Quod me nutrit me destrui
Days beyond count had passed since the HMS McKenna had hit the reef and broken up. Of the men who made it
to shore, all had died but he. Some had grasped their chests, some their heads,
and dropped. Others had taken the black piss or wasted from dysentery.
The ones who had lasted longest had enjoyed what the island
provided in abundance. Clams were found in lava pools. Oysters could be harvested
at low tide. There were small thistles to be eaten with care.
Early on, the priest had found a secluded patch of mushrooms.
They were sparse, but the meaty taste was so satisfying that he kept the discovery
to himself. There seemed to be different
varieties surrounding a rotting ancient tree. These fungi sprung from it and from
its roots still trailing in the ground.
The mushrooms seemed to be why he survived and the others did
not. He knew some could be poisonous and so had eaten only small nibbles and
waited to see if they were fine. There were times he thought he would die.
Lying puking on the ground, the world whirled around him with horrifying
visions that seemed to be glimpses of another world. But, there were other
mushrooms that were fit for a king.
That he alone survived the island for ages set his mind
wandering far. For it was he, the priest, who was responsible for ringleading
the mutineers. Twas he, the man of God, standing on the McKenna’s foredeck beside the captain as the men were admonished. He
who pulled the cutlass from under his robes and slashed the captain’s throat
and laughed as he fell to his knees. Again the priest had swung the blade, this
time into the center of the captain’s skull rending his face in two in a
splatter of blood and brains. The captain did not tolerate the ways of the sea,
or understand that the cabin boy was the priest’s own to do with what he would.
While the bunks creaked with sodomy at night, no moralizing officer was going
to put a stop to the tradition of sailors. The captain had ruined the cabin boy,
and the lad fell second to the priest’s blade. Then, with the rum kegs uncorked
and the crew reveling, the helmsman passed out at the wheel and the McKenna hit the reef at speed.
* * *
Mere survival did not take much of the day. The temperature
was moderate and his hut served him well. Thus, he was left to ponder. He never
saw sign of another human.
Nor any animals, nor birds, though
occasionally gulls would fly far out to sea. He would scatter oysters and clams
for them, but they would never come ashore, as if the land were poisoned. Flying
fish would skitter across the sea’s surface out past the reef. Only sharks
would venture inside the reef.
He became given to ruminations that
could last days. He began to enjoy the small dark-capped mushrooms. He would
dry a stockpile and then make tea with collected rainwater from the tropical
showers. With this drink, he would become soul drunken. Stumbling around the
beach and the forest, he would babble madly in tongues for hours before coming
to his senses.
He came to accept that he would
never get off this island, that God in His wisdom had delivered him over to a
lifetime of solitary contemplation.
Out of boredom, he became addicted
to his mushroom fever dreams. He increased the dosage. He became slovenly and
filthy. He lay in the mushroom patch, the rotting tree as his pillow. He was
used to tremors, fits and even paralysis, but none deterred him. He lived with
his Lord in his visions, lying transfixed on nights when the rains came and the
lightning pierced the sky. He felt the wonder and the magnificence of nature’s
violence. He drifted away on dreams into the night, riding the lightning bolts
as if they were God’s steeds and the thunderclaps were his own shouts of
ecstasy. He became one with God.
He woke to find he could blink his
eyes, but as he looked over himself, he saw that his torso was covered in
toadstools. Great broad fungi covered his chest and among these grew the slim
tendrils of the dream mushrooms. He checked his nethers and from amidst his hairs
sprouted thick-stalked, bulb-headed mushrooms. He shrieked and made to pull himself
upright, but his arms and back seemed attached to the earth, and he saw his
arms were covered in slimy black inkcaps, their gills showering spores upon his
skin. As he watched, the spores sprouted into new tapered Chinese hats. He felt
the gelatinous stems run from the ground, through his body and burst through
his flesh. His vision dimmed as tendrils ran down his forehead and pushed his
eyelids shut. He screamed and felt mushrooms roiling up from his gut and out
through his mouth to clog his air and reach for the dim light above the grove. He
felt his jaw dislocate. Every hole was being raped by these fungi. He could
feel them prodding through his bowels, working their way through his bladder
and any space in his intestines. His body was clogged; his blood clotted with
spores and tendrils. With an anguished shudder, his stomach burst and peeled
back to release more of the malignant mushrooms squirming and slithering
through his guts making their way to the air.
He endured the tortures of the
damned; for damned, he realized, was what he was. He had born false witness and
misrepresented the Lord while indulging his seaman’s sins. His life had been an
abomination and now he would have eternity to repent. Forever growing and
bursting with spores that would bury him in the filth, slime and ever-prodding
tendrils.
-- 30 --
