“They’ll drown!” Howard wailed.
“They’re completely relaxed, Howard,” Amanda explained. “Their bodies will naturally float. We can use them like rafts.”
As Amanda fought, Vegas tied the two bodies together and laid them in the river. He began deftly unbuttoning Cynthia’s shirt.
“What are you doing?” Howard asked, trembling.
“We need a sail, essay. Do you think this current is going to be strong enough to carry us?”
“Oh,” Howard said as Vegas pulled the garment off of the prone body. Cynthia’s breasts stuck out of the water like perfectly-frosted cupcakes.
“Are we ready?” Amanda called, decapitating a man.
“Si,” said Vegas.
“Let’s go, Howard,” Amanda yelled. Howard climbed aboard his wife’s inert body, followed in short order by Amanda herself. “Why are her knockers all over the place?”
“Sail,” Vegas explained.
“It’s a fucking river. There’s a current.”
Vegas shrugged and squeezed an unconscious nipple lewdly.
“You’re a rapist pig,” Amanda accused.
“Why don’t you just kick off?”
Amanda reached out a strong, muscular leg and pushed the raft away from the shore and into the heart of the current. Almost immediately, the group started traveling at speed. Behind them, they could hear the hoots and hollers of the angry tribesmen, deprived of their lunch or whatever it was they wanted. White women, probably.
The three sat in silence as they drifted through the too-silent jungle. The trees seemed to be watching them as they drifted by. Twice, Cynthia’s generous posterior got hung up on submerged tree branches and had to be shaken loose.
“Goddamn it,” Howard lamented. “Her ass was perfect. Perfect.”
“You can get it fixed,” Amanda suggested sarcastically. It was clear that Cynthia was no stranger to the surgical knife.
“She’s bleeding!” Howard exclaimed. Amanda looked behind the boat. Sure enough, there was a thin trail of blood atop the water behind them. Following them closely, incensed by the smell and flavor of plasma was the school of killer fish.
“That’s not good,” Amanda said, as the fish started to bite the dangling legs of Cynthia.
“Why doesn’t that wake her up?” Howard asked. Everyone puzzled over that for a while. This was a woman who complained to no end about a mosquito bite. She was not the kind to allow a fish to tear her apart without so much as a cry of annoyance. Amanda and Howard turned to look at Cynthia’s face, only to find that they couldn’t because Vegas was sitting on it. The brown man blushed, but made no effort to pull up his pants.
“What are you doing?!” Howard demanded.
“Hold on,” Vegas instructed, concentrating hard.
“Are you helping her?”
“Si!”
“How is that helping?”
“Si! Si! Si!” Vegas cried out, coming to orgasm on the bare breasts of their raft.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Howard cried, leaping toward Vegas and slapping at him with his flabby arms. “You killed her, you bastard! With your ass!”
“Back off, vendajo,” Vegas warned. “I’ll cut you.”
“Um, guys,” Amanda said. “I think we have more pressing things to worry about.”
She pointed. Ahead of them lay an immense waterfall that they were about to go over. There was no time to avoid it.
Howard grabbed hold of his asphyxiated wife’s semen-covered breasts and screamed as the whole motley crew went over the side into the unknown.
Chapter 8
The police woman tapped her pen against the desk. “Really?”
Cliff looked back at her, his eyes a little bloodshot, his hair clearly mussed. His long, ragged fingernails were scratching what appeared to be a number of infected bites on his arm.
“Really,” he said. “That’s what they said happened, anyway. I was unconscious.”
The police woman looked over her shoulder, smirking at her partner. As far as she could tell, this was the most coked-out man she’d seen in years on the job.
“You do realize you said Howard died, right? And after that he was back, riding the naked people raft?”
Cliff bit at his nails. “Yes. I know how it sounds, but I’m just telling you what happened. Or what they said, happened, anyway. I was fishing when Howard died the first time. So I’m just taking their word for it.”
She looked back at him, giving him her fiercest and most threatening look. Usually, this was a look that would break the spirits of many liars. They would crumble before her fierce stare like a badly constructed sandcastle. But not this one. Not this Cliff Parker bozo.
“It’s just that, generally, when people die, they stay that way.”
Cliff leaned forwards, his palms facing the ceiling in an insipid, pleading gesture. “I know how this all sounds, but you’ve gotta believe me! You weren’t there. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. That was no ordinary jungle.” After a pause for dramatic effect, he repeated the whole thing. “You weren’t there. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. That was no ordinary jungle.”
She tilted her head, smirking. “You’ve told us that quite a few times, Mr. Parker. But it sounds like you were taking a lot on faith. The cannibal fish you didn’t see--”
“They weren’t cannibals, they were piranhas.”
“--the mysterious first death of Howard, who bounced right back; the fact that while you were unconscious, they rode you over a waterfall.” She crossed her arms. “If you were in my seat, what would you think?”
Cliff broke into nervous laughter. “I would think, ‘This guy is loonier than a hyena with catnip! The light might be on inside, but nobody’s home! Don’t you see? I know how it sounds. But I also know what happened.”
Morgan jerked to her feet, slamming her fist down on the table. She shouted, “You don’t know what happened, Cliff! You don’t know! Now, either you are lying to me, or they were lying to you! And I need to know which it was so I can make sense of what the hell happened! I need to know where all those goddamned bodies came from!”
Cliff said, “So, what do you want me to do, then?”
She rolled her nails along the top of the table. “I want you to tell me what YOU saw when you woke back up. Don’t tell me what they said was really there. . . tell me what you actually saw.”
Cliff swallowed. “Well, we were in the Pacona village--”
“Only what you saw.”
Cliff swallowed again. “Okay. We were in the middle of a bunch of these strange tents, but I didn’t see anybody there. . . nobody but Vegas, Howard, Cynthia and Amanda.”
“And what was happening?” she said.
“Vegas was using Cynthia’s unconscious hand to get himself off. Meanwhile, Howard was screaming, tied to a stake. There was a pile of wood underneath him, like he was about to be roasted.
“But he wasn’t roasted, was he, Cliff?”
“No. No, he was just standing there, naked as a jaybird, some crazy fish drawn on his chest in what looked like finger paint or something. Amanda was naked, writhing in the dirt beside the campfire. Like she was doing it.”
“But you didn’t see her doing anyone, did you, Cliff?”
Cliff once again swallowed. “No. It was just her.”
Deputy Morgan jumped to her feet again. “Why the hell were you even out there? What were you looking for?”
“Escape! I was looking to escape. My life at home was crazy.”
The police woman rolled her eyes. “I’ll say. You murdered your whole family right before you disappeared.”
“No,” Cliff said in an even voice. “They were ran over by a car. In Kansas.”
“No. They were in their beds, each one suffocated.”
“No, they weren’t,” Cliff continued. “Anyway, that’s why we all went. To get away from reality for a while.”
“Well, it looks like you succeeded, Mr. Parker. You are now pretty fucking far away from reality. I�
��m recommending you be placed in Butler Asylum until a trained professional can see what kind of butterflies are in that bonnet of yours.”
As the woman turned and walked toward the door, Cliff said, “I’m not crazy. If you want to see what happened, go look. All the bodies are still there, out in the South American Jungle.”
She glanced back at him in disbelief. “You weren’t IN South America, Mr. Parker. You’ve never been out of Indiana in your life. You were in South Bend. That’s where we found you and the rest.”
As Cliff’s mouth dropped open, tears hovering in his eyes, she stepped closer to him again. “When we found you, you weren’t even ten miles from your house.”
Chapter 9
Crashing into the water below, the unconscious bodies buoyed up to the surface. Howard and Vegas were each holding tight to one of Cynthia’s boobs, while Amanda was grasping Cliff’s belt as if it could save her life. Maybe it could.
They went over a second set of waterfalls, and this time the human raft came apart. Howard and Vegas were bobbing ahead, Amanda holding Cliff by his robe and dragging him toward the shore. Cynthia was still asleep, the little shirt sail keeping her moving at a good clip.
Finally, they reached the shore of the river. Amanda dragged Cliff’s tall body out of the water and began trying to wake him. She poured water on his face, which did nothing.
Vegas and Howard were gasping for breath and dripping all over the place. Cynthia drifted closer, her head bumping against the shore.
“Man, she is out cold,” Howard said, reaching down and grabbing her hands. He lifted her from the water. It was quite easy; she was much lighter than he’d remembered.
This was because the furry piranhas had eaten her out. The front side of her body was all that was left, her organs and bones having been devoured like she was an all-you-can-eat buffet on a Friday night.
The most surprising part was that the fish were still underneath, as if they’d been steering her this whole time. The furry piranhas poured out of the water, swarming toward Howard.
“Run!” he shouted, his chubby legs pumping furiously as he barreled into the jungle. Amanda, knowing there were too many fish to ninja them to death, slung Cliff over her shoulder and followed. Vegas had started running earlier because he stole Cliff’s wallet while they were using him for a raft. He figured his best chance was to get away alone; these white people were just going to slow him down, and would all be eaten by the end of it anyway. As far as he could tell, he was the main character: he had lost a loved relative on the trip, and he was clearly the best anti-hero. And Amanda Handy was totally into him before she regained consciousness.
The bouncing wave of piranhas was moving through the forest almost as fast as the humans were, eating its way through trees and shrubs and gazelles. Howard was on the verge of having a heart attack, having already sprinted ten or eleven feet, despite his bad back. He was starting to think he would never make it.
That’s when he saw teepees ahead. “A tribe,” he thought. “If I can just reach the tribe, they’ll protect us from the fish!” He assumed that, since they had traveled pretty far down the river, this was probably a different tribe from the one who they were trying to escape from.
Vegas was looking back over his shoulder, not too worried about what was ahead. After all, the piranhas and the Americans were behind him. That’s why he didn’t see the tall Pacona until he ran into the guy, chest to chest. The other guy didn’t even move. Vegas fell onto his ass, looking up with fear-filled eyes.
Amanda had also not noticed the teepees because she had been approaching them from a shitty angle where you couldn’t see any of them. It was dumb luck. Really dumb. It was retarded luck.
She rushed into the camp, tripping over a log, and dropped Cliff to the ground. She fell right on top of him somehow, looking down into his unconscious face, thinking about how handsome he was. Not for long, though, because she was grabbed by her two arms and lifted to her feet.
“Let go of me, you stupid natives!” she shouted, way beyond any concern for being PC. “I’ll report you shitstains to the American Embassy, and they’ll put you away until--”
She stopped as she saw a figure emerge from the crowd of Paconas. Although the hood was up, she could tell this was no normal human being. Oh, no. This was something altogether different.
As it stepped closer, she saw the scaley mouth beneath the hood, jagged teeth inside of it. With fin-like hands, it reached up and pushed its hood back, revealing the head of a piranha, only covered in a dense, curly gray hair, like an old man’s afro.
The beast looked at the scene around it. Howard was still running for his life, still carrying the remaining layer of his wife, and had now made it nearly twenty feet. It would be a matter of minutes before he arrived in the village. Cliff was still out cold. Vegas was being ignored because he looked like all the natives. They couldn’t really tell him apart.
That’s when the piranha man spoke. “When the fat man arrives, cook him. Use the seasoning salts and a little of that chipotle. Keep his head as an offering to our pagan gods. You can discard whatever the fuck that thing is that he is carrying. As for the woman, it is time for me to pass the seed of the piranha people into a white woman, so my descendents can be legal residents of the United States.”
“Really?” said Vegas, trying to blend in. “You’re going to just send her back to America? It’s not every day our pagan gods just drops a white woman into the camp! Shouldn’t everybody get a turn?”
The fish looked at him somberly. “As you should know, making love is a spiritual act, and it is about transmitting the essence of life into the womb of a woman. I will not have my mate degraded in such a way. She’s not some kind of trashy ho. If you want one of those, you’re out of luck.”
Howard arrived in the clearing, his eyes closed, his face red enough to remind one of a glass of Tahitian Treat. He stopped and stood panting, hands upon his knees, sweat dripping in large globs into the mud. He still hadn’t looked up.
The fish waited upwards of a minute for Howard to stand up and look around before he delivered the line he’d been waiting to use.
“Hello, dinner. We were just talking about you.”
Chapter 10
A howl of pain tore through the jungle as a jagged blade fashioned from a crude piece of stone tore the jugular clean out of the Pacona leader. The fish man fell to the earth, its death throes squirting blood all over the ground, as if to pay homage to a pagan god. If that god existed, it would have been pleased.
“All hail, Pinkadek, our new leader!” cried one of the Paconas in their primitive language.
“What’s going on?” Howard demanded, his second and third chins quivering.
“I have succeeded our previous leader,” Pinkadek explained. “Because I killed him.”
“That’s barbaric!” Amanda hollered. Pinkadek just laughed. He extended a scaly finger towards Howard. Realizing he was about to be eaten, the fat man’s eyes widened. He instantly turned on his heel and fled. He very nearly made it, but after less than a step, his skull had been split open like a banana by one of the Pacona’s battle axes. Howard was dead, which meant that Amanda was all by herself, except for Cliff Parker.
The Paconas bound Cliff and tied him to a tree, just in case he regained his faculties. Then, all at once, the Paconas disrobed. Amanda screamed. Their junk was huge and she knew she was going to get banged with it. Pinkadek walked up to the bound Handy and stood in front of her, scaly dick at attention.
“Get that fish stick away from me!” Amanda shouted. Pinkadek grinned, his long incisors gleaming in the moonlight. Pinkadek opened some flaps on either side of his face and a green gas was released. Amanda couldn’t help but breathe it in. Against all odds, it smelled good.
Suddenly, Amanda relaxed. Pinkadek smiled handsomely and beckoned Amanda forward. She stood shakily. She could feel her vulva pulsing, like a freshly born star. Her dampness dripped down her legs. She rent at her clothing
, tearing it off. She could not get out of her clothes quick enough. It was like she was in college again. At Arizona State.
Instinctively, Amanda lay down at the feet of the Pacona leader and spread her legs wide, as if she was sitting in front of her gynecologist and not an amphibian Indian. Pinkadek dropped to his knees and slid into her. Deep. Amanda called out. Her eyes rolled back in her head in rapture. She grabbed at the groundcover and squeezed the leaves. She felt Pinkadek explode in her. As his fish sperm burrowed itself into her, she couldn’t help but being a little disappointed. He hadn’t lasted a full minute. She grasped at his hips and tried to pump them for him; she wasn’t finished. He pushed her hands away and climbed off of her, giving her a knowing smile.
When he stood, Pinkadek gestured to the sight behind him. Amanda looked. The entire Pacona tribe had gotten in line and all of them wanted her. Tears gushed from her eyes. She gave a little prayer of thanks to their Pagan god.
A second Pacona dropped down onto her. She felt it fumble around. It must have been a virgin.
“It’s okay, baby,” Amanda cooed. “Let me help you.” She guided its fish dick into her and ten seconds later felt gallons of pent up semen spraying into her, like the high-pressure hose at a coin-op car wash. She moaned with pleasure. This was like getting peed in.
“Next!” Amanda called.
Lucky number three stood above her and started his descent. She arched her hips up to meet him halfway. His knees didn’t even hit the ground before he started ejaculating. Amanda’s vagina, which could hold at least a quart, started to overflow. The chagrined Pacona climbed off and another took his place. This one was more seasoned in the ways of love. He stuck it in a swished it around. She felt the pressure of the liquid ebb and flow, as if her lady parts were a stock pot full of fish stew. She clutched his scaly buttocks and thrust into him. The feeling of the other men's semen was too much and the Pacona lost it. He pumped into her furiously.
Amanda was hooked. She needed more.
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