Amazon Adventures

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the mud. I was lying in the middle of what appeared to be a clearing, surrounded on all sides by trees. I struggled to move. My whole body was aching, especially my skull. Where in hell was I? I was in some kind of forest. There wasn't a building in sight. I shouted, hoping to attract someone's attention. It was all coming back to me. I remembered the hotel room, the girl, and her acolyte who knocked me out after she slept with me. Man, this bitch and her man friend had me good! I cursed, calling her every name in the book. Man, when I returned to the hotel, I was going to make that bitch pay for what she did to me, and her friend too. I searched my pockets, and discovered that I didn't have my wallet anymore. Big surprise. I cursed again.

I would probably have gone on cursing the treacherous bitch for what she did to me if it hadn't been a low rumbling that I heard behind me. It didn't sound like thunder. No, it sounded like the sound a fierce predator might make. The same roar came again, this time much closer. I turned around, and saw it. The sight of it made me piss my pants. An enormous wild cat was prowling only twenty feet away from me.

A jaguar, native of South America! My blood froze. I couldn't move. The fearsome jaguar tensed its muscles, preparing to launch itself at me. I couldn't believe it. I had left the United States to find death at the jaws of a jaguar in the godforsaken jungle! I was looking at death and it looked back at me through yellow eyes. The end had come at last. There was no escape. Nevertheless, I screamed.

I waited to feel the jaguar's sharp fangs on me, and to feel its claws tear me up before it turned me into its lunch. It never came. I heard a sound like thunder, and then a thud. A foot away from me, the jaguar fell, dead. I looked at it, shocked. I couldn't talk. My heart was still beating like thunder in my chest. I was scared shitless. I turned around, and saw someone standing there with a gun. It was a dark-skinned girl and she held a smoking gun in her hands.