[ WP ] The lights flicker to an orange-red hue , and your hearing starts to return after an impossibly loud droning sound . You slowly raise to your feet and realise that you 've single-handedly created the largest bug zapper known to man kind .

In the haze, the man heard no sound, barring the incessant ringing that fluctuated around him. His senses felt as if they were disembodied, floating just outside of his grasp, and he was content with that. It was the death he had envisioned -- his peaceful spirit held aloft while his mortal shell flatlined. 
 
 In that moment, he was eternal. 
 
 Then, there was the world. 
 
 His eyes flew open. 
 
 He tried to think of how he had ended up here, but his thoughts were interrupted by an infrared light seeping towards him -- like the sun sheltered by clouds, then becoming bright again once they drifted. Likewise, it faded in and out. He groaned, and forced his aching body to sit upright. 
 
 Before him stood an elephantine device. It whirred and buzzed, shockwaves bouncing along its length like rocks atop water. Then it faded once more. 
 
 Something fell from the sky, and fell flat beside him. He groped the floor ( sharply inhaling through clenched teeth as he did so, sharp pain fizzed beneath his skin ) and picked up what had fallen. 
 
 In his hand was an insect -- a tiny, roach-like being with more eyes than anything should have. It convulsed, its wings fluttering in a final attempt to grasp the life it once beheld. Then it lie still. 
 
 The man suddenly remembered everything; the great war between bug and man, how science had gone wrong and had created a monstrous Praying Mantis that sought to wreak havoc on all humankind, how he was tasked with creating the largest bug zapper known to man that could kill anything with a single touch. 
 
 How his family was ripped limb from limb by the Mother Mantis's mutant servants. 
 
 A quake in the floor caused the man to cry out. He grunted as he turned to observe the source of the trembling; the sheer magnitude of it hailed something gigantic. 
 
 There it stood, the beast herself. Her many wings flared behind her; so large were they, that they reminded the man of stained glass windows in a church. Its mighty thorax swept to and fro as she scanned the area for her prey. Her angular legs darted towards him at an alarming speed. 
 
 The man, albeit in pain, pushed himself to scurry backwards until his back was pressed against the cool metal of the machine. 
 
 `` Come and get me, motherfucker,'' he chided as the bug zapper whirred to life.
