by Randa Morris

Created on: May 04, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Too late we realized how foolish we had been, how unprepared for the realities that suddenly faced us The darkness above and below and all around, the sounds that echoed eerily in the night that was swallowing us whole

Back home in Missouri we had been younger, so much more innocent. How quickly a few weeks can age you. That dark jungle will grow you up fast, and once it has aged you, time can never make you quite so young, quite so naive' again.

Now that the night was smothering us, I knew that Jack and I had little hope of seeing Missouri again.

Out there in the darkness, somewhere, our best friend had been taken. His terror filled screams still echoed in my head, though it had been almost a week to the day, that the mad tiger had attacked, dragging him off into the darkness of a night just this like one
A night I will never forget.
"Kevin", Jack said softly, "It's out there. I can feel it watching us"
"Yeah," I agreed, but said no more. Why give voice to a horror that lurked invisible in darkness? It seemed as if speaking of it would somehow lend form and shape and substance, inescapable. The thought brought back vivid, horrific memories, of the beast that had lunged, unsuspected, from out of the darkness

"For a week" Kevin said, his voice sounding more and more stressed with each word
"A week, man. It's been out there, every night in the dark What is it waiting for?" He raised his voice in an angry outburst, as if issuing a challenge to the darkness, he shook his clenched fist into the night and shouted "Why doesn't it just come on? Come on you bastard, let's get on with this!"
"Jack" I said, hissing his name into the darkness of the jungle night air, I grabbed his fisted hand and pulled it down, trying to quiet his sudden rage. "One more night" I said firmly. "The plane will be here by sunrise. We just have to get through this one last night." And I prayed we would, but in the leaves I heard rustling, the low faint growling sound, growing closer

"Bastard" Jack said.
"Shut-up Jack" I told him. "I mean it."

I could sense that the tiger was closer than it had been since the night that it had rushed us.

Up until that night we hadn't been afraid of anything.
Matt, Jack and myself, we had always been the fearless three we had charged into danger without blinking- together- ever since the fourth grade.
It was Matt who had started it back then, but, of course, Jack and I were never far behind. As it turned out, our first dare was to see if we had the guts to jump from the

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