I won't go into the full details about the whole thing, but it is divided into two parts on DeviantArt, and you can find specific notes about each section in their respective posts. I have another story up as well and a third still being worked upon (well, once I get a MASSIVE case of writer's block out of the way first lol), and as soon as those are uploaded I will cross-post them here as well. For now, though, enjoy, y'all!
Part 1 on DeviantArt
Part 2 on DeviantArt
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Max Gluteus and the Hummingbird Headdress
by Skaea
Contains: */M and some */F Hotbuns. Mildly NSFW.
Word Count: 15,996
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This was, without a
doubt, the worst day of my life.
At just twenty-five years of age, I’d been the talk of the town for almost half a decade now — short, curly dark hair, equally dark eyes, flawless beige skin, and perfectly toned, athletic body, the works. By all rights, I should’ve been one of the brightest and most brilliant archaeologists the world had ever seen.
As it turned out, I was indeed one of the brightest and most brilliant archaeologists the world had ever seen… and also one of the most unlucky.
It’s not every day that you end up deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle, tangled up in several thin, ivy-like lianas, eight feet off the ground. The vines had tied my knees against my sides and my arms over my head, and my accursed assets exposed below me — my pants and underwear had even been loosened and pulled down, so that my lower cheeks were fully exposed, and spread so widely that I could almost feel the tropical steam against my hole.
What was far more concerning, though, was that I was dangling just a foot above a very sharp spear, held by a beautiful tribal girl with skin the color of milk chocolate, long black hair that went down to her lower back, a mischievous expression upon her painted face, a cluster of macaw feathers in her hair, and a loincloth and bra that looked like they could easily have been made from a single peccary tail.
“Fancy to see you around here, white man,” she said cheerily. “So, what made you decide to do your business onto our land?”
“It’s not what it looks like, trust me,” I grumbled. “And technically, I’m Asian. Now, do me a favor and get me down? That spear looks like it’s getting closer by the second.”
“Closer, huh?” She chuckled with trollish intent, and then thrust it sharply upwards.
“YEEOWWWW!!!” I howled in pain, having felt the needle-pointed flint spearhead jabbing into the tender flesh of my taint. “N-NOT THAT CLOSE!!”
“Serves you right for intruding upon our sacred grounds.” She laughed with scorn. “You’re with him, are you?!”
“W-wait, who?! GYAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”
She’d jabbed me a second time, this time nailing my helpless left buttock. “That evil white man who wants to steal the sacred relic we call the Hummingbird Headdress!”
“Ah, I see you’ve met my nemesis, Agent Nile. Well, I’m here to get the Crown back, so if you could put your spear away and get me down, I’ll be happy to help you, miss… uh…”
“It’s Tlacotl. And no, I won’t.”
I recognized that name as meaning “long slender stick” in the Nahuatl tribe language. I wisely decided not to ask about what kind of stick her name referred to, though, and simply replied, “Won’t what?”
“Put my spear away.”
“Why?”
“The vines are loosening.”
I started, looking up in a panic, and realized that she was right. The vines were now loosening thanks to my struggles, and while that would normally be a good thing, the fact that she was now planting the butt of her spear into the soil directly under me made it very much not so.
“N-no, please! You’ve already—” I protested, but she cut me off.
“I’ll have to take you to the tribe chieftain, because I’m sure he’ll have questions about why you came so soon after this ‘Dr. Nile’. And since it seems like you’ll fight back once you get loose…”
The vines slipped, dropping me two inches. I whimpered in terror, realizing what was coming.
Then they slipped again.
And again.
And finally, after only enough time for me to cry “Oh, f—!”, the vines finally released me… dropping me six inches onto a very sharp flint-tipped spear that sank deep into the intimate flesh between my buttocks, a mere inch from my tightened hole.
There was one brief pause, where my eyes widened until they were as round as gumballs. And then…
“YIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWCCCHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”
My scream of total agony sent birds scattering into the air for miles around.
**********
I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Dr. Max Gluteus, though some call me Glutes. To understand me and my constant misfortune, it’d be most appropriate to go back in time eight years or so, when I was a tender young age of seventeen, studying history and archaeology in college. I’d wanted to be an adventurer like the various pulp heroes in film and literature I’d idolized as a wee lad, and as a result I liked to fantasize a lot about traveling to all kinds of exotic places, beating the shit out of the villain of the day and recovering priceless artifacts to give to museums around the world. Unfortunately, most archaeologists don’t work that way, and worse yet, it was hard to convince me of that.
And then there was the fact that back in the day, I was a lazy, hedonistic jerk.
I mean, sure, for a five-foot-five-incher I was quite a picture of Indonesian/Japanese handsomeness, with a perfectly toned stomach, lean but muscular limbs, smooth creamy beige skin, curly black hair with just a little chin stubble, and almond-shaped eyes colored like very dark chocolate and often framed with a sleek pair of browline glasses. Unfortunately, while I always exuded an air of bubbly exuberance and cheer (and still do to some extent), those who did get to know me always referred to me as a coward, bully, cad, and thief, with no spine or sense of conviction. Always looking for an opportunity to have a good time, and preferably hit on someone cute, I cared little for my career back in the day, or much of anything else.
That is, until I made the mistake of hitting on the daughter of my supervisor, one Dr. Emmanuel Freda. A tall and impressive-looking Haitian man just short of fifty, he was a very respected emeritus from the university whose Ph.D. had been on ancient Caribbean societal structures and tribal sociology. Something to do with variations on ancient architectural practices, I think. I thought it was boring as hell but then again I was supposed to have been working on an up-to-date summary of the construction process of the Colosseum of Rome, having taken several trips with him to Italy to get the necessary data. We’d fought and bickered with each other the entire time, partly because I was more interested in the youthful studs and babes that passed us by than boring old rocks or some shit like that. It was when we went back to America, and when his attractive twenty-something offspring visited the campus and I ended up trying to ask her out right in front of him, at least three times despite her refusal, when the last straw finally broke.
Looking back, I guess it was dumb of me to let my hormones do the talking rather than my brain. I can’t control my libido, sure, but my actions? That’s an entirely different matter. Perhaps I was lonely and desperate for someone to share my sex life with. But I have no excuse, and to Dr. Freda and his daughter, I cannot apologize enough.
I still remember the conversation very clearly. I had just driven into campus when I got a phone call from Dr. Freda to see me in his office immediately. He hung up right after he’d said that, which meant some very bad news. I hurried over to the office and knocked on the door, only to get no response.
Slipping inside, I found the dark-skinned professor sitting in his chair with a soul-piercing glare in his eyes despite his relaxed position. He motioned for me to close the door, which I did, and then take a seat, which I did.
“Congratulations, Mr. Gluteus,” he growled. “You have lost the last of my respect from you, and potentially your career as well.”
I instantly began to panic. “Wha— no! You can’t! Not after all I’ve done for you! For once in your life, please let me stay in this program! Pleeeease?!”
“The fact that you’ve said ‘for once in your life’ only redoubles my contempt for you, Mr. Gluteus. And that is on top of not only shirking your academic studies and disrespecting me in public too many times to count, but also forcing yourself upon my daughter. My. Daughter. She hates you because of your actions, and she wants me to have you removed from not only the program but from the university as a whole. So do most of my colleagues who know your insolent behavior all too well.”
I bowed my head in shame, horror washing over me as I took in the implications. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Freda. I truly am. I wish I can make it up to you and I’m sorry for hitting on your daughter and please please PLEEEEASE let me finish my thesis project!”
“Hitting on my daughter was the final straw, and this moment has been years in the making. I do want you to succeed, but to do that you must cast aside all things that lead you to sin, or you will suffer a far worse fate than a career lying in ashes.”
I sputtered in shock and horror and anger. “B-but I can’t help but flirt! It’s not my fault that people look cute!”
He stood up, towering over me with an enraged expression that made me quail in terror. “It is your fault, Mr. Gluteus, that you disrespect people’s basic rights so blatantly that they want you gone from the university entirely. I won’t sugarcoat it: you are a creep. A disgusting. Fucking. Creep. So if you do not choose to cut the bullshit right now, then so help me I will file a report to not only the Department of Personnel Conduct, but the police department as well.”
My eyes widened in mortal fear. “M-mom would kill me! Please no! Stop it! I can’t be expelled now, not after I’ve made it this far! Not with so many sexy—” I covered my mouth, realizing what I’d just said.
He continued glaring. “Then you leave me no choice, Mr. Gluteus. I’ve given you so many chances, forgiven you so many times. But you’ve continued to perform reprehensible actions with complete impunity. Perhaps even expulsion or imprisonment won’t change your cruel, lascivious ways. But maybe this will.”
“W-what will?!”
He spread his hands wide, the room starting to turn a little darker. Then I noticed that his eyes were glowing, in a way I couldn’t possibly believe was real. I thought it was a trick of the light until he started speaking, his voice echoing as though multiple people were talking at once. Like… Like he was calling forth the will of ancient spirits!
“From this day forth, Masahiro Rupawan Gluteus shall never again be an idle hand of strife! Let him feel the pain he has callously inflicted upon his fellow men, women, and children a hundred fold for the rest of his days! May the seat of his indolence never know peace again, and may he live forevermore to see the error of his listless, arrogant spite! WHERE ONCE HAS SEATED SELFISH COMFORT, FROM THIS DAY TO THE END OF DAYS, THERE SHALL ONLY BE SEATED AGONY, PENITENCE, AND DESPAIR!”
That was when I felt my bottom begin to tingle. All of a sudden, the cushion of my chair didn’t feel so comfortable.
“H-how did you — what — What have you done to me?!” I cried, terror washing over me as my mind struggled to take in what had just happened.
“Only what needs to be done to get you to shut up, shape up, and man up.” Dr. Freda glared daggers at me once more. “Clearly, you have failed to listen to anyone who tried to get you to stop this utter fuckery before you ruin your career, but perhaps the will of the gods might be far more persuasive. I will let you continue your studies only on one condition: if you continue to act like you have, even in the wake of this invocation, I will not remain civil any longer, and I will file the report as originally planned. If you believe I am blind to your despicable actions, if you believe I am powerless to stop a grown man from screwing over dozens of others without remorse, then you are sadly and sorely mistaken.”
“I—”
“Get out of my office. Get out. And while you’re at it, find someone else to advise you. From this point on… we’re done.”
Tears welled up in my face as I realized that my master’s degree would be set back for several years more, to say nothing about my plans for a Ph.D. But there was no choice, and for the final time in my life, my recently cursed butt left a safe and relatively comfortable seat.
It would only be an hour later that I’d end up sitting on an open safety pin someone had carelessly left on the couch at the campus library. And when I returned home to cook a very lonely dinner, I ended up slipping on a puddle of spilled milk and sitting on the very hot stove burner. That was when I realized what was happening in abject horror: there shall only be seated agony, penitence, and despair.
Regret came far too late over the next few weeks. And for the rest of my college days, my poor shapely ass would never be the same…
**********
I gave up on flirting with people from that point onward. In hindsight it was for the best, because any attempts to do that would no doubt be scuttled by something very bad happening to my poor posterior. That meant I had far more time to study, learn, catch up on what I’d been missing, and work my butt off (if you’ll excuse the expression) to own up to my mistakes. But the damage had already been done. Word had already gotten out of my poor behavior, and nobody wanted anything to do with me, not after everything that had transpired.
Having guessed that any attempt to make amends with those I had wronged would only end in failure, I spent the rest of the year in a very introspective state. The falling out with my own family was the kicker; my mom wouldn’t speak to me no matter how many messages I left on the phone, which was how I realized that even she was furious with me. When that happens, you know you’ve fucked up royally.
Which meant I was alone in my studies for a while, until another supervisor found me, an emotional wreck with my butt in constant agony. I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d stopped because they wouldn’t believe me, but when she saw that I didn’t even try to hit on her, regardless of the fact that she was merely twenty-eight years old and quite beautiful at that, she must’ve realized that I’d changed. I told her that the curse was a major factor, but people slandering me for my actions was more significant. Dr. Christine Henderson didn’t condone them any more than anyone else did, but she did recognize that I had gotten into college early for a reason. By pouring through textbooks and published articles, the only thing keeping my mind off the pain, I’d amassed an immense trove of knowledge to put to use, and under her guidance I eventually made it through my thesis and ultimately my dissertation, even if there was quite a bit of arguing over the years. It was when I came to her after graduation that my life changed again.
I found out from Dr. Henderson that the voodoo curse Dr. Freda had put on me wasn’t a bunch of coincidences after all. Magic and myth was indeed real, and her specialty was studying it, as well as how it had been kept secret for so long by so many different peoples until relatively recently. For my post-doctorate, I was to work a number of very unusual jobs for her, my first being a little assignment somewhere in the rainforests of the northern Amazon Basin. A rival of hers’ was en route to snagging a supposedly magical artifact from a temple that had been recently discovered there, and aside from exploring the temple, my task was to get to the Hummingbird Headdress before he did.
I thought it was going to be easy — just like the Colosseum, I’d explore the ruins, find the crown, and bring it back to her. It was when our plane got shot down over the jungle by some unknown party that I found out how wrong I was. It was lucky that I got tangled up in those lianas or I’d have been a grease stain on the rainforest floor… though as it was, I doubted getting shish-kebabed on a Nahua tribes-woman’s spear was any better.
**********
So here I was, being hauled off to Tlacotl’s tribe with my arms and legs tied to a pole, two of the tribesmen carrying me with the rather attractive young woman in the lead. My troubles only continued as we entered the tribe village, in part since my jiggling round bottom was seen as a tantalizing target by the local children, who apparently wanted something to practice their blowdart aiming on. I managed to lift my head just in time to see one of them raise his pipe to his lips…
“AHHH! N-NONONO WAI—”
PffftTHWAP! A sharp little needle made from a sliver of wood and a feather embedded itself in my right buttock; it was thankfully not poisoned but it still hurt like fuck.
“EEEEYOOUUUCH! HEYYY!!”
PffftTHWAP! And now my left cheek got a dart stuck in it.
“AIEEEEE!”
PffftTHWAP! PffftTHWAP! PffftTHWAP! PffftTHWAP! PffftTHWAP! PffftTHWAP! Six more darts in rapid succession pierced an inch into my tender flesh, most nailing my buttocks but some managing to get my taint and ass crack as well. I writhed and screamed helplessly as the procession continued.
PffftTHWAP!
My eyes widened as I felt one more dart strike dead-center, flying right into my anus, its shaft disappearing with only the feather sticking out like some miniscule parody of a bird’s tail.
“YIIIIIIIIEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!” I howled, thrashing so hard now that I actually ended up slipping out of the ropes and landing hard on the ground, forcing a few of the darts deeper into my bottom. “EEEEEEYAAAAAAAAH!!!”
As I sprang to my feet and danced around in agony, I would swear I heard one of the kids say “Nice shot!” to his friend in their native language, the rest of them applauding. The fact that they followed me all the way to the chief’s gathering only added to my humiliation.
The chief, a ferocious-looking man with a very colorful outfit, including a robe decked out in tribal patterns of every color of the rainbow and a headdress made from macaw tail feathers, cleared his throat. Despite being in so much pain that I could barely stand, I knew I had to remain respectful, so I turned and stood up as straight as I could.
“Foreign man,” he said in a measured but stern voice. “Have you no clue that you have trod upon hallowed ground?”
“C-correction,” I said, pulling one of the darts out of my bum. “YEOWW! I fell into hallowed ground. My plane was shot down over the jungle and I honestly didn’t know where I was landing.”
“I don’t believe you,” replied the chief. “You and the white man who raided our village appeared within a day of each other, and I am certain that you are here only to finish us off!”
I yelped in pain after pulling out another dart, spluttering in shock and angered confusion. “Wha — but I — What does that have to do with—”
“SILENCE! You do not defy us with your insolence, foreign one! Where is he? Where is the white man?!”
Completely nonplussed, my expression was as though I’d just witnessed him sprout an extra head or something. “Your guess is as good as mine… The guy could be anywhere for all I know. I don’t even know him!”
“Enough with your snide sentiments! Tell me. Right now. Where the white man is. Or I will make you pay.”
I looked to Tlacotl for help, and sure enough I noticed that she was beginning to panic. “Chief, I—”
“NO! You will be silent!” the chief replied harshly. “Put him in the Mound of Agony and leave him there until sundown! That will surely make him speak!”
I let out a squeal of terror that sounded anything but manly, but it did me no good.
Two of the tribesmen grabbed me by the shoulders while another rudely and painfully yanked the darts out of my searing buttocks. Removing the one stuck in the interior of my asshole was excruciating, but I didn’t yet know that there was worse to come.
After being hauled through the jungle for several minutes, I was led to a small earthen mound in the midst of a clearing whose top had apparently crumbled into a small crater. Ignoring my feeble protests, one of the natives swept my legs from under me and hoisted my ankles up, leaving my bottom protruding downwards once again. With one swift movement, the natives proceeded to slam me butt-first into the mound, leaving me stuck deep in the crater like a cork in the mouth of a wine bottle.
Screaming in vain for help, I only barely noticed Tlacotl arriving at the clearing, nearly being knocked over by the natives who were backpedaling as fast as they could. I didn’t have time to make sense of it before I felt a little tickling sensation upon my perineum, then another, and a dozen more after that. In horror I realized what the chief’s words had meant: This mound was an anthill! MY BARE HELPLESS ASS WAS STUCK IN A FUCKING BULLET ANT HILL!
“HEEELLLLP!” I cried, my dark eyes wide with terror. “OH FUCK SOMEONE PLEASE HEL— EEEEEEEEEEYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
It had hit me like a ton of bricks. Dozens upon dozens of Paraponera clavata had almost simultaneously sank their razor-sharp mandibles deep into the flesh of every inch of my bottom, getting in between my cheeks and around my anus as well; even my ballsack and four-inch member weren’t safe. But that was nothing compared to the stinging. It was like a million white-hot needles were being plunged into my most intimate regions, the venom from so many stingers impaling my ass all at once sending signals of pain through my entire body which were so intense that I could do nothing else but SCREAM. My limbs wiggled feebly as my howls of agony echoed through the rainforest, so loud and high-pitched that animals nearby actually winced in pain.
The most humiliating part? Those damn villagers who’d dumped me in the Mound of Agony were doing nothing to help! They were just standing there and watching me in total silence. The only thing worse was if they were laughing at me, but thankfully, embarrassing me probably wasn’t the intention.
“YEEEEEEAAAAARRRRRRGH!” I shrieked, as wave after wave of bites and stings assaulted my intimate regions. “OW OW OW OWWWWWW! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHH! GYAAAAAAAH! NONONONOOOOOOOOOOOO! HELP MEEEEE! HEEEEEELLLLLLP!!!!…”
It seemed like forever until someone had grabbed me by the leg and started tugging. I was nearly catatonic from the overwhelming pain by the time that happened, having felt like someone had emptied an AK-47 into my derriere several hundred times over and then made me sit in a tub of molten iron. I had thought in terror that the ants would in fact devour me alive up until that point. Blinded by anguished tears and my own messy dark hair, I barely noticed the tribal girl pulling me out of the mound, a swarm of angry black insects still engulfing my throbbing, burning bottom.
After dragging me a safe distance away from that goddamn anthill, Tlacotl flipped me onto my stomach before emptying a bucket of river water onto my rear, dislodging most but not all of the bullet ants that had remained latched on. The rest she had to beat off with a stick, each whack feeling like a red-hot poker being rammed into my lower cheeks at high speed.
One final ant was still clamped onto the rim of my anus. With no other choice, she proceeded to ram the stick through the orifice in a bid to crush it, which did the trick but also caused its stinger to sink into the inner surface of my rectum. That was when I passed out, though I’m pretty sure I screamed so loudly that I nearly rendered myself deaf right before then.
I was barely awake for at least 24 hours, unable to shake off the incurable feeling of absolute agony radiating from my tortured rear. It wasn’t until two days of uneasy rest later when I regained consciousness in full, the tribal chief and Tlacotl on either side of me. The latter was rubbing some kind of cream on my blistered, pockmarked posterior, which was soothing it considerably.
“Are you awake, foreign one?” asked the chief.
I moaned into my pillow, not wanting a repeat of the previous conversation.
“We’ve had a talk,” said Tlacotl. “We may have gone just a teensy bit too far with the Mound of Agony—”
“You think?!” I grunted, well aware of how badly my ass was still hurting.
The chief scowled a little. “Perhaps it was a mistake to leave you there for that long. We weren’t aware that you wouldn’t be in a state to confess. But Tlacotl told me that the white man would’ve come to rescue you if you two were allies — your screams really do carry!”
I somewhat deflated upon hearing that last bit. “Thanks for noticing.”
“I still don’t trust you. But I might be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, on one condition. You have to find the Hummingbird Helmet and retrieve it before the white man does.”
I lifted my head to give him a dirty look. “Why do you think I came here in the first place?”
Tlacotl poked the buttock of mine that was closer to her, and the jolt of pain shooting through me made me shut up instantly. “As a surety, the chief wishes for someone from his tribe to come with you as a guide. I decided to volunteer, seeing as we’ve met…”
I nodded a little, shivering at the memory.
“You have four days to verify that the Helmet is in safe hands, foreign one,” the chief said sternly. “Or we will have to make you leave. Whether it’s evicting you from our land, turning you over to civilization, or may the gods help us, putting you back in the Mound of Agony to die to its residents—”
“I’ll do it!” I sat up bolt upright, wincing as I felt my tender butt cheeks being squished against my legs. “I’ll get the Helmet for you! It’s why I’m here, after all.”
“I didn’t say necessarily to take the helmet. Whoever wears it carries a very dangerous power… one that could end the world as we know it. Just make sure it does not fall into the hands of the white one, and your dignity — and much more — will be spared.”
I nodded. “No time to waste, then. Pack your things, Tlacotl — Operation Keep White Guy Away From Helmet is underway!”
The twenty-something tribeswoman tilted her head in confusion. “That’s… not the best of names for our little endeavor.”
“Well, I can’t exactly think of good quest names on short notice. Let’s just get going!”
**********
It was a few hours later when we set off, taking most of the afternoon to forge our way through the jungle. The sun was already beginning to slip down towards the horizon when I decided to get our bearings by scaling a tree which I hoped was reasonably high, at least enough to get me over the canopy. Once I managed to peek over the treetops, I had to make sure to keep myself stable so I could get a look around.
“Any luck?” Tlacotl’s voice called from below.
“Just a sec, I’ve gotta get a bearing…” I took out my pocket compass with the hand of mine that wasn’t gripped onto the tree branch just over my head. “So… North is thataway,” I said, turning my head to look over at a mountain range off to my right. “Which means the temple’s some 38 degrees west of here… A couple more miles past that river,” I added, indicating the light brown line cutting through the greenery.
Then I noticed the faint hint of a hewn capstone, the roof of a small building jutting forth from the treetops. “YES! There, I see it!”
“Well, what are you waiting for, then?” asked Tlacotl down below. “Let’s get to it before the white man does!”
“You bet your ass we will,” I said, turning to start the climb back down the tree. “I can assure you, my jungle survival skills are second toOOOOWAAAAAH!!!”
In my excitement, I hadn’t realized that the humid environment led to the growth of moss on the tree branches — not to mention that the moisture made said moss dangerously slick. My foot had slipped out from under me, and as a result, I’d lost my balance and toppled off the branch, the one I was holding onto snapping off in the process.
I fully expected to plunge to my death some sixty, seventy feet below. However, there happened to be another tree branch just below me… which I landed on… with my legs on either side.
CRUNCH!
“EEEEEEEEEEP!” My voice shot up an octave as I screamed, my still-tender gonads flattened against my pelvis, before I slipped off and fell again.
I landed crotch-first onto another branch and yelled again, my balls getting pancaked a second time. And there happened to be at least half a dozen more arranged in something like a zigzagging pattern on the way down the trunk of the tree.
The astute listener can probably tell where this is going.
WHUMP!
“YIIIIIIIII!”
THWAMP!
“AIEEEEEEEEE!”
CRACK!
“GYAAAAAAAH!”
SMASH!
“AAAAAARRRRGGH!”
POW!
“OOOOOHHH…!”
This continued for quite some time until I finally ended up plummeting off the last branch, getting snagged on some vines, and ending up with my knees tied against my sides and my arms over my head, my bottom sticking out below me once again — complete with my pants and underwear being yanked off of them with my cheeks spread apart.
“…Yeesh, déjà vu much?” muttered Tlacotl.
“Wait, you know what that phrase actually means?” I asked, looking puzzled. “Isn’t it like what, French or something?”
“I had to take a course on French once…” she mumbled in a low voice.
I raised an eyebrow, completely dumbfounded.
“I’m studying for my biology major at the University of Rio De Janeiro, and I was visiting my native tribe on holiday when you dropped in.” Beat. “We’re not savages.”
I was about to shoot a snappy comment back at her when the branch I’d broken earlier fell from the boughs overhead and bonked me upside the scalp (“Ow!”) before tumbling into the bushes below.
Whereupon the large, bright red, and surprisingly toothy flowers adorning the bushes suddenly burst into life. Several of them shot upwards, swiftly sinking the nasty little barbs lining their petals into the soft and yielding flesh of my exposed backside!
SNAP SNAP SNAP!!
“EEEEEYYYOOOOUUUUCH! OW OW OW OWWW! H-HEELLLLP!!”
“What the—?!” Tlacotl could only gawk at the bizarre scene. “Omigosh! Aracamunia muscipula!”
“YEEEEEK!” I howled, shooting several inches upwards as another plant sank its thorny fangs into my sensitive taint. It dawned on me what she was talking about, and I shrieked like a schoolgirl. “F-FLESH-EATING ORCHIDS!!”
“AAAAH!” Tlacotl instantly whipped out her spear and prepared to slash at the flowers in a bid to cut me free.
“NO NO, UPROOT THEM!” I screamed, struggling in vain to escape as the killer orchids continued attacking. “I — EEEP! — wanna coll— YEOWWW! — COLLECT THEM — AIEEEEE! — FOR THE MONUMENTROPOLIS CONSERVATORIIIIIEEEEEEE!!”
“Way ahead of you!” she cried, before proceeding to use the head of her spear to dig up as many of the flowers latched onto me as she could. “You have no idea how any botanists around the world would kill for just one of these extremely rare and endangered plants, and here you just happen to stumble into a patch of them completely by accident!”
CHOMP!
“YEOWWW! JUST MY LUCK, I GUESS!”
SNAP! CHOMP! CRUNCH!
“OUUUUCH! YEEEEE! GYAAAAH!…”
It was another half hour of removing and bagging the plants that I’d provoked, along with treating the numerous tiny puncture wounds inflicted upon my bottom, before we were fit to set off, taking the direction I’d noted earlier. I was quite sure she gave me a “you have the softest and best-looking rear I’ve ever seen” comment at one point, but I was thinking about the painful bite marks at the time.
This was shaping up to be an eventful trip, I could tell.
**********
It about a day of hiking later when we’d reached the river. It was surprisingly shallow at first, though I did have to take off my boots and roll up my pant legs to get across. Not eager to get swept off-course, I chose the least turbulent part of the river, and stepped into the water.
“Alright. Just a couple more miles ahead, and we should be at the temple complex. Shouldn’t be too hard!” I started moving across the river, trusting my instincts with regards to where I was putting my feet and managing not to step on anything too hazardous. “I’m actually surprised at how well this is going. No piranha in sight, strangely enough.”
I looked back, and noticed that Tlacotl was looking a little hesitant.
“Uh… Foreign one?”
“It’s Max. Dr. Max Gluteus, to be specific. What is it?”
“Are you sure the water’s safe to swim in?”
“Um, yes? It’s not even that deep…”
“I’m not worried about the current. I think I’ve been here before, and this place is a prime hunting spot for, um, eels of life?”
I tilted my head. “Um, English please?”
She gave me a dirty look. “Eels of life? You know, Electrophorus electricus?”
“Electrophorus?” I still had no idea what she meant. “Since when did those things show up in Mesoamerican mythology, anyway?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “In your urban parlance, they’re called ‘electric eels’.”
“Those aren’t eels, though — they’re relatives of catfish,” I replied in a matter-of-fact tone as I waded deeper into the river. And then I stopped dead in my tracks, my eyes widening as I finally realized what she’d meant.
“Oh dear,” was all I could say in a pathetic whimper.
An instant later, something slimy and sinuous brushed against the seat of my pants, and then liquid fire shot through both buttocks at once.
“GYAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAHHHH!!!”
I would swear my messy hair stood on end, and would’ve ended up as black as soot if it wasn’t already dark to begin with. My muscles locked up and my feet slipped off the riverbank as 860 volts of life force surged up my spine. Several other eels also joined in, making my luckless rear end feel like it was being hit by multiple taser prods at once.
It was only a few seconds before the dangerous knifefish slipped away, but I was helplessly paralyzed, and only barely able to hear Tlacotl’s yelling. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but from the way she was starting to walk along the shore after me and how the plants and riverbank were moving, it can’t have been anything good.
It was lucky that I was able to float on the surface of the water, my backpack serving as a ballast of a sort. By the time I was able to wiggle my fingers, a great rushing, roaring noise was thundering through my ears.
“Don’t tell me,” I muttered to myself. “I’m about to go over a huuuuuuge waterfall.”
Tlacotl was frantically gesturing for me to do something, but I could barely move, let alone try and reach out for a rock or whatever. By the time my limbs were fully functional, it was already too late.
“Bring it on,” I said calmly.
FWHOOOOOM!
“WOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Down, down, down I plummeted, fully expecting to go splat on the water below and maybe a few sharp rocks in the pool as well. However, a tree branch protruding from the rocks aside the falls caught me by the back of my underwear at the last moment, which had the agonizing side-effect of yanking the hem of my garment out of my pants, the stretched cotton biting deep into the crack of my bottom!
YOINK!
“AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
SNAP! The band of my briefs snapped, sending me dropping the remaining distance down to the water.
“YIIIIIIIII!!!”
SPLOOSH!
Flailing about under the churning water beneath the falls, I managed to figure out which way was up and paddle upwards as best as I could. With a gasp I broke the surface, immediately swimming towards the nearest log I could find.
It was only then that I noticed Tlacotl screaming at me from the treetops some distance away, not to mention how oddly bumpy and greenish gray in color the log was. I turned my head to notice several other similar logs in the water as well, some of which seemed to be moving.
As in, moving towards me.
Let’s just say the simple “Uh-oh” that came from my mouth at that point was a gigantic understatement.
Then the long, snaggle-toothed head of one very indignant, ten-foot-long Crocodylus acutus broke the water and turned towards me, regarding me with a fierce, dark-brown eye. I shrieked at the top of my lungs before it dove, nearly taking me with it. At the same time, a second American crocodile barreled towards me, churning the water with sculling movements of its powerful tail. No human could outspeed it in the water, so it’s safe to say I stood no chance.
CHOMP!
“AIEEEEEEEEBLBBLLBLBLBLLBLL!!”
Dragged underwater by the reptile’s powerful jaws, I found myself unable to pull my seat free as too many spike-like teeth tore into the seat of my jeans. At least a dozen other crocodiles came piling in a few moments later, attempting to take off my limbs or even my head; it was amazing that all I suffered from the feeding frenzy was a few nicks and scratches and tons of rips into my clothing. One of the crocs finally ended up hitting the one biting me by accident, which caused it to dislodge me, and with a burst of panic-induced strength I struggled towards the surface a second time, only to find an immense twelve-foot croc surging up to catch me.
Tlacotl was assuming the worst upon seeing the frothing water, but then the crocodile and I shot out of the water like a comically grotesque parody of a Seaworld performance. The reptile’s great bulk was halfway out of the water, its jaws seeming to engulf my entire lower body. With a yell of terror I spread my legs as wide as I could, forcing its jaws apart to avoid getting swallowed. The tribeswoman screamed as all the smaller crocs swarmed around me, trying to get a piece of hapless explorer.
“HEEEEEELLLLLLLPPP MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” I cried, my arms windmilling to avoid falling back into the water.
“AAH! H-HANG ON!” Tlacotl was looking around frantically, trying to find something to do. Then she noticed a long vine dangling from a tree, which she instantly grabbed and yanked as hard as she could.
“OH NOOOOOO!!!” I cried, slipping free from the crocodile’s jaws and then tumbling bottom-first into its mouth.
SNAP SNAP SNAP!
“EEEEEEEEYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!” I screamed, several crocs at once biting down on my bottom!
Seeing that it wouldn’t budge, Tlacotl gripped the vine with one hand before cutting it loose with her spear; then she tied one end to the tree branch she was standing on, and broke off a smaller branch to tie to the other as a weight.
“MAX! GRAB ON!!” she cried, before throwing the branch like a spear. Still struggling to escape the snapping jaws of all the crocodiles, I ended up getting bonked in the forehead by the thankfully blunt stick, letting out a shriek of surprise. The branch fell right into my hands, and out of instinct I grabbed the vine it was tied to before wrapping it around my wrists. Tlacotl instantly started reeling me in, but not before the hungry reptiles started giving chase.
SNAP!
“OUUUUCH!”
CHOMP!
“AIEEEEEEEEE!!”
CRUNCH!
“YEEEOOOOWWWWW!!!…”
By the time I made it to shore, the back of my jeans was in tatters, and my jacket wasn’t doing much better. I thought I was safe as soon as I reached the shore, until I was reminded that crocodiles are amphibious. Said reminder, because of course, being a set of spike-like teeth lunging for the hole in my pants seat, with only my shredded underwear shielding my bottom from the outside.
CHOMP!!
“EEEEEEEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCHHHHH!!!”
Wasting no time, Tlacotl grabbed both of my hands and started tugging. My screams could be heard for miles as she and the crocodile engaged in a brutal tug of war — with my rent red rump caught in the middle, for obvious reasons — for what seemed like forever. Then a horrible ripping sound could be heard as I was yanked free from the ravening reptile, though whether or not it was from my unfortunate undone undies or my gruesomely gnawed gluteus (I apologize for nothing) is a question I pointedly refuse to answer to this day. Besides, I wouldn’t know myself — seeing as I collapsed in a dead faint mere seconds later.
**********
I don’t know how long it was until I woke up again, but I was pretty sure the sun was moving up above the treetops the next time I managed to look up into the sky. My bottom felt like someone had slathered it with enough suntan lotion to grease an entire crowd of beachgoers, and my loins had been tastefully covered with a crude loincloth Tlacotl had thankfully bought with her in case I ran out of leg-wear.
“We’ve wasted too much time,” she said after taking a look at the morning sky. “This is already the third day, and we have to confirm that the Hummingbird Headdress is safe before sundown. We have to reach the temple post-haste!”
I had to agree with that statement, among lots of other things about her. Yesterday’s incident was the second, probably third time that this girl had saved my life, and as loath as I was to admit it, I owed her for that. Still, I asked her to look away as I changed into a fresh pair of briefs and jeans (having packed a number of backups in case of scenarios exactly like this) and put my boots back on.
“Okay, of all the situations I’ve encountered,” I said once I exited the bushes, “yesterday has to be the first where I’m actually glad someone was there to help. So, uh… thanks, I guess?” I strained to say it, but there was no denying the truth.
The tribal beauty looked slightly offended. Geez, I guess some people can’t take a compliment.
“You have a flesh-eating orchid in your underwear,” she pointed out simply.
CHOMP!
“EEEEEEEP! THANKS F-FOR NOTICING!” I danced around in panic while trying to fish the plant out of my pants, unaware of where I was stepping. As soon as I managed to pull the plant out, wondering how it had fallen out of my bag in the first place (perhaps the hole one of the crocs had torn into it with its teeth had something to do with that), I ended up tripping backwards over a log on the ground, tumbling head over heels down a small hill.
“WAAAAAAAH!”
Said hill, of course, happened to have a clump of viciously thorny brambles at the bottom, and gravity was inexorably pulling me butt-first towards it.
“GYAAAAAH! OH NONONONONO—”
CRUNCH-POINK-POINK-POINK-POINK-POINK!
“AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”
Once again, Tlacotl had to get me out of the nasty patch of stickers; you’d think she’d get extremely tired of having to do this over and over, and indeed she was. The same vine from earlier came in handy, luckily, though not quite as much as with the crocodiles; she had to suspend it over another tree branch like a pulley to hoist me out, and each time she tried to tug my torso upwards to a height where I could extract myself from the thorns, she ended up dropping me right back into them. By the end of the ordeal I’d managed to get several dozen little puncture wounds upon my bottom, and a healthy crop of thorns came off of the plants as well, embedded into my tender buttocks.
With an exasperated sigh, Tlacotl moved in to de-thorn me, and without hesitation I got down on my hands and knees and let her do just that. The squealing and yelping began mere seconds later, and I was glad she had the wound cream close at hand. There went another hour and even more of the good stuff; by the time it was over, I felt like my ass hurt twice as much, maybe three times.
“In light of all of this,” she said once she was done, “I wonder what could’ve possibly happened that could’ve made your assets attract so much trouble.”
I let her put the salve on my bare bottom without complaint. “Funny story, actually. I was an ass back in college, and my former supervisor cursed my actual ass to try to get me to stop dicking around. It worked, maybe just a little too well…”
She looked down, and let out a gasp of surprise. While the wound cream was doing its job well, it seemed like my puncture wounds were healing a lot faster than normal. It would be only an hour or so before my butt would be as smooth and flawless as it used to be, whereas in any other person it’d take days if not weeks to heal.
“Astounding,” said Tlacotl. “That must’ve been a pretty bad slip-up for this to happen to you.”
I stood straight and hitched my pants back up. “Does making inappropriate advances on the supervisor’s daughter right in front of him count as a bad slip-up?” I asked, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
“Heeeeeeeey, there’s the temple!” she said suddenly, pointing to my right. I turned, and—
“Oh my.”
By sheer luck, our little escapade had landed us right in front of the temple complex. The massive structure was surrounded by moss- and liana-covered walls of stone, and ruined buildings and rubble were strewn about in rectangular patterns, but there, standing on a small forested hill in the middle of it all, was the unmistakable step-pyramid towering over the jungle.
“Hey, it is the temple,” said Tlacotl, genuine surprise on her face.
“And what a temple it is.” I beamed in triumph. “This must be where the Hummingbird Helmet is! Look at the Nazca Lines-esque bird symbols carved onto these stones on the entrance!”
“Can we marvel at the remnants of ancient civilization later? We’ve got a white man to intercept.”
“Oh, right!”
Without delay, the two of us hurried along the main path towards the temple. It was another ten minutes of walking before we’d managed to climb up the stairway upon the hill. I think it was halfway up when I noticed a small cave visible on the side of said hill several hundred feet away from us, with animal bones scattered about just outside. I ignored it though as we continued on our way.
Once we cleared the top of the stairwell, we found ourselves at the main gate. A stone statue resembling a seated man with his knees to his chest and his arms crossed was sitting next to the twenty-foot-high stone entrance, its back pressed against the wall. Rising from the ornate headband on its forehead were two stubby horns, which served as the bases for two large, hinged rods made of rotten wood.
“Never expected to see the Two-Horned God of Templo Mayor this far south,” I said upon taking a closer look at the three-foot-tall statue. “This must be the mechanism that opens the door! But which lever…?”
“One way to find out, right?” asked Tlacotl, grabbing the stick on the left.
“You read my mind!” I struck a dramatic pose. “Pull the lever, Tlacotl!”
Ka-CHINK!
FWIP! A tile on the floor flipped open to reveal a square hole which was five feet wide on each side. Said hole, of course, happened to have opened up directly under me.
“WRONG LEVEEEEERRRRRR…!!!” I screamed, plummeting into the darkness, sliding through some kind of winding tunnel. The trapdoor disappeared behind me, and with the lights going out so fast, I failed to notice that 1) the end of the slide opened up into the ceiling of a noticeably larger tunnel, and 2) instead of the hard ground at the floor of the cave, there was something huge, black, and furry sleeping right below the exit.
WHUMP!
ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR! “AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!” RIP! CHOMP! “OW!” SNARL! SLASH! “AAAGH!” SNAP! “EEEEYAAAAAHHH!” GRAAAAWRRR! RIP RIP RIP! CRUNCH! “YEEEOWWWWCH!!”
“Okay, why do they even have that lever?!” I shouted five minutes later, stumbling out of the jungle with my clothes practically shredded to leather and denim confetti and a 300-pound black jaguar chewing on my bottom — the cave I’d passed earlier was apparently its den, which was likely once an ejector slide starting right under the trapdoor.
Tlacotl, unable to comprehend the state of things any more than me, shrieked and thrust her spear at the beast a few times, trying not to actually wound the sacred animal; after she managed to jab it in the shoulder, hopefully not deep enough to draw blood, it reluctantly let go of me and slunk off into the green. I glanced back just in time to notice that it had a large bump on its head, which was odd. I’m pretty sure I’d landed on its back when I’d literally dropped in on it.
“Gimme that!” I growled, waving her aside and pulling the right lever on top of the sculpture. A great rumbling noise told us that the front gate to the temple was slowly beginning to open, revealing its interior to the outside for the first time in six-hundred years.
It was about a minute before the massive, dark passageway was revealed. It was exactly like in the movies, though I wasn’t sure anymore as to whether or not that was any comfort. If Hollywood was any indication, one wrong move and things would go very wrong very quickly.
I gulped, before taking out one of the flares I’d bought with me and, after checking to make sure it wasn’t actually a stick of dynamite, lit it up.
“Well… Here goes nothing,” said Tlacotl.
“Took the words right outta my mouth, sweetie,” I replied. I covered my mouth a few moments later as she gawked at me. “What? You did save my life like what, three times now?”
“Might not wanna rush it, or I won’t next time,” she replied. I shivered a little before she lightly punched me in the shoulder. “Just joking, Max. You’re too sweet not to leave for dead!”
“That’s not as reassuring a statement as you might think,” I replied sourly, before leading the way into the temple.
**********
CLICK-POW-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
“EEEEYYYYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUCCCCCHHHHHH!!!”
Squirming in pain, I pulled another set of poisoned darts out of my bottom. “I swear to the gods — YEOW! — at this point I’m surprised — EEP! — that I haven’t dropped dead from so many toxins in my ass! OW!”
“Well, you did recite the words of the curse to me earlier,” replied Tlacotl, recounting when I’d explained the nature of said curse to her a short while after we’d entered (What? She wouldn’t stop asking, okay?). “May the seat of his indolence never know peace again, and may he live forevermore to see the error of his listless, arrogant spite.”
“Live forevermore my fanny,” I grumbled, before pulling the last dart free. “OUCH! What I’d give to be able to sit without having to use a pillow for once.”
“Can’t you see what the curse entails, though?! You’re practically immortal! How else does that explain the fact that you’ve taken a dozen darts to the ass already and haven’t dropped dead from Dendrobates auratus poison yet?!”
“W-wha?!”
“Poison dart frog secretions! Normally even one a dart would kill a person within seconds. That’s why I’ve been walking behind you all this time.”
“Well, that explains the frogs. Come to think of it, I do feel slightly woozy…”
“First thing when we get out of here, I’m getting you to a hospital where you can get an antidote. Not to mention donate some blood samples to the university to study how the flying fuck you haven’t died yet!”
Beat. “…you know what the F-word means, do you?”
“Like I said, we’re not savages. Oh, mind that tile!”
“Why wou—” CRUNCH! “GAACCCK!”
Pressing my foot on said tile had caused a long, thin, rectangular stone panel to shoot up between my legs. Not for the first time that day, my testicles were cruelly squished against my crotch. With only a faint whimper, I slumped forward, my face ending up pressing down on another poison-dart tile.
Tlacotl shrieked and hit the dirt. Me, though? My rump was pointed straight up, right at the level of the next set of dart shooters.
CLICK-POW-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
“EEEEYYYYYYOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUCCCCCHHHHHH!!!”
I think I was still pulling little toxic missiles out of my calamitously cursed caboose by the time we arrived at the final passageway. There seemed to be a skylit chamber at the end of the hallway, but it was quite a ways away.
“Well, the good news is that there aren’t any dart traps anymore,” I said, before shuddering a little at the memory of said darts.
“And the bad news?” asked Tlacotl.
“We don’t know what traps they’ve got here. Perhaps it’d be worth staying here while I get really unlucky and set off every single one?”
She rolled her dark eyes, scoffing in spite of herself. “Only you, Max. Only you.”
I shrugged in a “what else can I do?” sort of fashion, before setting off towards the central chamber.
“Okay, so. The tiles that had frogs on them were the poison dart ones, and the green ones activated the tile traps. But I don’t see any of those here…”
I tried stepping on the tiles that had different symbols on them; most of the time I got nothing, that is until I ended up pressing down on one with a graphic of an obsidian serrated sword, a macuahuitl. There was a hissing whoosh from right above me, and with a yelp of terror, I hit the dirt.
The semicircular brazen blade swinging down from the ceiling was two feet in diameter, suspended from a rope almost as thick as my arm. It dangled just low enough that its razor-sharp edge just barely made contact with my ass jutting up from the floor.
SWHING-SLICE!
“EEEEYOOOOUUUUCH!!”
Desperately, I crawled forward with the intent of getting to the center chamber as fast as I could, only to find my hand pressing down on another trapped tile which sent another blade coming down right above my bottom. SHRIPPP! “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK!”
Several more slashing noises, “OWWWW!”s, “YEOOOWWW!”s, and profanities later, I stopped encountering those blasted swinging blades, but a number of the tiles were now red in color from this point forward. Trying my best to ignore them, I soldiered on, but then had the sheer misfortune of pressing down on one of them, and after a sinister click, I heard a loud FWOOOSH behind me. I could barely make out a screeching shriek from somewhere that I was sure came from Tlacotl, but what I definitely could make out a second later was the smell of smoke, followed by the realization that a black scorch mark was blossoming along the seat of my underpants, which had already been exposed when the blades cut my jeans open.
“EEEEEEYOOOOOWWWWWW! HOT HOT HOT HOTTTTT!!!” I cried, leaping to my feet and trying desperately to pat out the flames licking away at my presently pained posterior. Through sheer foul luck, my foot pressed down on another red tile, causing a hatch on the wall behind me to slide open before a second jet of fire blasted me in the rear. “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!”
I gave up my final shred of hope of making it through without triggering something dangerous at that point, my panicked mind instinctively switching to the tried and true tactic of running like the dickens. Needless to say, the rump roast continued a few more times before I reached the two-thirds point, and the traps changed from red tiles to red tiles with images of blades on them.
HISSSSSSHWING-CHOP! A massive axe on a pole swung downwards from the wall just behind me, its blade sporting grills on its flat sides that emitted flames hot enough to make the bronze glow a terrifying red. It sliced into my underpants before hitting the floor, and it suddenly felt very drafty and very, very painful below and behind me.
“EEEEEEEEYIIIIIIAAAAAOOOOOWWWWWWWW! FLAMING AXE BLADES?! JESUS FUCK, THIS IS GETTING RIDICULOUS!!!”
ClickHISSSSSSHWING-CHOP!
“GWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”
ClickHISSSSSSHWING-CHOP!
“YAAAAAAAAAAHOOHOOHOOHOOIEEEE!!!”
ClickHISSSSSSHWING-CHOP!
“AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
I don’t know how long it was before I finally got to the end of the dreadful passageway, but it was to my surprise and consternation that Tlacotl was waiting for me, arms folded and toes tapping in impatience.
“Took you long enough,” she muttered.
“B-BUT HOW?!” I cried. My clothing had all but fallen off, my hair was ruffled the tips of most of the ebony tufts singed and smoking, my ass felt like I’d sat in an erupting volcano, and my signature scarlet baseball cap was askew.
“If you crawl along the corner of the hallway, there’s just enough space for all the blades and flamethrowers to miss you. And none of the trapped tiles are situated right next to the walls, either.”
My eyes widened in absolute rage and humiliation. “NOW YOU TELL ME?!” I shouted, before mentally counting to ten and pinching out the last remaining flame in my hair. No time for arguments now — we had a headdress to recover.
The pants and undies I changed into were, unfortunately, the final pair I’d bought with me. So if I lost these, that was it — I’d have to fly back home with my lower body clad in nothing except a loincloth. That or I’d have to buy some new pants from the market at Rio on my way back to the airport. To this day I still don’t know which option would’ve been worse. That being said, though, two sets of ruined legwear were well worth the chance to see the interior of the temple. And boy, was it breathtaking.
It was shaped like a truncated pyramid, with rectangular windows near the flat ceiling illuminating the center. The walls to the left and right sides of us each had a feathered serpent head the size of a double-decker bus, both spewing gently trickling waterfalls like gargoyles down to a ring-shaped moat which was emptied out of the room by two channels leading to the far left and right corners. Smaller versions of the serpent head statues jutted from the wall behind us some fifty feet off the stony floor. The moat itself surrounded a small circular island platform, accessible via wooden plank bridges in four cardinal directions a few inches above the water surface that was nearly level with the floor. In turn, the island bore a small step pyramid, which was covered in vines, moss, and lichen that grew freely thanks to the sunlight and moisture (and vegetation also covered the bottom faces of the window openings, too). A series of bronze mirrors around the edge of the moat directed the rays of the sun towards the dais at the top of said pyramid.
And at the top of that, a stand made from decaying wood held an elaborate golden headdress shaped like the head of a long-beaked bird, with a semicircular wooden plate affixed to its top that glistened with jewels of turquoise and jade. From the upper edge of this plate jutted a halo of feathers from every kind of bird one could find in the Amazon, long green plumes like those from a resplendent quetzal framing somewhat shorter red feathers from scarlet macaws; these rows of color continued artfully towards the base with pinions gathered from eagles, parrots, teals, curassows, flamingos, grebes, doves, potoos, hummingbirds, gallinules, toucans, woodcreepers, flycatchers, saltators, and God knew what else. The whole assembly shone like a multicolored gemstone at the top of the step pyramid, drawing the eyes of all who stepped into the room towards it.
Then I noticed that the far wall had a fresco near the top, portraying a god with a feathered headdress almost exactly like the one in the center of the room. Clutched in his hand was a blue serpent spewing a tongue of flame.
“Huitzilopochtli,” I whispered. “The hummingbird god of war, the sun, and human sacrifice. But he’s the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan up in Mexico,” I added. “What exactly is a temple dedicated to him doing this far south? And why would the headdress be here rather than—”
“Where he was worshipped? Maybe the builders wanted to keep it safe in case invading tribes tried to take it,” Tlacotl suggested. “That could also explain why there were so many traps.”
My poked, poisoned, singed, sliced, and all-around agonized bottom started tingling at the memory. “Well, we’re here now,” I said finally. “Just one more step to go. Stay here and keep an eye out, alright? I’m going in.”
“But Max—”
“Trust me on this one,” I replied, puffing out my chest and sliding my backpack off my shoulders. “I’ve got this.”
Setting the backpack next to the bridge in front of me, I reached in and pulled out a bag of marbles I’d bought with me, which should keep whatever trapped mechanism was waiting from triggering. Then I miraculously crossed it without falling through, climbed up the steps leading up to the dais, and found myself facing the majesty of the Hummingbird Headdress.
Carefully, slowly, I raised the bag of marbles, ready to make the switcheroo in one swift move. One, two, three—
There! I swiped the headdress off the sand at almost the exact same moment that I put the bag of marbles in its place — only to accidentally tip it over, sending dozens of little round balls of colored glass clattering everywhere.
“Um, oops?” I asked, before turning to Tlacotl. “Well, at least there’s no traps here!”
What I didn’t know was that as soon as I’d put the marbles in, a panel right under the fresco of Huitzilopochtli started sliding open. The gentle scraping noise of stone went unnoticed by myself, such was my attention on the headdress, but once again, the jungle girl wasn’t oblivious. She reached for her spear for some reason I couldn’t fathom, a frightened expression on her face.
“Before we bring this back to the tribe,” I called down to her, “I gotta make sure it’s as powerful as the chief described it to be. And we all know how to go about that, right?”
Before she could stop me, I put it on. I turned my head to the heavens above, my eyes squeezed shut in anticipation, and felt…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
“Wh-wha?!” I cried. “It doesn’t work?! What kind of idiocy is this? I’ve trek through the jungle at the expense of my ass for three days and blunder my way through a booby-trapped temple to find out that this — this thing is just a fancy dud made of like what, paper mache?!”
I took the helmet off and frantically shook it, coming dangerously close to dislodging a few feathers in the process — and failing to realize that something enormous had emerged from the opening in the wall behind me. “Come on, phenomenal cosmic powers! If you’re really channeled through this thing, then why aren’t you responding to me?! Am I even worthy of your presence, or is the curse that’s been plaguing my butt for seven years canceling out whatever awesomeness you can offer?!”
The helmet did nothing in my hands, but had I looked up from it I’d have noticed that Tlacotl was now backing away from the center of the room, so much so that her back was virtually against the wall behind her. And I certainly didn’t notice something huge and scaly rising up and forward, stopping mere feet behind me.
“ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!” I shrieked, threatening to throw the helmet across the room. “WHY, ISN’T, THIS, STUPID, THING, WORKING?!”
“Because it’s a fake.”
The voice right behind me was deep, booming, echoing, and gravelly like a reptilian hiss. I screamed and jumped a foot in the air, nearly dropping the headdress, but before I could turn, whatever had spoken had opened its gaping maw behind me and—
FWOOOOOOOOOSH!!!
“YEEEEEEEEEOOOOOUUUUUUCCCHHHHH! NOT AGAIN!!!”
There went my last pair of pants! My bottom was once again on fire, and I shot down the steps of the pyramid in a wild panic, alternating between “HOT HOT HOT!” and “HEEEELLLP!” at the top of my lungs. I managed to toss the fake headdress onto my prone backpack before dropping my bum in the moat. SSSSSSS!
“Ahhhh…” I sighed in contentment. But then I heard Tlacotl let out a yelp somewhere ahead of me and call, “Oh gods! Max! Piranhas!!!”
“Piranhas aren’t normally dangerous to people, though!” I replied. “They usually only attack in the dry season, when water levels are low and there’s… little food… available…”
A second after I’d trailed off, it dawned on me that the native wildlife of the river must’ve gotten into the moat if the water really was being fed from outside. And a second after that, I realized that the water around me was churning with movement from a bunch of very interested Pygocentrus nattereri which had no doubt received too little nourishment from whatever flowed into the temple from the streams beyond.
CHOMP! SNAP! CHOMP! SNAP!
“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!”
Leaping to my feet, I ran around in circles, screaming at the top of my lungs as four red-bellied piranhas clung to my buttocks with their razor-sharp teeth. “GET THEM OFF MEEEEEEE!!!”
Tlacotl finally mustered the courage to step forward, cajoling me to hold still while she started ripping the starving fish free. Several “EEEYOOOUUUCH!”-es later, the fish were tossed back into the water, leaving me to moan and cradle my wounded lower cheeks. Then a horrible hissing noise made both of us stop dead in our tracks, chills running down our spines. Then we both looked up… and finally saw the enormous creature coiled around the pyramid.
The oversized rattlesnake was a hundred feet long at the minimum, its bright green scaly head bearing a backwards-curving bony crest on its snout, edged with gold and studded with obsidian bladed spikes. Its fangs were as long as my leg, and sharp recurved teeth a quarter of that length filled the rest of its mouth, which also sported a scarlet forked tongue. Its sinuous body was covered not in scales, but in turquoise feathers, each at least three feet long; its segmented underbelly was gold in color, and its tail was tipped with an obsidian rattle that resembled two trapezoidal blades tipped with a triangular one, forming a serrated spear-like weapon that made an ominous scaled-up version of that classic rattlesnake tail sound as it vibrated. Five obsidian blades stuck out of the dorsal surface of its front section, and its eyes glowed like burning coals, unblinking and set in sockets framed by bony brows that gave it a permanent glare. A glare which was now directed straight at the two of us.
“Are you indeed who I think you are?!” I cried.
“I am indeed Xiuhcoatl,” the serpent said in that booming, hissing voice like a raging flame. “Mortals such as you know me as the Turquoise Fire Serpent, and the Spear of Huitzilopochtli. In the act of merely entering the temple of my master, you have disturbed my slumber for the first time in six centuries. You two,” he indicated us both, “had better explain yourselves, and fast.”
As he spoke that last word, his fangs flipped forward, and with his head angled downwards he blasted twin jets of fire from the tips of said fangs that scorched the air. I realized that it was his combustible venom that he was shooting forth, which was how he’d burned my bottom earlier; the flaming venom splashed onto the steps of the temple, lighting up the whole chamber with its own rightbright orange glow as it flowed down the stones like water.
“Oh great and mighty Xiuhcoatl,” said Tlacotl, “We heard that an evil white man was on his way here to steal your master’s headdress. We had to secure it before he reached it, but we didn’t know that one was a fake,” she added, pointing at the one sitting on my backpack.
“A decoy,” corrected the feathered serpent. “Thieves and looters would have found only the replica in this chamber, while the real one will remain safely hidden. But why, pray tell, would you want to take the headdress? Do you understand what power you would unleash if you employed it for your own ends?”
“We’re not gonna use it, you overgEEEEEYOOOWWWWW!” I’d started to shout back at the beast against my better judgement, only for Tlacotl to spear me in the freshly chewed backside, which shut me up in a fraction of a second.
“Thank you, young one,” replied Xiuhcoatl. “I jest not when I say that all who come to obtain the Hummingbird Headdress only use it for their own gain. Is there any reason for me to not assume that you have a similar agenda?”
I was about to furiously deny that when I felt something tug against the back of my underwear. I thought it was Tlacotl preparing to chastise me again until I heard the sound of a cable scraping against something above me. Too late I realized what was happening before — YOINK!
“YEEEEAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!”
The grappling hook extracted the back of my underpants from my damaged trousers, the cotton sinking between my throbbing, swollen butt cheeks and digging into the intimate flesh beneath, not to mention cruelly squeezing my genitals against my pelvis. The force of the wedgie was such that I was actually hoisted screaming from the ground and up towards one of the serpent-head statues above me, the steel cable hooked around one of its teeth. My undies were stretched to a good five feet by the time the hook stopped to rest against the stony fang, leaving me dangling some forty-five feet above the ground, my limbs flailing as I continued screaming in pain and fear.
“MAX!” Tlacotl cried in horror.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Xiuhcoatl hissed, coiling as though about to strike.
Then we heard it. Suave, silky laughter that clearly sounded British. Then a young man of clearly Caucasian ethnicity strode into the room, around the same age as me, but with a build and tailored suit like an English supermodel (or super spy?) and straw-blonde hair that came down to his shoulders. His eyes were sea-green in color, and his boyish face was impeccably clean-shaven even though he was clearly a head taller than me and muscular despite his statuesque figure. And in his hands was—
“The real Hummingbird Headdress!” screeched the Turquoise Serpent, horror dawning upon all three of us upon seeing the artifact he was holding, completely identical to the one I’d snatched earlier. “This cannot be!”
“Who are you?!” cried Tlacotl.
“Who am I, you ask?” The British man chuckled in such a charming voice that I wanted to cut myself free and kick him in the head on the way down. “The name’s Nile. Agent Daniel Nile. And I believe this belongs to you?” he asked, holding up the headdress. “Or at least it did, until now.”
The serpent hissed in outrage, but he couldn’t torch Nile without risking the helmet, and the agent knew it.
“Agent Nile,” I called from my uncomfortable position, my voice an octave higher than normal. “I’ve heard of you! Dr. Henderson told me you were kicked out of Her Majesty’s Secret Service for selling government gear to the black market, right?”
He looked up at me, barely stifling a grin, and then burst out laughing. “So you do know my old colleague,” he retorted. “I hear she’s had to scrape a living as a teacher. Do you know how hard it must be to earn your keep in the education industry?”
“Not gonna lie, it ain’t the best position,” I replied, feeling my undies beginning to rip ever so slightly. “But it’s better than taking up a life of crime out of contempt for society!”
“Says you. And unlike you, at least I had the sense to bypass all the hazards you ran afoul of unscathed.”
For a few moments, all that could be heard was the rustling of the jungle vegetation in the breeze outside.
“Waaaaaait, wait wait wait wait waitwaitwaitwaitWAIT.” I couldn’t comprehend what was happening right now, and believe me, this is coming from someone who got a Ph.D. at twenty-two. “So. Um. I opened the temple door for the first time in six centuries, got rump-roasted by a giant fire-breathing rattlesnake who was asleep until I entered this room, found out that the Hummingbird Headdress here was a replica and that the real one was elsewhere in the temple… and you somehow got in here before me and managed to retrieve it unscathed?”
Dr. Nile nodded, though I got the sense he wasn’t quite following.
“Which means you somehow managed to break into the temple, without the knowledge of myself or anyone else in this room, and steal the real Headdress right out from under Danger Noodle’s big scaly schnozz without awakening him, even though even setting foot inside the temple complex does so by default?”
“Come to think of it, that… that actually shouldn’t even be possible,” said Xiuhcoatl. “Explanation, please?”
“Well, you got me,” said Dr. Nile, taking out a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolding it to show it to us. It was an elaborate map of the temple’s interior with two routes going through it: a green line of dots representing me and Tlacotl leading up to the central room with a big coiled snake, and a red one for him that started from the entrance and went down into a cave with a stylized jaguar at the bottom of the map. “By all accounts, it makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Suuuuure, argue about cartoon logic like that’ll solve all this,” Tlacotl replied fiercely. “What’s important is that the Hummingbird Headdress is not yours to keep, Agent Nile. If you don it and take control of Xiuhcoatl, you’ll unleash doom upon us all! So for the sake of this already broken world, do not put it on!”
“She isn’t wrong,” the serpent added. “I was used as a weapon once, and I’d rather not repeat it again.”
“Too late, you little dismissive diminutives! Now BURN!” Before anyone could react, Nile had slid the helmet on top of his stupidly handsome, perfectly punchable head.
“NO!” the rest of us all cried simultaneously.
Too late. A breeze began to blow around Agent Nile even though there was no wind in the chamber, and Xiuhcoatl twitched in place. Then he bowed his head towards the agent and bared his fangs.
Dan Nile (ohhhh, denial. I should’ve known!) turned towards Tlacotl and smiled with all the sweetness of a bowl of poisoned Cinnamon Toast Crunch. “Kill,” he ordered.
The serpent slithered down from the mini-pyramid without a second thought, and lunged at her. She made for the exit, but a panel of solid rock suddenly slammed down and sealed us in. She banged on the blockade in a futile bid to escape, a grave mistake with a fire-breathing feathered serpent rearing up right behind her.
FWOOOOOSH!
“NEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAA!” She howled in terror and pain, fiery venom coating her bottom. “I’M ON FIRE! HELP MEEEEEE!” She made the same mistake that I did and dove for the piranha pit to douse herself, though needless to say, I couldn’t find it in myself to laugh at her for it, and I probably shouldn’t given the state of things.
“EEEEEEK! Go stick your face somewhere elsEEEEEEEOOOOOOUUUUUCH!!!”
Even as she leapt from the moat with one piranha biting down on each butt cheek, Xiuhcoatl had slithered around to block her, his feathered body forming a wall between her and the doorway. Caught between the monster serpent or the starving fish shoal, she was trapped. Even so, she still held onto her spear, trying to knock the piranhas off of her. Nile, stepping forward with a revolver drawn from his belt, kept a safe distance from his new servant even while pointing the barrel at her head.
“You think this world is going to keep itself afloat on the current world order?” Xiuhcoatl would’ve sneered at her if he had the facial muscles; it seemed as though Nile was talking through him just to make himself look more threatening. “My master has been around longer than you think — he sought the legendary Fountain of Youth a century ago, drinking its mystic waters in the hopes that he could live long enough to see what this world would become, and if he could make a difference. But look around us now! Cruel and selfish world leaders are making stupid choices for their countries, threatening to wage war and bring our economies crumbling. They don’t care about the common man! All they care about is fattening up their own bank vaults and inflating their egos while the things they should pay mind to are left to wither and die!”
“EEP! What’s that got — AH AH AHHH! OOOH! Where are you going with this?!” Tlacotl was still trying to pry the piranhas off of her.
“Where do you think?” Nile gave a haughty laugh. “With the power of the Turquoise Serpent, the Aztec god of war, my immortality, and the world's finest hot cocoa by my side, I will take those fat bastards upstairs down a notch. I will give the people a hero, someone to admire. I will pave the way for a new order, where all will benefit. Where all will survive!”
Unbeknownst to us all, my already damaged underwear was beginning to fray even more, and I was threatening to take a nasty fall. There wasn’t anything to cushion me, either, and Nile had moved out from directly under me as well.
“So, what will it be?” the agent asked, twirling his gun. “Fire, bullets, or piranhas? It’s up to you! For all intents and purposes, I’ve already won.”
SHRRRIP!
Suddenly, my underpants gave way, and I fell screaming towards the hard, uncaring ground. An instant later, however, Nile looked up and waved his arm, Xiuhcoatl swinging his head round and opening his jaws wide. With a cry of terror I fell directly into his gaping mouth!
Tlacotl screamed at the top of her lungs. With a cry of fury, she finally tore the piranhas away from her and tossed them back into the moat, before whipping her spear out and charging at the serpent at top speed!
Of course the spear met iron-hard scales and pinged off of the monster’s surface, but before he could rear back to strike again, I managed to squirm back up his throat and force his jaws apart with my arms, struggling to escape!
“HEEEEELLLLLLP!” I shrieked, struggling not to be devoured for the second time since I’d set off into the jungle. “I’M TOO YOUNG TO BE SNAKE FOOD! HEEEEEEEELLLLLLLPPPP!!”
The serpent’s forked tongue squirmed uncomfortably against my chin, and I kicked out reflexively, my boots struggling to find purchase against his slippery throat. Then he whipped round and spat me out with tremendous force, sending me plowing head-first into Nile by accident!
“I’ll have you know right now that I’m not a fan of Japanese cuisine,” growled Xiuhcoatl. “You taste like bad sushi…”
No doubt wondering why Xiuhcoatl no longer sounded like he was under his control, Nile raised his head groggily, then felt his hair, yelping upon realizing that something was missing. The helmet had fallen off of him when I’d slammed into him at a hundred miles an hour!
We turned and saw it a good thirty feet away, having slid across the floor and nearly fallen into the piranha pool. We both dove after it, but I beat him to it after accidentally stepping on his fingers (“OWCH!” he yelled), causing him to shriek in pain and fail to get to his feet in time.
Standing up and blowing on his hand, he glanced at me to see the Hummingbird Headdress in my hands.
“W-what?!” he cried. “How could this be?!”
“There’s an unspoken rule when it comes to adventure movies, Dan. Never, ever assume you’ve won.” I smiled and raised the headdress over my head.
“NO!” Daniel screamed, but it was too late. The headdress plopped onto my head as soon as I released it, and now I could feel a sudden breeze flowing around me, brushing against my hair, my clothes, the hole in the seat of my pants… I felt powerful.
This wasn’t for my own gain. I had to do it to stop Nile. I had to make sure that the power of this artifact could never fall into his hands. And most of all… I had to get him back for that fucking wedgie.
I looked up at Xiuhcoatl, then back at Dr. Nile. One thought went through my head at that moment, one that would have made the great serpent grin like a fox in a henhouse — or me at that precise moment for that matter — if his static reptilian expression hadn’t looked that way already.
“Sic ‘em, Fire Serpent!”
The turquoise-feathered reptile reared up to his greatest extent, his underbelly aglow with heat, that unblinking gaze this time aimed at the evil British spy. “With pleasure,” he purred, flicking his tongue in anticipation. “And just in time for dinner, a nicely toasted English muffin!”
“NO! N-nononono NOOOOO!” Daniel yelled, backing away frantically. Then he made his second mistake that day: he turned and ran.
BWOOOOSH!
“YEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!”
The seat of his trousers had burned away and now his underpants were on fire, black scorch marks blooming across his buttocks. With the great snake in hot pursuit, he fled in shame and agony, screaming all the while, and yelping periodically at a higher pitch than normal each time the serpent’s projectile gobs of flaming venom blasted his rear.
“Have a nice life, doc,” I called after him, “‘cuz I have a feeling you’ll be around to hate it for a good, long while!”
He didn’t hear my last quip, instead running pell-mell through the temple and triggering every single trap he could reach in a bid to stop Xiuhcoatl, only managing to hurt himself even more in the process. He even sent a giant boulder rolling down the passageway towards him, which stopped the serpent from chasing him but forced him to keep running.
Nile didn’t stick around to gloat, instead racing towards the entrance and putting enough distance between himself and the Turquoise Serpent to make his escape. Within seconds he found himself back at the entrance and, with a final frustrated yell, pulled what he thought was the lever atop the Two-Horned God sculpture that would seal everybody else in.
The trapdoor gave way under him, sending him screaming down into the darkness, before slamming again and making his world go pitch-black. The impact with the soft ground snuffed out the fire, leaving him in total darkness.
At least, until a pair of reflective green eyes opened behind him, the loud, low growl sending a shiver up his spine.
“…A-aren’t you that jaguar I hit with a stick?…”
ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR! “AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!” RIP! CHOMP! “OW!” SNARL! SLASH! “AAAGH!” SNAP! “EEEEYAAAAAHHH!” GRAAAAWRRR! RIP RIP RIP! CRUNCH! “YEEEOWWWWCH!!” POW! ZING! “WHY DO THEY EVEN HAVE THAT LEVEEEEEERRRRRR?!”
**********
After consoling Tlacotl (and applying the wound cream to her injured bottom for once), I looked up to see Xiuhcoatl slithering back into the main temple chamber. I couldn’t read his expression (snakes can’t emote after all) but I could tell he was far more relaxed than when we’d first met him. Partly because I’d set the helmet in front of him the instant he’d reappeared.
“Thank you,” he said. “I had thought that all who sought my master’s headdress would use it purely to destroy those they wanted gone. I was worried you’d go down the same path, but you’ve made a wise decision.”
“So, what does this mean for the temple?” asked Tlacotl.
“It will stay as it is. But you can keep the fake headdress. I’d rather not have it attract anyone else now that this has happened. But the real one stays here with me, far below the surface world where none shall find it.”
“Can I at least take photos of the temple with my smartphone?” I asked, thankful that I’d sealed it in a watertight bag after my dip in the river yesterday. “The conservatory at Monumentropolis would definitely want to build an exhibit imitating it.”
“Only after I’ve taken my leave with the Headdress. The world must not know of it or its guardian. But otherwise, sure, why not?”
Tlacotl bowed in gratitude. After a quick nudge to my shin, she got me to do the same.
Xiuhcoatl nodded once, then gently he picked up the helmet with his forked tongue and placed it on his head, before turning to leave. Then he stopped. “Dr. Gluteus?”
“H-how did you know—” I stammered, but I failed to finish, for he’d turned his head to face us again, his fiery eyes boring straight into my soul.
“I apologize for my conduct at the hands of Agent Nile. It was unbecoming, and undeserved. I will say though that while I don’t approve of what you did to have that curse cast upon you in the first place, I’m proud of you for acting without selfish intent on this day. Although maybe avenging your wedgie might count as such,” he added with a hissing chuckle.
I looked down at my feet, feeling a little guilty.
“Do not assume you aren’t worthy of making a difference just because you’ve failed yourself before, however. In my time I witnessed people change dramatically over the course of mere years, and I can safely say that the natures of people aren’t stable. You still have an eternity ahead of you to come to terms with who you are and what you can do for others. And speaking on behalf of Huitzilopochtli himself, I wish you the best of luck in doing so.”
My head was still bowed in deference, but I couldn’t hide my grin.
From his tone, I could tell he was smiling inside. “And one last thing. It may be prudent in the future to not be so quick to judge the curse itself, once you take the time to understand it. Who knows? Perhaps one day, you'll find it may not be quite as detrimental to you as you might think.”
All I had for that was a little “Huh?” But before I could ask any further, he’d slithered back through the opening in the wall behind the step pyramid, and disappeared into the dark.
**********
The celebration that followed our return to the tribe was spectacular. The village and several others which had no doubt been raided by Nile had banded together to send me off with a gesture of thanks for sending him packing. All I asked for was a year’s worth of the wound ointment and a new pair of pants for the return trip, but they certainly delivered. I still can’t figure out how they got the denim to make ten pairs in a day, but they managed all the same. Evidently the story of my curse was a popular albeit humiliating one.
I sadly had to say goodbye to Tlacotl as I headed back to civilization, but she promised we’d keep in touch. She even kissed me on the cheek before I left, which was done very good thing about that day. It almost made up for someone leaving a thumbtack on the seat of my bus chair.
Aside from my butt getting poked and slapped a few more times, the trip home was rather uneventful. I was however happy to bring back not only the photos needed to map out the Lost Temple of Huitzilopochtli, but the replica Hummingbird Headdress as well.
Several weeks later, I stopped by Dr. Henderson’s office to let her know that my job was done. I wanted to take her to see the new exhibit at the Monumentropolis Conservatory, but before I could enter I heard screaming from behind the door.
“Is everything okay in there?!” I cried.
“YEEEEOOOUUCH!” My supervisor’s voice was unusually high. “GIVE US A MINUTE PLEASE! EEEK! GET IT OFF!!”
“Do you think I’m not trying?!” A familiar voice met my ears. “I’m so sorry, I should not have put it in the chair!”
A short while later I was allowed in the office by none other than Tlacotl! My supervisor was looking out of the office window, and I noticed that she had a large hole in the back of her dress, as well as a potted flesh-eating orchid on her desk, chewing on a scrap of fabric that matched said dress perfectly.
“Ah, Dr. Gluteus! I have expected you. I take it you know Ms. Tonantzin here?” She waved at the girl.
“We’ve met, yeah. What about it?” I asked, wondering what Tlacotl was doing here.
“We were wondering if you are interested in two roles which are closely related.” Dr. Henderson turned to face me. “I want to offer you a teaching position here at the university. Knowing you and your talent, it seems like the most ideal career path.”
I blinked in surprise. “But that — wouldn’t it require doing research and stuff?”
“With emphasis on the ‘and stuff’,” replied Dr. Henderson. “Which leads me to my second proposal. I would like for you to become an adventurer on a permanent basis, to keep so many important things from falling in the wrong hands. I was told you handled Nile extremely well.”
“I wouldn’t say extremely, but yeah,” I replied with an embarrassed laugh.
“This world is a lot more mystical than you once thought, in case you couldn’t tell already. I chose to keep you in the dark until now because I wasn’t sure yet if you were fit for the task. But you have dedication, and I can certainly appreciate that.”
“Sooooooo, that counts as research, right?” I asked to both of them.
“I suppose,” she replied with a smile. “The Conservatory owes you a favor, and it would be fitting to let you two visit.”
“Wait, us?” I looked at Tlacotl, shocked at where this was going.
“I suppose I should tell you,” she replied. “I transferred here last week. The university and my tribe thought it fitting, so I hope you don’t mind me taking a class or two from you in the future!”
My heart soared. “Sure to basically everything,” I said, beaming.
“Then it’s settled. Welcome to the team, Dr. Gluteus!” Christine smiled cheerfully. “Now run along, you two. I have a carnivorous plant to scold…”
We outed after thanking her, and immediately made our way to the Monumentropolis Conservatory on the other side of the campus. Sure enough, there was a big banner labeled “The Lost Temple of Huitzilopochtli” over the entrance.
“Well?” I asked. “What are we waiting for? We have an exhibit to admire!”
“And not just an exhibit, mind,” she added. I blinked, still not used to her attraction to me, but then I mentally shrugged and thought, Sure, why not?
Indeed, the replica was of the massive central chamber, though of course smaller, with several exhibits inside. These included some of the traps, a grove of familiar red flowers, and even a scaled-down moat with four live red-bellied piranhas swimming about in it. And of course, the (fake) Hummingbird Headdress sat at the top of the miniature step pyramid, illuminated and in all its glory.
“It’s… It’s beautiful,” I nearly sobbed.
“Just like what we saw a few weeks back,” added Tlacotl. “Though without the big what’s-its-name.”
I had to laugh at that one. “So… shall we spend a little time here, or maybe elsewhere?”
“Here is fine,” she replied, our budding relationship seeming to flare with the reminders of our adventure together right there in front of us. “Come here, you sweet stupid person!”
Next moment, she’d pulled me into a kiss on the lips. I was taken by complete surprise, until I remembered: This beautiful, brave girl had saved me multiple times over. She certainly deserved a reward for it all, and if she wanted it to be an evening full of snogging, well, I might as well oblige.
Except that as I pulled her in to kiss her again, our movements took my bottom a little too close to the flesh-eating orchids…
You can probably guess what happened next.
SNAP SNAP SNAP!
“EEEEEYYYOOOOUUUUCH!!!”
With a scream of pain I suddenly disengaged from my friend with benefits, struggling to rip myself free of those beautiful but nasty flowers. It took a bit of tugging from (who else?) one Tlacotl Tonantzin to yank me loose, the seat of my pants coming off. I stumbled across the exhibit in a blind panic, until I heard the telltale click! I looked down to see that I had stepped on the red tile in the trap demo…
“Oh shit,” was all I could say.
WHOOOOOOSH!
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! HOT HOT HOTTTT!!!” I screamed like a little girl, trailing flames from my underwear, and ran for the nearest body of water I could find.
SPLOOOSHSSSSSSSS!
“Ahhhhh…”
Tlacotl, of course, was facepalming, though I would swear I heard her giggling. “We… We’ll find a way to make this work, alright?”
To that I could only nod.
Then she gasped. “Ohmigosh! Max, GET OUT OF THERE!”
I was still reveling in the soothing cool of the water. “Tlacotl, it’s fine. It’s not like this is the actual temple—”
“No no, Max, you’re sitting in the piranha pool!”
With a startled gasp, I looked down to see the water boiling around my submerged and now bare bottom cheeks. Apparently, Inky, Blinky, Clyde and Sue were about to get very acquainted with my cursed derriere.
I only had a moment to let out a sigh of resignation and mutter, “Here we go again…”
CHOMP! SNAP! CHOMP! SNAP!
“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!”
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