Chapter 4 Flight

Sirona travels from Brazil to the USA with a very valuable horse. On the flight things go badly wrong.

Chapter 4 Flight

 

Typical of airports, loading Dulcinea and her shipping stall on to the plane was a series of ‘let’s hurry up to wait’ scenes.  Finally the massive door clanged shut and my cell phone rang.  Who in hell could be calling now I wondered as I took my seat and flipped the phone open.  My sister’s ID flashed on the screen so I punched the answer button.  “Hey what’s up?” I asked.

 

:Hi, sis!  You haven’t taken off yet?” She asked me.

 

“Nope. I was just taking my seat.  We should be starting our taxi any minute now.  Why?”

 

“Well, I had one of those feelings and needed to call you”

 

My sister is blessed, or maybe cursed depending on your view point, with premonitions.  Some times in startling accuracy and others more vague and dream like.  I’ve learned over the years to pay attention to these “visions.”  “Ah, OK… What did you see?  Not a plane crash, I hope?”  I am a good flier, and generally do not fear flying, but you never know what will happen once airborne.  I’d already checked the safety record of Pegasus Air Transport before I arranged for Dulcinea to be moved.  They specialize in shipping livestock and zoo animals, and their safety record is legendary.

 

“No, not a plane crash…but there is just this really bad feeling.  Please be really careful, OK?

 

“What’s to be careful of?  I’m just going on a plane full of horses, cows and I think a wild animal or two…  I think I saw a tiger… Hey I’m not going to be eaten by a loose tiger on the plane, am I?”  I joked.

 

“Come on Sirona, be serious.  I just get this feeling that you need to be extra careful… at least until you get through customs.’  She scolded. 

 

“OK, I can do that”

 

“You haven’t had any other things happen…you know like odd or weird since you’ve been in Brazil, have you?”  She asked with concern in her voice.

 

“Other than getting a sucky car with the air conditioning that didn’t work , Nah.”  I laughed.  “Well the farm manager was a little bit weird.  He’d had his vet caslick Dulci.” I said with anger still in my voice.  “And I saw some sort of animal in the trees, that he tried to tell me was a chupacabra.” I added.

 

My sisters voice picked up on that little aside, “Really?”

 

“Yeh, like I am going to believe in a Mexican vampire!” I laughed.  “It was like that animal we saw when we got lost in the jungle at Nana’s place… remember?”  Barely in our teens, my sister and I on one of our annual visits at Nana’s, had managed to get ourselves totally disoriented in the surrounding jungle.  We barely missed being lunch for a jaguar stalking us from the dense tree branches above.  We’d been saved by the appearance of another animal, that to this day neither of us had been able to stick a name to.  After the near miss, we’d spent innumerable hours searching to identify our unlikely animal savior with no luck.

 

“Really?  Did you get a picture of it?”  She asked sounding excited at this news.

 

“No.  I just got a brief glint of it before it disappeared in the trees.  I didn’t even think to use my camera phone until it was too late.”

 

The plane’s captain announced on the in-flight PA, “All human passengers please take their seat and buckle up.”

 

I told my sister. “Hey, I’ve got to go now. I’ll call you when I land.”

 

“OK, Please be careful!”  My sister pleaded.

 

“Will do.  Bye.”  With that I switched off the phone and strapped myself in for take off.

 

Take off was totally uneventful.  When the pilot announced that we were finally at cruising altitude and free to move about the plane, I wove my way to Dulcinea’s box to see how she had fared the noise of the take off.  She stood calmly and quietly acting as if she were a seasoned jaded flier.  She did look a bit comical with the large wads of cotton I had stuffed in her ears to help muffle the sound of the jet engines.  Dulcinea turned her head at my touch and blew a huff of recognition and promptly began nuzzling me for treats.

 

“Sorry, girl you had the only ones I was able to get earlier.”  I continue to stroke her beautiful glossy hide.  She quivered lightly under my administration.  “I’m going to go get some coffee and maybe something to eat, so I’ll check on you later, OK?”  I asked Dulcinea, but not expecting any response.

 

I made my way toward the front seating area, and shuddered at the sight of the Neanderthal grabbing the coffee pot in his big meaty fist.  Oh goody, I get to be creep ed out with this lunk of misplace manhood for the long flight to Miami, I thought to myself. 

 

He finally put the pot back down with slow deliberation as he stared at me.  “Coffee?”  He asked as he gestured to the nearly empty pot.

 

I grabbed the pot, turned as much of my back to him as possible, and filled a cup.  I studiously ignored the brute and claimed a seat as far from him as I could get.  There were twelve seats for passengers, handlers, and trainers at the forward compartment and only four would be occupied during this flight.  A young girl plopped down in the seat adjacent to me and began to chatter.  After the first few questions that fellow travelers share, I began to tune her out and issued a few yes and no, when I sensed a question had just been asked. After nearly and hour into the flight I finally told the girl that I needed to sleep, and she finally shut up with a hurt look on her face.

 

I fell asleep and dreamed of that day years ago when we had become lost in the trees and nearly were lunch for a hungry jaguar.  The creature my sister and I saw wasn’t like anything you would find in a book.  Oddly, this creature appeared to be very hungry, but after its presence became known, the jaguar had leaped from the trees and run off.  Immediately the creature had turned its ravenous eyes away, spun on its legs and disappeared back into the jungle.  When we had told our tale to our grandmother she had scoffed and put down our sighting as childish imagination.

 

I awoke with a start and the sense that quite a big chunk of time had passed.  Checking my watch, I noticed that a several hours had elapsed since our take off.  Good, that takes care of a good part of the nearly nine hour flight back to the US.

 

I pulled back my now mussed up hair into my favorite clip and decided that I should go see how Dulcinea was faring, and possibly give her more hay and water.  Weaving my way toward her box, I took a look in to the various containers and large cages housing various assortments of animals.  At one particularly large box, I peeked in and saw what looked like a very large fox on stilts and steroids.  The front of the animal’s nearly fully enclosed box had a plastic sheathed label naming it as a ‘maned wolf’ and was bound for the Chicago Zoo.  The wolf stood quietly and peered right at me as if it knew exactly where I was and quite possibly what I was thinking.  We stood there staring at one another for several seconds until the plane gave a brief shudder.  With that the wolf lunged at my face with eyes wild and teeth barred.  Snapping and snarling, its teeth glistened just inches from my face. I lurched away from the container slamming my back into another metal wall in these close quarters.  I was very thankful for the strength of the metal of the cage between the wolf and me.

 

OK, not eaten by a tiger on the plane, but almost had my face ripped off by a Brazilian wolf no less!  This must have been what my sister’s premonition was, so I had better not peer into any more of these huge crates…

 

Recovering from the wolf’s ferocity, I headed directly for Dulcinea.  The mare was sweating profusely, and had rivulets trickling down her legs, even her ears were wet, and she shuffled nervously in her box.  I spoke trying to calm her nerves, “What’s going on here, Dulci?”  She jerked away from my touch with her eyes unfocused and wildly rolling.  Her whole body trembled and steam arose in the cool air of the planes belly. 

 

“This is not normal for you.  You’re a good traveler,” I said while reaching out to touch her again.  This time she jerked away so violently she strained and pulled on the leather lead and her halter dug in behind her ears.  She crashed against the far side wall, slipped on the shaving covered floor, screamed, and scrambled in full blown horse panic.  She wildly thrashed, repeatedly kicking violently the rear wall of the rubber mat lined container.  The full forced blows reverberated loudly in this enclosed space.  It was imperative that I try to get her calmed down, before she hurt herself in this insane attempt to be free!   

 

“Dulci…  Dulci, Please calm down,” I pleaded with the terror stricken mare.  There was no way for me to enter the box safely; I stood by helplessly waiting for her panic to subside, or for her to just wear herself out in this brutal attack.  In her blind fight she reared and clanged against the container, and with total disorientation and tried to go over the padded chest bar. She rained a blow to my left forearm numbing it with pain down to the hand.  She hooked one leg over the bar.

 

“Oh, Please stop!” I begged her as I pulled the panic snap on the lead line to try and free her from the bar.  Her trapped foreleg further enraged her ‘fight and flight’ instincts.  Her hind legs slipped out from under her with her rear crashing to the floor, unhooking her left leg from the chest bar.  I watched as her whole beautiful chestnut body crumpled down to her left side. 

 

With her down I rushed under the bar to put a knee to her sweat drenched neck in an attempt to hold her down long enough for her to regain some resemblance of sanity.  She continued to thrash her legs and made some feeble efforts to get my weight off of her neck.  Stroking her wet neck I beseeched her, “Calm down… Shhh…  Easy girl…  Easy…  Shhh.”  I continued to pat her neck as her attempts to get up became weaker and weaker.  She finally closed her sightless eyes gave a huge sigh, and totally relaxed her whole being. 

 

Believing that the worst of her mindless panic was over I let some of my weight up off of her neck.  She opened her eyes with a pleading look, took two short ragged breaths and stopped all movement.  Her unseeing eye stared right at me, accusing me of not helping her.

 

“No!  No!”  I screamed.  “Damit, horse breathe!”  I entreated her now still body as I scrambled off of her neck to slam my whole one hundred and twenty-six pounds onto her rib cage.  I bounced on her body in hopes that it would start her breathing again. “S**t!  S**t!  S**T!”  I shouted to the unseeing, unhearing, uncaring walls of the box.  “No this can NOT be happening,” I cried as tears started to cloud my vision.  “No, not you!”  I howled as my ministrations had no effect.  Realizing that my efforts were futile, I fell sobbing with anguish onto her helplessly still body.  Sorrow filled my soul as I sobbed uncontrolled, my tears mixing with the sweat sodden hair of her beautiful neck.  Never again would I be able to watch with total joy this incredibly breath-taking mare gallop freely.  I do not understand what has caused this to happen, or why she is now so very dead.  

 

Slowly ever so slowly, I regained control over my cries.  I gently closed her eye and lovingly arranged her mane and forelock.  Why did this happen to this mare?  I straightened her legs and started to arrange her tail about her neatly.  It was then that I saw the offending sutures.  Feeling the anger toward Mendez for doing this to her, I scrambled to the front of the box where I had stashed my purse.  I quickly searched the cavernous depths for either my knife or nail clippers.  Finding the clippers first, I grabbed them and made my way around to her rear and quickly cut the offending stitches loose.  Pulling the last suture out, I saw a whitish mass begin to emerge. 

 

Oh, holy s**t!  This was encased in a clear plastic bag.  I tugged on it and it popped out.  The bag had a small tear toward what would have been the farthest in.  Looking at that bag of coarse powder sitting in the shavings with Dulcinea’s dead body and was filled with dread.  What had these people done to this beautiful gentle spirit?  I knew what this stuff was, and it surely wasn’t sugar!  I tried to figure out the implications for what I now held in my hands.  I rocked back to lean against the wall that Dulcinea has so savagely beaten with her hooves just a short time ago.

 

Leaning against the black rubber matting, I could feel behind my shoulders the irregularities in the surface that she had wrought.  I turned to examine the damages.  One of the rents in the rubber was clear through its one-quarter inch thickness.  I poked a finger into the hole, expecting to find a steel or extruded aluminum wall.  Instead my fingers pushed into something firm but friable.   Pulling my fingers free, I found them covered in small white crystals similar to that which was now laying in the shavings at my knee.  Those sons-of-a-b*****s!  was screamed over and over again in my head.

 

A big metallic thunk heard over the roar and drone of the jet engines drew me back to what was now a very precarious situation.  I had no way to put the package back and re-suture her, and the tears in the mats and their now leaking contents would be pretty obvious to anyone who looked in here.  I knew that the kind of people engaged in this illegal and nefarious enterprise wouldn’t hesitate to take drastic measures.  “Now what in the hell do I do?” I asked the eternally still mare.

 

“Not a damn thing,” growled the Neanderthal as he lurched into the close confines of the box.

 

I scrambled to try in put as much distance between myself and this looming creature; I found myself without any options for running or escape.  “Stay away from me!” I shouted, I prayed it was loud enough for someone else in the bowels of the plane to hear.

 

“No one is going to hear you.” The hulk said with absolute calm and finality as he menacingly drew near.  He tossed a large clevis clamp, like the ones used to bolt the shipping boxes to the floor, from one hand to another. 

 

Not willing to become a sitting duck, I lunged forward with the intent to hit him squarely in the genitals.  He laughed as he swung the clevis and connected with the side of my head.  I felt myself falling forward, but was unable to even break my fall, landing face first in the bedding.  I lay there marveling with the new knowledge that one actually sees stars with a blow to the head, and the detached curiosity of what he planned to do with our bodies as blackness welcomed me and enveloped me in its embrace.

 

Author's Note

All critques are wanted. Doe it move at the right pace and are the descriptions adequate for you dear reader to visualize what is and has happened so far?

Reviews

[S. Allison (Ferrante) S..]

I hope you don't mind...this is my first story review and it was easier to write it down as I read it (by no means am I rewriting your works). I didn't finish, I definitely found the story (or chapter of) very enthralling and exciting!



As I should have expected, being typical of most airports, loading Dulcinea and her shipping stall onto the plane soon became a series of 'let's hurry up to wait' scenes. At last, the massive door finally clanged shut just as my cell phone rang. "Who in hell could be calling now," I wondered flipping open my phone as I took my seat. My sister's ID flashed on the screen so I hit the talk button. "Hey what's up?" I asked.

"Hi Sis! You haven't taken off yet?" She asked me.

"Nope. I was just taking my seat. We should be starting our taxi any minute now. Why?"

"Well, I had one of those feelings and needed to call you."

My sister has always been blessed or maybe cursed, depending on your point of view, with premonitions. Some times they are vague and almost dream like, other times startling with accuracy. Over the years, I've learned to pay attention to these "visions" of hers. "Ah, okay� What did you see? Not a plane crash, I hope?" I consider myself a good flier, and generally do not fear flying, but then again you never know what might happen once airborne. I had already checked the safety record, for Pegasus Air Transport, way before I arranged for Dulcinea to be moved. They specialize in shipping livestock and zoo animals, and their safety record is legendary.

"No, not a plane crash�but I just have this really bad feeling. Please be really careful, okay?"

"What's to be careful of? I'm just going on a plane full of horses, cows and maybe a wild animal or two�I think I saw a tiger. Hey I'm not going to be eaten by a loose tiger on the plane, am I?" I joked.

"Come on Sirona, be serious. I just have this feeling that you need to be extra careful�at least until you get through custom," she scolded.

"Okay, I can do that."

"You haven't had any other things happen�you know like anything odd or weird, since you've been in Brazil, have you?" As she asked I could feel the concern in her voice.

"Other than getting a sucky car with the no air conditioning�Nah," I laughed. "Well the farm manager was a little bit weird. He'd had his vet caslick Dulci," I said with the lingering anger in my voice. "And I saw some sort of animal in the trees, which he said was a chupacabra," I added.

My sister's voice picked up on a little, "Really?"

"Yea, like I'm going to believe in a Mexican vampire!" I laughed.

"It was like that animal we saw when we got lost in the jungle at Nana's place�remember?" During one of our annual visits to Nana's, my sister and I barely in our teens, had managed to get ourselves somewhat lost in the jungle near by. We barely missed being lunch for a stalking jaguar, leering at us from the dense tree branches above. We were saved by the sudden appearance of another animal, to which neither of us has been able to stick a name to, to this day. After that near miss, we spent countless hours searching to identify our mysterious animal savior with no luck.

"Really? Did you get a picture of it?" She asked sounding excited at this news.

"No. I just caught a brief glint of it before it disappeared in the trees. I didn't even think to use my camera phone until it was too late."

The plane's captain announced on the in-flight PA, "All human passengers please take their seat and buckle up."

I told my sister, "Hey, I've got to go now. I'll call you when I land."

"Okay, please be careful!" my sister pleaded.

"Will do�bye," and with that I switched off the phone and strapped myself in for take off.

Take off was totally uneventful. When the pilot announced that we were finally at cruising altitude and free to move about the plane, I wove my way to Dulcinea's crate to see how she had fared the noise from take off. She stood calmly and quietly acting as if she were a seasoned, jaded flier. She did look a bit comical with the large wads of cotton that I had stuffed in her ears to help muffle the sound of the jet engines. Dulcinea turned her head at my touch and blew a huff of recognition and promptly began nuzzling me for treats.

"Sorry, girl you had the only ones I was able to get earlier," I told her as I continued to stroke her beautiful glossy hide. She quivered lightly under my administration. I asked Dulcinea, not expecting any response, "I'm going to go get some coffee and maybe something to eat, so I'll check on you later, okay?"

I made my way toward the front seating area and shuddered at the sight of the Neanderthal grabbing the coffee pot in his big meaty fist. Oh goody, "I get to be creeped by this lunk of misplaced manhood for the long flight to Miami," I thought to myself.

He finally put the pot back down with slow deliberation as he stared at me. "Coffee?" he asked as he gestured to the nearly empty pot.

I grabbed the pot, turning as much of my back to him as possible, and filled a cup. I studiously ignored the brute and claimed a seat as far from him as I could find. There were twelve seats for passengers, handlers and trainers at the forward compartment and only four would be occupied during this flight. A young girl plopped down in the seat adjacent to me and began to chatter. After her first few questions with fellow travelers, I began to tune her out. I issued a few quick 'yes' and 'no' responses, when I sensed a question had just been asked. After nearly and hour into the flight I finally told the girl that I needed to sleep. With a hurt look, she finally shut up.

I fell asleep and dreamt of that day, years ago when my sister and I had become lost in the trees and nearly became lunch for that hungry jaguar. The creature we saw wasn't like anything you would find in a book. The creature appeared to be very hungry and once its presence became known, the jaguar leapt from the tree and ran off. In an instant, it immediately turned its ravenous eyes away, spun on its legs and disappeared back into the vast jungle. I remember as we boasting our tale to grandmother, she just scoffed and accredited it all to our childish imaginations.

When I awoke, I could sense that quite a bit of time had passed by. I confirmed my senses by checking my watch, as several hours had elapsed since take off. "Good," I thought, "That takes care of the majority of my nine hour flight back to the US".

I pulled my now rustled hair, back into my favorite clip. I decided to go see how Dulcinea was and possibly give her more hay and water. Weaving my way toward her crate, I slowly glanced into the various cages housing a varied assortment of animals. In one particularly large crate, I saw what looked to be a very large fox on stilts and steroids. On the front of the animal's, nearly enclosed box was the plastic sheathed label, reading 'maned wolf'. It was bound for the Chicago Zoo. The wolf stood quietly as it glared right back at me, as if it almost knew exactly where I was standing and what I was thinking. We stood there staring at one another for several seconds, until the plane gave a brief shudder. With that the wolf lunged at my face with eyes wild and teeth barred. Snapping and snarling, its teeth glistened just inches from my face. I lurched away and in such closed quarters, I slammed my back into another metal wall. I was very thankful for the strength of the metal cage that was between me and the wolf.

Thoughts rushed through my head, "Okay, so I wasn't eaten by a tiger on the plane, but I almost just had my face ripped off by a wolf�a Brazilian wolf, no less!" Assuming this must have been what my sister was worried about! I decided not to peer into any more of the huge crates�

Recovering from the wolf's ferocity, I headed directly for Dulcinea. The mare was sweating profusely. As she shuffled nervously in her box, I noticed rivulets trickling down her legs. Even her ears were wet! I spoke softly, trying to calm her nerves, "What's going on here, Dulci?" She jerked away from my touch, her eyes unfocused and wildly rolling. Her whole body trembled and steam arose in the cool air of the planes belly.

"This is not normal for you. You're a good traveler," I said as I reached out to touch her again. This time she jerked away, straining so violently that she pulled the leather lead, digging the halter behind her ears. She crashed against the far side wall, slipped on the shaving-covered floor, screamed and scrambled into a full-blown horse panic. She thrashed wildly, repeatedly kicking, violently, into the rubber lined rear wall of her crate. Her fully forced blows loudly reverberated in the enclosed space we shared. It was absolutely necessary, for me to calm her down before she hurt herself in that insane attempt for freedom!

"Dulci� Dulci! Please calm down," I pleaded to the terror stricken mare. There was no way for me to enter the box safely; I stood by helplessly waiting for her panic to subside or for her to finally wear out from this brutal attack. In her blind fight she reared and clanged against the crate with total disorientation and tried to go over the padded chest bar. She rained a blow to my left forearm numbing it with pain down to the hand and hooked one of her legs over the bar.

"Oh Please�Stop!" I begged her, as I pulled the panic snap on the lead line, trying to free her from the bar. As her trapped foreleg further enraged her 'fight and flight' instincts, her hind legs slipped out from beneath her. And with that, her rear crashed to the floor unhooking her left leg from the chest bar. I watched as her whole beautiful, chestnut body crumpled down to the floor.

With her down I rushed under the bar to put a knee to her sweat drenched neck in an attempt to hold her down long enough for her to regain some resemblance of sanity. She continued to thrash her legs and made some feeble efforts to get my weight off of her neck. Stroking her wet neck I beseeched her, "Calm down� Shhh� Easy girl� Easy� Shhh." I continued to pat her neck as her attempts to get up became weaker and weaker. She finally closed her sightless eyes gave a huge sigh, and totally relaxed her whole being.

Believing that the worst of her mindless panic was over I let some of my weight up off of her neck. She opened her eyes with a pleading look, took two short ragged breaths and stopped all movement. Her unseeing eye stared right at me, accusing me of not helping her.

"No! No!" I screamed. "Damit, horse breathe!" I entreated her now still body as I scrambled off of her neck to slam my whole one hundred and twenty-six pounds onto her rib cage. I bounced on her body in hopes that it would start her breathing again. "S**t! S**t! S**T!" I shouted to the unseeing, unhearing, uncaring walls of the box. "No this can NOT be happening," I cried as tears started to cloud my vision. "No, not you!" I howled as my ministrations had no effect. Realizing that my efforts were futile, I fell sobbing with anguish onto her helplessly still body. Sorrow filled my soul as I sobbed uncontrolled, my tears mixing with the sweat sodden hair of her beautiful neck. Never again would I be able to watch with total joy this incredibly breath-taking mare gallop freely. I do not understand what has caused this to happen, or why she is now so very dead.

Slowly ever so slowly, I regained control over my cries. I gently closed her eye and lovingly arranged her mane and forelock. Why did this happen to this mare? I straightened her legs and started to arrange her tail about her neatly. It was then that I saw the offending sutures. Feeling the anger toward Mendez for doing this to her, I scrambled to the front of the box where I had stashed my purse. I quickly searched the cavernous depths for either my knife or nail clippers. Finding the clippers first, I grabbed them and made my way around to her rear and quickly cut the offending stitches loose. Pulling the last suture out, I saw a whitish mass begin to emerge.

Oh, holy s**t! This was encased in a clear plastic bag. I tugged on it and it popped out. The bag had a small tear toward what would have been the farthest in. Looking at that bag of coarse powder sitting in the shavings with Dulcinea's dead body and was filled with dread. What had these people done to this beautiful gentle spirit? I knew what this stuff was, and it surely wasn't sugar! I tried to figure out the implications for what I now held in my hands. I rocked back to lean against the wall that Dulcinea has so savagely beaten with her hooves just a short time ago.

Leaning against the black rubber matting, I could feel behind my shoulders the irregularities in the surface that she had wrought. I turned to examine the damages. One of the rents in the rubber was clear through its one-quarter inch thickness. I poked a finger into the hole, expecting to find a steel or extruded aluminum wall. Instead my fingers pushed into something firm but friable. Pulling my fingers free, I found them covered in small white crystals similar to that which was now laying in the shavings at my knee. Those sons-of-a-b*****s! was screamed over and over again in my head.

A big metallic thunk heard over the roar and drone of the jet engines drew me back to what was now a very precarious situation. I had no way to put the package back and re-suture her, and the tears in the mats and their now leaking contents would be pretty obvious to anyone who looked in here. I knew that the kind of people engaged in this illegal and nefarious enterprise wouldn't hesitate to take drastic measures. "Now what in the hell do I do?" I asked the eternally still mare.

"Not a damn thing," growled the Neanderthal as he lurched into the close confines of the box.

I scrambled to try in put as much distance between myself and this looming creature; I found myself without any options for running or escape. "Stay away from me!" I shouted, I prayed it was loud enough for someone else in the bowels of the plane to hear.

"No one is going to hear you." The hulk said with absolute calm and finality as he menacingly drew near. He tossed a large clevis clamp, like the ones used to bolt the shipping boxes to the floor, from one hand to another.

Not willing to become a sitting duck, I lunged forward with the intent to hit him squarely in the genitals. He laughed as he swung the clevis and connected with the side of my head. I felt myself falling forward, but was unable to even break my fall, landing face first in the bedding. I lay there marveling with the new knowledge that one actually sees stars with a blow to the head, and the detached curiosity of what he planned to do with our bodies as blackness welcomed me and enveloped me in its embrace.

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[JRB]

this was a sweet read and nice write thank you, i enjoyed it flow,

[TL Boehm]

I was too wrapped up and in a lather at the end to give this a 'mechanical review' All I can do is sit here and FUME! I want to kill somebody.

[anneliese]

it was very easy to follow and visualize, not once was i confused about anything. i do have to say that you seemed to repeat the scene in the jungle with the creature one too many times, but that could just be me. other than that, this was really good. Great Job!!

[Lena M. P.]

Yes this was very dramatic, the imagery was concise and believable, the story is intriguing and the chapter has a good plot. The pace is good and the added mystery and mystical was gentle enough to keep my interest.

[Daiku Maryu]

":Hi, sis!"--you missed the " here.

" your view point"--I think "point of view" would sound better. It may be that I just hadn't heard the phrase "view point" used before and it sounds odd to me because of that...

"I asked Dulcinea, but not expecting any response."--the "but" isn't really necessary here. The sentence will sound smoother if you remove it.

"creep ed"--there's an unnecessary space here.

"various assortments of animals."--this sounds a bit off. I'm not sure you can have assortments of animals?

"planes"--the apostrophe between plane and "s" is missing.

"She wildly thrashed"--I think "she trashed wildly" would sound better.

"and with total disorientation and tried to go"--either there's to many ands or there's a verb missing here.

"I do not understand what has caused this to happen, or why she is now so very dead."--you suddenly switched into present here.

Those sons-of-a-b*****s! was screamed over and over again in my head.--sounds rather weird. Try writing "Those sons-of-a-b***h!" I creamed im my head over and over again.

Overally, this is a good chapter. The pacing is quick and the cliff-hanger ending doesn't feel forced.