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Heart of Darkness, a la Shmoop.

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Captain a riverboat up the Congo, they said.

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Collect the ivory, they said. It'll be easy, they said.

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Yeah, right. My name is Charles Marlow, and this is what happens when you work for a bunch

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of Belgians.

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I should have known something was amiss from the beginning. When I arrived at the Company's

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station in Africa, it was a mess...

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...complete with random explosions and overworked native men in chains.

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It was also at the station that I first heard about the Amazing Mr. Kurtz.

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Was my riverboat waiting for me at Station Number One? Of course not. I had to truck

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two hundred miles through the jungle to the Company's Central Station...

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...and what did I find when I got there? My battleship had been sunk. Apparently, the

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guys from the Central Station killed it when they tried, and failed, to go and rescue the

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Amazing and Very Sick Mr. Kurtz. Yeesh. So, I set about trying to fix my ship. The

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hours and hours... and hours... spent on repairs nearly drove me to bust into my stash of emergency chocolate.

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As for the Amazing and Very Sick Mr. Kurtz, turns out nobody liked the dude, because he

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got the gig at the Inner Station via his European connections.

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Finally, I got the riverboat fixed. It took two months to get up the Congo to the Inner

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Station. There was fog, and the natives shot arrows at us...

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...and my helmsman got killed.

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A Russian in motley signaled my ship from the Inner Station.

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While some of the guys went to collect Kurtz, Ivan came aboard to tell me how totally rad

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the Inner Station's lord and master was, although, to be honest, Kurtz sounded less rad and more

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completely batpoop freakin' insane. I got out my trusty telescope to observe as

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the men from my ship came hauling the Amazing, Very Sick, and Probably Crazy Mr. Kurtz from

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the station. I saw heads on poles.

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I saw an army of natives.

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All in all, as Kurtz got situated aboard my ship, I was wishing I'd never left Europe.

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That night, I discovered that Kurtz had left my ship and gone back to shore. I had to go

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look for the guy, and talk him into coming back aboard.

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We set sail the next day under less than ideal conditions.

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Kurtz handed me a packet of papers and a photograph, and proceeded to snuff it.

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In the end, I got sick, too, and nearly died, but I

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eventually made it back to Europe with Kurtz' stuff.

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I gave the report Kurtz had written, entitled the "Suppression of Savage Customs", to

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an official, although I might have done a little editing first.

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I also went to visit Kurtz' fiancee. Dude had been dead a year, and this chick was still

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wearing black. Guess she didn't know about Kurtz's hot girlfriend in the Congo.

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She asked me what Kurtz' last words were. I lied and told her he called her name because,

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really, how do you explain crazy?

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I swear, I'll never work for the Belgians again.

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