It started out as a simple bet—just spend a night in the depths of the jungle. “Nothing a brave farmer couldn’t handle,” as Natalie said it. Normally, I wouldn’t give into Natalie’s ambitions but this was different, or so I thought. I lightly packed my bag that day and before I knew it I was waving goodbye to Natalie across the bridge with a surprised look on her face. From then I could’ve just crossed back and said ‘I’m not doing any of your stupid bets,’ but I didn’t and that’s all that matters from then.
About an hour after setting camp I was thinking about heading back. Every few seconds a weird bird would startle me with its call. The heat was bad enough, and there just had to be bugs attacking me constantly. Neither less, I stayed and crawled into my simple tent in hopes of not getting bit anymore.
Sleep came with difficulty, as I suspected in the first place. The fire had died down about an hour or two from then and it was just me lying in the tent looking aimlessly at the ceiling of it. Something didn’t feel right for a moment—like someone or something was watching me. Maybe it was Natalie and Denny trying to freak me out, it did sound like something they would do, so I stepped out of the tent—one of the things you don’t want to do at night in a jungle.
The next think I knew I was being tackled by a man in a loincloth and wild, ravenous hair. His eyes at first seemed almost as sharp as the spear he was holding in his right hand. That was pointed towards me. He seemed to notice that I was a person, but then I must have suffered from shock and I fainted.
A nasty smell ventured up my nose and I woke up in an unfamiliar environment. I was on a straw mat that was more comfortable than my sleeping bag and in a fur blanket, but for some odd reason there was a sharp pain in my side. I sat up almost immediately and took a look around and saw a different man with curly black hair that was sucking on a dead charred lizard. He sat by me and I immediately asked, “What’s going on?”
He seemed to look right through me with his eyes, as if he was looking right into my soul. After a moment or two he finally answered me, his voice sounding rugged. “Shea hunt and find you… thought you were food, but were not…. he didn’t kill you. You got big scratch on waist on way here… I help make you better so you wake up.”
His sentences where choppy which made me think that he didn’t live anywhere near town at all. I couldn’t help but peer under the covers to see a piece of cloth tightly wound around my wait that was stained with my blood. It stung with pain as I lightly moved my index finger on it—looked like I wasn’t going home for awhile with this kind of injury. All I could do then was hope for someone civilized to come and save me from this jungle prison.
