Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Quod me nutrit me destrui --new horror fiction from L. Wiseman


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.

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