© JS Brand

The Ape Man prowled as a stealthy jaguar through the Guatemalan jungle. Ahead, the enemy agent Raglan had the Green Goddess idol containing a terrible weapon. Now that his friend D’Arnot has been freed, he had to lead his party to recover the idol and escape before the tribesmen attacked.

“Cut. That’s a wrap. Great work, Herman.”

Tarzan stepped out of character and became actor Herman Brix again. “Think Burroughs will like it, Ed?”

“He’s said your Tarzan is the closest to what’s in his books. Look. Sun’s setting. Let’s get back to the Berrisford and get cleaned up.”

I authored this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as an inspiration for creating a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 99.

I could see the dilapidated hotel in the photo was the Hotel Henry Berrisford. A quick Google search said it was located in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. In looking at that Wikipedia page, I discovered one of the most interesting things about the place was that in 1935, the twelve-part movie serial The New Adventures of Tarzan starring Harold Brix (later known as Bruce Bennett) was filmed there.

The serial was co-produced by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs along with Aston Dearholt and George W. Stout, and Brix’s Tarzan, unlike most other film depictions up to that time, was more in keeping with the Tarzan in the novels, who was a cultured and well-educated gentleman.

I’ve always been a Tarzan fan, so this bit of historical trivia was fun for me, though of course, the dialogue and much of the circumstances are fictional. The “Ed” mentioned is director Edward Kull.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.