THE ZE

Home. Walking in the front entrance, I passed the growing piles of miscellaneous trash and evidence of gut wrenching degeneracy. Half of a wall was charred black, burnt some time ago with ashy foot and hand prints around the place. In the middle of what was once a living room was a heavily stained couch with bits of foam ripped out and spewed madly onto the floor. Down the hallway there was carpeting pulled apart and terribly worn with piles of cans, bottles and magazines strewn around the place. The only thing that held any real human value that was left here, was the random etchings and graffiti left upon the walls floors and ceilings, wherever a fevered dream seemed to have taken place. I checked each room to see if I was alone. Robby lay still and silent in one of the rooms, seemingly passed out and lost into it again. Was he still here since I left two days ago? I saw from afar that he was still breathing. By his side I placed a can of expired spaghetti and a jug of that all too distinct dirt stained water. I walked out closing the door and checked the last rooms to find that they were empty. In the kitchen i carefully pulled back the bottom skirting of the cupboards. The can and two bottles of water I left here were still there so I felt ok to store this nights worth of scavenged supplies here.

Pushing an old dresser behind the door of the front entrance give me a small sense of security for a moment before laying down on the least stained part of the couch ready to lose myself back into ZE. A curtain fluttered with passing gusts of wind making their way through a broken window and brushing upon my face. I smiled to myself at the contradiction of the feelings of security I felt from the outside world. My mind started to drift thinking of all the ways other passing scavengers could break their way inside here but by now its become second nature to disassociate away from all the fears, sadness and hopelessness to getting lost back into the ZE. I grabbed my tackle box with the toolkit out from my bag. "Fuck!" I muttered having forgotten to store my backpack, but my mind just drifted too focused on caring so I could get back on the ZE. Pulling out the shiny blood and rusted, stained metallic applicator and a tiny semi translucent orb of ZE from the tackle box, my breathing was labored feeling the pull as I inserted the ZE into the applicator. When I first started I remember the pain. It felt extreme at the ripping apart of flesh veins and muscle as the ZE orb made its way into the back of my neck and as the orb capsule sliced open the main ventricle to expose a direct passage for ZE to enter my brain for the first time. It was pure dilated horror for a few moments. Not now though. By now I have learnt to love the pain like opening a deep and raw passage to a world unimagined into the ZE. Leaning slightly forward as I lay there on the couch, I took one last deep breath and pressed the applicator to the back of my neck. The sound of clanking metal came along with uncontrollable gasping of pain. My head fell backwards onto the neck of the couch and my pupils tremored.

I seemed to still be in the room. The sounds, mostly just the wind and flattering of the curtain become disjointed and ever far away until a ghostly silence seemed to occupy everything. My focal point was drawn sharply to the edge of the broken glass from behind the curtain. The silence was disturbed by the sounds of many sharp metallic tap tap tapping's that seemed to be coming closer. At first the sound was disjointed but increasingly became more eerily musical. It sounded like some kind of larger machine work of tapping's, far away gears, humming of motors and tiny hydraulic hissing. It felt like some kind of ancient great symphony, a rhythmic mechanical pulsing of life itself as it grew in intensity. clank claNK CLANK. A golden metallic beetle taped its way up and stopped at the side of the glass. Everything became starkly silent. The contrast between the symphonic machine work tap tap tapping's, then abrupt silence was totally deafening. The beetle was in a strange state of super focus as most of my vision blurred the further it was away from it, then magnified upon the beetle in growing clear detail. It had sharp well patterned geometric shapes that felt like some kind of merged symbolic language embedded deep into its shell that glowed blue from inside. It body had many sharp, well precision cut, three dimensional golden layers and 6 green glowing eye orbs upon a tapered trapezoidal head. Overall it kind of resembled a strange alien heart shaped locket. It seemed to robotically dart its head as if looking, scanning around the room. An ominous full constriction overtook my body as I watched its head dart around then abruptly lock its series of six green eye orbs directly upon me. I could feel the warmth from the blood that was dripping from the back of my neck turn cold as it soaked into the couch.

In unison, the many sounds of tap tap tapping's kicked back in as I watched the beetle move down the inside of the glass. Many more beetles started to appear climbing the crack in the window and began to fill the room. Hundreds of tap tap tapping's, the metallic clanging and rhythmic machine pulses growing in intensity as the loud humming of moving gears, could be felt as deep vibrations all throughout my body. In a state of complete paralysis and could never tell if it was from some sedative effect of the ZE or from just being utterly mesmerized by the experience. Piles of beetles on top of beetles grew and even larger sized beetles made their way inside. Even larger beetles tried to force their way through the piles and the broken glass but being unable to fit, shattered the glass as they made their way inside. The very first beetle climbed its way over and appeared from the edge of the couch by my feet. As it appeared, its head darted towards me keeping its 6 eyes transfixed on me whilst its body was locked in a frenzied march towards me. I felt its sharp legs press upon my body. It could be mistaken that the seemingly ominous nature of the the experience would make it feel cold and distant but that's not the case. As fearful as the experience was there was something deeper pervading through all those feelings. The legs were sharp but I could feel a loving pulse emanating through them, through the constant focused gaze in their green eyes and the whirring of gears and metallic sounds. More and more beetles started to climb from all over the couch towards and on top of me. By now the crack in the broken window had entirely shattered. Large piles of beetles forced their way through piles of beetles breaking a larger hole in the room as parts of wood and brick and ceiling were falling around them. The first beetle stopped on my chest still facing me as other beetles burrowed underneath it raising it in the air as the pile continued to grow on my chest. Hundreds then thousands of green eye orbs transfixed on me. Then they stopped.

A pulse like a wave pushed through all the beetles. The stopping of the movements of tiny beetle legs emanating from my chest. By now the room and house for all I know had crumbled entirely away and i found myself surrounded in a sphere of golden metallic geometric heart shaped beetles. A blue and green glow from their patterns and eyes shined off of their shiny golden bodies surrounding me. The pile of beetles in front of me started to move and morph all in symmetrical unison. The geometry from all the rotating shapes was entirely mesmerizing. You see, this was just the gateway. It was different every single time but this was just an elaborate entrance into the full immersive experience of the ZE. The pile of beetles kept on morphing and moving as it started to resemble a face. The face at every gateway was always the same. A strange but beautiful creature. The shape of the creatures face stayed constant even though all the beetles were constantly moving. The symphonic machine work noises of everything grew louder as all the beetles around me started to move also. A pulsing of green and blue lights grew brighter and dimmer with the pulsing of the machine work noises. More beetles gathered upon the creatures face then scuttled behind its head and interlinked to resemble a strange geometric pulsing backdrop as the face slowly came closer to mine. The sphere of beetles around me seemed to be shrinking closing in. The machine work noises got louder and pulsed more intensely in unison with the lights, the morphing geometry and the sphere closing in. The machine work noises were met with growing oscillating mechanical pitches. A strange non human robotic language of sorts, the face moved as if talking but the noises of words were emanating from all around me. I couldn't recognize what the words were but i knew that they were the same every time. The face then opened its mouth and screamed as a fury of all the beetles pushed themselves into me. A flood of beetles rushed into my mouth cutting and expanding all along into my body. Then through my eye sockets as they pierced through my eyeballs and into the center of my skull. All along the outside of my body the sphere closed in and pressed hard upon me as the beetles pushed their way through my skin separating all my organs, then cells, then splitting apart fragments of DNA then even deeper as if dissecting me on some kind if sub atomic level. As the bits of me got smaller everything turned dark. Then in the darkness a fog of a far away light grew brighter with the sounds of a beating heart. The feelings of being welcomed home after being gone for such a long time flooded all sensations. And the real experience of ZE began.

Eventually, it must have been days, I woke back up into the new world they created. They took everything. We were completely unaware. We think it started from a subtle infiltration of key people running the infrastructure of humanity. Poor decisions were being made and we thought it was to serve higher political foreign interests that we were unaware of. The media then became infiltrated and we were being convinced that relations between nations had stopped most global trade as slowly everything started to become more scarce. That's when the scourge of ZE swept over the world. It started in our water supplies. The experience was subtle but incredibly addictive. Unbeknownst to us, we were having feeling of growing anxiety if we drank from other water sources. Many killed themselves over the anxiety but most turned to the strange little orbs of ZE that everyone seemed to have found from a great friend of a friend. We were too busy trying to run away from our anxieties, then one day we just found ourselves with almost nothing. Scrounging for food and water in a mostly barren planet. There was nothing left for us here. All the paranoias, the survivalist double crossing and anxieties. the only thing left was those few moments of feeling eternally complete in the ZE.