Scanning Proofreading: CSH
Chapter V
They want me to stay with Carla, Martha emphasized. She was responsible for Carla and she didn’t want her to be alone with Lori.
Of course she didn’t know what was going on between Lori and me.
I stayed as far away from them as I could, and the others all went back along the road as we kept heading towards its rumbling interior.
The rumble was slow and low.
Rory removed the mask from his backpack and Kara smiled facing him as he leaned down and kissed her lips. Her face was hazy in the light and she loved having him as a privilege.
He loaded the mask onto her face.
“The Incas.”
Reddish brown body, fat and stocky, dressed in woven wool and cotton. Leather short-top shoes, ears pierced and embedded with large metal earrings.
The sweat of the sun, the tears of the moon.
Kara said, “You’ve already started with her.”
“Her?” Rory said.
“Ask her to come forward.”
There was a moment of reticence, “I think she meant you, dear.” Lori said.
Reluctantly, I moved forward, Kara giving a frightened look.
“I’ll be watching you,” she said, while crossing her arms.
Lori turned to me.
“Oh no,” I said. “I don’t want to play these games.”
Kara waited.
“She wants us to fuck,” I said in a hoarse voice, “it’s sick.”
“Sidney, don’t be shy, it’s not the first time.”
“I’d hate to do this,” I said, my vision blurring and tears welling up in my eye frames.
I began to fall forward, half asleep, and Rory grabbed my body and held it against his side. My head hung back, but my weak body was firmly against him.
“Is that what you want?” He asked Kara.
“It’s something I have to have.” She replied.
“It’s not like I want a mask,” I murmured through my parched mouth. “Why should I have to suffer through this.” Rory’s groin squeezes me hard with desire.
Rory undressed me, and I was covered with no self-control, as if I were a good deformed object. That booming knock from the mountains sounded like it was in my blood.
I was lying flat on my back and Rory was all naked on top of me. His face was glistening with ecstasy. Carla stood behind him, their bodies entwined.
“No,” I cried pathetically.
Cupping his manhood in both hands, constant stroking caused it to rapidly bulge and swell and become erect.
The petals underneath opened up and I became moist.
They softly tweaked my breasts and sucked on them as I spread my hips and fingers dug into my pussy as they turned around and got on my knees.
Something damp and sticky squirmed against my anus and I couldn’t stop sobbing, my vagina was about to be punctured. I heard smug laughter as my fingers kept churning inside me, forcing arousal against my will.
Only my thoughts still resist, only this corner still belongs to me personally. They dominate me, this mask controls me.
Lips caressed my nipples, pinched my soon-to-be-molten pussy lips tightly, every nook and cranny kissed; folded pussy muscles, struggling pussy muscles, swollen with arousal, made wet with thirst.
I finally had something thrust into my vagina, slim and slender, snaking and writhing, and I swayed, my hair stained with tears.
Now certain huge things were pushing in hard. I cried out in grief as the thick, smooth thing was still pushing hard and pumping. I wailed as my folded pussy muscles wallowed in excitement.
They both laughed maniacally with glee. It was a silky sound, brief, and gloating, their characteristic laughter, and the masks took control and I was sodomized.
Lori was always excited, playing with her fingers in the tightly closed area of my cunt. And her fingers, I hated her.
If it had been possible I would have escaped long ago; my limbs were as dead as death, and I fell heavily to the ground.
She deliberately teased my clit, and my rear spasmed as Rory cooed low and squeezed harder, his hands peeling my hips apart so he could see in the light the pinch of pleasure being worked out of him.
I felt him go from erection to flatline, his fucked-up orgasm accompanied by the booming, drumming beat of the mountains before retreating out of me.
The magic faded and I whimpered, burying my face in the gravel on the ground.
I rolled over, my face dirty with dirt, tears and secreted snot. “You bastards.” I choked out a curse.
Kara had taken off her mask, her eyes skewed into almond shapes, so dark against her pale cheeks, and her body bent across me until she was lying on top of me, her bare backside touching my stomach.
She raised her body on her heels and Rory knelt between her legs, his long, firm, moist manhood once again powerfully erect, and she moaned and twisted as he thrust into her without hesitation.
He wanted her urgently, she was ecstatic and greedy, showing a look of triumph in front of me, and I escaped from under them when I caught a chance.
I shivered as I picked up my clothes, I hated what had just happened, I couldn’t control my body, it had succumbed to other wills than mine, he had desecrated my personhood seized my wholeness, robbed me of my freedom of decision I was powerless to stop it.
My mind was still filled with all sorts of civilized ways to die, and I saw the waterfall and understood the need to cleanse my body, already soiled by the staining insults of their game, and my mind was still filled with thoughts of death.
I left the cave and the waterfall was over there, cascading down from the top of the rocks.
I stood completely naked beneath the waterfall, letting the cold running water soothe my dirty skin. The unbearable cold was a great blessing, and I stood frozen in the clear water as it washed through my hair, onto my face and into my mouth.
“What are you doing?”
Matson stood there, watching me, “Go away,” I said, as the piercingly cold water cascaded down between my breasts, which might as well have been marble, so cool and pale in the faint, wavering light.
There was a sour taste in my mouth and I drank a lot of water.
Matson was dismissive of my total nudity, “Stop washing now!” He said, “What the hell happened back there?”
“Obscene.” I said, secretly snickering.
“Are you doing these games too?”
“The Inca Emperor!” I said. “Can’t you feel it?”
He dragged me out of the waterfall. “You’re going to freeze to ice, dumbass,” he said as he clumsily took off his own shirt to dry me off.
The water trickled down from my hair and landed between my breasts before being caught by my pubic hair. It dripped back down from the bottom of my belly to the ground.
Matson took his own shirt in one hand and rubbed me roughly all over my body. “Get dressed, now.”
He said.
I shivered and started to get dressed, I was cold and scared and just wanted to go home. He looked at me with the same stubborn and angry expression he always had.
We headed back down to the center hall, “Ugh, it’s great!” Kara said loudly. “Let’s go this way, Sidney.”
We finally arrived at the cave with the frescoes, where the gold miners had told Carl to find the masks.
Colin and Lori looked overwhelmed, Matson snapped photos, Martha applauded straight away with joy, and Carla sat on the floor smiling as if she was going to fall asleep. Jack stood watching quietly, I had a feeling he didn’t believe what was about to happen here.
I don’t believe it either.
They are mostly dromedary camels and reddish-brown American llamas. The flat-backed, long-necked, fluffy-haired, erect-eared dromedary camels are clearly seen. All of them had short, slightly curved tails that looked lifelike and smoothly drawn, and a somewhat humanoid silhouette appeared, crisply milking the inside of a giant breast, with a calf sticking its nose up to the milker.
“These murals are ancient in history.” Rory was ecstatic as he pulled out a scalpel-like knife and scraped some micro-pigments into a small plastic knee box.
“You mean those who escaped from Vicar Bamba created this?” I wondered.
“No, that happened in fifteen-seventy. Everything here is older, about a hundred years earlier.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a professional hunch, do you agree, Colin?”
“Of course, we will examine the period to which it belongs. These scrapings will tell us the answer, and we’ll be back.”
“We will come back authoritatively,” Martha said. “You will have the authority to claim the discovery outwardly.”
“I think we can start by assuming it’s Inca,” I said, still huffing at the fact that I hadn’t yet organized everything that had happened. I didn’t blame the dim-witted Carla and Rory, I was just angry with myself that I had lost my mind.
Martha said, “Put the mask on the rock shelter.”
“No,” Kara said. “Just leave it here.”
A stone pillar was erected in the center of the cavern. Kara took the mask and placed it right on top of the pillar. The pillar was about four to five feet tall or so.
If you lean back and look at it from a distance, it looks like a person.
Kara said, “I want you all to leave. I need to think alone.”
Everyone did as she said, and I caught up with Martha, “There’s a word,” I said.
Her eyes brightened. “What, Sidney? Now you’re going to actually get what you need, and I’m grateful for that, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help us realize our dreams.”
“I wasn’t even trying to help. I never thought it was right. Can’t you see the changes that are happening to Kara?”
She was silent for a moment, “Carla is different from other girls,” she said quietly. “She’s very shy and lacks confidence. I’m glad to see that she’s so confident that Rory won’t do her any harm.”
“Rory is a scoundrel, and pressed to give the least bit of truth,” I said. “All he cares about is Vicar Bamba, and he’s using her.”
She twisted her face to stare at me, “I’m surprised to hear you say that, you’re just like everyone else.”
“What do you mean?” I asked foolishly. Was the cow alluding to the fact that I had fucked his man elsewhere?
“Sidney, you’re a news reporter. People using each other isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I think it’s a wonderful experience for Carla, full of life.”
“How was the sex?” I said unreasonably, growing angry.
“You’re jealous?” Martha stared at me with both eyes. “I don’t understand why you are.”
“I didn’t think this was the way to get Carla to experience sex.”
“She’s not a virgin, if that’s what you mean. I find your attitude amazing; you sound like a Sunday school teacher.”
I was ashamed of myself. Maybe Martha is right, I hate the kind of autonomy that uses authority and morality to get in the way of my sexuality, which is about pleasure, even though no one agrees with me.
In fact, Carla made herself a ball. I didn’t like the ball because I was being pushed out of bounds, and I suspected that if I stayed out of bounds, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.
It was late, and part of us waited mysteriously in the darkness, while part of us returned to the cave so that Margaret could regain her confidence and tell her that we had achieved our first goal.
Kara decided to stay alone in the masked room for the night. The rest of those left behind retreated a short distance down the channel, and Martha asked to stay with Colin and Lori.
Matson hinted to me to climb back to the top of the rock, and we carried a kerosene-filled lamp and took our rifles.
The others didn’t care that we had left, they were excited like children due to the fact that they had found the cave where the mask was hidden. I was uncomfortable in the midst of such commotion and excitement. Now I began to miss the flies, the lovely river. I hated the mountains.
Masson and I set off without a word. Almost silently we strained up the futile slope toward Margaret, who was waiting outside.
There was still a silence, my heart beating regularly, maybe it was the pounding in the center of the mountains. Matson led the way, keeping his head down and observing each lower footing. With his pack slung over his shoulder and me carrying my rifle, it was an odd sensation, like I was growing a penis or something.
The air was dull and uncomfortable. My leather boots felt so heavy. The dark silence closes in on me, and my shoulders are bent with exhaustion.
I contemplated aromatic baths and satin sheets, and unexpectedly tripped slightly, jerking my arm up to touch something light as a feather.
I flinched back but couldn’t see anything, no bats, not reptiles, I touched something that stuck to my fingers.
“Mason,” I called out. Desperately trying to shake the thing off, wiping my hands hard on my pants, my vision was blurry.
“Mason,” I shouted shrilly.
“Huh?” He couldn’t quite see past it, a blurry outline.
“What is it?” I was going to say that something fucking happened here, but that sounded too easily horror-inducing.
“Ran into your companion again?”
“What is this thing hanging down upside down?”
He reached out and touched the gray, senseless thing.
“I think it’s a spider’s web.” He said.
I approached slowly. “Do you think,” the voice said gruffly, “that the spiders that make their webs here would be huge?”
“I like to see you scared, Sidney, not like other women. On the whole, I don’t like the way women look when they’re frightened. But in you it looks charming. I think you ought to lead the way here; don’t you demand equality?”
I walked ahead, my leather boots crunching. The cobwebs grew denser and denser, and eventually I had to remove them by swinging Tom’s machete.
“Why weren’t these on the way here?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He lit a cigar.
The cobwebs were getting denser as we continued on. I stopped again, feeling hot. Sweating profusely, partly from walking and partly from fear, obviously.
“Mason.”
“Hey, frog.”
His indifferent tone was expected, the son of a bitch, was gloating over my frayed nerves, “Have you been careful?”
“Since you’re in the front, I’ve been viewing your hips, which sway adorably. I’m going to tell my own children how tantalizing it looks.”
“I think we should get out as soon as possible at this point and not stay in a nest built of cobwebs.” I stopped talking, shocked that I had so many ideas.
“You mean we’re lost.” Masson said easily.
“We’d better get back,” I said in a gruff voice, as the mountains made a low, deep rumble.
“I guess you’re right, it’s a little stifling in here, so go ahead, cat, and let me get a good look at you again.”
The net I had just cut down was rewoven and mended. I always held the machete to my chest and carried the oil lamp in my left hand.
I really don’t like it all.
The cobwebs thickened. When I split them, they swung like a flimsy tent and swept lightly across my cheek. I fell, my tongue hitting the sour cobwebs, and I cringed to the ground, shivering.
A hand held me up, “Decided to give up already, frog?”
I turned to grab the hand and buried my face in it; it was dry and warm. “Damn it, Matson,” I said, my voice trembling a little.
He gently wrapped his arms around me, “Be quiet for a moment, Princess, we’ve brought food, water and weapons, what more do we need?”
“I,” I said in a muffled voice, “I want fresh air, I want to go outside.”
“You’ll dislike me later, after you’ve made me see you like this.”
“I abhor you already. Lori told me about your plot to set Martha up, and shame on you, Matson.”
After a moment of reticence, I still let him stand there with his arms around me, leaning greedily against his solid body to restore my confidence.
“Is that all the details, frog?”
“Enough.”
“Give me an example?”
“The one that you planned to hide when you found Vicar Bamba and go back later.”
I’m going to lean against him, I’m going to rest the skin of my greasy face next to his, I’m going to accept comfort to feel safe, and I want him to deny Lori’s accusations.
I backed up and stood, smiling. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “It’s better now, just be sure you’re around, that’ll put my mind at ease.”
Then we sat quietly for a while and rested. To save kerosene we put out our lamps, Masson was smoking again, and the red-burning butts were a lovely hopeful sight in the darkness of the cave, and we encountered no more cobwebs.
We never met anything again, and I was hardly sure whether we were going up or down; I was so tired that we had become horribly and hopelessly lost.
Matson reached into his backpack, a rustle then handed me something.
“What is it?” I asked. I actually knew that it was the magic mask.
“Put it on,” he said kindly.
“Why?” I replied.
“That’s not at all accurate in words; wear it, Sidney, just this once.”
“Wear it yourself.”
“It has no effect on me, I tried.”
If he was telling the truth, it must have been Rory that day in the forest.
“It makes no sense.” I said weakly.
“Sidney, you don’t like me very much as a person, do you?”
“I didn’t mean that at all.” I feigned surprise.
“You made love to me in Manaus.”
“That was our mistake.”
“And the sweet talk, when you wear the mask, it pleases you, energizes you, and even I am affected by the sensory leakage. And you saw the lagoon, the lagoon that later appeared before our eyes.”
I shifted uneasily, “Not bad, not bad.”
“This is the mask you once wore.”
My eyes lingered on it for a moment, “Say that again.”
“That’s the mask you’re wearing, and Martha is holding the original that was first unearthed.”
I was suddenly furious, “Don’t lie, you devious little man. I saw you buy it with my own eyes the other night. Remember?”
“Of course I remember, dear. I’m in the process of buying a reproduction. The woodcarver had returned the original, but he didn’t want to return the copy; he was instigated by someone else.”
“Why?”
“How would I know? I know the difference between them. This is the replica, it’s what you were wearing in my room the other day, now put this on and let’s walk out of here.”
I don’t want to wear it, I don’t want dreams and visions. I don’t want to indulge when I’m deep in this mountain that looks like it breathes and has a pulse and chatters in fear, it’s a mountain that eats people, I don’t want to wear it.
“I don’t want to wear it.” I said.
There was a silence as the man sucked on his cigar, and I could feel him shaking with nervousness, but when he spoke again his voice was quite subdued. “Sidney,” he called.
“Eh,” my somber voice.
“I’ve never forced a woman to have sex with me, and whether you believe it or not, that’s not going to change.”
“You don’t want to wear this mask because we might have a desire for sexual pleasure, but the magic of this mask could save our lives and guide us out of here, and you’d rather choose death?”
“Pay attention,” I said, equally calmly. “Stop thinking about your genitals, really, and neither here nor elsewhere will I have intercourse with you. If the earth did not revolve, and the sunshine was gone, perhaps it might be considered; the real reason I don’t like masks is that I don’t want my mind to intrude on the will of others, so that, unlike the walking dead, how could I give myself over to the old ghosts of 40,000 years ago.”
“You’ll have yourself again.”
“No,” I said mildly. “It’s leaking a virus, baby, and that’s a situation you and I both know.
Kara isn’t the same as she used to be, is she? Even when she’s not wearing the mask Kara’s changed.”
“You don’t think the change actually originated with Rory; that’s an evil fellow, Sidney.”
I stood up. “I think the break is over.”
As Masson struggled to light the kerosene lamp again, the wind whimpered low along the letterbox. It swirled back around me, stifling and parched, quivering with malice.
“That wind must be coming in from outside,” Matson said.
“You stupid ass.” I tried not to shout out the words. The wind was coming from the interior of the mountain, interspersed with a rather threatening rustle, smelly and dirty.
I reached out my hand in the darkness and my fingers came across a protrusion that was too strange to be true, I stopped and surveyed it thoroughly.
With a piercing roar, the sides of the channel opened, I suddenly screamed, like a cannonball jumped violently toward the back scampered into the arms of Matson, foggy raised dust is suffocating, a moment of work appeared an inner chamber, the four walls seem to be cut with a knife.
I felt Matson wish to jump in, “No,” I said shrilly.
“Too surprised,” he said pushing me away.
I stood alone on the threshold. “Get out,” I said my voice hot.
“For God’s sake, Sidney, come and look.”
“Matson, this is a bad place.”
He chuckled softly in a low voice, and the light swept over just above his head where a finely carved band of horizontal trim appeared.
“I’m going to take some pictures, Sidney, and stop raising the dust.”
I look behind me and it’s empty, just a dark road stretching infinitely forward and backward, the wind blowing all the way up and caressing my cheeks.
I walked in after Matson, but always close to the door.
He was holding a flashlight and looking around the house, the walls smooth upward to a carved and smooth horizontal band, though the ceiling was quite rough, and about eight feet above us a boulder seat sat silently in the darkness, empty and corresponding to the wall.
It was so creepy that my hair stood on end, and I gazed at the chair, wondering desperately why I was so timid. Then a peculiar clamor began.
“Matson,” I screamed shrilly as his flashlight went out again and suddenly I couldn’t see anything.
“Mason,” I shouted, raising my voice again.
“Eh?” He was working, his voice rambling.
“What is it?”
The next thing I knew what was happening, “It’s the door.” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
We all saw it. The door is closing.
Matson was about to bend down to pick up the lamp he’d taken from me on his way into the house when he flipped it over. “Shit,” he cursed, groping around while holding the swinging camera.
I stood by the door and watched him, pushing so hard that it practically amounted to pushing a building. For a moment I wanted to take what was left of my flashlight and scurry out alone.
But the door finally closed. Masson stood there with the lamp. “Ah,” he said, and I was speechless.
We couldn’t find an exit from the house, the wind was slowly drifting to our feet with dust in it, but we couldn’t really find a crack where it blew in. I’m screwed, it’s ridiculous, it’s all so cruel.
Matson felt various protrusions, and we thought rather rationally that if there was a handle to get in, there must be a handle to get out as well, only we hadn’t found it yet, and my hands rustled.
After a while we sat back to back in the middle of the floor, neither of us liked the huge stone chair, I thought it was a magic chair.
We were hot, thirsty, hungry and exhausted, yet we were not yet thirty.
Masen leaned his head back against my shoulder and I felt the rough cheek of his beard. “I’m really sorry, Sidney.” He said softly and slowly.
Exhausted, I leaned my head him backward onto his shoulder, and we were face to face in the darkness. “I’m not a good cynical woman,” I said, twisting my face toward him in the darkness so that I could feel his breath and bury it carefully into his skin, needing comfort, even if it was his.
I was almost asleep. Some low, secret scraping sound interrupted my grief and worry, “What’s that noise.” My eyes were blurred and I half thought I was hallucinating.
We had put out the oil lamps and weren’t really thinking about saving all that kerosene. Tom took out his flashlight and gently screwed on the yellow column of light.
He shone straight through. I felt his body suddenly stiffen with excitement.
“What was that?” I said again, trying to contain my fear.
“Sidney,” he called with an effort.
“Tell me.” The state of uncertainty was unbearable.
“Are you familiar with snakes?”
I whimpered and moaned, closing my eyes.
“Look,” Matson said, as if his lips had suddenly split from too much thirst. “They’re big, with a tan pattern on them. The average venomous snake today is no more than about eight feet in maximum size, and a bite can yet quickly result in violent internal bleeding. But the American snakes here, they can grow up to eleven and a half feet. You might think their venom wouldn’t be too poisonous, but you’d be wrong, they secrete all their venom when they attack, so they’re usually the ones who are more dangerous. In fact,” cried Masson, “they are considered the most dangerous snakes in the world.”
Not being an expert at all of this, I turned around and reached out my arms to wrap them tightly around Masen’s trembling body.
“Perhaps,” I whispered quietly, “they are invisible in the dark.”
Masson folded his legs together so that I could more or less get out of the way on his lap. His arms wrap around me as I look up into his face, though I can’t see anything because it’s so dark.
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” he said just as quietly.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“They belong to the pit viper.”
“They inhabit deep potholes and the darkness doesn’t bother them.” I tried to speak as easily as I could, but in reality my heart swelled rapidly and regularly under my shirt.
“Between their eyes and nose they have infrared detectors, and they hunt based on heat radiation. The heart and liver, that heat is what the prey animal is radiating.”
I was sweating like a pig. Too late now, I let out a small whimpering sob and buried my lids into Masen’s chest.
“My last request,” Matson’s voice was so miserable I could barely hear it.
“Won’t smoking raise our heat level?” I said equally hoarsely.
“Put on this mask.”
I sat up very carefully, pulling my back tight. Matson reached out and brushed my cheek hastily. “We’ve both been in trouble a lot this month, huh?” He said clumsily, then slipped the mask over my face.
The wind whirled back, and I heard the serpent hissing furiously. The whole world rushed upward, and I felt the earth rise in darkness, and all things laughed playfully and maliciously, and ancient voices spoke of past wrongs, past grievances, and all the misfortunes of a conquered people were laid upon my shoulders, and the burning air shot out of the pits of past history.
My hands struggled upward against the unbearable weight, my fingers clawing around futilely and ineffectively as I tried to rip the mask from my lids, my will and mind refusing to believe anything but still having my delicate human skin bruised by rough stones and old lies.
In a moment I saw him, seated in that majestic chair, looking down upon me, his robe woven of camel’s hair, his tunic over his right shoulder, jewels and gold glowing on his garments, his head in a noble bun, his crown of bright crimson wool adorned with gold, his right hand holding a golden scepter, the symbol of his position, and both his ears ringed with gold.
I felt afraid at the sight of him, for he stared at me, he saw me and recognized me, all the people who were subjects under his dictatorship.
I was completely naked, not a stitch, nothing, worthless.
We believed in nothingness, chest to chest, belly to belly, my slender thighs clasped from behind him, my hips leaning on his crossed legs. It was a perfect match for the ancient king: his penis stood proudly and reverently erect, unlike human penises. It had a snow-white, smooth exterior that felt like sun-warmed silk, and underneath it dangled golf-ball-sized testicles, full and taut within soft folds.
We stared into each other’s eyes, in a trance, as he lifted my hips with both hands and my snake-like arms wrapped around his neck, not moving a muscle.
He spread my legs, widening the full muscle behind them to reveal my wet pink vaginal opening, while lowering me down to satisfy his whims and desires.
He raised his erect manhood and plunged into me at once, plunging deeper than any man’s manhood had done before, stuffing the place so full that it seemed to squeeze me through. We were one, his penis still and dominant, yet also possessed, and I touched this ancient man with my hand, as well as the universe of heaven and earth, feeling as if I had died and had ascended to some higher realm. Was he a Masson, or an Inca? It was difficult to tell, for they had become one, and further disturbed my already uncertain powers of observation.