by Jeff Strand
“I’m not going to share my entire life story while you try to figure out a way to escape.”
“Just the highlights, then?”
“I was born here. Moved to Cleveland. Had a bad experience in Cleveland. Moved back here. Congratulations. That’s the last piece of knowledge you’ll acquire before you end up in my belly.”
She said something to the other men. One of them jabbed me in the back with the tip of his arrow, encouraging me to walk forward. Roger, Ignacio and I were led to one of the huts.
“Go inside,” she said. “We must prepare a fire. I have not yet decided which of you will be eaten, but if one of you leaves the hut, my choice will be made.”
The three of us ducked under the low entrance and went into the hut. It was empty except for a bed made out of fronds on the ground. We sat down, cramped in the tiny space. They hadn’t taken our phones away, but a quick check showed that there was no service, of course, so they wouldn’t be good for anything but passing the time with games.
“What if all three of us made a run for it?” I asked.
“They’d fill our legs with arrows, then drag us to the fire,” said Ignacio.
“I agree with Ignacio,” said Roger. “Arrow-filled legs and a trip to the fire sounds reasonable.”
“Maybe Henrietta is on her way to rescue us,” I said.
“She barely knows us,” said Ignacio. “Why would she sneak into a village of cannibal natives to rescue three fools like us? If I’d escaped like she did, I’d leave you to die. No offense.”
“No offense taken.”
“And just so there are no surprises, I’ll be pushing for one of you two to be eaten first. I assume you’ll do the same to me. That’s fine. It’s natural that our survival instincts will kick in.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But maybe we could be trying to figure out a way out of this instead of making plans for how we’ll stab each other in the back.”
“I won’t be stabbing you in the back,” said Ignacio. “I’m saying right to your face that I will be trying to make a strong case for why one of you should be eaten before me. I’m being completely upfront about it.”
“What about a hostage?” I asked. “One of them comes to collect us, and the three of us pounce. If they live together in the rainforest like this, they have to be a tight-knit community, right? She’s not necessarily a sociopath who’ll let her followers die.”
“I’m cool with trying to catch a hostage,” said Roger.
Ignacio nodded. “We might as well try.”
“Any other ideas?” I asked. “Does anybody have a match or a lighter? We could set fire to the hut and try to escape during the chaos.”
“None on me,” said Ignacio. “There are matches galore in a bag on the boat.”
“I don’t have any,” said Roger. “I wish I’d taken up smoking instead of alcoholism.”
“Hear me out on this one,” I said. “What about pretending to be a god? We don’t know what their religious beliefs are. I guess it could be racist again to think that they’re so primitive that we could fool them into thinking that one of us is a deity, especially when the leader is from Cleveland, but maybe that’s the way out of this mess. Do we know for sure if they’ve ever seen a cell phone? Maybe they’d think Candy Crush was proof of our magic. I’m obviously just spitballing here but it’s worth a shot, right?”
“Perhaps we should just sit here silently and make peace with our imminent death,” said Ignacio.
“Screw that,” I said. “What’s that one poem about getting mad at the light?”
“‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas?” asked Ignacio.
“Yes! That one. With the whole rage thing.”
“‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.’“
“Right,” I said. “That’s me. If I sat silently and made peace, I’d have died about twenty life-threatening situations ago. I’m getting out of this mess. What do we have that we could bribe them with?”
“An arm?” asked Roger.
“Shut up,” I told him. “Does anybody have gold fillings in their teeth?”
“They could just take them out after—” Ignacio began.
“I know, I know, I caught the logic lapse right after I said it. What if we told them about the treasure? Maybe we’d offer to leave one of us as collateral while the other two went out to get it. How well do you remember the map?”
“Not at all,” said Ignacio. “He never really let me look at it.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, fine, so we’ll focus on the hostage. When somebody comes in, the three of us have to make a pact not to hesitate, even if it means we get jabbed with something. We just pounce. We should make sure that one of us does all of the talking so we don’t contradict each other. It definitely shouldn’t be Roger, but I’ll do it if you don’t want to.”
We heard the woman speak from outside: “Come out of the hut, all three of you!”
I didn’t need to say “Shit” again. It was understood.
“Should we refuse to come out?” I asked.
“That depends,” said Ignacio. “Do you think it’s more likely that they’ll send somebody in blindly to let us tackle them, or that they’ll just start shooting those tainted darts at us until we can’t stand up anymore and then drag us out of here to our deaths?”
“Probably the latter,” I admitted.
“Let’s just do what they say.”
Roger, Ignacio, and I stepped out of the hut. I could see smoke, though the fire itself was blocked by one of the huts. The woman stood there, surrounded by the villagers.
“Come with me,” she said.
The two other potential meals and I were led through the village. I didn’t see any women or children. Were they hiding away, or did this lady simply have one big harem to call her own? Kudos to her if it was the latter.
We reached the fire, which looked like it would be perfect for burning witches. A very large roasting spit was in front of it, perfect for rotisserie human. About fifty people—all men, all painted white—were gathered in the area.
“One of you will die,” said the woman. “Two of you will watch.”
I like to think of myself as a pretty selfless guy, but there was a very definite ranking preference in my mind for who would die and who would watch.
“I have made my selection,” she said.
Then she just stood there.
I honestly wouldn’t have thought that the leader of a village of cannibals would feel any real reason to draw out the dramatic suspense. Was she practicing to be a reality show host?
She pointed at Ignacio. “You are the tallest, the most fit, and the most attractive. You will be our first meal.”
I was more relieved than insulted. But now I was horrified, because though I barely knew Ignacio, I didn’t want to see him get spit-roasted and cooked over an open flame. Would they be merciful enough to kill him first, or would the spit-roasting happen before anybody whacked him in the skull with a hammer?
Ignacio tensed up and looked like he was trying to decide if he should make a break for it or not. I probably would have if I were him, even though there were many, many notched arrows pointed at him and he wouldn’t make it more than a few steps.
“Skewer him!” the woman shouted. “Soon we shall feast!”
Two of the men grabbed Ignacio by the arms and pulled him over to the fire.
What could we do? Apart from volunteering to die in his place, which was not on my list of options, how could we save his life? In a rapid-fire fashion, I kept thinking of plans and rejecting them as doomed to failure. The best I could come up with was “Let Henrietta save us,” which wasn’t a high quality plan.
Behind us, somebody shouted.
Everybody turned to look.
Two more white-painted, loincloth-wearing men entered the village. And in front of them, bleeding from the scalp and looking terrified, was Percival Lo
ngshore.
They led him over to where the woman stood. She smiled as the men spoke to her.
She looked over at Ignacio. “Is this your boss?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, you have been briefly spared. Return to your friends.”
Ignacio hurried back over to stand by us. He was trembling and covered in perspiration.
“I’m told this is all your fault,” said the woman to Percival.
Percival frantically shook his head. “No! Not at all!”
“You did not force them to continue down the river despite the warnings?”
“No! I begged them to turn back! They were blinded by greed!”
“You don’t have a trustworthy demeanor. It’s time for you to become our food.”
She gestured. Percival yanked his arms away from his captors and tried to make a run for it. The villagers launched a volley of arrows at him, all of them striking him in the legs. So we now knew that they were very good shots.
Without pulling out the arrows, a couple of men dragged a screaming Percival over to the spit-roast.
As it became horrifyingly clear what was going to happen next, I turned my head away.
Percival sobbed and begged for mercy. Yes, he was a cowardly piece of crap who’d abandoned us, and he was by far my top choice for “gets eaten first,” but it was still upsetting to hear.
I’ve been around some really awful things, but I have never heard a shriek like the one Percival let out. He continued shrieking, though the volume diminished after that first one, and soon it became muffled.
One of the villagers seemed to notice that I wasn’t watching and smacked me on the side of the head. I looked back to see a nude Percival, skewered, next to the fire, being slowly rotated to ensure even cooking. He was still making quite a bit of noise.
I wish I could say that I didn’t see a couple of the villagers licking their lips.
I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he died. His sounds of agony became increasingly more difficult to hear, and eventually he was silent, but I can’t say for certain when his suffering ended.
They continued to cook him. As the process went on, I would’ve expected at least one of the villagers to get bored and find something else to do besides watch this, especially once he stopped showing any signs of life, but all of them stood there, completely rapt.
Finally, one of the men turning the handle made a dramatic proclamation to the others.
“I think he’s saying that he’s done,” Ignacio said, though I really didn’t need the translation.
A villager walked over to Percival’s body with a very large knife. He cut out a section of Percival’s upper arm, which quite honestly didn’t look done enough to me, and presented it to the woman. She took a large bite, nodded her approval, and shouted something to the rest of the villagers.
Except for the ones guarding us, all of the villagers hurried over to the body. It wasn’t quite pandemonium, but they certainly weren’t lining up in an orderly fashion. They tore out chunks of flesh with their fingers, devouring it as they stepped out of the way.
Everybody was taking reasonable portions, so I hoped they’d all return for seconds and finish up all of the meat instead of offering some to those of us who were not cannibals.
They returned for seconds. And when only scraps of meat remained, they broke his skeleton apart and gnawed on the bones. They smashed his skull upon a large rock and feasted upon his brains.
The woman walked back over to us and smiled. “Your boss was very tasty.”
Roger, Ignacio, and I said nothing.
“Why do you look so scared?” the woman asked me. She gestured to my missing pinkies. “You’ve already had two fingers eaten, right?”
She laughed as a few of her men forced us to our feet and led us back to the small hut.
Chapter Eight
We couldn’t understand what the men said to us as we entered the hut, but from the tone and context it seemed to be, “If you come out of here, we’ll kill you.” Of course, we were going to be killed anyway, in a truly ghastly manner, but it made sense that we’d want to postpone sharing Percival’s fate for as long as possible.
“He didn’t deserve that,” Ignacio whispered. “This is all his fault and he left us to die, so he deserved something, but not that. Not that.”
“Since you’re next on the list,” I told Ignacio, “I’ll let you take the lead in how we deal with this. Do you want to sit here and wait to become breakfast, or should we try to be proactive?”
“Let’s wait for them to fall asleep. If the village sleeps except for our guards, maybe we can take them by surprise, overpower them, and escape. If one or two of us die in the attempt, it’s still better than our current situation.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“I agree, too,” said Roger. “I didn’t get over Samantha just to be devoured by cannibals.”
“You’re over Samantha?”
“Yeah. It happened pretty much while I was watching Percival die. Puts things into perspective, you know?”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Thanks.”
“We still have several hours before nightfall,” said Ignacio. “Maybe naps are in order. If we can all get in some sleep before our escape attempt, we’ll be better off.”
“There’s not a chance in hell that I could fall asleep right now,” I said.
“Me either,” said Roger.
“That’s reasonable,” said Ignacio. “Wake me up immediately if anything noteworthy happens.” He stretched out on the ground, closed his eyes, and was softly snoring within moments.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Roger told me. “I thought it would go a lot differently. I’m not sure why I thought that.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We were both dumb enough to think there might not be gore this time.”
“I have to admit, of all the ways we could’ve died, I didn’t think ‘consumed by cannibals in a South American rainforest’ would be on the list.”
“Oh, I did. But they haven’t eaten us yet.”
“Nope. And I know it’s not a pleasant topic of conversation, but should we vow to kill each other before it gets to the point of being skewered on the spit-roast? Because I really don’t want that to happen to me. Even if you have to pick up a rock and bash me to death with it, I’ll take that over the spit-roast. I cannot describe just how much I don’t want to go onto the spit-roast.”
“I’ll make every possible effort to kill you before that happens,” I promised.
“Do you want me to do the same for you?”
“No. I don’t want the irony of you killing me to spare me the agony, and then having somebody show up to rescue us right before the skewer would’ve gone in.”
“I guess that makes sense. I’ll take the risk, though.”
Ignacio opened his eyes. “I too would like to be killed before it gets to the skewering stage, even if it means possible irony later.”
“Noted,” I said.
“And now I’d appreciate it if you would stop having this macabre conversation so I can sleep.”
“Sure. Sorry about that.”
We waited. As we did, I wondered why we were so optimistic as to assume that the next victim wouldn’t be claimed until the next day. If Percival was a late lunch, maybe one of us would be a late dinner, or a midnight snack.
There really wasn’t anything to do to pass the time, so I played mental word association games with myself. They were less entertaining than you might think.
A couple of hours after we’d been forced into the hut, one of the men slid two large wooden bowls inside. One was filled with water. The other had a brownish grey gruel. We waited for more bowls to arrive, but they didn’t, so apparently we were meant to share.
We shared the water. Ignacio dipped his finger into the gruel, tasted it, and declared it “technically edible.” I didn’t want any, but he insisted that all three of us needed to keep
our strength up. I’m not going to offer a full recap of its culinary pros and cons, but overall, it wasn’t very good.
We continued waiting.
The sun set.
The village was quiet.
“We’ll wait for one hour after it gets completely dark,” Ignacio whispered. “No more talking until then. Let them think we’ve gone to sleep and accepted our fate.”
We sat silently. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of not freaking out, considering the circumstances. I’d see Helen and the kids again, I was sure of it, and then I’d never leave the freaking house again, for anything, ever.
There was a loud thump outside, then a grunt. This was followed by another thump and another grunt.
Henrietta ducked into the hut, holding a rifle. She pressed her index finger to her lips.
The four of us crept out of the hut. There were a couple of fires going, which gave just enough light for me to see the pair of unconscious men just outside. We slowly followed Henrietta, walking on ground that seemed to crunch like we were stomping on potato chips.
The hut was in the middle of the village, but it wasn’t a very big village, so there was a very good chance that we’d be able to—
Somebody let out a piercing scream.
“Run!” Henrietta shouted. You might think this was an unnecessary command, but I can’t promise that I wouldn’t have just stood there in slack-jawed shock. We ran.
We suddenly heard lots of activity around us. These villagers weren’t heavy sleepers.
Ignacio winced in pain.
A dart struck me in the arm but bounced off.
We followed Henrietta around one of the larger huts, and then she stopped. The leader, flanked by a few of her men, stood in our way. I spun around, thinking that a change of direction was a good idea, and saw more villagers behind us. We were surrounded. Of course.
Henrietta raised the rifle and shot the woman in the forehead.
As her body dropped to the ground, the men around her gaped in horror.
For a split second, I had this fantasy that the men would thank us for freeing them from her wicked dictatorship and vow to worship Henrietta as their new leader, but as their expressions exchanged to anger it became immediately clear that this was not going to happen.