Out of Control

When Ezekiel opened his eyes, it was only to find himself hanging upside down like a piñata, his head spinning like a top. "What fresh hell is this?" he muttered, having a vague memory of being trussed up like a turkey by the woman and the 'Lapdog', before being dragged through the forest by Flynn, attached to his hooves by the ankles, the rope cutting into his skin.

"Hell?" a voice hazarded from somewhere unseen to the left of him. "I think there's only really the one."

"Not according to Dante," Ezekiel said, looking around for Flynn, who was now nowhere to be seen.

"Well, I'm not going to tally up the various circles of hell," the voice retorted, "especially when you landed us slap bang right in the middle of this one."

"I did?"

"Think, fratboy. It may come back to you."

Ezekiel frowned, the past still hazy. "Really still not remembering," he said, swaying side to side like a pendulum.

"Does a monkey skull made of solid gold ring a bell?"

Ezekiel instantly straightened up, only to bang his head off the ground, making him just as instantly hunch over again. As he cursed uselessly under his breath, he vaguely recalled colliding with a bunch of loin-cloth wearing strangers, a small monkey skull made of solid gold landing literally in his lap, the memory unsurprisingly standing out above everything else. "Yeah, I remember now," he said hastily, glancing around for Flynn again, wanting to kick his equestrian ass for apparently abandoning him.

"You bloody well should since you stole it!"

Ezekiel's brow furrowed. "That's not how it went down, mate," he said, craning his neck, trying and failing to see who he was talking to, "I crashed into some cult, and then that skull was in my hands, through no fault of my own, might I add. It was just... there."

"Actually, you crashed into the ancient Urutu tribe, previously thought to be lost" -

- "Okay, enough with the enlightenment," Ezekiel snapped, "I've got places to be, man."

"So do I" -

- "Do you know where my horse went by any chance?" Ezekiel cut across the voice, not interested in hearing it extol a list of social events it was meant to be attending.

"After our Urutu companions knocked you out with some primitive sort of truncheon, they – they-decided-to-have-your-horse-for-dinner."

"They what!?" Ezekiel yelped. "That's barbaric!"

"I tried to stop them" -

- "But my horse wasn't a horse" -

- "but they were being deliberately obtuse"-

- "he was a man who was turned into a horse!"

"He was a what!?"

"He was turned into a horse," Ezekiel said, struggling with his bonds, "by Baba Yaga. Don't ask me to explain why."

"How, then!?"

"Duh, magic, of course."

"I don't believe in magic."

Ezekiel just closed his eyes and shook his head, not wanting to instigate an existential debate on the existence of magic. "Who the hell are you anyways?" he demanded, craning his neck again, just enough to see a pair of irate blue eyes glaring at him through a fall of tangled black hair.

"My mother said never to speak to strangers."

"All you've done is talk the ears off me!"

The voice was silent for a moment, processing the logic of his statement. "I was asking for directions from the Urutu hunting party," the voice said reluctantly, "when you suddenly came out of nowhere, stealing a sacred relic while you were at it" -

- "I told you, it was just there, in my hands! You can't argue against the laws of attraction" -

- "and for some bizarre reason they jumped to the conclusion I was in cahoots with you," the voice said as if he hadn't spoken, "wherein they went from happy to help, to stringing me up higher than Hamen!"

Ezekiel just rolled his eyes. "What's a chick like you doing in a place like this anyhow?" he asked against his will, her cultured tones sitting at odd with their situation, stirring his curiosity.

"That's for me to know and you to find out."

"Keep telling yourself that," Ezekiel muttered, before a sudden flash of movement caught his attention, making his head snap up, promptly smashing off the ground again. "What are they doing?" he demanded, not liking the look of the wooden stake two tribesman were hammering into the ground, one holding the stake steady, the other baring his teeth as he swung the makeshift mallet downwards.

"They're making the necessary preparations to stake me over that fire ant's nest," the voice said wearily, "it's the standard tribal punishment for errant women."

"Nasty," Ezekiel said, whistling through his teeth, before an alarming thought arrested him. "Hey, what about me?" he said, panic suddenly setting in. "Are they gonna stake me too?"

"You're a thief," the voice spat, "so the tribe will hold a yohimbi trial."

"A what trial?"

"Usually the outcome is already decided," the voice continued, "wherein you join the chief's harem, serving his every need, doing your duty as a good wife should."

"I'm a bloke!"

"It's meant as a title of degradation."

"Well, he's not my type," Ezekiel snapped as the chief strode past, wearing a rather bedraggled feathered headdress, his saggy knees on somewhat sickening eye-level with Ezekiel, "he's got more wrinkles than my grandma."

"There is... another way for your honour to be regained."

Ezekiel sensed a trap within the words, but he'd run out of options, and he didn't particularly fancy assuming the ancient shackles of matrimony either. "What would that be, then?" he asked suspiciously, eyes narrowing.

"The Urutu are immensely proud of their warriors," the voice explained, "if you were to challenge and defeat their strongest warrior, they'd see it as the will of the gods."

Ezekiel gnawed his lower lip, weighing up his chances, not really fancying risking his beloved fingers. Being no Jacob or Eve, he might never pick a lock again or shoplift some Chardonnay. "So if I win, they have to let us go?" he said carefully, setting his snare.

"So I believe," the voice replied tiredly, instantly confirming all his suspicions.

"You're just using me to get the hell out of hell!" Ezekiel exploded. "Why don't you save yourself? I don't do damsels in distress!?"

"Neither do I, actually."

"What, I'm the damsel!?" Ezekiel exclaimed in disbelief.

"I had to stop them from chopping off your thieving hands," the voice snapped, "which took considerable effort on my part, might I add. It was only the casual reference to a curse befalling the whole tribe that they commuted your sentence to a yohimbi trial. Now I'm trying to help you avoid that fate as well, so I think I'm doing my damnedest" -

- "Okay, point taken, mate," Ezekiel cut across the voice, "and... thanks, for my hands, I mean." There was an awkward silence, Ezekiel then clearing his throat awkwardly. "Couldn't you have said if they took the horse they would be struck down by the gods for sacrilege?" he said, wincing at the thought of explaining to Eve and the others that Flynn was now nothing but dinner on someone's plate.

"Trust me, I tried that," the voice said witheringly, "but that was the part where they were suddenly struck down by deafness."

"Convenient that, huh?" Ezekiel said with a heavy sigh, before resigning his precious fingers to their precarious fate.

We're the puzzle I can't fix
A million pieces still missing
When I look at you and me, I still can't tell what this is
But it's out of my control...