THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TARZAN...
Chapter One...
of a cliffhanging stabbin jungle adventure!
Episode One--OPENING UP...IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE...
He sprang out of the trees at the bare young man. He had a huge barrel chest and wore a fur of lion skin on his crotch, a sling going up from it over his left shoulder. His belly button was indiscriminate and a swirl going deep from his unridged, undefined stomach, not the best part of his body. He looked terrifically strong though and had a head band on his long brown and dirty hair. The rest of him as bare and his shoulders and chest were massive. This made it easy for him to kill the youngster...but he didn't.
The big man, Tarzan the first, Elmo Lincoln, was landing out of the trees toward the lithe young blond, who wore a more traditional loin cloth, thicker and with more
leg covered. His chest was tiny compared to Elmo, his arms and shoulders, while adequate compared to the rest of humanity, any average man could see he was better built than they. He was defined but not overly so. His stomach was the best of him, defined as a college kid just working out into the football team, the abs stood out and the indents went in in all the right places. Elmo jumped at this one, Denny Miller, perhaps the first blond Tarzan at 6 feet three inches and 215 pounds. He had long locks that didn't quite reach his shoulders. He also had in his right hand a heavy hilted foot long curvey blade.
As Elmo dived for him, Denny, who Elmo thought was unaware, turned to greet him, holding his knife up high. He wanted Elmo's chest but missed. He found Elmo's quicksand like belly button and Elmo's weight did all the rest. Elmo hit Denny like a ton of bricks and then he felt the steel curving through his belly button. He fell square
on top of Denny and his face leaned down on Denny's. A trickle of blood oozed out of his mouth and dripped down Denny's jawline. Denny gasped from the weight but Elmo gasped for his life. Denny managed to move his knife around as it was in the big dude. He must have been 230 pounds with a bullish neck and huge arms which now tried to wrap around Denny's shoulders to squeeze. Denny moved as much as he could and found it got easier. He ws butchering Elmo's stomach between them but he sorrowed that he could not see his handiwork. No matter, he felt it.
They were in a lush, green jungle. Denny's jungle, no one would take that away from him, not even this one, a Tarzan from an alternate universe (or so THEY said) who was born in something like 1889, much earlier in that universe than in Denny's own---for Denny was born in something like 1941, yet both he and Elmo were the same age, curtesy of some alien and supernatural tampering.
Letting go of the knife hilt, Denny pushed the dying man off him and rolled him over. He stood over the jerking body and saw the heaving knife blade beneath that rising and falling gargantuan chest. Denny bent over and put both hands on the hilt and pushed! PUSHED!!!! "I am king of the jungle! Die!" He twiste and pushed, pushed and pushed, and drove it in and up and down and all around. The belly button was now part of the guy's deep innards. Denny took it out and put a bare foot on the bloody mess and rose his knife to the sky, dripping gore. He let out a Tarzan howl of victory and beat his chest with one hand.
He thought he was alone in this sight but watching from the jungle bushes was a young boy, very young. About 10. He had thick strong legs, the undefined but potential of youth, a healthy looking bare body and a skimpy loin cloth made out of lion skins. His belly button was a deep slit doing vertical
ly along his body. "Father." The boy took out from the bushes a long bow and arrow and set the bow along the arrow. He pulled it just as Denny caught sight of the boy.
"Who are you?"
"I? I am son of Tarzan! I am Korak!" He had a slight headband on his brown tawny head of long hair. A sort of innocent look about his eyes.
Denny smiled, "Well, I am Tarzan. You my son for your sire is dead."
"So are you!" Korak let the arrow fly and it hit Denny right in his belly button, taking him totally unaware...
even as he was about to say, "Law of jungle, kill sire, take son and raise..ssssszzzzzorrrruhhhhhhhhgghhhh!" Denny's back moved backward as if it wanted to leave the rest of his body but the arrow protruding proudly from his belly gave him a sight to remember. He then grabbed the arrow wit
h both hands.
Korak puffed his nice chest out in proud triumph and moved closer to watch Denny slowly die. Korak let the bow hold itself high in his hand and he looked at it lovingly. It did him well. He lowered it a bit.
Denny leaned in on the arrow and hunched over it. He bent his knees. He was't sure he wanted to pull it out--could he bear the pain? Would he live? Still he had this long shaft in him by at least six inches. It had to come out. Maybe he could break it and keep only part of it in him. Damn! He thought, I am dead.
Korak watched pleased as Denny slid to his knees and tried to bear the pain of a new part of his body--the wooden arrow part! He tilted his head as he drew inspiration from this. Watching Korak was a little boy, younger than even he, maybe seven in full zebra fur. The boy, with a head band of zebra fur, moved off quietly.
Korak moved over to Denny, who on his knees, was just about an inch taller than Korak. Korak stared into his eyes and made his own wider. "Die, Tarzan of the Apes!" Korak grabbed the shaft of the arrow and buried it up to the end of the shaft and then fisted it into the nice abs of the blond Tarzan, who could do nothing. The older leaned back, his torso over his legs bent and his stomach upward. Korak left him there, moaning and dying slowly.
Korak looked at his own father's dead body, cumming with death. Korak drew sad but hard. "Yes, sire, this is the way of the jungle." He thought back to a few days ago.
It was like a list of some old movie studio. They were all lined up against a wall, none of them could move. Some invisible force had held them there. All of them tried to get free, their fibres straining, their veins showing, their muscles forcing. It was no use. The
force was stronger than every Tarzan of the Apes from every universe. Korak knew none of them really. Yet he and some other boys were also part of the mix. There was silent Bobby Nelson, in zebra skins and the youngest there. There was even an older version of himself---if he had had to fight this lean but muscled man, Kamuela Searle, he would knew he would die...and right away. Others included a 13 year old boy of curly brown hair, smooth limbs, and a boyish nature, named, well...Boy. Some soft boy named Joey with feathered back hair, thick and long. Both Boy and Joey could be formidable foes, he could see, for they had the rashness of youth and the unpredicability that went with that. Korak knew he had that on his favor as well. Then there was a beefy but no less weak boy named Tartu, apparently named after his Gordon Scott Tarzan. I still understood little of what was this was all about then. Tartu was supposed to be Tarzan Two. This kid seemed somewhat blond. And cute. T
here were others, Jai the elephant boy from India with his robe like loin cloth; dark Pepe of the sea, a sailing pirate boy; Jukaro, who confusingly had THREE names...Steve Bond, Jukaro, and Erik. He seemed the least to worry me. A sensitve type he, I felt would die with my knife or arrow buried in his smooth,unmade belly. For he was a boy. Now another proble, one I did not comprehend then, was that Pepe looked exactly like another jungle boy or rather like Ramel, a boy from a peaceful people who lived in a valley of gold, called Tucomy in the Mike Henry Tarzan universe. ANd both of them looked like the bit older boy Jai from the Ron Ely universe. This one was the most warrior like but even he was not with the cruelty of jungle spirit. I was. They would have to die if I were to not. There was also a boy named Roger Taft, he was about 19 but with long dark hair and blue-green eyes, he would be the easiest. He grew up in some Canadian town, a city in the Wolf Larson universe.
He was not a jungle fighter or a fighter of any kind, really. I kind of longed to kill him in his belly button.
Then there were the mighty Tarzans themselves. Introduced by the strange unearthly forces that brought us here. The mighty Johnny Weismuller, Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Denny Miller, Jock Mahoney, the football player- like Mike Henry, the most well built of the Tarzans, Miles O Keefe, lean and abbed, Chirstopher Lambert, the darkly handsome Joe Lara who was familiar the most with NYC street fighting, a French Tarzan, a Spanish Tarzan, even a German Tarzan, Frank Merrill, Herman Brix, Gordon Scott (whom THEY said was also known as Flash Gordon in one universe and Buck Rogers in another universe!). Glenn Morris. And the young TARZAN TWINS, Doc, blond and Dick, brunette, twins but of different father and mothers--their mothers were twin sisters...were also there.
None of this made much sense
to us then. We were savages most of us although some like Henry and the so called TV TARZAN Ron Ely were totally educated...not that education would save them in this free for all jungle warfare they put us in.
THEY explained it to us. THEY introduced us to each other. THEY were either aliens from the sky or supernatural demons from the lava fields of hell beneath our feet.
They said the universes were converging and that in order for choas not to ensue, we would have fight each other to see which of us would be the only remaining Tarzan family. If not, we would all die from the universes becoming one and having too many of us in it. I couldn't help but feel the bastard currs were lying to all of us. We were given our own weapons from our own univeres and also given the choices of more newer stabbing weapons and set out into the strangest jungle I have ever seen...an amalgagram of all our jungles..
it looked like a movie set, a Brailian forest, a Spanish forest, a rain forest, all sorts of jungles and forests.
The reason they called us different names was so they could distinguish us from another when one was vanquished and one was not. They gave names from a universe where none of us were real...one universe that had us all as actors on either movies or TV shows or in books. It didn't make sense but it was happening...we were all set out to survive while THEY watched. I wanted to kill THEM, not the other jungle boys and Tarzans....
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TARZAN
Chapter 2-YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART
Curly locked head of hair Boy ran to the part of the jungle he knew best, the kind that looked others like a fake movie jungle. He found the escarpment and the treehouse. Running with a broad smile, h
e knew he would find his father, well, his adopted father anyway. For Tarzan and Jane (who was not in this kill or be killed game but back in his real universe in England) found him.
Boy quickly climbed up the tree house, "Tarzan! Tarrrr--Zinnnn!" He called with joy, for of all the Tarzan's, his father would know what to do best in all of this craziness. The stout, solidly built, 14 year old with muscled abs and smooth skin, hairless, wore a loin cloth that dangled down over his front.
Clambering up to the outer balconys, Boy could not find Tarzan. No matter what name these aliens called him, Tarzan was his name, his Tarzan. The one others mentioned was Johnny Weissmuller in another universe where all Tarzan was a literary figure and played by actors in movies and TV. "Tarz---zan! Are you here?"
Boy, barefooted and legged, made his way into the area where Jane
used to prepare food. There he stopped mid way in his run. For standing there was a dark lad with thick curly black hair and black eyes and a wrap around loin cloth over his thin but just as muscled as Boy belly. The dark boy had high cheek bones and in another alternate life was called Tommy Cook but Boy knew him only as, "Kimba!" The evil doe eyed lamb had ingraciated himself into the Tarzan family but was really a spy for the leopard cult run Kimba's sister Lea. He was after a heart for his test as a leopard warrior...a heart that would be sacrificed to the leopard god. Kimba was vicious and evil, Boy knew it from the beginning.
"You remember name," Kimba wore over his shoulders a leopard skin and in his left hand he held a bone white six inch curved blade that was shaped like a leopard claw upward from a lowered hand. "Kimba want heart, Kimba get heart!"
Boy couldn't see Kimba's other hand whi
ch was behind a table Kimba was near. Boy was closer to the doorway out but he wouldn't run. "Where is Tarzan!?!"
"Right here," Kimba took his hand up and in it was a heart.
Boy was shocked, "Nooo!"
Kimba put the heart down on the table in a straw dish, "Now Kimba take back two hearts to Lea!"
Kimba was rushing at Boy but Boy was already rushing at him. Boy grabbed the hand of Kimba as Kimba tried to raise the knife up inside Boy's lower stomach. Boy and Kimba tumbled over the kitchen area and out the window onto the balcony, sideways. Boy still held Kimba's hand away from his stomach. Kimba managed to raise the knife upward but Boy shoved Kimba's wrist away. Kimba held Boy's wrist with his free right hand, Boy having both Kimba's arms. They regained their feet, still holding each other that way. Kimba positioned the knif
e in his hand so that the blade stuck out from under his pinkie. He was trying to raise it to stab down at Boy's chest or belly. That was when Boy flung himself at Kimba's whole being. The two of them fell off the balcony, straight through the wooden railing. They fell a long way down but were saved from the death of it by soft bush hay under them. Boy felt it on his back. The sun beat down as all he could see above was Kimba's silouette, the knife high in the air over even Kimba's head. "Now you die son of Tarzan!" Straddling Boy's waist and bent legs, Kimba, bending his knees and kneeling, arched the knife down toward Boy's chest, aiming for his heart.
Boy meet Kimba's arms with his hands and shoved. He was slowly drawing the knife away from his own chest, slowly, slowly, moving the hand of Kimba away from himself and turning that sharp curve toward Kimba's own leaning belly. Kimba was leaning down, trying to force the knife into Boy
and strained. Boy could see all Kimba's neck muscles and veins popping out, even in his well muscled boy arms. And Kimba felt Boy more strong than him. Boy was too innocent and soft though. Kimba thought, "I'll kill youuuuuuuuuuuggggggg."
The bony white curve was turned toward two inches above Kimba's knarled belly button and Boy managed to curve the curve down from there and with a quick jab inward and curving down, was able to get that thing stuck right into Kimba's bare navel. Kimba felt it slide in a roller coaster ride down his navel and arching down into intestines. In his motion, caught, Kimba himself leaned over the knife as Boy, realizing his new advantage and victory, overcame his own shock at feeling something in his hand in another's guts. He leaned his shoulders up to look and saw with some glee, that he was not the one stuck. He straightened out his arm at the elbow, rushing that knife into his opponent more. Kimba wanted
to lay on Boy, die with that thing deeper in him but he involuntarily leaned back and his head lopped backward, "Uelllll! Llllll, ughhhhhh."
Boy rushed the knife in some more and it sank as a water logged pole cleaning pole would in water. With some resistance. Kimba still has his hands on the knife and didn't know what to do. Let go and let Boy jabber him some more in his former navel? Or try to force it out? Or help Boy finish him off---at least it would be quicker. Kimba looked down at the curvey cat claw going into his belly and saw only pain but then he felt pleasure. He decided.
He threw his head back down and his hands into his enemies' hands. He shoved the claw deep into him and he felt it hit the pelvic bone in the center of his body---through the furtherst part of his intestines, the point stopping at scrotum.
Boy kicked himself out of under Kimba, w
ho rolled over and groaned into a huffing last embrace with the jungle grass.
Boy left that claw knife in Kimba. They deserved each other. He felt good though. His chest heaved with excitement and the sweat on his body, both his and Kimba's, felt thrilling. He would have to go back up the treehouse and reclaim his fallen knife...and maybe a few other weapons. This was fun! Maybe he would join in anyway.
Kimba rolled over onto his belly and pushed his stomach downward so that the knife buried itself deep into him. He vibrated, then died.
Boy forgot about him but not about the feeling he had had killing the evil dude. Who would be next? It was equally thrilling to think Kimba might have killed him, Boy thought. That's what made it exciting. For the first time he saw the jungle as he always knew his dead father did---a kill or be killed home. No wonder the old ma
n liked it so much!!!!
END OF PART TWO