Page 2 of In Darkness and Dank

They were convinced that Kittisak was Chinese and loved to ask disgustingly ignorant questions about where he was from and how to say his name. He tried to ignore them, but he could only take so much bigotry. They never said anything to Hutte, and Kittisak didn’t know if that was because their racism was limited to Asians or that Hutte had seniority over Denninger, making him the next one up in their chain of command.

Kittisak figured it was the latter.

He complained to Hutte and Browning, who both spoke to Denninger multiple times about the pair’s unacceptable behavior. Denninger made empty promises about making sure it stopped, but of course it didn’t.

Kittisak hoped those jerks would get eaten by something out here, but he wasn’t that lucky.

To deter the verbal abuse, Kittisak decided to trick Bissell and Zimm into thinking he didn’t speak English so he wouldn’t have to talk to them. Hutte despised the pair as much as Kittisak did, and even though he wasn’t the most riveting of conversationalists, he helped Kittisak play up the ruse by creating a fake system of hand signals to communicate with.

The captain of the boat even got in on it. He was a Portuguese man named Caetano Paiva, and he was big, round, and bearded with a laugh that could shake a full-grown jaguar out of a tree. He enjoyed helping Kittisak and Hutte screw with Bissell and Zimm, and he told the most outlandish stories about monstrous creatures and evil spirits said to roam the Amazon because he knew those idiots were extremely gullible.

It only took one night for Paiva to convince them they had to stay awake until morning to watch out for El Tunchi, a spirit who lured his victims with a high-pitched whistling sound to punish them for offending the forest.

Maybe it wasn’t all terrible here in hell.

Kittisak did enjoy thinking up new words for his hand signal game with Paiva and Hutte, and there was nothing more satisfying than seeing Bissell and Zimm jump at the slightest sound because they were scared of a ghost coming to get them. Paiva was taking them through parts of the rainforest that weren’t found on any tour, and maybe sometimes it was quite beautiful. The research with Browning was actually sort of interesting once he understood it, and he found himself hoping that Browning would find what he was looking for out here.

After two weeks, however, it didn’t seem like that was going to happen.

Browning and Hutte were arguing constantly, Denninger managed to be an even bigger asshole, and Bissell and Zimm wouldn’t stop complaining about mysterious monsters lurking out in the trees. Zimm in particular insisted that he’d seen a giant fish monster sneaking around their camp, and he kept talking about the different ways he was going to cook it and fry it when he killed it.

Ugh.

The crazy must have been catching because after Kittisak laid down to end his most recent day in hell, he decided to keep his lantern on in case any fish monsters decided to come into his tent later. He was probably being paranoid, but better safe than eaten.

With a grumpy sigh, Kittisak drifted off to sleep.

Sometime later, he heard the footsteps of someone coming into his tent, and he opened his eyes to see a giant amphibian monster standing over him.

Well, huh. Imagine that.

Kittisak wasn’t afraid because this clearly had to be a dream. Nothing so incredible as this beast could possibly be real, and he was actually impressed that his imagination had created something so fantastically attractive.

The monster had a generally humanoid shape, and his shoulders and chest were deliciously broad with sleek, well-toned abs. His overall physique reminded Kittisak of a swimmer he had dated last year, though that guy certainly hadn’t had big crested gills on the side of his neck like this monster did. Kittisak got a glimpse of other crests that ran along the monster’s thick arms, and he sleepily wondered if they were actually fins to aid in swimming.

The monster’s smooth, slick skin looked like it was made for cutting through water, and it was a spectacularly rich shade of ebony that glittered as he moved in the low light of Kittisak’s lantern. The anterior portions of his body, like his chest, stomach, thighs, and face, were a most dazzling cerulean reminiscent of the poison dart frogs Kittisak saw hopping around the camp. There were splashes of black over the blue that stretched across his chest and cheeks like freckles, and the monster’s fingers were webbed, each set with a black curled claw.

The monster’s face was striking, as it was so very nearly human and simultaneously not. His lips were full and wide, and he didn’t have ears. His brow protruded forward and ran flat down to his nose, so there was no bridge. His nose was actually just a small bump with two tiny nostrils, and there were additional fins or crests or whatever they were running up over the top of his head that mimicked tall spiky hair. By far, the most alluring feature was his eyes.

They were big, round, and black. There were no whites at all, and when he blinked, Kittisak swore he saw some sort of second eyelid that slid over it like a milky lens. When the monster crouched beside his cot and the light was angled just so, Kittisak realized that the monster’s eyes weren’t completely black. There was a glimmer of purple and blue swirling there amongst the black like a heavenly galaxy, and he’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Kittisak didn’t know why, but he still wasn’t scared.

Maybe because it was a dream, and he knew the monster couldn’t hurt him.

The monster was also insanely hot.

Kittisak loved the monster’s big muscles and glittering eyes, and he quickly started thinking about those luscious lips working over every inch of his body.

This was probably the result of Paiva’s crazy stories about fish-men who lived deep in the river and came up on shore to seduce women and get them pregnant with pink dolphin babies. Kittisak wasn’t much interested in babies, but the seduction bit was pretty appealing. He knew exactly what kind of dream he wanted this to be.

The way the monster reached out to brush Kittisak’s ruffled hair back from his face was tender, even reverent, and Kittisak smiled. He loved having his hair played with, and the claws felt amazing brushing over his scalp.

Although Kittisak hadn’t officially dated anyone since that swimmer last year, it wasn’t hard to find someone to burn off some steam with. He was a young man at college, after all. But this kind of affection was different from the quick sticky fumblings he’d grown accustomed to from hookup apps.

It felt… intimate.

The monster touched him sweetly, making sure not a single hair was out of place, and he smiled down at Kittisak as if they’d known each other for ages. Kittisak was feeling particularly grateful to his imagination right then because although he had no idea what movie or TV show had inspired this monstrous creature, he was definitely going to have something fun to jerk off to when he woke up.

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