The air was thick with humidity, and the jungle buzzed with a symphony of insects. Jason Malone wiped the sweat from his brow as he hacked through the dense foliage with a machete far too dull for the job. He wasn't a native here—just a photojournalist with a taste for adventure, traveling deeper into the Brazilian Amazon in search of untouched tribes and untold stories.
This time, the story had found him.
"Jason, slow down!" Maria called from behind him, swatting at mosquitos. She was a local guide, hired to keep him alive and on track. He didn't respond. He was too focused on the rumor they'd heard in the last village—the story of a beast that walked on two legs, smelled of decay, and could bend trees with a single swipe.
The Mapinguari.
It had all started as a drunken tale from an old man with cloudy eyes. "It was once a shaman," he'd said. "A man who defied the gods and tried to live forever. Now it curses the land with its breath of death."
Jason had laughed at the time. But now, with each step deeper into the green hell of the forest, something tugged at the back of his mind—a weight, a warning. The trees stood too still. The birds too silent.
Maria stopped suddenly. "Something's wrong."
Jason turned. "What do you mean?"
"The jungle… it's quiet."
That's when the stench hit them. Like rotting meat left out under the sun. Maria gagged and pulled her shirt over her nose.
Jason raised his camera instinctively. "Do you smell that? God, it's awful."
She looked pale. "We need to go back."
But he was already snapping photos. The trees ahead were damaged—ripped apart. Bark shredded. Claw marks at least a foot long. Massive, and fresh.
"Do you see this?" he whispered.
Maria didn't answer.
When Jason turned, she was gone.
"Maria?" he called. Nothing.
He spun in circles, the vines around him seeming to close in. His heart raced as he shouted her name again. Then he heard it—a guttural, wet-sounding growl. It seemed to vibrate the trees themselves.
He ran.
The jungle came alive with movement behind him. Branches cracked. Something huge moved, yet he couldn't see it. Jason stumbled over roots, tripping into muddy ditches, thorns ripping at his arms and clothes. He didn't look back. He didn't want to see it. Not yet.
He burst into a small clearing and collapsed, gasping. The silence returned, but the smell remained.
Jason stood slowly, listening. No birds. No monkeys. No insects. He turned in a slow circle.
Then he saw the eyes.
Red. Glowing. Watching him from the shadows.
"Maria?" he whispered, unsure of anything anymore.
The thing stepped out.
It was at least seven feet tall, covered in dark matted fur, though parts of it were bare and oozing. Its mouth opened in its stomach, lined with jagged teeth. One of its arms was too long, bent at an unnatural angle. It blinked slowly—once.
Jason couldn't move.
The Mapinguari lifted its head and let out a roar that seemed to split the air, and Jason turned and ran once more, sobbing. He dropped the camera. He didn't care. All that mattered was getting out.
He ran until his legs gave out.
When he woke, it was night. The jungle pulsed with nocturnal life, yet he felt utterly alone. He crawled to a nearby tree and slumped against it, tears drying on his face.
"What the hell was that?" he whispered.
He stayed there until dawn. No sign of Maria. No sign of the monster. Just that smell… always the smell.
For the next two days, Jason tried to find his way back to civilization. His phone was dead. His supplies dwindled. But the worst part was the feeling—like he was never really alone. The jungle *watched* him. The scent lingered. Once, he heard heavy breathing in the night just outside the lean-to he had fashioned from leaves and branches.
He didn't sleep.
By the third day, his mind was unraveling.
He saw Maria's face in the trees, her voice calling his name. He saw shadows moving even when he stood still. He screamed at birds for mocking him with their calls. He ran into clearings, hoping to be seen by helicopters that weren't there.
And then the final night came.
Jason sat by a dying fire, the darkness pressing in. His voice cracked as he spoke into the void. "If you're going to kill me, do it already."
The fire flared once, then extinguished.
He heard footsteps.
Not animal. Human.
He stood, heart pounding, eyes wild. "Who's there?"
A voice came—low, distorted, dragging through his brain like wet moss. "You asked."
Jason backed away, tripping over a root.
The Mapinguari appeared again, towering and unnatural, its stomach mouth grinning wide.
Jason screamed.
No one heard him.
His body was found weeks later, or what was left of it—bones gnawed clean and camera shattered beside them. His final photos were undeveloped, save one polaroid tucked inside his bag.
It showed a towering figure, mid-motion, mouth gaping in its chest and red eyes glaring straight into the lens.
The jungle claimed the rest.
And if you listen closely on humid nights deep in the forest, they say you can still hear Jason's final screams echo through the trees—cut short, swallowed whole.
----
Maria didn't scream.
Years guiding outsiders through the rainforest had taught her that silence, sometimes, was the only weapon she had. When she turned and saw the twisted branches where Jason had just been, her instinct wasn't to cry out—it was to run. But she didn't. Not yet.
She crouched low and moved carefully backward into the thicket, her breath shallow, heart pounding. Something was watching her. She could feel its gaze like the pressure of a knife resting just against her spine. Jason's frantic shouts faded quickly, swallowed by the choking green. The jungle was dense and disorienting, and now, utterly foreign.
Maria reached into her pack with trembling hands and pulled out a small bone charm—a talisman from her grandmother. "To keep the dark things away," her abuela had said.
It wasn't working.
The smell came first. Rot. Disease. The kind of odor that clung to the back of your throat and stayed there. It didn't waft. It engulfed.
Something enormous moved through the trees to her left. Slow. Heavy. Maria didn't look. She slid into a shallow trench, camouflaged by low ferns, and forced herself to be still. Minutes passed. Maybe hours. The jungle's song did not return. The predator still hunted.
She waited until moonlight broke through the canopy and dared to move. North. She had memorized the landmarks. The river wasn't far. If she could reach it, follow it upstream, she might make it back to the last village. But every step forward felt like walking deeper into a nightmare.
She saw Jason once. Or thought she did.
His face floated in the darkness between the trees. Pale. Expressionless. Watching her. Then it was gone.
"No," she whispered. "Not like this."
By the second day, her legs trembled with exhaustion. Her water had run dry. Her machete was gone. But she had found the river. The jungle's hunger, however, was insatiable.
That night, she lit a small fire beneath a tangle of exposed roots and wept. Not just for Jason, but for herself—for daring to believe the warnings were just stories.
She heard it again: the breath. That slow, ragged wheezing that sounded like lungs full of tar. Then the whispering.
Her name.
"Maria..."
It wasn't Jason's voice. It wasn't even human.
She stood slowly, clutching a stick like a weapon. But there was nothing. No glowing eyes. No monstrous form. Just darkness, and that stench.
She turned—and the Mapinguari was there.
It hadn't made a sound.
Its mouth—gaping and filled with crooked, glistening teeth—opened across its belly. One clawed hand reached out and rested on a tree trunk, warping the wood with its weight.
Maria ran. Her scream finally tore from her throat.
She didn't get far.
A root caught her foot, sending her sprawling. She rolled over, ready to fight, but the creature didn't rush. It walked, slowly, savoring each moment. Like it knew there was no escape.
Her hand found the charm again. She held it out, whispering a prayer in trembling Portuguese.
The Mapinguari paused.
It looked at the charm. Then at her.
Then it laughed.
The sound was like bones snapping underwater.
The last thing Maria saw was its shadow eclipsing the moonlight.
The last thing she felt was the forest floor rising to meet her.
Weeks later, villagers would speak of bones found scattered near the river's edge. Of claw marks on trees that oozed black sap. Of a broken charm, half-buried in mud, still warm to the touch.
And deep in the heart of the Amazon, the Mapinguari still hunted.
Always hungry. Never sated.