J Weichsel - Ebu Gogo

He straightened his back and suddenly became light-headed as he thought about all of that sex he had been having with the non-human ebu gogo. It hadn’t seemed like something shameful at the time. It was just something he did. He had enjoyed it so much that he hadn’t even considered what the consequences might be. Given that they were different species, he hadn’t even thought that there could be consequences. But now the consequences of his actions showed on Lua’s growing belly. That belly! What shame he felt about that belly! It was a sign to all the world of the dirtiness that he had done, and whenever somebody looked at that belly he or she would know that he, Martin, had sex with an animal. He wanted to leave the three women in the pit and never see them again. Now that he had told them what had happened, he wanted them to be dead, so that they would no longer know.

After much silence on the part of Martin and the three naked women in the pit Linda said, “You have to destroy it.”

Martin shouted back, “No!”

Linda looked up and tried to make eye contact as she said, “Martin, if that child is born, it will be an abomination. It will be a stain on the human race. It doesn’t matter how you do it, if you abort it, or if you kill Lua, but it has to be done. That child cannot be born.”

“I couldn’t! To kill my own flesh and blood. It’s unthinkable.”

Linda said, “Martin, think about the ethics involved. If that child is born, it will be half human, and half ebu gogo. Then, if it goes out and reproduces with other humans, it will spread ebu gogo DNA throughout the human race. Think about what kind of genetic damage that could do to humanity generations down the line. Why should the rest of humanity take that risk just because of your own feelings, feelings which seem to me to be deeply conflicted I might add? You major in genetic anthropology for crying out loud. I know you can see that I am right.”

“But… but what should I do?”

“Find a stick, skin the bark from it, sharpen it with a rock, and cut barbs into it near the sharp end but facing away from it. You are going to ram this barbed stick up Lua’s vagina, and impale the fetus with it. The barbs will catch against the fetus’s flesh, and then you will pull it out of her.”

“But that’s horrible. It’s murder.”

“No, it’s not murder. It’s an abortion, performed the old fashioned way before modern medicine, just like they used to do in Biblical times.”

“But it’s my own child we are talking about, my own flesh and blood.”

“Your child is a monster. By conceiving that child, you have abandoned the human race. Now, in order to rejoin the human race, this is the penance you must perform.”

Martin left the three women and walked around the jungle alone some more. Of course he wasn’t going to abort his own child. But he wasn’t sure that he wanted to keep the child, either. He was so conflicted! He didn’t know what he wanted. He wished he could just leave the jungle, go back to civilization, and leave this entire mess of a life he had created for himself on Flores behind him.

But he knew that if he left now, Flores would come calling. He knew that for the rest of his life, as he lay in bed at night before going to sleep, his mind would bring him back here to this moment of decision, and that he would question the choices that led him to flee.

He also knew that it is not in the nature of secrets to remain hidden, and that somehow the truth would eventually come out that he had fathered a half human child on a remote Indonesian island. So maybe it was better for him to remain hidden on Flores along with his secret.

He had heard the three women, and listened to what they had to say. Now, he decided, it was time to hear Lua, and listen to what she had to say. So he returned to her cavern, where she still lay where he had left her. She sat up when he entered, and he sat down beside her. He took her hand and said in the language of the ebu gogo, “Lua, what kind of child will it be that we have conceived together?”

She answered, “It will be the future of the world. It will be tomorrow’s people.”

“But what does that mean?”

“It means that you will get to watch your child being born, to raise him, to watch him become a strong, handsome ebu gogo. It means that he will give you grandchildren who will love you and remain by your side until your end, so that when you are old and dying, you will be surrounded by life.”

“But what does it mean for the rest of humanity?”

“It means that because we have produced offspring together, just as the parent on his deathbed is surrounded by life, so too will humanity its deathbed be surrounded by life.”

“I don’t understand. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

Lua said, “I am going to sing to you now. The words and melody are very old, and their origins lie in the remote past, before there were ebu gogo. I am going to sing of our origins, and our history. I am going to sing to you from The Song of the Ebu Gogo.”

And then Lua began to sing, and the moment Martin heard the melody he understood that it came from the misty remote past, from before the dawn of man. As he listened to the verses, Martin understood them, even though they were in archaic forms of the language the modern ebu gogo spoke.

When the song began, the earth was frozen. It was covered in ice and snow. But then some snow melted and in the one thawed out green part of the earth, the apes began to talk. Then, some talking apes left the warmth of the green jungle to travel to a land that was still blanketed with ice.

Lua sang of the historical figures from pre-humanity. First, she sang about Asha. Asha, who discovered what the ebu gogo call the clever weapon, a weapon that would serve as the catalyst that led to the near obliteration of the ancestors of the ebu gogo.

And she sang about Seeter, the one who led the ancestors of the ebu gogo across the land and the sea in order to escape the clever weapon, to the island of Flores, where the ebu gogo was born.

Martin listened, mesmerized by this history composed of verses that had been passed down from generation to generation since before human beings began to walk the earth.

When Lua’s beautiful singing ended, both sat in silence for some time and then Lua said, “Martin, now do you understand?”

Martin said, “Yes.”

Lua said, “Good. Then you will understand why this must happen as well.”

Lua clapped her hand, and another ebu gogo entered. She was barely over three feet tall, and was covered in orange fur. Like the others, Martin found her very attractive. Her forehead sloped back at a nice angle, she had a very broad nose, even for an ebu gogo, and very fat lips on a chinless mouth. He couldn’t help but stare at her enormous breasts which hung past her round hips, almost to her knees, and at her orange fur. Most of all he loved her fur. Martin asked, “What’s going on?”

Lua got up off the bed and her breasts hung almost to her feet. She walked to this other ebu gogo, and gently brought her over to Martin. Lua said, “You understand Martin. You understand why you must do this. You must do it for the future, Martin, for the future.”

And Martin did understand, so he had sex with the other ebu gogo right there in the cavern on Lua’s bed of grass and leaves as Lua watched.

The light of dawn gave off its first orange-pink glow through the jungle mist. Contrasting sharply with the serenity of the scene was Lewis, wide awake and chipper, strolling about the camp with a bounce to his step, shaking tents with his muscular arms. “Up, up,” he shouted, “Come on everybody, we have a big day ahead of us.”

Tents unzipped, bleary-eyed heads poked out, and stiff bodies stepped out into the Indonesian dawn, yawning and stretching.