by Sam Herrera
“Jaguar, huh?”
“Yep. Very fast and very powerful. It’s also a really good climber.”
“If we do meet it, can you like… beam us up or something?” I whispered.
Chloe smirked. “Sure. Energize. Look, if you’re touching me at the exact moment I vanish then you’ll come with me but I don’t know where we’ll end up or when. And if you’re not touching me, then I can’t help ya.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “Fine.”God help me. “So, you just end up wherever? Every day?”
“Uh, huh, I could wake up in Morocco in the sixties after falling asleep here. There’s just no way of telling.”
“What about guys, boyfriends?”
“I’m gay. But, still, yeah, flings are the best I can hope for. I’ll just vanish one day, never to be seen again.” I looked into her eyes and saw how lonely and lost she really was.
“I’m sorry.”
“‘S alright,” she said, clearing her throat. We walked on, following the stream, stopping now and then to refill the flask. We walked until evening drew in.
“I’m gonna get us some more firewood,” she told me, handing me the flask. “Stop here, get some more water and I’ll be back for you. Hopefully.”
“What if you vanish? What will I do?”
“Pray.” I glowered at her, shaking my head, as she vanished into the gathering dusk. Thanks. I crouched by the bank of the stream, drinking, washing my sweaty neck and face and wondering what the hell was wrong with my hand. It was like I’d stuck the damn thing into a fusebox. Chloe walked up behind me, silent as a wraith, her face the picture of fear and urgency.
“Take your clothes off.”
“Wwwwhat?” I squinted.
“Do it!” she hissed as she pulled her shirt up over her head and, dropping on her back, wriggled out of her pants. Blinking in shock, I did it. Crouching down, Chloe smeared mud in my hair and on my back, told me to do the same to her and then hug a tree just as she was doing. I thought, for a moment, that she’d lost it. But I still obeyed. Out it came into the clearing, walking with the loose grace of all its species, right up to us. I watched it, out of the corner of my wide eyes, as it stopped by our tree, sniffing at our cast-offs for four age-long seconds. I could see its savage golden eyes, split by black slits and surrounded by the blotches and dapples on its face. I saw it get up on its hind legs, its claws sheathing in and out as it sharpened them on the wood right beside my face. My heart, and my hand, was pounding so fast and loud I was certain they would give us away. But finally, it walked on, vanishing into the trees. The moment it was gone, my hand stopped pounding even though my heart didn’t. We came away from the tree, breathing hard. At least I was breathing hard, Chloe looked… just fine.
“I wonder what they taste like,” she murmured to herself. I looked at her as if she’d gone mad. I looked at my hand too, beginning to see a pattern here: a warning, a danger signal.
“I need to sit down,” I gasped, collapsing.
“No time for that; it could come back any second.”
“Will you gimme a break?” I protested, glaring up at her. “We almost died. What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re the one panicking, not me,” she pointed out as she reached for her underwear.
The days passed in a cycle of hunting, walking, wiping our asses with itchy leaves, making campfires and sleeping by them. Chloe was harsh with me when she needed to be, but she was also patient when she needed to be. I learned to wait in hiding for hours, for wild pigs or whatever to stroll up; how to fashion spears from sticks with her pocket knife and the art of camouflage which had saved both our lives. I learned, also, to lose all modesty and squeamishness. When I’d first seen Chloe put a stick through a termite’s nest and eat as many as would come up with it, I’d been disgusted. But after a while I just ate as many as she. Yum, yum.
“Thank God,” Chloe grinned, seeing another lake in sight. We were shattered from a particularly tough hunt. She was naked and wading in in seconds. I just stripped and followed without a second’s pause, as relieved as she was.
“Ah, ha.”Oh, hell. I looked down at my metal hand, feeling like a kid caught with the cookies. “You are her, aren’t you?”
“Sorry?” I frowned.
“Mara Christine Hale. Father: Ronald Martin Hale. Mother: Rachel Louise Gardener Hale. Brother: Andrew Hale. Best buddy: Kyle Thayer. We know each other; will come to know each other sometime in the future. And that thing,” she added, pointing to my hand, “comes in dead handy.”
“Hah, hah. What do you mean?”
“Those little shocks you were getting just then,” she reminded me as she backstroked through the water, “they’re warnings. You get them every time there’s a threat. Just like me with my vanishing act.” I looked at my hand, remembering the jaguar and how it had throbbed when the jungle cat had come close. In a weird way, bathing like this was bringing us closer together. As Chloe had often so eloquently put it, “friends shouldn’t be ashamed to show each other their tits or cunts.” Tits? I looked down at myself and saw I was getting them, two budding and ripening mounds, and my hips were wider than I recalled.
“Oh, my God,” I yelled. Blood was spreading around me, through the water. Had the boar we’d just hunted cut me? Was I dying? I leapt out of the water and looked all over myself, unable to find a wound on my front. My legs? The blood seemed to be coming from my lower half.
“Chloe. Chloe, am I cut?” I demanded, turning so she could see my back.
“No, you’re fine.”
“I’m bleeding!” I yelled. She looked and began smiling knowingly.
“Mara, how old are you?”
“Thirteen. Why?” I frowned. “What’s that gotta do with it?”
“Um, everything.” I looked at her in confusion. She raised her brows and it suddenly dawned on me. She smiled, seeing it, and went back to the lake to fetch some water. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Am I really going to get this every month?” I wondered aloud as she poured it down my leg from her flask.
“‘Fraid so. It’s perfectly natural, y’know.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” I scowled.
“I know. I didn’t either. Here,” she smiled, offering me my clothes. Even the fact that she was gay no longer put me off allowing her such intimacy. I was glad of her company, to swap campfire tales with her. She was a good storyteller and had led a far more active life than me. Every night was a thrill ride: dodging the bullets of the Gestapo, seeing, through the cockpit window of Flight 93, the ground coming nearer and nearer and living on the super-continent, Pangaea, which had existed before time was measured. She encouraged me as well, seeming very interested in Kyle and the Winter and eager for every detail of our little lunch break among the clouds and our trip Down Under. She examined the scar on my wrist from the jellyfish with interest.
“I’ll bet that hurt,” she nodded sympathetically. I shivered and quickly changed the subject back to Kyle saving me. “Vinegar, huh? I’ll have to remember that. This Kyle sounds like an alright guy.”
“Alright? Awesome, more like,” I smiled. “I miss him.”
“Welcome to my life.”
I’d long ago stopped asking her about relationships and things: she found it too painful. “You miss your family as well, right, your mother and father?”
“Oh, yes of course, him too,” I nodded, though I hadn’t given Father a second thought.
We stopped suddenly. “We’ll rest here tonight,” Chloe told me. “Here” was a nice stretch of grass under a tall, shady tree. I stretched out on my back, not realizing until then how tired I was from all the walking, and watched the sky darken and the stars come out. We slept.
*
“We have company,” Chloe hissed urgently in my ear as she shook me awake. She pointed upwards. I barely had t
ime to comprehend what I was seeing before it leapt off its perch, on the lower branches of a nearby tree, and landed right in front of us. Chloe instantly brought her spear up, aiming directly at the snakelike face at the end of the foot-long neck. I shrank to her side as thick, green lips parted to bare a set of curving, cone-shaped fangs on either side of its long, sharp beak. I bounced on the balls of my feet, my eyes like saucers. It held up one huge hand, on the end of a muscular arm lined with three blades running all down the forearm just as they did on its face, and spread its fingers. Out they came: five foot-long claws, extending outwards the way a cat’s do. Chloe bravely placed herself in front of me as it walked slowly towards us, gripping her spear with both hands. She looked like a baby deer facing a lion. A few seconds passed as I watched, hypnotized, the huge scythe on the end of its tail curl lazily back and forth through the air. We’re dead.
“What. Is. It?” I whispered as we slowly began edging further away.
“Let’s just not piss it off,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
“A wise course of action,” the creature said in perfect English, with a deep, smooth cultured voice.
“It can talk?” I stammered.
“Evidently. I am perfectly capable of defending myself as well.” Its pale blue eyes locked onto the spear point, hovering in front of its face. “Put it down, child.”
I hissed wide-eyed, as she did, sighing and nodding. What the hell?!
“What do you intend to do with us?” she asked.
“Nothing. Go where you wish. Do you mind?”
She slowly nodded and, moving like spilt oil, it sheathed its claws and sat on a patch of grass, simply staring into space. Chloe began to walk forward.
“If you don’t mind, we’d rather stay, considering this is our campsite.”
“As you wish.”
She sat opposite, putting her spear in her lap, as if it were totally normal, and took in this… thing with a strange cool. Does nothing scare her?
“It’s customary for guests to introduce themselves.”
“I am Ethan.”Ethan? Ethan?!
“I’m Chloe. This is Mara.” I felt a chill and swallowed hard as she mentioned my name and the thing turned its piercing gaze on me. I stayed standing, ready to bolt in a split second.
“Mara, the Hebrew for bitter.”
“You know Hebrew, do you? I don’t think I have ever met anyone like you before.”
“You would not have: I am the only one of my kind.”
“Ah. How did you find us?”
“I heard your voices and was simply curious.”
“What are you?” I blurted out.
“What kind of question it that? Don’t be rude.” Chloe scolded.
“It is well to ask,” the thing, Ethan, nodded. “I do not know.”
“I… but…”
“Well said, Mara, and so tactfully stated,” Chloe grinned. God’s sake. Blinking and shaking my head, I stared at her, stunned. The two of them began chatting like a couple at a café. I kept throwing glances at this creature, feeling the need to keep checking it was real.
“Were you about to leave? Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.” She smiled as though at some private joke. Oh, right, she never knows.
“You?”
“I’m taking a little holiday.”
“Yeah, Borneo. I have always wanted to visit this place. But the kid wants to go home, I think.”
“I cannot help you. All I can suggest is keep following the river and you will find your way to the shoreline, sooner or later. From there you may or may not find a local tribe to aid you. Or a ship may be sailing close by. As I said, I cannot help you. I have no desire to return to,” he sniffed, “civilization.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. She leaned forward, closer to him and they began to talk long. I was apparently forgotten. I looked around at the morning of the rainforest, hearing again the twittering of birds and the deep, bass calling of monkeys. It was beautiful here; there were so many flowers opening to the sun.
*
We walked in the direction in which “Ethan” had pointed. He’d told us there was a tribe of people a quarter-mile from where we were now. We’d left him to sleep on the grass and continued on our way. I was puzzled by Chloe’s silence; I was overjoyed at the thought of seeing people again. She seemed totally indifferent, wistful even.
“I know exactly how he feels,” she said suddenly. “He’s the last of his kind, just as I am the first of mine. There’s no one like me anywhere either. No one can do what I can or go where I can go. We’re both lonely.” We walked on in silence, headed for the rumored village.
KYLE
Goddamnit, Mara, where are you? It had been weeks and the cops were continually giving me shit, thinking I’d abducted her. And I’d had about twenty or so calls from Mara’s aunt, accusing me of the same thing. Finally I’d just turned my phone off, sick to death of it. I’d been expecting Chloe and Mara to make contact with me soon, but when I’d turned on the news, I had seen Mara’s photo above the headline: “Student Missing”. What had happened? The Winter was right where we’d left it, so how had she just vanished? I hunched over my drink, frowning worriedly. Pete’s Tavern was pretty quiet this time of day and I preferred it that way; there were no rowdy drunks to dodge.
“Hello, Kyle.”What do we have here? Women like this tall, shapely, somewhat familiar blonde standing over me were rare, if not non-existent, in my social circle; she looked like a model or something. My eyes roamed over her full, feminine figure and, near as I could tell, flawless face. “Remember me? I’m Mara’s aunt.” Oh.
“Oh, yes. You were in the manor, calling the cops, right?” Her eyes narrowed at my smug grin. There was something of Mara about the small, rounded nose and slightly pointed ears .and I should have recognized the voice anyway: it was the same one that had been calling on and on, demanding to know where she was. “May I sit?” I reluctantly indicated the space next to me and moved up so there was room.
I could feel her watching me, taking in my tall frame, hands covered in coarse blond hair, shoulders honed from soccer playing and army training. Women seemed to like me; they were always ogling like that and making me uncomfortable. After a while, I just learned to ignore it. It was hard to ignore her though; she was stunning. I’d heard from Mara that Auntie liked her booze, but it didn’t seem to have done her looks any harm.
“Do you know where she is?”
“No,” I sighed, “I’ve no idea. I wish I did.”
“Well, where did all this strange new shit come from? I mean, an Eskimo outfit, for Christ’s sake.” I groaned inwardly. I’d told her to get rid of that. “What were you two up to? How come you meant so much to her and she to you? She loved you and she trusted you,” she stated.
“She’s mental.” We both smiled. “Listen…” I began, instantly on the defensive.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” she added quickly, “I just want to know… .that.”
“All I’ll say is that we’ve been through a hell of a lot together and that I would never have kidnapped her or hurt her in anyway. Ever.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“Well, I’m sorry; it’s the only explanation I can give you. I don’t know where she is. I can’t help ya.” She scowled and sprang up from the bench. I watched her as she started to walk away, admiring the sway of her trim yet shapely hips. Fuck it. Why not?
“Hey,” I called out, just noticing. I caught up with her as she turned around and handed over her handbag.
“Thanks,” she said grudgingly.
“Want to?”
“Want toooo what?” My sly smirk said it all. Her mouth fell open and her violet eyes, framed by long, thick lashes, bugged incredulously. “I beg your pardon?!” she squeaked.
“My flat is on the twelfth floor of the building just round the corner; number three on the right with a big, black door. You can’t miss it.” I left her, frozen, blinking and speechless, and walked on into the dusk, grinning like a cat with the cream.
*
My smug grin quickly faded as I looked around my dusty shithole of an apartment. It hadn’t been vacuumed in ages and there was hardly anything in the fridge, just a couple of beers. Ah, well, I could offer them at least. I headed for the shower and to change into some nice clothes. I had a hot date tonight and wanted to look my best.
MARA
“Well, hello.” The olive-skinned, dark-eyed and bare-ass naked people standing in front of us didn’t reply.
“Who are they?” I whispered out of the side of my mouth to Chloe, nervously eyeing their heavy, tall sticks. One blow and I would be brain damaged.
“A rainforest tribe, I imagine.” Their faces, covered in red and black tattoos, were very broad and gaunt with high cheekbones and earlobes you could put your whole hand through. Their hair was cut bowl-style at the fringe and hung in ponytails at the back, and they sported small, sparse goatees. Their upper bodies were heavily tattooed and muscled. At their hips were long, cylindrical gourds and over their shoulders were slung woven-net baskets containing weird, small, orange fruit, gathered in bunches with their green stems still attached. Chunta, I was to learn. As an older man moved forward, I carefully avoided looking any lower than the waist, unlike Chloe.
“Pleased to see us?” she asked, glancing downwards. They spoke to us in their own language, but of course we couldn’t understand a word. Through some miming, Chloe made it clear that she wanted to go with them. The older one nodded and we followed at a safe distance. I soon figured out that they were hunters on a raid when I saw one of them open his gourd, take out a long, slender, feathered dart, raise the loaded “stick” to his lips and fire it, scoring a direct hit on a monkey in the tree tops, miles above us. We all watched it fall, taking a few leaves down with it as it went.
*