And now…she wants me to take off all my clothes.
I’m not a total prude. I’ve been with a couple of women in my life, but other than the three of them—including Gwen—and my own parents, I haven’t been naked in front of anyone. When I go to the gym, I change in a stall. Other guys don’t mind letting it all hang out, literally, but I’ve always been wired to conceal my business.
Not only does Ashan want me to get naked in front of her, she wants me to sneak around through the jungle, with all its bitey things, and kill a bunch of men.
I’ve agreed to perform a reprehensible act, and now I need to do it fully exposed. As awkward as that feels, out here, it’s normal. The nakedness at least. The vengeful killings… Hopefully they’re less common.
“Nu-vi,” Ashan says, enunciating her impatience.
“Fine,” I mutter and yank off my shirt. I’m about to just go for it and shed the rest of my clothes in one pull, when I note Ashan’s attention. She’s looking at me, eyeing my chest with a different sort of interest.
With a rising sense of shame, I look down at myself. “Huh…” I’m more muscular than before. It’s hard to say how much I’ve transformed and how much is new muscle versus a leaner body, but I’m pretty ripped. Days spent working hard and eating no refined or processed food has done good things for me. It hurt like hell, and nearly killed me in the process, but the rainforest has made me a new man.
A stronger man.
And a killer.
Ashan’s hand on my chest snaps me from my thoughts before they turn dark again.
My stomach clenches as her fingers slide up my torso, but I don’t move. It feels…nice.
She smiles up at me and my stomach lurches again.
This is wrong, I think. You’re still married. You’ve only been gone for— How long have I been missing? Five weeks? More? Days blur without a schedule. Without a calendar.
“Mapinguari,” Ashan says, and with a shriveling embarrassment, I realize her interest has nothing to do with lust. She balls her fists, grasping the hair on my chest and tugging. It hurts, but I say nothing.
Her fingers explore my growing beard and hair.
I’ve never been told my hairiness was admirable. Gwen mostly tolerated it. Had she not found hairless man-boys even more repulsive, I might have subjected myself to laser hair removal.
Ashan, on the other hand, grins with delight. She looks up at me with renewed interest.
“No Mapinguari.” My argument falls on deaf ears.
Ashan takes a step back and motions to my remaining clothes. “Nuvi!”
Having a woman all but beg to get me naked while having zero sexual intentions is a surreal experience. It also puts me at ease. In Ashan’s mind, my hairy body and height resembles that of a mythical creature. She knows I’m human. She’s had to coddle me like a baby for weeks. I’m no more a savage man-killer than I am a jaguar. But for her, having a partner that resembles the infamous Mapinguari could be beneficial. Like a kind of psychological warfare.
Men are easier to kill when they’re running away. I think.
“Greg,” she says, voice stern. “Nuvi.”
Resigned to my fate, I strip and stand before her, totally exposed.
At first, she’s thrilled. I’m hairy everywhere, in a way that Amazonian men just aren’t. And then, in a flash, she becomes just as uncomfortable as me. She heads back to her small pit that looks like the impact site of a bowling ball.
I don’t bother redressing. Being naked isn’t just part of the culture out here, it’s a necessity for what we’re about to do. For me to perform, I’m going to have to be comfortable in my own skin first.
While Ashan and I avoid each other’s gazes, I return to the brush, drop to my hands and feet and slip through. There’re a few whispers of leaf over skin, but nothing catches. I nearly laugh a few times when the stalks tickle my skin. Otherwise, my performance is good enough to put Ashan at ease.
“See?” she says. “Nuvi good. Quiet.”
I join her by the small hole, sitting in a way that hides my nether region. “Nuvi good.” Desiring to move onto more comfortable subjects, like murder, I motion to the hole. “What?”
Her response to my simple question is a simple answer. She squat-walks over the hole and demonstrates her complete lack of shame by urinating into it. While I watch with raised eyebrows, she slides some of the soil she removed back inside, thrusts her hands inside and churns it into a thin mud.
As realization blooms, my body sags. “God damnit.”
17
The potent smell of earth manages to mute the aroma of Ashan’s urine, which is good for two reasons. First, it helps me forget that my naked body is now slathered in a thin layer of mud made from piss. Second, it will keep the hunters from smelling our approach. Granted, we’re going to wait until they’re asleep, but strong smells have been known to rouse people from even the deepest slumber. When eyes and ears fail to detect danger, the nose is up to the task. Gas leaks, rotten food, and death itself can all be detected by the nose.
Then again, maybe smelling urine is nothing new for these people. Coming from the sterilized world beyond the Amazon basin, the scent of urine is out of place. It means something is wrong. Someone’s had an accident. Out here, where there are no bathrooms, and no sanitation, pissing ten feet from your slumbering friend isn’t taboo.
Ashan has taught me that on many occasions since our meeting.
We crouch at the clearing’s periphery hidden by a comingling of darkness and mud. The hunters have started a fire, cooking a monkey. Seeing the bipedal body stretched out over the flames made me queasy at first. Then I smelled it, and my stomach awoke. After weeks of eating a raw vegan diet, my body is craving animal fat. With the hunters on our trail, Ashan thought it best to avoid cooking. I wasn’t sure that starting a fire in the Amazon was even possible. Everything seems so wet to me, all the time, but it has been a few days since the last heavy rain. Honestly, I know nothing about starting a fire without a Duraflame log. Even then, my success rate is spotty at best.
A lesson for another day.
If we survive the night.
The men eat and drink around the fire for hours. I’m not sure what they’re drinking, but it’s definitely not water. As the moon rises above the clearing, their voices grow louder. They take turns telling stories. I catch bits and pieces. Hunters killing prey. Jungle monsters. Conquests. While most of the tales sound ominous, they all get laughs, too.
Seeing the men like this, just being regular guys around a fire, softens my heart. Just a little. But not enough to change things. I have not forgotten what they’ve done or what they’ve traveled here to do.
As the night wears on, my eyes drift to the sky. While I’ve been hankering for a clear view of the daytime sky, and to feel the sun’s direct warmth on my skin, I haven’t thought much about the night sky. Living just outside of Boston means the night sky has more light pollution than stars. The big dipper. Orion’s belt. Venus, Mars, the North Star. Those are the stars I’m used to seeing.
The view tonight makes me feel like a child again, when everything was new, and colors were vibrant, and each experience was visceral. I’ve heard that childhood seems to move more slowly because new experiences shift our perception of time, and every experience for a child is new. When we grow up, life becomes routine. We work the same job. Repeat the same habits. Visit the same places. Eat the same food.
Since crashing in the rainforest, time has slowed to a crawl. Every day is something new. The world is potent again. Flavors are powerful. And things like the night sky, revealed without a curtain of light, fills me with a spiritual sense of wonder.
This is why people believe in God.
Uproarious laughter draws my eyes back toward the men. One of them is urinating into the fire, filling the air with putrid steam. The drunken men all stand, shouting a chant I can’t understand, dancing around the flames, all of them pissing now.
This is why peopl
e believe in the Devil.
It’s several hours before the men either pass out or fall asleep.
Waiting in the dark, under a blanket of stars, surrounded by the fragrance of cooked meat and flowers I can’t see, I nearly fall asleep. Back home, with an expensive bed full of springs and foam and down feathers, I can’t sleep without an Ambien. During the past few weeks, I’ve had no trouble falling asleep. I close my eyes and the next time I open them, the sun is up.
I’ve often wondered how people about to engage in battle stay calm. How they keep themselves from simply walking away. Why fight when there is so much to live for? Obviously, there are some good reasons for fighting—freedom from oppression, from tyranny, from terror. But not crumpling into a fetal position from fright at the knowledge that the moment you engage the enemy, your life could end with the crack of a bullet? That’s always eluded me.
I thought it was because I was a coward. Sure, I can help people. That’s pretty much what I’ve dedicated my life to. But fight? Kill?
The truth, I now know, is that I never had a reason to fight before now. I lived in a safe neighborhood, in a house with deadbolts, window locks, and ADT security. I drove an SUV with the highest safety rating, surrounded by airbags. And even though the soup kitchen operates in a part of town usually avoided by folks in my neighborhood, the people there know me, and what I give to their community. If anything, I’m safer there than in my own home.
Ashan puts her hand on mine. She’s been low to the ground, eyes never leaving our target. The silver-moon’s light and the Milky Way’s dull glow illuminate her eyes and little else. She leans in close, her breath warm on my piss-mud caked ear.
“Now,” she whispers and then lowers to her hands and feet.
I lower myself down and begin the sloth-like four-legged walk into the field. A weight lifts as I exit the jungle, like I can breathe again. Despite the fact that we’re about to take several lives, I feel invigorated.
Or is it because I’m about to kill people that I feel invigorated?
I don’t know the answer. And right now, I don’t care. This has to be done. Like a tumor that needs removing. What’s that make me?
A scalpel, I decide, as my hands and feet slip over the packed dirt in which Ashan’s people once lived. Skeletal remains frame our path, guiding us toward the village’s center, where the fire glows and men sleep. How many memories is she reliving? Where was her hut?
As hard as this might be for me, it must taste like shit in her mouth. Killing these men, avenging her family, it might help keep us safe, but I doubt it will provide any kind of catharsis for her. Her family will still be dead.
And now, another tribe is about to lose its fathers.
I pause, my hand just an inch from the ground.
This won’t be the end of it.
These men have sons. Wives. Daughters. If they’re anything like Ashan, they’re going to come looking for the woman who killed their husbands and fathers. I’m a stranger to them, but they must know of the white man who joined Ashan. In a jungle of tribal natives, I am an easy-to-spot aberration. There is no hiding who I am.
They already want to kill me. They are here to kill me.
Become part of the cycle, I tell myself. Fight. Survive. The twisting current is too much to resist.
This is who I am now.
The fire’s dying light is just enough to see by. The hunters are lying about, within fifteen feet of the luminous embers. Those who passed out, lie sprawled, as if already dead. The others lie closer to the fire. All are asleep.
Approaching like a pair of jaguars, hugging the ground, homed in on our prey, Ashan and I stop beside the outlying pair. Both are passed out, their limbs in uncomfortable tangles. If they survived to morning and woke up, they’d no doubt be in serious pain.
We’ll spare them that, at least.
Mimicking Ashan, who’s now glowing a demonic hue of dull orange in the flickering light, I pluck one of the poison arrow tips from the pouch tied to my hip. She demonstrated how to do this, cupping a hand over my mouth at the precise time she jabbed a branch against the skin of my neck. I practiced the move on her until it became fluid.
But that was practice, and she survived every assault.
This man won’t.
My hand quivers, threatening to throw off my aim. While the poison will still kill the man if I miss his jugular, it will take longer to work. The difference is just a few seconds, but in those moments, if the man wakes, adrenaline will allow him to fight—for just a moment, but long enough to rouse the others. For this to work as intended, I need the poison to enter the bloodstream rushing to his brain and his nervous system with every beat of his heart.
The effects will be almost instantaneous. Fighting, let alone screaming—or breathing—will be impossible.
I hover over my first target like the Grim Reaper, holding the man’s life and death in my hands. It’s kind of a strange power rush. I don’t like it…but some part of me that’s lain dormant since birth, looks forward to the more capable man I will become as a result.
A monster, I think. I will be a monster.
And alive.
Frozen by my dual competing nature, I look up at Ashan. She’s poised over her target, calm and focused. She points at her eyes and then to the man. ‘Watch,’ she says without speaking. ‘This is how you do it.’
It happens fast. While one hand slips over the man’s mouth with a vice grip, the poisoned shard of wood penetrates his neck. His body jolts, just once, and then lies still. She remains frozen in place, waiting. After thirty seconds, she releases the man, whose head lolls to the side.
Dead.
She made it look easy. Like putting an exhausted child to sleep.
A hazy image of Juni slips into my thoughts. What would she think of me now?
She wouldn’t, I think, growing angry. She won’t even know me.
Unless I survive.
Unless I kill.
My hands move without thought, guided by practice and instinct. The man’s greasy lips slide under one hand, which clamps down hard, while the other stabs the poison into his neck.
Easy.
18
The man’s pulse slows under my finger, pressed to his throat, monitoring the irreparable damage I’ve done. The thump-bump of my heart slows in time with his. Despite having just performed a reprehensible act, I find myself calming. I’ve crossed the threshold, and I still feel like me and not at all like the monster I feared I would become.
Thump-bump…
Thump…bump…
Or maybe I’m just callous to death?
How could I be? That doesn’t make sense. I’ve spent my life trying to save people from the conditions that lead to an untimely demise.
And yet, I’m unaffected by slaying this man, by holding his head as his life slips away. What does that say about me?
That what I’m doing is right, I decide. It’s not good, but it’s not wrong, either.
Thump…bump…
Ashan steps away from the man she killed and crab walks toward her next victim.
They’re not victims. They’re enemy combatants.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m a pacifist. I’ve protested wars. When my grandfather was drafted to fight the Germans in World War II—a more noble cause than mine—he took a stand against killing as a conscientious objector. As a result, he became a medic and was awarded with a Silver Star for saving hundreds of lives. I’ve always been proud of his character, and what he did. His service inspired me to become a doctor.
What would he think of me now?
Thump…
A lone tear slips from my eye, carves a clean trail down my cheek, and drops, now muddy, onto the slain man’s face.
This is who I am now.
Who I must become.
Embrace it.
No more tears.
My grandfather’s actions might have been noble, but so were those of all the men who fought
in that war. Evil sometimes deserves mercy, a chance at redemption. But sometimes it needs to be snuffed out.
I lower the man to the ground and move to the next, taking my time, staying quiet. When I reach the man, lying on his side, more asleep than passed out, Ashan moves on to her third. She’s an efficient killer, not slowed by the moral dilemmas plaguing me. I envy her for it.
I slip into position behind the man, hands like flared cobras, ready to strike. There’s less hesitation this time, and a lot more fight.
The man’s eyes flare open when the fresh arrow tip pierces his neck. His eyes twitch to the side, make contact with mine, and a shout builds in his chest. The poison will work in the next second, but his scream will escape before it does.
I react without thought, removing the arrow while twisting his head skyward. Then I plunge the arrow in again, piercing the center of his throat and the vocal cords within. The scream is nothing more than a raspy whisper, muffled by my hand.
The man goes still, the poison acting fast, pushed along through his system by a rapid heartbeat. I hold him still, feeling another pulse slow and stop beneath my fingers.
I shed no tears this time.
When I look up, Ashan gives me a nod of approval and moves on to her next target. Closer to the group, I can now see them all clearly. I count eleven.
How many were there before? Thirteen?
Shit.
They’re not all here. When did they leave? Are they coming back?
I’m not sure how to communicate any of this to Ashan. Even if we could talk, I’d have trouble explaining my fears.
When she finishes her fourth kill and gives me a stare of disapproval from having failed to even start my third, I hold up an open palm. We’ve used this signal to silently communicate the word from our very first day together. I then point to my eyes, and then to the men. I point at each man in sequence, raising a finger with each to show I’m counting.
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