by Brian King
It was a large pond. Probably the size of a couple of football fields put next to each other. And most importantly it looked blue, clear, undisturbed, and safe.
The water looked heavenly. Nearest to me were some reeds and big lily pads, but the rest of the lake was pretty open and clear. Animals had long ago crushed and destroyed all vegetation on the outer rim of the lake. A sign this was a well-used watering hole.
I got to my feet and experienced a head rush.
“Think. Before you drink.” Beatrice’s voice was calm but distant.
“Screw you, Beatrice. I’m drinking,” I replied as I took a hesitant step toward the water.
I looked over the cliff back into the dark jungle. The feeling of being watched was with me again, but being in the open air of the lake gave me a new sense of security. I’d at least see the threat coming because there were no trees along the shore.
I walked through some of the reeds near where the lake met the waterfall but was soon clear of any obstructions between me and open water. A fist-sized mosquito-looking creature buzzed past me and was then followed by something that looked like a dragonfly. The blood-sucker gave me one more idea for a potential cause of death: malaria.
I shut it out. My entire being was focused on the water.
I knew enough not to jump in. I probably wouldn’t have done that even back at home. I always had an aversion to deep water. Probably from playing too many video games or watching horror movies. There’s always something lurking below, even in suburban storm ponds.
I got on my knees, threw aside my hat and spear, and looked at the water gently lapping against the bank below me.
“Here goes nothing.”
I stuck my head all the way in. When I came back up, I wiped my face, savoring the relative coolness of the sun-warmed water. Then I got down to the serious business of drinking. I did think of cows and dinosaurs and what they could have done in this watering hole, but I didn’t care. I’d be dead by sunset if I didn’t get hydrated.
I sucked down the water as if I would never get a chance to drink again, but I pulled up seconds later because my stomach was about to pop.
I sat there for a long while savoring the best tasting water I’d ever had. I didn’t care if it was tepid and a bit murky near the shore where I drank. I pretended there were no germs, whatsoever, and that I’d be just fine.
Then my stomach started to feel a little nauseous, and I figured I had drank too much too quickly. I groaned with annoyance, but then I noticed the water shift in front of me. It started to rise up in one spot. It kind of looked like a log was in the water, or it looked like a bunch of rocks in the shape of a log.
It actually looked like the head of a massive crocodile.
“Fuck me!” I slide-scooted up the bank and slipped on the mud like I was in one of those awful slasher flicks.
I saw the teeth first. The gigantic snout was bristling with grimy white mountains of ivory. It wasn’t one knife coming at me, but hundreds of them in a row that just wouldn’t end. At the top of the snout were the malevolent eyes. Though they were underwater, I knew they were singularly focused on me.
I continued up the slope on my butt as the creature exploded from below the surface and threw itself at me on the shore. I didn’t even know how big it was because most of it remained in the water. The head was gigantic, and I could probably lie down comfortably in its maw. It had missed me on its first lunge and then it kind of waited at the water’s edge as if debating if I was worth more effort.
By some miracle, I managed to get a hand on my spear, though it felt like it had shrunk by half in the face of the record-breaking huge crocodile coming for me.
I continued scooting backward.
The croc called out, unlike anything I’d ever heard. It had a deep mechanical-sounding bellow, kind of like a souped-up hot rod engine left on idle. I felt it in my lungs, and I shook despite the heat. Its nostrils flared, and the top half of its jaw lifted a little when it roared.
It was like a hot rod driver was stomping on the gas, and every muscle in my body seized up with terror as the monster shot all the way out of the water and raced toward me.
He was about the size of Old Guss.
The best I could with my spear under extreme pressure was kind of toss it in the direction of the monster. My throw missed, and the giant dino-crocodile raced up the slippery bank without even noticing my counterattack.
I figured I was going to die. I recoiled and shielded my head in what was going to be a futile final act, but I caught motion from my right. Some kind of animal slammed into the side of the croc’s head and diverted it away from me.
I had a precious few seconds and took advantage by continuing to scramble back to the safety of the treeline a dozen feet behind me.
In that time the new attacker had repeatedly stabbed the thing’s left eye until it was a pulpy mess. My savior was a woman with a mane of long blonde hair, and she fell over as the lizard’s maw snapped at her.
The oversized crocodile emerged fully from the water, and I could see its impressive length. It would fit inside the back of a tractor trailer, but wouldn’t have much room to spare. The monster had a patchwork of brown, green, and yellow scales all over its back. As all thirty feet of the behemoth chased the woman into the reeds, I got to see how it kind of blended into them.
Though I was covered in mud and highly delirious from my lack of water, I ran to grab my weapon. I wanted to help the woman, but just as I got to my feet on the slippery shore, the angry croc roared and came back out of the reeds. The warrior woman screamed furiously while she rode the monster’s back, and she worked her spear like a butter churn into the head of the gigantic lizard.
I fully expected it to roll over to throw her off, but it simply wiggled itself my way and tried to escape into the open water.
Even in those five seconds, the woman, who looked as if she dressed like a cheetah, pumped that spear deeper and deeper into the brainpan. She let out a scream each time she slammed down with her javelin, and each of her strikes was rewarded with a spray of bright crimson blood.
A few feet before the monster reached the pond, it sank to the sand on the shore, and then slid a little down the mud bank with a melancholy groan.
Then it rested in silence with one scaled front foot in the water.
I could barely stand, despite the adrenaline rush, but managed to keep myself upright long enough to watch her yank the spear from her kill, swish it in the water, and then dismount onto the bank in front of me. She turned toward me, and I felt my heart threaten to slam through the ribs in my chest.
My savior wasn’t wearing much for clothes, just a small piece of colorless cloth tied around her hips. It looked as if the garment might have once been a bikini bottom, but it was torn and ripped in over a dozen places, and it was one tug away from disintegrating. She had the physique of one of those fitness models found on health magazine covers. She rocked a lean body with just the right amount of muscles, washboard abs, feminine arms, and breasts that looked almost fake since they were so perfectly proportioned. She had another thin piece of gray cloth tied around her chest, and her nipples pushed against the soft material with a distracting urgency.
She partly turned around to look at her kill, giving me another chance to gawk and try to classify her. She wasn’t human, but her frame was pretty much a duplicate of one.
My savior seemed to be some kind of cat-woman.
A super thin coat of blonde fur came out of her skin and poked through the holes of her two raggedy bits of clothing. The fur looked soft and luxurious, but she had thicker patches of dark fur on her shoulders and forearms. It was only blemished by the mud and grime she’d picked up from fighting the croc. As I looked at the spear she used, I noticed that her fingers ended in cat-like claws. Her hair was almost like a horse’s mane. It was a bit lighter hue of blonde than her fur, and it came down past her tight butt with a heavy wave.
I knew cats. The woman was as far
from a cheetah as I was from a tabby, but the fur and spots on her shoulders gave me that impression. I was absolutely sure she’d been following me, and I wondered if she intended to kill me now.
I could think of a lot worse ways to die.
I got one last look at her taut ass before she turned to study me. Her face was a heart shape and as beautiful as the rest of her body. Her facial features were almost human, except that her eyes were big, golden, and had an elliptical iris. She also had the light coat of fur on her face, but somehow it made her look even more attractive.
“You are welcome,” she said with a nod, but I was still a bit dumbfounded by how good looking she was, the giant crocodile that had almost eaten me, and how efficiently she’d killed the beast.
“You do not speak?” she asked, and her perfect lips frowned with disappointment. She breathed with a little exertion from her fight.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, I can speak. Thank you,” I said as I gestured to the now dead crocodile and tried to pretend that my legs weren’t trembling.
“We have a camp,” she said. Her frown had left when I spoke, but she wasn’t exactly smiling.
“A camp?” I asked like an idiot. Damn, she was all sorts of distracting. Her voice was husky and had a strange accent that sounded almost Australian, but yet not.
“Hmmm,” she kind of growled as she studied me. I may have been dehydrated, and she may have been an alien cat-woman, but it seemed that she was starting to think I was an idiot.
“Uhhh, I would like to go with you. To your camp. Yes.” My words probably weren’t helping her think I was intelligent, but my head was really starting to spin again. “Wait, you said ‘we’? Are there more of you?”
“Yes. I have two female companions. We are camped in a cave a mile and a half in that direction.” She pointed off to the side with a spear, but I found myself focusing on her abs and the lower area of her stomach right above her torn and almost non-existent bikini bottom. I could spend a solid week licking chocolate off those abs.
“Do they both look like you?” I forced my eyes up to meet her’s with a great deal of effort.
“No. They do not,” she said as her golden eyes narrowed a bit. “I followed you through the jungle. You are weak and lack basic survival skills, but we are stronger together than apart.”
“Uhhh. I guess I’ll come with you,” I said.
But then the world spun, and I felt the hot sand on my face.
Then I felt nothing but the cold embrace of darkness.
Chapter 4
I don’t remember what happened after I blacked out, but I came to when someone dropped me down next to a small crackling fire inside a cave.
“You are safe. Rest,” the sexy Australian accented cat-like woman spoke next to my ear.
“What have you brought us, Sheela?” another woman’s voice asked from elsewhere in the cave, and I heard a clicking sound move toward me. “A man? Ugh. Is that the best you could find today? I’d rather have some meat.” The new woman’s voice was beyond disappointed, and I tried to crack my heavy eyelids open so I could see her. The firelight hurt my eyes though, and I had to close them again.
“He is a man, yes, Trel,” said the woman who had saved me, and I now knew her name as Sheela.
The woman I figured was named Trel made more clicking sounds. “And you know men are useless? Each and every one I have met is a complete waste of space and oxygen. They are slaves to their penises.”
“No. That’s horrible. We can’t have slaves around our hearth.” A bubbly female voice interrupted the other two from another part of the cave.
Trel’s voice huffed. “I didn’t intend it literally. I mean that they are useless and must be told what to do all the time. They are worse than children and are only good for one--”
“Oh. I see. Well, this one’s in uniform. He can protect us,” the bubbly woman replied.
“Ha! If Sheela had to drag him--” Trel tried to say.
“Enough for now,” Sheela countered. “I followed him for a few hours. He is not skilled in survival, but this world is harsh, and we need all the help we can get.”
After more clicking noises and the complaining, one named Trel spoke again. “I’m telling you now, the best thing to do with this man is to kill and eat him.”
“Yuck. You are so gross,” the third voice replied.
“Eat me? Where am I?” I said though it was little more than a whisper.
“Did he speak?” the upbeat woman asked with surprise.
"Yeah, I spoke, why would you eat me?" I said with a stronger voice.
I was still tired from my journey, the restless night, and the sharp bursts of fear each time I thought I heard those feathered dinosaurs chirp, but the drink of lake water seemed to have brought me back from the edge of delirium. My tunnel vision was gone, and I could think straight again. I pushed myself off my stomach, rolled to my side, and made it into a half-kneeling crouch. The fire was inside a ring of big rocks, and a large clay pot sat next to a modest bloom of flames. The aroma reminded me of my mom pulling a big turkey out of the oven on Thanksgiving, and my empty stomach grumbled to remind me the food gauge was on empty.
My eyes adjusted to the low light of the cave and the jagged gray rock all around us. We were in a chamber about the size of my parents’ three-car garage. The smallish exit across the rough floor to my right and the fire to my left provided enough light to finally see my rescuer. I thanked god she wasn’t a figment of my water-deprived imagination.
“Trel is joking, it is nice to see you awake. I am called Sheela. Here, drink some water before you answer our questions.” The feline-woman nodded as she crouched, dipped a little clay cup into a pot, and then handed it to me. I downed it in several massive gulps and felt a bit disappointed it was only half full.
She was just as gorgeous as when I first encountered her. Like a fitness trainer and Amazon warrior rolled into one package while wearing a torn bikini.
My eyes peeked down the taut muscles and firm curves of her amazing body, but I didn’t want to start drooling, so I willed them up to her face so that I could study her alien perfection. Her blonde hair fell to the side of her head and playfully obscured her left cat-looking eye. She wore my hat on her head, and I forced myself to focus on it since my eyes kept trying to check out her body again. Damn, I’d seen plenty of beautiful women during my short life in Southern California, but Sheela was making my head spin.
Or maybe it was because of the dehydration?
“You are, um, wearing my hat,” I said.
I was quite attached to the wide-brimmed leather hat, but she did look damn good wearing it. Nope, it wasn’t the dehydration that was causing my head to spin. She looked amazing wearing anything.
Or nothing.
“It would not stay on your head as we walked back to camp, so I put it on my own for safekeeping,” she said unapologetically, but she didn't move to return it.
Every ounce of me wanted to say Sheela could wear it forever, but she soon realized that I wanted it back, so the furry-woman took it off her blonde head and handed it to me. Her hair left a scent on the leather, and I was able to smell it when I put the hat back on.
Sheela stood up, shook her long mane of blonde hair, and then ran her clawed fingers down its length. The movement probably wasn't meant to be sensual, but it reminded me way too much of the videos I had seen of models standing in the shower.
I stood and appreciated that Sheela was a bit taller than me, just like a true Amazonian warrior. I looked away and searched the shadows of the cave for the other women I had heard speak. “Do you three girls live here?”
“You think we’re girls? Ugh. You are such an idiot.” Trel’s angry voice echoed from just behind Sheela as if she’d been waiting for her important moment. She then stepped out from behind the feline woman, and any notion of the word “girl” vanished in the light of the fire.
Her face was heavenly, but there was also something more sinister in her
features. Her black eyes seemed to burn red as they sat under regal arched eyebrows, the sharp points of her ears probed from her lustrous black locks, and her red lips were dark and inviting at the same time.
Her neck was tall and thin like a runway model’s, caressed by black hair on both sides and a hefty choker necklace of polished black stones pressed against her marble-white skin. Large black hoop earrings hung from her ears, and I saw that the bands of dark stone were highlighted by thinly spun webs of glittering gold metal.
She wore a white silk dress with accents of metallic gold that might have come from the treasury of an Egyptian princess. It hung from thin strands over her shoulders and flowed down to her feet. In many places, the fabric clung to her skin as if it were painted on, and the sweat of her body soaked through until it was practically see-through. The neckline plunged way down below her cleavage and highlighted every detail of her pert breasts.
A narrow band of gold looped around her flat stomach, and the glittering accessory drew my attention to her Victoria Secret’s Angel model hip-to-waist ratio. Her airy dress hung off her body below her hips, but the silk fabric was sheer, and I was able to see her long legs flow down to perfect calves and little gold-encrusted sandals wrapped around high-arched feet.
The dark-haired woman laughed as she took a final step into the light. “I am a woman. I have hundreds of thousands of males on my planet begging for the chance to inseminate me. Don't you see this delightful body?” Trel asked as she ran her hands down the sides of her stomach, hips, and thighs. Her fingers were unusually long, thin, and black. They almost looked like they were just bones, but it had to be the light doing weird things. “You called us ‘girls.’ Perhaps we should address you as ‘boy.’ Would you prefer that?”
I stood about a head taller, so my line of sight went right to the beads of glistening sweat gathered in her cleavage. Her hands were now on her hips as if she were losing her patience with me. Something was definitely off about her fingers, but I was distracted by the rest of her body, and couldn’t really figure out where I should keep my eyes so that I didn’t offend the strikingly beautiful woman.
