part0026

The mark on Lisa’s belly was hot to the touch, the pain immense. Branded like cattle and left to writhe in agony by the fire, Lisa had crawled her way backwards and leaned against the nightmarish wooden idol that bore her friends’ severed limbs.

Now the men proceeded towards her, carrying a white robe, or at least an old bit of tarpaulin with a hole cut in it.

They were going to crown her their queen.

She remembered a film Darren had shown her once, White Cannibal Queen or something. A guy had lost his daughter in the jungle and when he went back years later to find her she had become the high priestess of the tribe, a gorgeous blonde that ruled over the land. They had gotten real high and laughed all the way through it, and now here it was, a stark reality. Life truly is stranger than fiction.

Two of the men hoisted her into a standing position. Her panties were roughly tugged down over her hips and one of the men struggled with her bra.

‘Fucking men,’ she sighed, reaching behind and undoing the clasp. She dropped her shoulders and the garment fell to the ground. She stepped out of her undies and waited, naked, while the men with the tarpaulin advanced.

The drugs were taking effect. This was the good stuff, the kind they had all taken last night, the same pills she had sold that weaselly little bastard Ricky.

Was that really all it was? Had it not even been twenty-four hours since they had been dancing and drinking on Koh Phangan beach? Today would have been a day of rest, and they had a waterfall trek booked for tomorrow.

Guess they would miss that.

I wonder if we can get a refund , thought Lisa. She laughed too hard and too long.

She thought of her suitcase lying in the hostel. Her clothes, her makeup, her bag of weed. Holiday essentials.

It would all go to waste.

They placed the tarpaulin over Lisa’s head. It sat like a poncho as one of the men tied a string around her waist.

Lisa smiled. Had she gone mad, or were the drugs even better than she remembered, or was this whole thing just comically ridiculous? She figured it was a combination of all three.

‘I will be your queen,’ she announced. ‘Your white cannibal queen. I shall rule over you with poise and dignity.’

The men ignored her.

She raised her arms and spread them wide, tilting her head back.

‘I will be your queen!’ she shouted. The men turned her around, two of them flanking her, the others lining up behind. They took her by the arms and walked her away from the village. Lisa felt like a macabre Pied Piper. ‘Bring me my flute,’ she demanded, ‘And I will play you a tune. We shall dance until the sun comes up.’

They left the fire behind, walking slowly past the worn, ruined buildings towards the edge of the clearing. Black clouds gathered in the sky; an ominous portent, or just weather doing what weather does? The terrain hardened as they climbed a gentle slope, the mud giving way to cracked black earth. The trees, too, seemed to become more and more wizened, the utter absence of leaves allowing them to hunch forwards in all their petrified glory.

The well-trodden path led towards two trees in particular, ones that towered over the rest. They were unlike anything Lisa had ever seen, except perhaps on one of her occasional LSD trips. An enormous spider web hung between them like a lace curtain, obscuring what lay beyond. Someone prodded Lisa in the back with a knife, urging her onwards.

Queen Lisa of the Cannibals, knowing no such thing as fear, walked forwards into the web. It snapped and fell, draping over her, a bridal veil for the damned.

‘Take me to my throne,’ said Lisa, dizziness and nausea jostling for pole position in her mind. ‘Your queen must rest now.’

She raked the webs off her face to better see, but the path was free of obstacles.

Small stones had been carefully laid out along either side of the pathway. The surrounding jungle looked impenetrable, a wall of twisted white limbs and roots that plunged several feet out of the ground, twisting and coiling around each other, their decaying forms spiralling outwards with grasping hands that clutched at thin air. They moved as she watched, the trees themselves seeming to breathe as she passed, their trunks gently pulsing.

Then the smell hit Lisa. The stench of rotting, putrefying meat.

It was enough to briefly shatter her illusion, but not quite enough to snap her back to reality. To her left was a pit, but she couldn’t tell how deep it was - there were too many corpses in it for an accurate guess. Behind her the men carried the charred remains of Bret and Darren, their crispy bodies rudely bundled into the pit atop the others.

‘Hi guys,’ said Lisa dreamily. ‘I’m the queen now.’ She smiled and Bret’s horrified face gazed back at her, one side melted away to the bone, the black craters of his eye sockets giving him a skull-like aspect. Darren’s head had avoided the worst of the flames, but still hung like a loose sack. His glassy doll’s eyes never moved, yet he managed to wink at her in his inimitable way. She smiled back. It was just like old times.

‘Thanks, Daz. Guess I’ll see ya on the other side.’

Stygian clouds rolled across the sky, obscuring the moon and plunging the barren landscape into darkness. A lone light flickered in the distance, a sight to warm the heart of the weary traveller.

Lisa said goodbye to her friends and carried on the infernal procession. The wind picked up and billowed her tarpaulin gown around her waist, her silken veil sticking to her hair and face. The light grew stronger as they neared a sheer rock face that led up hundreds of feet towards the abandoned buildings that crowned the island. Ageing, decrepit vehicles and construction materials littered the ground; shovels, pick-axes, even a pneumatic drill. The diggers were dilapidated and rusted and covered in bird shit, the flat tyres sunk deep into the mud.

The firelight fluttered within a deep gash in the rock. A cave, man-made if the great heaps of rubble were anything to go by.

‘My castle awaits,’ sighed Lisa as the men led her into the mountain, the entrance greedily swallowing her up. Nearby, thunder pealed and lightning tore the sky asunder as Lisa stood in the man-made tunnel and looked at her feet. The cave floor was fifteen feet down a steep incline. She checked for a ladder or a rope, but she needn’t have bothered. Two firm hands on the small of her back shoved her, and she stepped forwards, trying to maintain her balance, but to no avail. Her feet skidded out from under her and she fell on her ass and slid down into the belly of the cave.