Ommatidium, or a Thousand Paths to Madness

That evening, as Berlin fell quiet under an autumn rain, I sat in my fifth-floor apartment in a panel block building on Sch;nhauser Allee, methodically killing time. I wasn’t working — just scrolling through old photos on my laptop, ones where I was still smiling. From two years ago, before Anna left, taking with her not things, but the ability to feel anything besides emptiness.

The coffee in my mug had long gone cold, a shimmering, oily film spreading across its surface. Outside the window, the city blurred into wet glints of light from the streetlamps — the Berlin tourists call free, but which I called a gray labyrinth where all exits lead to loneliness. On a shelf, books from my university days gathered dust: Nietzsche, Jung, Euripides’ The Bacchae with a bookmark on page 47, where I’d stopped three years ago. Dionysus, the god of ecstasy and madness, stared mockingly from the cover — what ecstasy was there when even anger had dulled to a background hum?

I dozed off, my head falling onto my folded arms, and I dreamed of a swamp — viscous, warm, where I was sinking very slowly, without panic, almost with a sense of relief.

I woke to a scraping sound — thin, insistent, like a needle on glass. My heart hammered against my ribs once, sharply, then stopped. Beyond the balcony door, clinging to the wet glass, sat a praying mantis.

Mantis religiosa. A common praying mantis, green, about ten centimeters long, its forelegs folded in a gesture of prayer. But on the fifth floor? In October, when they should be dying in the grass? Its triangular head turned slowly — left, right — and its faceted eyes, those thousands of tiny lenses called ommatidia, caught the light of the streetlamps, turning it into constellations of reflections.

I moved closer. The mantis didn’t stir, only its antennae twitched slightly. In each ommatidium — and a mantis has about ten thousand of them — shimmered something that shouldn’t have been there: not the reflection of the street, but other worlds, as if its eyes were not organs of sight, but portals.

My hand reached for the door handle on its own. I opened it, and a gust of cold air rushed into the room, carrying the smell of wet asphalt and fallen leaves. Without hesitation, the mantis stepped onto the frame, then onto my palm. Its tiny legs pricked my skin — not painfully, but electrically, like a jolt of static when you touch metal in winter.

I brought it into the room and closed the door. The mantis crawled to the edge of the table, next to the mug, and froze. We looked at each other — a man and an insect, separated by millions of years of evolution, yet connected in that moment by something I couldn’t understand.

And then time shuddered.

Not metaphorically. I felt it physically: the air grew thick, the seconds stretched, and in the gap between one heartbeat and the next, reality fractured.

I leaned closer to the mantis, and in one of its ommatidia — the upper left one, if you count from the center — a light flared. Not white, but a golden-red, like a sunset seen through grape leaves. And I fell into it.

The Hills of Thrace, Greece, 4th Century BC

I was standing on a mountainside, barefoot, in a torn tunic, and my feet were bloody — either from the rocks or from a run I didn’t remember, but my muscles burned as if from a marathon. Around me was a forest of pines and oaks, not the neat, orderly trees of Germany, but wild, gnarled things with branches twisted into knots. The moon hung overhead, huge, pregnant with light.

And there was a sound: drums. A dull, low rhythm — boom-boom, boom-boom — like the heartbeat of the earth. It was joined by flutes, high-pitched and hysterical, and voices — female, but not human. More like the howls of beasts that had been taught to sing.

I turned — and saw them.

The Bacchantes — the Maenads of Dionysus — were descending from the mountain’s peak. There were ten, twenty, maybe a hundred of them — the crowd merged into a single organism. Women of all ages: young girls with unbound hair, matrons with sagging breasts, old women with sunken mouths. All were half-naked, their tunics ripped, their skin covered in scratches and dirt. In their hands, they carried thyrsi — long staffs entwined with ivy, topped with pinecones, but sharp as spears.

At their head walked Dionysus.

He was not as he appeared in textbook illustrations. Not a soft youth with a wine cup, but a beast in human skin. Muscular, his body covered in tattoos of grapevines that moved — I swear, they moved — coiling around his arms and neck. His hair was long and tangled, with leaves and feathers caught in it. On his head was a wreath of grapes, but the berries were black, overripe, bursting, their juice running down his face like blood. His eyes were yellow, like a goat’s.

He saw me and laughed — a low, guttural sound.

“You’ve come,” he said in Greek, but I understood it the way you understand things in a dream. “At last. We were waiting.”

“I don’t…” I began, but he raised a hand, and the words died in my throat.

“Don’t speak. Dance.”

And the Bacchantes surrounded me. Their hands seized my wrists, my hair, and dragged me into their circle. The drums quickened — boom-boom-boom — the flutes shrieked, and their bodies began to move. It wasn’t choreography; it was a convulsion, a seizure passed along a chain. The woman to my right threw her head back and howled — a long, ragged cry — while another sank her teeth into the forearm of a third, who only laughed and kept dancing.

I tried to pull away, but the Bacchantes’ hands were stronger than they should have been. Their fingers dug into my skin, leaving bruises. One of them — a girl of about twenty, her face contorted in ecstasy — brought her thyrsus to my face and brushed the pinecone against my cheek. It was damp and smelled of resin and something sweetish, like decay.

“Drink,” she whispered, and I saw a liquid seeping from the pinecone. Not wine, but something thicker, darker.

“No,” I breathed.

“Drink, or we will tear you apart,” she said, not with malice, but as a statement of fact.

Dionysus came closer, and I felt a heat radiating from him — not from his body, but from his very presence. He held out a cup — a chalice made from a skull, rimmed in gold.

“This is not wine,” he said softly, almost gently. “This is freedom. Freedom from time, from yourself, from everything that holds you in the cage of reason. Drink, and you will be here, in the eternity of this moment. Refuse, and you will return to your gray box, where you are slowly rotting like a forgotten fruit on a shelf.”

I stared into the cup. The liquid inside was black but glowed from within with a red light, like embers.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The blood of the vine, mixed with the blood of one who was torn apart in my name. Every sip is the death of the old and the birth of the new. So it was with King Pentheus. So it will be with you.”

The Bacchantes grew quiet, waiting. The drums slowed to the rhythm of a heartbeat — thump… thump… thump…

I took the cup. It was heavy, warm. I brought it to my lips. The smell hit my nose — iron, honey, decomposition. I took a sip.

And the world exploded.

The Bacchic Orgasm. The First Wave.

It was nothing like intoxication. It was a dissolution of boundaries.

First, pain. The liquid burned my throat like acid, my stomach twisted in a spasm, and I fell to my knees, snarling. But a laugh burst out of the snarl — hysterical, uncontrollable. I was laughing and screaming at the same time, and I couldn’t stop.

Then, pleasure. A wave rolled from my solar plexus down to my groin and up to the crown of my head. Every cell in my body ignited as if an electric current had been sent through my veins. My skin became unbearably sensitive: the wind on my face felt like a kiss, the earth under my palms like a lover’s body.

I staggered to my feet, and the Bacchantes seized me again, but now their touch was not violence but communion. I danced with them — no, we danced as one organism, a hundred feet, a hundred hands, a hundred voices merging into a single cry.

Dionysus danced in the center, and the grapevines on his body grew, entangling the Bacchantes, entangling me. I felt the shoots pierce my skin, growing through my muscles, and instead of fear, there was ecstasy. I was becoming part of the vine, part of the forest, part of the earth.

Time vanished. I don’t know if we danced for a minute or an hour. The drums beat faster and faster — boom-boom-boom-boom — the flutes screamed, and suddenly one of the Bacchantes seized a deer — where had it come from? — and tore it apart with her bare hands. Blood sprayed onto our faces, our bodies, and everyone around howled with joy.

A piece of raw meat was thrust at me. I looked at it, and my reason — the last part of me still clinging to reality — screamed, “Don’t eat it! This is madness!”

But I took a bite. The flesh was hot, salty. And in that moment, the final boundary fell.

I was not a man. I was a beast. I was a god. I was everything, and nothing mattered except now — this instant, where pain and joy, life and death, merged into one.

Dionysus looked at me and smiled.

“Now you know,” he said. “This is the truth. Not reason, not morality. The chaos from which order is born. Remember this feeling. You will lose it again.”

And the vision began to fade.

I came to on the floor of my apartment, in a pool of my own sweat. My body was trembling as if after an orgasm, but worse — every muscle ached, my head was splitting. My mouth was filled with the taste of metal and honey, though I had drunk nothing.

The mantis sat on the edge of the table, motionless. The clock on my laptop read 11:47 PM. Only ten minutes had passed.

I sat up, clutching my head. What was that? A hallucination? A micro-stroke? Or…

I looked at my hands — and froze. On my left wrist, where a Bacchante had grabbed me, a red bruise was forming in the shape of fingers. On my right forearm were scratches, as if from branches, though there were no plants in my apartment.

“God,” I whispered. “Was it real?”

The mantis turned its head. Its eyes flickered again — a different ommatidium, a different world.

“No,” I said aloud, recoiling. “No, no, no. I don’t want this. It’s too much…”

But curiosity — that damned, wretched curiosity — was stronger than fear. I crawled closer, and the mantis raised its forelegs, as if in invitation.

In a lower-right ommatidium, a light ignited — neon, blue and pink.

And I fell again.

The Club “Berghain,” Berlin, 2025, 2:37 AM

I was standing in darkness pierced by strobes. The air was thick with sweat, machine smoke, the scent of bodies. The bass hammered so hard my ribs vibrated like speaker membranes: boom… boom… boom… — the same rhythm as the drums in Thrace.

Around me were people. Hundreds, maybe a thousand. Half-naked, in latex, leather, in nothing at all. Dancing in a trance — eyes closed, heads thrown back, bodies moving not by will but by the command of the rhythm. It wasn’t a dance; it was a collective, synchronous convulsion.

On stage, a DJ in a goat mask, his hands flying over the console, twisting knobs, each movement unleashing a new wave of sound that crashed over the crowd like a tsunami.

I looked down — I was wearing nothing but my underwear and was covered in dirt. On my arms were the same scratches from the vision of Greece. I was here, but I was also there, simultaneously.

A girl materialized beside me — the very same one with the grapevine tattoo on her shoulder I’d seen in the first vision. But now she was in ripped jeans and a crop top, her hair dyed purple. She looked at me with a sense of recognition.

“You’ve come,” she said, her voice the same as the Bacchante’s. A Russian accent, but the words were Greek — I heard both languages at once, like a double exposure.

“Who are you?” I shouted over the din.

“Eurydice. Semele. Ariadne. The names change, but the essence is the same. We are those who follow him.”

“Follow who?”

She pointed to the stage. The DJ took off his mask — and beneath it was Dionysus. The same, but in a black t-shirt, a piercing in his nose, his hair tied in a bun. He saw me and nodded — an invitation.

“Go,” the girl said, pushing me forward.

The crowd parted for me. I walked toward the stage, and the people around me touched me — with palms, lips, tongues. Not aggressively, but exploratively, like blind people discerning a shape. Someone’s hand slid down my back, someone’s teeth nipped my shoulder — not hard, but I felt it.

Dionysus reached down and helped me onto the stage. Up close, he smelled of sweat, whiskey, and incense.

“You recognize me?” he asked, leaning close to my ear.

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Good. That means the first lesson is learned. Now for the second: time does not exist in separate pieces. Thrace in the 4th century BC and Berlin in the 21st are one and the same. People change their clothes, their tools, their languages, but the essence is immutable. Ecstasy. Freedom from the self. Dissolution into chaos. Do you see?”

He gestured to the crowd below. And I saw: mingling among the dancers were Bacchantes in tunics, philosophers in togas, Roman soldiers in armor, medieval witches, hippies from the ’60s, ravers from the ‘90s — all eras, all cultures, dancing together, across time.

“But why?” I asked. “Why are you showing me this?”

Dionysus turned, his face growing serious. His yellow eyes narrowed.

“Because you are dying. Not physically — worse. Your soul is rotting in a cage you built yourself from fears, from ‘shoulds,’ from ‘rights.’ You’ve forgotten how to feel. And when you forget that, you’re already dead, even if your heart is still beating.”

He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look into his eyes.

“I’m giving you a choice. Leap into the chaos. Destroy the cage. Become alive again. Or go back to your gray box and wither away in safety. But know this: if you refuse, I will not come again. The mantis will fly away, the visions will cease, and you will be left with what you started with — nothing.”

The music cut off. The crowd froze. The silence was deafening.

“Decide,” Dionysus whispered.

I stood on the stage, and a thousand eyes watched me — from the crowd, from the shadows, from the ommatidia of the mantis, which had suddenly appeared on my shoulder, light as a feather but heavy as fate.

A choice.

To jump meant embracing madness. To refuse meant remaining in the safety of the void.

I remembered my apartment: the cold coffee, the dusty books, the photographs of a past self smiling. I remembered Anna, who had said before she left, “You don’t live, you imitate life.” I remembered my reflection in the mirror that morning — pale, empty, almost transparent.

And then I remembered the taste of raw meat in my mouth, the heat of the grapevine growing through my skin, the ecstasy of communion with the Bacchantes.

Freedom or safety?
Life or a slow death on an installment plan?

I took a step forward, to the edge of the stage, where the crowd below had become a gaping maw, arms reaching up, ready to catch or to tear.

“I jump,” I said.

Dionysus laughed — a loud, triumphant sound.

“Then pay the price!”

And the crowd below turned into a pit. Not metaphorically — the club floor split open, and from the fissure poured a light — golden, blinding. From the light rose hands — thousands of hands, of Bacchantes, DJs, dancers, gods — all reaching for me.

“The price of freedom is sacrifice,” Dionysus said. “Offer me what holds you back. Give me your past.”

And I understood: Anna. The photographs. The memories of who I once was. Everything I was clinging to, afraid to let go.

“How?” I cried out.

“Burn them.”

The mantis on my shoulder stirred. Its eyes flared, and from its ommatidia shot rays of light — thin as needles, and hot. They pierced my head, and I saw inside myself: a repository of memory, where moments lay on shelves — the first kiss with Anna, our wedding, her laughter, her tears, her leaving.

“No,” I whispered. “Not that.”

“Only that,” Dionysus replied. “As long as you hold on to the dead, the living cannot enter.”

The hands of light grabbed my ankles, pulling me down. I was falling, and in that fall, I made my decision: to let go.

In my mind, I gathered the memories of Anna — all of them, down to the last — and threw them into the light. They flared up like paper in a fire and vanished.

The pain was unbearable — like having a part of my soul ripped out. I screamed, but what came from my throat was not a word but a howl — animalistic, liberating.

And when the last memory was cinders, the pain transformed into ecstasy.

The Second Bacchic Orgasm. Catharsis.

I was no longer falling. I was flying.

The hands of light caught me, and I dissolved into them. There was no more “I” — there was a multitude. I was a Bacchante dancing in Thrace; I was a DJ spinning a record in Berlin; I was a grapevine breaking through asphalt; I was Dionysus, laughing and weeping at the same time.

Time collapsed. Past, present, future — all a single, pulsing, eternal moment.

I saw everything:

· An ancient theater, where actors in masks perform The Bacchae and the audience weeps with catharsis.

· A medieval carnival, where a masked crowd dances in the town square, defying the laws of the church.

· Woodstock, where thousands of hippies merge into a single body under the music of guitars.

· Modern rave culture, where the DJ is the new priest and the dance floor is the temple.

It was all one. Dionysus wasn’t dead. He just changed masks, following humanity through the ages, reminding us: “Forget yourselves. Dissolve. Live.”

The orgasm hit with a third wave — not physical, but cosmic. Every cell in my body sang, every atom vibrated in unison with the rhythm of the universe. My climax was light, sound, meaning. I was everything, and it was unbearably beautiful.

And then — silence.

I opened my eyes.

I was lying on my apartment floor. Outside the window, dawn was breaking — gray, Berliner, ordinary. The clock read 6:12 AM. The entire night had passed.

My body ached everywhere — muscles, bones, skin. As if I’d been beaten. But inside me was an emptiness — not of despair, but of purity, like a swept-clean room.

The mantis was gone.

I sat up and looked around. On the table, next to my mug, lay a single ommatidium — a tiny lens, the size of a grain of rice, shimmering with rainbow colors. The mantis had left it, as a gift. Or a reminder.

I took the lens in my palm. It was warm. I looked through it at the window — and saw two Berlins: one gray and ordinary; the other golden, where grapevines entwined the skyscrapers and the shadows of Bacchantes danced in the streets.

I stood and went to the mirror. My face was different — not the features, but the expression. My eyes were alive, burning. On my shoulder, where the mantis had sat, was a scar — thin as a scratch, but in the shape of a grape leaf.

I tried to remember Anna. Her face, her voice, her scent. But there was nothing. The memories were gone, just as Dionysus had promised. Only a vague shadow remained — “she was important once” — but without the pain, without the attachment.

The price of freedom.

I got dressed and went outside.

Berlin met me with noise: trams, voices, music from open windows. But now I heard something else beneath it — a rhythm under the rhythm, an ancient pulse that never stops.

I walked past a piece of graffiti on a wall — someone had painted a mantis with its wings spread like an angel’s. Beneath it, the words: “Ecce Deus” — “Behold the God.”

I went into a cafe and ordered a coffee. The barista — a girl with a nose ring — looked at me strangely, as if she recognized me.

“Were you at Berghain last night?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Maybe.”

She smiled. “You have that look. Like someone who’s come back.”

I sat by the window with my coffee. I took the ommatidium from my pocket and placed it on the table. I looked through it at the city — and saw the layers:

· Layer one: Modern Berlin, 2025.

· Layer two: 1920s Berlin, cabarets, decadence.

· Layer three: A medieval city, a carnival.

· Layer four: A Roman fort, soldiers drinking wine.

· Layer five: A forest, where Germanic tribes dance around bonfires.

· Layer six: Ancient Greece, right here, right now.

All times at once. Dionysus was right.

I drank my coffee — hot, bitter, alive.

I stood up and walked on, with no destination. But for the first time in two years, it didn’t matter. Wherever the path led, I was alive.

A month passed.

I quit my job — meaningless, suffocating. I sold my apartment. I bought a ticket to Greece, to Thrace, to the hills I had seen in my vision.

The ommatidium is always with me — in my pocket, or on a cord around my neck. Sometimes I look through it and see them: the Bacchantes dancing in the subway, Dionysus sitting at a bar, praying mantises crawling on the walls of skyscrapers — guardians of parallel worlds.

One night, on a train heading south, I dozed off. I woke to a familiar, thin scraping sound. I opened my eyes. On the armrest sat a new mantis — brown, slightly smaller than the first.

It turned its head, and a light flared in its eyes.

I smiled.

“What is it this time?” I whispered.

The mantis spread its wings — and I fell.

The End, which is a new beginning.

Author’s Afterword

This story is about the price of freedom.

Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine, ecstasy, and theater, teaches us that true life begins where control ends. But every ecstasy demands a sacrifice: you must let go of what you cling to — memories, identity, safety.

The praying mantis (Mantis religiosa) is a paradoxical creature: it prays and it kills; it is fragile and deadly. Its faceted eyes see the world in multiplicity — each ommatidium captures its own angle of reality. So it is with us: each of us sees our own truth, our own layer of time.