see.”
“It’s unscientific, I admit, but I’ve also started to feel the same way. I mean, this planet may be a world in which only indecent life forms are allowed to exist,” Mogamigawa said with a sigh, seeming to lack energy after his violation by mistress bine.
“Sssh!”
I signalled to Mogamigawa and Yohachi to keep their heads down, and hid myself in a thicket of evergreen fern. Beyond the thicket lay an open clearing that appeared to be the dead centre of the jungle. There, a number of animals were writhing around in highly furtive activity.
“Are they mating?” whispered Mogamigawa, who’d crawled along the ground to join me.
“Clearly.”
“The female resembles a small bear…”
“And the male looks like a mountain goat. The other two seem to be a cross between a tapir and a pig.”
“What are they doing?”
“Waiting their turn, probably,” I answered, sickened by the sheer outlandishness of it. “I’ve never seen any of these before. They must live permanently in the jungle. I can’t remember hearing names that would answer to any of them, either.”
“I doubt such an obscene sight could be found on any other planet,” muttered Mogamigawa with a look of nausea. He hurriedly started to crawl back. “Let’s be off. I don’t wish to see any more of this.”
Noticing the sound of rustling leaves as Mogamigawa brushed against the evergreen ferns, the two creatures that resembled tapir-pigs reared up on their hind legs and turned towards us.
“Oh no! They’ve spotted us!” exclaimed Yohachi.
The two tapir-pigs both sported massive erections. No sooner had they discovered us than their bloodshot eyes started to glisten, as if they assumed us to be new objects for their sexual gratification. They began to waddle towards us on hind legs, hips jerking and lower bellies thrust forwards, revealing their swollen members. Their appearance reminded me of a certain type of middle-aged man who’s so starved of physical affection that he turns into a sex-crazed monster. Nothing could be more repugnant to the eyes.
I set aside my fear and prepared to run. But the blood drained from my face when I saw another seven or eight animals suddenly emerge from the undergrowth around the dead centre. The tapir-pigs weren’t the only ones that had been waiting their turn to mate – these others had also been lying in the thickets quietly biding their time. They were all creatures that I’d never seen before in the two months since I’d been on this planet. One looked like a horse, another resembled a dog, another an elephant, another a sloth and another looked like nothing on earth. The weirdest of them all resembled a massive gaping hooter, but was even closer in appearance to a human. They all stood on hind legs, displaying erect penises and panting heavily as they yielded themselves to their burning carnal desires and started to approach us. No words could describe the dread that filled us at that moment.
“
“
“Here they come!”
We started to run for all we were worth. It was as if we were being pursued by the demons of vengeance for spying on the Walpurgis night feast. We felt like dead men already, and had lost all sense of our bearings. All we could do was to keep running, gasping and wheezing for breath as we imagined what might happen to us if we stopped or fell, those demonic beasts ravishing us from behind, their blood-red members thrust deep inside of us. Just when it seemed that our hearts would leap out of our mouths, it was Mogamigawa who at last flopped down onto the ground in exhaustion, then Yohachi on top of him, and finally myself on top of the two of them.
“Nooooooooooooo!” Mogamigawa, evidently mistaking us for the beasts, leapt up waving his arms about madly like a man in the throes of death, and tried to run off again. He was about to collide with an itchy scratchy tree that stood in his path, but howled with fright when he saw its trunk. “
A tapir-pig had become entangled in mistress bine on the trunk of the itchy scratchy tree, and had died as it remained fastened there. Its exposed face had started to decompose and its eyeballs had fallen out. We shuddered at the ghastly sight of its agonized features, and slumped to the ground petrified with terror.
“That’s odd,” I said with a tilt of my head when I’d recovered my senses and found my tongue again. I pointed at the carcass of the dead tapir-pig. “Mistress bine only has gripping force initially, but eventually it relaxes its hold. So a creature as large as that should be able to disengage itself easily. And anyway, this individual is a male. Surely, the animal would have lost its usefulness once it had released its protein, and the mistress bine would have returned to its usual dangling state…”
“Perhaps he gave himself up voluntarily?” suggested Yohachi. “Perhaps he got such an unbearable itch from the itchy scratchy tree, and because he didn’t have a partner, went to rub himself on the plant. Then he couldn’t stop doing it, and as more and more of the plants came to give him one, he eventually used up all his energy and died. That’s what I reckon.”
“Hmm. You may have something there,” I said, looking him up and down. “But what made you think that?”
“I dunno,” he laughed. “That itchy scratchy tree has been making me itch like hell for a while now. I wouldn’t mind getting tangled up in that plant myself!”
“You’ve already ejaculated seven or eight times and still you say that?!” said Mogamigawa with a frown. “How utterly disgusting!”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if all the animals in this jungle, including the ones that were mating just now, have their sexual desire aroused by the itchy scratchy tree,” I said with a nod to Mogamigawa as I got up. “It’s just one big orgy around here. Let’s get out, quick!”
In the blind panic of our flight, we’d strayed off our linear course through the jungle. I set off once more at the head of the group with compass in hand.
As we continued to push on westwards, we stumbled across a truly heart-rending scene. A female gaping hooter had collapsed at the foot of a sagging fern palm and, with thighs spread wide, was in the process of giving birth. The baby’s blood-drenched head and shoulders were already protruding outside the mother’s body. I stopped walking and lowered my head to watch.
Mogamigawa edged close to me and whispered in my ear. “Aren’t we right in the middle of an animal trail here? Why give birth in such a wide-open space, when it doesn’t even live here?”
“Because it has no natural enemies, of course,” I replied. “But look at the baby’s head! It doesn’t look anything like a gaping hooter – it’s a much larger creature. More like a hybrid between a gaping hooter and that bear-like thing we saw earlier.”
“The mother’s certainly having a hard time of it.”
“Yes. The baby’s too big and she will probably die. Look how badly she’s bleeding.”
“In that case, the baby will also die. There’ll be no mother to feed it, and no surrogate mother either, as it’s a hybrid.”
“Yes, naturally.” I stretched my back, then went over to examine the newborn before turning back to Dr Mogamigawa. “Hybrids like this must be born and die all the time in this jungle. Poor wretches! Right, let’s be on our way. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Wait a minute!” yelled Mogamigawa, placing his palm on my chest to hold me back. “Take a look at
A nursery spider, hanging on a thread that emerged from its backside, came sliding down from the trees directly above the prostrate body of the dying mother. We watched its behaviour closely, wondering what it was planning to do.
Though a mammal, the nursery spider seemed to have a number of silk-spinning glands in its backside, from which it produced a silk-like thread. This thread must have been formed by mucus secreted from those glands, instantly congealing on contact with air, and was found on closer observation to consist of several strands. If there were only one, it would have broken with the weight of the nursery spider alone. The spider descended onto the mother’s body with all four legs; then, after appearing to sniff around it, crawled across to the newborn hybrid by its side.
Suddenly, the spider popped the blood-soaked newborn into its mouth and stood up on its hind legs. Then it
