I took this photo a good decade ago. I helped out a friend, who set up a haunted house at “Fort Langley” located in the lower mainland in British Columbia, Canada. It was my job to set up the lighting and take some still photography. While I was writing “Never Diddle the Dead” this image came to mind. You can check out more of my photography at Chris Griffin’s Photography
“Never Diddle the Dead” is a short story involving short vignettes. It has been written in the twisted comedic style that is typical of “Angry Bear Film Productions”. Warning: Story involves graphic violence, sexual themes, gore, and a vomit inducing lack of good taste. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Part 3
The zombie apocalypse spread like no epidemic before it. Reports of a growing presence of famished corpses sprang up on all seven continents. There were stories from Antarctica of a brief zombie penguin uprising. It has been theorized that the virus had reached the icy landmass via infected sea life. A lone National Geographic videographer, Jacques Chartier – first came across an infected waddle of banded penguins. A population of roughly 230 birds. He was shocked by how unfazed they were by his presence. Without hesitation, the entire group of birds began their approach. Jacques was so entranced by these majestic creatures, that he ignored the warning signs; such as moulting feathers and festering wounds. The penguins approached him with slow and rhythmic waddles. Jacques, with camera to his eye, stood hypnotized as the penguins gradually descended on him. His knee caps never saw it coming. The entire horrific incident was uploaded to his digital cloud and streamed via a live satellite feed, as his wife and three daughters watched, helpless.
The solution to the penguins turned out to be a simple one; zombie leopard seals. A solution to the leopard seals? That’s a story too ghastly for even these pages. Let’s just say, it involved a hydrogen bomb strapped to the back of a live blue whale, and an oil tanker full of chum.
The spread of the virus was unprecedented. A cure came too late for most, especially those living in more remote regions. Animals became ferocious and nimble carriers of the disease. The infection would spread without prejudice through exposure to infected blood and other bodily fluids. Pathways to putrefaction were unpredictable and varied. It should go without saying, that widespread fornication with corpses, didn’t help the matter any. It “should” go without saying… it was still a contributing factor.
Some might say “let the perverts have their fun.” Whoever once said that, no longer says that. Honestly, most of them are dead. It’s true that most of the victims in these sordid tales were “career defilers”, but not all. Some happened to be no more than sexual opportunists. One might, by chance, come across a random dead body and think to themselves “I’d fuck that” and then do. A mere sample or “taste” can be just as deadly as an old habit. These samplers discovered all too late, that one should never diddle the dead.
Roninkoshi of the Huambisa Tribe, Amazon Rainforest, Peru.
A snake’s paradise. The rainforest was a baffling maze of thick vines, ferns, trees, and the promise of a violent death. When it wasn’t raining, it was pouring. An infinite moisture hung dense in the open air. The humidity was so prevalent, that every and all inhabitants were suspended in a constant state of being hot and bothered. In the Amazon, the face you made during sex was no different than the face you made while skinning wild game, building huts, or staring down a sloth. The tribes of the Amazon were the first to coin the phrase “taking it slow”, but in the context of sloth fornication. In the rainforest, love was deliberate and you never lost yourself in the moment, lest you were jumped by a jaguar, and not in a good way.
Roninkoshi was young enough to keep up with the most dangerous of predators. He was also old enough to understand the rapid changes that threatened his way of life. The modern world was closing in. Men who had lost touch with their roots. Some of these men were so pathetic in their domestication that if you asked them to stick their hand in a bag of cassava, they wouldn’t know a root from a rodent. Roninkoshi tested an English tourist in this exact way, and the man literally thought there was a hamster in the bag. A hamster! Roninkoshi was tempted to decapitate the man then and there.
Roninkoshi knew a thing or two about decapitation, for his occupation was that of a head hunter. He adored the irony in the English phrase “not worth losing your head over”. Roninkoshi adopted it as his catch phrase. Aside from the collecting and shrinking of heads, he considered himself a man of culture. Witticisms were not beyond his grasp or appreciation. He also possessed an impressive repertoire of artistic talents. Roninkoshi could work miracles with shrunken heads. Whether it was music by means of wind chimes. Friendship bracelets. Bobble-head voodoo dolls for the kids. A special roulette wheel for their new casino. He called it traditional tribal fare, with flare. His favourite creation was of a more personal nature. It was his prized shrunken-head string of anal beads. It brought new meaning to the phrases “head strung”, “heads up”, and “face plant”. A Canadian tourist once criticized the effectiveness of Roninkoshi’s puns. Roninkoshi cut off the man’s head, shrunk it, and added it to the beads.
As much passion as Roninkoshi held towards his art, he took his job seriously. It was his duty to protect his tribe’s territory from threats, both native and foreign. The greatest rising threat came from poachers. Too many of his tribesmen had perished when mistaken for game. His brave old friend, Tonkiri, met that very fate. Tonkiri was minding his business, returning the life he consumed to the earth, when his life was taken. He was squatting over his favourite hole, bellowing prayers to the gods… mainly prayers of mercy; for his bowels were cursed. His mighty chants were mistaken for the screams of a wild vicuña. It was an ironic death, for vicuña grazed in the higher altitudes of the Andes, never in the depths of the rainforest. Gross foreign ignorance had been the end of poor constipated Tonkiri, a rifle shot to his throat. Roninkoshi vowed to avenge his fallen brother.
Vicuña were not common targets for poachers in this region, due to the fact that there weren’t any. Jaguars on the other hand, were in great demand. Their furs were smooth, colourful, luxurious, and well groomed. The cleanliness of cats made them their own worst enemies. As far as Roninkoshi was concerned, Jaguars might as well prowl the jungle wearing signs that read “Shoot, skin, and hang me on your wall. You’re in-laws will love me!” Foolish beasts.
Roninkoshi killed every poacher he crossed paths with. In fact, six of his seventeen shrunken head anal beads came from poachers. Some tribesmen believe that seventeen anal beads are more than any man can handle; Roninkoshi pities those fools.
It was the eve of the Amazon’s rainy season. The forest had grown increasingly more moist, and not in a good way. Bugs buzzed frantically, frogs prepared for hibernation, and potent poisonous plants poisoned poignantly. Roninkoshi patrolled the outer perimeter of his tribe’s territory. He knew every tree, plant, stream, and hole in the ground. Roninkoshi had a photographic memory, and literally saw things he couldn’t un-see. He came across a trampled fern that had not been trampled the day before. If that wasn’t enough to draw his suspicion, the George Foreman portable grill placed atop the fern, was a dead give-away. Clearly, someone had camped there, and due to the freshness of the chipotle maple barbecue sauce dripping from the grill, it had been recent. Also, nearby, there was a pile of dead animals, and a tent with the phrase “World’s Best Poacher” stitched onto its side in Spanish. Roninkoshi’s blood boiled hot as he stood frozen and admired the craftsmanship of the stitch-work on the tent wall. The greatest of evils had the steadiest of hands.
A crackle from the dense bush caused Roninkoshi to instinctively take to hiding behind a tree’s trunk. He peaked around its cylindrical edge and caught sight of a man walking in the direction of the camp. Roninkoshi could immediately tell that this man was from Nicaragua from the cocky swagger in his step, or maybe it was a limp. It was also possible his left leg had fallen asleep. Who really knows? All Roninkoshi could deduce was that he walked funny. The poacher swung has arm haphazardly at the air in a manner that reminded Roninkoshi of a sloth slapping another sloth in the face. The mental image almost forced a laugh out of the head hunter’s mouth. Rage replaced humour as Roninkoshi took aim with his trusty rifle – because traditional Huambisa weapons were for suckers.
One shot to the heart was all it took. The poacher crashed to the ground face first. Roninkoshi ran over to his fresh kill, and rolled him onto his back. The dead man looked pale, like a Scotsman only less jovial. What stood out about the man most, was the black eye patch over his right eye. Roninkoshi admired the fabric weave in the eye patch as he slammed the edge of his axe into the poacher’s neck. Like a cork popping free from the neck of a champaign bottle, the removal of a man’s head marked the beginning of a celebration. Roninkoshi hooted out in pride as he raised the head up into the air by its hair. Once again, his focus fell back onto the eye patch. A curious thought entered his mind.
With dismembered head held in one hand, Roninkoshi lifted back the eye patch with the other. He dipped his index finger into the gaping hole. The socket when damp and warm. The flesh was tender; it felt nice to the touch. He looked over his shoulder; nobody was around for miles. It was just him and the head, with its slutty little eye socket. The eyelid overtop the hole winked involuntarily, like lips pursed together in a kiss. It was inviting him home, like a brain-pussy calling him back to the place where dirty thoughts are born.
Roninkoshi was in the process of undoing the tie on his shorts, when an old warning from his friend Tonkiri came back to him. “Nothing good ever came from hijinks and skullfuckery.” He knew he should heed his friend’s warning, but this came from a man who believed demons haunted his anus. Everyone knew Tonkiri ate too much cassava root, ass demons were a convenient excuse. None of this mattered anymore, for Tonkiri was dead and gone. What wasn’t gone was a perfectly fuckable eye socket.
Penis met juicy eye socket for the first time. It felt like a blow job, but without teeth to get in the way. Roninkoshi applied pressure to the back of the decapitated head, as he attempted to sink deeper into the skull. The head hunter hesitated as a clacking sound caught his ear. Cock in skull, he looked about, as alert as ever. He had never heard such a sound. Not from any snake, insect, or bird he ever encountered. It was when he looked down that he found the sound’s origin.
The dead poacher’s jaw was moving up and down rapidly. It was his teeth that were generating the clacking sound. The corpse’s one good eye peered up and made eye contact with Roninkoshi. The head hunter freaked and released his grip on the head. It didn’t drop far, as its teeth became tangled in Roninkoshi’s robust bush. The dismembered head dangled from his pubes, teeth biting desperately a mere inch away from Roninkoshi’s testicles. Strong genetics worked against him, for his pubes held under the strain.
Roninkoshi stood perfectly still, afraid that any movement he made might swing the biting corpse head into his baby-makers. The head hunter was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. He understood the physics behind the swing of a pendulum. Hell, he once built his own pendulum using a shrunken head; he didn’t even require a rope, he just braided the head’s length of hair. It was called being resourceful. If he could wait this out, gravity would eventually cause the teeth to slide free from his pubic hair.
He took in a deep breath, ready for the long… A bone chilling roar took Roninkoshi by surprise. The sound reverberated violently through the entirety of his body. With instinct honed from a life lived in the harsh Amazon, Roninkoshi leap away from the source of the sound. The weight from the rotting skull, hung from his pubes, lowered the poor man’s centre of gravity, causing him to fall forward and straight onto his face and stomach. The zombie head became squeezed between ground and Roninkoshi’s pelvis. His penis forcibly re-entered the undead eye socket, penetrating its brain. The zombie head’s jaw went slack as the deep penetration caused Roninkoshi to climax.
Roninkoshi of the Huambisa Tribe, life spared by accidental brain penetration.
Roninkoshi’s relief was short lived. A second roar turned his gaze in the direction of a full grown male jaguar. His gun was out of reach, and the end seemed inevitable.
The jaguar gave the headless body of the poacher a sniff and then backed off a few steps in revulsion. It stared at Roninkoshi.
The head hunter rolled off of the zombie head. It lay lifeless once more. He carefully picked in up off the ground. It didn’t move, and the one good eye gazed off into space. Roninkoshi tossed the head in the direction of the jaguar, as an offering. With its front paw, like a pro volleyball player, the jaguar spiked the head back to the man. Roninkoshi caught it, and then tossed it off into the bush.
If a jaguar could appear concerned, this one did. It showed no desire to attack, as if it knew that some things were better left untouched. This wild beast was clearly wiser than Roninkoshi. The cat knew something was off with the poacher… that something might be off with Roninkoshi.
Roninkoshi suddenly felt a rumbling down under, in his gut. The shrunken head anal beads, he didn’t bother removing them the night before. As of late, he had become so accustomed to having them up in there, that he would just leave them. Hard to lose them when they are safely stowed away in his anal cavity. This proved to be a mistake. Like an anaconda with a stomach full of large stones squeezing through a mole hole, he could feel the beads slowly slithering their way up into his intestines. Whatever had reanimated the poacher, must have done the same to the shrunken heads.
An unfathomable agony shot through Roninkoshi’s lower regions, as the beads began to eat him from the inside-out.
The Jaguar stood and watched, while it bathed itself with its coarse tongue. Roninkoshi fell to the ground and writhed in torment, as the jaguar mocked him with its immaculate hygiene. This was a message from the gods, that Roninkoshi had fallen victim to his own filthy habits. It was an unspoken commandment, that one should never diddle the dead.
Roninkoshi of the Huambisa Tribe, death by shrunken head anal beads.
To be continued…
You can learn more about the author, Chris Griffin, at About Me.
You can also read this story on Wattpad.