Spores of Thought

By Daisy Cheshire  

As I lay here being on by an unseen organism, I look back at how stupid I was. I should have paid attention in my biology class, especially when discussing the kingdom of eukaryotic organisms. In class, Dr. Robert’s voice was just a low hum. My eyes were glued to the window, watching the fleet of polished chrome sedans glide silently between the towering gray buildings. The air was a thick yellow-green haze with the faint scent of ozone and exhaust, a scent I’d become accustomed to that I barely noticed it anymore. All I could think about was getting out of the city, away from the endless concrete. I have always heard stories about an old growth forest located outside of the city walls.  

I left the city behind, the smog scent slowly disappearing, giving way to a new clean, alive scent. My electric bike hummed along the dirt road until its battery died, leaving me to walk for hours on foot. Then I saw it. A living monument of a tree, its leaves a shade of green so far different from the green hue in the haze that coats the city most days. My eyes were drawn to a cluster of strange, luminous, fleshy looking things growing from the ground. Their caps a vibrant blue with bright green spots. They looked almost alien, so perfectly out of place. Curiosity, or looking back stupidity, made me kick one. A puff of white spores erupted into the air, surrounding me in a cloud. A few of the specks drifted into my nose and mouth, making me cough and sneeze. Laughing, I inhaled the clean scent deeply. It was so different from what I would have done in the city, completely oblivious to what I had just inhaled.  

I spent hours lost in that forest, walking among the silent, ancient structures. The air was so clean that it felt sharp in my lungs. But eventually, the city called me back. It took me almost all night to walk home. When I finally collapsed onto my couch, the smell of stale, poisonous air and processed food felt wrong. I fired up the projector to watch the newest episode of Us vs. It, but the images felt too bright and too loud. A faint, nagging, pain started behind my eyes. I rubbed my temples, trying to ignore it, but it persisted. A constant low, rhythmic, throb. It’s just a headache from all that walking in the sun, I told myself; I was just feeling the impact of another in a long line of bad decisions. As the night continued, the dull ache in my head erupted into a screaming pain. My vision began to blur, filling with black and gray static. I told myself that I just needed to sleep it off, as if I were a machine that could simply power down and restart.  

I woke up to the whimsical chime of my alarm. I turned it off and got out of bed. I walked over to turn the lights on and when the bright LED lights turned on, I cried out, hissing in pain. The light felt like daggers stabbing into my eyes. I folded over in pain, grabbing at my head. Then came the voice, a deep agonizing scream that wasn’t my own, echoing inside my skull: “What is that? It burns! It burns!” I fumbled around for my sunglasses, the familiar plastic a quiet comfort against the assault of light. The shouting in my head quieted, but it remained screaming. I tried to follow my morning routine, but I was like a marionette. I kept finding myself doing something opposite to what I had to do. Every time I tried to get work done on my computer, I would find myself walking towards the window. I also couldn’t keep the lights on in my apartment. I stumbled to my bike, letting whatever was growing in my brain take over and lead me back to the woods, back to that ancient tree, taking the same route as the previous day…

I’ve settled my body against the ancient tree. At least my final moments will be the light blue hue of the sky through the interwoven treetops instead of the concrete world I spend most of my days in…

A wet, gurgling cough escapes our throat—

a coarse sponge scraping across the bottom of the sink. We no longer need to scream; the forest’s floor allows us unrestricted comfort—

Another wiry and wet scrape as the oxygen feeds us, the moisture from the air allowing us to expand further into the muscled comfort between our host’s ribs. We place the host’s hand against the ancient tree and curl the host’s spine against the oak’s bark. We’ve come to help. New growth is on its way. We camouflage ourselves in the fallen leaves, the oak lending its resources—understanding the necessity. Here we nestle, ensuring our repopulation effort. Spores float off the host’s flesh, off the host’s tongue, and into the canopy above.