Purple Heart

Chapter 2
Kayamma

Chapter Description: Dr. Cueves theorizes on what could be causing the disappearances in the Rejuventud Forest.

Rain barraged the Parker Science Center in New York City. The water drops slid off the windows and left trails of shiny slime. Behind these windows, scientists went about their research. Dr. Jose Cueves analyzed the image on a computer screen. His assistant, Jane Doe, stood behind him, waiting for his response.

“More disappearances,” Dr. Cueves muttered. “You do realize this is a trend?”

Doe cocked her head, getting a closer look at the report. “In what way?”

He sighed and pointed out a few lines of text. “We’ve had five squads of soldiers attempt to make their way through the Rejuventud Forest, and all of them either died or…”

“Or what?”

He blinked. “Or disappeared. Out of these five three-person squads, only twelve bodies have been recovered.”

“How were they recovered? I thought you said no one could get through the forest?”

“Well, no one can get through in small groups, which is what we’ve needed. Anyway, the other three soldiers, Jacob Turk, Paul Dyers, and Vicente Gonzales were never found.”

Doe walked over to a touch screen the size of T.V and turned it on. She went into the rosters and brought up the soldiers in question. Their images and information materialized in the screen. To Doe, she could only see on connection….

“They’re all of Mexican descent,” she inferred. Dr. Cueves walked up beside her.

“Exactly. Each had at least one Mexican parent. It’s all a little too…coincidental. So, I went back into what little history of the Rejuventud Forest we have.”

“What did you find? Not much, I suspect,” Doe pointed out. The forest was the stuff of myths and legends, as not much was known about the place. No one usually lived to tell the tale.

He smiled. “I actually found accounts of a Cryptid in the vicinity.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What the hell’s that?”

“A Cryptid is a creature that is or was widely believed to be real at one point, and may have been. A modern example would be Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster.”

“And what Cryptid would this be?”

Dr. Cueves changed menus on the touch screen and went to historical files. He brought up texts and pictures about this creature. It had a naked, pink body that looked like an oversized, hunched over, human. It had no genitalia to speak of, and seemed to have a nipple-like appendage that would come out of its mouth.

“This creature,” the doctor went on, “Is known as the Kayamma, or in English, Mother. According to Egyptian texts, this creature was originally a woman, hence the name, Mother. She was once a beautiful Egyptian woman who shared the name Cleopatra with the future queen. It is said that she once sacrificed her own children in order to save her own life. The god Anubis looked down upon this, and cursed the woman to become this beastly creature. Not wanting to stay like that forever, she made a deal with Anubis. She promised that, in return for the Afterlife, she would care for the babies of the world. He agreed, and gave her the ability to suck the age out of humans, giving her a source of food. Once the age was removed, she cared for the infant that was left behind.”

“But,” Doe interrupted, “That doesn’t explain why only some of the bodies disappeared. And why are dwelling upon this? It is only legend.”

“So was flying, until we made it happen. Cleopatra only fed off of people that looked familiar to her, in this case, the Egyptians. In order to better explain the significance of this, I must tell you that Cleopatra found a weakness in Anubis’s punishment. She found that if she were to find and endow a woman, she could switch places with her, effectively ending her sentence. So, that is what she did. After switching, the victim, an African woman, became the new Kayamma, and fed off only Africans. So began the chain. Year after year, century after century, the creature’s mantle changed hands. And now, I believe that it lies in the arms of a Mexican woman.”

“What do you propose we do? Go to this forest and investigate?”

Dr. Cueves smiled. “Obviously.”

“You’re Mexican, what if this creature captures you?” Doe asked with a worried look in her eye.

“And you’re a woman, what if the creature switches places with you?”