“They always kill the messenger.”
The man started speaking, and we both listened intently, though only Alessandra could understand, as I imagined the unusual language coming from his mouth was Chalupan. He went on, and his voice sounded oddly deep and raspy as though he were purposely trying to disguise his identity—kind of like Christian Bale did when he played Batman. I had heard Lars’s voice the day before, but, honestly, I couldn’t be sure if it was actually him.
“Well? What’s our loin cloth clad man saying?” I asked.
“He’s about to perfume something called the ceremony of womanhood, which will transform one of the village girls into a woman.”
“That sounds a little creepy.”
“I agree.”
He spoke another phrase, then the minions parted, and a young woman wearing an ornate ceremonial robe and mask was led out onto the stage and laid down on the altar. At that point, the minions tied her arms and legs into place then pulled the robe aside in order to expose the rather buxom girl’s naked body. Next to be removed was the mask, and I instantly recognized the girl, as I’d met her only two days ago. Holy shit! It was Bachué!
“You see what I see?” I asked Alessandra.
“Yeah,” she responded with anxiousness in her voice.
“I think it’s pretty clear what the ceremony of womanhood is, so I guess that slab really is a sex altar.”
“Yeah, but why isn’t she struggling? This can’t be consensual,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure she’s drugged—likely with Sexstasy.”
“We can’t just stand here and watch.”
“Agreed, but we need to proceed with caution, as we still don’t quite understand what we’re up against. Are those minions a bunch of fucking assholes in costumes or are they supernatural beings? I’ve already tried shooting them, so this is going to be particularly difficult—to say the least.”
The loincloth-clad man placed his scepter in a little holder then approached the altar and gazed at the girl, who, oddly looked up at him without even the slightest show of concern. He then stepped between her legs and ran his hands up and down her thighs, and she finally stirred and gazed up and appeared to be frightened at the sight of the strangely dressed man. The drummers picked up their pace, and, as the beating intensified, so too did the odd sexual tension. Meanwhile, the creep in the loin cloth continued his assault by moving his hands farther up her body to her breasts, where he ran his fingertips over her nipples until they sprang to life. Now, the girl was slightly more aware and started to struggle and pull at the ropes that held her down in her spread eagle pose. This apparently pleased the man in charge, as he decided to pull down his loin cloth and release his boner, which snapped to attention with the quick precision of a switchblade knife.
“Sweet Jesus! He’s about to penetrate! We’ve got to stop this,” I said.
I looked around the chamber and tried to figure out how I might intercede without also inciting a massive reprisal from the man in charge, his minions, or perhaps even the crowd of onlookers. From the balcony, I didn’t have a lot of options other than my gun, so I pulled it out took aim.
“Wait! Do you think that’s a good idea? There are a lot of innocents in the room.”
“I’ll be careful, and I promise not to do anything but wing King Chalupa’s penis—or should I say Lars’s penis?”
“Not funny.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“No, now stop fucking around and do whatever you’re going to do.”
This was a tricky situation anyway you sliced it, as the silenced pistol was quieter than a normal pistol, but it was by no means silent. That meant that there was a good chance that the moment I fired, we might end up in a shitload of trouble. We were on their turf, after all, and we were outnumbered about twenty to one, and that was only counting the evil minions. The villagers increased that figure tenfold, but I had no idea how suggestible they would be in their current drug induced state.
I continued to watch and look for my opening as King Chalupa, or whoever the fuck he was, reached down and began running his hands over Bachué’s privates, obviously to prepare her for penetration. My window of opportunity to maintain the sanctity of her lady business was closing, and I needed to act fast, but what the fuck was I going to shoot? King Chalupa’s penis or perhaps just one of his arms? It was tricky, as he was a little over fifty feet away, but there wasn’t any wind or outside force to contend with other than my own emotional state. Still, shooting him would be a very obvious giveaway of our presence as well as our location, so I therefore decided to shoot the nearest minion in the chest, in the hope that it would create a shitload of confusion and put a halt to the festivities.
King Chalupa the opportunistic rapist made a final announcement to the crowd that I didn’t really need translated, as it was obvious what he was about to do, so I took aim, let out half a breath, and squeezed the trigger. The pistol coughed, and the bullet impacted the unlucky minion standing about four feet to the right of King Chalupa, and the minion cried out in the same horrible scream and fell to the floor. It instantly drew everyone’s attention, including Chalupa, and, with his sexual assault temporarily on hold, he turned and approached the downed minion. They exchanged some kind of brief conversation, then, a second later, Chalupa said something to the crowd, and everyone in the room turned to look up at us. Oh shit! That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, so now I needed to come up with some kind of escape plan. As I gazed nervously down at the crowd, a memory of my special operations training came to mind—namely the theory, that when faced with superior numbers, a smaller force could sometimes beat back a larger force with extreme violence of action. It had been used by special operations units for many years, and there was one famous incident in particular in the first Iraq war when Andy McNab and the rest of his British SAS unit were reported to have fought off a larger Iraqi contingent. Unfortunately for them, things got complicated soon thereafter when only one of the eight men managed to escape while three were killed and four were captured, including McNab, and they were held prisoner for a time before being returned to Britain. Obviously, Alessandra and I were facing a very different situation at the moment, but what was life without a few challenges.
“Freeze, rapist, or I’ll blow your fucking cock off—and not with my mouth, obviously,” I yelled.
King Chalupa said something to his minions, then the entirety of his team headed in towards the hallway that would take them to the stairs—and eventually us. Meanwhile, down below, a sense of panic ensued amongst the crowd of villagers, and they began scrambling towards the exit.
“Oh shit! I guess we now need to find another way down to the main floor.”
I looked around the space and quickly concluded that we were very much fucked, and, to make matters worse, the first of Chalupa’s minions arrived at the other end of the balcony. Our situation was growing more dire with each passing second, and, as panic mode set in, I saw something nearby that gave me an idea.
“Did you see Star Wars?” I asked.
“Which one?”
“The first one.”
“The Phantom Menace?”
“No, A new Hope—the real first one.”
“Yeah—what about it?”
“Well, I’m going to need you to wrap your legs around me and hold on for dear life, because we’re going to escape the same way Luke Sywalker and Princess Leia did in that famous scene.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Yeah, do you see those?” I said, pointing at the long, red silk ribbons that were strung from the center of ceiling and over to the nearby columns.
“Oh, so we’re going to use one of them like a rope swing to get down to the lower floor.”
“Exactly!”
“Good, let’s do this, fucker!” she said.
I was surprised at her enthusiasm and, in truth, a little turned on, but before enacting our escape attempt, I hazarded a glance to check
on our antagonists. The half-man, half-beast demon assholes were close, so I fired off a quick round and hit the closest one square in the chest. He, or should I say it, screamed and dropped to the ground and was temporarily disabled, and its distress thankfully slowed the progress of its peers. That gave me the break to free the silken banner and loop it around my hands before stepping out onto the other side of the railing. Alessandra climbed out after me and put her arms around me then inexplicably kissed me.
“For luck,” she said, in a perfect reenactment of the famous Star Wars scene.
I smiled and felt my manhood rapidly swelling—as I was turned on by both the kiss and her knowledge of the movie.
“Feel free to sit on my boner for extra support,” I said.
I cast one last gaze down the balcony and saw that the minions were again on the move, so I fired several times to slow them down before letting go and swinging free. We began swooping towards the stage, and the silk thankfully held firm as our trajectory led us directly over the sex altar and a struggling Bachué. We reached the far wall then swung back to our starting point, where I felt a sharp scraping from the outstretched claws of one of the minions as it latched onto my leg. I kicked free of its grasp, and we swung down and crossed over Bachué yet again, but this time I let go, and we went flying and tumbled down onto the floor in a tangled mess.
“Not as smooth as the movie,” Alessandra said.
“Real life is never as smooth as it is in the movies.”
We stood up and ran to the sex altar and freed Bachué, who was groggy but still managed to recognize us—or me, anyway.
“Finn! It’s you! You’ve come to save me!” she said, as she wrapped her arms around me and pressed her large, bare breasts against my chest and kissed me.
Alessandra, meanwhile, stepped in and separated us and slid Bachué’s robe back into place. It was odd that Bachué didn’t think to do it herself, so she was obviously quite comfortable with her nudity or perhaps still under the effects of the Sexstasy. Assuming it was the latter, I had to admit that there were some pretty good side effects.
“We need to go,” Alessandra said.
“Oh—to your place?” Bachué asked me dreamily.
“No, just out of here—for the moment, anyway,” I said, receiving a look of annoyance from Alessandra.
I looked around the massive chamber and saw that some of the minions had appeared over at the entrance, thereby blocking our escape. Lovely. I grabbed Bachué’s hand, and the three of us turned and headed for the doorway behind the stage. It went into a kind of anteroom where I imagined King Chalupa prepped for his grand appearances. Considering the nature of the act we had just witnessed, I would describe it more accurately as the fluffing room where King Chalupa, like a male porn star, got his boner up and ready before the big show. What kind of creep gets pleasure out of forcing himself upon young beauties, let alone in front of a crowd? I guess it came down to absolute power corrupting absolutely.
We gazed around the anteroom and saw an ornate throne flanked by life-sized statues while the wall behind it contained similar pictographs to the ones we’d seen upstairs. Alessandra looked on in awe, with her inner archaeological curiosity outweighing her fear of ghost kings and their supernatural minions. Unfortunately, we needed to keep going and find another way out of this fucking place. There was another door in the room, and we continued on to emerge in a wide hallway that had several rooms on each side. At the very end we discovered a grand stairway that descended into what appeared to have once been a large natural underground cavern. It was even bigger than the main chamber and had obviously been renovated considering it now had a smooth stone floor that stretched over to a large rectangular water basin. We walked over and saw that the basin also had carved stone steps that led down into the water, so it would appear it was actually a proper swimming pool.
I had a look around the room and saw there were several passages leading off in different directions, so choosing the best one was going to be a gamble. We ran over to our right and passed through a doorway and discovered another corridor which had been outfitted with electric lighting. Either the Chalupans were a thousand years ahead of their time or someone had recently been to Home Depot. The corridor also had several doorways that accessed more rooms, and in one we found lockers and various equipment hanging on the walls. I opened the nearest one and found a pair of jeans and a Polo style shirt.
“Interesting—half-man, half-beast minions shop at all the same stores as regular people,” I said.
I moved to the far wall, opened a closet door, and found a number of pairs of night vision goggles.
“This explains their red eyes and ability to see in the dark, and it also explains why they couldn’t see us in the river,” I said.
“But what about the smell and the fact that they never left any tracks behind?”
I looked in a few more lockers and had her answer.
“Simple, and I should have figured it out sooner. See this?” I said, pulling out an item that looked a bit like a cross between a fuzzy house shoe and a shower cap.
“Yeah.”
“In special operations, when we operated behind enemy lines, we sometimes wore Ghillie suits which allowed us to blend into the foliage. Part of that sometimes included shoe covers made of soft materials—the idea being that they wouldn’t make distinctive marks on the ground. Disguising the tracks you left behind could be critical to a mission’s success and secrecy, and, in Vietnam, instead of army boots, the special operations soldiers, SEALs in particular, sometimes rectified this problem by wearing sandals or going barefoot, so they would blend in with the local prints and leave no specific traces after they had passed through an area. Honestly, I should have already figured out our minions were using a similar technique when I saw those subtle striations.”
“Interesting, but how did they get rid of any tracks left behind by the villagers when they herded them here to the pyramid tonight? Do you think they just used their feet to scrape them away?”
“Good question, and I imagine the answer is either that or something equally simple,” I said, as I walked over to another storage closet and had a peak inside.
There, I found a number of items, and amongst them were some extra wide rakes, and I pulled one out and held it up.
“Voila! They simply used rakes to cover their tracks, as I imagine it’s a bit faster than just using their feet,” I said.
“And they obviously also used them to erase their tracks in the open area between the camp and the dig site.”
“Exactly, and I’m also guessing that the team is being held somewhere inside this pyramid.”
“Let’s hope so.”
We had a quiet moment to ponder the latest facts before Hot Sauce spoke.
“Well, now I suppose our most important final mystery is finding where the team is being held, though I still am a little curious how in the hell those minions managed to smell so bad.”
“Well, the answer to that is actually quite elementary, my dear Professor Hot Sauce, as our stinky minions used fart spray,” I said, as I reached back into the same cabinet, but this time pulled out an aerosol can that had been sitting on one of the shelves.
“Excuse me?”
“As a youngster, my friends and I would spray each other with fart spray when we couldn’t actually fart on each other.”
“Why would someone do that, and, better still, why would someone even manufacture such a product?”
“No idea, but it was probably a man.”
“Without doubt.”
“Now, take a whiff,” I said, as I pointed the can away and shot a tiny spritz into the air.
“Ew, nasty! That’s definitely the smell those creeps gave off,” she said.
“Yeah, and I suspect our bad guys had this uniquely terrible blend custom made. Olfactory senses are very powerful, so adding smell would really increase the terror factor.”
I continued checking all the storage cabinets and
found even more clues as to the unique abilities of our mysterious minions—namely kevlar bulletproof vests, which they had kept hidden by wearing them under their leather armor.
“Now, we also know why they’re apparently bulletproof, and it’s embarrassingly obvious, though it should have been when we found that bullet in the dirt.”
“Honestly, this all seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a new drug,” Alessandra said.
“A potentially multi-billion dollar drug. People kill other people everyday for a lot less.”
“So, the creatures aren’t real?” Bachué asked, becoming a bit more aware as the drug wore off.
“It would appear it’s all just a cleverly concocted hoax.”
We left the room and continued on to discover the hallway dead ended at some kind of massive chamber filled with laboratory equipment.
“So, I don’t know about you, but between the locker room and our secret laboratory here, we now know that Chalupa and his minions are obviously of this earthly plane, and while I know you don’t want to hear it, this is even more proof that our bad guy is none other than your secret boyfriend.”
“Anyone can put on a loin cloth and a mask,” Alessandra responded.
“I suppose, but Lars really pulls it off well. That’s not an outfit for everyone. The wearer needs to be in good shape or it’ll make him look dumpy.”
“This isn’t the time or place to discuss your theories. We need to get the hell out of here so we can alert the authorities.”
We turned and headed out of the room only to run into faux King Chalupa and his faux minions.
“The jig is up, boys. There’s no need to continue the hoax.”
None of them spoke or reacted.
“Seriously, why don’t you fuckers just drop the act and lose the costumes. We know what’s going on down here.”
Still, no one reacted, and there was a long uncomfortable moment of silence, then faux King Chalupa stepped forward, carrying his gold scepter in his right hand, and I was wondering if he was going to use it to take a swing at me. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind that he lifted it and pointed it at me. I prepared to defend myself when I suddenly felt a mist spraying from the end and filling the air around me. I raised my gun and prepared to fire, but my vision started to blur, and I felt unusually light headed. It was actually quite pleasant, but I was feeling extremely tired, and I slowly dropped to the ground, where I stared up at faux King Chalupa. My eyes felt heavy, and I had the uncontrollable desire to sleep, but I made one final valiant attempt to stay awake. It was all in vain, however, as I started to fade into unconsciousness, and the last thing I saw was faux King Chalupa’s piercingly blue eyes as he stared at me from behind his mask.
The Chalupa Conundrum Page 42