I should have listened when Dr. Kabelovsky told me not to play football in the middle of a forest in Brazil with strange native American Indian women wearing grass bikinis... I didn’t even think there were native American Indian women in Brazil, I thought they were in America. Apparently, Dr. Kabelovsky explained knowingly, they were driven out of their home land early last century by stampeding antelopes migrating from northern Canada for the winter. My limited knowledge of geography and biology told me that antelopes didn’t migrate, or stampede, or live in northern Canada, but I could have been wrong. Anyway, most of the men were strong enough to stay behind and stand up to the stampeding antelopes, and even had contests to see who could collect the most antlers during a single stampede, although some of the weaker men went with the women.


       Well, I should have listened to the wise doctor, but I didn’t. I certainly paid the price. I was stuck for weeks in this weird tree house, looking longingly at the ground about 80 meters below through a heart shaped window, unable to get down. The grass-bikini clad women were so impressed with my football playing they insisted I come back for afternoon tea. I gratefully accepted, of course, as I was very hungry and thirsty and tired, and a rest in the company of these fine people would do me good. Of course there was no way I could possibly have known that they were going to give me green tea, which I despise but accepted gratefully and reluctantly forced myself to drink, and they made their chocolate cake with low fat milk, which I find always has an obvious lack of taste. And of course, little did I know that they’d lock me up and keep me there as a play thing. Literally as a play thing. They’d come and play with me for hours on end. It's pretty gross actually, some of these women were obese, and they sweated heaps. They’re huge perspiring bellies wobbled around, looking like the face of a drooling pug, sticking to my bare skin like a stamp does to an envelope. And then it was as if they’d steam them off, and then lick them to try and stick them back on.

       Some of the women weren’t so grossly obese though. Some were very tasty indeed, slim yet firm bodies, faces like supermodels’, deep, rich eyes. These ones weren’t so bad, their bellies only occasionally rubbed against me, and when they did the feel was of smooth, perfect skin, like silk, not of the wet rubbery feel of the larger women.

       So anyway, for weeks these women played with me for hours at a time, saying they’d never had any men with such amazing stamina before. I wouldn’t have thought this to be the case, not after seeing some of the men there. To these men it seemed like a sport, each man competing with each other, trying to win the hearts of the women and become their play thing. It was very tiring for me, but hour after hour, day after day, they’d come and play with my long, black, flowing, thick, smooth hair. Apparently, I gathered by the hurt looks of the occasional male visitor to my house high up in the trees, this was the tribal sport. The passion of the tribe that elected the male leader. Actually, when I was first taken up there, there was another man who’d just had his hair done in a bun by a gorgeous looking girl surrounded by dozens more giggling girls, but was immediately thrown out the window when they saw there was a replacement mop of hair to style endlessly.

       To me, at first, it was awful. A terrifying, horrific experience, as the women came in, sometimes by the dozen, other times by themselves, and stroked, combed, brushed, platted, braided, styled, gelled, tied, bleached, and knotted my hair. They’d even tie bread loaf bag twisty thingoes around small bunches of hair, creating hundreds of little pony tails.

       There were two kinds of women, the obese kind, and the slimmer, better looking kind. One of the two breeds, the obese one, seemed much more important than the other, each with a fancy ribbon in their gray hair and a snarl that seemed to say “I’m so good, worship me,” on their pitifully ugly faces. I dreaded the time I had to spend with them. It seemed the other kind, the kind I didn’t mind, indeed the kind I grew to enjoy playing with my hair the way a little girl does with her Dad’s, or a teenage girl does with her boyfriends, or a mother does with her daughters, or I suppose similar to how a cat claws the sheets of a bed before she’ll sleep there... this slimmer, better looking kind would always have their playtime in the morning, until the mid afternoon, when the obese ones would take over. These obese ones were a lot older, it seemed. They had gray hair and wrinkled faces, in comparison to the shiny black hair that flowed majestically around the beautiful, smooth faces of the young breed. They also seemed to order the younger ones around with an arrogance that suggested to me they were very important in the tribe, maybe like the chieftesses or something. Maybe because there were so few men who were so scrawny when the tribe first arrived here nearly two hundred years ago, the tradition that had grown was that women led the tribe, and men were their toys. At least men’s hair was. That’s certainly what it seemed.

       Now, in the middle of this tree house, there was a poor excuse for a kitchen, consisting only of a rusty old metal tub sitting over an even rustier metal stove sitting in the middle of the room; a small set of shelves holding mysterious jars and bottles that contained what must have been herbs or spices, or maybe ground up grass; and, strangely, a cardboard box full canned vegetables. I have no idea where they got these from, the box or the canned vegies, way out in the middle of a forest in Brazil. Come to think of it I really do have no idea how they’d managed to build a house 80 meters up in the tree tops, with walls and a roof, all perfectly fitting together, and a stove in the middle, a chimney escaping out of the roof. And how everyone, up to 20 or 30 or even more people at a time, could walk around with ease in the fairly large house (well, I thought it was large considering it was at the top of a tree), without even the hint of a bulge in the floor. This actually frightened me a lot for the first week or so, before I got used to it all.

       While waiting for their turn at me, three of four of the obese breed of women would fumble around in the “kitchen” and prepare lots of meals. Most of what they cooked they ate themselves or threw out the window, apparently to other people waiting down on the ground, but they did feed me very well. Every afternoon and evening, they’d present me with the lovely gift of canned vegetables and exotic herbs and spices, cooked in a rust-ridden pot over a stove in muddy water that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I got used to it. Then I got sick of it. But I never went hungry, even though I’d go from dusk until mid-afternoon the next day without eating.

       There was also a small room with a shower, toilet, and sink. I found shaving equipment behind the glass mirror that opened up as a cupboard. Strange, but I didn’t really give it much thought, instead gratefully accepting the convenience, however weird.

       So for weeks this went on, the younger ones coming in the morning, and staying until mid afternoon, giggling and whispering as they watched their friends style my hair in the weirdest fashions, excitedly rushing forward and grabbing my hair when they thought it was their turn. This often hurt, but I didn’t mind it. They were usually very gentle with my hair, and after a while I really did start to enjoy their company, even though they were using me as a means of recreational entertainment, and I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying. Sometimes one would look me in the eyes and smile, I’d readily smile back. Then they’d look away, often bursting into a fit of high pitched giggling with a group of friends, sometimes talking excitedly with her friends like a bunch of teenage girls do when they get a look they think was one of approval from the most popular guy at their school. Sometimes they’d ramble on in a boastful sort of way as if to say, “Did you see the way he looked at me? I bet he never looks at you like that!” It was most likely my over-active imagination though, I often thought, trying to bring myself back down to Earth, at least in one sense, and decided they must have been saying “Gee, what a dork. Look at the way he smiles at me, thinking I’m gonna just keep standing there smiling goofily at him. If only he knew what we’re gonna do when we finish playing with his hair,” which is what the giggling must have been all about. Although if they were thinking that, it didn’t effect their enthusiasm when they got at my hair and the excitement to get to it when it was their turn.

       I always found it interesting, amazing, the styles they’d come up with. Sometimes my hair would come out deep purple, braided into dozens of thick pony tails. Sometimes yellow, green, and orange in a very thick pony tail. Occasionally in a big, red and pink checkered bun. Sometimes brightly multicoloured in thick knots, which would be annoying because the way they combed out the knots, gently, painlessly, almost lovingly, took time, and usually the overweight half of the tribe would come for their turn before they could finish, having to finish the job themselves, and they were much less gentle, viciously attacking my hair with their spiky metal combs and bristly brushes which would stick into the back of my head at times and was quite painful.

       So the pretty ones would stay until about mid afternoon. They were constantly coming in and going out, but there’d rarely be less than a dozen or so in there at a time. I had my eye constantly on them, and managed to get a very accurate number. There were either 41 or 42, depending on whether any of the ones I saw during the day was the night stalker, or whether the night stalker was a completely different person. The night stalker I speak of is an important part of an unimportant story, I’ll explain her later on. Anyway, after hours of the beautiful young girls, the ugly versions of these native American Indian women would come and take over, arrogantly dismissing from duty what I like to call the “2nd edition” of women, the younger, more refined breed, something evolution got right. Amazingly, every one of the girls would get their turn, each girl having what certainly seemed like an equal amount of time, whether sharing with another girl or having me all to themselves, before the evil tyrants came along.

       The ugly ones were far less gentle. They were downright rough, pulling and tugging at my hair and attacking it with their combs and brushes. It was not a pleasant experience, their rough handling of my hair mixed with their rubbery, sweaty bodies. But their was one girl who was out of place with the obese ones, one who should have been with the pretty ones. This one was absolutely beautiful, like all the very best features from each of the others rolled into one girl. One of the fat ones seemed to be her mother. She seemed to always boss her daughter around and keep a very close eye on her when she was having her turn at my hair. Maybe she was the chief of the the tribe, training her daughter to be her successor. Poor girl, I thought, she seemed so nice and pleasant, being trained in the evil ways of her mother and her breed of nasty overweight cows.

       It was this girl, I thought, that would sneak in unnoticed every night at about 2 or 3 in the morning. (Heck for all I know it could have been 6 in the afternoon, I didn’t have my watch, and these primitive natives couldn’t even fry eggs, let alone tell the time... I don’t know what the grandfather clock in my tree house was for, it was broken down at 7:42, the pendulum twisted around what was now a skeletons throat, but I think the clock must have been a souvenir from the long journey south during the stampedes.) This girl would come and start gently caressing my hair with her long slender fingers, and had almost exactly the same touch as the chieftess’s daughter, which is why I thought they probably were the same girl. The first night I didn’t know what she was doing, I could feel the odd tugging on my hair, the occasional hard yank which would jolt my head back suddenly and unexpectedly (for me anyway), and when she was finished, she’d go away. The morning after that first night I was amazed to find when the morning sun shone through and I could see in the mirrors, one in front and one behind me, that she’d tied two bows with my hair, one on either side. She didn’t tie bows in my hair, she made bows with it. I got used to this feeling of having natural bows in my hair, and after a while I began to think that it was actually rather cute. This particular girl did it every night, without fail. I never saw her though, because it was dark. I could tell it was the same girl every night though because of her gentle touch, and I was almost certain she was the chieftess’s daughter.

       So for weeks this went on. The whole time I was wondering if and when I’d ever get out, despite growing to live quite comfortably in my new lifestyle. Then, one night when the mysterious girl snuck in, instead of tying my hair in bows, she took me by the hand and started leading me out the door. I’d always wondered where the door went to, I could never get out because it was locked firmly when I was left alone, and if I tried walking towards it when I wasn’t, they’d almost crush me to death between themselves and force me back. The only other way out was jumping out the window, at least 80 meters to the ground, which I had considered a few times. But now this strange girl was leading me through the door, muttering to herself in the native tongue. It led out to a spiraling staircase that went to the bottom. Ingenious architects, these primitive native people. Amazing, how they could build such a sturdy structure so high in the trees, when they seemed so primitive. She rushed down the long flight of spiraling stairs, her hand grasping mine. Before long we reached the bottom. Continuing to lead me away along a path through the forest, she took out a torch, yet another little thing that surprised me. Where did she get a torch from? I suppose it wasn’t as surprising as the seemingly endless supply of canned vegetables, and heck, the whole thing with the playing with my hair in a tree house 80 meters from the ground, but I still hadn’t learned to prepare myself for surprising little things like the torch.

       “I don’t mean to pry, but where are you taking me?” I said, for a second almost forgetting that she wouldn’t have been able to speak a word of English.

       “Off to some sacrificial ritual or something? Are you cannibals here? Or maybe you eat hair, and you have to prepare it over a long period by meddling endlessly with it.” The girl looked at me as if to say “Yeah. We eat hair. We sprinkle the toenails on top and cook it in your sweat.”

       “Where you lead me?” I asked, vaguely hoping that maybe if I talked real primitive-like, she’d be able to understand me. “Where us go?” She just kept leading the way, tightly holding my hand. I could feel her fingernails sinking into my flesh., the way my sister’s used to when she impatiently led me places.

       “You help me escape?” I tried again. “If help me escape, me give big reward,” I offered. “Me give heap big wig of hair.” It didn’t seem to be working. “Oh gee what am I doing, trying to talk English to this girl,” I said, annoyed at myself for being so stupid. “Oh well, at least I’m going somewhere.”

       “Will you settle down a bit, you’re making to much noise, they might hear us!” the girl said.

       “Oh yeah, course, sorry,” I said quietly, realizing what an idiot I was, talking away loud as ever in the middle of the night. Of course, it never occurred to me that we were trying to escape and didn’t want anyone to hear us. “Wait just a minute... did you speak English?”

       “No, it just so happens that our language is exactly the same as yours,” she replied.

       “Really? That’s incredible!”

       “Of course I spoke English! Now keep the noise down!” Her English was perfect, her accent unmistakably British.

       “Who are you?” I asked.

       “My name is Sherry,” she answered frankly.

       “Oh, pleased to meet you Sherry. Name’s Dave Jones. Are you part if that weird hair obsessed tribe back there?” I asked dumbly.

       “Yeah, I’m the chieftess’s daughter,” she said, looking back at me, a smile crawling across her face. Then she looked back and sped up. “I shouldn’t be doing this, but I was scared of Big Hairy Ape-Boy.”

       “Who the...”

       “This new guy,” she cut in, “he’s only about 17, but recently his hair has been getting really long and thick, it was only a matter of time before they throw you out the window and he replaced you. Although at first I’m sure most of the girls would’ve voted you stay,” she said looking back again, grinning widely.

       “Uh huh,” I grunted. “What’s with the whole hair thing anyway?”

       “To be honest with you, I don’t know. Just a tribal tradition. Apparently it’s been going on for years.”

       “Okay... where are you taking me?”

       She let go of my hand for the first time since we left the tree house, ducked under a low tree branch lying across the path, then stood up, brushing her long flowing hair out of her radiant face as she waited for me to come under the branch. I failed to notice the branch in time, however, and smashed right into it.

       “Careful!” She said, examining me as I stood up having crawled under the branch. I muttered a quick “I’m okay”, then repeated my last question.

       “Back to your home, where do you think?” To me the answer wasn’t so striking, obviously she thought it should have been.

       “Oh okay, just that... well my home is a long way away.”

       “Yeah, Australia right?” she said knowingly.

       “How’d you know?”

       “Your accent, who else speaks with such a horrible broad accent, so strine, so ocker, so insulting to the English language...”

       “Uh.. well.. fine then...”

       “Besides, I found your wallet in your back pocket one night, it had your license and a whole bunch of other cards.”

       I don’t know why, but the conversation seemed to die for a while. She continued to lead me through the dark forest, along what seemed to be a path, but was overgrown with shrubs and bushes growing among twisting, towering trees. Every now and then I heard the piercing shriek of some wild animal or bird. I would have stopped dead and been scared to death if not for the reassuring hand of Sherry leading the way as if she traveled it every day. After a while we came to a clearing, with a wide dirt road continuing on the other side. Sherry walked over to a huge mound, with a camouflaging sheet over it. She pulled the sheet off and revealed a jeep, so far the most shocking thing I’d seen during my stay.

       “Get in, quick. We don’t have much time before sunrise,” she said, jumping behind the wheel.

       “Sure, sure,” I said, still overcome by the jeep, very well camouflaged under a sheet (although it was the middle of the night and I wasn’t exactly looking for it) in the middle of a forest.

       “Hey look,” I began as she started up the road, “I don’t mean to be nosy, but... what exactly... I mean... who... where... what do...” I stammered around a bit, trying to find the right words to pop the question that had been on my mind the whole time I was there, and had been trying to pop since I found out she could speak English.

       “Our tribe?” she said simply, understandingly. I don’t know how she knew what I was thinking, but just uttering those two words made it all so much easier.

       “Yeah,” I blurted out, relieved.

       “And why we seem so primitive yet have the tracings of a modern civilization?” she went on, almost taking the words out of my mouth.

       “Something like that, yeah.”

       “Well for a start, nobody knows about my jeep,” she said, rubbing the side of it proudly, lovingly, and eying the wheel lustfully as she drove on. “The torch is just one of my many little gadgets I pick up when I go for drives into the city. I have a passion for them you know, I collect all sorts of high-tech gadgets. Cameras, stereos, mobile phones, two-way radio systems, laptops for hacking into organizations like the CIA and NASA, global positioning satellites...”

       Wow, I thought, she collects those? Yet she lives in a tiny little tribal village in the middle of a forest... She saw my look of bewilderment and laughed joyfully, “Yeah, it’s a hobby of mine, but I keep them all out here in the jeep and a few other places, if Mama found out I’d be killed. Boiled probably. If I was lucky I’d be quartered then eaten at a royal banquet.” I looked back to the front, dumbfound. We bumped along the rough road. I could only see what the headlights were lighting. Just as I turned my head away from Sherry’s beautiful face, a moose relieving himself on the side of the road came into view, although at the time I was still too shocked to take any notice. It wasn’t until years later when I read my autobiography that I noticed this.

       “I... well... wow...” I said, shocked.

       She laughed again, just a happy little laugh that signaled amusement and understanding. “Yeah, we’re a rough tribe, vicious sometimes.”

       “How’d you come to be part of the tribe?” I asked dumbly, desperately wanting to learn more about this fascinating girl. She looked at me with a look that said “didn’t your father ever teach you about the birds and the bees?” and then answered blankly,

       “I was born.” A few awkward seconds passed as I realized what a dumb question it was, when she continued. “I could easily escape from the tribe and go live in a mansion in the city if I wanted.”

       “Why don’t you?” I asked, watching the wind blow her hair in her face and seeing her brush it away yet again.

       “I dunno, my life is with the tribe, I’ve been a part of it for so long... and besides, I’m the chieftess’s daughter, someone needs to run the tribe when she’s gone.”

       “Ohh, okay..” I said sympathetically.

       “It must be hard to understand,” she continued, in an almost sad tone, turning her head to face me, “but I belong there. I can’t leave.” Keeping her eyes on mine for a few seconds without looking forward again at all, she stomped on the break, the jeep coming to a sudden jolting stop.

       “Why are we stopped?” I said, looking around, my hand on my seat belt ready to take it off. I noticed we were now in some sort of town. I could hear a train off in the distance, coming towards us.

       “The light’s red, stupid,” she said.

       “Oh, right. So how do you know English so well?” I asked, quickly wanting to change the subject. No one else in the tribe spoke it, not that I knew of anyway. I’d attempted to communicate with them a number of times, twice with the younger version. Both on the first day. I started yelling frantically as they started on my hair, “What are you doing? I’m too young to die, nooo!! Can’t we just settle this like mature adults? Sit down over a cup of coffee and discuss this? You can’t just kill me here, I never did a thing to you!” I was frantic, but of course, they couldn’t understand a word of it, and only tied me up to stop me running around wildly.

       Hours later they untied me. I started looking them in the eye and speaking slowly and clearly, so that if any of them happened to speak English they could hear me clearly. No luck. So for a week or so I just didn’t say anything at all, excepting the odd comment or two to myself. Luckily they didn’t tie me up at all after the first time.

       After a while I brought up the courage to try and speak to the older kind, hoping that maybe the others were maybe still learning English in college or something, and the older ones, being the leaders responsible for the running of the camp, so it seemed, might speak it fluently. I mean there had to be a foreign minister, some ambassador somewhere else in the world, fighting for the rights of this tribe slowly becoming extinct, surely. Well it was no more than a wild hope, for when I did start, it only resulted in my arms flying wildly around the room, and me becoming extremely frustrated. I gave up when one of the fat ones put her hand on my mouth, and swore never to try again as the sweat poured slowly down my throat.

       “My grandfather taught me when I was little,” she said, answering my question that seemed like an eternity ago, even though she answered almost immediately. “He and I are the only ones in the tribe ever who have been able to speak it, or who knows we can. He wanted me to have a life away from the tribe, but made me swear I would never abandon it. He taught me everything I know about western civilization.”

       “How did he know?” I probed, genuinely interested in what the radiant girl had to say, as the train wizzed past us. It startled me a bit. Until now I hadn’t even noticed that we had stopped at a railway.

       “He was subscribed to Time magazine for a few years before he died,” she answered. I was again taken by sudden surprise, but the effect was wearing thin. I thought to myself, there are so many of these weird twists that it’s just not funny anymore, it’s scary. It’s almost dumb.

       “Oh yeah,” I continued, hoping not to sound to skeptical, “and he learned English from that?”

       “No, his half-brother would also sneak out of the tribe just about every night, like I do, and he taught him. Of course, it was a sworn secret between the two of them and me. I think his half-brother’s a lawyer or something in New York now.” This just keeps getting weirder and weirder and weirder.

       “I thought you said you and your grandfather were the only ones..?”

       “Grandpa’s half-brother wasn’t part of the tribe, just a regular visitor,” she replied. I was too surprised to come up with anything intelligent to say, so I just turned back to the road, luckily in time to catch the extraordinary sight a couple of monkeys fighting with a bear over a bag of peanuts, or so it seemed in the dark.

       For another hour or so, we traveled along the road, through towns, into some city, which she told me was Rio de Jenairo, and on and on, the sun rising slowly, and me oblivious to most of it all as I was listening intently to Sherry’s every word. I did, however, notice that many people recognized Sherry and waved to her from the side of the road, Sherry waving back with a quick smile. Lots of people know her considering she only gets out at night when no one else knows she’s gone, I thought. This is just weird, is she telling the whole truth? Maybe she is, but if she is, the truth is just incomprehensibly weird.

       So for what would have been close to an hour, we chatted away about anything and everything, yet nothing. I told her my life story, how I came to be in the forest, why I was visiting Brazil, where I lived, everything, even my 2nd grade chemistry teacher’s name, Carly. That was when she started getting suspicious, asking if it was just a new thing or if they’d always taught chemistry in 2nd grade, but I explained that I referred to my first and only girlfriend I had when I was 7 as my 2nd grade chemistry teacher. I learned enough from Carly that I decided never to get another girlfriend. She looked at me, and I knew that she knew that I wasn’t telling the whole truth. Embarrassed, I confessed that I hadn’t decided anything of the sort, but she was the only one who had ever even wanted to be my girlfriend. She quickly muttered something about knowing for a fact that Carly wasn’t the only one, before suddenly changing the subject to her father’s flatulence disorder, explaining that no matter how many baked beans he ate, he simply could not pass gas at the table. It was a major embarrassment for the whole family, and him being the chieftess’s husband, it was a major embarrassment for the whole tribe. If he wasn’t the chieftess’s husband, she went on to explain, he most likely would have been boiled.

       Before I could say anything on the matter, we arrived at an airport.

       “I have a one-way ticket to Sydney, your plane leaves in an hour. I’d love to stay with you til it leaves, but I must be getting back, please understand,” her voice drifted off. She was looking into my eyes with a sad look, yet deep down in them I could see what was almost a loving look.

       “Hey, well... I guess this is... goodbye,” I had to force out the last word. “What’s your address, we can keep in touch..” I asked, fumbling around for a pen, then realizing I hadn’t seen a pen in weeks, and had probably forgotten how to write.

       “Oh how I’d love to,” she went on melodramatically, “but I can’t, we can’t get mail.”

       “What about your grandfather, you said he was subscribed to Time?”

       “Yes, but our mailbox broke.”

       “Well, can’t you...” I stopped short, realizing it was pointless to go on. No point arguing with her, either she didn’t want to or she genuinely couldn’t. For some reason I had a hunch it was the latter, even though I was sure she must have been able to get mail from the city or something. She got something out of her pocket, and tied it around my neck.

       “I want you to have this, to remember me by,” she said. I looked down at it, studying it curiously. There were four shiny red things tied to the end of the string. “They’re my mother’s wisdom teeth, coated in iguana blood.” I immediately dropped them.

       “Thank you,” I said, meaning it, even if they were teeth belonging to that old obese ugly woman who tormented me so much during my stay, coated in iguana blood. “Thanks very much.” I looked at her.

       We stood no more than a foot apart from each other, looking into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. I found my heart beating heavily at an astonishing rate. Was it possible that I’d fallen for a tribal girl? Amazing, I thought. I was a good head taller than her, and as I looked down into her beautiful, deep, rich eyes, I could have sworn I saw evidence that she was feeling the same thing. Slowly, she moved her head up towards mine, which was slowly moving down towards hers. My heart beating even faster, I could feel my lips trembling with every heart beat as they made their way for hers. Then she moved her right hand from her side up to my eye and scraped with her long, sharp fingernail. I cringed.

       “You have something in your eyelash,” she said, the same melancholy tone in her voice. I was slightly disappointed. I honestly thought that it was going to be the first time since I was sitting in the school playground with a grotty little girl called Carly that... anyway, it wasn’t. She stood back and said, “I will miss you,” before going back to her jeep and driving off without looking back. I stood there watching the point where I could no longer see the jeep for 40 minutes (yes, I timed it on the giant clock at the airport), not expecting her to return, but just speechless, mulling over the events of the night, before I finally turned around and went through security, onto the plane.




       The next morning, I awoke at home. I could vaguely remember arriving at Sydney and getting a taxi home. It must have been all a dream. Boy, what a relief, what a strange dream.

       I went out and started making some coffee. Then I noticed the four red wisdom teeth tied around my neck. I stood there, perplexed, scratching my head. The kettle boiled. A truck roared down the highway. A couple of cats started fighting in the backyard. Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked...

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© Daniel Simon, 2001. All rights reserved. Any copying of this story wholly or in part for any use whatsoever is strictly prohibited. Reading of this story could result in extreme boredom and/or starting to worry about the sanity of the author. Please note that the author is completely sane, but does not always act so. The taking seriously of this story is stricly prohibited. All events in this story are fictional, any event/name in this story that happens to be parallel to an actual historical event or real person is mere coincidence and not intended by the author. Also please note that as far as the author is aware, there is no such tribe of native American Indians or any tribes in Brazil or anywhere on Earth who carry out such practices as mentioned in this story.

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