Malignant Moonlight

I don’t think, even had I been given a handbook on what to expect, that I would have.. expected what I was about to bear witness to.

Night had fallen on the jungle, and I can not reiterate what a surreal place it is at night. Its far different than it is during the day, for at night, anything seems plausible. I had been led into one of the huts, while I stood quietly while the other women.. decorated me in paint. When I was finished, they attended to themselves. I hoped this was a sign that I was not to be.. soup.

There was a large fire blazing and cracking and hissing, and dark bodies surrounding it, all painted with various streaks of paint, which gave them a horrific, skeletal appearance.

I wondered if I looked that like and for a moment, I’d wished I had a mirror so that I could see my reflection.

I caught glimpse of Silas and Jonah, painted, who were on the opposite side of the fire. We had all been invited to be a part of it.. whatever .. it .. was.

When Tukuli appeared, all fell silent. He spoke, and sometimes his words were repeated. I tried to follow along because I did not want anyone to think I was being disrespectful. I was always a few motions behind, though.

Then I saw him. August.

His head had been shaved and the entirety of his body had been covered in symbols. I thought, for a moment, that he had been painted as well, but when I neared him, I realized that it was not paint, but tattoos. Four men carried him on a stretcher to Tukuli. I had said August’s name beneath my breath, and had been slapped on the arm for it by the woman next to me.

There is a certain mysticism in a chant, and though I did not understand the words, the ceremony was certainly having in impact on those around me, including Silas and Jonah. With the haunting beat of drums, voices rang forth and arms were raised towards the sky. It was as if .. something was taking possession of them. I felt as if I was seeing things, and I wondered if someone had slipped something into my food. Now, I was being the practical one. August might have been proud of me.

There was dancing and the eerie chanting continued. I don’t know how much time elapsed, I only know, that when it was over, I was sweating profusely and the energy seemed to have been sucked from me.

But it wasn’t over. Not even in the silence the followed, was there an ending.

We tracked through the jungles and towards the water. Villagers touched him. Silas had as well, but his purpose was more prudent. He nicked him. August bled. Still.. alive. This small favor brought me joy.

A boat awaited him and August was put upon it. Only one of our party was allowed to accompany him on his journey. I was glad it was Silas. The ceremony had come to a close.

I walked behind Jonah and Tukuli, quietly listening as Jonah asked questions. August had been taken to a place.. where the dead could become the living. His words chilled me. August was to be buried alive in the sands. It was the one thing he made us all promise not to do.. bury him alive. I turned and ran back to the water, screaming his name. The boat was gone, with August on it. We had.. murdered him.

Silas had returned the next morning and explained what had taken place. They had buried August in the sand.. red quicksand that had held the blood of those before him, his wrist tied on to a rope, the rope tied to an overhanging tree. Then they had.. lowered him and he had been left. Left to die.. or live, as the gods would have it.

For three days I worked and toiled, trying to assuage my guilt. And at night, I was forced to share the furs with Tukuli. I did so with the mechanics of an unemotional woman, offering no more of myself than I had to give to survive. Three days of an emotional heartbreak that I had not experienced since the death of my son.

It seemed like the eve of that third night would never come, when we would all be allowed to go back to the island to see what August’s fate had been. I was praying, that if he was to be like the man I saw in the village, that he would indeed be dead.. and stay that way.

The three of us, Silas, Jonah and I, were loaded into the boat and poled across the water to the mysterious island that I had only heard about. We were soon caught in the thrall of a thick whirling mist, and despite the sultriness of the night, I shivered. I was feeling nauseated from worry and grief.

We drifted in this miasmic fog slowly, until finally, we felt the lurch of land beneath the boat. We were there, one step closer to a knowledge that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Though the foliage on the island was thick, the path was relatively cleared. How many had traveled this same route? And how many had come to a bitter end by doing so? The further we moved into the center of the island, the more the mist seemed to clear, until finally we were there, at the tree, the rope still hanging solemnly from the tree branch above.

One of the natives hooked a pole around it and pulled on the rope. I wasn’t breathing. I think even, at this point, my heart had ceased to beat, and I was surely as dead as the man who we would find on the opposite end of the rope. Despite the fact that I do not pray, I was praying hard.

The end of the rope came up empty. It had been untied. Silas moved forward to examine the rope, and when we turned, the natives were gone. They had left us, disappeared like wraiths into the womb of night, either to our doom, or to our glory, none of us were certain.

Now we had to find him. Tukuli had told us they always go towards the water, but under the intense blanket of fog we had arrived in, and the blackness of night, I’m not sure any of us knew exactly which way the water was. So we walked and eventually arrived at a beach.

It wasn’t the beach we had arrived at. Nothing was familiar. Silas and Jonah had moved onward, bidding me to stay near the fringes of the jungle until they checked things out. I obeyed accordingly.

I heard something behind me and was about to turn to see what it was, but before I could, I felt the wrap of arms around my body and a hand clamped over my mouth as I was pulled back into the cover of jungle. I twisted, but freedom was impossible, escape only an illusion. When my captor thought we were a safe distance from the men who had been protecting me, he pushed me to the ground, and straddled me, holding my wrists crisscrossed over my chest. Markings. It was August.

His hair had grown, long and wild and full of dried red sand. He leaned over me, his nose pressed to my throat.. and sniffed. I wasn’t sure if thought me.. food, and would simply rip me to shreds. This went on for several ehns, before he grabbed the dark braid I had woven into my hair. His scent. He knew that I.. somehow, belonged to him. I reiterated this with words of my own. Yours, I had told him, hoping he understood me. I was trying my best to communicate with the beast.

His face moved downwards, over my stomach, smelling. Even though I had taken careful pains to scrub Tukuli off of me every morning, August could still smell him on me. He grabbed my arms and jerked me upwards, enraged. I had been tainted. His possession.. had been.. defiled, and now it was his job to.. correct things.

He had bedded me only once, the night of our companionship, and that had been cut short because of pressing dangers. But what was to come was not a sexual consenting of two adults. I have, in the past, been taken against my will. But what was to come was nothing that I have ever experienced.

He drove into me without clemency, over and over again. I tried to push him, I tried to gain leverage against his assault, but there was no contest of strengths that would never be matched. I was his, to do with as he pleased, and this.. seemed to please him.

I felt wetness the wetness between my legs and knew that it was blood. I tried to surrender my body as best that I could, hoping to ease both pain and damage as he continued his savage invasion. I remember screaming, over and over, and I thought that it was over, but he had merely stalled to turn me, seeking his revenge in an alternate position, and a new agony, that try as I might, I could not crawl away from.

I begged for an oblivion that refused to give me sanctuary.

Nails raked over my neck leaving clawed red ribbons in his wake. I could feel him licking at the blood that pooled through the scratches, but even that did not seem to satisfy him. Several times he nipped and broke skin, then lapped at the essence he had freed. And somewhere, deep inside me, something else was released. Through the magnified pain of rape, were twinges of pleasure incurred by the possessive bites.

If he was trying to purge the shadowed demons of the men before him, he had succeeded.

I don’t remember being picked up and carried to water, but he had me, or at least conscious threads of me, draped against him. I thought for a moment that he was simply going to drown me. I would not have fought against him, merely succumbed to the sea, but he held me secure. He was actually holding me tenderly and his cheek was nuzzling mine as he rocked me back and forth in the water.

Silas and Jonah must have heard my screams, because they found us there, August refusing to relinquish his hold on me. I was his, not to be given over to another, even if it was for medical treatment. With so many wounds, I would not heal quickly. I didn’t matter now. I had been.. purified.

Yes, they always go to water. Tukuli had been right.