Of Fungi and Humus, Mingled

Yes I remember the day. Or rather, I have failed to forget.

The weather was unbearably hot. That white heat that twists people’s already warped senses even further out of shape. I had gone out driving in the car. It’s true, I was lost, but it didn't worry me. I was given to thinking, at that time, of the mind and body being separate from each other, of being able to refine right out of existence the mind’s connections with the body’s urges and complaints. In this way no perturbation could possibly compromise the stillness of the sphinxlike ‘I’.

I didn’t always think like this. Sometimes it was the woozy paranoia of multiple selves, or of zombies… but enough… I see no reason why I should try to explain myself to a crowd of shits like you.

Before long I reached the country where I happened on an inn – an ancient-looking sandstone pile whose squat, crumbling brickwork gleamed white in the glare of the sun. I stopped and looked out upon a pair of old men who were sat on a bench, wordlessly supping ale. They regarded me as cattle might: dull incomprehension and unwilling. One of them had the look of old Simon.

Old Simon... hard to say what is more remarkable about that beast: his estrangement from reality or his preternatural resistance to death. Simon rarely speaks, but he has a story – a story known to most of the vagrants and lost souls that have taken shelter in the same nook as him over the years... and almost certainly fantastic lies from prologue to epilogue... not that that’s unusual, the lies...

He was a banker for many years, the story goes. A respected and influential figure. Moneyed, too. Yes, money to burn. His was a singularly brilliant career: record company performance, unprecedented shareholder approval, election to the board, advisory roles, if you please... Well, one day – quite spontaneously, he says – in full view of fellow directors, his PA and even a group of visiting dignitaries from some far-off land, he collapsed to the floor and began to bawl. Bawling like you’ve never heard, he says. Nobody was able to rouse him. He remained curled up like an embryo on the office floor for over an hour. Refused all help. His PA brought him a cup of water and he struck the woman in the face, breaking her nose. His howls could be heard on the adjoining floors and he would not stop. Everyone was asked to leave. Eventually he had to be sedated and was taken away.

Never an explanation for this. All he would ever say was: “It was as if the external world completely disappeared.”

That was the end of that. Simon... well, he never wore a suit again. Still in the City though. Oh yes, there for all to see, dressed in his filthy judge’s gown, gibbering from his bench under the oak tree on Sanctus Street in the shadows of the towers of Mammon.

But why was I? Where was I? Yes, the old men on the bench. One of the old men, the one who didn’t look like Simon, grumbled something about a forest. He even explained where I could find it.

Now I like forests, and this was more of a discovery than I could have hoped for when I set out. To an extent it assuaged my desire to end the man’s life. I would have stayed longer with the two of them, but it’s never a good idea to stay anywhere for too long. Get out while you can, that's what I've learned. Leave no trace.

On reflection it was a pleasant little inn. Perhaps it would be better if I could name it. But no, such details elude me. Other things have happened since then, so many execrable things, that the memory has been routed from my mind. It may just as well not have happened at all.

In any case, spurred on by this intervention, I set off driving again in search of the forest. I drove down a seemingly endless road, the car trained on the silvery shimmers on the horizon. It was a scene almost barren – the odd tree, an orphaned tuft of luminant white cloud – but then I noticed something, a dark, incongruous shape in the distance. A wisp of smoke was rising from it. As I came closer I saw that it was a car, much like mine – very much like mine – which appeared to have been grafted onto a large tree trunk. I stopped and walked around this car to see what the matter was.

The corner on the driver’s side of the car was crushed flat against the tree trunk – which had itself held up admirably well. A hissing sound rose from the car’s innards. I peered in. On the passenger side an airbag billowed in the breeze, but there was no passenger. In the driver’s seat, a man was slumped against the wheel, his eyes closed. He had a gloopy hole in his forehead. Viscous drops of blood pit-patted onto his knee. I leaned in and prodded the body. No movement. I prodded again. There seemed to be a twitch, a subtle tensing of muscle. I opened my mouth to speak then snapped to my senses. What the hell was I doing? This was absolutely not my concern. This was not what I was here for – I was here to find the forest.

I had driven for no more than a mile when I suffered another imposition: another human shape, walking carelessly along the verge. As I approached I saw that it was a girl, a rather fat girl dressed all in black and walking on bare feet. What a strange figure she presented. She wore a tutu, yes, a flouncy black tutu, and above that a slender black chemise which bared to the sun the fleshy expanse of her nape and shoulders.

I brought the car to a stop beside her. As I did so she paused and began to stare up at a bright knot of cloud morphing over her head.

I wound down the passenger-side window. The car hummed. I looked down towards the mirage bubbling at the end of the road, then back at her. She walked up to the car and squinted through the window. Around her eyelids mascara bled.

She looked at me, passively – or was it impassively?

“I’m going into the forest,” I said.

She gave no reply. Her eyes started to adjust to the light and her face assumed better definition. Those eyes. Huge glossy black discs. I could see myself in them.

“I’m going to the forest,” I repeated. She opened the door and sat beside me.

She was no beauty. No, hardly that. And her proportions, well, they would have made da Vinci puke... but those huge black eyes, the shimmering dark mirror-pool of them… and… well… I don’t wish to think too hard about it. I have since tried to forget her. I have tried, yes, but I have failed. Certain things about her have been fixed in my mind by her perfect inscrutability. There’s nothing I can do about it. Personally I’d prefer it if every experience died as soon as it were born. How much better to be a mayfly, with its single day of fresh-peeled, glorious flight. Or a wet-brained drunk. Oh yes, the Promised Land that would be. How much more simple for them – free to appreciate every fresh crime with the wonder of a child, to savour every new horror with a palate perennially clean.

“My name… is Simon,” I said. She did not respond. Instead she looked at herself in the sideview mirror.

I looked more closely at her flushed body. Her tutu had ridden up as she slumped in the seat. The thick flesh of her thighs spread against the hot vinyl. Her knees were dimpled, like a cherub’s, and she had a light stippling of hairs on her otherwise esculent calves.

Soon we arrived at the forest – the old corpse had been telling the truth! We left the car. I removed my shoes and socks – it seemed the right thing to do – and we walked deep into the forest together.

The air was dense and cool. A couple of birds twittered above us, high in the trees. Silently we walked, my companion now and then staring up into the dappled light of the canopy.

After some time we came upon a little clearing, a broad blanket of moss under an awning of mangled trees.

“We’re here,” I said.

We lay down on the moss, on our backs, and stared up into the chaos of twisted branches above us. Into our shelter came the creamy, mealy waft of fungi and humus, mingled.

“Humus,” I said. Still she said nothing. She did nothing. I began to doubt whether she was human. I knew about zombies, of course... but something was working on me, a subtle gravity that drew me towards her. I could not resist.

I climbed on top of her. She did not object. Uncomprehendingly, I looked into her panda eyes, which answered nothing. “What?” I asked, sharply. “What do you see?” She sighed. Her breath rose up to my nostrils. Sweet. Hormoney. Death-conquering.

At one stage a glossy black labrador bounded over, surprising us. I rose from between her legs, gave his rascally head a ruffle and sent him on his way.

I don’t think there is anything else to tell of her, of that. There is immeasurably more left inside... No, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that at all. We think there are memories when there are none. We think we have stories to tell, but it never works out that way. Now I wish I’d never begun. After all, what’s there to say? When you consider the carnage of it all, the slightest artifice is disgusting.

Oh, there was the cobweb. A cobweb became tangled in my hair. I picked it out, with difficulty, and rubbed it into her cunt.

I came away from the forest with my face sticky and stinking of her secretions. I left her there. It seemed the right thing to do.