Skull of the Zipa PREVIEW CHAPTERS by Chuck Chitwood (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📕

I take in a deep breath hoping I’ve found my voice and I scream, “Help me! I’m being raped! Please somebody!” I thrash violently just as Uncle Ami had taught me. My legs and arms are like windmills whirling to make contact with anything. I tighten my fists and strike out with vengeance hoping I can connect a punch to a sensitive part of the body. I hit something. A back, a shoulder? I don’t know. But I won’t go down without a fight so I keep hitting.

I hear the leader shout, Stupido! Then I feel something heavy, a bat or maybe the butt of a gun, hit my head and a sudden, sharp pain shoots through my skull which may or may not be shattered. The pain is intense and radiates down my neck and back. My eyes roll up in my head. A bright light races through my brain just before everything goes dark.

***

My eyes flutter. I shake my head and wonder if what had happened was real. My head aches. I feel like I have been asleep for days. It takes a few seconds for me to realize that what I thought was just a terrible nightmare is real. I feel the blood vessels pulsating in my head, throbbing like they might explode. It’s dark and everything is blurry. And I have the weirdest sensation that I am falling, only I’m not.

After a few minutes, the pain in my head eases slightly, but the throbbing remains. I try to rub my skull which feels like it was cracked by the blow to my head but my wrists are tied together with rough, bristly ropes. It hurts to breathe.

I twist and turn to get air into my lungs but it doesn’t help. And I feel contorted and like I’m…swinging. I can also feel a painful burning that stings my ankles. That’s when I realize that my ankles are tied together, too. Every second of consciousness registers new pains and aches throughout my body. My eyes feel heavy and I drift off again.

When I wake back up I wonder if I have been out for seconds or days since all I see is darkness. I’m covered with bug bites. And I still feel like I’m swinging. Oh no, I’m going to be sick.

I try to cover my mouth but my hands are still tied together. I blink my eyes and my vision starts to come into focus. Surrounding me are tall trees, vines, and underbrush. Tiny gnats swirl around my face sticking to my arms and neck. A few tents are set up around a dwindling campfire. A dirty, green, beat up truck is parked in the distance. But something is wrong with what I see, Why is everything sort of upside down? What’s going on?

That’s when I realize I am the one upside down. Well, not completely upside down. In fact, as I swing there, I imagine I must look like an oddly shaped ‘J’ because my hands and feet are tied to a rope suspended from a gnarled tree branch. Somewhere in the jungles of Colombia in the middle of the night, I am dangling like a piece of meat behind the counter at Sam’s Deli on Market Street. I blink a few times to make sure I’m not dreaming. No. I am wide awake. Oh, crap! What do I do now?

The heavy air is moist and thick as I try to gulp it down, but hanging upside down like a human candy cane makes it difficult to breathe. To be honest, it feels like there’s a stack of bricks sitting on my chest but at least I am able to get some air into my lungs. At this point I’m happy to say that other than having a killer headache, sore muscles, and some seriously bad rope burns, I’m okay. And so long as I’m okay, I can try to think of something to help free myself.

Looking around, I know my captors must be asleep and since I’ve not been thrown in a cage and shipped off to some wacko, I know they’re not human traffickers. That can only mean one thing. These are the men who kidnapped my father. Somehow they knew I was at the El Tigre. I must have something they want. Whatever it is at least I am one step closer to my dad. 

I survey the landscape. No one is around. I see four tents and a truck in a clearing. I also see a fire that is dying out. Then I spot a dirt road that twists off into the jungle.

A noise at the edge of the clearing catches my attention. I wiggle and twist my body to spin myself around. A short, pudgy man with a stub of a cigar in his mouth pushes his way through the bushes adjusting his pants like he had just gone to the bathroom. There is no way he washed his hands. He’s got a rifle slung over his oversized camouflage jacket and matching camo-pants. He staggers and trips over a tree trunk by the fire. I notice his right hand is bandaged and it has a red spot where blood has soaked through.

Gross! Gross! Gross! He’s the man whose foul smelling hand had shoved my head into my pillow. I know I should be nervous, but hate fills every inch of my body.

He walks towards me, cigar in his good hand, with a gapped-tooth smile spreading across his face. From this angle, it’s impossible to tell exactly how many teeth he’s missing. He runs his unbandaged hand through his thick, greasy hair like he’s trying to fix it, only there’s no improvement. From the looks of it, his hair probably hasn’t been washed in months, maybe years. He moves within a couple of feet of me, and I spit in his general direction. It’s probably a dumb move, but it’s not like there’s a whole heck of a lot I can do at the moment.

Taking a puff on his cigar, the gross, snaggle-toothed henchman steps closer and raises his bandaged hand in front of my face. He strokes my cheek with it. Leaning in close me, his stubbly beard scratches my cheek. Being upside down puts me in the perfect spot to get a good whiff of his breath, which reminds me of spoiled meat left in the back of a refrigerator for months, only worse.

He gets close to my ear and clears his throat. “Hola Señorita. We are now alone.”

As if having some gross, pudgy little man invade my personal space weren’t enough, I have the world’s worst headache, and I am literally turned upside. This is crazy. What am I doing here in the jungle of South America? How stupid was I to think I could find my father?

I should be sitting at the dinner table, filling out my housing forms for college, getting a part time summer job at the mall, or hanging out with Chance by the bay watching the sailboats drift across the water. For crying out loud, I’m eighteen. I should be with my friends at the prom I should be going with them down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Most of all, I should not be hanging upside down from a tree with a short, toothless, cigar breath evil man with drool running out the corner of his mouth caressing my cheek.

Ignore it, Haddie. Close your eyes. Go anywhere but here. But where? When? And then it comes to me. Three weeks ago I was having the best day of my life…

***

The state track and field finals were held at Providence High School. And I was preparing for my race. My last race. For four years I had dominated the 400-meter hurdles. I was even the first freshman at Providence to ever medal in the event. And I was preparing myself to medal once again. I was sitting next to the field house stretching out my hamstrings with my friends, Stacey and Morgan, while people filed into the stands when something totally unexpected happened.

Chance Baker walked up to us like he’d known us forever. Do you know how much confidence it takes for a guy to approach a group of girls? But then again, that’s Chance – confident but not cocky. He didn’t need cockiness. With a full ride to Chapel Hill to play football, he knew who he was and wasn’t worried about what other people thought of him.

“Hey Haddie.” I looked up at the mention of my name and saw his smile. That smile. Chance’s teeth are toothpaste commercial perfect and his wavy hair is cute the way it looks messy on purpose. And his skin was warmly sun-kissed thanks to his job as a lifeguard. I’m tan, too. Only my olive skin and dark hair isn’t what I think of as attractive because it whenever I’m at the airport or anywhere I get the nastiest of stares like I’m plotting something evil.

But I’m not. I can’t help my genetic code. When my mother was alive, it wasn’t so bad because she was one hundred percent Israeli and gorgeous and would tell me to be proud of my Anglo-Israeli heritage. Staring at Chance, standing there sort of Adonis-like, I can’t help but wonder what our kids would look like. When I realized I probably had that dorky deer-in-the-headlights look, I coughed to clear my already clear throat and asked, “Hey, Chance. What’s up? You staying for the meet?”

He cleared his throat, too. “I just wanted to come wish you good luck. You’re gonna rock it today. Nobody can touch you. Oh, and…”

Chance sort of nodded his head, which I took as him wanting to speak in private. I stood up, brushing grass off my legs and then put my curly black hair into a ponytail. I could feel Stacey and Morgan staring at me, trying not to giggle, and acting like they were tying their shoes so they could eavesdrop. They didn’t have to. They know I would have told them every single word he said as soon as he walked away.

Chance looked at the ground as we meandered toward the side of the bright orange and blue field house with a larger than life Minuteman painted on the side of the building. “Hey, I know it’s short notice, but, well you know Courtney and I broke up a couple of weeks ago and I was wondering if you’d like to go to prom? With me.” If I hadn’t been there to see it with my own two eyes, I would never have believed Chance Baker could be . . . nervous about anything. But he sure did sound nervous. “What I mean is would you like to go to prom with me, Haddie?”

I was, in a word, stunned. Everything around me sort of melted away. The bleachers which were full of cheering fans and parents sounded like they were mumbling and the starting gun that fired behind me sounded like a kid’s pop gun. I looked around wondering if it was some sort of joke but Chance wasn’t that kind of guy. And when I saw Courtney, the cheer captain and now his ‘ex’, with her long blonde hair, perfect skin and fake smile glaring at me like a cobra ready to strike, I knew for sure he was being serious. Not many people get under my skin. But Courtney and her cookie-cutter minions do. Courtney, though, is the worst of the lot because of her icy blue eyes. Not clear blue eyes like the sky; pale blue like