wasp

"We have a pill form. I'm glad you don't have to be hurt by the needle."\n\nShe watches me carefully as I swallow. I watch my distorted reflection swim in the therapist's shiny black mask-eyes.\n\n[[Headrush|contact]]<<set $infusion = "give me those pills without giving them to me">>

She picks up and scrutinizes a vial in her gloved hand. "I would like you to be fully aware of the joy of the upcoming event." She hands me two pale green [[pills]].

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I peel back my arm sheath like an oily opera glove. Something jabs. I watch my distorted reflection swim in the therapist's shiny black mask-eyes.\n\n[[Headrush|contact]]<<set $infusion = "give me that shot without giving it to me">>

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She puts her <<$text>> out at the same time.\n\n[[Look left|look][$text = "looks left"]]\n\n[[Look right|look][$text = "looks right"]]

"Have you ever considered that you are incapable of finding pleasure outside this twisted dynamic? You can't choose between me and Ichne because you're not in a relationship with either of us - you're in love with the shadow person formed by the composite of our [[perpetually unresolved tension]]."

She was right, I feel less alone this way. To know that if I choked on a hard candy, or suddenly leapt through the window, or shoved my hand into the garbage disposal and died from blood loss, my last moments would be witnessed.\n\nSometimes, when I feel very [[alone]], I'm flattered at the attention.

A [[squelching, hydraulic sound|spray]].

I<<replace " scratch my skin.">>mmediately this feels like the wrong move to have made. The red flush left by my nails makes me aware of the other marks on my skin - the lurid nebula of a bruise, the fused slag of a mole, the carcinomal stain of freckles, chewed skin around my thumbnail, and deeper, the unearthly blue veins, the bestial bone straining against the skin, the heave of knuckles, it seems impossible to breathe under the onslaught of this almost billowing, vividly suffused skin.\n\n[[Deep breaths|apartment]]<<endreplace>><<set $skin = "checked">>

"I have to go now. But I promise I'll be right back. I promise I'll never give up on you."\n\nShe <<replace "pauses.">>pauses.\n\n"Do you want me to jerk you off," she asks.\n\n[[Sure]] | [[Don't touch me]]<<endreplace>>

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Wasps gather above my head, tight enough to ripple the air with the heat from their wings. \n\n[[A burning vortex of wasps|fogger]]

The impacts are muffled now, because the wasps are hitting the corpses of other wasps. The weight of their dead bodies amasses above us. The room is dark under the night of these wasps, except for the light of <<replace "people's phones like fireflies.">>people's phones like fireflies.\n\nI know [[something|screaming]] they don't know.<<endreplace>>

Holding a knife to my chest, which feels like her chest, and putting it down. I cannot hurt you, <<replace "I say.">>I say.\n\nShe is, or is not, in the room.\n\n[[Shh|sh2]]<<endreplace>>

The last time I saw her, we were sitting in a black therapy van. She was taking [[notes]] on a tablet. I could hear peach-colored rainwater splashing under the wheels. I didn't really want to get in the van, but she jerks me off at the end of each session, [[so]].

[[Ento-muzak]] drowns out the rustling of the [[windows]]. <<if $skin neq "checked">>\n\nMy [[skin]] feels exposed. The light is too much. Even through the frosted glass.<<endif>>\n\n<<if $terrarium is "checked">>[[Shiny black eyes|shiny]] stare at me from across the room.<<elseif $skin is "checked" and $terrarium neq "checked">>I need to check my [[estrogen terrarium]].<<endif>>

A body scanner frame is installed in the park antechamber. The device in my pocket feels huge, bursting like an alien growth, a fundamental deformation to my silhouette that the other shadows must surely notice.\n\nThe crowd pours through the scanner. Every second of stillness makes me stand out.\n\n[[Run]]

Go to the [[shiny black eyes|mask]], and the collapsed skin.

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<<if $fate is "naked">>Crawling, swollen beyond recognition, I lean against Ichne's leg, naked against her rubber, froth pouring from my mouth.\n\nIchne's [[glove|tube]] touches my face. "Oh. The wasps have burnt the naivete from you."<<else>>Orange droplets glisten on my hoody mask. A flare bursts in the distance, a red comet to usher in the age of insects.\n\nIchne lifts her [[glove|tube]].<<endif>>

The parallel channel of my empathy sees through Chelica's eyes: my skull like a nightlight, venting [[smoke|dream]] until it cannot be known.

Black sky crashes into the fogger, a torrent of wasps steady as pressurized water, and the juice of their bodies lubricates the tripod of the fogger, turns the asphalt to marshland, it groans as it tips, is it [[possible]]?

I know what she's going to say before she says it.\n\n<<replace "//I hope our session was beneficial.//">>//I hope our session was beneficial.//\n"I hope our session was beneficial."\n\n<<replace "//Let's try to catch up soon, Diopa. Your happiness is important to me.//">>//Let's try to catch up soon, Diopa. Your happiness is important to me.//\n"Let's get lunch soon, Diopa. Your happiness means a lot to me."\n\nThe crystal sharp link is fragmenting, but the [[empathy high]] will permeate for days.<<endreplace>><<endreplace>>

//The grit of dirt in my teeth felt like a rite of passage - to willingly do what others were disgusted by. The fruit had [[fermented|wind]] into bitter, cloying, burning flavors.//

Subway platform runs along [[flooded tunnel]]. [[Adrenaline pens]] strapped to pillars under glass.\n\nA motorboat shreds past, drenching us. Droplets shine on rubber under the flourescent light. [[Waiting|interstice][$dest = "wait"]] for the boat sent by the city every hour.

The floor is littered with [[glass shards|shard]].

They don't show up in blood or urine. Hence the focus on inputless testing. Invisible testing for invisible pills.\n\nIf the therapist had known how to <<$infusion>>, I might not be standing here, or, far worse, a version of me without a heart to give the [[woman in the bee-veil|syrup]].

//The anaphylactic body scratches furiously on the platform, clawing at unyielding rubber as the eyes of the mask cloud with vomit. A slit of wasp-stung skin stares from a rent in the rubber like a crimson eye growing from her flank.\n\nA crash of glass. Someone holds the epipen to the twitcher's thigh. I close my eyes and imagine the needle stabbing through the rubber - savoring the idea of this injection that pierces not only through skin but intermediary quotidian material. With divine authority, an angel's finger.//\n\n[[^|platform]]

Vesp: a History of Sapphic Scaphism

<<replace "Furrows cut through the sky">>Furrows cut through the sky, the wake of ultrasonic flyers.\n\nI am excruciatingly aware of the agitation in the wasps flitting around me, like a scrap of skin has been taken in a thousand cuts from my body and placed inside each wasp, to be [[stabbed]] by the beating of their chitinous, razor-fringed hearts.<<endreplace>>

It feels good to squeeze the trigger and see the wasp explode into blaze-winged fat spattering carapace shards. By the blue glow of the UV pillars I see Chelica smiling. I wish I could see her eyes but they're behind the goggles because the zapper light can blind you. The music is gentle in the shooting range, a trembling trellis of chimes, her favorite song.\n\n[[Kiss her neck as she fills the world with light|kiss]]\nor\n[[Put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger|gun]]

"bitch i'm\nbleeding bad\n\nlike a bumblebeeeeee!!"\n\n[[^|eclipse]]

This old machine still takes [[coins]]. I cycle through snacks, my finger on <<cyclinglink $food "horseradish-camphor" "kudzu-rhubarb" "fractal broccoli-honey" "ginger-kelp">> paste, and depress the chunky plastic [[button|ingest]].

I grab a greasy plastic fork off the floor and <<replace "poke through the leaves.">>poke through the leaves.\n\nI see some <<replace "doses crawling around.">>doses crawling around.\n\nI crush them with the fork, then scrape them under the dirt. I make a [[disappointed]] face for the cameras.<<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<set $terrarium = "checked">>

Ichne Famescori.\n\nShe's at least six feet tall, and even though she rarely so much as brushes past me, her [[shadow|what]] always has an embrace for me.

Putting the mask on feels like attaching a healthy and proper face to a gaping hole. No one can see me now. I feel safe, pressurized. The smell of rubber is comforting.\n\nI am receiving [[signal|open]] with clarity.

The fogger crashes into the ground, cracking the concrete under my boots. Gas bursts free in hyper-concentrated, almost liquid jets, flooding the square with [[orange tide]]. Foam clings to my legs, pale like citrus sorbet.

Another step. "It may not seem like it now, but your mind can be another mind. One day you will look back, and it will seem impossible that you could have been the same person. All the pain you're in now will seem like a fading dream."\n\n[["I only want the mind that has room for her."|dynamic]]

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Cannister sloshing with some kind of white fluid.\n\n[[^|way]]

//The breeze gathered under my skirt and nibbled. I pawed gently at the warm little hardness, as if it were a flame I was afraid would leap up and burn my body to the ground, but that I was equally afraid of allowing to [[blow out|wind]].//

A sound like a lightbulb full of concrete being thrown against a window. Then another. Then faster, until it sounds like a storm of glass jackhammers perpetually regenerating their [[shattering tips]].

When she comes back, <<replace "the room is blue.">>the room is blue. She is holding a lantern. This lantern is the [[source of all life and all death]].<<endreplace>><<endreplace>>

I feel the vibration of the zapper through her body, [[pulsing|dream]] like an arcade lightgun. I'm buried in the smell of her hair, dark and slick down the back of her neck, perfumed from rubber encasement. Wasp fireworks drift in the bokeh.

I rub my hand along her skin, which does not ripple or rise at me. I still do not look at my own skin, but there is no need. In [[her skin I find my skin|ours]].

I don't even say anything about her not jerking me off. I know it hurts her hand.\n\n[[Sweating a little from all this empathy|outside]]

I twist in [[pain|pain_next]].

Something is singing louder than the transmitter, louder than sirens.\n\nThe song is everywhere. Its mouth is the broadcast tower. And the voice is Ichne's.\n\nI was a good distraction. I experience a degree of arousal at being situated so perfectly as an instrument of the [[colony]].

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"Your account registered no transaction." She's probably scrolling my most embarrassing purchases behind her eyelids right now.\n\n"I steal. It's something I do. I can't stop. I've tried. I've alienated everyone in my life."\n\nOur masks stare at each other.\n\nBut we both know how this [[ends|interstice][$dest = "test"]].

"It has been so long, and I hold every piece of my heart in place, just as it was."\n\nShe demures behind her beekeeper's veil.\n\n"A little crack was seen on the street today." Her voice is [[deep and warm]].\n\n"Another routine session. We did video therapy. Gave me a dose. It doesn't [[matter]]."

The radio alarm on my phone, waking me up to 100 organ-patched ant farms, with an apiary solo every 2 minutes.\n\n[[^|apartment]]

<<set $text = "The tunnel ripples around us from the chaos of the bodies.">>\n<<set $infusion = "give me that shot without giving it to me">>

When I stopped talking she would nibble on her stick insect stylus and stare at what she had written, as if her gaze could rearrange the words into more pleasing combinations.\n\n[[^|style]]

She peels back her hoody mask. I vomit from the empathy rush of her exposed affect. Her features float and glisten on the plane of her face, throbbing gelatinously in the oxytocineration.\n\nI lift my mask a couple inches and let the puke drain down my chest. I can barely smell the bile through the seratonin. It is horrifying that she would be desirable.\n\n"You won't let me [[choose|dynamic]]. You won't let me see without distortion."<<set $mask = "off">>

She could be poisoning me, annihilating all trace of this conspiracy. The individual insect is immaterial before the needs of the colony.\n\n[[^|Clear fluid]]

I like the click of the gun on my teeth. It reminds me how my body should move. The sounds it should make. I have double vision. Wasp fireworks drift in the bokeh.\n\nIf we are shooting wasps, I must [[shoot myself]].

She steps closer. "You think I don't know how it feels? Three years ago I was like you. Like," she searches for the word I would use, reads it off my body language.\n\n"I remember the syrup. I still get the dreams. I wake up wet. And I have to look in the mirror and come back to my body and go to work like everyone else. I chose to preserve my humanity. To believe it was worth fighting for."\n\n[["Uhhhhhhh it's not really something I can controlllll"|choice]]\nor\n[["You were stupefied by beauty and you threw it away like trash."|glory]]

[[Heavy shapes|sagging]] sag from the ceiling of this chamber.

"Come live with me. Don't wake up alone anymore." She unzips her dress to expose her clavicles, her delicate clavicles, and I get hit with a surge of ball-melting nipple-kissing heart-rending anthro-emp.\n\nMy hand tightens around the epipen. In what spirit?\n\n[["I want to ride your UV lamp pussy til the wasps pop and melt from my asshole"|Humans]]\nor\n[[Show her the glory of the wasps|Wasps]]

In the sprinkler-misted dome, tramping across the grass til it's matted orange. The lights have been turned off for the night so the park is [[dim and misty]].

[[Black rubber women]] shoulder to shoulder, squeaking down the subway stairs.\n\n[[Descend into the humid depths|platform]]

My shoulder blades twitch nervously. They feel too short.\n\nMy eyes drill into the apartment, rapidly changing depth of field, focusing with painful precision, like screws being tightened.\n\n[[I stand up, suppressing the urge to crawl|apartment]]

In the dome of the broadcast tower, reeking of [[smoke and copper]].\n\nAn [[entomologist]] is slung over a desk. A USB millipede wriggles from the control core of the broadcast tower. The plaster of the walls is being regurgitated into honeycomb labyrinths, glistening with the spew of the auto-masticators.\n\n[[Ichne]] is here.

Rushing through the pipe-dripping corridors, [[fire]] fanning the winds of pesticide, following the [[trail]] of bloody orange footprints.

The manual discourages pointing your gun at clients. It leads to distrust.\n\n[[^|way]]

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The wasps have more flesh inside them than ever before. Like flying shrimp. They swell with what humans have, as if one day they will wake up as humans, and we will be unable to tell each other apart. Or perhaps their carapaces are simply enlargening beyond their guts, and their heads, stingers, limbs, wings are connected by tiny filaments to a little wad of viscera in the center, like something's shadow outgrew it and left it naked.\n\n[[^|vista]]

A concrete field shrouded in [[smog]], enclosed by looming structures. A broadcast studio crowns the [[square|fog]] like the gleaming jewel of a diadem.

"...I'm not trying to doubt your feelings or belittle you. But we need to find a stable common ground. People are getting hurt." Her empathy radiates at me like an advert, cool water bright light.\n\nI have an epipen in my hand, for some reason.\n\n[["If you just tried this for one second you would understand."|try]]\nor\n[["You think I'm fucking crazy."|down]]

Shoppers returning home with their vacuum-sealed bags, picnickers leaving the dome park with their watercress-stained tube baskets, plastic-cloaked tourists blinking pictures of the broadcast tower.\n\n[[^|pull]]

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The broadcast tower ripples like a mirage through the cracked window smeared with wasp-slime.\n\nMy therapist is in the [[way]].

My friend lives in a [[nest of pulped books|hole]] clinging to the eaten-away underside of a library on the 40th floor of the Concord Tower.

Standing in the dark of the therapy mansion, mirroring her movements.\n\n[[Left hand out|dance][$text = "left hand"]]\n\n[[Right hand out|dance][$text = "right hand"]]\n

My lips hum with wasp venom, a stained black smile. They burn in supplication, as a substitute for her [[untouchable lips]].

Metal gates demarcate the city like a maze of guillotines. As I walk down the street [[lifestyle|lifestyle data]] data [[drains]] from my body.\n\nI head toward the [[light|hissing]].

She tosses the [[device]] to me like she's discarding a bit of trash. I store it in my utility folds.\n\n"Bring this to Temperance Square. Leave it in the potted plant in the bank. Then imagine the looks on their faces when the sky comes for them."\n\n[["I understand."]]

On the other side of the tent I pull open the hatch to another wasplock. Back to the shifting architectural battle lines of the square, the war for interior/exterior.\n\n[[Disappear in the chaos|interstice][$dest = "showdown"]]

Soaring CGI logos speckled by wasp smears, trapped in a radiant tombstone.\n\n[[^|fog]]

By their light I see auto-masticators regurgitating [[page-sludge]], building a new chamber, breathing heat to dry the paste.\n\n[[Keep moving|chamber]]

"Your lifestyle data has no record of this."\n\n"It was illegal, back-alley surgery. I was full of germs. I had a delusion. I inhaled toxic gas."\n\nOur masks stare at each other.\n\nBut we both know how this [[ends|interstice][$dest = "test"]].

You don't even need to take them, it works better if you don't. They work if you become [[aware]] of them, under certain conditions, if you have the [[predisposition]].

The hatch whooshes open and the crowd slams me through in a bang of blossoming bruises. The hatch slides shut behind me, sealing me in this [[tiny chamber]].

But that's just the cage. I was drawn to the bars by\n\n[[The void she encloses|void]]\n\n[[Her chemical command|command]]\n\n[[Her insect logic|aura]]\n\n[[How straightforward and efficient our relationship is|use]]

//Almost too late I connected this sound to my memory of [[flyers]] visiting us from the city.//

Fighting in the other direction, trying to keep above the rubber slap of the surge, trying to keep above their boots, I've seen it before, the trample, what a body looks like after hours of panic, [[gum on the sidewalk-]]

The therapist [[leaves the room]].

Empathy withdrawal drags my mind into the [[tar under the world|interstice][$dest = "mansion"]].

<<if $fate is "naked">>She brushes one of the tubes from her dress like a tendril of foliage uncurling. I put it in my mouth, shuddering, half-blind.<<else>>She brushes one of the tubes from her dress like a tendril of foliage uncurling. I plug it into my mask.<<endif>>\n\n[[Clear fluid]] travels through the tube.

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Back on the street I feel jittery, nervous, I [[slap]] at my skin like I'm about to get stung. Wasp wings drilling.\n\nThe most logical explanation is that they have been giving me the druq for a long time, and this overt, spectacular administration is merely a shell druq to mask the symptoms of the interior druq, and I have been tricked into thinking that my unnatural mentality begins now, to associate the covert druq infusions with my natural state.\n\nFurthermore, it makes sense that if their goal is to catch me in the commission of a transgression, that the true druq, if it exists, should in fact not weaken empathy toward wasps but //strengthen// it, to increase the chance of a [[crime|interstice][$dest = "library"]] being committed.

A [[digital sign|billboard]] towers in the fog: <<set $cycle += 1>><<if $cycle gt 3>><<set $cycle = 1>><<endif>><<if $cycle is 1>>//Xenoestrogens found in vespaskin manufacturing plant//<<endif>>\n<<if $cycle is 2>>//Slip into our luxurious cotton/Morgellon fiber weave//<<endif>><<if $cycle is 3>>//Vespoterrorist incident at Victory Park//<<endif>>\n<<if $bank is false>>\n[[Go to the bank|fog][$bank = true]]<<else>>\nThe bank is closed today.\n\n<<set $tankers += 1>><<if $tankers lt 2>>[[Wait|fog]]<<endif>><<if $tankers is 2>>The ground is vibrating.\n\n[[Wait|fog]]<<endif>><<if $tankers is 3>>The ground is trembling.\n\n[[Wait|fog]]<<endif>><<if $tankers is 4>>The ground is rumbling.\n\n[[Wait|fog]]<<endif>><<if $tankers gte 5>>Huge tankers roll into the square. I step [[back|deploy]].<<endif>><<endif>>

Something is different. Something is [[wedged into the path]] where I've walked a thousand times before.

I breathe deeply and let the empathy fantasies wash over me. Beyond their sweet light, it is very dark. The dark between walls, the dark at the center of a photon, if there is dark, I find it.\n\nIf the barrier between us has truly melted, then why is everything still dark? I think that we are connected, as completely as we can be, and that we still do not know each other. I think there is nothing for her to know.\n\n[[She gets up|go]]

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Rusted orange fading to the cigarette blue of UV light ambience.\n\n[[^|square]]

//...wasps as affording unequivocal examples of transmigrations in which the vital essence is transferred from one organism to another and quite different one...//\n\nThe machine is stuck on the line, can't stop looping. She has done nothing about it, presumably because her mind doesn't register repetition like mine does. Repetition is beauty to her. The infinite patience and sacrifice of the colony, solving all problems. She would have no problem believing the book was composed purely of this sentence, repeated line after line.\n\n[[^|beeveil]]

The rods are spliced directly below the restrooms, which service a considerable volume of estrogenerative women. The GMO caterpillars filter out waste and leave estrogen.\n\nThis is how I met her, through my old e dealer who was leaving the city. Moving up to fresh juicy caterpillars after chewing on anemic aphids for a year and a half was amazing. But it wasn't the only druq she was selling.\n\n[[^|sagging]]

I can feel my brain damage through her fingers, feel the pity at what I've become. These blessed moments are what divine spirits bring, when they visit the earth and allow us to stand before our own damage, and not be immolated by the sight of it.\n\n[[She gets up|go]]

The howl of sirens. Those crimson beasts. Cold sweat, trapped under my rubber, slides across the flatland of my skin.\n\nThe northern gate is still up. The crowd is heading toward it. Some have broken into a run.\n\n[[Leave the square]]

Is my therapist in the crowd? Her web trembling at the touch of my transaction?\n\n[[^|subway]]

jquery:off\nhash:off\nbookmark:on\nmodernizr:off\nundo:off\nobfuscate:off\nexitprompt:on\nblankcss:off\n

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//Boots hit the dirt in the distance. I heard arcing electricity, and a branch burst in a shower of sparks. Ash stuck to the glistening red fruit pulp on the ground, like raw skin coated in dust.\n\nI saw her bound away. For a few shaking seconds I thought we were running in the same direction, then she was [[lost in the trees]].//

She uses me, and in return, I am used.\n\n<<if $admired is true>>[[We're talking|like]]<<else>>[[And|more]]<<endif>><<set $efficient = true>>

<h1>Vesp</h1><h3>a History of Sapphic Scaphism</h3><div class="center">by [[Porpentine|http://slimedaughter.com/]]</div>\n\n<div class="center">Playtested by:\nHeaven Pegasus\nCassie Spiral\nNeotenomie\n\n<3</div>

Pesticide sprays from the walls, I can't see through the jets, the floor is an orange soup of wasps.\n\n[[Wipe mask]]

Swarming with dark shapes.\n\n[[^|apartment]]

The wasplock hisses open. I'm in some kind of [[circus tent.]]

//At the time I couldn't possibly imagine that her ravenous beauty was the culmination of my awkward, scrawny contortions in the dark of the foster dorms, and, when my body had fallen asleep from exhaustion, those diaphanous, droning [[dreams|interstice][$dest = "eyes"]].//

I always wake up the same <<replace "way:">>way: <<replace "naked">>naked, <<replace "spread apart">>spread apart, as if afraid to touch any other part of myself, soaked in <<replace "sweat.">>ID-pheromones.\n\nI have a nervous tic, jerking my head to smell my sweat, to remember what they [[know]] about me.<<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<endreplace>>

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The boat drifts through the gloom of the tunnel, barely lit by the occasional flickering [[UV light]], ghostly blue like underworld wisps. I'm crowded to the back, by the [[vending machine|food]].

//[[I touched myself|touching]] \nor\n[[I got down and ate fruit with her|fruit]]//

<<if $fate is "naked">>//Cutting my feet on the shells, skin flush from the friction of their wings, the hot needle hail of their [[stingers-|tower]]//<<else>>//The harsh edges of their shells under my boots, cooking in my casing from the friction of their wings, the hot needle hail of their [[stingers gouging my rubber skin-|tower]]//<<endif>>

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Help, my daughter did the bad druqs and now she's [[insane with wasps]].

It always sounds like she's talking to herself, like an inexorable script that would unfold even if I wasn't there. I can only hope to be present for our conversations.\n\n[[^|like]]

She wishes she could communicate to her therapist the beauty of their metallic limbs, their prismatic wings, their ovoid black eyes, their gorgeously full abdomens.\n\nBut she knows some things you can only [[see for yourself|see]].

10% off subway ticket, 5% off vespaskin, a free check-up every year.\n\n[[^|street]]

Is it [[saliva]]?\n\nHeat builds in my abdomen, a mystery of love, orgasm, poison. To be allowed this oblique and remote manifestation of herself.\n\n[[Suck]]

Releasing me into the wasp-dark [[street|vista]].

I connect the tube to my suit's plughole. The machine shoots a vein of <<print $food>> into my mask, where I suck on the rubber nipple.\n\nAm I eating too much or too little? The conversion of food into energy seems impossible to track - stray rivulets streaming off into the cosmos surrounding my glands, unexpected infusions of feminized calories or feminized nega-calories into my system. I cannot count on a closed system, and do not know where the system of my body ends or begins. It has already been penetrated, like that woman on the subway platform.\n\nIn the dark there is room for [[all of my thoughts.|interstice][$dest = "emerge"]]

I think she knew I was dealing at parties, that this was more than a harmless wasp fantasy, but who would admit [[wanting to be a wasp|love]]?

//Stolen from the dresses drying on the clothesline of the foster dorm opposite mine.\n\n[[^|wind]]//

Gooey jelly critters. Their translucence tracks their saturation.\n\n[[^|sagging]]

She has a nice room with air-conditioning, facing the glassed green of a vertical park. It even filters the burnt smell of wasps and replaces it with "Lavender Waterfall".\n\nWe're smoking GMO psycho-bamboo leaves from a chrome-encased bamboo shoot. Our black rubber dresses are shed on the floor like the skin of the angels that burnt up in the atmosphere to bring us here.\n\n[[I watch the freemium virtual aquarium on her wall as she wraps her hands around my breasts and squeezes|breasts]]\nor\n[[Wasps are drawn to the smell of burning plants because it means they can lay their eggs in them|burning]]

The buzz burns deep inside Diopa's dress, swarming between her legs, compressing her cock against the tight rubber. That classic nightmare, reported in 40% of vespaskin wearers: something is trapped in the suit with me. Something hard with a stinger, struggling against my flesh.\n\n[[^|source of all life and all death]]<<set $buzz = true>>

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Porpentine Charity Heartscape

I can hear the transmitter now, not just as an intimation, but how the wasps hear it, singing in my brain, filling me with the [[sweetest urge]] to bash my brains out, or mirror this impulse on another body.

A gust of wasps, sudden as a black speck on old film, knocks an entomologist from the top of a tanker, into the riptide of the crowd.\n\n[[^|orange tide]]

Go to the shiny black eyes, and the [[collapsed skin|dress]].

Black with wasp shells, black with the juices drained from their corpses.\n\n[[^|platform]]

//The first time I saw a [[human like me]], it was in the orchard near the terrace farms. This was the year before I moved to the city, when even the paper mache family of the foster home would be taken away from me.//

<<set $cycle += 1>><<if $cycle is 1>>Diopa peels back her hoody mask. It hangs behind her like a shriveled cowl.\n\nShe is shown a video of a wasp being crushed.<<endif>><<if $cycle is 2>>A video of a woman getting beaten with a stick. The woman's wrists are bound to a metal rung. The veins tense with each strike.<<endif>><<if $cycle is 3>>A video of a woman getting electrocuted.<<endif>><<if $cycle is 4>>The women are shown with increasing levels of distortion on their faces.<<endif>><<if $cycle is 5>>Women stepping on [[wasp eggs]], black yolk sticking to their stiletto heels.<<endif>><<if $cycle is 6>>A close-up of a wasp being dissolved with acid.<<endif>><<if $cycle is 7>>The wasp's legs curl as it struggles against the steady drops of acid.<<endif>><<if $cycle gte 8>>The wasp tries to crawl from the burning sludge of itself. Half its face is bubbling off.\n\nOf course, if you really had some kind of hyper-empathy toward wasps, you would cry at this part.<<endif>>\n\n<<if $cycle gte 8>>[[Cry]]<<else>>[[Stare]]<<endif>>

I emerge into the [[swarm-eclipse|eclipse]] of the street, frying in sweat. Women shoulder past and disappear into the droning dark.

<<timedgoto $dest 3.5s>><<set $cycle = 0>>

"There are new tests. This one is very advanced, because it doesn't rely on [[input]].\n\nPlease expose your eyes to the [[screen|Stare]]."

I bruised myself yesterday, and went to [[comfort her.|interstice][$dest = "credits"]]

Over the months I will fill her room with wasp eggs. Her tongue will be in my mouth and I'll be thinking, I've filled your room with wasp eggs. [[Nice|dream]].

The huge industrial steel [[gate]] screeches shut, and its comrades grind their jaws in the distance, the ground shaking with their descent.

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The glass falls and the people below are buried by wasp corpses. The building breathes again, screaming into the night with their voices.\n\nI hear this as the rest of us run into the [[maintenance tunnel|tent]].

"Is it possible that you look down on yourself, and you can't imagine anyone else not feeling that way? Can't imagine that everyone isn't secretly laughing at you?\n\nYou should ask people what they think, let them speak for themselves. I think you're amazing and that you can do anything you want with your life."\n\n[["This is exactly what I want to do with my life."|exactly]]\nor\n[["If you really respected me you wouldn't hide behind the power differential."|differential]]

My therapist has [[bugged]] my apartment.

I feel heavy, strange, my energy beats at my back, but I do not move. I see [[rivers of light]].

Something is wrong. The crowd can't tell, but I know it, and the aerial tracking system of the city knows it, a secret shared by me and god, that's why the city is tightening around me, [[and-]]

Open my apartment [[door]].

Wasps smolder and burst on the grills of the market row, corrugated awnings dripping with congealed grease like caves of sick honey.\n\n[[Not hungry for food|street]]

I am perfectly melded to my suit. My skeleton feels rearranged. I'm moving differently. My arms play through the air.\n\n[[Moving through time and space|interstice][$dest = "first"]]

She takes out a <<replace "knife">>knife and slits a hole in the webbing. She peels back my skirt and reaches inside the rubber.\n\nImages of our life together burn into my cock. After 5 minutes of extremely conflicted jerking off my cock pulses softly and goes limp. Her glove glistens with my clear venom. Is this the future of all wasp girls? Milked for their own good?\n\n[[And she's gone|interstice][$dest = "gone"]]<<endreplace>>

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The air of the mansion is full and clean. You can see from one end of the room to the <<replace "other.">>other. I still jump at the spots behind my eyes.\n\n[[Shh|sh1]]<<endreplace>>

//Wind blew through the orchard, rippling the edges of my simple cloth dress. The looser leaves fell from the trees, and the rest seemed eager to join them.\n\nI became aware of a [[whining]] to the wind.//

//I hoped she [[escaped]].//

Still deals in the physical, doesn't feed my footsteps to my therapist. The domain of earth is where we live. Theirs is the domain of air.\n\n[[^|food]]

<<replace "Pretext: I am leaving my apartment to buy more estrogen.">>Reality: I will accomplish what I have delayed for five days, which is to get my [[green pills]].<<endreplace>>

A [[bulbous gun]] is slung at her [[side]].\n\nHer body language mirrors me, glistening with HD emotion.\n\n[[She says something|says]]

<<if $fate is "naked">>I suck until she sees the tube is clear. She puts her arms around me as perfectly as wings folding. She smells nice like chemicals.<<else>>She pulls me close with the tube, puts her arms around me as perfectly as wings folding. The smell of rubber is strong inside my mask, fogged up by sweat.<<endif>>\n\nI stare stupidly over her shoulder, at faint [[flashes]] in the storm of wasps.

Her chamber is a jaw-spawned cathedral. Sometimes a sentence fragment can be seen in the pulpy haze. The drowsy ambience of wasp wings.\n\nYellowed pages are being scanned inside a glass vacuum box. An automated voice is [[reading]] from the text.\n\nThere she is, brooding in her [[grand carriage of a veil|veil]].

I close my eyes. Two green circles rise in the darkness. Emerald moons resolve into pills - I imagine the particles separating, absorbing into my blood.\n\nAnd now the wasp wings sound beautiful, warm, no longer drilling - dissolved into [[syrup|wasp_ecstasy]].

Like leylines rippling under the asphalt.\n\n[[Look up|furrows]]

I kiss her on the netting, leaving a black stain like grainy pixels.\n\n[[And I'm gone|interstice][$dest = "square"]]

Spongy rods laden with [[jewel caterpillars]], oozing [[yellow fluid]].\n\n[[Eat caterpillar|eat]]

I am no longer in that world. Ichne sits on a mound of books, humming in her throat.\n\n"You were drowning in time."\n\nShe stirs a cup of sugar water, then dips a tube from her veil into it. The water sucks into her [[void|speaks]].

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On the other side of the square, through the blizzard of chitin, I see the broadcast tower, and feel the <<replace "bone-radiating command of the colony.">>bone-radiating command of the colony.\n\n[[Into the storm|interstice][$dest = "tower"]]<<endreplace>>

I saw at the webbing, slipping and slicing my breasts and crying until I've cut myself out of my rubber dress like a [[molting imago|storm]].

Digital incontinence.\n\n[[^|street]]

//The entomologist with the flamethrower, liquid fire jetting into the basement tunnel, the darkness turned to a furnace of wasps, boiling and bursting, and the thought, as I watch this from the stairwell, that my organs were popping too, that each organ was a gift of the wasps, and in failing to protect the wasps I had relinquished the right to these gifts.//\n\n[[^|tent]]

"This air is very dusty," Diopa says, slackening her face muscles, trying not to let the aching pulse spread beyond her red and dripping eyes.\n\nHer therapist pauses the video. "It is the same dust I breathe. This is something we face together. Would you please remove your gloves?"\n\n[[Remove gloves]]

A talisman for empathic contagion. Deja pills.\n\n[[^|pills]]

Just ahead, the emergency exit, and the suddenly frozen crowd, as if the red exit sign was a burning ward they cannot cross, an inversion of the blue bug zappers, and somewhere in the world beyond a loudspeaker is grunting incomprehensible commands.\n\nSomething flowing and tunnel-like <<replace "rushes toward me">>rushes toward me, an enormous flapping [[mouth]].<<endreplace>>

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Am I merely mimicking how I think someone acts on such a druq? Druqs are pretext. In this case, to allow me to relapse into the rightful responses of flesh which allow me community with my fellow humans.\n\n[[^|outside]]

Manual excerpt: //All client input is inherently biased to self-protect the client.//\n\n[[^|love]]

A [[catacomb]] lit by fireflies, like sparks cast from an [[invisibly burning angel]].

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I pull off a fat one and squish it between my teeth like gummy candy.\n\n[[The signal is calling me down the tunnel|beeveil]]

<<if $fate is "naked">>Two women exchanging fluids at an austere remove, above a city invaded by wasps, achieving [[satisfaction|terminus]] the only way they know how.<<else>>Two rubberized women exchanging fluids at an austere remove, above a city invaded by wasps, achieving [[satisfaction|terminus]] the only way they know how.<<endif>>

But this is impossible. The transmitter hasn't been <<replace "activated yet.">>activated yet.\n\nI unzip the fold and sees the flashing red light.\n\n[[Something moans in the sky|sirens]]<<endreplace>>

When the tankers stop, the vibration doesn't entirely go away. The [[crowd]] calmly wanders past me. Is anyone else feeling it too?\n\nTime to quick my [[step|wrong]].

These spiritual injections cannot be seen, and there are no filters against them, no epipens, only the suspicion of change, a change which will never have to be admitted to, by you or any higher power, proceeding indefinitely until the change is complete, and you no longer have the mind by which to reject the change, because you have achieved total consonance with an <<replace "entirely new form.">>entirely new form.\n\nIf so, what right do I have not to treat this new material as carefully as my own? Some people dump their newborn child in the trash, or in the canals, plop, and the opaque surface resumes stillness, betraying nothing. Even a full dredging could not discern human flesh from wasp slurry. You might say, my child used to be a child, now [[they are a wasp|interstice][$dest = "credits"]], and thus avoid guilt.<<endreplace>>

My skin echoes their pain in a cigarette burn stacatto, green rings burning in my mind. I jerk my head, try to find the reflection of my eyes in my mask goggles.\n\n[[^|light]]

She <<$text>>. We stare into the same darkness.\n\n[[I say, "Amber stones clamber home."|say][$text = "Amber stones clamber home."]]\n\n[[I say, "Quartz gems belong to them."|say][$text = "Quartz gems belong to them"]]

I feel feverish. "You were shown something so beautiful you couldn't handle it. You were shaped too much by this ugly world and your eyes are unable to conceive of the proportions of actual beauty. You threw it away so you could deny that beauty to others."\n\nShe doesn't say anything. I continue, as if in this disordered space I am capable of saying everything I hold back in our sessions. [["You're jealous of Ichne."|dynamic]]

I'm inside a wasplock, hyperventilating to the strobe of red lights, floor wrinkled like a deflated pool. Wasps ricochet like popcorn, smacking my mask. Is there [[air|hydraulic]] in here?

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A lacerated car rolls by, belly dripping UV underglow, tires crunching, [[mournful song|song]] rattling the subs.\n\n[[Everything is slow|I feel heavy]]

<<display "storm">>

A wasp explores the room, drilling into my ears with its wings. I [[twist my head away]].

An overturned pesticide tanker floods the streets to orange rivers, flowing past the bonfire of a crashed flyer, past an abandoned fumigation machine pumping gas into an apartment complex until the windows burst from the pressure, fumes like fleeing ghosts, and everywhere the craze of wasps like every atom of the air is demon roe.\n\n[[She sighs|women]]

<<replace "Name:">>Name: Diopa Guyander\n\n<<replace "Hormone-gender:">>Hormone-gender: E (exogenous)\n\n<<replace "Secondary Neuroreputation:">>Secondary Neuroreputation: dissociation, paranoia, suicidality \n\n<<replace "Primary Neuroreputation:">>Primary Neuroreputation: identity disorder, empathy misalignment\n\nToday I am [[cursed|apartment]] to be exactly what I was yesterday.<<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<set $id = "checked">>

Also\n\n<<if $void is true>>The void she encloses.<<else>>[[The void she encloses|void]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $chemical is true>>Her chemical command.<<else>>[[Her chemical command|command]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $logic is true>>Her insect logic.<<else>>[[Her insect logic|aura]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $efficient is true>>How straightforward and efficient our relationship is.<<else>>[[How straightforward and efficient our relationship is|use]]<<endif>><<set $admired = true>>

//Diopa is 12, living in the rural enclave outside the city, terrace farms around the base of a gutted skyscraper like shelf mushrooms growing from a ferrous tree.\n\nShe finds wasp eggs under the porch, by the dancing light of the firefly lamps. They look like big bird eggs. Pale green, speckled. She holds one in her hands, feels the faint beating of limbs like a bony, fractured heartbeat.//\n\n[[^|Stare]]

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As the paste hardens around me,\n\n[[I struggle|Struggle]]\nor\n[[I wait for her|Wait for her]]

Something strange and horrible is coming from my mouth. My throat hurts, like it's being <<replace "shredded.">>shredded. But finally I know what it is. It's wasp screams, filtered through a <<replace "human body.">>human body.\n\nShe places her hand on my forehead and strokes gently. It feels like a hand carved from the sky.\n\nAnd it feels like\n[[Nothing]] | [[Something]]<<endreplace>><<endreplace>>

She detaches the front grill from the UV bug zapper. There are two elements to the zapper. <<if $buzz is true and $glow is true>>The buzz, and the glow.<<else>>The [[buzz]], and the [[glow]].<<endif>>\n\n<<if $buzz is true and $glow is true>>Diopa wants to touch it very badly, and it seems as if no one could condemn her, that no one could possibly not share this overwhelming impulse.\n\n[[Touch|interstice]]\nor\n<<hoverreplace "[[Don't touch|interstice]]">>[[Touch|interstice]]<<endhoverreplace>><<endif>><<set $dest = "Touch">>

The paste wall is so thin I can see a phantasmal outline of the city, dirtied by the static of wasps.\n\n[[^|invisibly burning angel]]

I <<replace "drop the epipen.">>drop the epipen.\n\n//SPACK//\n\nHer glue gun slaps me to the floor, I spasm against the tight webbing, my heart is beating like crazy, I am [[crazy]], I need to be free, straining until I feel like my limbs are being detached from my body, I keep slamming back to the ground.<<set $fate = "naked">><<endreplace>>

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I strain my arm until it's shaking, grab a shard with the tip of my fingers.\n\n[[Cut self]]

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//I ran until my legs burned. When I stopped, everything looked the same. Trees mirrored in every direction. I stood there for a long time, dress flowing around me in the breeze, not sure where to [[go|imagine]].<<endreplace>>//

As from a single throat: "<<$text>>"\n\nWe dance in the [[void of mirrors]].

I slap the transmitter to the fogger. It [[screams|interstice][$dest = "sky"]].

//She crawled naked through the orchard, her dick dragging in the mud. Flies clung to her sallow skin, gathered around the filth running down her thighs. Hair encrusted her face like a <<replace "curse.">>curse.\n\nShe was eating rotten fruit off the ground. She grinned at me through [[teeth stained with putrid jam]].//<<endreplace>>

Step inside the orange-stained metal chamber. Tiny wings and legs are gathered around the <<replace "drain.">>drain.\n\n[[The wasplock depressurizes.|step]]<<endreplace>>

[[Zip]] up my black rubber dress.

A [[blinding, hissing pit of light|light]].

It has been five days without pills. Five days of not leaving the apartment because the thought of leading her to my source is petrifying.\n\nBut today [[withdrawal]] is stronger than fear.

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Pesticide orange sky over buildings shrouded in black plastic. A landscape of punched teeth.\n\nLittle bodies thwap into my dress, some of them [[heavy]] enough to leave hermetically sealed bruises.\n\n[[Stride|market]]

Diopa stabs the therapist with industrial-strength, high-penetration epipens until she crawls like a rubber porcupine, [[spasmbristling]].

//This was when my reality was perforated, by the understanding that there were things that were not only hated, but that people didn't talk about at all, and that humans were very fragile, and could become unrecognizable to themselves, and that this new self was something you could smile about, and what did you have to lose if your old self didn't [[smile|reaction]] at all.//

I reach the fogger, gasping for breath in the shadow of the metal tower. I look around, feel like vomiting when I see the dragnet of entomologists contracting through the crowd toward me. Is that my therapist? I can feel my life being <<replace "stolen away.">>stolen away.\n\nI lift [[something]] above my head.<<endreplace>>

The skylight is cracking under the [[impact]] of the wasps.

<<set $timer += 1>>At the end of the tunnel there's a pressurized hatch.<<if $timer gt 1 and $text neq "I slam my elbow behind me, hear things crunch inside rubber." and $text neq "I jerk my head back, feel the impact of their face click my teeth together." and $text neq "I slam my boots on someone's feet, grinding their toes.">><<set $people = "People are crushing me into the hatch, close enough to grind the wasps between our bodies.">><<endif>><<if $timer is 1>><<set $people = "">><<endif>>\n\n<<if $timer gt 5>>The light is green.<<else>>The light is red.<<endif>>\n\n<<$people>> <<$text>>\n\n<<if $timer gt 5>>[[Open hatch]]<<else>>[[Open hatch|hatch][$text = either("It won't open.","My fingers hurt from pulling on the hatch.","I rock the handle back and forth but it won't twist all the way.")]]<<endif>>\n\n[[Fight back|hatch][$people = "";$text = either("I slam my elbow behind me, hear things crunch inside rubber.","I jerk my head back, feel the impact of a face click my teeth together.","I slam my boots on someone's feet, grinding their toes.")]]

Wind gently breathes on the plastic skin of the [[building]]. A screen glows as if there was a tear in the plastic and the sun, as it used to be, was shining through. The room is stained orange. \n\n"This isn't our usual [[style]]," I say.

The tide reverses across the square, toward the [[dome park|exit]]. The entrance is flanked by those tankers, hazard entomologists staring inscrutable and alien from on top, primates in the hills.

The void speaks. "I want you to help me do a thing."\n\nShe is rolling something back and forth in her [[palm]].

How the outline of her form feels like merely a temporary focused channeling of the elemental discontent of the wasps, the honor of witnessing a rare atmospheric event.\n\n<<if $admired is true>>[[We're talking|like]]<<else>>[[And|more]]<<endif>><<set $void = true>>

The way she flits from subject to subject with insectile intensity, spending an undetermined amount of time on something then suddenly, she's somewhere else, and only late at night when I'm falling asleep do all the seemingly random leaps make sense.\n\n<<if $admired is true>>[[We're talking|like]]<<else>>[[And|more]]<<endif>><<set $logic = true>>

Green rings sing like rung bells sustained indefinitely on the precipice of audibility. Through the empathy sweats it sounds like she's speaking with my voice.\n\n[["The scariest thing for you is accepting love from another person."|tension]]

"You only know the beginning of this story, not how it ends." Her voice is full of pity.\n\n[["You have no idea how this story ends."|try]]\nor\n[["She will take care of me now."|dynamic]]

Did she see me flinch in perfect concert with the wasps?\n\n[[^|pain_next]]

Entomologists are <<replace "lowering pillars into the square with the pressurized arms of trucks">>deploying foggers, vented metal towers with bellies full of orange miasma.\n\nThe last of the tankers [[pulls into the square.|pull]]<<endreplace>>

Clownfish ($0.99) melt into rainbow prism gravel ($1.99) as I feel the soft fat moving around on my chest. This is what humans have, flesh on the outside, and it is good. I do not want to be sealed in iron.\n\n"We have shared the same struggles. It is good to not be alone."\n\nBlack fluid drips from my nipples, sticking and hardening to my ribs.\n\n"A trick I do is imagine chocolate syrup hardening on ice cream," her voice in my ear, like through a [[microphone|dream]].

She eats the world and lives in the hollow left behind.\n\n[[^|hole]]

"This shot is an anthropocentric empathy re-distributor. Taking this will allow you to keep your insurance and ensure full access care."\n\nI rub my tingling hand as she stares at me, needle cocked. The pesticide dust angel of my electrocuted body covers the floor.\n\n[["I have intense anxiety about needles."]]\nor\n[[Acquiesce]]

The chaotic flurry of wasps turns thick over my head, turns [[armada]].

Mask slit open. A grin of wasp stings.\n\n[[^|tower]]

The corrugated tube tent expands, sealing to the emergency exit. I knock someone down and run [[inside|hatch]].

I twist in pain.\n\n"Are you in [[pain]]?"\n\nMy therapist is here, like a slick shadow. Was she following me?\n\n[["I have nausea from the poorly prepared food of this district."]]\nor\n[["I had surgery recently, and I twist from the pain in my side."|surgery]]<<endreplace>>

You might have heard about these on the news. Looks like a plastic barnacle, sticks to things, transmits a signal. The kind that turns wasps to weapons.\n\n[[^|palm]]

"Now show me your heart."\n\nI take out a <<replace "tube,">>tube, <<replace "twist it">>twist it, and smear it across my [[lips]].<<endreplace>><<endreplace>>

The veil projects and overhangs, like a massive questing jaw jutting at whatever she's looking at.\n\n[[She|ichne]] has never let me see her face. Its absence builds in me, a parasite that feeds on my dreams but never strikes, never shows itself.

"See you next session," she says. I cry because of how hard this is for her.\n\n[[and listen to her footsteps fade|interstice][$dest = "gone"]]

The glow paints the inside of Diopa's skin tingling, like mentholated light. It's a good drunk feeling, but cleaner, more lucid.\n\n[[^|source of all life and all death]]<<set $glow = true>>

One of those many fumigated structures wrapped in plastic. A hose snakes through the murky corridors like a temple python.\n\nThey must use these fumi-monoliths as anonymous clinics. Condemnation encrypts the structure. Buildings with explicit purpose and accountability become buildings where things that never happened are done to people who don't exist in a structure that isn't real.\n\nThe city is being swallowed up by the void.\n\n[[^|test]]

Jaundice, polymerization, forensics, psioriasis, suntanning, night clubs, insect attraction.\n\n[[^|wait]]

Soaking in the empathy baths. The iridescent water feels like our flesh melting together.\n\n[[Shh]]

A liaison therapist has no limits. They can be your friend, be your girlfriend, be with you forever. The city assigns them to people who struggle with maintaining quarantine due to [[mental illness]].

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The perma-sizzle of [[wasps dying]] on the UV lights blazing at the [[subway mouth|subway]].

[[Pull|safe]] the hoody mask over my face.

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Women in torn dresses thrash as hazard entomologists treat their wounds, used epipens on the floor like a nitrous binge.\n\nTriage.\n\n[[Keep moving|connect]]

In the reflection of the therapist's mask leaps a shiny dark creature with big ovoid eyes, gripping something [[sharp and venomous-|sharp and venomous]]<<set $fate = "loyal">>

I have her memories on me like contact poison. The dehumanizing shell melts away and in throbbing pulses of blood I see her name - <<replace "Chelica Setay">>Chelica Setay, <<replace "mineral pool eyes">>mineral pool eyes that she does every day even though no one barely ever sees them, <<replace "likes camphor eel tempura">>likes camphor eel tempura, <<replace "lived by the terrace farms when she was 12">>lived by the terrace farms when she was 12, how much am I projecting of myself, is this what the druq does?\n\nI want to\n\n[[Smoke with her in an air-conditioned room and tell her the names of my past five years|smoke]]\nor\n[[Go to the zapper range with her and do target practice on those big wasps that hatch from the estuary|zapper]]<<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<endreplace>><<endreplace>>

Transmuting piss to estrogen, phobia to philia, slipping emetic into the drink of the zeitgeist, she creates feeling where none existed. In my anhedonia this seems like magic.\n\nI long to communicate in pheromone breezes, nothing so crude as untangling my tongue.\n\n<<if $admired is true>>[[{{{~~~~}}}|like]]<<else>>[[And|more]]<<endif>><<set $chemical = true>>

The room sweats back into existence, our contact fantasy fading. She's holding me in her arms like I'm dying.\n\nI feel like a [[crystal laser]] connects our brains.

People flee into the dome park through the monsoon of pesticide and [[frenzied wasps]], I'm being carried with them, [[surging]] like something inhuman and segmented.

//Wind blew through the orchard, rippling the edges of my [[simple cloth dress|edges]]. The looser leaves fell from the trees, and the rest seemed [[eager]] to join them.//

I sniff in the faint delusion that the information will change, and I will become a [[different person]].