Speaker 1: It was a cold and foggy morning when I went
out foraging for mushrooms. I had always been fascinated by
the idea of magic mushrooms. Their transformative properties had intrigued
me for years. One day, while on a walk in
a quiet part of the forest near my house, I
stumbled upon a cluster of mushrooms I had never seen before.
They had an odd glow to them, almost as if
they were pulsing with life. Ignoring all the warnings I
heard about poisonous mushrooms, I picked them and headed back home,
excited about what I had just found. After researching, I
confirmed that they were indeed magic mushrooms. Without hesitation, I
decided to eat them, just a small amount to start.
The effects hit me fast. At first, it was like
the world opened up, the colors becoming vibrant, the air
thick with the kind of energy I couldn't explain. I
felt weightless, almost as if I were floating above the ground.
But then the world started to warp around me. I
looked at my hands and they were slowly turning into
something that didn't resemble hands at all. The skin stretched
and bubbled, becoming rough and brown like bark in horror.
I watched as my arms began to twist and distort
into roots, the veins turning into something like branches. It
wasn't just my body. The room around me was transforming,
the walls breathing in and out, pulsating like the heart
of some ancient creature. But the most terrifying thing was
the shadows. Shadows that weren't mine. They moved independently of me,
creeping along the walls as if they had their own will,
And as they moved, they started to whisper, their voices
low and indecipherable. I tried to stand up, but my
legs felt weak, like the ground beneath me was shifting.
The door to my house slammed open on its own,
and I saw something moving in the corner of my eye,
a figure hunched over, barely human. It was tall, its
skin pale, and stretched tight over its bones. The creature
slowly turned to face me, and I saw that its
face was nothing but a gaping mouth, a massive hole
where eyes should have been. The thing stepped forward, its
footsteps echoing with a bone chilling sound, and as it did,
my body began to spasm, twisting unnaturally. As I felt
myself being pulled into its embrace. I screamed, no sound
came out. The creature was inside my mind now, whispering things,
promises of things to come, things I couldn't escape. The
trip lasted hours, but it felt like a lifetime. When
I finally came to my senses, I was back in
my living room, lying on the floor. The mushrooms were gone,
the memory of the creature still lingered. I've never gone
into the forest again. I don't know if what I
saw was real or if it was just the mushrooms
playing tricks on me, but I'll never forget the feeling
of the creature's cold, invisible hands around my mind. For
weeks after that night, sleep became a stranger to me.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back there,
pulled through the heaving, breathing walls of my house into
some deep and infinite forest that wasn't on any map.
I could feel the creature watching me from the dark,
hear it escaping mall, whispering through the roots beneath my bed.
I tried to convince myself it was just a trip,
a bad reaction, a hallucination. But then strange things started happening,
First it was the soil. Patches of dirt began appearing
on my floor, like someone had tracked it in. But
I live alone. I've never worn shoes inside. Then came
the spores, tiny dark specks floating in the air, visible
only when the sun cut through the blinds. I'd sweep
and vacuum o sessively. They always came back. One morning,
I woke up to find mushrooms growing out of my
bedroom wall. Not store brought white caps or anything normal. No,
these were those mushrooms, the same kind I found in
the woods, the ones that with the faint, ghostly glow.
They were pulsing again, just like before. I panicked, tore
them down with glove hands, scrubbed the walls would bleach
until it burned my lungs. But by the next day
they were back, more of them, taller, like they were
feeding off of something or someone. I started hearing whispers
even when I was awake, the same low, undulating voice
from the trip, except now they had words. I couldn't
make out most of them, but one word kept coming
through clearly. Return. I didn't want to, I couldn't go
back to that forest, but every night the dreams got worse.
I'd wake up soaked and sweat, clawing at my own skin,
convinced my fingers were growing bark again. I thought I
was losing my mind. Until one night I woke up outside, barefoot,
standing in the middle of the woods, no coat, no flashlight,
no foam, just the moon above and the glowing mushrooms
all around, like tiny lanterns, leading deeper into the trees.
My body moved on its own. I tried to resist,
to turn back, but it was like I was being
reeled in my limbs, not my own. The forest seemed
to twist around me, rearranging itself as I walked. Trees
bent aside like curtains. The air was damp, humming with
the sound I couldn't place, not wind, not bugs, something older.
And then I saw it again, the creature. It stood
in a clearing, taller than before, more solid, less a hallucination,
and more manifested. Its mouth gaping face pointed towards me,
and I stepped into its space. I heard everything, not
through ears, through roots. It told me mushrooms weren't from
this world, that they were seeds, condoluts for something buried
deep beneath our reality. A sleeping god long forgotten, known
only as my Cora. Every person who consumes the mushroom
becomes a node in its growing network, a vessel, a garden.
I tried to scream, my mouth filled with dirt. I
collapsed into clearing, and from the shadows small hands began
to rise, thin, spinlely, root like. They crawled up my arms,
my chest, my face. I blacked out. When I woke
up again, I was in my bed, clean, normal, like
nothing had happened. But the forest is in me now.
I don't need the forage anymore. The mushrooms grow in
my fridge, my dresser drawer, behind the bathroom Mirrah. When
I bleed, the wound smells like wet moss, and the
whispers have changed. They no longer say return, They say prepare.
Last week I found the mushroom on my neighbor's porch.
Two days ago, I saw a pulsing glow on the
back of the grocery store. This morning, I looked in
the mirror and saw bart creeping up my neck again.
I don't know how much longer I have before I'm
completely theirs, before I stop being me. But if you
ever find mushrooms in the forest, glowing, beautiful, alive. Don't
eat them, don't even touch them. They're not from here.
They're spreading at first. Suddenly anonymous post on local forums,
messages buried in common sections under foraging guides and psychedelic subreddits.
If you see glowing caps, leave them. If the forest
feels like it's watching you, it is. If the mushrooms
hum run, Most people laughed. A few accused me of trolling.
One guy said I just had a bad trip and
needed therapy. I stopped posting after my keyboard began sprouting
gills between the keys. The whispers grew louder after that,
less patient, less gentle. My cora didn't want warnings. It
wanted silence. It wanted cultivation. I started losing time. Hours
would vanish, entire nights, E raced. I'd come to stand
in places I didn't remember, walking to community gardens, damp basements,
the wooden strip behind the elementary school. My fingernails were
always packed with soil, My teeth ate like they'd been
chewing stone. One morning I woke up with a map
carved into my thigh, not cut, grown into the skin,
raised lines like veins, branching outward. When I traced them.
Images flooded my mind, underground chambers, root tunnels stretching for miles,
human shapes suspended in fungal webbing, like fruit ripening on
the vine, cities beneath cities. I finally understood the forest
wasn't expanding outward, it was coming up. I tried to
burn it out of me. When the flame touched my skin,
the bark didn't char it opened. Spores burst into the air,
like breaflies from long held lungs. The smoke smelled sweet, familiar.
I inhaled without meaning to. That night, I dreamed of
my coral fully awake, not a creature, not a body,
a system, a consciousness stretched across sentries, feeding on decay, patience,
and belief. It didn't hate us, didn't even notice us
as individuals. We were nutrients, messengers, infrastructure. It showed me
the future, subway tunnels lyned with bioluminescent growth, forests blooming
inside office buildings, roots cracking marble and steel like egg shells,
and people smiling, calm, hollow saying the same thing over
and over. It feels so good to let go. I
woke up, crying sap. My reflection no longer matched me.
One eye clouded white, threading with fins like my acylium.
My hair clumped together, stiff and fibrous. When I shaved,
the skin beneath was already roughening. I stopped going outside.
Didn't matter. The mushrooms found me anyway. They always do.
They grew in walls, yes, but also in places that
shouldn't have been possible, inside sealed cans, between the pages
of books, in the small spaces behind my eyes. When
I closed them, the whispers became instructions. Plant here. Touched
them gently. They are ready. I resisted until resistance hurt
more than obedience. The first time I planted a mushroom,
it was behind the bus stop down the street. I
don't remember deciding to do it. I just remember the
feeling afterward, the deep, satisfying quiet in my head, like
scratching an inch I didn't know I had. After that,
it got easier, too easy. Now understand why no one
ever stopped it before, Why civilizations vanished without a trace,
why forests grew where ruins should be. Because by the
time you realize what my acora is, you want it.
I'm writing this while I still have fingers that bend
the right way. While my thoughts are mostly my own,
the bark has reached my jaw now, speaking herts, swallowing
dirt doesn't. Soon, I won't remember why I was afraid.
Soon i'll forget the word human. So if you find this,
if you read this, listen to me. The mushrooms don't
need belief, they don't need rituals. They only need contact.
And once they touch you, once you taste them, you're
already part of the garden. The forest is hungry, and
it's growing closer to the surface every day.