Fungi

by Orrin Grey

  All Art needed was to wait the plant out. After decades of living in the closet, he figured he had patience enough for one year.

  But then, one day, the bluff collapsed.

  The lake was never meant to hold a trailer, dump truck, backhoe, three storage units, myriad construction equipment and the tons of debris unloaded by the landslide. The vehicles and most equipment could be fished out, though at great expense, both monetary and environmental. But the muted rainbow sheen of fuel on the lake, the coal ash sinking beneath, the rock and soil that left a wake long as a football field, the shore clogged with a cataclysm of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury …? Art’s coworkers at the Great Lakes Waterkeepers talked about “unstepping the butterfly.” Art thought it was more like sucking the venom from a rattlesnake bite. That nastiness had to go somewhere.

  And so, too, did Art. The spring and summer he’d spent in Michigan had changed him. Never before had his nature felt so nurtured. His land, his woods, his piece of the lake, they’d saved him. He couldn’t hide in a booth anymore. Now he had to save his saviours.

  Without a thought, he donned a blazer, jammed on shoes, even knotted a necktie. He shocked his coworkers, who’d grown accustomed to his shyness, by volunteering to speak at various town hall meetings about his experiences with the Gulf spill. He designed an ultra-media presentation to optimise attendees’ understanding, regardless of their learning styles. He explained skimmers, hair mats, booms, and — despite personal reservations — bioremediation and even myco-remediation techniques. He talked until he went hoarse; he wrote until his paw cramped; he researched until letters jiggled across his closed eyes at night. The letters were different colours and some of them didn’t get along, but when he dreamed, he knew he saw them as they truly were.

  In the end, it was like déjà vu. Art crunched over the frost-withered grass to visit the lake every morning before work. He no longer needed to wait for the late-rising sun to reveal the waves, however.

  Bobbing like deformed water lilies, a sea of oyster mushrooms shone white as moonlit ice caps on the autumn-chilled lake. Anchored rafts of the lab-enhanced, climate-sturdy fungus covered the area slammed hardest by the industrial avalanche. If he’d been a lighter sort of beast — a Jesus lizard, perhaps — Art could’ve run across, raft to raft, shore to shore, his feet never rippling the water.

  Since he’d stayed in a hotel in town the week the rafts were installed, Art could almost pretend the layers of gilled white pads had blossomed naturally. Each morning, he thanked the eager “volunteers” that consumed the coal ash in silence, converting neurotoxins into meaty, slightly anise-scented shelves. But when it came time to haul in the disintegrating rafts and harvest the mushrooms, thereby making room for the next generation, Art was elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, with the human volunteers. And rather than ship the bags of frilled fractals back to the labs, Art and the others tossed them into a refrigerated truck bound for the supper club.

  Aching by sundown, still a solitary beast at heart, Art nevertheless joined his neighbours in the refurbished veterans’ hall that served as the town supper club. There was no menu and no choice of entree. Only coleslaw and all-you-can-eat oysters, all night long. The myco-remediation company insisted that the engineered mushrooms were safe to eat, that they so thoroughly decomposed heavy metals and toxins that people were more likely to get sick from gone-over coleslaw or dirty deep fryers than the mushrooms.

  More than any previous tests or scientific findings, the locals looked to Art, his coworkers and the head honchos from the power plant and the outsourced clean-up company to prove the ‘shrooms were safe to eat — by demonstration. The VIP table was set at the front of the hall, CFL bulbs shining down bright on glasses of ice water and steel-topped salt-and-pepper shakers.

  Art carried his heaping bamboo plate to the long banquet table lined with butcher paper. His chair screeched as he pulled it out over the linoleum floor, no louder than many others echoing through the hall, but subject to special scrutiny.

  He sat quietly and took up his silverware. He sliced through the golden-brown breading of the top “filet” on his mountain of oysters. Within glistened a now-creamy, almost sepia-toned flesh. Art hadn’t spoken to Moises since he left the Valley, but he thought that particular colour might be the colour of infinity.

  The spores of Pleurotus corticatus had been captured and tweaked and replicated in a lab. Art released his knife. The new-and -improved spores had been shocked into stasis, embedded in straw rafts and wrapped in plastic. Art lowered his knife hand to the napkin draped over his lap.

  Contained, imprisoned in human-approved form, the spores had been shipped to Michigan in October and forced to feed on the poison of human error. Art lifted his fork. The least he could do was welcome the refugee as a brother, set it free of this engineered, unnatural cycle.

  Art opened his mouths, both the hidden bear’s maw and the obvious human orifice. He bit down on the buttery flesh, chewed with a redundancy of premolars and molars. He swallowed and gave thanks. He was not at peace, but he would eat his piece, and the next, and the next.

  LETTERS TO A FUNGUS

  By Polenth Blake

  Polenth Blake lives where the mushrooms bloom in autumn. She has two pet cockroaches, except on Fridays, when they get to be in charge. Her fiction has appeared in Nature and ChiZine. Her website lurks at http://www.polenthblake.com.

  DEAR FUNGUS,

  I’m writing to discuss my concerns about your recent behaviour. I accept that you need somewhere to live, but did you have to litter my lawn with your mushrooms?

  I could cope with the wood mushrooms. They were easily removed. But this time, you produced the most foul-smelling mushrooms imaginable and they’re attracting flies. If you don’t take action, I’ll have to report this to the neighbourhood committee.

  Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

  Yours sincerely,

  Jane Goodworth

  I appreciate you dealing with the flies. Eating them wasn’t what I had in mind, but it solves the problem nicely.

  However, I’m not happy about your change of abode. When I said I was unhappy with mushrooms in the garden, I didn’t mean you could move into my door frames. I admit you have taken care of the house’s dry rot issue, but you’re not an improvement. Your spores are giving Aunt Mabel terrible asthma. I’ve kept her from ripping off the door frames and putting you outside, but I can’t hide the crowbar forever.

  She blames me for touching the wood mushrooms. How could I know it’d upset you so much? All I wanted was a clean lawn.

  I’m willing to compromise. You were right. The garden is the best place. I hope we can arrange a relocation plan that suits both of us.

  Sorry about the exterminator. I should have given you a final warning. I do think it was a bit excessive to eat him. Were those poison spores you were firing?

  Having weighed up the options, I’ve decided you can keep the house. All I want in return is for you to uncover the front door. Or maybe one of the windows. I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but it isn’t much to ask.

  P.S. That exterminator wasn’t a cheap snack.

  You ate Aunt Mabel.

  I’m not angry. I never write letters when I’m angry. It would be silly. You’re a fungus. It’s like blaming a flood for drowning people.

  So, I hope you understand why I tried to set you on fire. You left me no choice. No hard feelings.

  You’ve cut off the phone lines. Accidentally, I’m sure. If you could just reattach them, I can call the fire brigade. It’s best we go our separate ways, before either of us does something we’ll regret.

  I didn’t know Aunt Mabel liked to draw. She’d sit at the bedroom window looking down into the garden, pad in hand. I assumed she was writing letters about the local children. They’re always sneaking into the garden.

  At first, I thought her pictures were random dots. Then I realised — it was the old drifts of mushrooms c
overing the lawn. It’s like finding pictures in clouds. The shapes are random, but they’re there. Squares and triangles. People and mushrooms. I’m not sure if the person is picking the mushroom or patting it. I suppose you don’t know either.

  I saw one of my neighbours today. I wrote HELP on a piece of paper and held it to the last uncovered part of the window. He waved and walked away.

  I remember him. He’s the one with three cats, after one had a kitten. The housing agreement clearly stated a maximum of two. They’re a health risk. He should have thanked me when one didn’t come home.

  And you. I kept the garden nice. I never used weed-killer. It isn’t just about looks, after all. The rot can be within. It kills the spiders and beetles, not just the weeds. Next thing you know, pests everywhere with nothing to eat them.

  You never thanked me.

  Aunt Mabel wanted a mobile. She brought one a few months back, so she could call her bingo friends. I threw it away when she wasn’t looking. Mobiles mean unsightly towers. They say it doesn’t lower house prices in the end, but I don’t believe them. Better that we all write letters, don’t you think?

  It doesn’t matter. However we talk, it’s always one-sided. I send letters and no one replies. I phone up and get an answering machine. Aunt Mabel told me I ought to listen first, but I always listen. She was just angry about the phone.

  I wish I hadn’t thrown it away.

  You’re everywhere. You’ve eaten holes in the door. The pattern almost looks like a cowering cat. Do you want me to cower? Is that why you’re waiting?

  Maybe they’re not coming for me, but they’re not going to let you slink away. You’re too dangerous. They’ll kill you. The monster always dies.

  We’re a lot alike, you and me. No one wants us here. We could have been friends, if only you listened.

  There were children in the garden. That girl from next door was singing again. I’ve talked to her parents before about it. Irritating habit.

  A boy called her to look at the mushrooms. I could’ve shouted to warn them. I stopped myself. You might as well do something useful while you’re here.

  I waited for the screams, but they never came. Only songs and laughter.

  Dear Jane,

  I’m writing to discuss my concerns about your recent behaviour. I accept that you need somewhere to live, but did you have to litter my lawn with your neighbourhood?

  We could have been friends, if only you listened. You thought my pictures were random dots. However we talk, it’s always one-sided.

  The rot can be within. Next thing you know, pests everywhere with nothing to eat them. Eating you wasn’t what I had in mind, but it solves the problem nicely. The monster always dies.

  Yours sincerely,

  Fungus

  P.S. Sorry about Aunt Mabel.

  THE SHAFT THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL

  By Nick Mamatas

  Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Sensation and Bullettime, more than eighty short stories, and is the four-time loser and one-time winner of the Bram Stoker award. He writes about fungi because of his avid interest in altered states of consciousness. He writes at all for the same exact reason.

  JOACHIM LEARNED TO GARDEN from his mother. She kept a nice house and was the biggest busybody in Loisaida. She yelled at the kids on the street when their mischief turned violent, took a broom to a dealer’s head once and, when he came back with a switchblade, she faced him down with a butcher knife. All the other tenants in the building on 4th and D knew to take out their garbage and keep their dogs from barking and their kids in school, or in church. And when the landlord sent his sons down from the Bronx to torch the building next to theirs, Joachim’s mother woke up and ran up the five flights of steps and down the hallway in nothing but her giant brassiere and girdle, banging on doors and rousing everyone for a general evacuation. Even as the neighbourhood watched the building next door burn, the rumours spread — the landlord wouldn’t dare burn down the house Joachim’s mother lived in, even though every tenant there was either on rent control or Section 8. It was 1974 and, for many landlords, arson was easier than rent collection.

  The rats came, and the needles, so Joachim’s mother got the kids together. With a roll full of bills she had maybe been keeping in her bosom for years, she sent them to what she called “the Jewish store” south of Delancey for shovels and trowels and seeds, and launched a community garden in the vacant lot. Joachim had to work the hardest of all. No comic books, no bicycle, no stickball. “I’ll work you like the Jews and Chinese work their children,” his mother told him, about both the garden and school. She did special things to the soil to make it fertile, things that Joachim didn’t understand completely, but he knew enough to know that his fourth-grade science teacher, Mr. Braunstein, would not approve. There were prayers in the night, burning candles, things done with chicken bones, even on nights when Joachim was only served Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner. Joachim dug and weeded and fertilised ‘till dark. That summer, he ate so many tomatoes even pizza seemed disgusting to him. All the neighbours had their fill of zucchini and bell and Cubanelle peppers, onions and eggplants in both white and purple. In fall, when the nights came early, his mother had Joachim drag some thick pieces of burnt wood from the corners of the lot into the apartment, where she took them to her room. And the years flew by.

  Punk happened and Joachim loved it from afar — the drums were like cavemen pounding on logs in the flickering firelight of their cavern homes. Graffiti and hip-hop, too, but he still danced along to Willie Colón records with his cousins and friends on the tar beach of the building’s rooftop. The city smelled so sweet up there, thanks to the garden.

  The garden got famous and white people moved into the neighbourhood. First, they were stringy junkies and fat women with more children than teeth, but then came the college kids, the artists, the faggots. He couldn’t even tell the difference between a gay man and a Hell’s Angel half the time. Some of them bought a chain link fence for the garden and stood around amidst the rows. His mother grew fatter and older, and had to have a foot removed. “A sacrifice,” she called it, with a philosophical shrug of her shoulders. She told him to look under her bed for two logs and to take one down to the garden, to sink it into the black dirt. It was a strange thing, covered in waxy blobs and smelling like wet feet, but Joachim was a good boy and did what he was told.

  Whatever that log was, the neighbours didn’t get to have it, not at first. The neighbourhood was changing and the same landlord that had torched his building 15 years prior wanted to rebuild. Studio and one-bedroom condos for $400,000 apiece. Joachim’s mother still paid $400 a month rent on the place she had lived in since coming to New York. The neighbourhood white people had meetings and invited Joachim to attend, to talk about his mother’s garden. He got his photo in the Village Voice. He was hugged and cheered and spat on, and called a “fag spic cocksucker” while standing on Houston Street and collecting signatures to send to the mayor himself. An old man with a long white beard — one of the first in the neighbourhood — invented a special kind of wheel. He pushed it like a wheelbarrow and it painted the sidewalks and the street crossings with a trail of green footprints. Those footprints covered the Lower East Side and the East Village, luring the curious back to the garden.

  Two things happened. His mother had a dream of a ship sinking, only to be raised again with a bony crew of skeletons scaling the seaweed-choked rigging. And someone slipped an envelope under the apartment door one morning while Joachim watched NY1 and ate Eggos straight from the toaster. In it was two thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills and a Post-It Note reading, “Please Stop.” His mother was moaning in pain in the other room, so Joachim took the money and stopped. He paid his John Jay tuition, got some painkillers for his mother.

  Some of the white people — ones who never had much time for the garden, actually, except when there were so many tomatoes they threatened to rot on the vine — decided to chain th
emselves to the gates of the garden. They were pepper-sprayed and beaten where they hanged, then clipped free and dragged away. Then the bulldozers moved in and tore the garden to pieces. The city was swimming in money again. It took only a few weeks for the foundation to be poured and the skeletal steel frame to go up. Then winter was hard and the construction slowed.

  One dark night, Joachim’s mother summoned him into her room. He left his college homework on the kitchen table and slipped into the tiny bedroom. Candles in glass jars painted with pictures of saints were everywhere. His mother was still in the bed, but the shadows danced on the ceiling.

  “Those fuckers,” she said. She rarely ever cursed and never in English. “Were there any mushrooms growing in the garden when they ruined it?”

  “No, mama,” Joachim said. He had worked in the garden every afternoon till the day the white people chained themselves to the gate, ironically keeping everyone out of the ground on which they had made their stand. “Not that I saw.”

  “All those people were acting crazy out there, no?”

  “No more than usual, mama,” he said. “Can I get you a glass of water, or coffee?”

  “No, you can get under my bed. There’s a log there, specially treated and prepared. Put it in the other building. Throw it over the fence then climb over after it,” his mother told him. “Find the air shaft they’re building — I know there’s one. I look at the damn building going up every day. They ruined my garden, but I’ve got something for them.”