Nightmare Fuel, Day the Seventh - A Quest!

Manic evil mushrooms! Who doesn't love evil mushrooms? Today's image is courtesy of Rodney Matthew.

Response seemed light today, perhaps because of the weekend. Samantha Dunaway Bryant continues to do wondrous and unexpected things with these, while Kary Gaul drifted into science-fictionland and Jo Ann Cabrera joined us with a poem. 

Read them, and then join me on a quest, and what comes after.

This is another two for one, with a special bonus story from my lovely and talented daughter. 

After the Quest

LC Suskin

So I went on a quest. I'm sure you'd guessed that. It is, after all, a familiar tale.

I did it right. You know the way these things work. Most are doomed to fail for one reason or another. The Forbidden Lands have been forbidden for many a generation, and for good cause - few who came would ever return.

As I said, I did it the right way. I recovered the ancestral weapon my father and his father had used before me. I proved myself worthy by deed, as known worthy by blood. And my goals were pure.


She has the greatest beauty in the kingdom, and I know I'd win her hand if I could bring her but one taste of the Timeless Mushrooms. I could win her hand and we could live forever. Together.

So I went on the quest. OK, yes. We went on a quest. The scholar, the bandit, and me. A long distance, over the great mountains, through the dismal forest. You know how these stories go; the clever bandit helped us sneak past dangerous highwaymen, the scholar knew the way to the secret mountain passes. We faced many dangers before I arrived at last at the Forbidden Lands, my two companions having fallen by the wayside.

How? That matters not. I think the scholar lost his footing on the Cliffs of Terror, and the bandit was bitten by a venomous viper in the Endless Wood. Or perhaps the other way around. What matters it hat they died well and boldly, bringing me closer to the Timeless Mushrooms and to the end of my quest.

The Mushrooms spoke to me. This much I expected, as The Scholar had taught me many secrets along the way. I knew the answers to their riddle, and - more than that - I knew that I had good cause.

I knew that I'd bring back their flesh and win her heart.

Everything was right, and everything should have worked.

The Timeless Mushrooms are treacherous, and that foolish Scholar fell before telling me all of his secrets.

I learned some things.

I learned that the night of the Harvest Moon is the mushroom's conclave.

I learn that Timeless Mushrooms talk by sending spores across the wind.

I learned that if a man is to breath those spores, he'd know all that the mushrooms know, all of the secrets of time and space. It became part of me.

And I know how the Timeless Mushrooms became what they are. That they were poor souls who wander too close, breath too deeply. That each of the thousand thousand mushrooms thought they'd done it right, had walked a proper quest.

Just as you have.

It's nice here. There's not too much son, there's cool damp soil. There's the universe to ponder. So cast aside your weapon, breath deeply, take root.

Join us.

In the Mushroom Ring

By CS Suskin

In a land far away there was a ring of mushrooms. Now, these mushrooms weren't ordinary. They thrived in wastelands and anyone who came best then works be sorry. 

How do I know this?

Well, I was one of the unlucky folk to come near to them.

This is my story.

"Ugh", I said. "What is that smell?"

I heard a noise, "who said that?" 

"We did," a gruff voice answered.

"Where are you?" I asked. I didn't see anyone.

"Down here."

I saw a mushroom with beady were and long fangs. He came up to my thighs, hit he was one of the smallest one of the ring.

I slowly backed away but, to my horror, they started advancing. I sprinted. I didn't think. I sprinted. Nothing mattered more than running.

I shuddered and woke up, to the lingering smell of waste.