by RB Schalin
Chapter 28
Becky is watching her husband playing with Danny. They are on the floor in front of the TV in the living room and Danny is beating his father in some kind of Formula 1 game. Sometimes she wishes he had stayed away and never came home. Things are so different now from what they used to be. Before they would go out to dinner or for long walks, now he is either in the cabin or locked in his study typing on another book. She sighs and goes back to the kitchen to wash the dishes.
Kerry is bored, but he has to play with Danny, that’s what normal fathers do, don’t they? He glances at his son and wonders how he would do in the jungle among wild animals, snakes, spiders and other more or less dangerous creatures. He remembered the children in the tribe, how they from a young age, were taught how to use the blow darts, bows and arrows and knives. Every day in the jungle is a day you have to survive. He decides Danny would last less than a week. Becky would maybe last a bit longer, since she is smart and has a lot of common sense. The thought of selling the house and moving did cross his mind when he first came back, but then he realized it could never happen.
"Honey, would you like some coffee?" asks Becky from the kitchen.
"That would be lovely, just let me finish this race and I’ll be right with you."
"Oh, C’mon dad, we have only played for an hour."
"And you have beaten me every time, " says Kerry chuckling.
In the kitchen he finds Becky at the table with two steaming cups and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. He takes one and they melt in his mouth, she is a fantastic cook he has to admit.
"What time do you want to leave tomorrow?" she asks.
"After breakfast I suppose, maybe around 9A.M."
"OK, I better put Danny to bed or he will not wake up."
They sit in silence for a while and when she has finished her coffee she places the cup in the sink and he can hear her try to convince Danny it’s time to go to bed.
Kerry stays in the kitchen and looks out into the night through the windows. Sometimes he has this crazy thought about killing them, and just taking off in the middle of the night. It would take at least a day or two before someone would realize they are dead. He would be long gone by then. The problem is that he would need money, and selling the house would be one way to get some serious cash. He has money from the royalties his book is making. Thinking about his book makes him depressed. It’s all lies and half truths. It was Becky’s idea to write it and at the time he thought it would be a good idea. Then after writing the first page he realized he could never tell the truth about what had happened to him. No one would believe him. If they did, he would get in serious trouble. One evening they were watching an old movie on TV and it was about a professor who makes up an entire tribe using his girlfriend and kids. He films them in his backyard and people actually believe this is a missing tribe. He decides to do the same thing, so the next day he begins to write again and using a fake friendly tribe that take care of the poor white man he writes a best seller. The only truths in the book are the settings and the wildlife scenes. He gets invited to Talk Shows and makes some good money along the way, but he has this sour taste in his mouth when he thinks about those years.
When he came back from the Amazon he analyzed what he had gone through, and when he realized he needed the rush of the flaying and began planning and building the cabin he read a few books about psychology. They were about hostages and people who had been kept in captivity for long periods of time. He had no illusion about what had happened to him in the jungle during those years, he had become one with the tribe, what he first thought was barbaric behavior became comfort and security. In the books he read the authors often talked about the Stockholm Syndrome, where the hostage or the captive feels with their captors, and slowly forms a bond with them. At one point the captive believes he or she is safe with his captor against the evil forces outside, usually the police. In Kerry’s case it was not the police, it was the jungle itself. He had to stay safe and the only way to do that was to become one of them. The only problem was, he loved it. The death of Hogan and Julia slowly vanished from his memories, and even during those times he would walk up and look at their drying skins hanging from the wood mannequins he felt nothing. That would have been the old Kerry, the new and improved Kerry was a hunter, a warrior, who could move through the jungle like a Jaguar and kill without blinking an eye. He was thin, but strong, and all his fat had disappeared because of healthier food, and much exercise in the form of hunting. Physically, he had never felt as good as he did during those years. Now he had gained more weight, but he was still impressive, and he knew it.
He leaves the cup on the table and walks up the stairs to his and Becky’s bedroom, she is already in bed and he can hear from her breathing she is sleeping. Thank god for that, he thinks. They don’t make love the way they used to, and it’s all because of him. Sex just doesn’t seem so exciting anymore, he doesn’t have the urges he used to, now he gets off pulling the skin down the back of a human being, his manhood goes hard and sometimes he actually climaxes while doing it. It doesn’t matter if the victim is a man or a woman, it’s the sound and the feeling of doing it that turns him on. He remembers how some of the tribe's men would either masturbate or have sexual intercourse with a woman while the Old Man flayed a victim. All eyes were turned towards the wood construction, but in the silence before the screaming began, Kerry had heard the heavy breathing of sex all around him.