We abandon our battered camels outside the lower entrance to Khafre’s Pyramid after midnight, Landon still bitching about the price he managed to haggle. Inside the pyramid, the narrow stone corridors are freezing – even colder than the desert air. An eerie quiet envelops us. My body shivers out of coldness, claustrophobia, superstition, and the prospect of photographing Landon’s asshole in the near future. My Maglight’s beam shakes in my hand causing shadows to dance as if by firelight. Ahead of me, Landon leads while nonchalantly humming a nondescript tune.
To my surprise, the vertically cracked wall behind the subsidiary chamber circled on the crude map is a real landmark. We push hard against the rightmost cracked slab and a portion of the rock slides backwards before toppling over, revealing a narrow portal to the hidden labyrinth. Landon’s laughter and celebratory yelling echoes through the tunnels. His high-five almost shatters my wrist.
Minutes later we’re deep in a narrow maze of winding corridors, walking in circles. The handler’s map, which depicts an arrow from the secret portal to the hidden burial chamber, is useless at this point. Landon studies the arrow before ripping up the map in a cursing fit, and then takes a swig from his flask. I dig through my pack for navigational items – a spool of thread, a bag of corn nuts, anything – but only find photography equipment and batteries.
Dumb luck eventually leads us to a small burial chamber. A stone sarcophagus rests in the center of the chamber and we approach it slowly, speechless. I drop the pack and retrieve the camera, confirm film is loaded, and affix the flash. Landon circles the sarcophagus, running his fingers along the lid’s edge. I imagine this to be his proudest moment. Hell, it may be mine as well. I take a photograph of the sarcophagus and then of Landon sitting on top of it, giving a two thumbs up review.
At the count of three we heave the massive lid – sliding almost too easily – off the stone box and it crashes to the dusty ground. I begin gagging, the smell of death wafting from the revealed wrapped corpse. Landon seems to savor the aroma, bending over to examine the corpse more carefully. The mummy looks abused. Some of the linen wrappings have eroded, exposing decayed limbs and a damaged face with disintegrated eye sockets and gaping maw. I creep backwards, gripped by fear.
“BRAAAH!” Landon roars, lurching his head up quickly. I scream and fumble with the camera while he laughs. “It’s fucking dead,” he says. “And now I’m going to shit on it.” He unbuckles his belt and drops his pants. Summoning my final wits, I mechanically approach the sarcophagus and lean in with the camera raised, Maglight tucked under my arm. His ass and the corpse’s chest are both clearly visible in the viewfinder. With a grunt, Landon pushed out a long wet turd and I successfully capture the action before turning to vomit on my shoes.
“We’re done,” Landon says, pulling up his pants. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and turn to face him from across the stone box. We sigh over the mess.
Then we hear a muffled groan.
Landon cocks his head to one side and stares at me. I’m still as stone, wide-eyed and listening. Another groan, louder and longer. Peering down into the sarcophagus I witness a wrapped hand slowly reaching upwards. I gasp and do the first thing that comes to mind: run the fuck away from the horrible thing we’ve awakened.
Landon screams, racing after me into the labyrinth. “What the fuck? What the fuck?” he barks. My Maglite’s potent beam darts between the narrow corridor walls, sometimes disappearing down dark stretches of hallway. I’m drenched in sweat, terrified, and completely lost in the winding passageways, frantically turning corners like a Cairoian motorist. The moaning echoes throughout the labyrinth around us. All Landon can do is curse repeatedly.
My heart beating out of my chest, I stop at a fork to catch my breath and assess the situation. There’s a chance I might die very soon. There’s also a chance I’m hallucinating. We’re both hallucinating. Together. The moaning echoes louder. I laugh deliriously.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Landon screams, his eyes darting from each corridor, to me, then back again. “What the fuck is wrong with us? This isn’t real. This is bullshit. This is—“
Suddenly, Landon begins to vomit uncontrollably. Beginning as dry heaves, it quickly escalates to steady streams of puke, splattering against the wall he’s propped against. I step back and watch my partner collapse to all fours, retching and spitting blood. Then a long, horrible cry echoes through the hall in front of us. I shine my light down the corridor and step back against the wall, locking into paralysis. The awakened corpse – our mummy pursuer – floats steadily towards us, its curled toes dragging along the dusty floor, thin arms reaching forward with wrappings dangling. I sink to the ground and glance at Landon, still retching his insides out.
The mummy halts a few paces away from Landon and floats in place, six inches from the ground. I stare, sitting as still as death, holding my breath and fighting tears. The only sound is raspy choking; Landon is curled up in a pool of blood and fluids, barely conscience. A faint glow begins to emit from the wrapped terror. It’s head rolls backwards, faint beams of light shooting from the neck and face holes. A howl, building deep within its maggot-ridden belly, begins low and grows louder. And louder. I cover my ears and scream with the mummy as Landon’s head explodes like a squished grape.
I’m still screaming as the mummy turns to me, the glow dissipated. It stares at me for the longest minute of my life. My screaming ceases but my ears are still squeezed closed by my palms, hoping perhaps my arm strength will keep my head whole. The mummy motions to me slowly. It reaches out with one shattered hand and raises the other to its face, arching its intact fingers like it’s pretending to hold something. I’m still frozen in disbelief until it groans, motioning towards me again. It points to its chest.
I look down at the camera still around my neck. I look up at the mummy and rest my hand on the lens barrel. It nods slowly and turns its back to Landon’s stained body. Mechanically, I lift the camera and position the mummy’s ass and Landon’s chest in the viewfinder, Maglight tucked under my arm. The floating corpse squats over Landon in midair. With a horrible moan, a volcanic blast of black shit and maggots erupts from the mummy’s ass, covering Landon with the most epic of dumps. I capture every moment of the action.
When the shitting is complete, the mummy turns to me, stares for a second, and then floats peacefully down the hallway it came from. I’m still paralyzed, unable to comprehend my trip to Cairo. All I know is that Stanley Seymour is getting much more than he bargained for and that I’m asking for double.
Something is obviously amiss in your life if the prospect of a trip to Cairo to photograph a stranger taking a shit sounds like a great opportunity. But if you happen to find yourself in the international terminal at LAX with a boarding pass, are dating a 19-year-old KFC fry cook who just had your baby, and have dropped out of your fine arts program, I say go for it. You fly to Egypt and point that lens barrel up some ass like your life depends on it – because perhaps it does.
I meet with Stanley Seymour, a slimy walrus of a man, one numbing afternoon at his Beverly Park compound out of desperation. Among other countless exotic interests my new employer harbors, he is especially into voyeuristic photographs of people shitting in exclusive worldly areas. His photo albums document hundreds of epic dumps: the edge of the Eiffel Tower’s highest observation deck, the center of Stonehenge, on a busser’s cart in the CN Tower’s 360 Restaurant. My stomach turns sour as the montage of bowel movements continues for pages. He simply stares at me, wide-eyed, patiently petting his left hand like a baby rabbit moments away from intense anal violation. The left hand twitches, aware.
The next four days are spent staring at the flight confirmation Stanley gave me, pondering life while my unhealthy baby’s wails fill my empty shed of an apartment. Inez tries soothing the child in Spanish to no avail before switching to bits of Original Recipe, mashed up like regurgitated nourishment from a mother bird.
Inez says she loves me. I tell her she’s full of shit and then we fuck like lions. Later that evening I meet my assigned accomplice on our flight to Egypt.
Landon is a large, loud, drunk man with straight jet-black hair. I instantly recognize him from the photo albums. He aggressively urges the flight attendants into the bathroom with him until they stop serving our row. He then attempts having an aggressive conversation with me about trucks until he realizes I have no automotive knowledge. Sighing, he takes a swig from his flask, fishes a SkyMall magazine from the seat pocket in front of him, and incessantly discusses every product aloud, paying particular interest to the Portable Mood Light.
“If I brought one of these fuckers on the plane, my dick would be wet by now,” he says and gives me a nudge. I feign sleep, counting down the hours until touchdown, wondering if I can pretend to snooze the entire time. Meanwhile, the scent of rum and sweat wafts from the seat next to me like bog gas.
I land at CAI a little past noon. Landon crashes, silent since vomiting in a drinking fountain at our Roman connection. He heads straight for our room at the Mayfair Hotel while I, somewhat coherent, take an opportunity to wander around the unknown city solo. The relentless heat and smog reminds me of a hot summer day in the San Fernando Valley, but considerably less pretentious. My walk proves unnerving as I haphazardly stroll into the sluggish chaos of Cairo traffic, dozens of horns blaring as each vehicle attempts forging it’s own path. I creep along the street’s edge, constantly wiping sweat from my brow and onto my damp jeans. Then, I spot an oasis at the end of the block: KFC. I speed my pace towards the safe haven, duck inside, and promptly order a 2-piece Original Recipe meal. I wonder if Inez has enough bus fare for the week.
At twilight, Landon groggily leads us to a less reputable part of town to conduct business. In exchange for most of the allowance Stanley Seymour gave us, and seizing our passports as deposits, an abusive handler eagerly provides two camels and a pencil-drawn map depicting a supposed secret burial chamber deep within Khafre’s Pyramid. Of course the deal is ridiculous, but my outcries are swiftly extinguished.
“Listen, you fuck,” Landon growls at me while the handler smiles. “I’ve been doing this a helluva lot longer than you, and there’s a lot of cash at stake if you’re willing to take risks. So back the fuck off and let me do our job.” Whether it was his intensity or the truth in his logic, Landon is very persuasive that moment. After all, he has photographs to prove his experience. I back away, bite my lip, and grin while imagining my bleached bones scattered across the desert.
