Russell climbed the tree with all the grace of an Australian breakdancer. It was a dance of awkward pulls and desperate kicks, Russell cursing all the while. As shameful as his acrobatic act truly was, it was the only shot he had of escaping the full-grown gorilla. He wasn’t about to outrun the hairy goliath — wasn’t about to fight it, either. Remember, Russell had spent more time than he cared to admit daydreaming about monkey brawls, and what was a gorilla if not the boss level of big-ass monkeys? Those mental showdowns always ended the same way: with Russell’s face ripped off.

So climbing was the only real option here. He clawed his way up the Crotch Goblin’s tree like his life depended on it. Which it probably did.

One branch, two branch, hiking himself higher with whatever energy he’d regained in the time since the rainstorm. It wasn’t much. His leggings strained in protest, and his bare hands scraped against bark like a cheese grater. He wasn’t going fast enough — the gorilla was closing in.

“Frig off!” he yelled, his voice cracking. “I didn’t do anything!” Russell grabbed for the next branch, his eyes darting over the blackened jungle around them. All that primo jungle real-estate, burned to ash — he had done something, and the gorilla likely knew it. It roared, deep and guttural, a sound that hit Russell right in the chest. The ground shook under its pounding footsteps, each one closer than the last.

The third branch gave out with a sharp crack, dumping Russell backward like a sack of potatoes. He would’ve hit the dirt if another branch hadn’t jabbed him in the spine on the way down. His suspenders snagged on it, snapping him to a stop and leaving him hanging upside down, arms flailing, blood rushing to his head.

It had taken him only seconds to start climbing, fuck that up, and end up hanging like a human pinata, ready and waiting for the beating of a lifetime.

“Shit, shit, shit!” he sputtered, twisting like a caught fish. Russell watched as the beast barreled closer. Every time its fists pounded against the burnt earth, a cloud of embers exploded in a fury. Those fists would be on him soon, no doubt. He threw both hands over his face, a flimsy last line of defense, then thought better of it and moved one hand to his crotch. Priorities.

The gorilla stopped dead at the base of the tree, chest heaving and nostrils pumping. Russell peeked through his fingers, daring a look at the thing. There it was, three hundred and sixty pounds of muscle and rage, just close enough for him to smell the sweat and smoke on its fur. In all the scenarios he’d run in his head — where he squared off against an army of apes — this was where things got ugly. Limbs flying, eyeballs plucked and slapped around like ping-pong balls — all kinds of National Geographic nightmares. But it didn’t happen yet.

The gorilla sniffed the air like it was searching for a clue. Its dark eyes flicked up at him, knowing, filled with something smarter than he wanted to admit. Russell clung to the branch, legs trembling in his stretched-out leggings, and felt a strange flicker of admiration.

Damn thing was badass.

“Easy,” he muttered, trying to sound like he wasn’t two seconds from pissing himself. “We’re good. Evvvvverything’s good.”

The gorilla slammed its fists against the dirt so hard Russell felt it reverberate through the tree. It thumped its chest, hard, once, like punctuation. A warning. Not full blown King-Kong shit, but enough to make a point. Then it cocked its head, and flicked its hands in a quick set of gestures — deliberate. Hell, some might even call the finger-flicks intricate, but from where Russell hung, upside-down and dizzy, it was hard to make sense of. So he stared like an idiot, his brain scrambling to catch up, and that’s when the voice hit him.

“Not good. Not good.”

It wasn’t the gorilla’s voice. Not really. It was clipped, spliced, the tones all wrong — one word high-pitched and cheerful, the next flat and everyday. Russell froze. Broken as it sounded, he recognized it. He’d heard that voice half a dozen times today, nagging and chirping at him since the moment he woke up. It was the voice from his wrist device.

Except this time, it wasn’t coming from his wrist.

It was coming from the gorilla’s.

As the gorilla continued to make quick gestures with its hands, Russell studied its arm. There strapped to one of its hairy appendages was a device. The thing had seen better days, screen cracked and flickering, but it seemed to serve the beast just fine — as of all things, a jerry-rigged communication device. As the gorilla performed sign language, barring its teeth at Russell all the while, the device translated the signals to speak for the beast.

“Holy shit,” Russell said. “You can talk. You’re a talking god-damn gorilla.”

The gorilla snarled in response, then gave Russell a shove, sending him swinging like a child’s swing. He flailed, throwing his hands out in feeble defense of himself. “No, no! No pushing! Be a good boy!”

“Jungle burning. Not good. Human get punished,” the gorilla signed, and the voice followed right after. The more Russell listened, the clearer it got — everything the gorilla “said” was cobbled together from the device’s library of pre-recorded lines.

“Yeah, I know — jungle was burning!” Russell said, his voice jumping a notch. “And I really hope they catch the guy that did it!”

The beast came closer, rising onto its hind legs until its head was higher than Russell’s. He cringed, bracing for the pounding of a lifetime, but when the gorilla’s massive arms came up, they didn’t come for him. They reached past him. Russell risked a look and saw what had caught its attention.

Tumzy. God damn Tumzy.

She dangled from a higher branch by her little lanyard, snagged in the chaos of Russell’s fall. Hanging there like some warped ornament on a Christmas tree.

The gorilla reached up and plucked her free, gentle as could be. Its whole demeanor shifted. The growling stopped. It hooted softly, low and comforting, anger draining away like it had never been there.

“That’s my friend,” Russell said, his voice shaky but hopeful. Jungle cred — he’d take it if he could get it.

The gorilla lowered Tumzy carefully, cradling her as it passed Russell’s eyeline, her painted eyes locked on his, unblinking and judgmental, all the way down. The beast crooned softly, nuzzling the water bottle like it was a cub.

“Me protect animal. Me protect jungle. Human not allowed. Punished,” the gorilla signed, its hands moving with deliberate intent.

Russell’s lizard brain fired up, his survival instincts weaving a story faster than he could think it through.

“Right, totally,” he said, nodding like a fool. “Humans suck. But me? I’m not human. I’m… I’m an animal. Look.” He held up his arm and rubbed it down the singed, matted fur of his mascot leggings. “See? Animal. So, uh, don’t beat the shit out of me.”

The gorilla didn’t look convinced. Its dark eyes narrowed, studying him. Then it reached out, grabbed a handful of his furry pants, and rubbed the fabric between its fingers like it was checking the label. Its brow furrowed, the gears turning. Then came the hand signals, flung like accusations.

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“You animal? The jungle only for animal.”

Even upside down, Russell could see the problem. To the gorilla, he must’ve looked like some freak hybrid — a mythical mix of man and beast. And maybe, just maybe, the same freak who’d torched its home, the one in need of “punishment”. Fuck that.

“I am,” he said, puffing out his chest like he meant it. “I am animal.” He curled his hand into a claw, swiping at the air with a half-hearted growl. “Rawr.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. Russell had spent more nights outside than he could count, including the time he woke up in a St. Bernard costume outside a mid-regional dog show, with a dog catcher trying to leash him. By modern society’s standards, yeah, he was an animal.

But the gorilla wasn’t buying it. Its expression stayed cold, that simmering anger starting to bubble back to the surface, thickening the air around them. Russell felt the desperation clawing at him. Like any decent con man, he knew one thing — he needed a little validation to seal the deal.

“Don’t believe me? T-Tumzy there’ll tell you — I’m the friendliest of the jungle critters. A true friend of nature, through and through. Right, Tumzy?”

They both turned to look at the water bottle. Russell gave it the kind of look you’d give a buddy at a poker table, the unspoken plea to play along, back up the bluff. But Tumzy, being a water bottle (and an asshole), stayed silent as the grave.

Russell’s face went red. “You fucking dick!” he yelled, unable to stop himself.

The gorilla shrieked and smacked him again, a massive backhand that sent him swinging harder. His suspenders groaned under the strain, and for a horrifying second, he thought they might snap. Instead, this second assault sent all of Russell’s collected gear spilling out of his leggings — everything he’d scavenged, everything he’d hoarded, scattered like offerings to the gorilla god: A pair of party shades, a golden crab claw, and a stick grenade. Replica, of course.

The gorilla sniffed at the scattered items, poking through them with a massive finger. It picked up the stick grenade, brought it to its nose, then swung it toward Russell, knocking him in the face a couple of times like it was asking, What the hell’s this for?

“No, no, it’s okay,” Russell stammered, trying to keep his tone light. He could recover from this, from Tumzy’s betrayal. “I’m a raccoon! Raccoons collect stuff. Trash! I was cleaning up the jungle.” He waved his hands around as he spoke, throwing in his own improvised sign language to sell the act. “Then — big fire! Whoosh!” He flared his hands like flames, then put them to his cheeks in a mock Home Alone expression. “I ran. Fast as I could. Got caught. Oh no!”

The gorilla tilted its head, watching him with wary eyes. For all its size and the coiled danger in its movements, there was something almost gentle in the way it stood, rising to its full height to inspect him again. The thing had to be six-foot tall.

“You animal. I protect animal,” it said, finally. If the translation was capable of creating proper tones, Russell was sure that last sentence would have been lathered in doubt. But it didn’t matter now, the ape had bought his bullshit.

“That’s great!” Russell said, barely able to believe his ruse had worked. If this was proof of his SWAGGER, then maybe it wouldn’t be a useless stat like he originally thought. Confidence swelled in him, enough to take a shot at something bolder. “So… you help me too? Help me down?”

The gorilla looked at Tumzy, then back at Russell. What a pair they made. But animals? Yeah, maybe in their own weird ways. With a cautious snort, the gorilla set Tumzy down on the ground, then rose back to Russell. It gave him a long look, sizing him up like a carpenter eyeballing a broken piece of furniture.

Figuring out how to remove Russell from the tree, that seemed to push the limits of the gorilla’s UTILITY — if it had such a stat. Smart as it was, its problem-solving boiled down to brute force. Like any good beast, it played to its STRENGTH, and it clearly had more of that than it knew what to do with. It grabbed Russell by the arm and yanked hard, no finesse in the move, just raw power.

“Wait, wait, wait—” Russell bleated, but it was too late. His worst nightmare kicked in as one of the suspenders snapped. His body peeled halfway out of the leggings, sliding loose like a ruptured boil. One half of him came free, the other half stayed caught, leaving him hanging by the lone suspender. A funny sight, if not for the consequences it unleashed. And that consequence unleashed? Well, it was Russell’s dick.

Russell’s exposed body sagged just enough to flash the gorilla square in the face — his junk, front and center. Instantly, the air shifted again. Whatever caretaker vibes the gorilla had been giving off evaporated in a heartbeat. Shocked by the sight, it jolted back and dropped to all fours, letting out a furious bellow.

It signed, pointed — right at Russell’s exposed crotch.

“Penis,” the device bleated. “Human penis.”

Russell didn’t need the gorilla’s spliced voice to tell him it was pissed. The air was already thick with its fury. He wasn’t an animal anymore — not in its eyes. Not after that. All thanks to his goddamn human penis. That thing was always more trouble than it was worth.

The gorilla raised both arms, ready to bring them down on Russell like twin wrecking balls.

“Fuck!” Russell screamed, bracing for the impact. But before the blow landed, a rock shot into the scene, hitting the ground just short of the gorilla. The beast froze, startled, its head snapping around like a dog hearing a noise it couldn’t place. Then came another rock, this one landing closer.

The gorilla roared into the smoke-filled jungle, banging its chest, demanding the rock-thrower step up and show themselves.

Rock-thrower.

Oh, god, Russell thought. My hero hath returned.

If Russell was right about what was happening, he’d need to sell it, dip into that SWAGGER of his once more. He picked a random spot in the distance, jabbed a finger toward it, and made his best terrified face.

“Ah!” he yelled. “Over there! Dirty human!”

The gorilla paused, then followed Russell’s finger, eyes narrowing as it locked onto the spot. Without hesitation, it thundered off in that direction, bashing through scorched logs and sending embers flying. A one-beast tank, ready to crush whatever human was hiding.

“Human no hiding!” the device screamed as the gorilla charged. “Me rip you! Me hurt you!”

But there wasn’t anyone over there. Russell knew it. The rock-thrower wasn’t far at all.

As soon as the gorilla thundered off, Russell felt a pair of small hands on his back, working to free him from the costume that had him tangled up in the tree.

“Shoji,” Russell whispered, his voice barely above a breath, turning to see if it was really him.

It was. By God, it was. The Japanese man, late twenties maybe, with spiked black hair, a mud-caked face, and eyes that said he’d seen worse than this. Shoji — the first face Russell had laid eyes on when he woke up in this nightmare.

The answer to his prayers.

Shoji spoke fast, the words tumbling out in Japanese. Russell didn’t understand a lick of it, but he didn’t need to. Unlike the gorilla, Shoji’s tone had an edge — sharp, urgent. We gotta go.

Together, they yanked Russell free from the last suspender. His bruised, battered body hit the ground with a bone-rattling oof. He scrambled to his feet, blinking down at Shoji, all five feet and some change of him. Just like back on the beach, Shoji was stark naked — and now so was Russell.

As a matter of fact, Russell was now more naked than Shoji. The little rock-thrower had a string of hand-made rope tied around his waist, with two small plastic bags dangling from it — the kind you’d use to pick up dog shit. Russell, meanwhile, had nothing but his birthday suit. He glanced down at himself, remembering his scattered gear, and snatched up the two closest things: Tumzy and the grenade.

“Must run. Run fast!” Shoji said, his English clumsy but clear.

But Russell had to wonder if it’d even be worth it. He pointed over Shoji’s shoulder, eyes wide. The gorilla had turned, snarling at the sight of them, fevered by their deception. Where it hadn’t gone full King Kong before, it did now. It beat its chest with a fury that shook the air, every pound screaming murder. It wasn’t just angry anymore. It was out for blood.

“It’s coming back!” Russell screamed as the gorilla barreled toward them.

Shoji looked up, sharing in Russell’s panic, but not for long. In the middle of all the chaos, he closed his eyes and let out a long, measured breath. Any trace of dismay disappeared as he found some kind of inner peace. When he spoke, his voice was steady but sharp, like some Dragon Ball Z character giving a monologue before the big fight.

“Kemukujara no raibaru…” The gorilla thundered closer. Russell gawked at Shoji, dumbfounded.

“Anata no nebaridzuyo-sa o sonkei shimasu.” Another step, closer still. Shoji didn’t flinch. His hand reached down to one of the plastic dog-shit bags tied around his waist.

“What the hell are you doing, man?” Russell said, frightened, ready to leave his savior behind.

Shoji screamed the rest of his monologue as he ripped the bag open, his fingers closing around its contents. Russell could only pray it wasn’t actual dog shit.

“Shikashi, anata wa jibunjishin'no yashin ni mōmoku ni natte imasu!”

“Shit!” Russell yelped as the gorilla lunged. Shoji moved with the unexpected grace of a samurai and the unnecessary flair of an anime villain. With a sharp twist, he flung a handful of the bag’s contents straight into the gorilla’s face.

The effect was immediate. The dust burst into a gritty, tan cloud, and the gorilla staggered back, roaring in agony. It thrashed wildly, swiping at its face, desperate to claw the stuff out of its eyes.

Russell stared in awe. “Holy shit, man. Did you just pocket-sand a gorilla?”

Shoji didn’t bother answering. He reached for the second shit-bag at his waist, scooping out another handful of dust.

“Help run,” he said, and before Russell could react, Shoji dusted him right in his face.

“No, don’t—” Russell managed, but it was already done. The dust had entered his eyes, his nose. It burned familiar. Like the gorilla, the effect hit instantly. Only, this dust was different, sourced from a different shit-bag. Where the gorilla had reeled in pain, Russell felt his brain light up like a switchboard. Every muscle snapped to attention, every receptor kicked into overdrive. His focus narrowed to a razor’s edge, and he felt like he could bench-press a patient from My 600 Pound Life. Best yet, he felt like he could run for miles.

And over the next twenty minutes, that’s exactly what they did. The two naked fugitives tore through the jungle, Tumzy swinging around Russell’s neck, the grenade rattling inside her. Bare feet pounding the dirt, they left the scorched wasteland behind, breaking into the untouched green where the fires hadn’t reached. Over time, the gorilla’s screams faded, swallowed by the trees, a bad memory and the kind of story no one back home would ever believe.

When Russell was sure they’d put enough space between them and their would-be destroyer, he grabbed Shoji by the shoulder, pulling him to a stop. They had things to talk about, and Shoji’s relentless Naruto run was starting to piss him off.

“Shoji,” Russell said, panting as he steadied himself. “I need you to take me to the boat.”

“Boat?” Shoji said, frowning like he didn’t understand, but Russell wasn’t about to waste time. He knew he’d just hooked his White Whale.

He wiped his face, smearing some of the dust Shoji had blasted him with. He didn’t need to look to know what it was. There was only one thing on this island that could light someone up like a meth-fueled firecracker. Spazz Powder.

He held his purple-stained palm up to Shoji, his voice sharp and clear.

“Boat, motherfucker. Take me.”