-I-
After a three-hour journey on an improvised highway, we were now traveling through the biggest settlement around the southern area of the forest. We passed through several full-with-people food stands, car repair shops, and stores I had no idea what they were selling. This looked like a normal cowboy town, so perhaps they sold normal commodities. At least that was what I thought until the chief talked.
"This town has more than ten thousand people living here. But it has little police. Bad people that destroy the jungle live here," the indigenous man told us. "Conflicts on land ownership kill people. Very few policemen will help when there are fights. This town is full of murderers. Seventy people got murdered last year. It's dangerous for me to pass here, but it is the shortest way. We'll not stop."
"Why is it dangerous for you? You almost became the seventy-first?" Luuk asked.
I was a bit shocked from how forward he was, but the chief laughed and nodded. “Yes. I was almost killed by the assassins who were paid to kill me because I exposed their illegal mining and logging activities.”
I squirmed in the seat, uncomfortable from passing through the murderers' outpost and from sitting in the pickup truck for hours without even one pit stop. My claustrophobia was acting up; my throat started to close up.
"Estás sudando." [You're sweating.] Aarón rubbed the sweat on my forehead with his coarse palm. "You want the window down?"
I shook my head despite my pounding heart. The weather was so hot, it would suck away the cool air in the truck and inconvenient them. "Não. Estou bem. Espero que cheguemos em breve." [No. I'm fine. I hope we'll arrive soon.]
"Estaremos allí en una hora. Espera." [We'll be there in an hour. Just hang on.]
I turned slightly toward Aarón and held his thick arm. It leveled my anxiety a bit that I fell asleep several times throughout the journey.
Every time I opened my eyes, the surroundings were the same: small farms spread toward bald brown hills and wooden sheds with and without cows lined the roads. Trailers stacked with logs passed us in the opposite direction every now and then; dusty road hindered my vision of the rainforest. The farther we traveled from the notorious town, the thicker the forest became.
"Where are we?" I straightened up, looking at the open crown of Dinizia excelsa trees above us. They would be no shorter than fifty metres tall. The path became darker as more of the trees were seen.
"I don't have the faintest. But..." Luuk peeked at his watch, "we are five hours away from where we started."
When the urge to ask the driver to stop because I would rather walk to the illegal logging site they were going to intensified, the 4x4 halted. The drivers parked among the trees, and I had an ominous suspicion that they were hiding the trucks from the illegal loggers.
We got out and followed the tribesmen. A big slanted cross made of thick sticks marked the end of the dirt road. Beyond that, grass closed into a dense orchard of trees. The mossy roots and the fronds of bracken seemed to invite us into the forest. This place was insidious.
The jungle was hot, thick, and dark. It wasn't peaceful, either. Every second, the sound of something falling onto the forest floor breached the short-lived silence. Nuts, maybe berries. Branches. The air had a strong chlorophyll smell. Thick with oxygen, but suffocating at the same time. Every species of animals I could not name chirped and cawed amid the dense trees. I could barely see the detritus we were stepping on. The deeper we hiked, the darker it became. I could only follow the indigenous guides.
In front of me, Aarón was telling Luuk and the students about the Roosevelt River that we had crossed an hour ago. "President Roosevelt trekked into this very place in 1914 with a famous Brazilian trekker. It was unexplored then. The poor president almost died from fever and an infected wound. The river was infamous for predators. Anacondas, electric eels, piranhas, malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The headwater we passed earlier, it was once called River of Doubt, then was renamed Roosevelt River because of the incident."
Luuk rubbed his lower lip. I suspected that he already knew the story.
A mosquito bit me. I slapped it instinctively, suddenly having an unrooted fear of contracting malaria, even though I was inoculated two months ago. River of Doubt. Very true to its name. This place was insidious.
"Anyway, what's your story? I saw you fear the monkeys too," Aarón said a few feet in front of Luuk.
My head whipped toward Luuk at the same time he glared at me.
"Hey, I didn't tell him anything. Though I forgot to tell you." Then I whispered, "Aarón knows everything. He's a Sherlock Holmes."
There are no secrets with Aarón. He sees everything. He knows everything. He's a mind reader. He reads my secrets like an open diary.
Luuk rolled his eyes. "I was attacked by two of them as a child. What started as hunting ended up with me being hunted." He pulled up his left sleeve and exposed the humanoid bite scar on his biceps. "They stole my M&Ms, can you believe it? Stole? No. It was an armed robbery. I got ten stitches from their bite and countless dose of rabies prophylaxis."
"No wonder you tried to climb the tree," Aarón said to Luuk.
"Climb what tree?" I asked, shocked.
"And who told you that?" Luuk ignored me, asking him.
"Chen." Aarón chuckled.
"Shocking. A psychiatrist who doesn't adhere to patient confidentiality. What are you guys? A bunch of schoolgirls who spread rumors?"
"You're not his client, per se. There's no confidentiality involved," I said.
"Thank you for stating the obvious." Luuk clicked his tongue.
"You're welcome." I grimaced, trying not to laugh.
His eyes glared at me, but his lips betrayed him. He grinned, and like this morning when he hugged me, something fluttered in my chest.
It's just a stupid smile. He doesn't have feelings for you, Jona. Don't even go there.
I rubbed my heated face and said, "I mean, it's okay to be scared. I would do the same if spiders surrounded me." And mentioning the word 'spiders' was a big mistake. I scanned the ground for whatever I could see in this darkness. An owl hooted somewhere behind me, and the hair on my neck raised. Every sound intensified together with my heartbeat.
"Yep. There are always instances where life will kick the ball under your feet, or directly kick you in the balls. You know, even as a trekker, I fear the forest," Aarón said.
"And that, coming from one of the best silviculturists in America," Luuk said.
"I may be the best now. Not fifteen years ago." He slapped his own arm. It was the moment I realized that this spot had so many mosquitoes.
"Why, you got lost in the jungle and had to fight jaguars to survive?" Luuk held aside a tangle of underbrush, waited for me to duck beneath it (not caring to wait for Aarón), and continued walking.
I gasped from how accurate his guess was.
Aarón laughed, took my hand, and helped me step over a big root. "You're right on the nail. Though it wasn't a jaguar I fought. It was a puma."
"Ah. Intriguing. Pray tell." Luuk sounded curious.
"The first time I trekked the Peruvian Amazon, I got lost. You know what they said about not to get too excited when you enter the jungle? Coz you tend to get lost?"
Luuk nodded. Strange. Maybe I was the only one who had never heard that.
"You are religious. So I take it you believe in jungle spirits?" Aarón asked.
"With God, comes all the unseen," Luuk said. "Only fools believe in ghosts but not God."
"Believe me when I tell you I followed my expedition team for hours. Turned out, they were not my team. Hell, they were not even there. I didn't know what I followed." He laughed and shrugged. "I was alone in the jungle for eighteen days. Jesus, it was a battlefield. I had to improvise and set light to my insect repellent canister to fight off the puma. Don't have to tell you how many times I almost died trying to save myself."
Luuk nodded and listened, making faces every now and then, especially in the part where Aarón had to kill and eat monkeys to survive. Luuk backtracked, adding distance between them.
Several minutes passed, and we reached a small clearing. A patrol group of ten indigenous people that the chief told us about was sitting and smoking in their respective hammock. They looked harsh and strong. A big guy in a white sleeveless shirt and a dangling cigarette between his yellowed teeth stood up and shook the chief's hand. Scanning around the camp, at least five shotguns and three machetes rested against the trees.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Luuk suddenly wrapped his hands around my arm when one of them shouted in a foreign language behind us. I saw a hint of childishness in his eyes, the look he had on him that night he cried.
“You okay?” I patted his hand. I knew he hated it when he didn't understand a language.
He let go of me and stopped walking. “Yeah, sorry. That just scared the shit out of me.”
I swapped the mosquito hovering over my forehead. That was when my heart almost stopped, because I saw a pale green snake on the tree bark behind Luuk. I backtracked and let out a small shout when my back hit another tree.
“What's wrong?” Luuk looked behind him and saw the snake crawling on a leafy branch. “Holy shit.”
“Get away from it!” I reached out for him, my heart sped up. I glanced at the group, looking for Aarón, but he wasn't there. I reached for Luuk. Instead of looking scared, he looked… excited?
"Nah, don't bother it. It won't attack you." He backtracked. "Pit vipers are cool. It's just chilling out.”
“Pit vipers?” I pulled him to me. “Aren't they venomous?”
“They'll probably kill you in one strike, yes.”
“Shouldn't we kill it before it kills us?” I asked.
He looked at me and his smile turned to a grimace. “You want me to kill it?”
“I don't want you to go near it.” I gripped his arm, willing my heart to calm down.
He scrutinized me, then his eyes scanned the tree behind me. Slowly, he came closer to me. The scent of bergamot mixed with sweat gave me shivers; instead of calming down, my heart pumped frantically again.
“What?” I asked.
He took out a black folding knife from his breast's pocket. He swiped it open in one gentle move, holding it as high as his chest. Another hand was resting on my left shoulder.
He's killing it for real? “Wait. You don't need to kill it for real.”
He shushed me. “Hey, help me out. Look at the snake. Tell me where it is now.” He could turn back and look himself, but he was staring into my eyes as he said that, his back to the snake. He bit the knife as he tied his hair.
My eyeballs glid toward the snake. I couldn't find it the first second because it blended with the greens behind it. Before I could tell him the direction of the snake when I finally saw it slithered upward on a branch, something whammed next to my ear.
Anxiety hit my chest. My legs weakened when I saw a big tarantula next to my head. I jerked away; my hand flew to my ear. I chanted "Holy fuck" four times.
Luuk grabbed me before I could fall onto the forest floor; his other hand was still holding the knife. He retracted his blade from the bark. “Calm down. It's dead.”
“What the fuck…” I willed myself to look at the brown, hairy tarantula on the blade, stabbed. “It's not dead!” Violent shivers ran through my back as I saw its wiggling legs. I stepped behind Luuk, hands clenching his shirt.
He turned the blade in his hand, staring at the spider.
I forced myself to look at his face rather than the spider. “What… What kind of spider is it?”
“Brazilian Wandering Spider. It belongs to the genus Phoneutria. Do you know what phoneutria means in Greek?" he asked.
I shook my head, still forcing myself not to look at it.
“It means murderess in Greek.” He chuckled. "And it's no wonder why. This bitch is one of the most venomous spiders on Earth. Do you have any idea what it feels to be stung by one of these?”
I moaned from disgust. “I'm glad I don't know.”
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Luuk pushed out the spider from the blade with his fingers. “Like any other venomous bites, it burns your insides. Your heart would slow down, you would get anaphylactic reaction. But one thing that made it different than any other bites is… it gives you an erection. A painful one.” He grinned.
My cheeks were burning. I ignored the fact that he just uttered the word erection so close to me and asked, “You were bitten by one?”
"My brother loved to keep exotic venomous arthropods. One day, I was stupid enough to open the spider tank and try to feed one. You get the gist of what happened." He threw the dead spider on the forest floor next to my feet; I jerked away from it, squirming from disgust. "He then killed every single one of his spiders and never kept one again."
What he said stopped my heart from pounding, but it didn't calm me. Instead, goosebumps rippled under my skin. “He killed his pets for you?”
He looked at the group fifty yards away. They had started to build a campfire and a tent. He turned to me and folded his knife between us. “He even killed people for me.” His smile reminded me of the look on the face of the kids I trained when their parents fetched them from the dojo.
Who the hell is this man?
-II-
The thick canopy gave the impression that night had fallen when it was still six o'clock. Two shirtless men holding a six-foot-tall bow approached our group. One of them carried a limp deer on his shoulder. They started to field dress the deer. Meanwhile, we tied our hammocks to the nearby trees. Luuk tied his right next to mine. I didn't understand why, but I felt safe having him nearby. Maybe because Aarón was nowhere to be seen. He had told me he would scout the place a bit with the chief.
The forest was loud. The sounds of things falling and the chirps and caws of animals never stopped. A stream of water was gushing somewhere on our right. Nothing seemed to sleep when night came. This area was less of a thick jungle and more of a dotted spot on Earth (the chief showed us the Google Map earlier, and this place looked bare). I knew the illegal loggers just took down a huge tree nearby when a loud, crashing rumble of a falling tree startled us. The rumbling of heavy machinery and trailers never stopped. A hundred yards away, there was active illegal logging. We would not get closer to the red zone, but we would document the activities we saw along the improvised road we took earlier.
"Aarón, onde está o rio? [Aarón, where's the river?] I need to relieve myself," I whispered to him came midnight. Drinking coffee when dehydrated wasn't a great idea.
"It's a creek." He pointed his flashlight toward our right the same time he got onto his feet. "Vamos. Yo te llevaré." [Let's go. I'll take you.]
I took his big hand.
"Anyone wants to join us to freshen up at the creek?" Aarón asked.
"No thanks," Luuk answered and kept reading the Quran.
What a weird hobby.
Nobody else answered so it was just us.
We walked farther before he stopped. "Hey, see that?"
I looked up.
Smears of yellow lights hovered in the dark. I couldn't see the background because it was so dark it sent shivers up my back, but the tiny lights made me love the darkness, at least at the moment.
"Fireflies."
We stood still for a minute or two, appreciating the beauty of the simple hovering lights before we continued walking among the illuminated insects.
Aarón stopped walking a minute later. "Espera." [Wait.] Holding on a tangled mossy root, he jumped down onto the stony riverbank.
I jumped after him. Electricity ran up my right leg.
"Toma." [Here.] He passed me his flashlight. "Yo te espero aquí. Tómate tu tempo." [I'll wait here. Take your time.]
And while I took my time behind a seven-foot boulder, he babbled about how the forest turned him into an 'unsolicited celibate' from the lack of women he could 'fuck senseless' here. What a vulgar friend...
"Haven't you ever think about... living a proper life?" I called. "You have fucked more than... what? Five hundred women? Haven't you found someone to settle down with?"
"I have," he said, and I knew what he would say next. "I found you. You know I've always loved you, Jona. But... doesn't mean I have to turn celibate after you rejected me." He laughed. "Though I'll stop whoring around the moment you return my feelings."
The water was numbing. I washed my hands and reached him in five steps. The moon was bright without the clouds. I could see every inch of his face. His stubble invited me to stroke it. Aarón was the most attractive guy I had ever known. Vulgar, but attractive. A gentleman in his own way.
I had never imagined myself in a sexual relationship. But I couldn't lie that Aarón breached the boundary sometimes, no matter how much I tried to deny him. Aarón was the only man I had ever allowed to touch me. He loved me. He took all the unpaid leave he could take to nurse me for a month when I got bedridden after the accident. And never once did he complain.
I hugged him around his thick waist. "You know I love you."
His sweat smelled sweet. Cinnamon. The kind of smell I woke up to for the past six years.
"Not in the way that I love you." He kissed the top of my head. His stubble pricked my forehead. "Ah, we should head back to the site. My celibacy is in danger." He pushed my shoulders, gave me a toothy smile, and turned away.
I grabbed his arm before I could think twice. But I didn't have to think, because I knew what I wanted. "Aarón."
"¿Si, querida?" [Yes, honey?]
"Você tem a mim, tu sabes." [You have me, you know.]
"Pues sí que lo sé." [Of course I know that.] He cupped my neck with his warm palm, and goosebumps raised on my arms.
"No, I mean... you don't have to be the unsolicited celibate you are now. I'm here."
His eyes widened. "And what does that mean, exactly?"
"You know what I mean." I sighed. My ears heated up.
He laughed and dangled his heavy arms on my shoulders. "Are you pitying me coz I'm sex-less? I thought you always asked me to stop having sex."
"It's not pity per se. You know sex is the last thing on my mind. I just hate that I'm here but I can do nothing for you."
"Now, cariño. You know I will take advantage of you if you keep talking like that. I'm not a gentleman." He grinned and cupped my ass.
I rubbed his forearms and shrugged. "It's not like this will be our first time."
"Almost all of them were because you were drunk, and I can count them with my fingers."
"And one of them wasn't. I never found that one time a mistake. Cuz you love me. And even when I was drunk, you always kept your hands to yourself. You never took advantage of me." I wrapped my arms around his neck and rested my cheek against his thumping heart. He felt like home, like a default. He loved me. The emotions became tangible at times for me too. "You know your boundaries. My boundaries. You respect me in ways no man has ever done. You keep my secret the way no friend keeps their friend's secret. You have never invalidated me."
"Porque te amo, cariño." [Because I love you, sweetheart.]
Yes. He loved me all the same even after six years. It was me who was incapable of loving him the same way. I lost a piece of my heart as a child, and I just couldn't complete the love he gave me. But I still loved him in my own way.
"Eu sei." [I know.] I paused. The chirping of insects intensified. I rested my chin on his chest and stared into his eyes, and he kneaded my scalp. So good. I leaned into his touch. "So, considering you have zero women to play around here, I can help you with... well, not sex, but lesser acts." I smiled.
He pulled me closer, another hand traveling down my spine. Shivers ran in the opposite direction. "I'm not gallant enough to reject seduction from you. Don't tempt me, Jona."
"You know I'm not seducing you." I grinned as I trailed my hands on his hip.
"Then is this a friendly gesture?" He touched the finger I hooked on his cargo pants' waist.
"Yes. I'm just setting up the mood for you." I laughed. "Just giving a... distressed friend a hand this once."
He laughed out loud for at least five seconds before he said, "Giving me a hand, huh?"
I nodded and shrugged. "Just take the damn offer and be grateful, Aarón. This is a one-time offer. I'm your only saving grace here in the Amazon. And you've been celibate for a month. I'm sure you're clean from any STDs. I don't have to worry." I grinned.
"Damn, Jona. How many years has it been... Amazon has softened you up." He chuckled and pressed his wet lips on mine.
He was big and almost a foot taller, so it wasn't long before he hoisted me up with his strong arms. I wrapped my legs around his hips for support, and he explored my mouth with his feverish tongue. His heart pounded. Fast. Hard. Loud. He growled in sounds I had never heard before. He was rough but sweet at the same time. Like sugar jelly candy.
My heart pounded in my ears when my back hit the cold, huge boulder. Goosebumps trailed over my skin when he ran his rough hand under my shirt. Another hand hovered on the boundary I set up myself. I knew he wasn't asking for permission because he knew where to stop.
But I took his hand and led it over the boundary. He gasped into the kiss and breathed my name.
"Just... do what you want. Anything but sex. I trust you with my life, Aarón," I breathed into his mouth and kissed him again.
He hummed into the kiss. Then he took advantage of me, and I just let him play with me. And so I played with him too, the way he wanted.