The Gift - 4 - Jungle Lunch

Razvik opened his eyes in a new and strange place. 

He was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, with trees flanking the sides of his vision. He got up on his elbows and looked around. It was a forest, for sure. The grass was green and wet under his hands and the wetness was soaking into his clothes. He got up to his feet and looked around like a lost dog. He had never in his life seen a forest so lush and wide. The trees were so green that it hurt his eyes to look at them for more than a few seconds. He saw something move in foliage.

"Hey, who's there?"

It seemed too much of a repeat of what he had said in the room where the girl had given him the keyboard. He knew he had grappled with some kind of mystical shit and he had no right to be where he was right now, but here he was. Out of his wits and out of his understanding. He didn't want to do anything with whatever this was, but he had no choice. He shouldn't have pressed that key on the keyboard.

He chose a direction at random and started walking. There must be a way out of this forest. There were random chirps of birds that he couldn't have recognized even if he had any interest in bird watching. He came up to a small block of black stone that was too big to avoid. He walked over it and kept walking. The forest kept talking at him with the forest voices and everything that it had to throw at the man. Razvik didn't mind. The hut loomed in view ahead of him. It was a simple hut. Clean walls topped by a thatched roof made from sticks and stones. There was no door to knock on the hut, just a bead curtain that jingles and jangles in the jungle air. He pushed it aside and walked in.

The black man from the market was sitting there. He had a bloody meat cleaver in his hand. The black man raised the cleaver up in the air, a stray ray of sunlight made a dancing dervish pattern on the dirty steel, and he brought it down with a solid thwack that separated another piece of meat from whatever he was cutting.

He looked up from his table and saw Razvik frozen in his step. He was not sure whether to run the fuck away from here or walk in and say hi.

The black man looked at him and his face erupted into a grin that looked like an alien worm on his face.

"Razvik! Brother!"

His voice was surprisingly gentle and cultured for someone who looked like a prison escapee.

"Hi," Razvik managed to croak out.

"I've been waiting for you," he said as he put down the bloody cleaver and wiped his hands on his blood stained apron. 

"Come in, come in. I was just cleaning the chicken for lunch. Elina is also coming."

Razvik's heart skipped a beat.

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I have no idea where this is going, but i am going to find out!