[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 39

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Part 38}

My stomach churned. I really, really didn’t want to throw up in front of everybody, but the nausea only grew worse until I gave in. Hunching over the edge of the platform I emptied the contents of my stomach onto the forest floor.

The others were presumably doing the same. I could hear people throwing up, but could no longer recognize the shape of a human being anywhere in the mess of pulsating, colorful patterns all around me.

I began to panic, but my motor control was compromised such that I couldn’t get up. I just tumbled over onto my side every time I attempted it. “Don’t fight it” she said from somewhere in the visually baffling mess of shapes. “It’s not for you to control. Let it take you where it wants. Trust it to take good care of you, and it will show you many wonderful things.”

I focused on the sound of her voice and let it calm my nerves. As I calmed down, perhaps in response, the visual confusion around me also slowed down. It became less energetic, less jagged. The shapes were now smooth, rounded and flowed from place to place like neon liquids.

“Look” the chieftess said, what I figured for her hand pointing up at the jungle canopy. “She comes.” She? Who could she mean? But as I’d resolved not to trouble myself with questions, nor to fight for control over what was happening to me, I laid on my back and followed her direction.

Gazing up into the branches overhead, a shape began to resolve. A humanoid figure. At first vague, it gradually grew sharper and more distinct. At last it was revealed as a beautiful, shapely woman made out of the overhead branches and leaves.

“She comes” whispered the chieftess once again, voice full of wonder. “Asherah communes with us.” I now had a name to put to it. As if that’s what it was waiting for, it began to dance. I could hear the other villagers on the platform around me laughing and gurgling like happy babies as they watched, apparently seeing the same thing I was.

I felt my mind growing, somehow beyond the confines of my own skull. Stretching out, extending into the environment. Into the trees and ferns, into the insects and birds. I became aware of the forest in an intimate way which defies description in any currently existing language.

I could see in my mind’s eye that the trees behaved like neuron analogs, propagating chemical signals between one another rather than electrical. Networking every tree in this jungle into a massive, conscious mind...just a very slow one.

“It is no great crime to perceive time differently” a booming, womanly voice opined. “Does it not already move too quickly for you?” My body tensed as I realized that the very moment I’d become aware of the forest intelligence, it had also become aware of me. Some sort of channel of communication was opened by that mutual recognition.

Above me, the feminine figure danced and flitted about through the canopy which by the looks of it was the medium in which she existed. Or at least her means of appearing before us in a visually comprehensible way.

“My queen” the chieftess declared, “an outsider came to us today. He came from the kingdom prepared for your lover, by those followers of his which still deny you. I thought I sensed his essence on the outsider, but only you will know for sure.”

I stared, transfixed by the alien beauty of the tree woman. Her generous locks of long, luxuriant hair flowed continuously like rivers. She seemed a giant by comparison to us, her face alone perhaps five feet high.

Her eyes shone with an energy that stirred my heart. The same gentleness I detected in the smiles of the chieftess, and the old man who led me to this village in the first place. I knew I could mount no emotional defense against a smile like that.

“Why this one, I wonder” spake the gigantic tree goddess as she loomed above me. “He doesn’t look the part, does he?” I felt somewhat indignant but wasn’t about to say so to the face of a hallucinatory nature goddess.

“Look at your heart. Look at your intestines, you’re so poisoned! What have you been eating, you poor thing?” I always knew my hermitic diet of instant ramen and frozen dumplings would fuck me over one day, I just never imagined the consequences would be metaphysical.

“What business is it of yours?” I demanded. “Who are you? WHAT are you, for that matter?” The confounding music of her laughter rang out, echoing through the jungle around me. “You’re a sassy one. Do your people still know of the elohim?”

Her voice oozed calm confidence even while terror gripped my heart. The entity, or vision, or whatever I ought to call it had no obvious intention to harm me. Yet simply gazing upon her inspired a unique mixture of awe and terror which I’ve only read about in the context of religious visions.

My heart raced, pounding so violently I felt sure it would soon burst through my ribcage. I could no longer tell where my body ended and the platform began. Or the jungle, for that matter. It felt as if I was melting. Blending into everything, the distinctions which make me separate from all of it having been illusory all along.

I screamed, then got up and ran. My body now responded to my brain’s commands well enough that I was able to scramble feverishly through the pitch black jungle, alarmed voices of the chieftess and villagers calling out behind me.

I just kept running. Whenever I fell, I continued on all fours until I could pick myself up and resume running properly. I’ve never been so fucking terrified. Like constant electrocution, the only thought I could process being the imperative to flee.

I knelt and puked a second time, then again until I could only dry heave. I pulled myself to my feet, still seized by the conviction that I would surely die if I didn’t get as far away from what I’d glimpsed back there as possible.

I continued running until I tripped over a root I couldn’t see in the darkness, twisting my ankle. I cried out in pain and collapsed in a heap, feeling tenderly at the joint. Not broken so far as I could tell, but possibly sprained.

This fucking meat leg! I’d be fine if I’d tripped with the prosthetic. I limped along, still surrounded by incomprehensible dancing figures in the darkness of the jungle, which had suddenly become a lot more menacing.

They were only ever a reflection of my own internal state, I realized. That’s all the tree woman ever was, too. They must’ve planted the idea in my head, priming me to see what they wanted. All just a result of my own expectations.

That rationale did very little to calm me. I witnessed the chieftess speaking to it, and heard it reply as if it understood her. We had to be seeing and hearing the same thing, then. Whatever they put in the tea must’ve also been the result of genetic engineering, surely?

I’ve never heard of a naturally occurring psychedelic with reproducible, synchronized effects on multiple people tripping together. If not for that element of the ceremony I’d be content to assume it was ayahuasca.

The visuals were consistent with what I’ve read about DMT, and I knew it to be ritualistically consumed as a tea in ceremonies Western new age types fly to South America in order to experience. Why did we see and hear the same thing, though?

It spoke to us. Not just to me, but to the chieftess. She answered coherently, confirming she heard the same question from the tree woman that I did. How is that possible? Some sort of telepathy? No, that’s ridiculous. Telepathy is nonsense. Then again, yesterday I’d have said the same thing about shirts that grow on trees.

My brain sloshed around turbulently in my skull. I gripped my head with both hands as if to cram my expanded consciousness back into that tiny little space where it should be. Nothing I could do would wrestle reality around me back into a recognizable shape however.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 40}