Then, when Clare didn’t respond, Jack tried to wrestle her into the fursuit.
Overpowered, Clare called out, “Help! Mrs. Holland? Help! Help!”
The door upstairs opened. Jack covered Clare’s face with a pillow so she couldn’t talk. A woman’s voice called down, “Is everything all right down there?”
Jack called back, “Yes mom, we’re just larping.”
Clare got her head out from beneath the pillow and called back up the stairs, “No Mrs. Holland. We are not larping. Jack is trying to rape me!”
Jack said, “No. We are just pretending that I am trying to rape her. It’s a game. She’s just playing.”
Clare yelled, “No. It is not a game. I am really being raped.”
Jack got the pillow back over Clare’s face so she couldn’t talk and then called up the stairs, “She’s just acting mom. Isn’t she convincing? Clare wants to be a movie star, you know.”
From upstairs Mrs. Holland chuckled and said, “Oh you kids and your role playing. All right dear, I’ll leave you two alone so you can do your cosplay.”
The door upstairs shut. Jack removed the pillow from the squirming Clare’s face. She gasped for air. Jack said, “Clare, you’re doing it wrong. You aren’t supposed to fight with me. Yiffing is supposed to be playful.”
Clare said, “Fuck you.”
Jack said, “Shame on you Clare, for using such a vulgar word.”
Again Clare said, “Fuck you.”
Jack said, with exasperation in his voice, “Clare, you still don’t get it. Unlike human sex, there is nothing shameful about yiffing. There are no obligations attached to yiffing either, so you can just yiff with me and it won’t mean anything. It’s just supposed to be fun. Let me show you.”
Jack unpinned Clare’s shoulders and hopped around her playfully, panting, with his tongue wagging from his mouth. He barked, “Yiff! Yiff! Yiff!”
Her arms free now, Clare grabbed a lamp off the floor and smacked Jack across the head with it. The lamp shattered over Jack’s head and he fell to the floor, knocked out. She grabbed her clothes and ran up the stairs, and through the basement door, and didn’t stop to dress until she felt the chill of the wintery air on her flesh.
When Clare finished her story, Dr. Stern stood there in silence, shocked by everything he had just heard and unable to formulate a correct response. Finally he managed to stammer, “Then what did you do?”
“I went back to LA where people are normal.”
“Why did your father bring Jack?”
“Oh, he doesn’t know. You don’t tell an old guy about a sexual orientation that didn’t exist when he was a kid. It reminds him that he isn’t young anymore.”
“I’m getting on there in years myself.”
“Oh, but you’re different. I don’t think of you as an adult.”
Taking this as a compliment, Dr. Stern blushed and grinned broadly and stupidly.
Meanwhile, in anther part of the jungle, Jack and Lewis made their way in silence.
Then, Jack’s face suddenly lit up in a big grin and he began to skip around Lewis, who scowled deeply.
Jack said, in a mocking sing-song voice, “Hey Lewis, wasn’t it funny how I blackmailed you to come on this trip?”
Lewis whispered, “Shush.”
“Because, you know, you really are nothing but a fraud.”
“Shush.”
“And the sad thing is that your daughter really believes in you.”
“Shush.”
Annoyed to wit’s end, Lewis quickened his pace. Jack followed and the two all of a sudden stepped into a clearing where a mere ten feet in front of them were dozens of bipeds, all of them three to four feet in height, and covered with orange fur. Lewis’s eyes widened and his heart missed a beat, but Jack continued skipping around him as before and said, “But the really, really sad thing is that you have fooled yourself as well.”
Lewis whispered, “Jack, seriously, shut up," and continued to stare in awe at the creatures. Lewis was in shock from the sight of these tiny man-like animals that shouldn’t exist. As his head cleared he was able to make out more and more details. They were all male. Some of them had black spots, while others had black stripes, and some were all orange except for black hair on their heads. They jumped around playfully, and there was a pile of them play-wrestling with each other. Lewis’s first impression was that they gave off an overwhelming aura of immaturity. Lewis, full of pride, whispered to himself, “I have made an important discovery. I have discovered something new.”
Jack, experiencing none of Lewis’s awe, took a few steps forward towards the creatures. Lewis whispered hoarsely, “Jack. Jack, stop.”
Jack continued to inch closer towards the bipeds, his eyes fixed on them. The creatures continued to carry on with their play, unaware of Jack or Lewis, who resorted to begging. “Jack, please, we don’t know a thing about them. Don’t.”
Jack ignored Lewis and continued forward. Lewis leapt after him, and Jack broke into a run and dove right into the middle of the pile of play-wresting bipeds, which all brought Jack into their play, tackling him and wrestling with him. Lewis looked on in horror as Jack rolled around with the creatures, laughing with joy and ecstasy. Lewis whispered, “Jack, get over here. Please.”
Jack, rolling around beneath a pile of furry hominids, laughed and said, “But they like it!”
Little hands playfully picked at Jack’s clothes, lifted up his shirt, and tickled him. Jack laughed ecstatically. Lewis, not wanting to miss what could be his only opportunity to capture a cryptid, lifted his tranquilizer dart gun in his large hands and shot one.
Chapter 15
Martin entered the small cavern where the three women who, like him, wore nothing but pith helmets and boots, were kept at the bottom of a deep pit. He told the other ebu gogo to leave, and they followed his order. Martin had expected the nude women at the bottom of the pit to jeer at him and call him names as they had the last time he visited them, but instead they all smiled at him and said together in a long drawn out drawl, “Hi Martin.”
Martin was taken aback at the friendliness of the naked girls at the bottom of the pit. He didn’t know what to say, so he stammered a bit and then said, “Um, hi?”
The redhead Amber did a big fake yawn where she stretched her arms out as far as they would go, sticking out her large, firm breasts. She said, “Oh Martin, we have been so bored down here, just three women, without a man to keep us company.”
The brunette Christa clasped her hands behind her back, sticking out her perky, tear drop shaped breasts and said, “Yeah Martin. Won’t you let us up from here so we can keep you company?”
Martin said, “No. I can’t let you up.”
The blonde, more mature Linda dug the toe of her boot into the ground and said demurely, “Oh Martin, why not? We so want to be with you.”
“Because the ebu gogo won’t let me.”
Christa said, “The ebu gogo? Those animals? I don’t know why you like them so much, especially when there are real, human women right here, who you could be with, if you wanted to.”
Martin said, “But you girls hate me.”
Linda said, “Oh Martin, don’t you understand anything about female psychology? We don’t hate you. We were acting the way we did because we were jealous of the way you were giving that ebu gogo Lua all of your attention. But then we realized the folly of our ways. We really do like you Martin. We really do want to be with you.”
Martin should not have believed the confessions of desire from the three naked women in the pit. But he was reeling from the loss of Lua just moments earlier, and couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been abandoned by her, and that she not telling him that their offspring would kill her was an act of betrayal.