Flesh: Prologue

The translator didn't bother repeating the question to Pachacamac. The two men had already angrily exchanged explanations. "Think of yourself as a llama...or as un gato, as a cat."

Summer raised an eyebrow.

"And you're being given to a new owner," Otoniel continued. "Your first owner, however, still maintains possession of your collar, your toys, and whatever else a cat may need."

"But these are my clothes."

"But how can a cat own its collar?"

"I'm not a fucking cat!" Summer screamed, running her hands through her long hair in frustration. Tears were starting to build up behind her eyes. "I'm not a fucking cat!"

"But you are," Otoniel said calmly, taking a step closer to her. He said something forcefully to Pachacamac as he took a hold of Summer's hand. "In this situation, you are. In his mind, you and your clothes are both property of Doctor Szalinski and the company that you work for. The deal that we agreed upon extends to nothing more than your body."

The translator paused for a second, working up the courage to deliver a suggestion that he knew she wouldn't like. "I will be with you the entire time. You will be safe. And Dr. Szalinski will be back soon enough."

"Is he giving me something else to wear? Is it back in the village?"

Otoniel shook his head again. "You are a cat."

Summer's whole body was shaking, not unlike Walter's had been before. The only difference was that the young doctor's shivers were caused by nerves, not venom.

She looked up the translator, this mestizo that she, Russ, and Walter had met only eight weeks ago. She had trusted her life with him before, at various checkpoints along the roads from La Paz to Valle de los Reyes. He knew this country better than anyone else she had met here, with a deeper understanding of both modern and native customs. But what he was asking her do was too much for her.

Summer looked to Pachacamac, who was waiting patiently. He didn't seem to be enjoying the cruelty of what he was doing, but he didn't seem particularly compassionate about Summer's strife. It was a deal, plain and simple - Russ and Walter got the truck to travel to Guayaramerin, and Pachacamac got a naked white girl to parade through his village. Summer cringed at the thought of being stared at by the villagers, all coming out of their huts and hovels to take a look at the denuded blonde.

But what choice did she have? Was she really going to refuse to get naked, and cost Otoniel his life?

"It's just getting naked, right?" Summer asked with hesitation.

"Pachacamac is not going to sleep with you, if that's what you're asking," the translator replied. She could tell that he wasn't happy about any of this, either. "Like I said, he used the word for ownership more closely associated with animals than with prostitutes or slaves."

"Well, let's just hope that our good chief here isn't interested in bestiality," Summer joked, trying to make light of the situation. She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to spend three days naked in Hanan Pacha. But Walter was in serious trouble, and her inhibitions about her body didn't seem to be any nearly as worrisome as the older scientist's snakebite. "And you're staying with me?"

"I promise not to leave your side," Otoniel answered.

Summer stared at Pachacamac again, her eyes showing off the animosity that she had for him. Pachacamac remained as stoic as he'd been.

Summer was wearing little more than a white polo shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. Pulling the shirt up over her head, the blonde revealed a utilitarian white bra. She had packed for a life of functionality, not a life of sexual encounters. Russ had caught her changing once, and Walter had walked in on her during one of her bucket showers back at the camp, but the first man was married and the second was close to three times her age. Now, though, it seemed like her bra was being examined in detail by the small crowd of men behind Pachacamac.

Trying her best to stay clinical and as unseductive as possible, she found the clasp to her shorts and undid it. She unzipped her fly, and, grabbing at both the waistband of the shorts and the elastic of her pink and white striped panties underneath, she slipped them down her legs.

"What am I doing?" Summer asked herself under her breath. She shook her head, unsure of exactly how she'd gotten into this mess, and cursed herself for acquiescing as quickly as she had. As Summer stepped out of the shorts, she revealed an untamed patch of pubic hair. Though Summer kept her legs clamped together, it was impossible to hide the fact that she was a natural blonde. Her bra was the last article of clothing to be shed, joining the rest of her clothes in a pile by Otoniel's feet.

"Happy?" she asked the chief.

While the other men around him at grown silent and were gawking at Summer's naked body, Pachacamac maintained the same neutral expression he'd been wearing since the end of his angry conversation with Otoniel. He simply nodded towards Summer's feet, indicating the boots and socks that she was still wearing.

"Wonderful," the biologist groaned. She was very careful about leaning down to untie her laces. If she squatted, the insides of her pussy were going to be on display for anyone there with her who cared to look. Instead, she bent over at the waist, consciously facing towards the men and leaving her exposed lower body away from the small group. Her breasts dangled down in front of her as she pulled at the boots, strangely free in a public place. She eventually kicked off the boots, and the socks along with them, and moved them closer to her clothes. Her panties and shirt were balled up and crammed as far as they could go into her left boot, eventually being placed back down in front of Otoniel.

Pachacamac smiled for the first time since they had arrived in the village, his teeth surprisingly white for a life of rural poverty. He reached behind his own neck, unfastened a necklace that he was wearing, and took a step towards Summer. The necklace itself was not much more than a series of eight sharp animal teeth attached to a piece of twine, but it obviously meant something to Pachacamac, because he took great care in trying to put it on the blonde girl.

"What is he doing?" Summer asked, annoyed at the intrusion into her personal space when she felt so vulnerable.

"That's his collar for you," Otoniel explained, continuing the cat metaphor. "That will let people know that you belong to him."

Summer was going to protest, but opted not to waste her breath. The chief, having placed the necklace on the young blonde girl, took a step back to marvel at the sight in front of him. Standing just a few inches shy of six feet, Summer was everything that Hollywood looked for - tall, blonde, and alluring. Though she had never been big into exercising back in the States, she was blessed with naturally flawless body. Her stomach was flat, her skin was unblemished, and her legs well toned from eight weeks of hiking around the valley. Her breasts were utterly perfect, not too large but not too small, and her nipples were situated so that they pointed upwards, and currently, outwards. Summer was a bit mystified as to why her nipples were hard the moment. She dismissed the idea that her strip show for Otoniel and the Huaca men had gotten her excited.

"Jaguar's teeth?" Summer guessed, fingering the necklace.

Otoniel repeated the question to Pachacamac, who replied in the affirmative. Though becoming more and more endangered throughout South America, the jaguar was still relatively prevalent in Bolivia's eastern borderlands.

"So what now?"

The two outsiders were led from the field back into the small village of Hanan Pacha. As they progressed between the huts and hovels that lined Hanan Pacha's main "street," Summer met the gazes of more and more Pachacamac's people. The chief himself strode right down the center of the village, a smile on his face indicating how proud he was of the exchange he had made. Hanan Pacha may have lost the use of their one and only truck for the next three days, but the naked blonde following Pachacamac back into town seemed to make everything all right.

Summer did her best to keep her head up high, trying to seem as indifferent to her nudity as much as possibly. Throughout the morning, she'd bumped into more than one topless woman in Hanan Pacha, and she kept reminding herself of this fact as she met the stares of villager after villager. Somehow, her nudity seemed completely different, entirely sexual in nature. As she met the eyes of an elderly Indian woman, who was topless herself, the realities of her situation sunk in - Summer herself was different.

The Huaca were dark-skinned people who had lived in the Oriente since before time began. And even Otoniel, though an outsider to Hanan Pacha, was still a mestizo whose native home was only a few dozen miles away. He was not Huaca, but his Quechua heritage made him more commonplace than Summer. Her nudity may have caused her to stand out, but her light skin and blonde hair would have attracted this much attention whether she was clad or not.

Her audience was both men and women. The concept of the men staring at her naked flesh was something that she could write off as simple, testosterone-fueled heterosexual lust. But there were just as many sets of female eyes raking up and down her body, drinking in the white skin, tan lines and all. Were they looking at her sexually? Or were they just comparing themselves to her?

The one thing that registered in Summer's mind, however, was the lack of children. If she were to walk down the center of the street back in suburban Babylon, she'd be exposed to just as many young kids as full-grown adults. But while there was the occasional set of young eyes on her, they were rare. As she reflected on this thought, it struck her as odd. Since the moment that they'd arrived in Hanan Pacha earlier that morning, Summer hadn't seen many young children. There were very few people that looked younger than thirteen or fourteen. Where were all the kids?

Pachacamac's home, though one of the nicest in the village, was still little more than a mud hut with a tin roof. But it sat at the end of the main drag, adjacent to a beautiful, crystal-clear pool. The pool itself was fed by the Rio Clemente, dropping what Summer guessed to be forty-odd feet from the cliff above the village in a breathtaking waterfall. Yes, Pachacamac's house left much to be desired, but he backyard would be the envy of any American.

There were women milling around the pool, where the water flowed onward down the Clemente, filling up jugs of water to take back to their own homes.

Summer wasn't looking forward to spending time with Pachacamac in the chief's cramped home, but she was looking forward to getting out of eyesight for a while. She had put on a good face as she walked through Hanan Pacha, but her nerves were completely shot to hell. While Pachacamac's home certainly wouldn't allow her any privacy from the chief himself, it would allow her a respite from the rest of the village.

Unfortunately, though, Pachacamac had other plans. Instead of leading her into his home, the Huaca chief led his newly acquired captive to the right side of the hut. Summer was confused, but as Pachacamac picked up a thick metal spike and long metal chain, the girl's confusion left her for a deep sense of fear and foreboding.

"What is he planning to do with those?" Summer asked her translator.

"Nooo," Otoniel moaned to himself, obviously understanding Pachacamac's intent. He ignored Summer for a few seconds, listening as the chief called for someone named Catequil.

"What is he planning to do with those?" Summer repeated her question, noticeably more worried.

"Livestock," Otoniel began. "Uywa." A large, strong man emerged from down the street, quickly joining his chief with a sledgehammer in his grasp. As Otoniel again explained the Huaca word for borrow that implied livestock and tools, the large villager began driving the metal spike into the ground.

"You're going to be kept outside," the translator explained in English. "The same way that one would keep a llama, or a sheep."

"I thought I was a cat!" the blonde screamed at her companion. She watched in horror as Catequil took a step back from the spike, which was now clearly embedded in the ground. Pachacamac was already securing one end of the chain around it, and Summer was sure that she knew what was going to be secured at the other end. "No!"

The protest was made to Otoniel, and it went mostly unnoticed by Catequil, Pachacamac, or any of the other villagers standing around. Otoniel, though, had clearly tired of fighting with the chief. He could argue until he was blue in the face, but he knew that any complaint would only be met with same death threat that Pachacamac had offered up before. He didn't want to disappoint Summer, or let her be humiliated yet again, but he knew where the argument would go even before it began.

Summer, thankfully, understood. She was usually all hellfire, but she had grown more and more resigned as the day wore on. Like Otoniel, there was little she could do, and rolling with the punches seemed like a much easier thing to do than fighting Pachacamac each step of the way. Was she happy about being chained to the ground like a llama or some other type of livestock? Of course not. But in current situation, this was the least of her problems.

And sure enough, Summer was chained to the spike. Pachacamac beckoned her closer, securing the metal links around her left ankle with a cheap-looking combination lock. The lock reminded the girl of her old high school locker back in Rhode Island, and the continued humiliation of being stripped and chained up behind the chief's home was further aggravated by the fact that he had decided to lock her there. Completely naked, devoid of shoes, and lacking anything more than a vague sense of direction back to Ambrosia's camp, Summer hardly saw herself as a flight risk; Pachacamac either saw differently, or simply liked the fantasy-turned-reality that he had created for himself.

Task completed, Pachacamac excused himself, leaving Summer and Otoniel alone behind his home. "Alone" may have been a stretch, however, as there were still quite a few Huaca just standing around, soaking in every detail of the naked American's body. Their attention soon began to wane, however, and eventually only a few women remained behind to get water, occasionally glancing in Summer's direction.

***

It was close to an hour before Summer and Otoniel even said anything to each other. The naked girl had just taken a seat on the ground, clutching her knees to her chest, and staring off blankly into the waterfall in front of her. Otoniel, at first, had looked like he wanted to say something. But not finding the right words to comfort the girl, he dropped to the ground a few feet from her, staring in the opposite direction down the road.

Otoniel was playing absentmindedly with a stick in the dirt when Summer finally turned to him. Her eyes were puffy, and she wiped a tear from underneath them. She had been crying silently for some time.

"Do you have water?" Summer asked the translator.

Otoniel hesitated for a second, unsure of how to respond. He felt horrible about not being able to keep her out of the situation that they now found themselves in. "No," he finally responded, "but I have iodine."

"Do you have a cup?" Summer asked. She smiled gently as she added, "I think my chain here will probably let me reach the river."

It was a joke, but it was a joke that made Otoniel wince. He crouched over his backpack, finding both his empty water bottle and a packet of iodine tablets. He wasn't going to make Summer get her own water - after all that she'd been through, this was the very least he could do. After filling the bottle up in the pool and inserted the tablets, Otoniel ventured closer to his companion.

"I'm sorry for all this," Otoniel said gently. "These people....they just..."

Summer shook her head. "That's not why I'm crying," she replied through a sniffle.

Otoniel looked at her questioningly.

"Walter," the blonde girl explained. "Here I am, feeling sorry for myself about a few dozen people seeing me naked. And meanwhile, Walter is still thirty hours away from any sort of medical attention." She looked up at the mestizo. "He could die, Otoniel. And I'm sitting here and feeling sorry for myself."

The translator was quiet as he sat down alongside Summer, much closer than he'd been before. "It is very brave of you," he said, finally. "You've put Doctor Newcomb's life ahead of your dignity."

Summer sniffled again, the tears finally stopping. She took a sip from Otoniel's water bottle. "When do you think they'll be passing through San Eduardo?"

Otoniel glanced at his watch, seeing that it was already past four o'clock in the afternoon. "They should be going through San Eduardo around eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Doctor Castillo is there, and perhaps he will be able to help Walter. Perhaps Dr. Szalinski will be back by tomorrow night."

The thought was comforting, but the reality of the situation was doubtful. They'd met the "doctor" in San Eduardo when they'd first arrived, and Summer doubted that the elderly Cuban man knew much more about medicine than she did. Otoniel knew this, as well, but he was just trying to comfort her.

"Well," she began, "provided that everything goes smoothly for the rest of the night, I think you should probably be back in camp tomorrow morning to get Russ's call from town. He said that he'd radio from San Eduardo, so I think you should probably talk to him. See how Walter is doing. Explain what's going on here."

"I'll leave tomorrow at five," Otoniel nodded. It was a two-hour hike back to the camp, and the translator figured he should be there early, in case Russ and Anqas had made better time than usual. Turning his attention back to the nude woman sitting alongside him, Otoniel asked, "Are you sure? Will you be okay?"

Summer stared off into the waterfall. "Well, you said I'm a sheep, and not a sex slave. And I belong to the chief. So I should be okay, shouldn't I?"

"Yes," Otoniel replied with certainty. Neither one of them was convinced by the response, but it made them both feel better.

It was another few hours before the sun began setting. Around the village of Hanan Pacha, both Otoniel and Summer could smell dinner being cooked. There was idle conversation, and there were more than a few villagers who walked by Pachacamac's house, staring long and hard at the naked girl chained up by the pool. Summer didn't ask Otoniel to translate what they were saying about her, uninterested in hearing how the Huaca viewed her naked skin. Her knees were still tucked up against her chin, her arms wrapped around her legs; while the skin of her back was easily seen by those passing by, that was the only view that they were to get.

Summer and Otoniel passed the time by chatting with each other. They had spent nearly eight weeks together, but Summer still didn't know all that much about Otoniel's childhood, or growing up in the outskirts of San Eduardo. He explained the many differences between the Quechua, the Huaca, and some of the other smaller tribes that inhabited the Oriente. Summer talked about growing up in Rhode Island, going to college and graduate school in California, and eventually coming to Bolivia with Ambrosia Pharmaceuticals. They could not have come from more different places, and yet there were still enough commonalities that they were able to share the perspectives. They both had overbearing mothers and fathers that tended to drink too much. Both had enjoyed reading as children, Summer about animals and plants, and Otoniel about far away places like London or New York or Babylon. Life was life, no matter where one grew up, and people tended to be faced with similar challenges and similar moments of happiness.