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“If the jungle doesn’t eat you up alive… I will!”
The words danced around in his skull, rattling off the bones, playing chaos on the sphenoid, clearing out the hypophyseal fossa so they could relax on the sella tursica while jolting Jason’s brain to life with words, words, words. They poked like knives. Knives poked like swords. Words. A constant hiss, a susurration intolerable, daggers stabbing at the sinuses, driving out from a place deep behind his eyes—it was all backwards—it was all very wrong. Something was very wrong. A neon “S” blinked on and off just out of sight to the periphery, making the words into swords and dull pains and aches became roars. The words became swords and Jason screamed and was devoured whole by them--when he fully came to, all that remained was this dull hissing sound—like a tv that had stopped its broadcasting but wasn’t turned off—white noise. He was bound, as he was before. Caged. It was only when he started to instinctively struggle that the deja-vu reminded him who exactly he was and what had transpired, and more importantly, that his brother was Dead. And that incessant hissing—it was maddening—he must have a concussion because all he could think was that hiss and those words, the swords, and a tv that had stopped receiving its broadcasting. Only there was no TV, there was just the madman himself, Vaas, hissing through his teeth as he sat out in the shadows, just watching Jason, eyes glittering. Predatory.
“Shit!—“ Jason tried to jerk away, but was held fast.
Vaas looked more amused than ever. Then,
“YOU KILLED MY BROTHER, YOU ASSHOLE” Jason shrieked—his voice taking up so much rage that it was inhuman—he didn’t have the wherewithal to be embarrassed that his voice jumped several octaves up to a high-pitched pathetic squeal—as opposed to a much more intimidating low, loud rumble like booming thunder, which would have been what he was going for. Maybe he could yell so hard that it resonated within this psycho and blew him to pieces.
“You look mad, hermano.” Vaas’s voice was relatively level, besides that sort of manic excitement that tended to lurk behind his words, slipping and entwining with his accent like stripes on a tiger. It was there, blatant, glaring, but Jason couldn’t look away from those horrible vicious eyes. “Befo—“ Vaas was cut off by Jason yelling again—
“FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU” so forceful and loud that it was unintelligible.
“Hey! Shut up!” Vaas slammed the butt of his gun on the bars sharply, shocking his captive into silence. – “As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me...” Vaas huffed and leaned back on his chair, lighting some sort of pipe made from bone—the smell that wafted over towards Jason’s cage was definitely not reminiscent of tobacco. “This is my own blend, by the way… and before you start screaming again, I just wanted to say… how beautiful you look.”
Jason, about to yell again, just gaped, baffled, at his captor, the psychopath, the slave-trader, the addict, a man truly unpredictable in every sense.
“You, uh—“ Vaas snickered a little to himself, eyes half-lidded, eyes still boring into Jason’s. While Jason’s confusion was growing, Vaas’s predatory stare was morphing into a different sort of animalistic-type… a different sort of predator. The smoke wafted around them both, obscuring the moonlight, dragged deep into their lungs with each breath they shared. “You remind me of the last animal I had in that cage…” Vaas’s voice dropped to a purr briefly—he leaned forward on his chair suddenly, resting his arms on his knees. “I used to—“ Vaas began. Jason watched and listened, dumbstruck, even when one of Vaas’s men interrupted him for some update or another.
“Can’t you see it’s story time, you fuck! – FUCK OFF!!!” Vaas yelled indignantly, waving his gun wildly and spitting at the back of the man’s quickly retreating form before settling down again and sighing. What a piece of shit.
“Nobody came up to this grove, hermano—this was my place… I used to keep a tiger right in your cage—she was… she was something else, you know? You know what I mean, hermano?” Vaas met Jason’s eyes again as if searching for approval—when he didn’t see any, he continued, his gaze drifting up toward the night sky.
“We were quite good friends, me and this tiger… anyway, one day I was up here, and I think, what the hell— do you know what I did, Jason?” Jason shook his head mutely. “I let the tiger out of her cage.” Vaas grinned wickedly, “Tore the place right apart, she did… anyway—mind if we slip into the proper perspective for this?”
Jason didn’t know what Vaas meant, until Vaas slid from his chair, sitting on his knees next to where Jason was sprawled, bound in the cage. They weren’t separated by more than a foot. Vaas breathed odd-coloured, iridescent smoke from his nose, dragon-like, eyes boring into his prisoner’s. Jason felt as if he was floating—floating right out of his body—leaving pain behind, carried inexorably along by Vaas’s low voice. Where, he didn’t know.
“After I opened her cage I kind of just stood there, you know? Like we had some sort of agreement or something, I dunno. I didn't know if she would pounce and rip me apart or what-- so I kind of stood there frozen, and she snarls and blows past me in a blur of stripes.”
They were standing outside of that very cage-- it was a bit past midday, now. Jason and Vaas side by side-- they were about the same height.
“--Look at her go, hermano! What's that you pretentious american boys say? I hate to see you go but I love to watch you walk away...? It was like that. Now look here, are you following me? See what happens.” A revolver gesticulation at the scene unfolding now.
Crouched behind a shipping container on the compound, Vaas was watching his men get torn apart and otherwise savaged. He had to admit, it was quite something to behold. Alternating between bouncing around on his toes nervously, to suddenly becoming aware of an erection overwhelming in its intensity and urgency-- we'd better take care of that, hermano. Sitting behind the big red storage crate to jerk off to the screams. It was just so like him.
He'd just gotten a comfortable rhythm going when an equally rhythmic growl drew his attention next to him-- where he was nose to nose with the tiger, blood dripping an endless river from its maw. Her nose was wet and where their faces came in contact, Vaas was smeared with raw carnage. He had been close. His hand had stopped moving.
“But I wasn't afraid, hermano-- I wasn't afraid...”
The tiger sniffs the renegade experimentally, and the cold assessment ruffles his hair, his nerves. It's like being stared down by a dragon and damn was she beautiful. Next thing anyone knew, heedless of getting his hand and arm and the rest of him torn to shreds, he was pulling this tiger closer, turning to lay on the ground, leaning back in submission. She was crouched over him now, and he started giggling. He felt high. He had to be high right now.
“But I wasn't. It's as real as us here right now, hermano-- Bro? Bro? Your eyes are all glassy-- look at me.” Vaas slapped the captive through the bars, jerking him back into the present. “So anyway, there was this tiger over me-- I had this raging-- and I mean RAGING hard-on.” Vaas is standing up and pacing again now-- aptly demonstrating this raging hard-on. It was impressive.
'Tiger fur is so... soft, you know? You don't think it would be, but-- damn.” The memories seem to overwhelm for a split-second-- Vaas closes his eyes, runs a hand over his mohawk and shudders slightly where he now stands. As he approaches the cage again, his eyes are glowing. He appears huge. Huge and striped. A tiger-demon. A balrog, all red and orange and burning terrible. The burning was fire. The fire was crackling with the burning and the crackling was like static. The static brought Jason back to the place between sleep and wakefulness and as this tiger-demon approached, his world was filled with the buzz of it, things grew distorted-- super-saturated, super-bright, overwhelmed by static little dots dancing in his field of vision. The demon was right up in his face now and Jason couldn't hear enough to tell whether there were screams coming from his open mouth or not--- an open mouth that was suddenly taking huge gulps of ice-cold water. He was drenched-- he sat up straighter and stared at Vaas, who was holding now an empty blue bucket. Vaas tossed it aside looking both bored and a little impatient-- he turned the bucket over and sat down on it-- nearly collapsing it to the ground in the process. It was one of those cheap plastic buckets. Pieces of shit.
“It was overwhelming for me, too.” Vaas seemed to whisper almost tenderly, taking another look up at the stars-- “but I learned my lesson-- did you?” Vaas couldn't see an answer worth anything on Jason's blank face, and stood up just as suddenly as the water had cascaded and washed away the fever-dreams.
“Don't you get it?-- My dick--” Vaas gestured obscenely-- jerk-off hand style-- he captured Jason's stare in his own, making sure he was paying damn good attention before continuing. “My dick ate a tiger. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you, hermano?”
At the pointed stare, Jason just continued to stare blankly, helplessly. Vaas must have finished the story while he was zonked out. Worst part was-- he kind of wished he hadn't completely missed on these more particular details.
“You're fucked in the head, Jason, you know that?” A little bit of anger there-- closer to disappointment, though. “You're too fucked to get anything out of this-- it's ok. It's ok-- It's OK. Because. Because I can just come back later. We'll continue our chat later. Would you like that...?...” Vaas, seeming suddenly preoccupied, wandered off before he could get a response at all.
“What the hell....?” Jason found himself mumbling thousands of centuries later when he found his voice, arms bound tightly above his head, and a tiger dancing up in there in a viscous fluid that most certainly was not blood.