Tale #6: Might of the Mushroom

Tale #6: Might of the Mushroom (Content Tags: Psychological horror, biological horror, mind control, dehumanization, messing, diapers, first-person perspective, light sci-fi) It was a turbulent tide on an unforgiving sea, and my mind was the vessel being tossed about on the waves. Every moment had the rigidity of my tether to reality being challenged; no matter how hard I paddled to stay afloat, the waters kept crashing down and sending me spiraling into the dark depths of the abyss below. I couldn't keep swimming, not like this, not with these irons shackled to my ankles. Perhaps I could keep my head above water for a short time, but my drowning was an inevitability, and I was so growing tired of kicking my feet. Was it finally time to sink? To let the darkness claim me? What else could even be done? Nothing. It only took three months to reach this point. Three months to succumb to the will of the insidious force that had wrapped its amber tendrils around every facet of my existence, and only three months for me to recognize that what was happening to me would soon happen to everyone else too. Before I was a husk, I was a mycologist: to the uninformed, that meant my area of expertise was in fungi. Mushrooms, mold, that sort of thing. They had long intrigued me, starting as early as elementary school whenever I learned that they weren't simply plants. What a discovery that had been! They looked like plants, didn't they? But no, they were this group that existed completely outside of being animals or plants. They were their own thing, and they had their own way of operating. That fascination would later grow much deeper in high school, whenever I learned the beauty of psilocybin; magic mushrooms gave me such phenomenal insight, on a lot of things in life, but also on the mushrooms themselves. How could something so unassuming have such a profound impact on the human mind? Had they evolved alongside us, like the loyal dog, to help our growth as a species? Whenever it came time to declare a major, my answer had already been set before me. I went into mycology, and up until recently, I'd never regretted that decision. The pay was poor, and it wasn't exactly a sexy profession to explain to people, but it kept me intrigued and it felt as though it gave me purpose. The majesty of mushrooms were so criminally understated, and I made it a mission to change that. As was a normal part of my job, I would often find myself going out into the field to gather samples and to analyze the ecological value if certain species on their environment. This routine excursion, to a national park nonetheless, had been where I'd come across the spores that would change everything. I'd gone a bit off the beaten path, which was something I'd always prided myself in, so that was why I was so surprised whenever I came across the piece of trash that would alter the course of human evolution. Funnily enough, or perhaps fittingly for the sort of animal we humans are, it was a discarded diaper. Nothing all that special, just a tossed pair of Pampers that ran on the larger side; it wasn't balled up, but instead just folded over, and it hadn't been there for more than a day or two, if even that. I'd been disgusted, not because of the repulsive nature of the garment, but because of the blatant disregard for the sanctity of the park. It was the same revulsion I felt from seeing fast food wrappers or beer cans on the hiking trails. I had gloves, and I had more than enough bags for my samples, so I decided to play the proactive environmentalist. Flies were buzzing around it, so I took my walking stick and prodded the grinning visage of Elmo on the front to disperse them from the dirty diaper. Poking it a little too hard led it to unfurl, and aside from being greeted by the gnarly sight of what happens whenever you feed your three year old McDonalds, I was also graced a peek upon a species of mushroom that I'd never seen before. It had a vibrant orange glow to it, like amber with a back-light, and it held a somewhat peculiar shape compared to the usual fare that I'd found in these woods before. The caps were small, immature, but they were bountiful and absolutely thriving. It wasn't fully surprising, since there was obviously precedence for fungi growing on dung, and the damp dankness of the closed diaper had offered a suitable environment, but there was certainly something unique about their genesis. Mushrooms typically could only grow from the dung of a herbivorous species, like a cow, because of the stark differences in things like nitrogen concentration. It wasn't an impossible leap to say they could grow from human waste, but when in conjunction with the fact that they were only growing in that fetid soil, without any additional nutrients from peat moss or anything similar, was extraordinary. At the time, I'd been so pleased with myself to find them. I really thought that I'd discovered something that would put my name in the textbooks, like an astronomer discovering a new exoplanet. Ironically, if the future of mankind were to continue, my name would end up in all sorts of books, but none for good reasons. I was hundreds of miles away from the laboratory where I worker, as was normal on field work such as this; I wasn't set to return for another few days either, so I had to set up a faux lab setting in my motel room. It was hardly ideal, considering the 'pot' where the specimen had bloomed, but the odor was a sacrifice that I had to make as a man of science. That first night I slept there, I had the most vivid dreams; a nocturne would wash over my sleeping mind, and nightmares would plague me with abstract images of my body being ensnared by glimmering organic strands. In my dreamland visions, these strings would penetrate my flesh and worm their way into my body. I imagined that the neurons of my brain were loops within thread, and that these strands were pushing through the loops and tying themselves off. When I woke the next morning, my skin clammy from the cold sweat of existential anxiety, I would sit up to the feeling of something squishing against my ass. It was something mushy and sticky, and the room stank of an earthy smell. It didn't take a scientist to realize what I'd done in my sleep. I'd shit the bed like a toddler, or a drunk. Waddling awkwardly to the bathroom to strip, I saw the sorry state of my underpants in the mirror. How could this have happened? Was I sick with a stomach flu? Or did I get food poisoning from eating at that greasy diner the night before? I didn't feel sick, so it felt as though my body had just decided to unload on its own accord. After a hot shower and a new change of clothes, I would go to check on my specimen. The mushrooms looked a little bigger now, and I noticed that where there had been a bulb the day before, it now looked deflated. I made some notes and took some more pictures, and then I got an idea... Maybe I could put those messy briefs to some use?  Better to give them purpose, than to just toss them in the trash, right? So that is exactly what I did. Carefully, with some tongs that I carried for extracting delicate or toxic specimens, I plucked a mushroom and replanted it in the mushy pile that I myself had created overnight. I needed to test whether the fertilizer of the diaper was a fluke or not. With the experiment set up, I would get ready for the rest of the day and then leave to go back to the park where I'd found the fungi in the first place. My field visit still had the better part of a week left, so I wanted to take advantage of that and see whether I could find more of the unique species. Over the next few days, I would fail in my quest to find more of the amber mushrooms, but the second 'pot of soil' I'd provided would become just as decorated with mycological life, thereby proving that the diaper hadn't been a fluke. There was something else though. Something going on with me. The nightmares continued, as strange as ever, and I would begin to feel ill. My thoughts would begin to feel slippery, like eels in an inky loch, and my gut grew unpredictable in its ire; while out in the field, I would have my second BM accident, and it'd fill out the entire backside of my briefs, leaving me in a precarious position. Logically, I should have called off my work and sought the opinion of a medical professional, but something kept me from doing that; there was a niggling anxiety, wormed inside my brain, that made the idea of seeing a doctor inexplicably terrifying. Instead, my brain flashed images of the diaper I'd found, and I felt an overwhelming compulsion to seek that out as a solution instead. So began my tenure as a diaper-clad researcher, with protection fresh from the package I had selected at the local pharmacy. Feeling the padding around my backside, clinging at my crotch, was embarrassing, but it tickled my mind with a sense of safety. I would wear it all day while out in the forest, its protective girth squirreled away underneath a taut pair of khaki cargo shorts. As if to give them a sense of purpose, the volatility of my bowels didn't relent, but instead worsened; as I squatted to get a sample of a basic fungal culture, I felt an immense pressure knocking at my backdoor, the fullness of my colon undeniable. Instead of attempting to hold back the beast, I found myself willingly opening the gate for it to escape into the world. With an eruptive wind, which blew hard and dry against the plush padding below, an immense log made a daring departure into the white valley of the garment's backside. My breath hitched with each moderate strain, each willing push, and the turd snaked into my seat to coil, much like a smelly length of rope. The evacuation of my bowels felt almost spiritual, as though by emptying them, I was also emptying my thoughts; there was a distinct pleasure, a euphoria of familiar origin, that took me back to the druggy days of college. Moans of joy vibrated past my tersely pursed lips, interspersed with diligent grunts of labored strain, and I felt a cool trickle of spittle leaking down my chin. It was a sensation unlike any other, perhaps better than sex itself, and unlike the satisfying relief of libido well spent, it also came across as profound. The steamer clipped eventually, letting the last pieces to be deposited as individual lumps, each of which slipped past my sphincter with little resistance. Still caught in a position that was not unlike the one a toddler would take, I could feel the heft of my warm creation pulling down on the seat of the diaper, causing the garment to sag heavily against the tight boundaries of my shorts. Mind still fogged over like a harbor on thr coast, my hands both crept behind me, as to feel for myself the bounty I'd brought into the world. With two readied palms, I would slowly grope and knead at the bulky payload which simmered beneath my buttocks; it wasn't as firm as it had felt when slithering out of me, but it still provided a great deal of resistance against being smeared across my rump. Its heat was like the welcoming glow of an ember in the snow, or the lit window of a tavern in the winter rain; the way the warmth cradled me, it made me feel at ease, such as the lit tip of an angler in the sea. Not knowing why, I would let myself sit down on the soggy earth beneath me; as my bottom made contact with the ground, I could immediately feel the putrid pile flattening out underneath my weight, spreading the warmth of its mushy majesty all throughout. Compelled to go further, I would mindlessly gyrate while seated there, in an attempt to tamp the soil inside more evenly across the landscape within the diaper. It was hard to say how long I stayed like that, squirming about on the ground like an empty-headed infant in a shit-filled diaper, but it was long enough for the mess to eventually cool, and for my wits to gain enough traction to fight back. Leaving those woods, with a full diaper and a confused mind, I would shamefully retreat back to my motel room to get cleaned up, with a grimace over what an arduous task that would be. Like the other accidents before this, the putrid diaper would end up a pot of fertility, for which the enigmatic mushrooms could be planted to grow. Continuing to cultivate them wasn't strictly necessary, as I'd already made a proof of concept with the other planters, but I couldn't resist the urge to do so; with several smelly garments acting as incubators, a colony of the mighty mushrooms was growing steadily. The dark spots in my head were becoming harder to ignore, and I found myself relying increasingly more on autonomous activities to continue my so-called research; thoughts that could be called my own were being edged out by thoughts that felt placed by a third party, and while somewhat aware of this, I felt powerless to overcome the apathy that kept me from trying to stop them. Within the last couple of days of my planned expedition, with my condition worsening, I would make a discovery that would threaten to overwhelm me with dread. Coming off the cusp of large dietary changes that felt out of the ordinary, and an increased desire to stay stewing in my own filthy diapers for longer periods of time, there would be something more substantial that struck fear into me. At no point past the first day had I used talcum, because it came across as unnecessary, and the sweetness of it had somehow offended my olfactory sensibilities; so it was peculiar to be in my motel room, plopping down on my bed in nothing but an old dirty diaper, and spotting a subtle puff of dust emanating from behind me. If it couldn't be powder, then what could it be? It was spores. A cloud of spores. Without considering the obvious up until this point, I'd allowed myself to be constantly engulfed in a storm of them within the motel room; this was where I laid my head to sleep, and the air was heavy with imperceptible particles of a biological agent. This fungi grew in dung, it prospered in poop, and what had I been hauling around behind me lately? Untaping the smelly garment to peer inside, my fears were actualized as truth; without physical transplantation, and in only a matter of hows, there were mushrooms growing to maturity among the muck. It all started to make sense, which made things so much more frightening; my body had long been compromised by the enigmatic specimen, possibly from the first moment I took it with me. The nightmares, the loss of bowel control, the changes in habit and behavior, it all pointed to my brain being hijacked. There was precedence: Ophiocordyceps unilaterali, otherwise known as the 'zombie-ant' fungus, was a specimen that infected insects and took them over, turning them into pawns. It grew into their simplistic brains, from spores, and acted as parasites to fulfill their own ecological needs. This was a concept that made for a good horror movie, but it shouldn't have been possible for it to happen to a human; our immune system was too complex, our body temperature too high, and yet somehow, this newly found species had found a way around all that. As soon as I was cleaned up, and begrudgingly putting on a fresh diaper, I was diving into my medical kit for the answer. I had a slew of anti-fungal medications, considering my profession, but I didn't know what would work in this case. The warming of the climate had already began to make these medications less effective, as fungi evolved past our pace to deal with them; as the heat rose, their ability to adapt to our higher temperature bodies rose too... Still, I tried. And still, I would fail. The fungal infection had spread throughout me too far, and it had successfully co-opted my will, only allowing brief moments of lucidity, where I would pop above the surface of my forced servitude to the mighty mushroom that had enslaved me. My body would move without any necessary input from my consciousness, and it would act in that way too, going through the motions that might make people believe I was still okay. The dirty diapers I made were like biological weapons, being set in various locations where they may be found by others who would soon share my fate. The takeover of humanity would be slow and subtle at first, but as more became these dung-drones, it would become impossible to ignore the truth of our collective demise. The first primary target would be obvious: other mycologists, so that their knowledge couldn't be used against the colony. The hivemind spoke to me in my slumber, it spoke of the future state of this planet. The age of man was coming to an end, and the age of mushrooms would finally begin. Our last purpose would be to accommodate them; our only function would be to provide the full diapers that nurtured their growth. All because I'd taken a small stance against littering.