I knew the fucking cartoon character couldn’t be real. It stood five meters tall for fuck’s sake! Trees were clipping through it as if through a ghost.
It was also making the stupid cartoon sounds, the excited panting and grumbling and half-idiot laugh.
And, somehow, it kept appearing straight in front of me no matter how I ran or where I turned.
So, yeah, a pretty big chunk of me was aware that I was seeing things and running away from a character whose only goal in life had ever been to eat a nut. Unfortunately, that chunk was entirely drowned in the flood of chemicals that were trying to dissolve my brain to grey goo. Whatever had been in the spores I’d inhaled, it wasn’t just going to let me walk away unscathed.
Branches whipped at my face as I tried to shake off the silly thing. I rammed into a couple of trees and gained a few bruises that I’d probably feel the next day. If I lived that long…
Worst of all was that in my mad dash I didn’t pay attention to the direction I was running in. So it came as a shock when I felt my next footfall not landing on solid ground. Instead, I plummeted into one of those water holes that spread among the trees. The splash was loud and the water lukewarm. It was barely deep enough to absorb the shock of my impact.
Belly flopping hurts! And leads to gurgling the sticky, stinking, cloying mud at the bottom of the puddle. My backpack had come loose and slid up to my head, holding me underwater. Not my finest moment at all.
I couldn’t even curse properly as I struggled to roll on my side and bring my head above the sludge. Normally, I would have panicked so bad in a situation where I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe and could barely move. But, somehow, I managed to not break out into a full blow, possibly fatal, panic attack.
That didn’t stop me from flailing and squirming until I finally drew a deep breath of air. I wiped sticky mud from my face, my eyes stinging with pain. It was enough to see the next crisis.
Two of the oversized mushrooms were standing over me, head mouths open. White tongues—as in, multiple tongues for each—flopped down their heads and quested out towards me.
I screamed.
They didn’t.
I tried to roll away but only managed to wedge myself against another of the shrooms. It smoothly bent at the middle and grabbed my shoulders. The touch of its fingers was oddly soft, as if I were being held aloft by hands made of sponge.
“Wait wait wait,” I spluttered.
It didn’t.
I found myself lifted easily into the air until I was staring right at the gaping mouth. Its teeth glistened so, so, so disgustingly.
The fucking thing drooled!
I tried to struggle and maybe free an arm. It was no use. The mushroom had my arms pinned to my side and its strength was incredible. I tried kicking at where its face might’ve been, but it felt like I was kicking tires.
“Why are you so strong?” I cried out. “Why is everything on this planet trying to kill me?!”
The mushroom pointedly did not answer. Instead it stuffed me, upside down, into its waiting maw.
I screamed when the teeth closed in around me.
And kept screaming.
That eventually guttered out as I realised I wasn’t being chewed to death. A whole row of those flat teeth were clamped around my face, but they were soft and floppy like hard jello candy. If I were honest, the sensation of them pressing against me while the mushroom climbed out of the water pit was quite pleasant. Like a facial massage.
I wasn’t dead. Just upside down, muddy, and halfway down a mushroom’s throat. Things could have been worse. At least I wasn’t seeing the stupid squirrel anymore.
Not that the slurping, sloshing sounds coming from below were any more pleasant. I craned my head and realised I was looking into a barely opened white sphincter.
How was I seeing this? The mushroom’s flesh was translucent, its insides almost glowing white. It was unsettling. Also, whatever it had for saliva stung my eyes, but I was too keyed up to care.
Doubly unsettling was the car battery acid smell that climbed up from what I could only assume was the creature’s stomach. That didn’t promise anything kind.
KLAUS: Sorry to bother you, Eklil, but I have a little situation.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: What did you eat?
KLAUS: I’m pretty sure it’s something I breathed in.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: … Please explain.
KLAUS: I ran into some mushroom people. Some of them let out this cloud of spores. I breathed some in. I’ve been running from a giant squirrel for the past hour.
KLAUS: Now one of them is trying to swallow me.
KLAUS: A mushroom. Not the squirrel. Pretty sure that was the spores.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Head or feet first?
What did that matter for?! The jolting continued as I assumed the mushroom was headed back to its original spot. I tried to move my arms, but the mouth was holding me fast. The top of the backpack was digging into the back of my head, its entire weight threatening to choke me.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
KLAUS: Head first. Very uncomfortable.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Try and not breathe in the fumes coming from the stomach. And do not allow yourself to be swallowed entirely. The stomach acid is very strong.
I kicked my legs and the rubbery jaws tightened around me. Not enough to crush, but enough to hold me very still. Right then, that was an issue.
KLAUS: How do I make it let go?
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Playing dead often helps. They prefer dead prey to living and will try to divide the corpse.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Normally they smother their prey, then spit it out and break it apart.
“Or you can just die for real,” a voice squeaked in my ear.
I yelped in surprise as that little grey mouse from Tom and Jerry rose up from the mushroom’s… err, feeding tube? Feeding sphincter? God damn it, it was beginning to open up!
The mouse was two dimensional. And waving innocently. It was also wearing a diaper.
I could never remember the name of the damn rat. Tibbles or something.
With a sharp pang of panic that sent shivers down my back, I realised I was drifting off, the air inside the creature thick with… something. My head swam, partly due to all the blood rushing down to pool in my skull, part the strange fumes coming up from the sphincter.
“Just let go and die,” the mouse was saying. “Come in for a dip. It’ll be pleasant. Dying can feel good.”
Fuck off. Go and torment some cat trying to do its job.
I resolutely held my breath.
Hallucinating cartoon characters was enough to get my adrenaline surging all on its own and I began to really kick my feet, swinging them from side to side. The thing was strong, but it couldn’t be that heavy. With half a guy sticking out of it, maybe I could topple it?
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Whatever you do, Klaus, do not panic.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: The shambling spora are not particularly intelligent or malicious.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: You are more than capable of freeing yourself from your situation.
Right. That was easy. So fucking easy! Not panicking was the simplest thing in the world, especially as my tiny little slice of fucking Heaven was filling with gurgling noises and the stench of rotten eggs.
The mouse took a deep breath and began floating on a cloud.
“It smells so good in here!” it squeaked as it came next to my face. “You should really stop holding your breath and take a whiff. All your worries will float away.”
I ground my teeth and focused my will on not struggling anymore. Feeling my heart thumping wildly, I forced myself to go limp. I let my legs fall over the mushroom’s side, dangling like a chicken corpse being gutted.
Could the thing feel my heartbeat?
Would it wait until I was cold to decide I was dead?
Was it seeing inside its own mouth?
My vision darkened at the edges. I could still see that my MP bar was completely full. I had my hands sticking out of the monster’s mouth and free, so I groped at my waist for my sword.
Tangled up and in an awkward position, the scabbard was still firmly attached to my hip. I couldn’t reach the handle, but shaking the scabbard revealed the sword hadn’t fallen off. I let my hand drop slack after this quick inspection, and focused my will on not moving.
I had my weapon. I had MP. I was ready… just quickly losing consciousness.
If the thing didn’t spit me out soon, I would really be dead and the mouse would get its fucking wish. I tried not to shudder or move, just hang there, like a dog’s ripped up chew toy. My heart thundered in my ears.
One beat.
Two beats.
Five beats.
Ten beats.
My chest burned with the effort of holding my breath. I slid forward a little more, face pressed against the soft flesh leading into the stomach. It was loosening up.
Twenty beats.
At least it wasn’t hot inside the mushroom. I had to bite my lip not to burst out laughing at the absurdity of what passed through my oxygen-starved brain. I was about to die, but I’d least I’d die at pleasant room temperature. Fuck me if that wasn’t just hilarious!
Finally the shambler—I was going to call it a shambler, because I had power over the interface and I was going to abuse it for the remaining ten seconds of my life—stopped moving. Something akin to a soft whine reverberated through the creature.
I relaxed like no one has ever relaxed before without crossing the veil. Any more relaxed and I would’ve pissed myself to complete the impression that I was indeed a fresh corpse who’d given up on hope and life.
The whine turned into a rumble. Something grabbed my legs just beneath my knees. Pressure eased off my sides. I was yanked out with a slurping noise and a wet pop, and slammed to the ground like a wet rag.
I opened my mouth to draw in air.
Whatever was in my lungs got violently expelled when my backpack slammed against my ribs with bruising force. Stars clustered around the dark edges of my sight. I think I passed out for a few seconds before violently convulsing to draw breath.
I did not wait for my vision to clear, for air to seep back into me, or to even understand if I was hallucinating dancing pink elephants or hippos. I mentally slammed [ADRENALINE SURGE] with all my remaining sanity.
Since my day couldn’t possible get any worse, it instead got weirder.
There is a component to the surge that I hadn’t paid attention to prior to this moment. While the effect of the skill is that my perception jacks way up, it also does flood my system with adrenaline.
A few fun effects of an adrenaline rush include feeling invincible, giddy, panicked, hyper-focused, nauseated, aggressive, hot or cold.
A less fun effect of the skill, when on a heady dose of spores, is that I ended up feeling all those effects at once. Complete with dancing elephants in the background.
There were shamblers around me. I think there were four of them, looking down at me convulsing on the ground. One reached an arm for me, probably to try and smother me again. I stared at the perfectly smooth white flesh of its fingers and yelled at it as it moved in slow motion. I don’t know what I said.
One moment I was on the ground, yelling my head off, the next I was on my feet, sword in hand, arm swinging, and a shambler’s top cap parting from its… uh, shoulders, I guess. I didn’t even read the notification that popped up. I don’t think I could’ve read the text, much less parse it, much less understand anything given the obscene noise that surrounded me.
Most of it was me screaming.
All of it was me screaming. The mushrooms made no noise as I sliced into them in a frenzy. My fight or flight response melted together into a bum-rush in a random direction, slicing as I ran for dear life, hoping I was heading in a straight line and not in a circle again.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Are you all right, Klaus?
KLAUS: I need to stop the little worms from chewing my toe nails.
What was I saying?! I swung at another shambler that tried to bar my path and my box cutter sword cut it in two just beneath the arm pits. I kicked it in the head when it began toppling, splashing white ichor everywhere.
EKLIL EHREEN-SEN: Please search for a yellow berry bush. It normally grows near the same ponds as the shambling spora. Eating the berries should alleviate the symptoms of the spores.
KLAUS: I need to find the mouse first. It’s running away! I need to strangle it!
A long time later—no idea how long—and after running into about seven trees—and maybe fifty low-hanging branches—I finally stopped running and collapsed from exhaustion, my [ADRENALINE SURGE] completely spent, and my head reeling.
I’m proud to say I did not vomit. I would’ve probably choked on it and died, given my state.
I woke up to something actually trying to eat my boot and having some difficulty with the steel toe. I kicked out and was rewarded with a sharp squeal of pain.
My eyes flew open and I stared into bloodshot black eyes and a tusked face much too close to my own. I screamed.
The owner of the face screamed too.
Patreon.