Julia Elliott - The Wilds

Around noon, we climb up an embankment in search of sunnier space and discover the perfect picnic spot. We unwrap our lunches. From an inside pocket of his backpack, Jeff pulls a contraband Coke — still cold and dewy with miraculous condensation.

At last, I am able to laugh.

“Christ almighty. Where did you get that?”

“From an undisclosed source.”

Jeff unscrews the top, releasing a mystical hiss. He offers me the bottle. I close my eyes and savor the burnt-vanilla sweetness. We sit in the sun, eating peanuts and jerked venison, passing the Coke between us. We relish the melody of salt and sweet, infusing our sluggish blood with the elixir of caffeine and sugar.

Jeff leans in with a dopey look on his face. He closes his eyes and draws his lips into a lush pucker.

I hesitate, picturing my fiancé lolling in my hotel room, sighing every five minutes, unsure of what to do with himself. Then I take the plunge.

Now Jeff and I are kissing, rolling in the grass, leaf shreds and bark bits stuck to our sweaty skin. Now we are grunting, groping, our mouths gaping with greed as we reach for each other’s secret parts. I am Vogmar, daughter of the Blackboar Clan. Jeff is Bogwag of the Shaggy Bear People. And we are fucking in the forest, our bodies sleek and keening. We fall into natural, beastly rhythms. Mosquitoes veer in to suck our blood. Birds flit through foliage, snatching berries and grubs. The trees ring with laughter.

I open my eyes, peer into foliage, half expecting to see my fiancé roosting on a bough, his face scrunched with fury, his eyes drenched with pain. Instead, ape-men hoot and jeer. They bounce in the branches. Slap their shaggy knees. At least six fake Neanderthals gaze down at us, ululating over the sheer hilarity of two chubby humans getting it on.

“Goddamn it,” Jeff hisses. He unplugs his wilting member and shakes his fist in wrath.

I can’t find my shorts. I cover my crotch with my backpack and stare at my empty palms in shame. Jeff snatches up rocks and sticks, hurls them into the trees.

“Get out of here!” he shouts. “You stupid Neanderthal shits.”

Deep in the forest, as we slog through brush, eyes peeled for pouncing ticks, ears pricked for snapping twigs, noses sniffing for whiffs of roasting veggies, my fiancé texts me, trying to sound casual: What’s shakin’, Cavegirl? But I know that he must be hysterical by now. I turn off my phone, bury it deep in my backpack, beneath my extra socks, birth-control pills, and contact-lens solution, beneath my hairbrush and Sani-Cloth wipes and pre-pasted disposable toothbrush.

When we stop to drink from our canteens, a flock of greenfinches scatters from a berry bush. The berries gleam with a purple, poisonous luster, and I wonder if the dwarf Amazon queen knows which berries are safe to eat. I wonder if she’s an expert on edible fungi and healing herbs. I wonder if she has a boyfriend out here in the wild, some feral accountant or savage data processor. Or perhaps she has a series of consorts — lean vegan foragers with sinewy yoga bodies who feed her succulent fruits. Maybe she’s still nursing the wound of Wilbur, licking and licking it like a dog. Maybe Wilbur still lights up the darkest, most twisted chamber of her heart. Or maybe, through some old-school, matriarchal mojo, she’s gotten in touch with her inner goddess and banished the asshole from her mind.

“Crap,” says Jeff, fiddling with his iPhone. “My cell’s not catching a signal. Check yours.”

I scrounge through my backpack. My battery’s dead.

“What time is it?” I ask Jeff.

“4:43.”

There’s a chill in the air. A figment of moon has appeared in the deep, blue sky. What else can we do but keep trudging down the ghostly footpath, attempting witty conversation, trying to recover from the awkwardness of our thwarted coupling? Of course the conversation is stilted now, tainted with false chirpiness. Of course things are no longer the same, now that the sweet pressure of suspended flirtation has been punctured, the holy mystery unshrouded, the comedy of flesh unveiled. The forest is getting dark, and we have no bedding to lie down upon, no booze to swill, nothing, really, to talk about. Jeff’s ex and my fiancé hover in the forest gloom like ancestral spirits.

I’m almost relieved when the fake Neanderthals leap upon us, grimacing and grunting. They brandish spears tipped with Levalloisian points. Their faces are streaked with red mud.

Hissing gibberish into our faces, they threaten us with their weapons.

“Here we go again.” Jeff rolls his eyes.

“Maybe they think we’re part of Zongar’s cult,” I whisper, but Jeff doesn’t hear me.

Prodding us with the butts of their spears, the brutes push us off trail into deeper forest, into the heart of the heart of the wilderness, where darkness oozes like fog from the earth and flying insects brush against our skin. Strange birds moan. A luminous moth flaps up from a cluster of ferns. And monkeys bounce in the branches, howling churlishly.

At last I spot the glow of a fire, hunched hominids dancing around the flames.

The fake Neanderthals are performing some ritual. They dance and twirl. They look dirtier than the other Neanderthals, their outlandish body hair so caked with filth that it looks real. When they see us emerging from the bush, they rejoice. Their jig grows frenzied. Women sway forth with wooden bowls. The fake Neanderthals shove us into the firelight. They pick at our clothes, babble, and sing. The women sprinkle water and herbs on us. I smell rosemary, wild thyme, pepper. Their fire pit is decorated with charred skulls. Their grass huts adorned with bones. Now one of them is tugging at my shorts, now scratching my thighs with his dirty, simian claws.

“Hey, I’m kind of shy,” says Jeff, chuckling as a Neanderthal woman rifles through his pants pockets. Grinning, she barks some protolanguage. Two husky males secure Jeff’s arms. And then, bellowing in triumph, the woman snatches his iPhone. Not bothering to feign bafflement, she efficiently presses buttons, locates a document, waves the glowing screen in Jeff’s face.

“So I’m working on a piece of creative nonfiction,” says Jeff. “A light feature, if you will, nothing to get worked up about.”

Another woman steps forward, rips off Jeff’s shirt, and casts it into the flames.

Now Jeff is struggling in earnest — tubby, twisting, stumbling. Now he’s cursing, causing a hullaballoo. When he elbows one of the apes in the gut and the brute who’s guarding me lurches in to help his cronies, I take off. I scramble through a nasty cluster of brambles, tearing my knees to hell.

The forest is dense and dark and full of skittish creatures. I step on something soft, crush the creature to mush. Some stinging insect has crawled into my shirt. Some multilegged creeping thing has landed on my nape. But I don’t stop to brush it off. I run and run. I have no idea whether I’m headed toward the hotel or fleeing into deeper forest, toward more ferocious tribes of fake Neanderthals, spies and cannibals who slurp raw brain-pudding straight from bludgeoned skulls.

Nimble pursuers are hot on my tail, panting rhythmically. I can feel the adrenaline quickening my blood. I think I hear a woman’s laughter, flitting jaggedly through the trees like a wounded bird. And then I see a shadowy figure — small, fierce, perched in a tree. Her body is impeccably toned. Her bowstring is taut, her arrow nocked and ready.

“Hello!” I bellow into the darkness. “I’m looking for Zongar!”

She leaps from the branch.

“Did that bastard Wilbur send you?”

“No,” I hiss, surprised at my bitterness. “That bastard did not.”