Flesh: Sacrifice

Dani D'Annunzio wiped sweat from her brow as she plunged her paddle deeper and more forcefully into the water. Her muscles ached, and even though she knew full well that Benitez was doing most of the work behind her, she was contributing all she could at the front of the canoe. She longed for another quick dip in the Rio Rosa. She longed for a break in the paddling. She longed for Benitez to turn the canoe towards the river's edge to her left.

While their first day in the canoe had been slow and lazy, today's trek had been nothing of the sort. The morning started slowly enough, Dani and the doctor digging just slightly deeper into the water as they fought an increasing current up-river. But by mid-day, the current had gotten so strong that the American girl wondered if they were making any progress whatsoever. At one point, just after lunch, they'd been forced to unload the canoe and make a number up trips along the river's edge by foot, carrying their supplies past a powerful series of cataracts that they'd encountered. Dani feared, hearing the roar of rushing water and seeing the crash of the Rio Rosa against the rocks in front of her, that they'd be forced to do so again.

"It's beautiful," she nonetheless remarked, allowing herself a moment to take in the waterfall. It stood six, maybe seven stories tall, and was a good three hundred feet across, with the tip of an island splitting the falls into two. Mist rose from where the water cascaded down into the river below, froth and bubbles everywhere. It seemed impossible that the outside world wouldn't know of this waterfall, wouldn't be sending wave after wave of tourists to photograph it.

"Qaqaqa Qan," Benitez nodded. Translating, he explained, "'Thunder.'"

"Are we going around?"

The Argentine answered in the affirmative. "Manqus Wasi is up there," he announced, pointing at the island between the two halves of Qaqaqa Qan.

Dani swallowed hard. They were here.

Benitez grimaced. "Our escort is here waiting for us."

Dani didn't see anyone. She searched the horizon, looking for any sign of life. It was growing dark, and the girl had difficulty seeing too deeply into the jungle.

"They're hiding," the doctor explained. "They're watching us."

The brunette wasn't entirely comfortable with unseen eyes watching her every move. Why didn't they just show themselves? Why weren't Dani and Benitez greeted with the same jubilation and excitement that Summer had received in Aya Pampa? Why weren't they making themselves known?

"I'm not sure," Benitez answered after Dani had voiced her concerns aloud. "Maybe it's just that they're expecting a blonde."

Dani was back in the bright yellow cover-up dress, with her black swimsuit underneath. She'd slept just inches from Benitez back in the tent at Santa Teresa in nothing more than the purple panties and white tank she'd worn to bed the night before. The smell of sex had hung in the air, Dani's whole body alive with lust and longing, but she'd denied her baser impulses and kept her back to the doctor. She'd been in the cover-up all day - aside from a couple of quick swims in the river - as she'd worried about losing herself to her current adventure, succumbing to the urges she felt around Benitez. The little yellow dress, by no means conservative in nature, nonetheless offered another layer of defense between Dani and the doctor.

As they pulled the canoe onto the banks of the Rio Rosa, Dani still didn't see any of the Huaca that Benitez had noticed. The sun had dipped below the horizon, but the sky was still alight with a purplish-blue hue. Dani scanned the trees, looking for any sign of life. If the villagers of Manqus Wasi were out there, they were better disguised and hidden than Dani was capable of seeing.

"Rap-hi!" Benitez shouted into the darkened jungle. "Rap-hi!" He followed his hellos with a few phrases shouted out in Huaca. Dani caught only one word -- "Chaqiska."

"The village is up there?" Dani asked, looking towards Qaqaqa Qan. "Why don't we just start walking?"

Benitez was distracted, still staring out into the jungle. "It's above the falls," he answered absentmindedly. "We'll be escorted there by our guides, once they show themselves."

Dani clutched herself tight. The reality of what was about to transpire had begun to seem more and more real. It was one thing to volunteer back in San Eduardo, inspired by an unthreatening little girl named Qapila and perhaps being a bit too cavalier about the prospects of erotic adventure. It was quite another to be here, in the Bolivian yungas, waiting for a little-known backwater Indian tribe to emerge from the jungle and fuck her as a flesh sacrifice.

But emerge they did, and in numbers that frightened Dani and seemed to surprise Benitez. One by one, then two by two, and then four by four, the Huaca stepped into the waning twilight. They'd been perfectly still in the jungle, and even now, it was difficult for Dani to pick them out individually against the dark backdrop. But they came en masse, maybe forty of fifty of them, dressed and adorned in the same fashion as Achaku, Qarachupa, Rukuku, and the rest of Qaray Puka's men three days earlier -- loincloths, ritualistic scarring, and piercings here, there, and everywhere. But unlike the friendly Medicine Man from Aya Pampa, these men did not seem pleased to see the American and the Argentine, and Dani couldn't help but notice that they were all armed. Bows and arrows, menacing-looking spears, and hunting knives at the ready, the Huaca did not seem to be rejoicing at the sight of their brunette savior.

Benitez reached out to Dani, shielding her with his left arm, and pulling her behind him. This only made the girl more frightened, knowing now that Benitez was as ill-at-ease as Dani herself.

The doctor cleared his throat, and offered something to the approaching Huaca in their own tongue. Again, "Chaqiska," was the only word that Dani recognized, and she hoped that Summer's reputation would keep her safe. One of the Huaca, indistinguishable from any of the others, shouted back at Benitez, seeming angry and confused. Benitez answered, and he was answered back, and it carried on like this for a few minutes, Dani standing behind the Argentine and offering nothing at all.

And then, without warning, the Huaca were on top of them.

The attack came so quickly that Benitez had no time to shout anything to Dani, that Dani herself had had no time to even scream. Dani was grabbed roughly by the hair by a man rushing up behind her, while another grabbed at her chin and held her mouth open. A large, rough, piece of wood was inserted, and Dani gagged at the size of it between her teeth. In one quick motion, a hunting knife had sliced through the thin yellow material of her cover-up. And when the Huaca discovered her black swimsuit beneath, that, too, was sliced apart. Hands were all over her, grabbing at the material, tearing it from her body. In an instant, Dani was naked in front of an entire tribe of men, her breasts out in the open, her pussy full exposed. She tried to cry out, but found her screams muffled by the gag in her mouth.

This was how her adventure was to end. Instead of being sacrificed on an altar, Dani would be raped and gang-banged in the jungle.

But the men, once Dani had been stripped of everything but Summer's necklace and the simple braided sapumpa ferns around her neck, made no sexual advances. She wasn't groped, she wasn't fondled, she wasn't violated in any additional way. Instead, she was bound at the wrists and ankles, and laid on the muddy earth at their feet.

Benitez was faring little better. He, too, had been stripped to the skin and gagged. He, too, had been bound and laid in the dirt. He was limp, however, and had his back to Dani, the girl being denied any sort of reassuring eye contact, any sense that she'd be okay. But, even at a time like this, when Dani was terrified and dreading what might come next, there was a part of her that couldn't help but take in the doctor's naked backside, that wondered what it might be like to be on the receiving end of strong, thrusting buttocks like Benitez's. There was a part of her that was disappointed that she wasn't able to see him, full-frontal. There was a part of her that was disappointed that she hadn't been bound, gagged, and taken by Benitez himself.

Everything that they had brought with them was ransacked, taken apart and examined on the edge of the river. Dani watched as her swimsuit and yellow dress -- or what was left of them, anyways -- were tossed carelessly into the Rio Rosa, the current taking them downstream. Her white tank-top, her button-down short-sleeve shirt, her khaki shorts, and her jeans were all examined, but when the half-dressed Huaca found no use for them, they were tossed into the river, as well. Her bras and underwear, on the other hand -- including the purple cotton panties she'd worn to bed the past two nights, which received an appreciate sniff and a disgusting grin from one of the Huaca men -- were divvied up and distributed among the Huaca, as were her flip-flops, the espadrilles, and the jaguar-print loincloth she'd been given in Aya Pampa.

The hooting began when one of the Huaca found the silver dildo in Dani's bag, the men finding it hysterical to come across such an intimate toy among their captives' personal items. This, too, was examined with a quick sniff and a wrinkled nose, and the toy was passed among the Huaca so that everyone, it seemed, could have a turn holding the dildo that had been inside Daniella D'Annunzio the night before.

Dani's eyes were wide in horror and shame, and it seemed that one of the Huaca took exception to the fact that they were now being watched. Instead of being knocked unconscious, as Benitez surely had, Dani found herself being blindfolded, a strip of a leather being tied around her head, and blocking out what little remained of the dusk's light.

The world was black to Dani. She was denied sight, and was forced to rely on her other senses. She could smell the Huaca men around her -- strong, masculine, and musky. She could taste their sweat in the air. The could hear them uttering quick instructions and sharing observations in their native tongue, barking at one another and laughing about the captives they'd taken. And she could feel them, grabbing at her forearms and calves, securing her to the underside of some sort of spit.

She was hefted into the air, dangling beneath of long pole of some sort -- A tree branch? One of the spears? -- with her ankles and wrists fastened securely to either end. She imagined herself being carried by two men, one at either end, and bouncing and swaying as they began their hike through the woods to Manqus Wasi. The bindings burned against her skin, her muscles aching already at the weight they were holding.

Four thousand miles away, Dani's parents might have been sitting down to dinner with her baby sister Michelle. They'd talk about their day, Dani's father offering gruffly about what it had been like down at the garage, her sister Michelle offering the latest goings-on at Cherryfield High. Dani's mother would remark on a phone call she'd received from Dani's middle sister, Valerie, who was studying at Vermont State, or a postcard she'd received from Dani herself, who was off to work on a public health program in Bolivia. She might have said she missed them both, and that whatever they were doing at that very moment, that they were safe, and that they were having fun.

Dani began to cry. Her tears ran into the leather blindfold, however, and her sobs were muffled by the gag between her teeth. Her mouth ached, her lips stretched further apart than was comfortable. She felt her hair drag along the ground every now and then -- though the Huaca men were tall, Dani's hair was long, and it brushed against the trail and the undergrowth along it. Her tits bounced in all directions, the choppy path and the up-and-down motion of her porters causing them to move independently of one another, carried whereever gravity took them. And, though her legs were bound together, Dani could feel how wet and excited she'd become..

And she cried that much harder.

The ride beneath the spit could have been five minutes long or an hour and five minutes long; for Dani, it seemed like an eternity. She had to pee. She wanted to touch herself. She wanted to massage her wrists and ankles. She wanted to massage her pussy. Her head ached, her breasts ached, her crotch ached, her joints ached. The only comfort that she took in being carried into Manqus Wasi, however, was that whatever waited for her there, whatever the Huaca were planning on doing to her, it wouldn't happen until the end of this little hike. And so, despite her aches and pains and longings, Dani hoped the hike would never end.

She listened. She heard the roar of a waterfall somewhere to her right. She heard the crackle of torches being lit. She heard the Huaca talking among themselves. She heard bare feet padding along a dirt path. And she again heard the rush of water, knowing that they were somewhere upstream, somewhere beyond the waterfall.

She was loaded into another canoe, this one shallow and poorly-made. For a few, brief minutes, Dani found relief from being hung upside down underneath the spit, being laid on a damp and roughly-carved wooden bottom. But the trip was short -- thankfully so, given that she could hear the crash and thunder of Qaqaqa Qan somewhere downriver, and feared that the Huaca might be carried over the falls with their prizes. She was hefted back onto her porters' shoulders once they'd reached the shores of Manqus Wasi itself, and even over the roar of the waterfall, Dani could hear the roar of an appreciative village.

She had no way of knowing for sure, but already Dani had the sense that Manqus Wasi would dwarf Aya Pampa. There seemed to be people everywhere, laughing and talking and shouting and screaming out in joy. They seemed to be pressing around her, and she could feel their hot, collective breath upon her skin. There were familiar smells - of dried meat and fish, of carambola juice and chicha qullisara, of human perspiration and human flesh. After having the Rio Rosa to just herself and Benitez the past two days, Dani now felt crowded and claustrophobic.

She was carried through the center of the village, or so she believed, across the little island between the falls that made up Manqus Wasi. The canoe that had taken her across the river was on the far end of the island, and Dani judged just how far she'd come by the increasing volume of the Qaqaqa Qan in front of her. Slowly but surely, the voices of the Huaca crowd were drowned out by the thunderous cacophony of the Rio Rosa spilling over the cliff-face, and the hot, sticky jungle air was replaced by a cooling mist of rising water vapor. As they drew closer to the northern end of Manqus Wasi, Dani began to grow concerned that she'd been brought all this way to be tossed into the churning waterfall below, that she'd be a sacrifice not to Sipusiki, but to Qaqaqa Qan.

But Dani, instead, was laid upon a cool, hard, volcanic rock just above the falls, the clamor of Qaqaqa Qan reverberating right through her very being. She was given instructions, in Huaca, as the bindings on her wrists and ankles were loosened, but as she had little understanding of the language beyond saying "hello" and introducing herself -- neither of which the Huaca seemed all that concerned with at the moment -- she simply went limp, and numbly allowed herself to be pushed around and positioned by her captors. Her arms were raised over her head and stretched apart, and her legs kicked outward like she was performing some sort of grotesque, nude jumping jack. Her wrists and ankles were bound once more, though this time not to each other. Instead, she was held in place by rough, scratchy rope, her body splayed apart like an X. And, once the Huaca had established that she was securely fashioned in place, her gag and her blindfold were removed, and she was no longer in the dark.

A small sliver of a waning moon hung overhead, and Dani knew that tomorrow would be pitch black. Tonight, at least, the village of Manqus Wasi was lit with starlight, torchlight, and at least some remaining moonlight. And for the first time, Dani saw the people whom she'd intended on sacrificing herself for.

There were, indeed, more Indians here than there had been in Aya Pampa, but the setting was no less cramped and crowded. Manqus Wasi was not a bucolic little village in the way that Summer had described Hanan Pacha on her first experience with the Huaca. Nor was it the quirky ravine town that Aya Pampa had been. No, Manqus Wasi was nothing short of a city. Huts and houses were scattered everywhere, almost literally right on top of one another. There were trees and bushes still standing on the island, but they were fenced in and surrounded by Huaca homes. All were built from rocks and mud and sticks and leaves, but despite the impermanence of them all, some were clearly newer than others -- green leaves instead of brown, freshly cut tree branch walls instead of faded, weathered exteriors.

And people. People for as far as the eye could see. Jam-packed so closely together that all Dani could think of was Grand Central during morning rush hour, the Huaca stood shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the brunette girl bound before them. They were young and they were old, and they were all dressed in mostly traditional Huaca garb, aside from the fact that the only exposed breasts that Dani could see were her own. Men and women both wore loincloths long and short, but Dani was hard-pressed to find a woman not wearing a skin-wrap around her chest, or some type of native bikini top, or something similar. Dani was quite alone in her nudity.

But not completely alone. To her left, Gabriel Benitez Serrano had been similarly stripped, bound, blindfolded, and secured by his arms and legs to a pair of trees that stood defiantly at the edge of Manqus Wasi. Dani's left wrist and left ankle had been roped to the same tree as Benitez's right wrist and right ankle. And, had there been a third member of their party, that individual would have been arranged between two trees to Dani's right -- four trees and three gaps, enough to display three prisoners to the village -- city? -- of Manqus Wasi. Their buttocks faced off the cliff, and Dani could feel the sensation of mist from Qaqaqa Qan cooling her lower body. Their fronts, completely exposed, faced Manqus Wasi and the crowds that had gathered to stare up at them.

Perhaps it was a treatment reserved for women, or perhaps Benitez's lack of consciousness had made it unnecessary, but the doctor hadn't been gagged. He moaned, and then coughed, the gentle spray of Qaqaqa Qan seeming to bring him back to life. Dani looked to him for guidance, looked to him for explanation, and looked to him to see if he was all right. But even held captive like she was, even as scared and horrified about what would befall her that night, Dani couldn't help but glance at the doctor's body.

He was well-built -- that much Dani had been sure of even before she'd seen him undressed. Slender, but not necessarily skinny, Benitez had a build like some sort of professional South American soccer player. He was muscular, with biceps, triceps, and pectorals accentuated by the way he'd been hung between the two trees, and possessed a set of six-pack abs that would later have Dani wondering where he got his work-outs in way out here in the Oriente. But it was Benitez's cock that Dani had fantasized about for most of that day, a lifetime ago in the canoe on the Rio Rosa, and it was Benitez's cock that now held Dani transfixed. It was big. Even flaccid, Dani could see that Benitez was well-hung. More than the Australian backpacker, or her Cherryfield schoolmate, or the Peace Corps volunteer from Texas she'd fucked during training, Benitez had a gift. And maybe, just maybe, it was Benitez's "talent" that had attracted Summer Monroe to him in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to the relationship between Benitez and Summer than the pair had let on.