Every time I've ever taken the journey to the other world, without exception and for decades, I've always had a gnat show up. Silly as it might sound to some, I'd given over to the belief that this was my spirit guide or animal/familiar and even in the dead of winter one would always show up just before or during a trip and I never left home without it.
One fateful day, I was standing on the front porch and a preying mantis landed on the railing in front of me. I reached down and touched it on it's back and unbelievably this thing let me basically pet it and pick it up. This was pretty unusual as they aren't exactly social critters, and at first I thought maybe it was sick or in it's dying stage but as soon as my wife walked up to look at it, it turned it's head to look at her and took off in a panic as they normally would. Later that day, rare and unusual circumstances provided the opportunity to consume a very potent brew of rue and psychotria. No gnat showed up this time, which I noted but didn't think anything of it. What follows is my quickly typed interpretation of a terrifying visit to what I'm calling the 'Planet of the Mantoids' that took place later that evening...
Quote:
A vast, flattened and largely featurelss desolate and barren landscape littered with stones and rocks of varying sizes, all shimmering with a polarized and metallic rainbowing coloration from the utterly brilliant, unrelenting and enervating other-worldly light that ferociously shines down from an unseen source above. The ultra-violet-ish and bleaching light seems to also emit a deafening and all encompassing high pitched insectoid sounding frequency that permeates the world around you. At first appearing lifeless, as one observes the bizzare scene more closely, subtle motion is detected on the stark and almost pulsating landscape, and soon bizzare mantoid like creatures are seen crawling across the ground busying themselves with some ineffable and timeless task, turning over the smaller stones with their segmented leg parts and rifting through the depleted and lifeless topsoil. It is difficult to ascertain their size and relative distance, due to the lack of contrast in the glaring and near blinding intensity of the strange alien light. From out of nowhere, or perhaps from behind an enormous mantoid, as large as a mountain suddenly steps over you and now in the shade of this giant insectoid directly above, you can clearly make out some features of it's smooth and segmented abdomen which emits it's own pale and sickly looking greenish light. It pauses for a moment, and the terrifying notion that perhaps it has somehow detected you hits like a tidal wave of terror and you remain motionless and silent as possible until it finally moves on and passes into the horizon. Occasionally, and seemingly completely at random, an amorphous and featureless rounded face of a brownish caterpillar or larvae suddeny pops into your field of view and makes chilling but definite eye contact before fading away into the stream of visuals.
The scene is so utterly bizzare, so completely alien, and so inundated with the insectoid archetype that it can only be another world, or perhaps another dimension unfolded from our own. Questions arise, and are completely ignored... whatever these mantoids are, they are completely indifferent or perhaps even unaware of your presence to which you are absolutely thankful and yet there seems to be some connection or familiarity that is inherent and just beyond your understanding which they don't allow you to know more about.
Scary stuff... I have no idea if the preying mantis I saw earlier that day had something to do with this experience or not, but it's a hell of a coincidence if it didn't, and the absence of the usual gnat seemed odd as there had not been a single time in all my experiences prior to this that they didn't make an appearance.
Any of you guys seen this place before?
Author of this Post assumes no Responsibility, nor makes any Guarantee of the Accuracy or Validity of material in this Post. Material Contained or referred to in this Post is presented for Entertainment Purposes Only. This Material IS Not Intended to be Inferred, or Interpreted as Information, Advice, News, Instruction, or Factual Information.