The Napoleon Man

A writer, a nurse, a legal aide, and a bellydancer.  This should be the setup of a dirty joke, Clancy thought, not a hiking party.  Or what was left of it anyway, with Danger Dan, the party leader, dead, his lower half back on Earth, the rest miles back dissolving in amber.

A writer, a nurse, a legal aide, and a bellydancer, and not a Napolean in the bunch.  Nurse Clancy sucked in the scene, of three-foot insects, flying snakes, and amphibious monkeys—a new world—and realized that for the first time since Cub Scouts he was in charge. 

The Man. 

Goddamn Napoleon.

He took Tiff, the legal aide, by the hair and kissed her.  Lilian, the surpringly prudish bellydancer, turned up her nose, while Writer Jorge focused his attention on a frog-monkey killed during a previous attack.

“Look at his back, these symbols,” he said, pointing to a series of diamonds , circles, and squiggles.

Clancy released the blushing Tiff to check it out.  He cupped his chin in a manner that suddenly seemed appropriate.  “It’s a map, right?  Gotta be.  Each symbol stands for a different landmark.“  Clancy didn't know what the hell he was saying, as long as what he said seemed firm.

“Does it tell us where we are?  How to get home?”  Lilian aid frantically, clutching her bosom in the defensive manner of a long-gone civilization.

“No, but it might keep us off the wrong trail.  Too bad we have no camera or paper,” Clancy said, pulling out his knife to Tiff’s silent delight. “And we can’t carry around a dead monkey…”

After taking the creature’s hide, the group set off.  Clancy recounted events.  A mysterious storm had taken them from the Himalayas to...here. Circumstances had made him important. He brushed against Tiff’s firm buttocks and realized how far he’d come in just a day. 

He felt so invincible he didn’t see the frog-monkeys before they rained rocks upon their heads.    Just as the biggest frog-monkey began to scalp him alive (one Napoleon always knows another), Clancy let himself recall the last time he’d been leader, taking his Cub Scouts straight into a nest of hornets, and the words his father gave him afterwards: Some men are meant for a life of Three Emperors, and some, nuthin' but Waterloo.