Mushrooms

By Evan

Orson never knew what hit him. He was a rather dull boy, a few locusts short of a plague many said. No one ever suspected that the Shroomies would target him. They usually bestowed that honor or punishment; no one has ever determined whether what the target goes through truly benefits them.

The Shroomies were a group of people who had eaten mushrooms that had been brought back from Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. The mushrooms had been determined to be safe to eat by a thorough analysis, but the first person to eat one, experienced hallucinations 1000 times stronger than such substances as psilocybin or LSD. He saw all sorts of strange colors and the whole world seemed to be made of Jell-O. He swallowed an entire bottle of Listerine (not just the contents, the actual plastic bottle) and tried to spay a dog with a spork. After a while he recovered and seemed to go about his life normally, until a mushroom started growing out of his head. Then his behavior radically changed. He became unusually insightful and imaginative. Before he had been a reasonably intelligent mycologist, but once the mushroom grew out of his head he became a world-class author and philosopher. He began to experience hallucinations periodically but he took them in stride. His personality however, seemed slightly off kilter; he would not allow anyone to touch his mushroom. He had difficulties with his social interactions, perhaps because his mental processes were seriously altered and he had an unusually high amount of serotonin in his brain.

No one really cared that much about it (except to read his books because they really were very good) until another mushroom grew of his head about a year later. He caught a woman unawares and fed her the extra mushroom. That person in turn became a Shroomie after her violent hallucinations. Apparently the host had an uncontrollable urge to spread the mushrooms around once he had an extra one. Gradually more and more people became Shroomies. As I said before, my friend Orson was not exactly a likely candidate for being Shroomed, they always seemed to pick relatively intelligent people, and Orson either hid his intelligence very well or was a dim bulb before they Shroomed him.

After school one day he and I were walking home (we live in the same neighborhood) when we were suddenly accosted by a group of Shroomies, one of whom had an extra mushroom with which they most likely intended to Shroom someone. I thought they were after me at first and debated whether or not to resist the inevitable, since the Shroomies claimed that their altered mind state was very enjoyable, but the very altering of the mind state could simply make them imagine that being a Shroomie was enjoyable so I decided to kick one in the shin and run. Much to my surprise they knocked me unconscious with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large brick.

I extrapolated what happened during the period in which I was out later. They grabbed Orson and fed him a mushroom. He began to hallucinate wildly, grabbed my unconscious form and hauled me onboard one of the school buses.

The driver had left the keys in the ignition and apparently intended to comeback after using the restroom or some other short errand. Orson dropped me gently upon the seat and began driving the bus rather erratically. I should probably mention at this point that we were both twelve and neither of us had any clue how to operate a motor vehicle. Somehow he managed to keep us on the road, and I woke up sometime after we had gotten on the interstate.

“They're coming for me,” he said.

“Who is?” I asked, wondering if I could convince him to pull over in his current state of mind.

“The rainbow colored amorphous blobs, and their trained attack parakeets!”

“Look Orson, you are hallucinating, the Shroomies made you eat one of their mushrooms.”

“I am not hallucinating, how do you know you are not the one hallucinating? The Rainbow Colored Amorphous Blobs could be attempting to control your mind as we speak.”

I could think of no way to retort this kind of reasoning as I had no proof that I was not hallucinating. I didn't have a mushroom on my head and he did, but that could be a hallucination also. Anything could be a hallucination but I decided that I should try to convince him to hide from the blobs and their parakeets rather than attempting to continue carreening down the interstate.

Before I could even open my mouth to suggest that hiding might be the better course of action against evil blobs, I heard sirens and saw about 20 police cars chasing us. Orson swerved so rapidly that they couldn’t come parallel with him, or manage to get off a clean enough shot to shoot the tires. A few of them were foolish enough to try and pass him and the school bus whacked them off the road. One of those cars skidded and effectively blocked the road behind the bus. The remaining police cars all either collided with the car or swerved off the road. “Ha ha ha! We have evaded the rainbow colored amorphous blobs!!!! Wait, I see some attack parakeets.”

I looked up and saw a gaggle of geese flying through the air, and who had chosen to relieve themselves directly over the bus.

“Ahh, they are bombing us!!!!!! Take shelter!” He screamed as he dived under one of the seats.

It quickly became apparent to me that there was now no one driving the bus and that the bus was still moving at well over the posted speed limit. The bus went off the road and flipped completely upside down. I grabbed hold of a seat and managed to hold on for a sufficiently long time to avoid an injury beyond a few minor bruises. Somehow Orson landed on his feet.

Unfortunately for us, the three police cars that had managed to continue the pursuit caught up with us. The police officers got out and threw several canisters of tear gas through the windows of the bus. It apparently didn’t occur to them that we might not be able to get out of the bus when it was flipped upside down.

Despite the gas, I managed to open the emergency side exit. We piled out of the door and were promptly pushed to the ground and frisked by the two policemen lying in wait for us. They then cuffed us and took us to jail. We sat in the cell for quite a while until I was let out because I had not actually committed any crime. Orson, however had to sit in his cell, at least until he stopped hallucinating. He was in prison for over a week. Luckily he was not held responsible for his actions while under the influence of the mushroom. The Shroomies who fed him the mushroom could be held accountable but no one seemed able to locate them.

After all those problems, life went on for Orson and me. I was a bit wary since I knew that eventually a mushroom would sprout from his head and I was unsure of how changed he would be. Would he still be my friend, or would he be another person all together? Eventually the fateful day came when the mushroom sprung forth from underneath his scalp. I found that he was still my friend, yet he often seemed to be in a world of his own. It was as if the mushroom was a part of his brain and his brain had expanded so that he possessed intuitive insight into everything he observed. He had a good deal of trouble expressing himself but other than that not much had changed about him. Maybe if he had been more outgoing before the shroom came the changes would have been noticeable but he had always been rather shy. So maybe the mushrooms really were a good thing for humanity, except for the whole process of shrooming.

Talkback: Post Reply | View replies (0)