by Cole Alpaugh
“That guy she’s tied to ain’t looking so good,” Ratu said, slowly spinning to face the new pair of white people hanging just as upside-down, a few meters away. The white couple’s tree was heavily stressed by more than twice the weight.
“He looks dead,” Jope called to the hot, leggy blond, who only seemed to want to whimper to herself. “I don’t gotta girlfriend. And I got plenty of coke I’ll share with you.”
“You don’t have any coke, dumbass.” The shark-god had suddenly appeared on a nearby fallen tree, startling the two former pirates. But the shark-god also didn’t look so good. A crust of dark, dried blood had formed in each nostril, and his eyes were bloodshot and pupils incredibly dilated. He sat slumped, his great head in his hands as if it ached miserably.
“We just forgot where we buried it,” Jope said defensively.
“I dug it up, you dumbass,” said the shark-god. “You buried it right down on the beach and put a big rock on top.”
“I don’t remember doing that. Is that where we buried it, Ratu?”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“And one of you dipwads used another rock to scratch an arrow pointing down.”
“That crazy cannibal woulda found it,” Ratu said.
“Ya think? Gee, maybe I’ll hide the coke and then draw a big arrow pointing to where it’s buried. And the rest of my plan is to be hung upside down and wait to be eaten.” The shark-god sniffled and pinched at his nostrils. Upon closer observation, the former pirates noticed his human hands were shaking badly, and he couldn’t seem to stop tapping his bare feet.
“Your shark-god been hittin’ our stash hard,” Ratu whispered to his friend.
“He’s not just my shark-god, he’s our shark-god, Ratu. He’s everybody’s shark-god.”
“Well, everybody’s shark-god is pretty strung out on blow.”
“He can help us, Ratu.” But Ratu didn’t think the shark-god looked capable of helping anyone, not even himself. The shark-god stank of his own poop.
“Hey, shark-god,” Jope called to the man-beast creature who seemed to have fallen asleep with his eyes open. “Hey, wake up! We need you to help us!”
“I need a drink of water.” The shark-god looked around, perhaps thinking he might have put a glass of water down somewhere nearby. “You have any water?”
“Hey, blondie?” Jope called to the hot babe on the next rotation. “You don’t got any water, do you?”
“Where would she have water, Jope? Jesus, she’s tied up worse than we are. And look at all the blood coming from her boyfriend’s head.”
“Miss?” Jope tried again. The blond woman kept whimpering, ignoring the former pirates and the shark-god. “We don’t mean no disrespect, or nothin’. It’ll be okay, and you get used to bein’ upside-down after a while. Just make sure to keep your mouth shut if you gotta pee.”
“I really need water.” The shark-god slipped off his perch on the log with a thud, squishing a half-dozen small birds under his human ass. The former pirates watched as he plunged one hand into the front pocket of his cut-off khaki pants, pulling out a monstrous handful of what had once been their nearly pure cocaine. The shark-god covered one nostril and then practically jammed the mound of coke up the other. The snorting sounds he made sounded like a donkey’s braying.
“Holy fuck,” said Jope, as the shark-god fell completely onto his side, killing more birds, his breaths coming in shallow gulps. A dozen new birds fluttered down from the tree tops, alighted on his great blue and gray head, and began to preen.
“We gonna have to find a new god,” Ratu said.
Chapter 51
Albino Paul was giddy with anticipation.
It was late in the South Pacific afternoon and the broken trees created jagged shadows that reached across the white sand like the hands of a skeleton. A cool breeze made the two sets of hanging people gently rock as they turned slow revolutions. The woman’s constant whimpering served as a lullaby, sending the two coke thieves into a deep sleep. Their snoring competed with the racket made by the birds. The flow from the white man’s head wound had eased to a light red trickle. Albino Paul wondered if he’d hit the man too hard. He might not survive long enough to be carved. No big deal, though, since it was all about the child.
The tree tops were teeming with thousands of fussing birds. When one took off for a better spot, twenty new arrivals fought over the newly created space.
Albino Paul welcomed the birds as a sign of nature’s approval of the seminal event he was so carefully organizing. The video camera was in position, four small fires at the perimeter corners of the sacrificial altar smoldered, and brush and deadfall had been shoveled up and carted away. Despite the makeshift setting, this backdrop was turning out to be perfect.
How many shows had he performed for the Cannibal Culture Spree? Six hundred? A thousand? Whatever the number, he was through summoning phony spirits and praying to pretend gods. The next time he squeezed the penis gourd in place, the filthy white people wouldn’t be laughing and pointing, snapping photos. No, they’d be begging for mercy, ropes cutting into their skin as they struggled.
The cannibal could make out the partially visible outline of what must be the two Fijian idiots’ god, sprawled next to them. A creature that looked to be half human, half fish, and completely fucking ridiculous. But Albino Paul also welcomed what he sensed was a dying deity, yet another sign of his own growing power. That he could so easily bring gods to their knees confirmed his might. How many humans could overwhelm a god without even trying?
The sickly looking half fish god sneezed twice. Its face was partially buried in sand, and small white puffs of powder billowed from each nostril.
“Bless you,” Albino Paul said absently, a habit picked up from all the pasty tourists.
The sacrificial altar where the girl lay was sometimes called a tenderizing log. Victims were lashed tightly and beaten with heavy clubs. The blows filled the soft flesh with blood and worked to numb the subject’s body, helping to keep them conscious while they were sliced up. The little girl was naked, spread-eagled on her back, her woven belt and bright yellow dress carefully cut away by Albino Paul. He’d wrapped a leather strap across her neck and around the thick log. The girl refused to cry for herself, as if sensing he fed on fear as well as flesh. He’d made no secret of his intentions, repeating over and over what a magnificent honor it was to sacrifice one’s flesh to such a noble and glorious cause.
“You’re not noble,” she had told him, as much scorn in her voice as she could muster. “You’re just evil. Eating people is dirty and wrong.”
Albino Paul, who’d been using a compact mirror to reapply his tribal hunting paint, marched over to the bound girl and slapped her hard across the face for such blasphemy. Birds jumped and squawked at the commotion. He heard her try to spit at him, but he’d already turned and walked back to retrieve the small mirror, pushing a pathway through the thickening carpet of birds. There might be as many as a hundred thousand now, filling the air with their talk, their growing discontent. They pecked at his bare feet and shins, but he didn’t bother kicking at them. Surely the birds were spirits come to bear witness, anxious as he was for the virgin to be sacrificed.
“The birds are here to watch me eat you,” he told the girl, picking up the mirror to finish applying his makeup. He watched her in the small piece of glass over his shoulder, but she just stared straight up at the cloud of birds circling above. The graceful shearwaters and petrels that soared in wide banked turns and might be the spirits of his great aunts and uncles, the sandpipers and the tattlers who might be long-dead grandfathers and stillborn nieces. The shadow of a magnificent southern royal albatross, perhaps once a village elder, swept across the sacrificial altar. It made Albino Paul’s heart ache and stomach rumble. Perfect, lovely innocence lay before him, ready, waiting for him to devour her young, unspoiled meat. His penis gourd grew tight and uncomfortable, but he refused to adjust it.
He’d kep
t his tools out her line of sight. She couldn’t see the felt knife holder he’d unfurled and placed on the tenderizing log between her open legs, the selection of knives and sharpening files out of her view. Albino Paul wanted to relish the look in her eyes at her first glimpse of his glistening carving knife, to soak in her terror as she realized what was about to penetrate her soft flesh.
He walked the sacrificial perimeter shuffling birds out of the way, dropping handfuls of powder into each small fire, making them smoke with a heavy spiced scent. It was convenient to have helpers perform these duties during the tourist shows, but now he relished each task. This was the real thing. Passing the tripod-mounted video camera, he flicked on the “record” switch and checked the viewfinder to be sure the girl was centered.
Albino Paul took a deep breath and surveyed the marvelous scene. He ran through a last minute checklist in his head, deciding there was nothing he’d forgotten.
“It’s time,” he said, shrugging off a bird that came in for a hard landing on his right shoulder, leaving small scratches where it had tried to gain purchase.
He was smiling as he approached the girl and the sacrificial altar from the end nearest her lovely head. Albino Paul reached down for the thick club he’d selected earlier for tenderizing her and held it up to the gods, his bright white eyes full of energy.
“I offer the flesh of this virgin to the mighty Malakula gods!” Albino Paul called in his forefathers’ ancient language, although what he actually said was, “I drink the laundry water of fat Malakula brides!”
Albino Paul brought the club down with a whoosh, striking the little girl across the chest and stomach. The heavy thud knocked the wind out of her. Her back arched from what must be excruciating pain, and although her mouth was open, she was unable to draw breath.
This new racket woke the former pirates from their fevered slumber, and the white woman began to scream bloody murder. Above, thousands of birds jeered and took flight, distressed and confused, sending guano flying everywhere. A young kingfisher bravely stood his ground beneath the noise and commotion at the sacrificial altar, tilting his head sideways, his long beak inching toward the knot on the leather strap holding the girl.
Albino Paul straddled the log, his polished penis gourd hovering over the girl’s head like a pointed rocket, and brought the club down again and again. The white woman pleaded for him to stop, to come take her instead, but Albino Paul continued tenderizing the lovely virgin.
* * * *
Despite the pain and lack of air, Butter’s eyes were open, fixed on a spot high above, a tiny wrinkle in the thin clouds over the island the dancing white man had called East Pukapuka. For the first time in her young life, she was looking at the doorway to Happa Now. And although she couldn’t quite make out the words chanted by her dead friends and family—the plaintive cries that might have been “Olly, olly, oxen free”—Butter smiled with contentment and the knowledge that her papa would soon be tossing her back up into the air, despite warnings from Mama that he was going to drop her on her head. Butter was now certain Happa Now was real and much closer than she’d ever imagined.
The terrible man reached forward and grabbed the longest, sharpest knife from between her legs. She watched him glance toward the camera he’d set up on metal sticks and make a bowing gesture toward it. He reached down and pinched a section of baby fat on her soft stomach. With his other hand, he brought the knife close to her skin and seemed to brace himself to begin cutting. Butter could see and feel how badly his hands were shaking. He seemed frightened. Maybe he didn’t know how relieved she was at this moment, how much she welcomed being sent to the next life.
Butter looked away from the man and his knife, searching the air for the butterfly that would take her to Happa Now.
* * * *
A few yards away, splayed out beneath where the two former pirates were both blubbering over what the awful cannibal was doing to the little girl, the once mighty shark-god raised his snout from the warm sand. Bloodshot eyes glared at the cannibal and the long knife that was inches from the child’s flesh, about to begin slicing. Dakuwaqa cleared his sore throat and gnashed his thousands of razor-sharp teeth. Just before his heart exploded inside his human chest, he uttered two final words. Jope and Ratu both heard the spoken order and immediately began to struggle against their ropes, but to no avail. The thin nylon cords didn’t budge an inch, and they stopped their fruitless wriggling when they realized the command wasn’t intended for them. Instead, the shark-god’s dying command was directed at the now half-million birds that had gathered all around the island of East Pukapuka.
“Sic ’em!” the shark-god ordered the birds. And, by god, they did.
Chapter 52
Technically it wasn’t the birds that killed the bloodthirsty cannibal named after The Smiling Pope. Sure, he was dive-bombed, pecked, and swarmed by a blizzard of feathers and thorny beaks, but he managed to stumble down the path to the beach and wade out to his boat. The cover of gnarled trees and the club he managed to hold onto and blindly swing had given him some hope of escape.
Blood seeped from small gashes all over his body. The boat’s steering wheel was slick from his gore. Albino Paul’s right eye had been easy pickings for a kamikaze pigeon. Several fingers went to the doves and boobies. A large blue heron swooped down and snatched away his penis gourd, doing enough damage to his testicles to ensure he would never reproduce, even if he survived this onslaught.
Turning due east, Albino Paul slipped through the narrow passage in the coral reef and jammed the throttle wide-open. Even the speediest birds fell back, unable to keep up with the roaring engines. With his lacerated palm, he slapped at the stereo’s “play” button and Gloria Estefan’s magical voice erupted from the three speakers not punctured by bird bombs.
Just as the speedometer topped a hundred-sixty, the bloodthirsty cannibal looked up through his cracked and spider-webbed windshield to catch a brief image. His boat was set on a collision course with a mostly rusted, black and red metal ship.
“I don’t feel so good,” Albino Paul’s said. They were the last words he ever spoke in this life.
* * * *
Jesus Dobby looked down at the flash of gleaming black speed boat hurtling directly toward his bow. He caught a glimpse of huge white eyes and a face painted with comically pointed teeth. He’d seen the face before, printed on colorful posters for a cannibal tourist attraction on one of the islands. Oddball tourist attractions weren’t new to anyone hailing from the Lone Star State. Dobby had seen billboards telling people to come visit the Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge II, and the toilet seat museum down in Alamo Heights. Right off I-27, between Lubbock and Amarillo, resided a life-size crucified Jesus Christ in a glass case.
But this tourist attraction was going like a bat out of hell and Dobby had no hope of maneuvering the tugboat out of its path. The captain’s conscience had convinced him to u-turn an hour earlier. He just couldn’t abandon the damn turtle-girl, the pain in the ass white woman, and her retarded boyfriend. He’d had the queerest feeling, like someone was whispering in his ear to get his saggy gray ass back to the beat up island.
“Sounds like Gloria Estefan,” were Dobby’s last words spoken in this life.
The head-on impact with the Gypsy Dancer caused a tremendous fiery explosion, followed by a black mushroom cloud that chased the souls of Jesus Dobby and the bloodthirsty cannibal toward their next lives. Both boats sank to the bottom in seconds. For hundreds of years they would provide hiding places and hunting grounds for countless species of tropical fish.
Chapter 53
“I feel like she’s safe, that she’s out of danger,” Butter’s papa told his wife, a little out of breath, the pair once again in the throes of their recently rekindled love. This time, they were doing it doggy style.
“Don’t stop!” Anonymous pleaded.
“Sorry, the image kind of came to me out of nowhere.”
“You stopped.” She rested her sweaty fore
head on the bedroll.
“And I don’t think we’ll see her for a long time.”
“You think that retarded ski racer will keep an eye on her?” Anonymous had crested the knoll of orgasm for the second time but wasn’t ready to call it quits, patiently waiting on all fours for her husband to refocus.
“Well, she does have the cop. And I get the feeling she’s a very down to earth woman.” Clarence resumed his work from behind, slowly at first. But then, as his worry over his daughter faded, he noticed something strange.
Just as the God of Weather was responsible for the moderate temperatures and low humidity, the God of Time had been responsible for everything running a bit slower because Butter was about to be eaten by the cannibal. Colossal negativity reached the afterlife in waves, emotional tsunamis, the type of thing that prompted a resident of Happa Now to sluggishly wade out into the blue water, face the sweeping horizon, and channel a message across the great void to the previous life. “Knock it off, already! It took me four days to brush my teeth, for crying out loud,” would be a typical admonition from the afterlife.
As peace and harmony replaced nagging despair over the dangers that had threatened their only child, everything around them began to speed up. Clarence’s thrusting hips were a stormy ocean, powerful, a flurry of motion. Their bodies slapped together, damp skin sounding like a flag in a gale force wind. And Clarence wasn’t even trying very hard.
“She seems smart and sweet.” Anonymous was again enjoying the lustful rhythm of her husband.
“And those legs are something else!” he said.
“Do you really want to discuss her legs right now?”
“Sorry, honey.”
“I know you’re sorry.” She craned her neck for a kiss. “I really missed you.”