. It’s something to understand, to admire, to emulate. It’s a means to a rightful end.”

I could feel a wave of nausea crawling around the lining of my stomach. A swirling swooshed in my ear, and Shards’ voice sounded as if I were hearing it from underneath water. I clutched the blanket tightly.

She went on: “If our survival is threatened by compassion, then it is a surrender to death, to defeat. If it has no reward, it has no purpose. There is no Heaven, Persephone. In this place, the only law is survival. And what makes one fit to survive? Kindness and compassion? If the bunny would have shot the Mexican, her daughters would still be alive.” She shook her head slowly. “No, kindness is death. You have to choose if you are going to be kind or be alive.”

She gazed up at the ceiling as if she were praying to a deity. “So I decided in that moment I would never again hesitate to kill,” she said, “to steal, to torture, or to dismember. I would live the way the Mexican lived, without pity, without kindness, without compassion. I shot the man from New York in his head, and the bunny ran away, never to be seen again. I took his food, his boots, his backpack, and his clothes. I found a lighter in a side pocket of his backpack and built a fire. And then I cut his flesh from his bones and cooked it right where I shot him. Human flesh doesn’t taste like chicken, by the way. It’s sweet and stringy.”

I looked up from her feet to her face, disgusted. “That’s...horrible,” I said.

“You have no right to judge me, Persephone,” she replied without anger. “You have a right to choose to live, and if that means killing me, then I can respect that choice. Though, I have every right to make the same choice, don’t I? But judgement will not feed you or clothe you or build you a fire. It serves no purpose here. It’s wasted energy.” She stood up and handed the candle to Yakov, who took it in a bloody fist, his sulking gaze held to the floor. “You’re just another little bunny -- a clever one, I’ll give you that. And that’s helped you survive a bit longer than most of the other little bunnies that bring their weakness into this gloriously savage place. But sooner or later, the monsters will eat you and your little Kiki alive.” She tugged her pants up, which had settled beneath the fat around her waist. “When you failed to do as you were told, you forfeited Kiki to me. It’s the price you pay for weakness, and you could have paid much more dearly. You both could have. Look on the bright side. With me, Kiki will live much longer. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Please let me see her,” I said, sitting up on my knees with the blanket pulled around my shoulders. “Then you can kill me or whatever. I don’t care. Just let me have this one thing, please.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. Sourly, she said to Yakov, “Go get her. Let this little bunny say goodbye.”

A moment later, Yakov shoved Kiki into the room. She stumbled toward me as Shards peered at us, a disdainful look on her face as she watched the exchange of affection. Kiki was nude, as she always was. There was a bruise on her cheek, and Shards had shaved her head bald. Otherwise, she appeared healthy and unharmed.

“Per,” Kiki squeaked sadly.

“Kiki bear!” I sang desperately.

I threw my arms around her, pulling her into a hard embrace. Her arms dangled at her side. She had never quite grasped the concept of a hug but always graciously accepted them. I took the girl’s face between my palms and met her eyes intently.

“I am so, so sorry,” I stated earnestly. “I wish I could have saved you. I wish I could have been the mother you deserve. I wish I could have been--”

“Strong,” Shards interjected. “She wishes she wasn’t so pathetically weak. Mothers like her have dead daughters. You’ll be safe with me, Kiki.”

Kiki and I looked toward the monster. Kiki bared her teeth at the woman, which brought out a satisfied grin from Shards.

Kiki would forever know the distance I traveled to tell her I love her. Whatever happened to her, whatever hardships came her way, she would always have that. Small as this one thing was, it was all I had to give her, and I sacrificed myself to do it. My heart would always be hers now, and no one could ever take that from her. I pulled the girl hard against me again and closed my eyes, savoring the warmth of her body against my own. With the strength of my embrace, I hoped to leave this moment indelibly on her memory, as I had expected she’d never see me alive again.

“Luff,” Kiki whispered as my tears dripped onto her head. She nuzzled her cheek against my breast.

“I love you too, baby” I replied and kissed her bald, wet scalp.

“That’s enough. Put her back in her cage,” Shards said abruptly to Yakov.

When he pulled on Kiki’s shoulder, she sunk her teeth into his hand, leaving him with another wound upon it.

“Fucking bitch!” the man shouted. He lifted his hand to strike her but a warning glare from Shards made him lower it compliantly, like a dog about to be beat. He laid his arm under Kiki’s chin and dragged her away.

“You’ve got a fighter there,” Shards said to me. “I’ll make her stronger.”

“Luff!” Kiki called to me from somewhere in the cave.

I covered my mouth with both hands and closed my eyes tightly. “Luff,” I wept quietly on my knees.

Shards walked me out of the cave, and Yakov followed, carrying my clothes and belongings. At the entrance, she shoved me to the ground and Yakov threw my things on top of me. She stood there, a haughty smirk on her face and a thumb hooked under the strap of her rifle sling.

“Your little stunt with Kartago forced me to kill Yakturo. They’re going to want to know where I live so they can come take their revenge. I’m afraid I can’t let you leave here knowing how to find this place, Persephone.” She unslung her rifle. With one eye closed, she looked down the sight at me. “Any last words?”

I had expected this moment was coming, and I was at peace with the end. Truly, I wanted it. Shards was right. In the jungle, only the cruel and brutal have what it takes to survive, and it had been inevitable that I would be consumed by the monsters I’d fought against for so long. I stood up, my clothes and backpack scattered at my feet, and awaited the shot, unfazed by my pending death. Shards then tilted her head and peered at me with disappointment.

“I’m just fucking with you, Persephone,” she said bitterly and lowered the gun. “No, I want you to tell the Yakturo where to find me. Draw them a map to this location. Let them know exactly where it is.”

I spent a moment processing what I was just asked to do. My reply was: “If I do this, will you let Kiki come home?”

Shards jaw dropped. She strode over to me in three wide steps, her glaring eyes baring down on me. “She is home, you stupid bitch,” the woman hissed. I flinched as a speck of spit landed on my nose. “Do I have to explain everything to you? I’m letting you leave here alive. Eventually, Kartago and his warriors will be a part of my army. You help me do this, and I’ll allow you to pay the tribute to me. Then, you keep your precious city.”

I’d like to say I hesitated to agree to send the Yakturo to this terrible fate, but I don’t recall considering that point. In that cave, Shards’ ruthlessness had steamrolled over me and changed everything I thought about myself, my world, and my future. The nod I gave her wasn’t just agreeable. It was determined.

As Shards and Yakov retreated back into the cave, I dressed. She had filled my backpack with food and a new flashlight. I walked downhill to the pile of bones and followed the ravine south, hacking my way back through the jungle toward the mighty Amazon, over the course of a few days.

I was about two days away from the river when I found Thomas coming north. He would forever be by my side, for better or worse, whether I asked for it or not. This unwavering loyalty had always set for me a standard for goodness so unattainable that its warmth frightened me. But walking down from Shards’ lair I felt larger -- larger than Thomas, larger than this whole fucking jungle. And none of it frightened me anymore. I was free to love without restraint. I was free to do anything I wanted, really.

Classically, we ran into each other’s arms.

“Thank god you’re alive,” he said pulling me hard against him. He then leaned back to look at me. I think he saw something in my gaze he didn’t recognize. “Are you okay?”

I nodded.

“I wasn’t sure I would find you. Did you find Kiki?”

“Yeah. We can’t get her back, but I also know Shards won’t let any harm come to her. She’ll be okay for now.”

“Oh, that’s great to hear,” he said, relieved. “We need to get back to the city. We’re going to be late moving out of the canyon, but I have some things to trade at Thor’s. We can buy some time while we scout for our new place to settle a while. I think to the west is a--”

“We don’t need to leave.”

He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll have plenty of time to explain on trip home. Listen Thomas …” I paused and laid my hands on his pecks. “I want to get married and raise a family with you.” The proposal just fell off my tongue. Truly, nothing frightened me now.

He studied me, befuddled. “You’re serious?”

I nodded doubtlessly. “I am absolutely sure.”

He smiled wide. “Okay,” he said, mirroring my nod. “let’s get married.”

(To be continued…)