Foraging for mushrooms is fun. But I really fucked up this time.

I’ve been foraging mushrooms for a long time. I live near a wooded area where you can find them if you know where to look and what you’re looking for.

Shitake, morels, porcini, and oysters. There’s a few spots where I go year after year.

I learned from my uncle who is an expert outdoorsman. He showed me a few of the best places. When I was younger I found my own as well, but now I have so many to choose from I don’t go exploring as much anymore.

I’ve saved a few people from accidentally ingesting false morels and other dubious fungi. Since I know what I’m doing people occasionally ask me to take them out foraging. I always tell beginners never to trust their own instincts, always ask a professional.

But sometimes even experts make mistakes.

I can’t help but think about the mushroom I ate without giving it a proper inspection, when I was younger and in my early days of solo foraging. I had diarrhea for two weeks after that and swore I would never touch the damn things ever again.

This time I made a much larger mistake, though.

I was out in the forest heading to one of my usual spots when I thought I saw a large Shitake mushroom growing in the dirt at the base of a tree. I picked it from the dirt and inspected it. Satisfied with what I saw in the dim light, I stuffed it in my sack.

Mushroom foragers who have been doing it for long enough – like myself – like to carry our mushrooms in something that allows for spores to fall through the gaps at the bottom, thus seeding the areas travelled and allowing more mushrooms to grow in the future. As you walk along the path, the movement knocks the spores loose and they fall on the ground through the gaps in the bag or basket that is being used to carry them.

So I went around with it in my bag, dropping spores of it everywhere, so they could grow more Shitake mushrooms in the future.

At least what I thought were Shitake mushrooms.

When I got home I ate it, thinking it looked a bit unusual in the brighter light of my kitchen. It tasted pretty good, I have to admit. Though it didn’t taste like a Shitake.

I should have spit it out when I noticed that fact, but I didn’t. I’ll regret that until the day I die. Perhaps that will be soon.

I’m typing this out as I climb the stairs to the roof of the tallest skyscraper in my city.

Things have been tough for me lately.

People don’t look at you the same when you have gills.

They started opening up on the sides of my neck just the other day, beneath the ears.

Now there are rows and rows of them, black, soft and fragile like the gills on the bottom of a mushroom cap, growing all over my body.

They started in the dark, damp places like behind my ears and in my armpits and groin. And then soon they were everywhere.

Do you know that there are mushrooms that have mind-control powers?

You learn about these things when you’re a mushroom forager. You can search online and find pictures of ants with mushrooms all over them, growing out of their heads.

They look like ordinary mushrooms except they are essentially parasites that turn the host into a zombie. They colonize the poor insect and takes over its brain and muscles.

It drugs the ant and compels them to climb.

I’m at the roof now, and I’d like to think I came here because I wanted to. Because I like the view.

But I know the truth.

The mushroom I ate is an unknown cousin of the Cordiceps family, I’d wager. One that has the ability to affect humans. To INFECT humans.

A mind-control parasite mushroom like the one that affects the ants, and causes them to climb high above their colony.

I stand above the city and can feel it cracking through my skull. Its roots dig further into my brain and the pain is excruciating. But I stay standing still while the time passes. My mind tells me not to move.

I can see it growing like an antenna above me, as I gradually lose control of all motor functions.

The spores will soon begin to drop from it, infecting everyone else.

I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.

The mushroom made me do it.

JG

TCC