Risa coughed up salty brine and felt the rolling waves lap at her tail.  She was wet and cold.  Her tunic and tattered pants clinging like a second skin to the castaway's tan furred body.  The squirrel monkey's eyes fluttered open to find a sandy beach and the green tangled patchwork of jungle beyond. 

 

  “Where --- wha ------.”

 

  Risa's muscles ached, her head spun.  The queasiness that dehydration brings fluttered through the young monkey's chest.  She just lay there.  Letting her mind order itself.  Memories crashing back like an incoming tide. 

 

  She was a deckhand aboard the Skylark.  A neatly rigged schooner that had left the Devolian Isles in the month of feasts.  Destined for Madera with a cargo of tea.  Monkeys were always in demand with ship captains who valued their nimble abilities and offered generous pay.  There was no way Risa could turn down that temptation, and so she joined the Skylark's crew.  Going to work high up in the ship's rigging. 

 

  Risa quickly grew to love her job.  The exhilarating thrill of leaping from mast to mast.  Surrounded by fluttering sail cloth and endless blue.  It was intoxicating.  She liked the challenge of mastering knots and learning how to make the canvas do her bidding with ropes and pulleys.  It was all going so well ------- and then the typhoon came.

 

  The sea and sky had pummeled them for almost two days.  Tossing the schooner about like a child's toy.  Risa found herself up in the rigging constantly.  Working with the other deckhand monkey's to furl sails and secure broken ropes while heavy waves crashed over the boat.  Some high enough to strike the cold, drenched deckhands.  Threatening to wash them away into the dark angry deep.  At one point Risa lost her footing and fell from the lower topsail.  Her arms pinwheeling through the air.  Only her quick acting tail saved the squirrel monkey from crashing to the deck far below.  Snatching a bit of the rigging as she fell.  Risa swung there upside down, battered by the wind and spray.  She tried to use that momentum to reach a nearby rope ladder with outstretched arms and grasping fingers.  The distance growing shorter and shorter with every swing, almost close enough to grasp ---almost ------- and then she was underwater.

 

   It invaded her nose and mouth.  Robbed the squirrel monkey of direction, of oxygen.  She clawed through the frigid water.  Hoping against hope that her arms were pulling her towards the surface and not deeper into the endless void. 

 

  With a sputtering cough Risa broke through the waves and gasped deeply.  Sucking in as much air as she could while her arms flailed for a wooden door floating nearby.  The shivering monkey pulled herself up onto the wooden slab and clung to it desperately.  Afraid the next rising swell would knock her back into the water.  The door crested a wave and Risa could see the Skylarks rounded hull silhouetted on the dark gray horizon.  Her rudder wagging uselessly like an upside down turtles tail.  Just a brief glimpse, and the upturned hull was gone from sight.  The next time Risa's raft emerged from an icy blue valley her ship was gone.  Lost to the deep. 

 

  What happened?  Was it a rogue wave?  Did the cargo break loose and capsize the schooner?  Risa would probably never know, and it didn't really matter now anyways.  She licked her dry tongue against cracked lips and pushed herself up off the sand.  Water, that's what mattered now.

 

  With stumbling steps she plodded her way off the beach and into dense jungle.  Colorful birds scattered into the air all around.  Scared off by Risa's thrashing, crashing progress through the foliage.  Sunlight trickled through the leaf littered canopy.  Slicing through steamy air like a knife. 

 

  She wandered aimlessly.  Her arms and tail pushing aside giant leaves and tangled foliage.  Forcing her way through walls of green that clawed at her legs and whipped her face.  The squirrel monkey was so hot, so thirsty.  Her mind a foggy daze that left Risa on autopilot for long periods of time.  She just needed to find water, cool life giving water. 

 

  Hours could have passed, or maybe just minutes, but eventually Risa's energy evaporated.  The sweat drenched monkey grasped a low hanging vine with her hands and swayed in place.  Taking deep breaths of humid, heavy air while her arms temporarily took on the weight of her body.  She was afraid to sit down but wanted to so badly.  What if she didn't have the strength to get back up, what if this was the end?  She felt so weak, so tired that her head was filled with a crashing hiss.

 

  It took Risa a few minutes to realize that sound wasn't in her head.  It was real, and it was close by.  Her small rounded ears swiveled slightly, narrowing in on the source.  She found herself moving forward once again.

 

  The air started to grow cooler.  There was an opening in the maze of green up ahead, a bright patch that grew and grew until Risa stumbled into it and found the sun beating down upon her once more. 

 

  The squirrel monkey stood at the edge of a clearing.  The ground before her gently rolling. Covered in soft grass and exotic flowers of every description.  This sizable jungle oasis hugged the base of a towering rock ledge, and from its distant peak a waterfall leapt down into a crystal clear lagoon.  Risa looked up at that cascading tower of water and felt fat droplets of spray dampen her matted pelt.  The monkey's green eyes growing wide as the true meaning of this discovery took hold. 

 

  “Water?  I – I found water!  I'm not gonna DIE!!”

 

  Risa bounced on the balls of her foot paws with energetic excitement that she hadn't thought possible moments before.  Her overwhelming exhaustion swept aside by a burst of adrenaline.  The giddy monkey ran straight at that sparkling blue and cannon-balled into its cool embrace.  Letting her mouth fill with sweet, refreshing water that she sprayed from her mouth once her head broke the surface. 

 

  She gulped it down like a fish.  Slurping from the surface with greedy lips.  Risa was beginning to wonder if her thirst would ever be quenched, but soon enough the queasy sickness began to lighten and the monkey was content to float there on her back.  Watching the clouds drift by with a conflicted smile on her pretty face.  So much had happened so quickly.  Her world was gone, along with everyone in it, and nobody knew where she was.  It could be years before a ship stumbled across this little patch of green in the middle of the ocean, maybe never.  All of this weighed heavily on her heart, but the monkey was still lucky.  Very lucky.

 

  “Well,” she muttered to herself.  “I suppose life on an island is better than no life at all.”

 

   With practiced back strokes Risa swam towards a grassy patch of shoreline near the cascading sheets of water.  It was time to get out and dry off.  Her stomach was growling, and her sensitive nose could smell ripe bananas not far off, but as she drifted closer the monkey noticed something odd.  A patch of darker black behind the wall of blue, and it peaked Risa's curiosity. 

 

  She took a breath and dived under the waterfall.  Expecting to bump into the unmovable ledge beyond, but instead Risa kept going.  Bobbing to the surface in a dimly lit cavern that stretched back into the volcanic stone for quite some distance, and that wasn't the only surprise.  There were torches sticking from the damp walls.  Water stained crates and powder barrels crowded the waters edge.  Some beginning to crumble with age. 

 

  Everything was covered with a thin lair of dust and grime.  Whoever had been here was long gone ---- at least that's what Risa hoped.  She slipped quietly from the water and pulled one of the torches from its notch in the stone.  Flint and a striker dangled from a strip of leather tied to its base and with little effort Risa soon had it burning brightly in her hand. 

 

  The tunnel ahead of her snaked its way deep into the earth.  Rising slightly as it went until the walls were dry and the air was cool. After a few minutes she turned a corner and found another large cavern that glittered like stars in the night sky.  Gold!  Risa's torch light bounced off piles of gold, silver diamonds and other trinkets that buried the floor from view.  Her jaw dropped open with shock.  She felt her heart jump into her throat and stumbled into this treasure filled chamber in a daze.  Bare foot paws sank slightly into the coins coating the floor like sand.  Hands reached out to scoop precious stones and other shiny bits from the piles she passed.  A part of her thought they might evaporate at her touch, that this was some mirage, but the trinkets she retrieved were very real.

 

  “I'm rich,” she said with a chuckle.  “I'm rich – hahaaa – and I'm stranded on an island! Hahahheeee!”

 

  The squirrel monkey couldn't help but laugh at her predicament.  It was all just too surreal and strange.  Like one of those adventure stories she used to read in penny dreadful's. 

 

  Risa wiped giddy tears from her eyes and continued exploring.  Winding her way through the towering piles until something dull, white and vaguely anthropomorphic caught her eye.  It rested against the far wall.  A skeleton clad in tattered rags.  A pile of treasure heaped between its widespread legs. 

 

  One bony hand held a scrap of paper, and Risa snatched it up quickly with her tail.  Afraid the long dead body might reach out and grab her.  Once it was in her hands the brittle parchment revealed a small poem written in sloppy cursive.

 

   Beware to ye who finds me prize,

   Tis not meant fer greedy eyes.

   Take what ye need and nothing more,

   Or seal yer fate forever more.

 

  Risa read those words with a furrowed brow.  Curses never held much water for the squirrel monkey, but it was something her fellow crew-mates had been big believers in.  There were so many conversations in the galley about omens and portents, sea monsters and bizarre traditions.  All of it immediately dismissed by the young monkey as superstitious rot.  She didn't think much of this little scrap of paper and its warning. 

 

  “Nice poem captain bones,” she said with a sarcastic smirk.  “You should have been a writer.” 

 

   The dried bit of parchment was crumpled in her hands and tossed over her shoulder like so much trash.  “Hah, like some little poem would stop anyone from taking every last bit of this treasure.”

 

  With a jangling crash Risa fell back onto a pile of gold and silver doubloons with a cackle of laughter.  Throwing those precious coins into the air like bits of snow.  Her limbs moving as if she was making an angel.  All thoughts of food forgotten for the moment.

 

  “Hahaaaa rich, I'm so bloody riiiicchhh!”

   

 

   Time passed rather comfortably for the squirrel monkey.  She would wander this island paradise every morning in search of food.  Swinging across the shady canopies on thick lengths of vine.  She found groves of banana trees and a whole herd of wild boar that roamed the island.  Food would never be a problem, and the hidden cave with its vast treasure proved to be the perfect shelter.  After disposing of a few bones that is. 

 

  Risa fashioned herself a bed from old crates, bamboo poles and palm fronds.  She found debris washed up on the beach every morning.  Folding chairs from the captains quarters, chests full of tea and even a shattered section of the ships mast tangled in ropes and shredded sail cloth.  Every bit of it put to good use.

 

  The spider monkey never strayed far from her treasure.  She had grown protective of it, almost obsessed in a way.  The monkey always feared returning to an empty cave, and had even begun to count the piles of doubloons that littered the floor in some futile effort to inventory it all.  Stacking them into neat, orderly towers that lined the walls.  

 

  Deep down Risa knew it was all foolish nonsense.  The odds of anyone coming to her island home were slim to none ---- and for over a year she lived in peace with her vast wealth.  Content to hunt pigs and count coins until everything changed one fateful morning.

 

  It started like all the ones that came before.  The pretty young monkey woke up with a yawn and a stretch that started with her furry fingertips and ended at splayed toes.  She slept naked these days.  It was so much more comfortable on humid nights, in fact she was naked most days.  Cloth was in short supply, and Risa's clothes had become pretty tattered.

 

  Her lithe, toned body slid up from the bed in one graceful movement.  She looked around at her riches and rubbed sleep from her eyes.  If even one diamond was out of place it would sour Risa's whole day until she found it, but that wasn't the case today.

 

  Risa brushed past the strip of canvas that served as her bedroom door and wandered towards the waterfall entrance to her home, scratching at an itch beneath one stiff nippled breast.  It was time for her morning bath, and once the waterfall came into view around a bend in the tunnel Risa broke into an eager run.  Leaping through that shimmering wall of turquoise and into the lagoon with a towering splash.

 

   After floating about for a while she sunned herself on a flat rock by the waters edge.  Combing her silky tan fur as it dried.  Then it was off to hunt.  With a canvas satchel around her neck and a knife clamped between pointed teeth Risa leapt onto a low branch and scampered up and off across the canopy.  Picking bananas and other fruits as she went along.  Dropping them into her satchel with nimble hands while her eyes carefully scanned the jungle floor.  The wild boar seemed scarce this morning, and after a half hour or so of hunting she stopped to squat down on the sturdy branch of some primordial tree to take a rest. They were probably hiding somewhere cool.  It was unusually hot out after all.  Perhaps the fishing would be better, there was usually plenty to spare and she could easily make a spear from a bamboo pole. 

 

  With this new plan of action Risa was back on the move.  From branch to vine and back again, sailing through humid air until finally the white capped ocean came into view between the trees. 

 

  One white cap in particular seemed to catch Risa's eye, and it only took a moment for her to realize what it was.  Sails on the horizon.  Just a speck to the naked eye, but the spider monkey knew a sail when she saw one. 

 

  Breath caught in her throat.  The ship they were attached to was big, and it was coming her way.  This should have excited Risa, it was freedom.  A ticket back to the world, but it only filled her with dread.  They'd take her treasure, or want a cut for themselves.  Neither option was appealing to the spider monkey. 

 

  “Aww shit!”

 

  If the winds held out that ship would be here tomorrow by midday.  She had to think of something, and fast.  Risa's mind raced with ideas.  She could hope they overlooked the cave and come back for the treasure later, but she refused to leave it unguarded.  She could try to smuggle it on board, but how?  Her clothes were too full of holes and they'd be sure to search her satchel, and that could only hold a fraction of the caves contents.  There's no way she could conceal it all ------ unless.  Risa's eyebrows raised with an amused smile once it struck her, but she quickly grew contemplative.  It was the oddest idea that had ever come to Risa's mind, but it just might work.

 

  “They can search my belongings, but they cant search my guts,” she muttered thoughtfully to herself.  “It just might work.  It HAS to work.”

 

  Risa rushed back through the tree tops and leapt from an overhanging branch into the placid lagoon with a mighty splash.  She scampered out of the water and snatched up two wooden buckets sitting on a rocky ledge just behind the crashing falls.  Dunking them beneath the water.

 

 Then she was off.  Breasts bouncing.  Her bare feet slapping upon the stone floor as she ran.  A rope handled bucket in each hand.  Leaving a trail of water in her wake. 

 

  The monkey burst through her canvas door and rushed up to a folding chair sitting by the latest pile of trinkets she had decided to count.  Dropping into it with a sigh of exhaustion.  Her lungs burning from the exertion. 

 

  “Ok – huff huff - I got this.” she said with panting breaths.  Still trying to psyche herself up. 

 

  Risa eyed the mound of treasure by her side with a nervous whimper, but she needed to be strong, and she needed to get started.  She reached out towards the treasure pile with trembling hands and retrieved a silver goblet and a fist full of coins.  One was filled with water from the bucket, the other was crammed into her mouth. 

 

  They tasted horrible.  A strange metallic twang on the tongue.  She tried to swallow them quickly, but they stuck to the monkeys throat like suction cups and made her gag violently.  She jammed the goblet to her lips and drank deeply.  Forcing them all down with a torrent of liquid.  Once the cup parted with her mouth she gasped for air, steadied her breathing, and forced another fistful of trinkets down her throat.  Then another, and another.  All the while cheering herself on with a rambling one sided conversation whenever her mouth was empty.

 

  “No one will think -gaghurk!  No one will think twice.  They'll just see a pregnant castaway happy to be saved,” she said to the walls.  Slurping up a gold necklace to punctuate her sentence.  Quickly one water bucket was emptied, and then the other.  Yet the mound of treasure still remained.  Risa felt her stomach pressing up into ribs that spread and creaked.  It bulged up between her breasts.  Pushing the sizable handfuls aside and sloping outwards into a firm ball that was beginning to press into her thighs.  She sat there rigidly in the chair and gasped for air in between each swallow.  Her throat becoming raw from the constant flow of rough edged objects.

 

  Hurk!  Guh, h-hold together girl,”  she croaked.  “Still got a long ways -glurk- to go.”

 

  She was afraid to bend, afraid to stand.  The pressurized ache of compressing organs and straining flesh made Risa whimper, but still she pushed herself up onto shaky legs, buckets in hand, and began her much slower, waddling journey to the waterfall.

 

  Swerving, uneasy steps brought her closer and closer to the water.  Each one making the monkey wretch and hesitate.  She could feel the treasure filling her guts jingle and shift strangely, and sometimes the poor creature wold have to stop completely and lean against a damp wall while she dry heaved.  Her hands and even tail rushing to sooth the full term bubble of thinned tan that now supported her ample breasts.

 

 It took almost twenty minutes to get back, and there would be no third attempt. She was anchored to the chair by then.  Its spindly legs creaked and crackled every time the monkey shifted her vast weight.  She was forced to lean forward.  Pulled into a hunched position by the anchor erupting from her waist.  A three foot drum of shiny pink coated in patches of brown fur.  Her belly button a fist sized bubble that brushed the ground every time Risa took a shallow breath.

 

  With water no longer an option the monkey was able to double fist her bounty into this horrendous treasure chest.  Making the raw strips of torn flesh that lined her hide spread wider and slither farther across the thinly furred wasteland.  It glistened with sweat, strain and the steady stream of drool that dripped from her coin filled muzzle. 

 

  She was learning to tolerate her scraped raw throat, the stabbing itch of growing stretchmarks, the constant piercing agony that radiated from her core.  Every minute or so her eyes would bulge and the bubble dangling from her waist would bounce with a sloshing jangle.  In these moments Risa could feel that rising metallic tide invade her throat and quickly grabbed gold bars, pendants, bracelets.  Anything big enough to prevent her stomach from ejecting its cargo.  Each piece wedged into her mouth until Risa's jaws threatened to pop out of their sockets.  The monkeys throat would swell into a lumpy cylinder.  The shape of coins and precious gems clearly visible beneath thinned skin, and then her stomach would admit defeat with a mournful squeal and let everything slide back in.

 

  “Ughuk!  Ungh, m-more ------ keep going -gurk – more.”

 

  Her voice was becoming a horse rasp as this strange feasting went on, but the abuse to her throat was not important.  She needed to keep going.  She was so close.  The treasure pile was almost gone now.  Risa could feel more and more of her belly pressing into the floor.  That cool stone soothing the reddening, feverish flesh around her navel for a brief moment, but it didn't stop.  Pressing harder and harder into the unyielding surface until Risa found herself being pushed upright.  Her grasping fingers no longer able to reach the scattered remains of a once towering pile. 

 

  It felt like the thumb of some giant was being pressed into the front of her tender flesh sack, and Risa could no longer hold back the agonized tears.  There was so much crushing weight suffocating every organ in her body.  The monkey could feel them contorting into unnatural positions.  A spine tingling anguish that usually accompanied violent, slithering movement's beneath the surface of her reddening pelt. 

 

  “N-nooooo,” she wheezed.  Giving up her futile efforts to grasp just one more fistful of glittering food.  Tired arms slumped to her bulging sides.  Risa sat there for what seemed like hours.  Looking around with unfocused eyes at the dozens of other treasure piles littering the room.

 

  There was still so much left, and she was already far too big to ever pass for a normal pregnancy.

 

  “El-elephant pups ---gruuuurgh ---- i'll -hurp- tell them ----- that.” 

 

  Risa's croaked explanation may have been enough to quiet her inner voice, but one look at the shivering beast that forced Risa into a sitting position showed just how foolish her reasoning was.

 

    The mighty swell was beginning to elongate now.   So solidly packed with coins that it defied gravity and refused to lose its shape even now that it's tapered front rested firmly upon the ground.  Lumps were appearing all across Risa's shiny fecundity.  Betraying the true contents of her stomach to anyone with a pair of eyes.  She was delusional.  Unable to admit that this idea was a mistake, that she needed to stop before -------.

 

  “Ship ---- gotta f- hurrrgh!  Finish befo -hurp- ship.”

 

  She huffed through gritted teeth and began to rock back and forth until her gut clinked and clanked like a box full of chains.  Then, with one great rock, the monkey rolled up onto her feet.  Risa found herself hunched over the oblong coin purse she had created once again.  Her muscular legs trembling with effort.  Risa hunched down low and cried out in pain.  Pressing against the rock solid surface with open palmed hands.  More for the illusion of support than anything else.  There was no way she could grip a single part of its sweat slicked surface. 

 

  The best she could do was drag the crushing weight of her bolder belly to the next treasure heap.  A slow backwards shuffle that made Risa whimper and whine past gnashing teeth.  The monkey's thin underbelly was more stretch marks than anything else, and the rough stone floor scraped against it like sand paper.  Leaving a trail of blood in her wake.  Risa huffed through clenched teeth, the muscles along her neck, back and legs straining against her tan pelt as she went.

 

A twanging snap came to Risa's ears, followed by a piercing stab at her inflated flanks.  It's nothing, she thought.  Just a pulled muscle.  But buried deep in the monkeys brain was the thought of a ripe grape being plucked from the vine. Soon froth formed at the corners of her mouth from the sheer strain, and her curved back began to pop.

 

  Once she reached her next target Risa's legs finally gave out and the tortured monkey rolled back onto her cushioned rear with a jangling crash that made her belly turn a shade of light purple. 

 

  To her right stood a towering wall of precious gems that Risa eyed with watery, sunken eyes.  She looked sickly.  Miserable beyond belief.  Rounded ears pinned back against her short head fur.  This was not the face of a women prepared to keep eating, but that's just what Risa did.

 

  She buried her face in that priceless pile and opened her mouth.  Letting the endless stream of precious stones tumble in like grain from a silo. 

 

  “Ghum, glup, ghum, glup.”

 

  Those wet, strained gulps bounced from the cave walls.  Joined by the sound of creaking timbers and whale song.  Risa's wide spread legs and soft soled foot paws rubbed and kneaded the lumpy surface.  Their simple touch leaving fresh bruises in their wake.  Her belly button was turning a bloodless white as the monster she created began its slithering journey across the ground.  Five feet, six feet, each inch spreading her stretch marks wider and wider until they began to blend into one.  So thin in spots that the flesh was transparent. 

 

“Ghum, glup, ghum, glup.”

 

  Risa was lost to her feasting.  The pain was all encompassing now.  There was no way to gauge it.  Swallowing was becoming difficult, breathing was becoming impossible.  Her vision narrowing ever so slightly.  The corners filling with darkness, but none of these warning signs stopped Risa. 

 

  If she could see her belly now maybe that would have finally shaken Risa free of this greed fueled delirium.  It was a purple bruise.  Weeping blood from the deep gashes linked across its vast equator.  Her navel was as big as a watermelon now.  Herniated and whiter than the driven snow.  It pulsated with every swallow ------ until there were no more swallows. 

 

  Risa's neck bulged with treasure that had nowhere to go.  Her lungs refused to take in any more air.  The engorged monkey pressed down on the upper slope of her warped belly where it pushed her breasts aside.  Trying to create just a little more room, but it only hastened her fate.  The thin flesh cracking around her finger tips. 

 

  The monkey wobbled there.  A small parasitic growth clinging to this long purple terror.  Her head thrown back in a silent scream.  Jewels tumbled from her jam packed jaws.  Arms and legs stiffening as a deep muffled groan rumbled up her throat, followed by a sharp zipping noise that reminded Risa of tearing canvas.  It was her bright white navel, the bloodless protrusion rent asunder by an endless stream of tumbling coins that splashed to the floor.  Eager to be re-united with their uneaten comrades.  Vomit and blood oozed out around the diamonds and rubies filling her mouth, the monkey's vision fading to black.

 

  With one last convulsing twitch Risa went limp and silence filled the cave, broken only by the waterfall's distant hiss.  A gust of air flicked at the canvas door and swirled around the monkey's cooling body.  Snuffing out torches one by one, until darkness reigned over all once more.