Antitled

Finale

         Samantha rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She stretched in the sunlight, rolling over and throwing her arm over her husband, smiling and kissing him. Her lips felt a hard, rough surface and she opened her eyes, staring at the trunk of a tree.
         Startled, she sat up quickly and looked around. Samantha sat in the jungle, the sunlight shinning through the leaves and branches above her. Her stomach growled, causing her to buckle and she used her remaining energy to stand. She turned once, twice, staring up at her surroundings, realizing that she had never left the island. Her head throbbed from the drugs she had inhaled and she fell back to her knees, tears forming in her eyes.
         Sobbing was not nearly enough to express her agony, and Samantha stood, running into the jungle as fast as she could. She didn't care how bad her feet hurt, she didn't care about anything at all anymore except put her feet in front of each other until she collapsed.
         Samantha didn't get a chance. As she stepped down with her left foot, the ground gave way under her and she fell. A sharp pain burst through her right calf as she landed and when she opened her eyes, she saw the sharpened wooden stake sticking out of the round and into her leg. The smell of shit overwhelmed her as she realized she was in a pit with about a dozen stakes just like the one through her leg. They were covered in manure and it was choking her.
         “Help!” Samantha screamed into the small hole above her. It was a moment later he wished she hadn't as a brown face peered into the hole at her. Frightened she jumped back as more faces looked over the edge of the hole.
         She couldn't do anything as the hands reached into the hole and roughly removed her leg from the stake, then dragged her over the dirty and onto the surface again. She screamed and kicked her good leg as they dragged her into the bushes and through a long path of rough terrain until they reached a small village.
         Samantha looked around. The village was a terrifying and foreign place to her. There were hunts made from stripped branches, fire pits dug into the ground with wooden spits hanging above them, and all sorts of tribal objects that she had no idea what they could be for.
         The men dragged her to a small hut and an older man looked down at her. He inspected her wound, turning her leg this way and that, sending shock waves through her body as the pressure made the throbbing in her leg a thousand times worse. The old man mumbled something to one of the younger men and Samantha felt them dragging her again, out of the hut and next to the fire pit.
         She watched as one of the men grabbed a stick from the fire, flames licking at the end opposite his hand. She turned her head and saw another man approach her carrying what looked to be a crudely crafted ax. Samantha's brain was spinning, it was hard to concentrate as starvation mixed with the gaping wound in her leg made it hard to grasp what was going on.
         The man lifted the ax above his head and before she could scream, he dropped the blade, chopping into her leg right below the hip. Samantha couldn't scream before the man raised the blade again and smashed it down into her leg again. This time she did scream. The pain of the backwoods amputation was unbearable. The man raised the ax again.
         In all, it took ten chops with ax to finally remove her injured leg from her body. She watched in horror as the man lifted the leg and placed it on the opposite side of the fire from her. The man with the newly fashioned torch approached her and with no warning pressed the flaming piece of wood into the wound where he leg had once been. She screamed again as the fire closed her wound.
         She stared over through her hazy vision as a woman came over to the fire pit and began to cut her leg apart. The woman tore chunks of flesh from Samantha's leg and tossed them into what she assumed was a pot hanging from the spit above the fire. Samantha cringed with each plop as the meat from her leg was dropped into the pot to make a stew. She could smell her own flesh cooking and it made her stomach sicker than it already was.
         The woman was only able to use part of the leg. The wound had become infected in a short time due to the animal feces the sticks had been rubbed in. The remaining meat and the leftover bones were tossed into the fire making the smell even worse.
         An hour later, Samantha watched as the stew was rationed out to the villagers. They ate from bowls formed from leaves and wood. Her brain in shock, she smiled to herself as the strange people greedily ate her body, happy that her flesh pleased them. One of the villagers dropped a bowl next to her and she looked over to see the stew made from her leg. Samantha was disgusted to see her own skin and muscles floating in the bowl, but her stomach was telling her that it needed something to survive.
         Slowly she lifted herself up on one arm and used the other to lift the bowl to her mouth. The juice was thin and almost tasteless, there being no vegetables or extra fat added to make the mixture delicious, but it warmed her throat and belly as it made it's way down. Samantha's teeth began to chew the tough meat that entered her mouth and even though the thought of it being her own flesh put her off, she couldn't stop inhaling the food, her body almost to the point of shut down. Samantha was finishing the bowl when she looked down to see her toe, floating in the last of the juice. A tear fell over her cheek as she looked at the cracking red polish on her toenail.
         Later that night, one of the villagers bandaged her leg and carried her to a hut nearby. He placed her on the bed made of leaves and moss and smiled at her. He rubbed his belly and walked out of the hut, leaving her alone in the darkness. Samantha broke down and cried.

         The next morning Samantha was awoken by the man, coming to carry her back outside. She had actually slept quite well on the mattress and with the cover of the hut she was not attacked as ferociously by the insects that ate her up the night before. The man smiled at her again as he lifted her up and carried her back to the fire pit.
         The man with the ax was there again and Samantha began to cry as she knew what was happening. These people were going to take her other leg. All hope lost, Samantha closed her eyes and realized she would never see her family again.
         The villagers didn't bother to just take her leg. Both of her arms were taken as well, and the wounds cauterized with the torch. Samantha's brain was not responding to anything other than the pain of being taken apart and repeatedly burned. Samantha laid there staring that the clouds in the sky as the man used a smaller blade to remove her breasts, one by one.
         When they were content with the rations they had taken from her, and were sure that with her low body fat, her torso would not be of much use to them, one of the men shouted and the smiling man from before came out of the small crowd gathering to watch. He picked her up in his strong arms and looked into her face smiling. Through her ruined brain, she thought of how nice this man was and how he was always so happy with her because she was providing nourishment to the village.
         The man carried Samantha away from the village, looking down at her and smiling the entire time. Her body was completely devoid of pain now as shock had wholly taken over her nervous system.
         When they were about three hundred yards from the village, the man gently propped Samantha up against a tree and smiled at her. He made a gesture almost to say, “wait here,” then disappeared into the brush for a moment. He returned carrying a few of the large leaves that it seemed everyone on the island used for beds and laid them out on the jungle floor. He piled enough of them to make a raised area about three feet long.
         Content with his work, the man approached Samantha, lifted her gently and placed her onto the bed of leaves he had made. He smiled down at her as he removed the small covering of animal hide from his waist and crawled on top of her.
         Samantha didn't cry. She only partially knew what was happening to her as the man thrust back and forth, grunting into her neck. When Samantha felt her leg kick out, she knew her brain was beginning to drift away, and when the man finally had his fill of her, he stood, replaced his leather skirt and smiled down at her before walking away.
         Samantha stared into the branches above her and tried to make out the abstract shapes in the leaves, a slight grin moved across her face as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep for the final time.