digital image by Charles Carter11 pm
Rumors had been circulating throughout the chemical underground about the mythical LSD-666 for quite some time, and its sketchy availability (if it even existed), when Serg and Adam had finally been hit with the urge (as they had so innocuously termed so many of their odd pharmaceutical-related cravings) to test it themselves and see what all the hullabaloo was about. So hastily they decided to go out on a late-night winter hunt for this legendary (and extremely localized) alleged beast of a mind-altering experience.
For Sergio, the urge was just another reckless party.
For Adam, the urge replaced temporarily the chronic dysthymia that affected him so harshly; those chemicals cut the numb of the incessant and lonely alienation that he felt forever plagued him. He hated it as much as he loved it, this urge, and was fairly aware it was nothing more than a replacement for the warm embrace of a “dream lover” that most likely did not exist. And if she did, he believed himself to be wholly unlovable. The truth was quite the opposite, just never really experienced or accepted by Adam to any real capacity.
The LSD-666 was supposed to be unlike any other hallucinogen ever conceived, pissing on the usually well-intentioned theories of the McKenna’s and John C. Lily’s, among so many others, of the possibilities and helpful knowledge to be found; this was by and far beyond any other drug experience imaginable. It was supposed to open physically tangible doorways ordinarily thought of as not existing, and pull one into the deepest realms of the body-mind-soul as one cellular collective...but also known for occasionally dragging one down to the most base reptilian depths and blackest of pits forever gouged in that very soul. This was the evocative invitation to a much darker place.
Some would find an eternal paradise, supposedly. Truth is, though, many, if not most, never really came back. At least that’s what the urban legends and PSA pamphlets declared. But just as “Alice” (title character from the initially alleged-to-be-true 1971 anti-drug cautionary book of lies Go Ask Alice) never really existed, and just as a spider never actually lays eggs in anyone's ear, this had to be a blown-out-of-proportion falsehood as well. At least that was Serg and Adam’s feeling on the issue. To them it would just be another trip for the brain, a new way to temporarily abate certain doldrums of old thought and feeling (or, at least in Serg’s case, lack thereof) in which they felt forever mired. Everything else to them seemed beat. Coke was boring (without girlfriends, anyway). The dope (of which they’d already indulged in a good bit of) was weak. They were tired of the standard booze-n-benzos. They both craved something more, something faster. Not some garbage like speed, or bath salts or Robitussin, but something to activate their minds, something out-of-body, something truly hallucinogenic. And being no strangers to all manner of altered realities, this LSD-666 just felt like something they needed to experience.
It was rumored this exceptional chemical compound came in the form of a Hell-red gelatin tab, which contained in its center the hideously pinpointed and forever glaring eye of a praying mantis. Supposedly one particular and solitary breed of praying mantis, isolated and virtually unheard of, accidentally discovered and subsequently worshipped for many millennia by some rare, cannibalistic Peruvian super-civilization, fallen and lost long ago. But this breed of mantis, according to the urban legends, was kept, passed down over thousands of years, only to be exploited in the international network of illicit drug trafficking, once this ancient secret ritual was discovered by the wrong semi-sociopathic post-grad chemist. The eyes of this strange breed of praying mantis had certain properties that made the unreal all too tangible, and supposedly brought things from the Other Side into this world.
Admittedly, they both agreed, it all sounded pretty hokey, so of course Serg and Adam thought it was all bullshit. Intelligent, and even universally wise as they could sometimes be, despite how reckless they were, this all seemed like drummed-up superstition and too many over-exaggerated bad-trip experiences.
However, they were both of the same mind that certain curiosities cannot be killed until the proverbial cat has been flayed well enough, so to speak. Both felt a constant and pervasive nothingness ruling their lives, almost like they had been cursed to some surreal existence that forever called and culled them away from this reality. Like they were incorporeal, didn’t even belong here. There were inconceivable circumstances, situations, loneliness and betrayals, as well as tragedies which had long plagued them both, albeit in different ways, that had brought them to their seemingly ill-fated and Twilight Zone-like lives.
All of that had brought them to this night.
Serg had heard through the long-withering grapevine, much to his surprise and delight, that an old friend, nay, acquaintance, of theirs was back in town. He was the only bastard to know the formula, really know how to make it, supposedly. He bred the mantises. His name was Mok, a hulking beast of a man with a flowing mane of golden Viking hair and greying-blonde beard to match. His eyes were a forever pinned marbled blue and his pupils were like dilated black holes. He was of a strange temperament, believing himself to be some Aleister Crowley-type cult figure, always subtly belittling, glaring, and speaking in odd riddles and put downs. Truth be told, he was a very scary, unsane individual, whose grip on reality seemed to have slipped long ago. Something about his soul and mind seemed rotten. But Mok was their only source.
Mok was also known to have walked people through various kinds of trips and rides as well, always for cash of course, though (again quite possibly due to the rumor mill) most of his clients seemed to end up in sanitariums or dead. Or perhaps stuck someplace in between...the worst place of all to be. The man had his fair share of run-ins with law enforcement, but always played the collected charmer, somehow easing the cops out of his space with double-speak and some bizarre homemade alteration of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He often proclaimed with self pride and wisdom how the successful went on to fulfill their lives with great prosperity, and that he knew how to capture and keep attentions just long enough to get them to believe anything, to feel it, to forget all else.
Whenever asked about the flip side of his mystical lysergic coin, be it by other mad-chemists, the curious, or even law enforcement, he’d simply smirk and scoff, “They said they could handle it...guess they were wrong,” whilst deliberately making sarcastic handwashing gestures, like some kind of vulgar, oversized Pontius Pilate. Then he would tend to his tanks of the strange luminous Peruvian mantises.
1 am
“Tonight’s the night, my brother!” Serg exclaimed like some excited wolf, bellowing over Cancerslug’s Beast With Two Backs album, up at full volume, as they sped carelessly down the empty black-iced night roads towards the Homefield A Go-Go strip-club to meet up with Mok. Serg passed Adam a large joint, after Adam had asked him to slow down. “Light this, fucker. Relax.” Adam could see the decidedly raunchy mood of Serg as he lit the joint, the flames from the lighter reflecting and flickering madly in his wide eyes. Serg wanted a party; he wanted an out of control night chock full of bad. He wanted to cause trouble. He was on a mission.
Adam was slightly more reserved, and leaned his head against the half-open window while exhaling the sweet smoke of the good weed. He enjoyed the feeling of the cold night air blowing against his overheated face. He always felt like “The Passenger” (the invisible title character who sees all from the Iggy Pop classic) and gazed at the full moon above. The piercing glow of her brightness seemed to almost block out the stars; Mother Moon hanging alone and watching down from Her throne in the sky. It was beautiful, relaxing.
Going to the Homefield was not. It was uncomfortable enough, being the strange strip-club/whorehouse it was, with its singular reputation. And seeing Mok furtively terrified him, filling him with dreadful anxiety. He considered taking a Xannie Bar, but knew that would counteract the effects of the LSD-666. They had to meet the brute there, then follow him to his house.
They met in the lot quickly (Adam somewhat relieved they didn’t have to go in), and followed Mok steadfastly to his dwelling. It was a small cottage, up a loose-graveled driveway, faraway from the main roads.
Adam’s reasons for being leery of Mok were justifiable. At one point many years ago Mok had been Adam’s mentor, as such, in the more questionable aspects of the dark arts, until the self-professed High Wizard’s heroin addiction overtook him completely, and the man disappeared from the face of the earth, along with Adam’s girl, leaving Adam confounded and festering with anger, feeling psycho-spiritually fractured for a bit. It also left Adam with this strange thing he could never shake, like an invocation that could not be banished, a wrath-fish hooked deep in his mind and tugging at him no matter where he went, what he did, who he was with, that seemed perpetually there, and not entirely his. For that alone, Adam could never trust the man again.
Both Serg and Adam had assumed Mok dead for years, as did most, and were both quite surprised to find out the human behemoth was still alive, let alone now living in some form of nefarious luxury.
They followed Mok quietly into his cottage, shadowed by haunted trees reaching for them in the moonlight. It was a smallish place, but more than enough for Mok. The main room was candle-lit, and reeked of thick incense, opium, and high grade cannabis. The walls were painted floor-to-ceiling glossy black, covered with a wide array of occultist symbols and sigils in stark white patterns.
Mok sat on his deep and fluffy violet couch, flanked by a slithery-pale, intensely beautiful dark-haired female. Together they looked like some bizarre, spooked-out Frazetta painting brought to life. “Gentlemen,” he finally spoke in his low, monotone and gravelly voice. He loved to try and sound wise and sinister, both Adept and Apex.
There was certainly a curious tension musing darkly about the room, much like the fog from the various smokes, if not practically thicker.
“Hey buddy, how you been,” Adam finally broke, almost involuntarily reaching out his hand to clasp the giant's warm and clammy paw, the tension stomach-churning to withstand.
Serg chimed in then, after deliberately letting Adam break the tension, coward that he was. “What up, Mok? Long time, no see, man.” He tried to be his usual hyper-jovial self, but his greeting came out flat and forced, the apprehension affecting even his chemically numbed dimness.
“Adam, my neophyte no more,” said Mok as he arose, giving Adam a tight hug, then peered deep into Adam’s grey eyes. “You’ve grown, my friend.”
“Well, it’s been a long, rough while,” was all Adam could muster in the flummoxing strangeness of the moment.
“Have a seat, gentlemen. This is Josephine, my current Scarlet Woman, if you will.” Serg looked her luxurious frame over quickly, not wanting to disrespect Mok in any way, especially when appreciating his woman.
But not Adam. One glance and he suddenly felt enraptured. She was petite and perfectly curved, dressed in a very tight black tube-top and a long, low-cut black skirt. Her lengthy dark brown hair swaddled gently over smooth alabaster shoulders, and her face was like that of a classical, finely cut sculpture of Renaissance art, from which two brown-as-ebony eyes peered back into him. She was in there, reading him, he could feel it. She smiled sweetly at him, and would not break her stare.
“Let’s get down to business, then,” Mok motioned them over to the violet-velveteen couch. “What do you know of ‘The Beast’?”
Adam loathed the tone. Serg was obviously nervous, and quite impatient. “Just that it sounds like a lotta urban folklore bullshit. Where’s it at?”
Mok was not fond of impatience. “In a moment, Sergio. I want to make sure you both know exactly what you’re getting into. This is no joke. I’m dealing with enough heat already, heh.” Something was so very off about that last sentence, Adam had noticed, or rather felt...something...soul-chilling and off about his...soulless tone.
Silence, but for the sizzle of Josephine lighting her opiated-hash ball.
“This will change you. It is different for every person. It will permanently open doors to worlds you never dreamed of, and will close other doors that once got you through day-to-day reality. You can kiss that goodbye once you’ve seen through the Mantis eye. That is reality.” Classic Mok form: deathly serious, humorless, and with that deliberate, caustic vagueness, eliciting within Adam a deep, slow burn as he listened. This was no different than Mok’s standard rhetoric from years ago. It was a tired old show. He just sounded like some over-tripped, burned out post-hippie. The 13th Floor Elevators crackled away on an old record player in the background, not helping to lessen that vibe in the least.
Adam’s attentions were far more drawn to Josephine, who wordlessly offered the pipe, which he gladly did partake in, while watching her fidget with her silver-ringed toes, each tipped with a chrome-magenta polish, the same as her fingertips. Adam could care less if Mok saw him appreciating this heavenly creature before him.
“Both of you–fucking pay attention to what I am saying–I made this. In the traditional style. Josephine taught me, her bloodline being that of the Peruvian Keepers Of The Manti...Idolamantis Diabolica; that cryptozoological insect of ancient legend and folklore. Also known as the delicate and beautiful Devil’s Flower Mantis. They did exist–both the insect, and her people–and they still do. She taught me how to cultivate them, how to create the concoction, for its original, intended purpose from countless aeons ago. It is not like LSD, DMT, MXE, or anything else you may have tried. Come,” he stood, motioning for all to follow.
Mok took them to the kitchen, just as dimly lit as the rest of the dwelling, with candles of all shapes, faiths, sizes and forms with strange waxen faces half melted, surrounding them. The table was littered in an organized chaos of beakers, tubes, and burners, all with multicolored and fluids of altering viscosity in them. It almost looked like the silly lab from the old Bugs Bunny and Gossamer cartoons.
There were objects in some of the beakers, small monstrosities, but neither Serg nor Adam could make out quite what they were. There were also a multitude of handwritten and leather-bound, archaic texts lying about everywhere. They were led through a labyrinth of counters adorned with chemistry glass to a fifty-gallon aquarium filled with nothing but finely removed mantis eyes.
It was a rather freakish sight to behold, that much was certain.
“Alchemy now?” Adam blurted mockingly.
“Something like that.” Mok was quick to distance himself from the query. Instead, he held out a handful of the finished product: little red translucent squares with something eye-like in the center.
Adam, by now pissing all respect to the wind, asked “Seriously? Why the eyeball, Mok?”
Stone-cold earnest he replied “Because these will give you BUG EYES. And the Mantises are perfect.” He laughed to himself, guttural, sinister, agitated, his eyes glaring with barely hidden malice at Josephine. “You won’t get it, man. Not until you do it. Then you will cease to be you and the real you shall appear, at last.”
Serg and Adam had enough. “Ok, how much?” Mok laid out a discount rate for his old friends and sold them a small handful. Josephine was slinking around Adam soundlessly like a liquid flesh ghost. She brushed against him, feeling more vaporous than human. It was an uncanny sensation, both caring and cold. Another one of the things Adam hated about being anywhere near Mok–it activated all his natural “magnetisms” from the Other Side–always against his will.
The deal was done. Mok regarded them balefully. “Now go. Opposite way you came. Don’t come back. I’m only passing through, won’t be here. And leave her wherever she ends up. I’m done with that too. My needs have been met.” His barely audible, sinister chuckle continued as the three exited the inexplicably dimming cottage which had suddenly taken on very dark and bad vibrations.
“One last thing!” Mok bellowed out the door of the clouding over cottage. He was quite loud, determined to be heard. “There WILL come a moment when reality and that drug blur, and ALL becomes one. I suggest at that moment you choose...because it IS a choice...choose your side of the fence wisely. Good luck, fuckers. Have fun!” And he slammed the now black-as-pitch cottage door as hard as he could.
3 am
Serg peeled out of the loosely packed gravel driveway with a fury. “Take it yet?” he asked Adam, his words somewhat garbled and clunky while he grappled with the wheel.
“No.” Adam held the little gel tab, red as the blood in his veins, up to the moonlight and inspected it. A strangely bright yellow pinpointed insect eye stared back at him from that small tab of LSD-666. He got the creepy feeling it was looking into him, just as Josephine had done earlier, with that same sort of intense and unblinking gaze she'd bored into him back inside Mok’s cottage of discomfort. “Did you?” Adam asked cautiously, already knowing the answer.
“Sure as fuck did–and it hit instantly, man–you gotta try this!” Serg turned to Josephine in the back, as she was lightly running her slender artisan fingers through Adam's long brown hair. “You good babe? Where you gotta go? Wanna gel?”
She merely smiled coyly and said nothing, as she had done all night, and continued to run her fingers through Adams hair.
“I think Josephine's fine right where she’s at, Serg,” Adam snapped back, enjoying to no end the feeling of her scarlet nails rubbing lightly on his scalp. He also decided fuck it and popped the one tab he’d been inspecting.
Serg was right. Within half a cigarette this concoction was doing something exceptional. Adam could feel it first on his scalp, within the fingers shuffling so gently through his hair. They felt more like the gentlest of lightly-scratching flesh-combs now, and that intense feeling of such simple physical pleasure began to course and wrap around the entire aura of his being. He felt as though his soul was enveloped in the softest and most tender grasp of the most gloriously beautiful creature alive.
Adam turned his head and looked up again at the gleaming moon, so large. A supermoon apparently, tonight. She appeared as beautiful as Josephine with her extremities running through his spirit. The moon then became Josephine. She appeared beautifully curled in on herself, in a fetal position, then began melting her glowing moon-flesh down the deep blue midnight sky. Her luminescent alabaster tissues cascaded in yellowing-white streams down to the earth, streams that congealed on the dead winter treetops like old milk, but reformed in the backseat as the silent beauty still stroking his hair.
In that same instant Serg also saw the moon dripping, but much differently. He saw the moon ripping open from the center and swallowing itself whole, taking the entirety of the night sky with it, leaving nothing but an empty, starless, all-consuming abyss. In that moment, Serg felt a pang of true nothingness explode deep inside his solar-plexus. Looking down to the road ahead, the endless black ice covering the blacktop had become the frightening grey slop that Serg saw sluice down from the no longer present moon. He pushed down harder on the gas pedal, believing that he was feeling the viscous moon-goo slowing up the mobility of his car.
The vehicle made a highly uncomfortable jolt as it seemed to take on a life of its own upon the sticky smear of black ice and the ever blinding moon glow that seemed to be rising into a streaming flood into Serg’s new reality.
A deluge which Serg had become completely fascinated with and horrified by, as he took in the entirety of his worthless life of scamming and scheming, of deceit and destruction of self, loved ones, and the very nature of not just earth but certain fabrics of the cosmos altogether. It played before him on the same order of the deathlike silent blast of the Tsar Bomba flash explosion, very quickly; and it played slowly like a grainy old film of every wrong he’d ever done, throughout every current of this torrential downpour, with his whole life caught flash frozen in the moment before his twisting, bleeding eyes.
It had been unnoticeable to Adam (who himself was altogether enjoying a much more pleasant bequeathing of these strange knowledges, for to him that is exactly what they were) until the hydroplaning swerve of the car pulled him suddenly out of the moon...out of Josephine...and Josephine out of him.
“Serg, pay attention, man!” Adam barked, Josephine's serpentine fingers pulling slowly back from Adam’s head. Adam, feeling an almost unnatural rejection of sorts from Josephine, due to the rather noticeable change in Serg’s gross demeanor, did not like what he was now feeling. Adam kept looking at his friend, watching Serg’s features become something ugly, physically devolving while simultaneously quite rapidly aging. Serg had substantially taken on the strange and ghastly features of a malformed Progeria child. Adam watched as Serg’s eyes sunk back, his face became withered and gaunt, and an encephalitis-like bulbous growth protruded from his cranium becoming at least three sizes larger, not unlike some misshapen and hairy watermelon.
In a panic, Adam pulled down the passenger side sun visor and checked his own features in the mirror. He touched his face, felt his lips, eyes, cheeks, pulling roughly at his skin...he was fine, at least objectively. Mentally, spiritually, and emotionally the wondrous feelings of a long-needed simple pleasure had gone. The sorrow that had always plagued Adam’s soul had returned, roaring with confusion, and was all that remained. Perhaps, all that ever was. It was a dreadful, sickening feeling of disgust, resentment, and caustic self-loathing.
The moon was now no more than a charcoal grey and crackling ball in the sky, the beauteous streaming glow of otherworldly flow Adam had witnessed only moments ago was now raining down like mostly hardened plaster and chunks of chalky drywall. In fact, inside the vehicle, the general feeling of adventurous fun and excitement had passed. Now it felt like a seething, slow-burning madness, as Adam too saw the flood in the road, and began pleading with the giggling, crying and deformed Serg, vile to behold in this new bodily countenance of his veracious humanity, to stop the car.
It seemed like Serg was desperately trying to answer Adam, but his voice was far from anything the human range of vocal sounds was ordinarily capable of. Blood was streaming down Serg’s ever-expanding cranium as the skin was beginning to split, tear and fall away like thinly thawed beige portions of Steak-Um. A stench of rancid decay accompanied the prevalent feeling of unstoppable doom overtaking the now predominantly moribund atmosphere.
Adam looked over to Josephine, desperately wanting her fingers back in his hair, just to feel that brief, strange and eternal bliss that gave him the will to come back. It made him feel alive, better, human...it felt so much like what he deeply longed for.
But she was now curled up in the back seat, her face covered. It seemed she was sobbing, shaking. Adam mustered the faculty to call out, “Are...you okay...”, finding difficulty within his own capacity to use language, odd chitters emanating from his lips, but not the words he was trying to say.
Josephine said nothing, made not a sound, but seemed to understand him nonetheless. Without looking up, she handed her opiated hash pipe to Adam, who took it, anticipating the sweet smokes contained within, and inhaled a deep, heavy toke, soothing his wracked and confused nerves slightly, but not enough to bring him back to...
Then it hit him. The Xanax, in his pocket, is recognized for easing bad trips and moderating the effects of LSD. He popped both bars, roughly 4mgs of the strong benzodiazepine sedative. But this was not really LSD. This was something absolutely different, and the Alprazolam would do nothing to abate this in any way.
It felt like time had stopped, and so had the car. The Alprazolam was having no effect on Adam’s trip. He stepped out of the car and into the flood of the ruinations of lives that swirled dryly around his shins. He could feel a mist of images, icy cold, the vaguest of sensations. He could sense the Current. This was real.
Adam watched as Serg hobbled out of the car, his body gaunt, streamlets of blood seeping in crimson rivulets down the entirety of his misshapen, horrendous figure. Serg leaned against his car for balance, his equilibrium off, and his cranium now so physically heavy as for him to have trouble holding it upright, an ungainly sight with his head lolling around involuntarily, in apparent pain.
Adam slipped down to his knees, trying to cling to the car hood as tightly as possible. It was like he was being dragged down by the Current of his own envisioned mists. They were nowhere near as nefarious as Serg's, yet they weren't especially pleasant, either.
Adam waded through the alternating viscosity of his own mists, aware of his own new reality-convergence taking place. Mok's paraphrased caveats, “Some doors open that never close, and some close forever–make your choice wisely,” roiled around in what was left of Adam’s logical, rational mind and his former perception of this reality. He felt as if his own equilibrium were slipping even as he found the translucent cinematography of the grainy-grey Current sweeping him under as well.
This was the moment when two worlds became one. This was the Veil, the Otherside, and Adam knew he was caught there, perhaps always had been. He could no longer watch Serg as he glossled horrible sounds and continued mutating, altering, and deforming. Serg never knew his own soul, or if he did, it was not a good one, nor ever had been, and he lived that to the hilt.
But they both became very aware once the back door of the car opened.
A sublime feminine figure stepped out; first a picture-perfect leg, followed by the other, wholly sensual and magnetic to the eye and mind. As Josephine stood revealed before them, she was wrapped in something that resembled a reflective brown cloak under the light of the supermoon. In one forceful flex of her body, this cloak crumbled away like the cheapest of Halloween plastics...it disintegrated just as the moon had in Adam’s bleary, disoriented eyes.
She stood before them, Idolamantis Diabolica, and she was real, physically tangible. This was indeed the Queen of the Manti, a being having survived for aeons untold. Legend of almost lost folklores, hidden away, enslaved to this world, largely against her will. Her beauty in this form, to Adam, was even more so than that of her once human skin. She glowed phosphorescent hues of purples, indigos, and blues that made him weep, for having inherited the beauty of all things incarnate. He could read the eternal pain in her glowing pink, neon Mantis Queen eyes. Adam full well knew he was beholden to a true, ancient Goddess.
Serg saw a monster, however, with a horrific green praying mantis head, not unlike that from some b-grade horror flick, yet a beast so hideous and maddening to behold as to cause him to let go of the car hood and be swept away in the turbulence of his own personal river Styx, comprised of a lifetime of nightmare mists, until he was forever lost, flesh stretching into a grey, 2D, doughy and endlessly looped nightmare hell.
Sergio had indeed chosen his side. He had chosen it a long time ago.
But Adam’s choice in this new reality of his was to crawl against the rough-flow Current of his mists, filled with not his friend's cruelties and deceits, but the sorrows and fears of a confounding and circumstantial life.
He fought through a legacy of brutality to crawl and tear asunder his own monsters of the mist, rushing and gnashing at him like the vaporous celluloid nightmare they were, through a lifetime trapped inside the bleak and eternal night of a lost yet ancient soul, and into the ever comforting Eye of the Queen. Reaching out for and grabbing gently her pupil, and stretching it like a loose rubber gasket with the viscosity of Silly Putty, he opened wide the fabric of all there is, and allowed himself to be swallowed into this new eternity.
As the hours passed and the most ravishing of pink winter dawns arose, Josephine watched from the woods as rescue vehicles filled with confounded workers looked upon an empty old car, with three open doors, and one of the most nightmarish, grotesquely mutilated corpses they had ever seen; a veritable monstrosity. The local law enforcement knew exactly what this was, but never why or how. Not their business. Ancient local legends and folklore they’d long known of told them better. Stay away.
She watched, then turned, so sad and mortified, to return once again to her own cruelly invoked existence into this world. Sorrowful at what she had witnessed, at what she had done, what she would have to do again. Mournful that she had never asked for this. A Goddess turned whore. The Queen of the Manti.
She wasn’t a carrier of the bloodline, she was the bloodline. She was the Mantis Queen, The living Idol Of The Dark Mantis, having witnessed with ancient eyes all manner of human horrors and monstrosities for what felt like endless aeons. It was not her choice to be here. Back to a madman, like most seemed to be, she went.
Josephine walked away, wondering if she would ever encounter a human being able to withstand the soul of an insect. Deep down, however, she truly believed that Adam had chosen wisely.
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