Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 04

"Where are we?" Benitez asked groggily, blinking himself awake. He seemed to be having difficulty seeing.

"Manqus Wasi," Dani answered, concerned for the doctor's health. "With the Huaca."

"No," Benitez croaked. "Too many people for Manqus Wasi."

Dani shook her head. No. No. No, this had to Manqus Wasi. They were on the Rio Rosa. They were between the falls. They were in Manqus Wasi. They had to be. Or else Dani were in even bigger trouble than she'd first thought.

"No, you're right. It is Manqus Wasi," Benitez corrected himself, eliciting a sigh of relief from the brunette. "Qaqaqa Qan. The island." He squinted out into the crowd. "But there are way too many people here. The whole village has grown."

Dani was less interested in a census than she was in her immediate well-being.

"It's not the worst reception I've received in a Huaca village," Benitez tried to calm the girl after she'd voiced her fears. He shot her a wry smile. But then he spat blood, and scowled. "But there's definitely something wrong here."

Benitez again surveyed the crowd. Gathering his strength, he called out, "Suwaqara! Suwaqara!" He beckoned for the chief. Not getting an immediate response, he barked out for the village's medicine man. "Qallu Qallu!"

There was a momentary pause, before a strong, male voice shouted from the crowd. "Qallu Qallu wanyusqa!"

This obviously concerned Benitez. He yelled out in the direction of the voice. "Suwaqara!"

Again, the male voice barked back, "Suwaqara wanyusqa!"

"What's happening?" Dani asked.

Benitez frowned. His brow was furrowed, and he was quite obviously getting a bit more worried. He smiled at Dani, though, choosing to ignore her question, as if he were telling her to "buck up," that he'd handle this.

"Gabriel!" Dani cried. "Gabriel, what's going on?"

Benitez bit his lip. "I don't know." He hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not to let Dani in on what he'd just learned. "Suwaqara is dead. Qallu Qallu, too."

Dani felt a shiver go up and down her spine.

"So what does that mean?"

Benitez shook his head. Even if he knew, he had no time to explain. The strong, male voice belonged to a strong, male figure, who emerged from the crowd and stepped up to where Dani and Benitez had been bound naked on the cliff-face. He was tall, even for a Huaca, standing a good head taller than Dani herself. He had dark skin, with a series of ritual burns and scars traced into it, symmetrically, on either side of his body. A strong jaw and a thin, slight beard framed his face, which was otherwise adorned with lip, nose, and eyebrow piercings. A single necklace dangled on his chest, the skull of some sort of small animal having been turned into this man's jewelry. In addition, he wore a long, flowing brown loincloth, and a pair of sandals that seemed almost out of place among the barefooted masses.

"Kuchaq sutiymi," the dark-skinned man introduced himself to Benitez, not even bothering to address the naked brunette.

Benitez glanced at Dani, and then launched into his Huaca. Kuchaq listened intently, and then answered Benitez in turn. Benitez asked about Suwaqara and Qallu Qallu, Dani was sure of that much. And Kuchaq pressed the doctor of Chaqiska, looking at Dani herself disapprovingly. Benitez seemed confused, and then it was Kuchaq's turn to seem confused -- all of which was taken in by Dani, who had not the slightest of clue what was being shared between the two men. She stared off into the crowd, doing her best to forget how naked and exposed she was at that moment.

Kuchaq reached for the knife at his belt, and Dani was sure the worst had come. But, though his tone had softened and his disapproval hadn't waned, the dark-skinned man reached up and cut the Argentine doctor from his bindings. Right wrist, right ankle. Left ankle, left wrist. Benitez was being freed.

The same could not be said of the brunette. She was left where she was bound, neither Kuchaq nor the doctor making any moves towards loosening her bindings.

"I need to go talk to the chieftainess," Benitez explained, rubbing his wrists. To look at him from the front, Dani could now see a good-sized bump on her traveling companion's forehead where he'd sustained a blow.

Kuchaq was obviously displeased with the porters who'd carried Benitez into town, slapping at one of them angrily. He paid little attention to Dani, however, and it was apparent that no similar anger who be directed at treating the woman the same way.

"What's happening?" Dani asked, doing her best to maintain eye contact with the doctor. He, on the other hand, seemed to be casually taking in her body -- not in a wanton, sexual way, but more absentmindedly, as if he were trying to think straight while looking at her tits.

"The chief is dead," he explained. "Suwaqara. The village priest, too. It's been Suwaqara's daughter, Sacha Allqu, who is serving as chief and medicine man both -- priestess and chieftainess all in one."

"Dead? How did they die?"

Benitez shrugged. "Some sort of disease. Yellow fever? Hep A? Food poisoning? I don't know what -- it's a good thing we're here." The doctor scratched his chin, as nonchalantly as if he were fully dressed and not standing in front of an enormous crowd. "It's sounds like some of the newcomers brought it with them."

"Newcomers?"

"From other villages," Benitez answered. "There's an American mining company to the south of here -- Knox Industries. They've been all over this part of the country for years now, not long after Summer first came down, mining for Huaca silver." He looked at Dani, and only seemed to just register that she was completely in the nude, aside from her jewelry. He gestured to her chest, and said, "Like your necklace. It's some sort of special alloy. But it sounds like they've been displacing some of the smaller Huaca villages, and they've been flooding in here, downriver, to Manqus Wasi. And, apparently, some of them have been showing up sick."

"What does that mean for us?" Dani asked.

Benitez looked at Kuchaq, and then out into Manqus Wasi, and then back to Dani. "I don't know," he admitted. "But I'm going to go find out."

"Cut me down," Dani pleaded. "Cut me down."

Benitez glanced sideways at Kuchaq, and then back at the girl, naked, bound, and spread at the edge of the waerfall. "I can't," he apologized. "'Uywa.' You're property. Livestock. This can be a part of the t'ojsiy...sometimes."

Dani blinked back tears of disbelief. "You can't just leave me here like this! You can't!" she cried.

Benitez was clearly pained by the way the American girl begged him to cut her loose. He shook his head apologetically, and said again, "I can't. I just can't." He looked away from her, doing his best to avoid the disappointment and fear in the girl's eyes. "I need to go talk to Sacha Allqu. Maybe I can do something."

"Don't leave me!" Dani sobbed, struggling against the restraints. She was being held in place, naked, in front of hundreds of Huaca in Manqus Wasi. Her arms were stretched apart, her legs spread apart. She was Ann Darrow, waiting for Kong. She was a well-meaning Catholic missionary, waiting to be boiled alive and eaten by cannibals. Nudity and dildos and orgasms -- these were the things she had signed up for. But this -- this display, this humiliation, this treatment as "livestock" -- was not what Dani had expected. She was supposed to have been greeted as a liberator, treated like Sipusiki made flesh. Instead, she was a prisoner, subject to restraints and torture.

"You'll be okay," Benitez did his best to reassure the girl. "They won't hurt you. You'll be okay." And with that, he began to slowly back away from the edge of the cliff, a pained look quite evident on his face.

"No! No no no!" Dani screamed. "You can't leave me! Don't! No! Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!" She was panicking, her naked chest rising and falling as she had almost begun to hyperventilate. She was being betrayed by the Argentine doctor, left alone. She was scared. She was humiliated. And she was crying.

Kuchaq, apparently, could take no more of the girl's shrieks. Without looking for approval from Benitez, he grabbed the girl roughly by the jaw and crammed the gag back between her teeth. She coughed for air, recoiling at the taste of dirt and sweat on the man's fingers, her tears now streaming down her cheeks.

She moaned and screamed into the wooden gag, her words muffled but the sounds still emanating from deep in her throat. She tried desperately to make eye contact with Benitez, but the Argentine worked just as diligently in trying to avoid it. He was brought a brown-maroon loincloth of his own by one of Kuchaq's men, and even as Dani struggled and writhed and pulled against her restraints, Benitez stepped down from the edge of Manqus Wasi and disappeared into the crowd. He was guided by Kuchaq and a number of the porters, and did not once look back at the terror-stricken brunette behind him.

The sun was down, and night was upon them. Torchlight flickered among the tightly-packed huts and houses the Huaca had erected for themselves on this little island. The thunder of Qaqaqa Qan was omnipresent, but Dani could hear the laughs and whispers and observations taking place before her. For the longest of times, Dani stared blankly and numbly into the dirt at her feet, asking herself how she'd gotten into all this. She did her best to find some level of comfort, alternating between hanging on her wrists and standing as tall as she could in her ridiculously widespread stance. Her whole body was on fire, aching and sore. Some of it could be traced to the paddling she and Benitez had done that afternoon, but most of it was from the uncomfortable way she'd been positioned between the two trees.

Dani continued to cry, but eventually worked up enough courage to take in her surroundings once more. There were hundreds of Huaca on the haphazard paths and alleys that made up Manqus Wasi. They were eating with their families and friends out in front of their homes. They were playing some type of game with pebbles. They were chatting and talking with one another, tending to fires, and washing dishes. They lived on top of one another, like some sort of Lower East Side tenement at the turn of the century. But none went very long without taking another look at the brunette propped up and held in place at the edge of falls, trying to make sense of her presence as much as Dani herself was trying to make sense of why she was here in the first place.

As scared as she was, and as much as her muscles and joints ached, Dani was overcome by another sensation, a feeling of excitement. She was powerless, subject to the whims and decisions of the Huaca, unable to decide her own fate. There was a freedom in captivity, a sexual charge the likes of which Dani had never before experienced. Her nipples stood straight out, headlights in the Bolivian night. Her pussy, open by the way her thighs were pulled apart from one another, seemed to drip with some combination of water vapor thrown off by Qaqaqa Qan and her own, inimate juices. The bare skin of her neck and chest, where Summer's necklace rested against her body, felt hot and alive, as if it were being kissed by a masculine lover's rough and calloused lips.

If the t'ojsiy were to happen that night, Dani wondered about the duration of the rite -- she very clearly was going to cum at the slightest touch.

Dani had no concept of time, but even by the most conservative of estimates Benitez had to have been gone for close to four hours by the time he returned from Sacha Allqu's. The American had remained silent and spread apart on the cliff, having little say in the matter from the beginning. She gazed dumbly off into Manqus Wasi proper, lost in her toughts and fantasies, doing her best to escape the burning in her muscles and the heat in her pussy. She was here, but she was elsewhere, divorced from her naked body and luxuriating in it all at the same time. She was Dani D'Annuzio. She was an embarrassed American girl. She was a proud and beautiful sacrifice to Sipusiki. She was horrified. She was turned on. She was contradiction.

"Dani," Benitez said softly to the girl as he approached. He took one step up the black, volcanic stairs, and then another. Kuchaq continued to flank him, as did a number of Kuchaq's strong, warrior-like men. "Dani."

The girl looked up at the Argentine, as if she hadn't even seen him coming. She was down and she was beaten, and she no longer struggled against her bindings.

"I need to talk to you," the doctor spoke as he extracted the gag from her mouth. "Are you okay?"

"I need water," the girl croaked. Her lips and jaw hurt from having been stretched so far for so long. "I need to pee."

Benitez turned and said something to Kuchaq, and Kuchaq barked at his men. The tall, dark-skinned man himself stepped forward and began to untie the knots around Dani's right wrist, while Benitez came up alongside her and gently touched her hip.

"Water's coming," he assured her. "And we'll let you down to pee."

Dani just nodded.

As Kuchaq released Dani's right arm from its binding, the girl slumped to one side, and had to be braced by the Argentine doctor. He was still wearing nothing but the brown-maroon loincloth, and the feel of his warm, brown skin against her own was electrifying. He held her up again when Kuchaq released her left wrist, holding her slender frame in his muscular arms. She wanted to kiss him. She was drunk on her own aches and pains, on her lust and longing.

Kuchaq freed the girl from her ankle restraints, and she took a few tentative steps away from the waterfall, Benitez guiding her and holding her up.

"I need to pee," she said again.

"Okay," Benitez said, glancing at the tightly-packed little island spread out beneath the stairs. It was going to be difficult to get all the way to the bathhouse from where they were currently situated. "Is here okay?"

Dani scanned the crowd that watched her every move. They stared at her naked body. They watched the way her breasts jiggled as she descended the stairs. But Dani was tired, and out of it. Her body ached, and more pressingly, her bladder ached. She'd already been humiliated more than she'd ever been before in her life, and what she'd volunteered to do for La Iniciativa was even more degrading than that. And, though he'd left her above Qaqaqa Qan, Dani still found herself trusting Benitez unwaveringly. "Okay," she replied weakly.

Surrounded by Kuchaq and his men, and holding on to Benitez's leg for support, Dani simply squatted at the base of the stairs and relieved herself. She could giggles and twitters from the Huaca in the crowd, but she paid them no mind. She was, after all, "uywa." She was livestock.

Freed from one more torture, Dani stood and the party continued its descent into Manqus Wasi. The Indians stepped back and cleared a path for the brunette and the doctor, and Benitez led the girl to through twisting alleys and narrow paths between the Huaca huts. As they walked, he spoke.

"They're going to take me," he said flatly.

Dani looked up at him, confused. He was still propping her up, helping her walk naked through Manqus Wasi, aiding her until the strength in her muscles returned.

"So much as happened here since last year, when Summer and Taksha Kuchu were here. Knox Industries has displaced a good half dozen different villages mining for his silver alloy -- he's chased them off their land. Sikimira Qullu, Lachiwana, Wasi Masi," Benitez spoke the village names as if Dani knew them. "They fled here, to Manqus Wasi."

Benitez met the eyes of the Huaca as they passed. Dani couldn't bring herself to do so.

The doctor continued. "They've had so much hardship. And then the disease. I think it may have just been age, or something simple, or maybe caused by everyone living in such close quarters - but first Suwaqara, and then Qallu Qallu. It's easy for such a superstitious people to believe the worst, to believe that they've been cursed."

The Argentine cleared his throat. "And then you."

Dani raised an eyebrow, growing concerned.

"Sacha Allqu had expected Summer. They all had." Benitez paused. "And I think, if Summer had known what was going on here in the South, she never would have sent you. She would have come herself. She never would have asked you to perform the Yumachi ritual."

"Yumachi?" Dani asked. "What about t'ojsiy?"

Benitez gritted his teeth. "It's the same. More or less." He paused again. "They need me to help you."

Dani wasn't quite sure what Benitez was getting at. She continued to stumble forward, and continued to hold onto his half-naked body for support. Did Benitez mean that he'd be holding the qollqephichilu? That he'd be in charge of driving the silver dildo in and out of her?

"Do you remember the icons in Santa Teresa?"

"The sun. And the...woman's vagina?"

"Yes. Taytaku and Sipusiki. The Sun God and the Earth Goddess. It was from their union that this world came about, that Apucha and Hatucha were born -- the first man and woman."

"I remember the story," Dani told him.

"The Yumachi is an older version of the t'ojsiy. More fundamental. More to the roots. Taytaku and Sipusiki represented by Apucha and Hatucha, represented by man and woman."

Dani suddenly understood. She stopped walking. Staring up at Benitez, with her lips quivering, she asked, "With you?"

Benitez, biting his lip, said, "Yes."

Dani wasn't sure what to feel. She hadn't signed on to have sex with anyone. She was no prostitute. She was a slut -- that much had made itself evident by what she had actually agreed to do, as well as by the fact that there had been a part of her that had actually begun to look forward to it. Dildoing herself -- or, as the case may have been, being dildoed by someone else -- was one thing, but fucking someone was something else entirely.

But...was it?

Dani was confused. She'd wanted Benitez. And wasn't sleeping with the Argentine better than being toyed to completion by some old Indian man?

"You don't have to do this," Benitez offered, sensing hesitation. "Sacha Allqu believes they need to do everything in their power to appease their gods, and that they need to perform the more traditional Yumachi to the t'ojsiy. And they'd prefer to have Summer, anyways. You'll have to wait here, with them, while I take the canoe back up North to get her, but you don't have to do this."

"No," Dani answered. "No, but I will."

Dani had signed on with the Peace Corps to do some good in Honduras. She'd flown to Bolivia to help be a part of Summer Monroe's "public health campaign" among the Huaca Indians. She'd agreed to play the part of flesh sacrifice in Manqus Wasi because of an opportunity to help an entire generation of Huaca, an entire generation of little Chaqiscas and Qapilas.

But Dani wanted this for herself.

At some point in the past few days, Dani D'Annunzio had lost herself to her body. Since slipping out of her clothes by the Land Rover and slipping on Summer's necklace, it was almost as if she'd been transformed. Every sexual urge that she felt was somehow magnified, as if she were on some type of Huaca Spanish fly. The afternoon shower, the night in the tent -- Dani couldn't quite put a finger on it, but she found herself hornier than she'd been in months. Maybe ever. There was something about the way she was exposing herself, the way her breasts had been bare in Aya Pampa, the way she'd been stripped naked in the Aya Pampa bathhouse, the way she'd been propped up on display here in Manqus Wasi, the way that the Huaca were watching her naked figure even now. She was getting a sexual charge from exhibiting herself, of being naked in such a public setting.