Shrooms- Chapter Two

 They'd warned him it'd be bad, but he hadn't imagined it would be this bad.They'd called the scene "messy;" word was a servere understatement. It looked like the man had been eaten by a pack of wolves. Had someone told him this was a suicide case? Officer Milford resisted the urge to vomit. The forensics team was scattered about, shadowy figures in the dark room like moles in a tunnel,  collecting blood samples, tissue samples, fingerprints, and of course cleaning up the mushrooms. The mushrooms were the most disturbing part of this, Milford decided. They were everywhere. Tiny blue mushrooms sprouted from the carpet, the decrepit wooden table that was shoved in a corner... but most of all they sprouted from the corpse. They stood small and bloodied inside of the wounds. They protruded from the corpse's fingertips, which were more like bloody stumps. They sprouted from the corpse's mouth, ears, even his goddam eyes. Milford shuddered. God, he'd never seen anything so bizarre.

The corpse was soaked with blood. It seemed to be everywhere. At first it was hard to tell the thing on the ground was even a person. In the dim light, it looked more like a large sack of raw meat. And the smell... Suddenly Milford just couldn't take it anymore. He sprinted out of the shabby little house, and spilled his lunch into the front yard for the first time due to a case since his first body thirty-two years prior.
***
 
Cody Donnellan had been on the force for five years now, which still made him a relatively new cop, but people trusted Donnellan. The older officers considered him to be a good kid. An honest kid. What they didn't know, of course, was the fact that he had the tendency to “borrow” around a fourth of the drugs he confiscated. When Donnellan saw Officer Milford sprint out of the room, his face pale, a hand clasped over his mouth, he took the opportunity to slip two of the many evidence bags of little blue mushrooms into his pocket.
***
Donnellan pulled into his younger sister’s driveway at 9:56 PM that night.  He ascended the three bloated wooden steps to the front door of her trailer and knocked. Donnellan didn’t use drugs himself (except, of course, for a few six-packs a night), but his beloved baby sister Debby lived for any kind of high, and consequently lived off of dealing drugs, being too intoxicated most of the time to get any kind of real job. Donnellan saw it as his job to keep Debby happy, which meant it was his job to keep her stoned, so he dutifully presented her with an assortment of drugs whenever there was a bust. 
            “Big brother!” Debby exclaimed as she thrust open the door. Her lips were dry and cracked, and open wounds decorated her tired face. She spread her thin arms to her older brother.  Donnellan accepted the embrace and followed his younger sibling into the musty, shabby trailer.
            The exchange was quick, almost businesslike. Donnellan left quickly after the fungus was released, leaving Debby alone with her treasure.
***
            The Winter Creek Festival was nothing more than a couple of hundred druggies and hippies camped out in a privately owned park located in a small, backwoods town that almost no one has ever heard of. For Debby, it was a golden opportunity to get cheap drugs from (and sell her own drugs overpriced to) people who were too high to care or notice. The fungus her brother had brought her the previous night was amazing. Two full sandwich-baggies of beautifully cultivated shrooms that were practically seeping with psychedelic juices. Debby used all the restraint she could muster that night not to sample her new product, but she had promised herself she would only save what she didn’t sell for herself this time; it was almost the only way she could think of to keep from using all of it herself.
***
            Debby pulled her disheveled van into a patch of dirt near the front entrance of the park. She killed the engine and grabbed her backpack from the passenger seat beside her. She slung it over her shoulder as she exited the van. She approached the ticket booth holding up her right arm without stopping. Around her wrist was a bright pink plastic band, which she had purchased almost a week in advance that guaranteed her entrance for the entire week of the festival. The sky was the hazy pinkish purple of late afternoon. Debby could hear live music playing in the distance. She turned and walked down a worn trail littered with cigarette butts and beer bottles. Soon she could see the warm glow of a campfire. She ducked under a low-hanging branch and emerged into a small clearing. A large group of dirty-looking stoners sat around the fire. Some had set up small, worn tents, others just sat in the grass or the dirt. Some were drinking alcohol, others smoking joints. A small group passed a bong between them. They all greeted Debby warmly. She was far from new here.
            “Man, I’ve got these amazing shrooms,” Debby quickly announced. Those who knew her seemed to be interested by her announcement. She proceeded to dig her merchandise out of her backpack and thrust it into the general direction of the scattered crowd.  Now more people were interested.
            “What the fuck are they?” Someone called.
            “They’re a new kind of mushroom. I’ve never seen a shroom this fuckin’ blue before!” She called back. A handful of people shambled over to inspect the bags of mushrooms. Debby clutched them protectively. Most of the spectators gawked at the bags, now splattered with the opaque blue blood of the mushrooms.
            “Look, man,” Someone whispered in a wavering voice, “They’ve got fucking purple spores on ‘em.”
            The mushrooms were gone soon after that. Debby had no problem selling her product whatsoever. In fact, Debby was mostly terrified that there wouldn’t be any left for herself. She had to admit, though, the shrooms were bringing in good money.
            Debby sold the mushrooms to roughly fifty-five people that night. Some held on to the mushrooms and left before the chaos began; others decided to try these perfect shrooms right then and there. Debby managed to save one seeping mushroom for herself, and she sat herself next to a group of her favorite festival friends and shared a joint with them before they all sampled her exotic mushroom.
***
            Lisa, a skinny, small girl with a quiet demeanor and a hungry lust for drugs, was the first to go. She consumed four of the little fungi at once. She felt the effects almost immediately. She began to shake violently, her head down, her face pressed tightly into the palms of her hands.
            “Shit, Lisa, are you okay?” A young man sitting beside her asked, shock and concern etched on his face. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Her head snapped up, a thin line of pink, foaming drool dripping down to her chin. Her eyes looked up at nothingness, moving rapidly. Her breathing was harsh and ragged. A sharp whining sound rose up from her throat. The man kept shaking her, screaming her name. The people around them had moved back. Everyone was concerned now. All eyes were on the couple. Lisa suddenly screamed, making everyone within close proximity jump and scream themselves. Some retreated into the gathering crowd. Everyone was on their feet now.
            “It’s inside of me!” The small girl shrieked, clawing at her face with her long nails. The man was hugging her tightly and sobbing now.
            “Oh Jesus, oh fuck! It’s eating me!” She screamed. Thick red tears streaked down her face, and a roar erupted from her frail throat. Pink foam sprayed from her mouth. She shuddered violently, and the man clung tighter. The girl emitted a hollow, blood-curdling moan. Everyone was frozen, watching this sick horror show. Some questioned if it was happening at all. Then, Lisa ferociously bit into the man’s neck. That is when the panic began.
            “What the fuck,” Debby whispered. She was a distance away from the couple, but she could clearly see something very bad was happening. Her vision was blurry, and sweat was condensing on her forehead. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
            “What’s going on down there?” She asked the girl to her left. The girl was staring quietly at the ground, methodically tapping her foot on the hard-packed earth. She didn’t respond. Debby was beginning to get a massive migraine. She grunted and rubbed her temples with her thumb and forefinger. Lance, a nineteen year old with dirty blonde dreadlocks down to his hips, suddenly collapsed, shaking as if he were having a seizure. Everyone leapt up to gather around him, either trying to help or simply to stare. The girl that had been sitting beside Debby suddenly fell to her knees, shrieking terribly.
            “What the fuck is going on?” Debby screamed, desperate now for an answer.
“You did this…” A rasping voice hissed from inside of her. Debby gasped.
“No,” she whispered. She suddenly had the terrible sensation that her organs were falling out of her stomach. She made a choking sound and hugged both arms around her midsection.
            “You brought them poison,” the voice whispered in her ear. The man who had collapsed was now moaning terribly. Others were screaming. Not just in her own group, but all around her. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. She gagged. A gush of blood and foam erupted from her gaping mouth. She fell over sideways, banging her head on the ground. She blacked out. When her eyes opened, the whites were stained a deep red, and a filmy white screen covered her irises. She had much difficulty getting up; this body was now stiff and clumsy. She managed finally to get onto her feet. All around her were others like her. They were all shambling in the direction of the orange specks of campfires littering the woods. Debby grunted, gazing thoughtlessly at the stumbling crowd. The growl of her empty stomach summoned her to join the group.