Scanning Proofreading: CSH
Chapter 9
When we first set out, there were four women and five men; now there are only four of us left, and it’s become an unhappy group of adventurers, even for Martha, who has always managed to boost the group’s morale and be indomitable.
We didn’t hide our grief at all, everyone was thinking they were going to die.
We were thirsty, hungry, and cold, and filled with a sense of defeat. We found the Vicar Bamba, but it was the greatest disappointment, and only Masson made an effort to try to save himself, and then even he had to admit defeat in front of those huge piles of stones. He sat at the bottom of the pile of rocks with his hands over his head, and even a man like me, who loves verbal attacks, looked forward to getting a cheering reply from him that we needed Superman.
We passed the day in this way, and the next day remained in a state of miserable inactivity, each with his own pessimistic thoughts, and not one of us speaking. By the third day, I wanted to leave the miserable, unhappy faces of my companions behind and walk everywhere alone. Carla kept harping on how hungry and thirsty she was, and how she abhorred the pitifully small rations. Martha’s patience was gone, and she yelled at the girl, “Shut up and stop your endless whining and discontent, or I’ll snap your neck!” Not at all like Martha. Then Carla burst into serious tears, and I was even more determined to go for a walk.
The batteries in the flashlight were getting weaker and weaker, and the wavering yellow column of light merely illuminated with an obscure light that wasn’t clear at all. I had to get away from them, at least for a little while, they were driving me crazy and I was feeling very uncomfortable to say the least, then I heard footsteps behind me again, and turned around only to find Matson appearing in the column of light.
“I want to be alone for a while,” I said in my most annoying accent.
“Me too. Then we’re alone together.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Why not? I don’t see what’s at stake in this pitiful situation. If anything, I’d rather be obtuse.”
“That’s your logic.” I simply ignored him and walked away, only to perceive him close behind me, closely followed by the faint light of the torch. “Well, if you’re going to be with me and walk with me, don’t follow, it makes me uneasy.”
He laughed aloud. It was a bit of a small, sleepy cave. “Why? Did you think I’d take advantage of the darkness to do something untoward to you?”
“I haven’t even worried about you in the past, let alone in tough times like these.”
In fact, I had been looking forward to this, after all, he had hinted at it, and yet when he suddenly grabbed me I called up in horror and slammed him in the darkness, and the torch fell to the floor and went out.
He pressed me firmly against the wall. I struggled absentmindedly as he kissed me powerfully and deeply, as if that was all he knew how to do, until my knees began to shake uncontrollably and I had to hold on to him for thought of support. Only then did he begin to undress himself, then me, and squeezed me again in the pitch blackness, kissing me deeply and passionately, exhausting me in different ways, filling me with burning lust.
I moaned, my mouth pressing against him and sucking frantically, my hands moving uncontrollably back and forth over his body, his spine, his hips, his strong, powerful legs. He was firm against me, that stiff and huge… “Come on.” I prayed, rubbing my crotch against him.
“No, take your time, the slower you go the more wonderful it feels.” He insisted, gently pushing his elbows against my legs and tracing his hand down to his pussy, so delicately caressing it, so slowly that I almost whimpered in extreme agony, frantic with desire for what he couldn’t give.
He lowered his head and licked and sucked on the breasts without fuss, adjusting each flick of his tongue with a flick that was so delicate it was painfully pleasurable. He reared his body up while stabbing his hard cock into me, wanting me with a caress so hard and deep it caused my feet to shift off the ground. He covered my hips with both hands, one finger roaming over them, and pressed me against the wall, each caress making me hoot with extreme precision, causing me to gasp with intense pleasure that bordered on agony.
I called his name aloud, yet it was drowned out in a gasp as I clung to him, tugging at his hair, and it wasn’t long before I felt the gush of heat, a throbbing, delayed peak of sexual arousal, and for a moment I forgot the reality of what I was facing. We were happy and peaceful for a while, but the reality of what was happening before us quickly swallowed it all up and disappointment set in.
I sank slightly into the crook of his arm. “You know, if I had died in that moment of pleasure, it would have been one of the most wonderful endings of my life, and I would not have complained. But it wasn’t so. Fate doesn’t tie up, does it? It will arrange all sorts of interludes to make us die slowly after all the trials and tribulations.”
The warmth of his breath on my cheek was a few moments of comfort. “Do we have to talk about this now?”
Matson murmured and whispered, “I was practically alive before you opened your mouth to speak.”
I was barely listening as my tongue continued to flop around involuntarily, pouring out all the ominous thoughts in my head. “How do you think we’re going to die? Is it starvation? Will we then eat the flesh of our own kind to survive, and if so, who will we eat? Or will any of us go mad? Yes, I might just go mad, for many times I have had this symptom in my mind.”
“Now I couldn’t agree more with that statement.”
I made a deliberate attempt to bend my knee and attack him where he was most vulnerable to trauma, but I was not surprised that he was on guard and avoided the attacking lower limb, ducking into the darkness to tsk tsk tsk in triumph.
We both fumbled with our respective pants, finding only one pair, a pair of Matson’s, and I had to settle for wearing my own lacy Marks and Period Parks branded knickers. I wasn’t overly concerned about the missing clothing, in fact it doesn’t really bother me these days. In about a week or so it would have been of no value at the time of my death, we had only a very small amount of water left, and you couldn’t last much longer without it.
We would die in an enigmatic grave where no one would ever find our bodies, and my paper might try to print an exclusive story, and usually in the newspaper business, bad news is good news. For me, it never made any real impression, but the rest of my colleagues at the paper would make it up as they went along, because they had always followed the one and only motto: Never let the truth get in the way of a good experience. Pepper will describe how he waved goodbye to the group from the boat on the last leg of the trip, watching us disappear into the jungle. From there they were able to use their amazing imaginations without restraint. The adventure was already forming in my mind, and the headline was already in place, but now it was time for someone else to do the job, to get the honor, the reward… Upon returning to the first stone room, we found Martha tearfully and sadly shaking her head. “I chose him… I chose him because of his ass, not because of his abilities… This predicament is all my fault. We’re going to die here because I chose the wrong person, and I’m a fool.”
“Stop blaming yourself,” Matson soothed. “He has a unique way of knowing how to capitalize on his appearance and poise and grooming. Besides, your folly is by no means unique, is it? Sidney, Carla and Margaret have all fallen for his tricks.”
I glared at him, even though it was true, but I didn’t want to remember it.
“But I should have seen it all long ago. I wasn’t a frivolous teenager, and when he said you were the spy, I was so convinced that I was just plain stupid. Forgive me, Masson.”
“Get over it all, I’ve forgotten all about it.”
Kara sucked in a sharp breath through her nose, her eyes framed in red as she cried out. “I don’t want to die.”
“We’re not going to die. Not yet, anyway, at least not yet,” Masen promised her.
I raised one eyebrow. “Oh yeah, so when will death come? Can you work miracles or something?”
He looked unsettled. “There is always a chance, there is always hope.”
“So you mean if I call out loud endlessly through the cracks in the rock pile, someone will hear me?” I laughed maniacally. “Who would hear? There’s not a soul here, not even for hundreds of miles around, don’t you remember such an obvious fact?”
“Can’t you be cheerful,” Matson snarled. “Looks like we’ll have to adjust your mood.”
“Ah, the desperate plunge into death!”
“So are you.”
“Shut up, you two,” Martha said in a friendly hush, “there’s nothing to be gained by quarrelling.”
Masson and I glared at each other, and I was determined never to look away. “I want you to be the first to die so that there is still something for me to rejoice about in the last hours of my life.”
“Sidney!” Martha gasped sharply, her body like an electric shock. “Don’t say anything so horrible.”
“I… We are never going to be that vulnerable all of a sudden.” I shushed.
Masen’s expression was full of scorn. “Viper.”
“Amoeba.”
Kara suddenly jumped up and screamed at the top of her lungs, “If you two keep this up, I can’t wait for you to die on your own, I’ll kill you while you’re asleep.”
I stormed out angrily; I didn’t want any company, just to be left alone. Of course I didn’t go very far, nor could I under the current circumstances. I came to the sixth stone room, maybe the seventh? Hell, who’s counting! I wouldn’t bother with such a thing nowadays. The only thing that filled my entire mind was that I was going to die.
Feeling like a bitchy, unsociable young lady using this place as a base, I set down my own sleeping bag and began rummaging through the contents of my backpack by flashlight light. It was Rory’s flashlight, which he would never use again.
I had a small amount of water left, a little dehydrated food, a couple of pads, a couple of ballpoint pens, a dozen pairs of underwear and bug spray and cream. Makeup was extremely simple: a comb, face cloths, soap, lipstick and a mirror.
I gazed at myself in the mirror and flinched and shuddered, it couldn’t be me! It simply couldn’t be! I was as miserable as a pile of garbage in hell, a vicious dog. I sensed the sobbing starting quietly, and knew in my heart that once it started it would be hard to stop. I could no longer pretend to be handsome Sidney, I could no longer be a good newspaperman, I was a skeleton of a human being, and I would feel better if I were dead, and I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. Not even that scumbag, Mason.
I shook my head skeptically and threw the mirror out of my hand with all my might. How could he have let himself make love to me? He must have kept his eyes closed the whole time! Poor Masson, I couldn’t help but admire him and at the same time sympathize a little with the fact that maybe he had some over-the-top mental shortcomings and only liked to do that with ugly people.
I cried out in the empty darkness, extinguished my flashlight to save the batteries at the same time, and finally fell into a slow slumber.
The place was bathed in sunlight and the jagged dappled shadows looked cool and moving. There were lush trees and bushes everywhere, and the water in the pools was a deep blue color, with a snowy, sandy bottom that shimmered and shimmered like crystal.
There were people there, local Turks, with dark skin and dark blue hair, which was their habitat. They wore ornately decorated clothes in extremely bright colors, red and gold being their popular colors.
The Inca monarch sat high on his stone throne, wearing rich royal robes, a crown and a ceremonial cloak. Gold dripped from his body down his arms, neck and ears.
His subjects tremble uncontrollably, oppressed slaves who can’t even think of betrayal. He was a descendant of the sun in the sky, and his surroundings were heaven on earth. In that marvelous pool, cool and beautiful as water, the ladies were bathing every part of their bodies naked, their nipples swollen and painted with black eyelids, the most beautiful girls from the Andes and the Amazon, all belonging to the Inca monarch, a group of women who pleased him.
When it comes to reproduction, he can only marry a direct descendant of the sun like himself, and that means he has to marry his own sister, but he can pick and choose from among his own people in order to fulfill his sexual needs.
As he sipped his wine, he watched them, picking them out carefully and recklessly. Who would be chosen today?
Did he feel energized or did he want to rest a little for what was to come? Did he want to fill her mouth again, her womanly pleasure gate, or the tight, defiant cunt between her golden ass-cheeks?
He couldn’t help but smirk in amusement at her at the thought of possessing that girl yesterday. He kept stuffing her mouth with the fresh, sweet fruit until she was gagging in a desperate effort to vomit, the juice slowly trickling down the corners of her mouth, accompanied by waves of laughter and choking sounds. Once her mouth was full, he began to stuff the fruit into her buttocks again, watching carefully how they were squeezed into her pussy muscles, and after a small contraction she disappeared and swallowed it all, so enthralled was he that he pushed more and more of the fruit harder and harder into her, into her mouth and anus, kissing passionately while jabbing his cock hard and fast into the area he had just filled with the fruit, to experience how it felt. how it really felt. It was so pleasurable, it was unbelievable, and the juices slowly flowed out from all over her body.
Now he was deep in thought, his elbows resting on the stone armrests of the elaborately carved imperial throne, his hands resting on his lower jaws as he watched them carefully, trying to make a choice.
They knew they were being watched while they pleasured themselves with a mahogany substitute penis with a beautiful grain, constantly preparing for coitus, but controlling to keep themselves from reaching the peak of their excitement. Only an Inca monarch could do all this.
A servant approached, interrupting his cheerful mood, and the Inca monarch frowned.
This slave always had his eyes downcast shivering. “Monarch, the men with the light colored metal asked to be granted entry.”
Dark eyes fixed firmly on him. “Is it necessary? Request.” It seemed he detested them greatly. The men with the pale metal kept coming, pretending to be friends of the King, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Whisk them away.”
“I’ll try, monarch, but I’m not sure they’ll go.”
“What do you think they want this time?”
“Want our yellow metal, monarchs; their demands are always the same, and these men who are called conquerors, and who take the light-colored metal, call it gold. To them it holds infinite value.”
“The same is true for us.”
“If we give them some, will they still stay away, monarch?”
“Good, but how long will it last? They’ll keep coming back for more gold, and I’m afraid they won’t be easily satisfied until they have everything.”
“We can keep them from getting all the gold, monarch, by hiding some of it.”
This Inca monarch nodded. “It seems there is only so much that can be done. However, for now, I have to put on a smiley face so they can’t guess the anger in my heart and let them in, but first, I have to notify my women so they can hide.”
I woke up with a start, blinded by the intense light in front of me, my shoulders were squeezed, and someone was shaking me. “What… what’s going on?”
“Sidney, I had a dream,” Martha said with unmistakable fervor, and Matson and Kara were putting their arms around her shoulders.
“Important dream.” I murmured, my voice coming out rather soft and almost hard to hear due to the sudden awakening.
“It’s about Inca gold, it’s so realistic and crisp, as if I were there.”
“Wasn’t there a group of beautiful girls in the pool pool in the dream?” I asked jokingly.
“Yes!”
I immediately sobered up and frowned at her. “What else?”
“A… a spring, a kind of parlor with a throne for the king to receive visitors, only without a door. And there was also a group of impeccably beautiful women who made it impossible for him to make up his mind who to choose.”
“And those conquistadors arrived and asked to be authorized to worship him, yes?”
Martha nodded frantically, almost stunned. “We both had the same dream!”
I shook my head. This was unbelievable.
“It’s never going to happen. You know all about this.” A shiver runs straight down my spine.
“Impossible, and yet it did happen.” Martha burst into a laugh that was, I think, a mild hysteria, like that of an over-excited child. “And I know that by all means it must be sought to be found while it still lingers clear in your brain and mine.”
“Well, then, so it’s all beyond the pale. It doesn’t specify anything, though, does it? It’s not going to help us get out of here, is it?” I said with all the feeling and excitement I could muster.
“Yes, it’s true that it doesn’t tell us anything definitive or any facts that I can associate with it, but… oh, damn it, Sidney, you always like to make a mockery of everything,” Martha said deflatedly.
They glared at me, all kinds of expressions, cold, brooding, enraged. I glared back at them in equal measure, angrier than several of them put together. “What’s for breakfast?”
The lines on Masson’s rough face twitched between his mouth and eyes. There was just not a word spoken, so I had no reason to be sarcastic; the clever answer was reflected in his face. I had an odd, deluded feeling.
Disgusted, Masha gave up arguing with me and led her away with an arm around Carla’s shoulders. As Matson walked slowly away with his own flashlight in hand, I screwed on my own and trailed behind them, clearly isolated.
I turned my back on him in exasperation and let them be, I didn’t care. I never wanted to meet such a stupid expedition. Why couldn’t Martha spend her wealth on charity like the other big industrialists to replace the idea in her head that she was going to the Amazon to find the fabled riches. No, I don’t have to feel bad at all, and I’m not going to let them keep bossing me around.
As I rummaged through my own backpack, trying to find something anything anything as long as it was edible, I stared intently at the wall behind the altar, scrutinizing the creepy faces of the Incas on it with their very strange expressions of loathing and suspicion. I hate this river, everything is because of it. Once I get out of here… But, of course, that’s impossible.
The suffocating lump rose again in my throat, and I swallowed it down hard and took a loose stone from the top of the altar and slammed it down hard into the center of one lid. The stone went straight through the eye recess and disappeared. I stumbled backward in amazement, blinking my eyes.
I shouted, “Matson, Martha, come back! Hurry!”
At the sound of my urgent voice, they immediately sprinted over to me, followed by Kara, as she did not want to be left alone in the dark.
“What?” They asked in unison.
“Behind that wall there is thin air, and I just threw a rock, and it… it made the hole through that eye disappear.” I stammered out of excitement.
He handed Martha his own flashlight, and together we illuminated the wall while Masson climbed the altar and hesitantly ran his hand over the faces, then his whole arm through the hole.
“If you begin to hoot,” I taunted, “don’t expect me to jump up and save you and your arm; I’ve already seen Carly Glenn and Audrey Hepburn perform in ‘Roman Holiday.’ I’ve seen Carly Glenn and Audrey Hepburn in ‘Roman Holiday.'”
“Hee hee hee,” he sneered and laughed wildly, mimicking in order to make fun of me. “Hand me the flashlight.”
He shone the flashlight beam through one eyehole and peered through the other. “I can’t see anything, the light doesn’t seem to penetrate it. It’s a pitch black hole, no walls nothing.”
“If only we could find a way in,” Martha said with hope in her voice. “Then it could be another way out.”
“The other way around, maybe not.” I added.
Masson had jumped down from the altar and was standing there pondering it, with his hands on his hips like the rest of us. “We had no choice but to break through the wall. The wall is very thick… about six inches.
”
I gazed at the faces, the abominations, and then I gasped sharply. “Oh God, why have we never seen them before! They’ve been glaring at us the whole time.”
The rest of them were there staring straight at me as if I had really gone crazy this time.
Martha took me by the shoulders and spun me around, staring intently into my eyes with desperate hope. “What’s wrong? Did you see something? Another vision?”
“They’ve been staring at us in the face, these faces, see?” I waved the torch light column while pointing. “One… two… three. Apparently, they’re a key to open it.”
“Feel her forehead,” Matson said pointedly. “It sounds as if she’s having a physical and mental breakdown.”
“No, Masen. Realize that it has a protection device that only responds when all the correct codewords are flush, got it?”
“Hmm…”, he was thinking and analyzing, then nodded.
“I see,” Martha called up in a high voice, elated, “three facial faces, three masks, and these masks were spread out so that no one would have them all at the same time due to the… Inca monarchs, don’t you think, Sidney?”
I nodded firmly and forcefully, “That must be it. That’s why we dream.
It was a clue, thanks to the Conqueror, that he hid the treasure of Vicar Bamba. Only he, and perhaps another of his most trusted servants, knew exactly where it was hidden and how to retrieve it. Then the masks parted for no apparent reason, the treasure was never seen again, and the secret has since disappeared along with the only two people who knew about it.”
“Bring the mask, Carla dear.” Martha ordered her stepdaughter, “Hurry.”
“I see,” Matson said, while clasping his hands in excitement.
“Oh, very good.” I said, “I know you will be… the last to understand.”
Kara returned with the three masks, and Masen climbed up to the altar again, placing each mask in the recess of the wall that aligned with it, and they matched fairly well.
“Luckily Mendez had a mask too and left it with us,” Kara said.
“That’s right,” Martha agreed. “She left it as trash.”
I watched Masson, waiting, expecting, only until the last mask was placed to match, and he moved back, inspecting, but nothing seemed to happen.
“Push on the wall,” I said in a desperate voice. “Maybe it needs a little help, after all these years it must have been lived in.”
He leaned his back against the wall and pushed with all his strength. Immediately afterward, yes, we heard a strong rumbling from something huge and dull. It was not, however, the wall that was removed, but the carving at the top of the altar. It slid slowly away and accelerated amazingly and rapidly, and Masson, who was gazing at the wall instead of his own feet, fell into the altar with a cry of terror.
Carla let out a sharp yelp as we ran forward and aimed our respective flashlights down.
Masson was just a few dozen feet below us, his feet shaking and patting the dust from his clothes. The sudden fall had not affected him much.
“Throw me a torch,” he called, his voice echoing in the void.
Very carefully, I threw my own flashlight at the closest distance to him so that he could easily catch it.
He looks around, obviously relaxed. “It’s nice here, nothing dirty, creepy or anything else. There’s a staircase carved out of the exterior of the rock that leads up to my right, if I can still get my bearings, and it tops out completely away from that defile and heads upwards right into the center of the rock. What an incredible achievement in engineering stonemasonry. This could be a way out of here.”
“We’ll just come down,” Martha said, speaking for all of us, too.
First she hung on to Carla so Matson could catch her from below. Then it was my turn, and finally she climbed down on her own.
We counted the steps as we walked. When we reached the 264th step, my flashlight died. Martha’s was the only one left to illuminate the way with a pale, faint yellow light, and we all stared ahead as if doing so would penetrate the darkness.
“Two hundred and seventy-two, two hundred and seventy-three…” chattered Kala, counting.
She began to stir me up, and still nothing new was discovered. “Can’t you count in your head like we do?”
“Two hundred and seventy-five… I’m willing to count like this… two hundred and seventy-seven…”
“No, it’s two hundred and seventy-six, dear.” Martha corrected.
I groaned in irritation and took a few arrow steps to the front, expecting not to hear the annoying sound again, but it wasn’t long before I could hear it again.
“Two hundred and eighty-four… Two hundred and eighty-five…”
“How much farther do you see?” I asked Masen.
He shook his head ruefully. “It’s not clear, the air is still very stale, and only when we feel fresh air will we be able to tell that we can’t be too far from the top.”
“But what if we get there and realize we still can’t get out? The exit might be closed, or even…”
“One of the things I admire most about you is your optimism.” Matson said sarcastically.
“I just like to think about all the things that could have happened and be clear about the truth. From the beginning until now, we have survived with only the pitifully small amount of necessities in my backpack, simply because you people forgot to take your own stuff with you when you left the altar. We no longer have any batteries, and I only have one cup of water left in my canteen, and I figure we can each have two more sips, and I’d literally kill for half a beer. Damn it, how could I have thought of all this? Now I can’t think about anything else, it’s agonizing.”
He laughed out loud, quite mercifully.
Martha’s torch went out too, “That means,” she said from somewhere in the darkness, as if we needed to talk. “From here on out, we’re just going to have to feel the dark, and we’d better stay close together. Carla, honey, you can tug on the hem of my jacket if you want.”
“I don’t like being last.” Kara cooed fearfully.
“Better than being at the top.” I reminded her, feeling my way forward, then turning a corner.
Each step changed direction constantly, spiraling to the right, to the left, and sometimes narrowing straight up, so that I could feel the walls on either side of me without having to support myself with my arms.
It had been some time since Kara had given up counting out loud. She gasped and tugged on Martha’s back.
“Can we stop for a moment? Just for a little while, I’m exhausted.”
“All right,” Matson said, lighting a cigar as he did so. He leaned back against the wall, took a deep drag, and watched me through the bright light of the match.
“I think… yes, it’s coming back. Fresh air, Masen, do you feel it?”
The match in his hand went out. Suddenly there was a furious roar from the bottom of the steps, a ferocious gust of wind that inhibited our breathing and lifted the clothes of the group. Carla clung to Martha.
Masson trumpeted, I cried out in dismay, and I could hear Martha screaming up at the top of her lungs in a feeble, shrill voice, all of which was drowned out by the roar of the roar beside us, which had us in its focus, and seemed unwilling to leave.
It dragged hard on my gasps, coiled around me, roaring like a wild animal, ripping open my jacket, my semi-short underwear.
Martha lost her voice and screamed. “It’s tearing through my clothes.”
Kara just yelled at the top of her lungs.
“God!” Masson exclaimed. “What the hell is going on here? It’s destroying my pant legs, ripping and tearing.”
I heard him palming it, trying to wield it. Then he cackled again, as if the thing had forced its way into his mouth.
“MASON!” I let out a shrill yell. “MASON!”
“What the hell is this? What is it?” Martha wondered, her voice quivering with extreme terror. “I can feel it right in the upper part of my legs, burning, smooth. It’s trying to get into the middle…” she broke off, obviously fighting it. There was doubt in her voice. “It’s in my ass, in my sex…”
“And me,” cried Carla. “All my clothes are gone. Will it be a snake?”
“No, it can’t be.”
It seemed to have as many tentacles as an octopus, yet when I tried to stop it from invading me, it sprayed a lot of creamy stuff at my ass and sex, but I didn’t hit or catch anything. It was too much like a ghost.
The cream was dripping from my body, and I could feel it running down my legs, as thin and soft as rubber, scurrying into me like a snake in a hole, writhing, tasting, teasing my sensual center. It snaked its slimy tentacles upward and wrapped itself around me, encircling my breasts, swaying past my ears, my nose, and into my mouth, and its possession was total. It suffocated me, and I had to struggle to stay sentient.
We are all destroyed, every one of our orifices clogged, expanded, derided and caressed by this wind-like thing.
I couldn’t even get my feet next to the ground. I was propped up by this special thing that was wedged deep into my back and pussy, engulfed and encased by it. Those sticky tentacles rubbed slowly inside me, bringing me peak after peak of shattered sexual arousal, filling me and squirting its marvelous essence into me, still tightly filling me, still so hard and thirsty.
“Oh, darling, oh…” cried Martha, only now that sound became one of pleasure rather than horror.
It forced its way into me, satisfying me in a way that no man had ever done before, rubbing my clit until I called out loudly again and again. Followed by a sound as sudden and ferocious as its arrival, accompanied by a sort of loud hissing sound, it descended the ladder and faded into nothingness all at once.
We all shrank into a heap, shivering and too emotional to say a word.
Finally Matson spoke up. “Are the ladies all right?”
The scene of exhaustion was our common answer.
I felt the places in my body that would have been occupied by it, as dry as a corpse, but hot from the excesses of the act. “What the hell was that?” I desperately wanted to know.
Not a single person answered back. I bet they’re shaking their heads with confused consternation.
“Damn it,” gasped Masson, full of awe and exhaustion, “no one has ever done anything like that to me before! It’s put me in almost everything! It was so wet, so sticky. It felt as if it had made my rectum grow a hundred miles in an hour, and yet now… I’m completely dry, it’s unbelievable.”
“Carla, are you okay, honey?” Her stepmother inquired when she had enough control.
“I guess it’s okay. It seems to have attacked me too.”
“Is it really true?” I inquired, having made up my mind to get to the bottom of it.
“No,” they replied in unison.
“And what exactly is it?” Martha said. “I can feel it, but I can’t hold onto anything.”
“Could it be a noisy, sex-crazed ghost?”
“Whatever it is.” Masson said. “It must know how to strip search…”
The three of us ladies made a “tsk tsk” sound together.
The further we went the more shaky our footing became, and as the cuttings around us were so brittle that there was no longer any hard rock, we proceeded on our way, careful to fill in the blanks. Matson thought these were sandstone, turned to dust by age and the erosion of water.
We then smelled the aroma of dirt and we all wondered if we couldn’t be too far from the surface above.
We climbed faster in unison, each of us eager to gain the sunlight and escape from this unsettling, incredible darkness.
Mason, who was leading the way, suddenly stopped in his tracks. “Whoa, there’s something on the road.”
“What is it?” Kara asked in alarm, not wanting any more surprises.
“By feel, it looks like tree roots to me. Can you get your dagger out, Sidney?”
I drew the dagger still in my jacket pocket, it was a miracle it remained on me. I handed the knife over, not realizing that the whole thing was touching Mason, unable to see into the darkness. He touched my hand and held the knife carefully, while his other hand grazed my abdomen in a smooth downward motion, the naughty dog. I touched his testicles as well, and then I came up with a great idea to slyly draw back my body and nudge Kara with my elbow to get her in my place.
“Is it Sidney?” A tone of skepticism was evident in his voice.
Crossing Kara’s shoulder, I murmured a gentle, “Oh?”
“Nothing.”
As soon as he pulled her close, there was no doubt that he must have gripped her hips and squeezed his stiff male root tightly against her belly button. Kara’s breath quickened and she cooed softly, not wanting to miss this opportunity.
“What’s taking so long?” Martha wanted to know.
“A tough tree root. It’s going to take a while, so sit down and rest first.”
Carla was getting fully into the game, holding out her hands in the darkness so that I could take the opportunity to use my own hands to fondle Masen, caressing the spot where he was rubbing against her, and taking the thick prick and sliding it down through her soft bulge and into her wet pussy. She shuddered, and he shuddered, stabbing deep, pumping hard, eager and hungry, his meaty cock all the way inside her, but still trying to go deeper.
I touched the connection between the two of them, her expanding sex, his insatiable manhood, and I kept my fingers tweaking it until the pair went wild.
He began to strike out heavily, burying himself in her all at once, then pulling out hard, and then stabbing again, rushing hard, stuffing her cunt, rubbing in the escalation, getting more and more intense, and finally exploding…
He groaned, unable to keep quiet any longer.
“What are you doing there?” Martha was puzzled, yet the sense of amusement that saturated her voice convinced me that she already knew everything.
“Nothing.” I said, pretending to be shy and very close to Mason’s ear in order for him to still be convinced that I was the one making love to him.
Carla stepped away unsteadily on her feet, probably with a wry look of contentment on her face, but unexpectedly slipped a step and a firm grip kept me from falling. “Thanks,” she said quietly.
For what? Was it for holding her up, or letting her share Masen?
We continued our flight, some roots containing a little water were no doubt of the species of the giant mahogany or other hardwood, and soon we came in sight of daylight. We surveyed each other, all of us in rags, practically amounting to nudity, and kept blinking our eyes from the blinding glare. The roots of another tree crossed in the shape of a cross at the entrance of the old cave, and the huge slab of stone, once it had covered the staircase, was broken by the sturdy growth of those trees. The very narrow gap through which we must pass.
Kara walked at the front of the line, and Matson pushed hard behind her.
“As a gentleman, you should close your eyes,” she emphasized. “I don’t want you staring straight at my ass.”
“As if I would look.” He showed a look of displeasure.
It was a crowded place, but the slender Kara climbed up quickly and reached the ground, looking around with a pleasant expression on her face. “Wow! What a great view.”
“What did you see?”
“The whole world!”
“I want the second one up,” Martha said forcefully, desperate to see what Kara had seen. She turned her face toward Matson. “Treat me the same way and close your eyes.”
“And you should add, being a gentleman,” he put his hand over his heart and made a vow.
Matson lifted Martha and with a little effort shoved her into the crevice and pushed her out of that cavern.
As soon as she reached the top, she immediately forgot about the two below and sauntered off after Carla. Matson and I heard the two of them praising the view.
“Unbelievable.”
“Amazing.”
“They completely forgot about us,” I said angrily.
Now I’m down in the lower part of the cavern, ready to get strong and capable Masento up and back into the human world.
“It’s so exciting, hanging on for dear life,” Matson said almost lewdly, his hand slipping up my leg, his face squeezing my ass, his teeth knocking playfully.
“Stop it,” I yelled sternly, acting indignant and reluctant, because I realized he shouldn’t do it anymore.
The hand slid between my legs, covering the mound, and yanked me toward him while bending me slightly in order to tease his cock up between my buttocks, teasing my little secret hole. He was so hot and hard, and I was on fire all over from all the wet love juices I’d been secreting since the earlier game.
He stabbed into me hard, pushing me hard against the wall, kissing the back of my neck hungrily and furiously, caressing the glans in the middle of my labia, quickly satisfying his own intense urges. His fingers sent me into a critical turn, his cock fluttering and pumping desperately and unrelentingly, my hips spreading as wide as they could to allow him to reach in completely.
“Oh, great,” I moaned with unbridled pleasure with every twitch, as I clenched my vaginal sphincter and pushed and pushed and pummeled with pleasure and greed.
His breath hit my ear, rolling and arousing me. “You are so insatiable.”
He said in a raspy voice, pressing me tightly against the wall as he did so, gripping me as a captive as if he never wanted me to leave.
I felt that he was all-powerful and consistent with all women at all times. “Do you have an answer about that? I’m just afraid your servitude is catching up with me oh?” I taunted, naturally not telling him that it was Carla and not me on the steps earlier. It mustn’t be told, where would be the fun in doing that? Let him think about it, even sadly, he doesn’t exactly satisfy me. That’s right, I don’t want him to be overconfident, I don’t want him to get the wrong idea about me, that I’m an easy conquest.
“I like a challenge.” He gasped, his lips on my ear, his cock still buried deep inside me, and our bodies were rubbing together, hot and wet.
My orgasm hit, and I gasped loudly and sharply, moaning low and softly, my whole body shaking. The pinnacle of his arousal followed with howls and moans, his hands squeezing me involuntarily. Frankly, a little later we realized that climbing out again would be really difficult, and he pushed against me, followed by me letting him tug on the backpack behind me to drag him up. Finally, we made it up and collapsed in the grass, blinking uncontrollably from the sun.
We forgot that we were actually completely naked, and the view around us captured our attention in a way that could at least be called magnificent. Carla was right, it was like being on top of the world, only slightly higher than the pale blue peaks of the Andes in the distance. We were on a tabletop, like an island in a tropical jungle, and sun-dried, thin, barren grass, overlooking just the top of an ancient forest that had survived centuries, and at the moment, above our heads, a vulture circled with a rising gust of hot air.
I turned a hundred and eighty degrees and took it all in.
“It’s amazing.”
Masson nodded.
Martha’s eyes widened in awe. “Should I say exciting or something?”
“It’s so beautiful, how do I justify publishing it in a newspaper column?”
Martha couldn’t help but burst out laughing indulgently as she gazed at the pieces of Matson’s clothing that were only his shirt collar. “No, they’re probably more interested in the fact that we’re all naked and viewing the scenery.”
“Good cynicism on your part, Martha.” I confessed in mock self-defense, followed closely by something else. “You remind me by saying that.” I kneeled down and unzipped my backpack. “It’s not too big, but it’s always a good cover.”
I rummaged through a couple of pairs of pretty, not-so-practical women’s knickers and held them out for them to choose from. Martha and Carla thanked me profusely, and Matson was honest enough to say that he had no choice but to wear women’s shorts as well. Carla sympathized with him and handed him shredded strips of her own T-shirt. He made these into a loincloth, and when he tied it in imitation of Cindy Crawford’s, he was able to get it to work. He made us all laugh when he tied it on, imitating Cindy Crawford.
Everyone’s emotions were running high. We began to consider that maybe, just maybe, we had a chance to touch something alive.
It took many days to climb these steps, only to arrive within half an hour when the sun was setting in the west and the entire sky was radiating orange, cherry and fuchsia.
The four of us hunkered down into a cavern in the highlands, a far-flung downed tree serving as our windbreak, but the chill from the night wind still made us feel miserable, as none of us were dressed. The sky was dark, the stars were winking, and we lay flat on our backs like sardines craving warmth, too exhausted to relish the sensuality of being so close.
I woke up shivering all over, my empty stomach making an abominable gurgling sound. The movement woke Martha, who rolled over and woke Kara again, not seeing Matson.
We sat up, annoyed, and all stared at each other unhappily, when Masson came back among us with a pleasant but extreme irritation. He whistled, shouldered a large bunch of bananas as tall as the others, and smiled at us with the sickening sweetness of a great man.
“Breakfast is here, ladies.”
Martha, a once thoughtful woman, did her best to appear content and gracious. “Thank you, Matson, that’s very kind of you, I was starving.”
He picked out the ripest ones and handed them over. “Let these green-peeled bananas sit for a while. They’ll feed us for days.”
I tried to make myself eat as slowly as possible so I wouldn’t cause indigestion. Suddenly I stiffened for a moment, my eyes fixed on the stalks.
Matson noticed. “What happened, Doc?”
I pointed and out of one of those bananas crawled one of the biggest, hairiest spiders I’ve ever seen. We were talking about the size of a giant tea tray at the time. My whole face was deformed with fear, my whole body felt a tingling sensation, and I loathed spiders, the most primitive of arthropod insects.
Matson actually threw back his face and laughed, the beast!
I couldn’t stop shaking, my whole body was goosebumps and a shiver ran down my spine. I was bloodless with fear, both my hands were tightly twisted together due to panic, and I realized that I would never be able to overcome this fear, unless it came to the day of my death. Now that Kara had seen it too and started to let out long, shrill cries, I had a supporter and felt slightly better that I wasn’t the only one as stupid as I was.
“Do something, Matson,” I pleaded, while carefully watching the multi-legged thing slowly climb over the banana.
He lifted his foot and pretended to step on it. “No!” I shouted, “Don’t kill it, just shoo it away.”
He rolled his eyes, no doubt thinking I was the most ridiculous woman alive, and had to lift the banana handle and carry it a suitable distance before gently swatting the spider away with the leftover banana peel in his hand. “Is that okay now?”
I nodded with gratitude, “Thanks,” I said grudgingly.
“What would you do if you ran into a spider like that in the shower at home?”
“Escape to a neighbor’s house.”
“Why don’t you drown it right now?”
“I just have an unspeakable fear of it, not that I want the thing to die.”
His eyebrows twitched. Apparently he thought it was funny.
“Alright,” I murmured before he had a chance to speak. “So what, I’m a secret friend of Earth, don’t ever proclaim it.”
He laughed out loud and ripped open another banana.
After breakfast, Matson said we should go with him to see what he found while foraging.
We knew there was a steep, steep slope on one side of the highlands, but the rest of the slope gradually reached into that tropical jungle. With my backpack on my back and Matson carrying the bananas, we set off.
The slope was lined with the remains of old buildings from centuries ago. The stone coping had collapsed, and the supporting stone pillars were broken and scattered, but I recognized the place, and I gazed at Martha as she looked at me. “The throne of the Inca monarch,” we both said in unison. “What a way to get here.”
“How do you know?” Kara asked, looking a little huffy as she felt nothing, for some reason she couldn’t snap to this source of mindfulness anymore herself.
“We’ve seen it in our dreams.” Martha replied, while pointing to the distinctive building in front of her. “That is his royal throne. It actually looks quite intact, with a stone waffle cover to protect him from the sun, and a pool below for his women to bathe in where, see, there the vine field things have been bound, taking on a sort of crescent shape, spaced in trapezoidal shapes. His subjects sit on the rocks above it, like Romans seated in an amphitheater.”
Masson listened intently, taking it all in and picturing it vividly in his mind. With great care we climbed down through the rubble of the stone and the weeds that had grown and spread, and made our rounds of the abandoned Imperial Throne. It had suffered the ravages of time, and all the fine, detailed carvings had been washed away by rain and wind. The corner joints were in pieces, and the canopy had long since collapsed on top of it.
I stroked the armrest of the imperial throne in front of the door, which Inca monarchs had touched some five hundred years before the arrival of the conquistadors of the last century, in their own land, in the face of the worship of their subjects.
I had to sit on the royal seat, and just because I had to, I was dragged and dragged over and nailed down. Martha nodded, it seemed she felt it all too. She sits at my feet and takes my hands in hers, and I feel the command quickly flood into her bloodstream, her arms.
Masson and Carla had slowly descended the slope and began to climb on the tiered stone chairs that faced us. I gazed at them, yet I saw the ghosts of the workers, dressed in the splendor of the costumes they had worn to worship the gods of this empire of the sun, and every seat was filled.
As if it were Martha’s, our hands intertwined to double the energy. In my mind’s eye, the picture was so clear and transparent. At this point I didn’t need to wear a mask, I was the Inca monarch. I was giving orders, and the gold was hidden where the Spaniards would never find it, buried so deep that its true reliability was only blurred after it became filled with wonder.
I leapt up from my stone seat and raised my hands to the sky and the sun as the incantation poured from my lips. Martha knelt submissively at my feet, and Masson and Kara were standing at the crescent watching me, alluding to each other as they did so, supremely amused by my dramatic outburst, and came the sound of their voices echoing incessantly around the walls of the amphitheater-like structure.
“Do you think she’s crazy?” Carla said pointedly.
“No, she was always interested in a lot of things.” Masson replied.
The spell breaks and my arms fall away, my mind clearing.
Martha and I hugged each other tightly, our faces beaming with joy. We finally knew the answer to the secret we had been chosen to receive. Yes, it was a woman like me who was harsh and arrogant, and I became humble.
We ran, fell, and slid down the slope all the way to the bottom, where we stood on the ground that had once been a pool for the beauties of the Inca monarchs to bathe in, and which had now been paved over. There we stood, knowing in our hearts that this was the very place, which lay at our feet, this great, perhaps even the most marvelous treasure in all the world.
The Inca king emptied the pool of water, put the vast majority of his gold and silver jewelry in it, and then filled it with earth and covered it with grass. Yet, for some reason unknown to me, it was later paved over. Conquerors came and went, and walked on the same paved road without ever arousing suspicion. Whenever the Inca king saw them in this state, he secretly cackled and sympathized with the poor fools.
Martha and I, still clasping hands, danced and jumped in a circle like innocent children, laughing shrilly and wildly all the while. I find it simply too difficult to accurately describe this happiness, and I am sure that I will never be this happy.
“It’s here, it’s here,” we both chanted, “it’s at our feet, it’s here.”
“She must be mad,” Carla whispered sourly. “Look at her, the stupid woman, and then look at my stepmother, in two pairs of borrowed shorts with her breasts flopping everywhere.”
“But the breasts are really beautiful,” Matson said kindly, and bent to the curb to try to get some justification from Martha and me.
“Okay, what happened, enough is enough,” he said forcefully, interrupting both of our maniacal dancing as he stepped across the room between us. “What’s wrong with you guys?”
Suddenly stopping, with nothing to hold on to, I was unsteady on my feet, dizzy and staggering as I finally collapsed. Accompanied by a scream, Martha also collapsed and we fell flat on our backs laughing.
“Right here… treasure. He drained the water in the pool and then filled it with all his treasure.” I said.
Matson turned very carefully and pointed with interest to the stone floor at his feet. “Is this it?”
“Exactly.”
“You can be sure?”
“One hundred percent assured.”
“Of course it’s here.” Martha added. “But it’s deep, and only God knows how we’re going to dig it out. The sensible thing to do these days is to return to civilization, move the equipment, apply for the rights and then come back and dig it up again; the trouble is, I’m finding it very difficult to make sense of it. Heh, I must be becoming a gold-digger.”
She abandoned even her minimal modesty and giggled more and more. Matson was judging her expression when I crossed over to him and turned my attention to Kara, who stood behind a couple of rows of simple stone chairs, frowning at our side and observing, seemingly rattled by our antics. Her disapproval didn’t affect me at all.
My attention was caught by a sudden movement above my line of sight, and I felt a mixture of surprise and wonder as a line of indigenous faces appeared at the top of the crescent-shaped seat. First the heads, then the torsos, and finally the legs. All were painted a deep brownish yellow except one, who was pale all over, very handsome, blonde, and blue-eyed, and who waved his hand.
“Colin!” I shouted, really, really happy to see him, “Why aren’t you dead?”