Double Feature

by Vernon D Burns

  “Do it,” Fidel urged.

  Vegas didn’t even respond verbally, opting, instead, for a shaking of his brown head. They stayed there looking at one another for a long while, only moving to scratch itches. It was torture and they both knew it.

  After thirteen minutes, Vegas moved back toward his pendajo. “So what do you think this means?”

  Fidel gave him a long hard look, as if he was appraising him. Eventually, he sighed. This wasn’t the place to have such a fight. They had to be allies. No dead Jew was going to help them in the jungle.

  “It says right here,” Fidel said, pointing at the crude words the entrails spelled out. “They want fifty thousand dollars in unmarked American currency or they’re going to take the woman.”

  “Which woman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope it’s the rich bitch,” Vegas stated.

  Fidel disagreed, but he didn’t say anything. He had carefully calculated and determined that Mrs. Bush was two hundred percent more likely to make love to him in the South American jungle. His estimates were based on the fact that she’d already fucked him the night before, though she’d been able to convince her stupid, fat husband that it had been a dream. The other one, the whore, was obviously attracted to Cliff Parker. He knew he couldn’t compete with such a specimen. Cliff Parker had it all.

  Including the whore vagina, Fidel thought bitterly. She was an attractive whore.

  Amanda Handy was sitting by herself on the river bank, wishing she was with Cliff, but not allowing herself the pleasure. It was about time she exercised a little restraint. Amanda sat there on the bank until she got her period. She’d been waiting for it all day and it had finally come. With some relief, she began to remove her pants in order to get to her soiled underpants before they stained.

  She didn’t notice Howard Bush hiding in the bushes a few feet away, busily wanking with the sunscreen. You’d think she’d have heard the wet slap of his chunky paw against his belly, but she didn’t. Instead, she tended to her bloody underpants. Very quickly, her work clouded the water. She moved farther out into the river where the water was clean again. Howard groaned. He was very close to orgasm, but he couldn’t see her butt anymore!

  As silently as he could, Howard waded out into the water, his dick in one hand, the sunscreen in the other. His eyes stayed locked on the twin globes attached perfectly to her lower back, above her legs.

  Amanda reached down and found a rock to beat her underwear against. She felt like an Amazon goddess, menstruating in a river, bare-assed, washing her clothes the old fashioned way. She felt alive and, much to her pleasant surprise, didn’t even notice that she’d stopped thinking about Cliff. She worked busily and eventually cleaned her underwear.

  Once they were clean, she started to put them back on, but found that she was getting knocked off balance by the flow of the river.

  Damn, she thought. I can beat this!

  She focused her will on being stronger than the river and was able to do it. Carefully, she lifted one leg into her panties and pushed her foot through the leg hole. Pay dirt!

  “Shit!” Howard shouted quietly, dismayed that the curvy woman was putting her clothes back on when he hadn’t yet sent his little soldiers to the briny deep. He held his breath and dropped beneath the surface of the water, resurfacing with a sizable stone. With a dexterity you wouldn’t expect, Howard Bush flung the rock toward Amanda.

  Instead of splashing next to her and frightening her into stumbling off balance, the rock connected with her pretty head, immediately concussing her. She fell over like a rock and began floating down the river.

  “Shit!” Howard said. He stuffed the sunscreen into his pocket and took off after her, stumbling over river debris as he walked. He was salivating at the thought of what he would be rewarded with if he caught her unconscious form before she drowned or was dragged out to sea: a completely willing and docile Amanda Handy!

  “Should we say anything about the bird?” Vegas asked.

  Fidel didn’t answer; his gaze was locked on a commotion in the water- what looked like a fat man with a tiny erection chasing a body down the river.

  “Let’s vamos,” he instructed. And, with that, the two Mexicans took off after Amanda Handy, too.

  “What are we doing?” Vegas asked.

  “Just get the body!”

  “What body?” Vegas hadn’t seen what Fidel had seen in the river. As such, he was confused.

  “The whore!”

  “Where?”

  “In the river,” Fidel explained.

  “Gotcha,” Vegas replied, now understanding what they were racing after.

  Fidel withdrew his weapon and stopped running. He watched as Vegas leapt into the river and grabbed onto Amanda’s lifeless form. Howard stopped his pursuit, panting and trying to wrangle his manhood back into his pants. Fidel took aim and fired a round into the side of Howard’s head, sending brain matter into the water. He smiled inside, satisfied.

  But his satisfaction was short-lived. He saw a disturbance under the surface of the water from where the fat man and the whore had come.

  “Vegas! Pirahnas!” Fidel shouted and discharged his weapon uselessly into the oncoming swarm. Vegas’s eyes widened as he realized what was happening. He pulled the woman by her hair toward the shore. If he didn’t make it there really soon, he’d be dead!

  Chapter 6

  Cliff Parker was wrapped in a very masculine robe as he sat on a small promontory, casting his rod once again, the fishing twine hissing as it unspooled rapidly. He sat there for a bit, tucking his pipe between his lips and smoking as he waited for a tug. Finally, the tug came.

  With a quick jerk of his rod, Cliff began reeling in a fish that was struggling against him quite valiantly. It was no match for the strength of his thick hands, and soon he was looking down at a strange little jungle fish that was flopping around on the ground.

  “Well, you’re an odd little creature, aren’t you?” he said good-naturedly. Suddenly, a thought crossed his mind. Instead of taking the fish and putting it in his bucket, he cast it out again, wondering if he could get one of those strange piranhas that had struck so much fear into the guides.

  “C’mon, you little devils,” he said, feeling the jungle fish struggling against the line. Perhaps it knew that its life depended on escaping. Or perhaps it had no idea and was just tugging about randomly. That was probably it, because fish are supposed to be pretty stupid.

  Fidel fired round after round into the water, the evil school swarming closer and beginning to circle around him. He was pretty much fucked, and he didn’t need anybody to remind him: the thought was repeating itself like a mantra in his head. I’m fucked. I’m fucked. I’m fucked.

  Vegas, meanwhile, Dragged Amanda onto the shore. Her clothes were wet, and they clung to her body like a second skin. He stared down at the luscious white woman, his thoughts lecherous.

  Fidel, realizing he only had one more bullet, shook his head. “You fish can go to hell, you won’t get me alive.” With that, he tucked the barrel between his lips and pulled the trigger. The fish didn’t mind. Human flesh, after all, tastes just as good dead as it does alive.

  “Come to papa, mamacita,” Vegas said, licking his lips.

  Amanda Handy began moaning, shaking her head. It felt like the worst hangover of her life was happening at that moment. Like all of the worst hangovers, there was a strange-looking guy staring at her as her eyes opened.

  Unlike usual, she watched as dozens of fish were flipping across the grass toward him, unbeknownst to Vegas. As he exposed his love weapon, clearly intent on assaulting her with it, she knew a whole pissed off pack of furry fish were about to catch him off guard.

  Pushing her headache away, Amanda grabbed the Ecuadorian by his collar, placed her foot against his chest, and tossed him further into the jungle. Rolling backwards, she rose to her feet and watched the fish as they flipped through the grass, ever closer, little razor-sharp teeth cli
cking against one another. The thick, mottled fur that adorned their bodies made them look like a bunch of . . . well, nothing that made sense, that’s for sure. They looked like a bunch of furry fucking fish that were making their way across the land. They had already devoured everything alive within the water, and their hunger was now urging them onward to devour human flesh.

  Sweat dripped from Cliff’s chin as he struggled with the fishing rod, hoping it didn’t break. It was already bending dangerously as he tried to reel in whatever was on the end of his line. “Come to papa, you dirty little fish!” he said.

  Finally, he reeled it in further. Hanging there and struggling against the wire was a four or five-inch fish covered in bushy grey fur.

  He stared at it, still finding it hard to believe his eyes. Everything he understood about science was thrown into question by this hateful creature. Its solid white pupil seemed filled with hatred and the need to devour. It looked like a really angry toupee.

  Just then, he heard a gun fire further down the river. Dropping the fishing pole into the water, Cliff jumped to his feet and rushed to the very edge of the promontory. Looking further down, he saw one of their guides standing in the water, firing down into the water, as the other guide swam through the water and pushed Amanda Handy’s unconscious body out of the water and onto the shore. Howard’s rotund body was bobbing along, blood leaking from the head.

  Without reflecting as long as would have been advisable, Cliff dove from the cliff into the water and began furiously swimming toward the crazy shit that was happening. He didn’t care about anything in that moment other than rescuing that mysterious beauty, Amanda.

  He felt dozens of little teeth clamp down on his bicep, trying to eat him. Grunting with pain, he forced that pain down with pure determination. His well-muscled arms cut through the water like the blades of a motor boat, his noble form moving rapidly toward Amanda where she lay on the shore, Vegas sliding his pants down as he crouched over her. A bunch of toupees seemed to be bouncing ever closer to the little brown guide.

  Cliff dragged himself from the water, his robe left far behind, his chiseled torso glistening in the sunlight. He really wished he weren’t wearing Batman underwear, and now wished he’d just put on some normal clothes instead of wearing that goddamn robe while he was fishing. It was an entirely impractical article of clothing in the best of times; why had he even cleared up the space to bring it along into the jungle? A little battery-powered fan would’ve been more practical, that’s for sure. Or even a few extra issues of Men’s Health in case he grew bored.

  Then, Cliff saw something that really caught him off guard. In one deft movement, Amanda grasped the guide and pitched him completely over her into the jungle. As part of the same fluid movement, she somersaulted further away, coming to her feet and pulling out two knives.

  One of the piranhas chose this moment to make its move, flipping right toward her face. With a quick slice, Amanda cut the fish perfectly in half, bisecting it down the middle. Another fish then attacked and got a taste of the same medicine. Moving fiercely forward, her arms faster than a martial artist on cocaine, Amanda was bisecting fish left and right. A few of them made it past her blades and bit the fabric of her shirt, tearing parts of it away. Finally, though, Amanda stood panting, surrounded by blood and furry pieces of fish.

  That’s when Cliff knew for certain there was something Amanda wasn’t telling him, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it. She was truly an amazing woman, and he thought that it would just take the right man to break through the wall of ice that surrounded her emotions.

  Vegas came running out of the bushes, his pants back on, and he looked at the chaos surrounding Amanda. With his lip quivering, he said, “What are you doing out here? Scalping Indians?”

  Amanda walked over to the water, rinsing fish blood from her arms. “If you ever try to rape me again, I’m just going to let the furry piranhas eat you,” she said, anger in her voice. Vegas recognized the seriousness of her tone, and bowed his head in shame.

  Just then, Cynthia Bush rushed from the woods, running toward them in impractical designer high heels. “The Paconas! The Paconas! They’re coming for us!”

  Chapter 7

  Cliff Parker slapped the bitch. She was hysterical.

  “What’s wrong, damnit?” Cliff Parker demanded.

  “The fish!”

  “What fish?”

  “Those fish! The fuzzy ones! I thought they were cute, but then they tried to kill me!”

  Cliff Parker slapped the bitch again, this time with feeling. She needed to snap out of her hysterics. This was no way to act in a jungle.

  “Cliff!” Amanda called. “Stop slapping her!”

  Cliff checked himself. He’d been, unconsciously, slapping the busty woman repeatedly. In fact, she was no longer conscious and there was blood trailing from the corner of her mouth. At some point, Cliff had started slapping her with his fist. He held the woman at arm’s length and looked at her. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Your eyes went all vacant and you started beating my wife!” Screeched Howard, who, up to that point, had been standing there silently, bleeding.

  “I’m sorry, Howard,” Cliff said. “It’s like I just slipped away. I was trying to slap some sense into your wife and lost my own. This world is a strange place. Things aren’t always what they seem. It’s like that television show, Dark Shadows.”

  “I think you mean the Twilight Zone.” Someone said with a vaguely Brazilian accent.

  “Do I? I mean the show with Rod Sterling.”

  “Yeah, that’s the Twilight Zone,” Howard mused.

  “I thought the Twilight Zone had that little Negro boy.”

  “No, that was All in the Family.”

  “Oh, okay. Twilight Zone, then,” Cliff said, satisfied. “It’s like that. We all came here just to get away. To have a little break from reality. But it seems to me that we’ve experienced a break in reality. Things are not as they seem. Up is down; left is right. I don’t know what to think anymore. I feel like myself, but this situation doesn’t seem to follow any kind of linear logic. We’re standing here and Amanda is swinging knives at nothing at all, while Cynthia is hysterical and now unconscious. How did she get that way?”

  “You punched her!” interjected Howard Bush.

  “Yeah,” said Cliff. “But that doesn’t explain the hysterics or Amanda’s attractive, but unusual behavior.”

  “It’s the fish,” Amanda said. “Cliff, it’s the fish.” She pointed to the hairy chunks of flesh at their feet.

  “Right, Amanda,” Cliff soothed. “The fish.”

  “Can you not see the fish that are right fucking there?” Vegas asked menacingly.

  “What fish?”

  Amanda reached down and picked up one of the flayed corpses. “This fish, Cliff.”

  Cliff looked at her like she had lost what was left of her pretty mind.

  “It’s the trauma,” Vegas explained, easing the fish out of Amanda’s hand. “He cannot see them.”

  “You mean he can’t see what’s right there in front of him?” Howard demanded.

  “No,” Vegas said. “See, he hasn’t said as much, but he’s very much in love with Amanda here. The thought of she and I making love on the beach of this river was too much for him. His brain fried.”

  “Thanks for that,” Amanda quipped, crossing her arms in irritation. Cliff stared into the distance, glassy-eyed.

  “Who’s going to protect us?” Howard asked, his voice full of fear.

  “Don’t worry,” Amanda said. “You’ll be fine, Howard. Me and ol’ Dr. Date Rape here will keep you safe until Cliff comes to his senses. He can’t ignore those fish forever.”

  “What fish?”

  Everyone ignored Cliff Parker.

  “What do we do about the fish?” Howard asked. “They can very clearly get out of the water and walk!”

  “I feel confident that they can’t travel more than very short distances.”


  “What about the Paconas?”

  “I said, ‘I feel confident that they can’t travel more than very short distances.’”

  “No! Not the paronas! The Paconas!”

  “The what?” Amanda Handy asked, confused.

  “Them,” said Cliff, nodding his head in the general direction of roughly twenty dark-skinned figures.

  Amanda turned her head and looked at what Cliff had nodded at.

  “Oh, shit,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, Amanda. I’ll handle this,” said Cliff.

  “Stay back, essay,” Vegas advised cooly.

  “They’re just men,” Cliff said. “Well, almost. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Cliff stepped toward the group, eyeing the bones in their noses and the tattoos on their faces.

  “They have fish painted on their chests,” Amanda murmured.

  “What?” Cliff asked, looking at their chests as if there was nothing painted on them at all.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Amanda exasperated.

  “We come in peace,” Cliff said. The leader of the aborigines stepped forward and rammed the thick plate of his skull directly into Cliff’s nose. Blood flew all around, causing the fish corpses to twitch and growl. Cliff clutched his nose and fell to the ground. Vegas’s dick swelled at the thought of being the only man left alone with the women.

  “Let’s amscray, amigas,” he said to Amanda and the unconscious Cynthia.

  “Yes, let’s,” Amanda said. She dove forward and somersaulted across the muddy ground, a good deal of grime collecting in her luscious, full-bodied hair. She deflected a spear jab from the leader of the Indians and delivered a swift kick to his chin. He fell backward like a bowling pin, taking out several others with him. Amanda pulled a butterfly knife out of her brassiere and flipped it open, cutting several of the tribesmen. “Take that, motherfuckers! Vegas, throw Cliff and the bimbo in the river!”