Jungle Jitters: The Action Girls in, #1

By J. Manfred Weichsel

When the Action Girls, a trio of wannabe starlets from Hollywood, land a jungle adventure show, they think it's their dream come true. But instead, they're trafficked to the Congo for a sinister purpose. 

In the heart of Africa, a cult of mad scientists harbors a mad ambition: to create a new species of human-ape hybrid, mating human women with chimpanzees. But their experiments are failures, so they need to bring a steady supply of women to their jungle compound to keep their twisted fantasy alive.  

Will the Action Girls escape their bizarre and terrifying ordeal? Or will they fulfill the cult's warped vision of humanity's future to become broodmares birthing inhuman monsters?  

Find out in Jungle Jitters, a story not for the faint-hearted, the easily offended, or anyone who thinks human-ape hybrids are a good idea. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Manfred Weichsel
• Release date: Jul 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201136888

J. Manfred Weichsel

J. Manfred Weichsel writes extravaganzas that fuse adventure, horror, science fiction, and fantasy into some of the most original subversive literature being published today.  Weichsel’s shorter works appear regularly in Cirsova Magazine and anthologies from Cirsova Publishing.  His longer self-published works have gained him a broad and dedicated base of rabid fans comprising folks from every segment of society – readers of all stripes who share a dark sense of humor and a desire to see modern culture burlesqued, and age-old human stupidity mocked.  A fiercely independent author, J. Manfred Weichsel aims to give birth to the classics of the future by writing works ungoverned by the constraints of traditional publishing houses and the inhibitions of contemporary society.   Loved by some and hated by others, Weichsel’s funny, unconventional, often grotesque books inhabit a unique space in American literature and will be read, talked about, and debated for generations to come. 

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov entered the office of the People’s Commissariat for Finance at the appointed time and was greeted with cold indifference by the Bolsheviks who made up the board.

Once everybody was seated around the conference table, Ivanov silently looked his thinly-framed, thickly-bearded, bespectacled auditors over with piercing, animated eyes. The idiots, he thought. The fools.

Earlier that winter, the idiots and fools Ivanov now glared at had rejected his written proposal for funding. But because of his influence, Ivanov had been able to appeal, and secured the opportunity to present his proposal in person. Well, he thought, perhaps my request for funds had been a little dry. I won’t make that mistake again. I am going to give these Bolsheviks exactly what they want. He began:

"Just as politics has the power to transform society, what if science holds the power to transform man? As you know, my development of a new technique of artificial insemination has revolutionized the way animals are bred. Before, a stallion might have been able to impregnate twenty or thirty mares in its lifetime, but I have impregnated five hundred mares with the seed of single horse.

"I selected horses with a high tolerance to cold and created an entirely new breed of horse that can survive the harsh Russian climate, and then I improved the new Russian stock so that it is now the largest, fastest, and strongest in the world. Not only does this give the Soviet Union a military advantage, but horse racing has become a more exciting sport than ever before.

"But I was not content merely to improve animals. I wished to create entirely new ones. So, using my technique of artificial insemination, I began to combine closely related species. I successfully combined a horse and a zebra, a donkey and a zebra, a bison and a cow, a mouse and a rat, and others, to create entirely new animals!

"These hybrids are more than mere curiosities. The possibilities they create are tremendous. Just think: As the process improves, I will be able to combine animals that are less and less closely related, and determine what traits get passed on to the new animal. I will be able to design animals to serve whatever functions the revolutionary Bolshevik government wants.

Imagine this new science applied to man! I could design men who are optimized to work in mines, or plow the fields. I could create men with gills who can live and work in the ocean, or men with wings who can soar through the sky. I could even design men to live in outer space and on planets inhospitable to human beings like you and me.

As he paused a moment to take a breath, a round of spontaneous applause broke out. He stood at grim and serious attention as these radical functionaries of the party expressed approval, impersonally, on behalf of the revolution. He knew better than to acknowledge it with any display of emotion.

When it ended, nearly as suddenly as it began, he correctly continued as if no interruption had occurred. Nothing in his manner altered at all, unless it was to add a tone of even more ruthless conviction to his delivery.

But first, he continued, I must do to man what I have already done to other animals. I must combine man, through artificial insemination, to the creatures Charles Darwin has proven are our closest relatives: the great apes. That is why I wish the revolutionary Bolshevik government to finance my experiment, so I can bring the revolution already going on in society to man!

Impressed by Ivanov’s speech, the People’s Commissariat for Finance agreed to $10,000 to fund his experiment, an unheard of sum, and gave him permission to travel to Africa, at a time when all Russians except those on official government business were prohibited from leaving the young country.

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Ivanov spent the month following his meeting with the Commissariat writing his plans with a $10,000 budget in mind, and sent them to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, where they were rejected. The idiots, Ivanov screamed when the rejection notice arrived in the mail, The fools!

While the People’s Commissariat for Finance was composed of true believers in the revolution, the Soviet Academy of Sciences was a direct continuation of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and was composed of the same men who had made up that earlier organization: in other words, conventional scientists uninterested in the political upheaval going on around them.

Ivanov knew he would have to take a different approach with these men. He had promised the revolutionaries a revolution, but now if he were to accomplish his dream, he would have to promise something else to the scientists. So, he traveled by rail from Moscow to Saint Petersburg to deliver a new speech directly to the Academy.

He was greeted by the famed scientist Ivan Pavlov, who was chairman of the board. Once everybody was seated around the conference table, he began his speech. After going over his technique of artificial insemination in more scientific detail than he had when speaking to the Bolsheviks, he dove into the meat of his new argument. 

"The superstition of religion holds such power over the people that even now, nearly a quarter of the way into the twentieth century, they still refuse to accept science. Instead of believing in Darwin and Mendel, who have proven man is just another animal, and that he evolved from apes, they place man in a different category than the other animals. They will not read our papers or look at our findings, because the churches of the world have told them not to, so they remain in ignorance.

To make them give up their religions and believe in science, we need to do something so big they have to look. When I breed a human with an ape and create a new animal, I will have definitively proven the theories of Darwin and Mendel. If man were not closely related to apes, such a thing would not be possible. The people will have to believe, and will in short order give up their religions, which stunt their minds and hold back progress.

The Soviet Academy of Sciences liked this speech very much, and approved Ivanov’s plans to travel to Africa to create a human-ape hybrid.

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Ivanov’s first stop after leaving Russia was Paris, where, being a world-renowned scientist, he was able to get a meeting with the director of the Pasteur Institute, one of the most well-respected scientific organizations in the world. Ivanov told the director about his plan to breed a human with an ape, without adorning it with the rhetoric he had used when talking to his own countrymen.

The director frowned and said, These are very interesting ideas, and of course I am as curious as you are to see what a man-ape hybrid would look like, but I will have to run it by the board before I can give you access to the Pasteur Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Guinea. Although the money you offer to visit our sanctuary is tempting, the Pasteur Institute is not exactly strapped for cash: in fact, we have to turn away more proposals to use our facilities than we accept because of time constraints, and the board prefers to work with people who have a prior relationship with the institute.

Ivanov frowned. He knew a no when he heard one, and knew the director was merely letting him down softly to spare his feelings. His instinct was to give this man what he wanted, just as he had given the Bolsheviks and the scientists of his own country what they wanted. But there was a problem: he knew the Bolsheviks and he knew the Russian scientists. He did not know this Frenchman, and had no idea what he might want.

Ivanov knew that a fellow Russian, Serge Voronoff, was currently a resident at the Pasteur Institute. Four years older than the fifty-four-year-old Ivanov, Voronoff had immigrated to France as a teenager, and must know the country well. And, as Voronoff was able to get funding for his own work, surely he understood these Frenchmen, and knew what made them tick.

Ivanov had seen a bill advertising that Voronoff was to give a demonstration of a new technique for rejuvenation at the Observatory Theater that night. Ivanov would go watch the presentation and introduce himself afterwards. Perhaps Voronoff would be eager to help a fellow countryman.

Chapter 2

Once in Los Angeles there lived three women who shared a peculiar belief. You will see, if you ever watch one of the big Hollywood blockbusters they used to make (I have been told that the recordings of these entertainments will last for ages, though I can’t imagine how you will ever manage to play them), that along with the main actors playing their parts, there are also people standing and sitting in the background. They could be pedestrians in a city scene, or other diners at a restaurant. Often they are out of focus blurs, as the focus of the movie should be on the main actors. They are merely there in the background to provide a sense of authenticity or realism to a scene. This is why this type of actor was called background.

This is what these women did. They were background. They did not get to speak any lines of dialogue, their faces often did not appear in the movies they were in, and their names did not appear in the credits.

These were all giant Hollywood movies the girls worked on, the kinds with budgets in the hundreds of millions. Now, most people knew the success of a Hollywood blockbuster was the result of giant global marketing campaigns that cost up to a half a billion dollars, but these girls didn’t know any of that. They weren’t in the room when the marketing campaigns were being created. They couldn’t see them. They did, however, see their own social media.

So, whenever a movie came out in which one of the girls was background, they promoted the movie on their various social media platforms as if it were their movie, and they actually thought that because their social media posts got thirty or forty likes, when a movie they were background in grossed a lot of money, it was a result of their having promoted it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and that no other factor went into the movie’s success.

They subscribed to all the trade papers and business websites covering the motion picture industry, and refreshed their browsers obsessively when they knew new numbers were coming out. Because film after film they acted in grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, they came to the peculiar belief that, although they had the most anonymous job in all of acting, they were movie stars.

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One afternoon the three women, Jennifer, a blonde, Stephanie, a brunette, and Jackie, a redhead, were sitting at a café drinking coffee, each one silently promoting the movies they were background in on their smartphones, tapping their screens as pleasurable electric sparks of dopamine went off like firecrackers in their brains.

Outside, from a distance down the street, came the sound of commotion. All three girls ignored it as they continued on their phones. But then as the sound grew closer, Jennifer looked up from her phone and said, What’s that?

Stephanie looked up and said, It sounds like a riot, and it’s getting closer. I haven’t looked at the news. Did something happen? We should get out of here.

Jackie listened and said, No. It sounds like people cheering for a sports team. Are we close to a sports field? Let’s go find out.

They went to the door of the café and looked at the street, which had been blocked for regular traffic, just as a limousine was let through the barricade and continued down the otherwise empty city street, surrounded by about one hundred teenage girls, screaming, crying, and banging on the bulletproof glass of the windows with palms and fists. It was a scene out of popular culture’s mythic past, one not seen since the days of Elvis or the Beatles.

The three women put their phones down and watched.

Jackie said, Wow. They must be a really big movie star.

Stephanie