Tag: Fiction

• Mental Mushroom Murder Day

  

  Sam stood on a big rock in the viridescent forest and aimed his arrow at the sky. He longed to taste real blood as he lined up the tip of it with an invisible target. He pretended to fire and made sounds like any young man would – shwoosh shwoosh shwap – and he didn’t even know anything about real life and pointless killing. Sam didn’t know much about most things in the world. His headful of thoughts was always dreamy and swimming backward in another colorful dimension. That’s why Sam wasn’t allowed into the king’s army. Even though he had come of age and was required to sign up, the powerful ones told him he was too crazy and therefore unfit for battle.

  “Hogwash!” he cried out, suddenly looking down at the ground and seeing the smiling face of a mushroom with an orange cap and a thick ivory stalk.

  And the mushroom opened its eyes and seemed concern. “What’s the problem, Sam? Are you having difficulties adjusting to the norms of society again?”

  “You got that right, Mr. Mushroom. I just want to fight like all the others. It’s my duty and yet they won’t let me – they call me Stupid Sam.”

  The mushroom worked two small, odd hands attached to thin, frail arms and lit a cigarette. He began to smoke it as he tried to give Sam some advice. “Maybe you are destined for greater things than just killing innocent others by order of some bozo who thinks he’s God. Did you ever think about that?”

  “If I can’t fight then I am nothing,” Sam explained, frustrated. “Do you expect me to tend sheep in a golden field for the whole of my life? No fair maiden would want someone as wishy-washy as that.”

  “Personally, I think that sounds kind of nice,” the mushroom told him. “I would like that a whole lot better than getting axed or shot with an arrow or slit with a sword because of someone else’s frivolous dispute.”

  Sam got agitated. “Have you ever heard of bravery or honor!? Have you ever heard of taking a stand and fighting for your kingdom?”

  “Have you ever heard of kindness and love? Have you ever heard of living together in peace and harmony? Have you ever heard of being decent to your fellow man?” Mr. Mushroom shot back.

  Sam scoffed. “Oh, what the hell do you know? Look at you. You’re just a bleeding-heart sissy-pants mushroom living in the forest. You don’t even have legs! You have a single stalk. What a loser. I bet you’ve never gotten any action in your whole life.”

  “Oh yes I have! I’ve spilled my spores countless times. And I’m not a sissy! And I happen to like living in the forest. All my friends are here, I’m popular, it’s generally quiet, and I don’t even mind the rain.”

  “Oh, stop talking like a little girl!”

  “Maybe you just need to settle down a little bit. I don’t like your attitude, Sam, and you’re scaring me.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised you’re frightened… I can be quite fierce if I need to be.” Sam turned around and watched the clouds race by. “I’m sure I can enlist in an army somewhere else. Nobody has to know. I can take on a new identity.”

  “You would misrepresent yourself and fight for the enemy?”

  Sam whipped his head around toward the mushroom. “Don’t you get it? We are the enemy. We’re no different than any other enemy in the world. We’re all enemies! What difference does it make who I fight for!? Everyone loses in the end.”

  “But that’s treason… They’ll cut your head off for sure.”

  Sam chuckled. “I don’t care Mr. Mushroom. People are stupid and I’ll get away with it. I was bred to fight and fight I will — no matter what side I’m on. I’m a natural born killer.”

  Sam slung the bow around to rest on his back and drew the sword sheathed at his side. He studied the blade against the sky. The mushroom grew ever more nervous. “What are you going to do with that?” he squeaked.

  Sam quickly turned, jumped off the rock, and drew closer to the mushroom. “Maybe I’ll undo your cap for you. Would you like that? Or maybe I’ll slice your stalk and leave you crippled.”

  The mushroom tried to pull himself from the ground and run — but of course he couldn’t. “Oh… Come on Sam. What an awful thing to even think. I didn’t do anything. I’m just a mushroom. Please don’t hurt me. Why do you have this thirst for destroying life merely because it exists unparallel to your own? What hypocrisies and atrocities have they filled your mind with?”

  “What are you talking about?” Sam wanted to know.

  The mushroom stammered. “Have you ever considered the thought that maybe it’s not you that is crazy? Have you ever considered the thought that it is they, your heartless, morally blind, asinine, and ignorant leaders, who are the crazy ones? Hmmm?”

  “You’re trying to trick me, Mr. Mushroom, aren’t you? Is this some sort of brainwashing technique you’re trying to use on me? Are you utilizing your psychedelic properties to sway me toward wrongdoing?”

  “No Sam! I’m trying to save your soul. You’re becoming one of the very sheep you do not desire to tend.”

  ---

  ---

  

  Sam touched his chin and walked in slow circles. He looked down at the mushroom and pointed with the tip of his sword. “You know… Maybe you can help me out.”

  “What is it, Sam? I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt me. I want to live. I just want to live as I am without judgment or scorn!”

  “Suppose I cut you from the ground and returned to the village hoisting my prize high. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Then they would all see what a great warrior I truly am. Then they would have to let me join the king’s army. They would probably make me an officer.”

  “Are you off your meds? You’re filling your head with false and grandiose ideas, Sam. And on top of that, you would be hurting me. I was hoping we were becoming friends.”

  “Oh shut up, mushroom! I’m trying to think. And I don’t need any friends.”

  “Please, Sam. Consider this. I don’t think the village idiots would be all that impressed by a mere mushroom.”

  “Of course they would. You’re poisonous aren’t you?”

  “Not really. Unless you ingest too much of me, which is highly unlikely since my psychotropic compounds would render the consumer unable to do so because, well, frankly, they would be trippin’ balls.”

  “Well, then surely you are an extremely rare mushroom?”

  “No. There are entire colonies of mushrooms just like me.”

  Frustrated, Sam shook a fist out in front of himself. “Damn it! Do you at least go well with a fine meat and two vegetables stew?”

  “Actually, I’ve been told I have very little desirable flavor. The truth is, I’m quite bitter.”

  “Wait a minute… This is all another one of your mind games. You’re trying to convince me that you’re not a grand prize, when in fact, you are.” Sam held his sword high and was set to cut the mushroom down when an arrow suddenly pierced his throat. He fell to the ground, gurgling, and soon after died.

  After a few moments passed, the mushroom, shocked and now spattered with Sam’s blood, called out in quaking fear. “Who did that!? Are you still there?” A figure wobbled between some distant trees. The mushroom strained his voice to make it louder. “Please! I want to talk to you! Help!” And suddenly there was someone standing over him. He was portly, nearly blocking out the entirety of the sun with his grotesque body.

  “A mushroom that talks,” the stranger said in a nasally and somewhat whiny voice. “Now that is a grand prize — but killing you would make your talent useless. And I don’t like things that are useless. Only losers are useless.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the mushroom asked.

  “How could you not know who I am? I am Gordon the Great. I am the king of this entire realm. I’m a very important king — very popular with the people. Just ask anyone. People love me. And these are very fine people that say this. They say it all the time. You’ll hear it. Wherever you go.”

  The mushroom looked him up and down with great suspicion and disbelief. “You don’t look much like a king to me,” he said. “Frankly, you kind of sound and look like an asshole.”

  The king sneered and pouted his overly ripe face. “I don’t like mushrooms that don’t like me. That’s just sad. You’re a very sad mushroom. I can have you beheaded for talking to me that way… And many people, all over the whole kingdom, they will like that. They really will. They will be huge fans of it. Huge.”

  The king finally turned his attention to Sam’s lifeless body on the ground. “Who is this I killed?”

  “He was a great warrior.”

  The king knelt down beside the body and turned the face toward him. He studied it. “It seems I have slayed Stupid Sam,” he said. “How unfortunate. I don’t like people who get slayed.”

  “He wasn’t stupid,” the mushroom asserted. “He had a bright future and you destroyed it because all you care about is killing and destruction and polluting the forests and the valleys and the seas, and all because of your damn money.”

  Gordon the Great rose and rolled his eyes and chuckled. “You only say that because you’re poor.” Then he made a goofy face and twiddled his fingers in the air, mocking the mushroom. He stepped forward and raised his kingly boot above the trembling fungi in an action of impending stomping.

  But then the king suddenly stopped and turned his head. “Do you hear that?”

  “What is it?” the frightened mushroom wanted to know.

  “It sounds like the kingdom is being attacked,” Gordon the Great answered. “I must run and hide!”

  But before he ran off, the cowardly king brought the bottom of his boot down upon the helpless mushroom, seething with ugliness and all the hatefulness he had inside him, and smashed it into an unrecognizable mush.

  END

  ---

  Want more stories? Sign up below to follow Cereal After Sex. You’ll be glad you did.

  Type your email…

  FOLLOW

• Mr. Rumples

  The diligent sound of war machines cracked an October day of bright sun.

  There is a disease in the air now and everyone stays inside – mostly. There is no more school or work or going to the doctor. Medicine finally failed. There was nothing that anyone could have done. Someone somewhere chose war over healing, and that’s why the jets still roar, and blood no longer matters.

  All I have left to drink is grape juice and I’m getting rather tired of it. I like to sip it near the window in the morning when I look out at a world that is no longer blue, but rather a sickly shade of yellow. The everlasting haze rests its weary head of death in the cradling arms of the mountains, and when it wakes it pukes out noxious gases all across the land. I cough all the time now. I can barely breathe. Everyone has cancer except for the devils that rule.

  The other night I opened my blinds to look at the full yellow moon for the last time. The stars were retreating. I watched and watched and watched. I concluded that the spaceships weren’t coming to save us after all. Can I blame them? What reason would anyone have for saving us? Love? Does anyone out there love us?

  At night it gets cold and dark, and I must light a wood fire in the wide-bellied fireplace in the main room. I live by myself in a worn mansion outside of the city, a bit in the country. No one comes around much anymore, but there’s an old black cat that sleeps in a dusty chair most of the time. The cat is sick too. I hope the cat dies first because if I die first there will be no one to feed it. The cat’s name is Mr. Rumples, which is funny because my name is Mr. Rumples, too.

  I have a gun and only one bullet. I thought about shooting Mr. Rumples once when his sickness was really acting up. I couldn’t do it. I keep the gun on the floor near my mattress where I sleep. I’ll know when it’s the right time. I have a knack for intuition and an eye for irreversible devastation.

  I used to have a wife, but she died when the storm came. She was a beautiful woman with intelligent breasts, and near the end her favorite meal was a toasted English muffin and Gatorade. I laughed at her a lot. We laughed at each other a lot. We had been married for 39 years and together we brought five children into the world – they’re all dead now too, as well as all my grandchildren – seventeen of them. It seems like everyone is dead. What does one do with that kind of fucking grief? Put it in a jar? Throw it to the stars?

  There had been years of grand love in our large home, a home that was always filled with warm voices and the smells of steaming gumbo and cherry cobbler from the kitchen. The wife had limited cooking skills and so I had hired a woman to come in to help. She was a black woman by the name of Rosie. She was a stumpy yet cheerful woman and her laugh resonated above all others throughout the house. Her pancakes, stuffed fat with fresh Maine blueberries, were the absolute best. Now Rosie’s dead, too. I miss her, and the love she had brought to our hearts and bellies.

   There’s a family cemetery on my land and when it’s safe I go out there, wading through the golden floss of waving grasses until I reach the place of the two oaks and their slotted canopy of love. I run my hands over all the stones I had chosen – and they were just regular rocks really and I had scratched all the names and dates into them with a big nail. I often lie down on the ground when the sun has warmed it and I look up at the yellow sky and wonder all about why the Great Bog had left me to live to the very end and not the young ones or anyone else for that matter. Was it the evolution of my sins that left me with this torture? A wind carrying nothing whips across my face.

  I can see the old work shed, rusted and red, and it’s kind of collapsing in on itself. I haven’t mowed the yard or plucked the weeds in months. What’s the use of doing anything, I often wonder. So I do nothing but wait. I wait by the window. I wait on the porch when it’s safe. I wait to fall asleep at night but rarely is it restful. There are noises in the nights here – great booms and screams and sometimes even the thundering of the sky, that angry sky committing abuse in the dark. I shuffle, I starve, and I pluck memories from my head like feathers from a chicken. I don’t want to remember anything or anyone anymore.

  Dinner is usually a quiet affair between me and Mr. Rumples. I always light a candle at the table and then we say our prayers that no one hears and then we share some cat food and it’s cold and mushy and tastes mostly of fish no matter what the can says. I hate it, but Mr. Rumples loves it. Damn… he’s going to outlive me and then starve because he can’t open the cans. Poor Mr. Rumples – both of us.

  After dinner, Mr. Rumples takes his place in the chair, and I make a fire and then just sit there watching the flames cast frantic shadows against the dusty walls. I have a stick I use to play with the fire. There’s something calming about poking at a fire with a stick. It’s like pretending to be camping and making hot-tipped arrows or torches to keep the creeps in the forest at bay. The creeps were everywhere at the end. People went absolutely nuts, all over the world. It was the worst horror movie I had ever seen.

  ---

  ---

  My breathing is getting worse. In the morning I sit up on my mattress and cough up blood. I roll to the floor and slowly make my way to what used to be the kitchen and feed the cat his breakfast. I have my grape juice and it is starting to sting as it goes down. It is mostly silent during the day. I used to loathe the roar of traffic on the country road, but now there is nothing. No cars. No trucks. No people on bicycles. And across the field the railroad tracks are nothing but skeletal remains now. I walk outside there sometimes when I feel up to it. Not so much anymore. Some days I can barely move. But I did enjoy my walks out there along the rusting rails and rotting ties. I found a few spikes and brought them into the house, but I don’t know why. I suppose my mind is going too.

  Sometimes when I’m shuffling about the place I just stop because I forget what part of the house I was wanting to go. I like to go to the upstairs part of the house where the bedrooms are. I don’t really know why I like to go up there so much, but I think it may have something to do with colorful memories – how the children would race through the hall as bedtime drew nearer and bathroom space scarce. I like to look out Jonah’s window. He was the first son and had the best room in the house. I pull up my rickety chair and scan the voided world, all the way to the crisp line of the sea against the shore. It’s so far away and such a pale baby blue color. I would love to go down there, but I’d never make it back alive.

  I leave Jonah’s room and slip into where the girls used to sleep. It’s a dark and dirty pink color now. The wallpaper is losing its grip and curling and slowly falling down. I open the closet and there is one faded dress on a wire hanger and a dusty box of shoes on the floor. The house was once looted when I was trying to walk to the sea, and they took most everything that was left.

  The boys’ room is down the hall and to the right. I push the door open and it squeaks. This room was once hot cat blue and made to look like a baseball diamond. The younger boys played baseball almost every day in the summers and I often went down to the fields and watched them when I wasn’t working. My wife was always there with them; she was good like that.

  Our bedroom was at the end of the hall and is now just a hollow, empty space. I turn on the sink faucet in the adjoining bathroom and no water comes out. I’m thirsty. I’m starving. I can’t do this anymore. There is something greatly heartless in the coming of the end of life. It’s the final pecking into the flesh by a wild bird that does not care to save you. It’s silent. Then Mr. Rumples meows out from downstairs. He must be lonely.

  It was a cold night when the end came. I was shivering in the corner of what used to be the living room. Mr. Rumples was burrowed in a blanket on the chair and he was purring.

  “How can you be so happy?” I asked him.

  He blinked at me once and said nothing. He jumped down off the chair and rubbed against me and then curled into my lap. I stroked his fur and looked into the fire again for a long time. The wind was howling outside and whistled in through the weak spots in the house. I was alone again in this false lap of luxury.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Mr. Rumples, and I set him back in his chair. “Just stay there.”

  The heart races in times of great finality. There’s a gnawing on the soul at the thought of everlasting darkness or the great rivers of Heaven. Will it just be sleep or does one travel to another world to take over for someone else who just croaked? I cocked the gun and wondered. I opened the blinds near where I sleep and looked at the fizzing stars. I thought I could hear someone yelling for help out in the tall grasses, or maybe that was just me. I smelled the gun and wondered. I would have loved to have one last hot shower and a good meal. I wandered through the rest of the house, now flowing with amber candlelight. I set every memory aside and took a deep breath as best I could in each hallowed hallway.

  I returned to the main room and drew near to the fire and pointed the gun at Mr. Rumples. He looked up at me and blinked his eyes slowly. My finger tremored against the trigger. For some reason I knew he wasn’t ready, and I also knew that he did not want me to be alone. I lowered the pistol and sat down in the chair with him. He circled in my lap, settled, and purred. The air sirens wailed outside, and we watched the fire, together, for a very long time it seemed, until a final silence fell upon the world.

• At the Speed of Mary Jane’s Insomnia

  

  I was once told by an electric psychic that I would die in a car crash in Montana on a sweet summer day in June in the year 2013. It didn’t happen. But the light bulbs we had for dinner last night were delicious. They illuminated my guts, and she could then see what I was feeling for real as we sat across from each other at the round table with the big candle in the middle. There was a lot of crunching going on and they say that eating glass isn’t good for you, that it can cut your guts to ribbons and then you will float away to the great ZOO in the sky and hang out with the gibbons, swinging from pearly gate to pearly gate with fury motivation and momentum.

  “Pass the beans. Pass the barbecue sauce. Pass the don’t you have any manners?”

  The next night our neighbor from across the hall had crock-potted some brisket but apparently, he didn’t cook it right and it came out all stringy and overly wet and he pounded on our door and said he had way more than he could eat himself and so he gave us some.

  “I have potatoes too. Take some. Eat them. Enjoy them.”

  We had only been married for 41 days and already she was getting on my nerves. She was making me climb the walls of our small pad across from the milkshake factory in a big city far, far away from wherever you are right now, so don’t try to go there, you won’t find it. We do not live on any map or globe. I read books when she bores the hell out of me. She has a strange fascination with cheese. Every time we go to the grocery store down and around, she quickly makes for the Department of Deli to peruse the plethora of cheeses they have there. So much cheese that I can’t believe, and they all have weird names and weird shapes and there are so many I do not remember, nor have I cataloged them. She has to look them over closely; she tries to smell them through the wrapping, she shakes them like an unopened Christmas present as if some pile of diamonds was just going to come falling out and then she wouldn’t need me anymore.

  The crock-potter knocked on the door again to see if we would be interested in his lemon chicken and sausage feast. The stereo was blaring, and the chick was belly dancing, and I could not hear him knocking at first until he nearly bashed in the door.

  “I crock-potted some lemon chicken and sausage, and, you know me, I made too much again.”

  “Come in, you know my wife the belly dancer, right?”

  “Absolutely. That’s one fine belly you got there.”

  She stopped dancing, turned, and jumped out the window.

  “Holy belly flop!” That’s what the crock-potter said.

  “Don’t worry about her; she does that all the time.”

  He went to the window and sure enough saw her rolling across the small patch of lawn and then she went running around in circles and down the street.

  “Where is she going?”

  “I don’t know, she’s insane and we barely communicate.”

  “But you’re married. Surely you have some kind of convos?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why did you marry her?”

  “I don’t know. She told me about a mysterious island and that intrigued me. She said she would take me there, but now I’m thinking it was all a bunch of bullshit.”

  “Your apartment is small.”

  “Care for a cigar?”

  “Got any Pink Floyd?”

  I rummaged through the record collection throwing albums here and there trying to find a Pink Floyd record.

  “Nope, sorry. I must have eaten it.”

  “Well, I’m going to go home then and prepare my menu for tomorrow.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Tuna casserole.”

  *****

  I sat on the couch reading a book about antique rocking horses when she came flying in the door all sweaty and out of breath.

  I looked up at her.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “The world is on fire!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She pointed to the window.

  “Look!”

  I closed my book and went to the window. It seemed absurd and impossible, but she was right. The world WAS on fire. Everywhere I looked there was burning going on. Everywhere I looked there was black smoke rising from the Earth and spiraling up toward God’s red velvet footstool. It was all orange and maniacal. It was the bombs, the bombs, the bombs, they had come raining down like a lava thunderstorm of human parking lots of lost and twisted souls.

  “I’m too tired for this shit,” and I closed the curtains, went into the bedroom and closed the door.

  She came knocking.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m tired. I need to rest up. Tomorrow will most likely be a pretty rough day.”

  “You dumb bastard! This is hardly the time to be sleeping.”

  “What do you propose I do then, eh? As if anything would even matter my dear.”

  “I want a divorce!”

  “Good! So do I. Now leave me be so I can get some rest.”

  I heard her stomp away and then the front door slammed. It was beginning to get very hot in the room and I turned on the fan. The breeze felt like winter in Bermuda and I was hungry for pineapple. I telephoned the crock-potter.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s your neighbor.”

  “Oh, hi!”

  “Listen, I know the world is burning to bits and pieces, but I was wondering if you had a good recipe for glazed ham, you know, the kind where you put the round slices of pineapple on top.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “I could crock-pot a ham and throw some pineapple chunks in there. Would that be OK?”

  I thought about it. Damn, the apartment was getting really hot.

  “Yeah, that sounds pretty good.”

  “I’m excited.”

  “So am I. Just don’t screw it up like you did the brisket.”

  The bedroom roof caved in.