“Ahh … ahh!” Someone shot me in my right foot with a .45 caliber bullet—at least that’s what the ant bite felt like, the pain excruciating, driving me to madness. Pulling myself into a sit-up, I hooked my left arm behind my knees, holding myself in place in order to slap at the crawling insects attacking the soles of my feet. When I looked down I realized that the vines supporting my weight were covered by the frightening creatures.

“Ahh! Little bastards!” An ant latched on to my right ankle, another slammed its clawlike pincers around my little toe and bit! I screamed in agony, pinching the tiny predators until my blood squeezed out of their crushed abdomens, their severed heads remaining anchored to my swollen, discolored flesh. The creatures seemed impervious to my defense, each bite delivering an ounce of neurotoxic venom that was quickly finding its way into my central nervous system, causing a frightening numbing sensation.

A vine fell past my face.

I dropped another three feet as two more supports were chewed apart.

Were the little fuckers that clever?

My fate all but sealed, I released my grip around my legs and dropped, attempting to use the momentum to swing myself clear of the awaiting colony. Swaying like a pendulum, tortured by worker ants progressing down my lower extremities, I felt a paralyzing sensation creeping up my body.

In my delirium, I heard something that sounded like an approaching pan flute.

And then the last of the vines snapped and I fell five feet onto the pile of killer ants.

Adrenaline sprang me to my feet. My back and neck were covered in a black vest of crawling insects, my jumpsuit dangling a thousand dark ornaments. I hobbled away from the colony, my flesh blasted by hundreds of bullets with teeth, my screams muted by the forest. All feeling below my calf muscles was gone and I stumbled, dropping through the brush like a tranquilized chimpanzee.

My body spasmed out of control, the pain horrific. Paralyzed from the chest down, I forced shallow gasps as I lay helpless, facedown in the soil, each breath vying to be my last.

Seconds from blacking out, my frenzied mind registered two final thoughts of madness—that the ants seemed to be abandoning my frayed carcass … and that something very large was hovering over me.

My vision narrowed. Darkness enveloped the periphery. A haunting face hovered before me—the Angel of Death, no doubt, my old friend staring at me with dozens of eyes born from a hundred past lives.

“Each past life ended brutally. Why are you here, Robert? What is your journey?”

“I seek … Nirvana.”

“You cannot achieve enlightenment while holding on to your anger.”

Blind, my heartbeat erratic, I felt something heavy press against my face, covering my eyes and mouth. A viselike grip compressed my rib cage—

Zap!