"The Jungle Of No Return"

 

 "THE FALL"

The sky was clear — too clear. A kind of calm that almost warned of a coming storm.

Zane Faulkner sat in his window seat, dressed in a sleek black coat with his usual relaxed charm, one leg casually crossed over the other. His expression was light, a small amused smile dancing on his lips as he looked out at the clouds.

“Are we seriously flying over nothing but trees for three hours straight?” Eli grumbled beside him, scrolling nervously through the in-flight magazine. “This place looks like it swallowed the satellite signal and forgot to spit it back.”

Zane tilted his head slightly. “Some say the jungle is alive. Personally, I think it’s just shy.”

Eli gave him a flat stare. “You’re having fun. I’m having a panic attack.”

“Which balances the flight nicely,” Zane said cheerfully. “Besides, I told you — this is personal. Not a case.”

Their destination was confidential — a remote location in South America where Zane had planned to meet someone from his past. Not a suspect, not a client. Just someone... important. But fate, as usual, had other plans.

At precisely 2:46 PM, the first tremor shook the aircraft.

The lights flickered. The overhead compartments rattled. Then came the voice of the captain — calm, but too calm.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing a technical malfunction. Please remain seated.”

A moment later, the left engine burst into flame.

Screams erupted.

Masks dropped from the ceiling. The cabin tilted violently as the plane began to descend, spiraling over an endless green sea of trees below.

“Zane!” Eli shouted, gripping the armrests, eyes wide with panic.

Zane calmly reached for his seatbelt. “Remember what I said about personal trips?”

“Yes?!”

“They always end badly.”

—

In the next thirty minutes, chaos unfolded at the edge of sanity.

The crew distributed emergency parachutes. Not everyone knew how to use them, but there was no time for instructions. The plane was losing altitude fast, and the jungle below stretched on like a monster with no end.

Zane and Eli were among the last to jump — pushed by the roaring flames and the cracking metal behind them.

Zane’s parachute opened like a silent angel above him. The jungle wind whistled past his ears. He looked down with a strange peace in his eyes — as though he were gliding toward adventure, not disaster.

Eli, falling nearby, was screaming like a man who'd just seen his obituary.

Minutes later, both hit the jungle floor — hard, tangled, and alive.

—

The jungle was ancient.

Not just in time, but in weight. It breathed with a heavy silence. Sunlight barely pierced the canopy. Vines the thickness of arms wrapped around towering trees. Insects buzzed like small engines. The scent of rot and wildflowers mixed into something dizzying.

Zane stood and dusted himself off.

Eli, sprawled in a thorn bush nearby, groaned. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“You landed on them. That’s a good sign,” Zane replied, offering a hand.

One by one, more survivors emerged from the trees. There were about fifteen in total — passengers and crew, bruised, scratched, terrified.

A woman in her late twenties stumbled out from the ferns, breathless and wide-eyed. Her name was Clara — strong-willed, skeptical, and visibly unimpressed with Zane’s unfazed demeanor.

“Is this man smiling?” she muttered to one of the crew. “We just fell out of the sky.”

Zane turned and gave her a short bow. “Zane Faulkner. Frequent crasher of flights, apparently.”

She frowned. “You think this is a joke?”

Zane tilted his head. “Well, when death stares at you with a vine in its teeth, you can either scream… or smile.”

Most people chose to scream.

—

By nightfall, the survivors had gathered near a clearing. A makeshift fire burned at the center, giving off flickering shadows that danced like ghosts on the surrounding trees. Tempers were high. Panic was seeping in like humidity — constant and suffocating.

Eli sat beside Zane, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“We don’t know where we are,” he whispered. “We’ve got no signal, no maps, no rescue. And have you noticed something...?”

“What?” Zane asked, chewing a leaf he’d found and examining its taste like a wine critic.

“There are no sounds in this jungle. No birds. No animals. Just... nothing.”

Zane’s eyes lifted. He had noticed. But he didn’t say it out loud.

Instead, he stood, clapped his hands, and turned to the group.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said loudly, “I know this seems bad.”

Everyone stared.

“Actually, it is bad,” he continued. “But we’ve got fire. We’ve got numbers. And most importantly — we’ve got me.”

Someone scoffed. “Who even are you?”

Zane grinned. “Just a man who doesn’t like dying in jungles.”

Clara, sitting opposite the fire, narrowed her eyes. She was watching him carefully. There was something strange about him — this odd mix of elegance and madness.

He wasn’t panicked. He wasn’t tired. He was... excited.

“Tomorrow,” Zane said, “we’ll begin exploring. The jungle has an exit. We just have to persuade it to let us out.”

More scoffing. A few people muttered, “This guy’s lost it.”

Eli leaned closer to Clara and whispered, “Don’t mind him. He’s always like this. You’ll get used to it.”

Clara raised an eyebrow. “He’s joking while we’re probably dying out here.”

Eli sighed. “Yeah. That’s the scary part. He’s serious.”

She looked back at Zane, who was now drawing a map in the dirt using a stick and humming a jazz tune.

Something about him didn’t fit here. Or maybe he fit too well — like a character in a novel who somehow knew he was the only one making it to the end.

And for the first time, Clara wasn’t entirely sure if he was brilliant... or insane.

"THE MAZE OF GREEN TEETH"

The second day began with screaming.

A passenger named Wallace — an older man with a sunburned face — had gone off to relieve himself at dawn and never returned. When two others went to look for him, they came back pale and silent.

“We found his shoe,” one whispered. “And blood. A lot of it.”

No one said it, but everyone thought the same thing:

This jungle is alive.

It didn’t take long for the panic to settle into the group like fog. They argued about staying put or moving. Some wanted to build SOS signs with rocks, others wanted to start hiking north — though no one had any idea where north even was.

Zane sat on a rock chewing sugarcane he’d sliced with a handmade stone knife. He watched them all with amused detachment, like a teacher watching toddlers attempt quantum physics.

Clara was watching him again.

He was different from everyone else. No insect bites. No dirt on his coat. No signs of fear.

Just that same calm smile.

She marched over. “Are you ever going to stop grinning and do something?”

Zane looked up at her. “Miss Clara, I’m already doing the most important thing.”

“And what’s that?”

He held up the sugarcane. “Sucking sugar out of a stick. Restores electrolytes, fights fatigue, and — fun fact — distracts me from the psychological decay of the group.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Do you ever talk like a normal person?”

“No. That’s Eli’s job.”

“I heard that,” Eli called from behind a tree, swatting at mosquitos with a giant leaf.

Zane stood and brushed himself off. “Alright. Enough comedy. Let’s go save someone.”

“What?”

“Wallace,” Zane said. “He might still be alive. I saw drag marks. They were fresh.”

“You didn’t tell anyone?”

“They were busy yelling,” he said simply, grabbing a broken branch shaped like a cane. “Besides… I like having a head start.”

—

Against her better judgment, Clara followed him.

Eli joined, of course — reluctantly, muttering about venomous snakes and invisible jungle panthers.

The tracks led them through narrow gaps in the trees, over strange fungus-covered stones and under canopies so thick they felt like curtains. Zane stopped often, not just to examine clues — but also to admire flowers, sketch leaves, and make witty observations that drove Eli insane.

“This isn’t a jungle,” Eli said at one point, drenched in sweat. “It’s a green sauna from hell.”

“It’s charming,” Zane said, sniffing a blossom. “It smells like death and mangoes.”

“I can’t believe this is real,” Clara muttered.

“Neither can I,” Zane replied, suddenly serious. “Something’s wrong here. This place… doesn’t behave like a normal forest. Distances feel distorted. Time moves differently.”

Clara frowned. “You noticed that too?”

He nodded. “We’ve been walking for thirty minutes, but it feels like three hours. Yet the sun hasn’t moved.”

She looked at him, unsettled. For a moment, the joking faded from his eyes — and she saw something deeper: intelligence sharp enough to cut steel.

But then it was gone, replaced by his usual grin. “Good news: I think I hear a goat.”

“That’s not a goat,” Eli said.

He was right.

It was a low, guttural snarl — and it was getting closer.

Zane raised a hand. Everyone froze.

From the bushes ahead, something moved. Something large.

And then it charged.

A wild boar — massive, tusked, and furious — erupted from the trees, barreling straight toward Clara.

She gasped, frozen.

And Zane moved.

In a blur, he stepped in front of her, grabbed his branch-cane, and with the smooth elegance of a dancer, sidestepped the charge and slammed the stick against the boar’s snout.

The creature howled, staggered, and ran off — blood trailing from its face.

Clara fell back, trembling.

Zane turned, extended a hand, and smiled. “Told you I was good with sticks.”

She stared at him like he was from another planet. “You just... fought off a wild boar. With a branch.”

“Technically, it was a symbolic negotiation. I hit first.”

—

They found Wallace an hour later.

He was alive — barely — tangled in vines, bleeding from the leg, delirious from fever.

Zane carried him on his back the entire way back to camp.

By the time they returned, the group had stopped arguing and started panicking. A second passenger had vanished — a teenager this time. And no one had seen or heard a thing.

Zane laid Wallace near the fire, cleaned the wound with herbs, and gave instructions to the crew on how to prepare bark-based medicine.

“You’re not a doctor,” one crewman muttered.

“No,” Zane said, “but I’ve read more medical journals than your captain’s read flight manuals.”

Even Clara didn’t argue this time.

She just stared at him.

Later that night, she sat beside Eli while Zane drew strange shapes in the dirt with glowing mushroom juice.

“Is he always like this?” she whispered.

“Always,” Eli said. “Sometimes worse.”

Clara laughed quietly. “I thought he was insane.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“But he’s... amazing.”

Eli looked at her sideways. “Oh no. Not you too.”

“What?”

“You’ve joined the list. It starts with confusion, moves to irritation, and ends with infatuation. Every time.”

Clara blushed slightly and looked away. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’ll see,” Eli muttered. “Give it another day.”

—

Day three turned cruel.

It rained for hours — a hard, slapping rain that drowned the fire, soaked clothes, and drove the survivors into miserable silence. Insects crawled into sleeping bags. Someone was bitten by a snake. A small fight broke out over a soggy protein bar.

But Zane?

Zane was singing.

He turned a banana leaf into an umbrella. Made a hammock out of vines. Shared a joke about a tarantula and a hairdresser. And somehow, he kept everyone from completely falling apart.

Even Clara was laughing now — unwillingly, but genuinely.

He made them believe.

And when one of the passengers collapsed from exhaustion, Zane carried him too.

“He’s not human,” someone whispered.

Clara smiled. “He’s Zane Faulkner.”

"THE EXIT NO ONE FOUND"

By the fifth day, the jungle had stopped pretending to be a jungle.

It had turned into a maze. A green labyrinth with no pattern, no logic, and no mercy.

Paths they’d marked had vanished. Landmarks they'd passed reappeared in the wrong direction. Even the sun seemed trapped above the canopy, refusing to shift. The group was growing desperate. People whispered about curses. Supernatural forces. Someone muttered they were in hell.

And still, Zane Faulkner smiled.

He hummed an upbeat tune while slicing a grapefruit-sized fruit open with a sharpened stone.

“Would you stop that?” Clara finally snapped, soaked in sweat, her voice shaking. “How are you not losing your mind?”

Zane looked at her. His smile faded — just slightly.

“I am,” he said softly. “But screaming doesn't make the vines part faster.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. There was something in his voice — a depth he rarely showed.

He wasn't blind to the danger.

He was just better at dancing with it.

—

Later that day, a man named Rafi collapsed. No energy, no water, no hope left. The others sat beside him, defeated. Eli leaned against a tree, shirt torn, face gaunt.

“I think,” he whispered, “this is how we die.”

“No,” Zane said. “This is how we almost die.”

He stood in front of the group, dirt-streaked, eyes bright.

“I've been mapping this place in my head. Every tree. Every path. Every sunbeam that shouldn’t exist.”

“You’ve been what?” someone said in disbelief.

Zane knelt and began drawing in the mud with a twig — a complex, spiraling map with dots and angles.

“I noticed something three days ago,” he continued. “This jungle isn’t random. It feels random, but the disorientation is deliberate. Like... a defense system.”

Clara stepped forward. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Zane said, pointing to the lines, “it’s an optical illusion. The jungle uses mirrored geography — repeating layouts with rotated symmetry. We keep thinking we’re moving forward, but we’re walking in mirrored circles.”

They all stared.

“You’re saying the jungle is... playing tricks?”

“Not tricks,” Zane said. “Design. This place was used for something once. Maybe ancient people. Maybe experiments. But someone — or something — wanted outsiders to stay lost.”

Silence.

And then, slowly, Clara knelt beside him. “So how do we beat it?”

Zane looked up at her and smiled — not his usual teasing smile, but something real.

“We confuse the pattern. We walk in chaos. Zig-zags, random angles, no rhythm. If the jungle expects predictability, we give it chaos.”

Eli blinked. “Your plan is to out-crazy the forest?”

“Exactly.”

—

That night, they moved.

Zane led the way, carrying a vine torch. The group followed his precise, absurd instructions: walk fifteen steps east, then jump three times; turn left, then walk backward; hum loudly when stepping over roots.

It was madness.

But it was working.

By dawn, they reached a place they hadn't seen before: a stone wall, crumbling, overgrown with ivy — a manmade structure.

Zane ran his fingers along its surface. “Old,” he murmured. “Very old. We’re close.”

They pushed forward.

The next two hours were brutal — mosquitoes, sudden rain, one near fall into a pit of thorn-covered plants — but finally, they heard it.

Voices.

Shouting.

And the distant sound of a car horn.

Civilization.

They broke through the final line of trees into a small riverside village — where stunned locals stared at them like ghosts emerging from the forest.

Within minutes, help was called. Blankets were given. Food. Satellite phones. The nightmare was over.

The survivors cried. Hugged. Collapsed in relief.

Zane?

He just looked at the jungle one last time, then turned away.

Two hours later, reporters arrived.

The headlines had already begun to spread.

“Plane Lost Over South American Rainforest — Survivors Found After 5 Days of Terror.”

Zane sat under a palm roof sipping coconut water while a newswoman asked him questions he didn’t answer.

Clara stood nearby, watching him, arms crossed.

“You should be in shock,” she said. “Or asleep.”

Zane smiled. “But then I’d miss the coconut.”

She walked closer. “I hated you the first day.”

“I remember,” he said.

“I thought you were either mad… or playing a game.”

He stood, stepped toward her. “I was.”

Her eyes searched his. “Which one?”

He leaned in slightly, voice low. “Both.”

And then, before she could respond, Eli interrupted.

“Oh no,” he said, pointing a finger at Clara. “You’ve got the look.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I just fell for Zane Faulkner’ look. Welcome to the club.”

Clara rolled her eyes but smiled.

Zane turned to him. “Don’t worry. I have no plans to rescue anyone emotionally. Too messy.”

Clara laughed. “Too late.”

—

That night, as the group prepared to leave the village, one of the survivors — the man who’d accused Zane of being insane — walked over.

He extended a hand.

“I was wrong about you,” he said. “If it weren’t for you, that jungle would’ve swallowed us whole.”

Zane shook his hand. “That’s alright. It nearly swallowed me, too.”

“But you weren’t afraid.”

Zane looked back at the trees, eyes unreadable. “Oh, I was.”

“Then how...?”

Zane smiled. “I’m always afraid. I just walk faster than the fear.”

[The End]