The City of Golden Bones

Passing through the seemingly peaceful rainforest, you thank gods there are no nasty bugs, carnivorous plants or venomous snakes on your way, almost as if someone took a great care of this jungle and cultivated it, but still preserved its natural looks...

All of a sudden you have to stand still as you feel a sharp end pointing against your back. Totally didn't see that coming! You slowly turn around to see a couple of exotic youths mumbling something as they point their... golden spears at you!

Now to think of it, they are wearing feather-decorated helmets, cute tiny loincloths and some jewelry, all made of pure gold. You could swear even their long shiny hair is golden, as much as their teeth, fingernails, toenails...

But they interrupt the process of your taking mental pictures of them and force you to walk in front of them for quite a while as they keep mumbling their own stuff that you can't comprehend.

When you finally approach their settlement, you almost get blinded by the amounts of gold invested into building all kinds of sculptures and decorations for this city. Well, at least they don't build their houses of golden bricks, you end up thinking after getting back to your senses. And realize how wrong you were when they finally take you to a whole temple made of golden bricks!

You're so blinded by gold that it takes a while to start seeing people, not only because their dark bodies are so well camouflaged by the golden decorations but also because of the inhumanly twisted poses most of them are in.

For a minute you're confused whether this is a golden heaven or a contortionist heaven, but why not both?

The guards thoroughly search through your possessions and extract all to the last bit of gold from your purse. Afterwards they show the amount to their high priestess "sitting" (guess we can call it that, despite her very twisted way of doing that) in front of you.

The high priestess nods and the guards take you inside the temple, into a room that seems to be a sauna. The temperature is enormously hot, so hot that the guards quickly leave you in the hands of the room's own servants, the lithe youths wearing absolutely nothing, not even the golden hair on their smooth heads.

The youths quickly undress you and welcome you to step into a bathtub with moderately hot water. The water soothes you and makes you adapt to the great heat in this room. The servants bring you a glass of juice to enjoy and suddenly one of them stands on the large podium right in front of your bathtub and gracefully slides into a full split.

Seems like after all these people weren't simple robbers but civilized people in their own way, wanting to give you a little show in return. Well, they better make it worth all the money they took from you!

Seeing that you're pleased do far, the youth grins wide at you. You smile in return, immediately two more servants sit by the sides of the bendy one. You gulp as you remember that contortionists make use of assistants only if they're going to show something absolutely extraordinary.

They don't make you wait, immediately grabbing the stretched legs by the feet and knees, lifting the feet off the floor. Expecting to be pleased by the sight of some exceptional oversplit, you strain your visual memory to remember every detail of the beautiful show for later recalling.

Suddenly something goes totally wrong as the feet of the bendy one are already far above ground, but the knees are still pressed firmly to the ground. In your memory even the best of contortionists have never been able to do that and you're pretty sure the bendy one's current position would pretty much break anyone's knee caps!

But the youth only grins wider, while the other two begin applying more and more pressure until the very ankles of the bendy one are crooked so much that the toenails end up touching the knee caps! The process of tugging, pressuring and applying force continues until the contortionist's entire legs are curved into two tight spirals to the sides of the hips!

It looks so much as if the legs were made of metal of some kind... Oh yes, now you finally realize not only their hair, teeth and fingernails are made of gold but even their bones! That's why with some significant heating even their very bones can be freely deformed!

You watch the rest of the anatomically-incorrect bending show with your mouth wide open and your heart almost ready to jump out of your chest.