Kiss The Candle Goodnight 2
By tmt
- 650 reads
The following morning he woke up, as usual, with his right hand clasping his morning erection. He was trying to work out where he was. As he looked up, he let out a gasp of sheer surprise and pulled his hand away. There was an orangutan actually inside his hut, just 2 metres from him, staring. The effect of its soft brown eyes was very powerful, mesmerising. Gregg heard a sound to the left of him and moved only his eyes. He saw someone looking in through the square hole that was the window. It was Darwan.
‘Shhh’
He was gesturing with his finger in front of his mouth, the other hand moving slowly, bouncing an invisible ball. Gregg could hear someone else walking towards the hut, making twigs crack. The sound of stepping on cockroaches. The orangutan began to rotate its arms like a windmill.
A blow pipe was shoved through the square window followed by the whooshing sound of air blown through a tube. The dart landed between the orangutan’s shoulder blades, who, startled, made a dash for Gregg’s bed.
The orangutan entangled itself in the bright pink mosquito net that hung above his bed, its arms caught like a crab’s pincers in sea weed and its legs flayed madly, kicking at empty space. Gregg jumped up from the bed just as the orangutan came crashing down. He made a dash for the door and came face to face with Jana. He tried to place his hands front and back and bent down to cover himself more.
Jana’s laugh hung forever in the muggy air. She handed him her baseball cap but seemed to do it in slow motion, ‘Here, use this.’ He made as if to wear it on his head then placed it between his legs, winked and said, ‘All the rage this season, baseball jocks with matching socks.’
He was facing the little bag of grass that he had stuffed in one of the bamboo panels of the hut. He was pretty sure marijuana was illegal in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Darwan was trying to get the 40 kilo orangutan out of the mosquito net pulled down onto Gregg’s bed.
‘Hello, wouldn’t mind a hand here, thank you.’
Jana went ahead and Gregg pulled on a pair of boxers lying on the mud floor of his hut.
The tranquilliser had worked its magic, they were listening to the rhythmic sounds of a sleeping orangutan. Disturbingly human to look at. Darwan made a quick phone call then a jeep and crate arrived to take the hairy beast away.
Gregg was tucking in to a water-buffalo steak and fries when Jana walked into the restaurant. He smiled as she approached, Jana said, ‘I’m pleased I’ve tracked you down. There’s a trek tomorrow and we’ve decided to invite you along free of charge.’
Secretly, he was delighted, he’d already decided a trek would be too expensive so was just going to buy the permit and visit the feeding station. That would only cost forty thousand rupiah, about five US dollars. He tried not to show any emotion, like a poker player.
Jana said, ‘You’ll have to sign something saying you won’t talk to anyone about Fifi coming into your hut, but that’s all.’ His luck had changed for the better, and he asked how the orangutan was getting on.
‘Fifi? She’s fine now. She’s in the special hospital. Her baby died last week. Very sad.’
‘Sorry to hear that. Why was she on the ground, don’t they live in trees?’
‘Fifi was rescued from a cage, so she lives on the ground much more than wild orangutans. She’s what we call semi-wild.’
‘She seemed pretty wild to me.’
Predictable but funny. They both laughed. Too shrill. He hated the way his laugh got high pitched when he was nervous.
Jana was incredibly pretty, petite, small boned with warm brown eyes that lit up at Gregg’s clumsy attempt to talk. He must have been staring at her far too long, even for Indonesia.
'Are you OK, Gregg? If you are in shock you could see the doctor, I’ll arrange it for you.’
‘No, no.’
He wanted to say something sophisticated, something amusing, but his mouth was dry, his lips like rubber and his tongue had stuck to his upper palate. He had been smoking and was so very stoned that he kept drifting off, staring into his own thoughts. He went to hand her baseball cap back to her but she would hear none of it,
‘No, don’t worry, a nice souvenir for you.’
When she walked off he put it on his head and swung it around, gangster style. Yep, things were definitely looking up.
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Nice readable chapter-
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