Gus Ripley, 21, known to his friends as ‘Fun Gus,” was driving home late one night after leaving a party full of drinking, dancing, and drugs. He was driving on a lonely road with hilly forests on either side; most of the drive between where the rave was and his home would be such a road—largely without other cars, so he figured he’d be safe, in spite of his driving under the influence.

Indeed, his car swayed left to right, but mostly he stayed in his lane. He was coming down from a half-pill of ecstasy and a line of ketamine, and feeling really good.

Early on in the party, before he’d drunk much or done any drugs, he was in a small room, alone with a twenty-year-old named Jenny Spelling. She was pretty, with long, wavy auburn hair, green eyes, a curvy figure and nice tits. He had a lot of fun, Fun Gus did, with her in that room. 

Without the roofie he’d put in her drink, though, she’d have realized he was the only one having any fun in that room. 

Suddenly, his car swerved unusually far to the right, and it went off the road and crashed into a tree. He wasn’t at all hurt, but he was still too stoned to make sense of what happened. He got out of his car, leaving his cellphone there, and staggered into the dark woods.

Did my high make me swerve like that? he wondered as he stumbled through the brush. It didn’t feel like it was me who did that. It felt as if someone else took control of the steering wheel, but that’s preposterous. I’m so wasted, I don’t know what I’m doing…or where I’m going…or why I’m going where I’m going.

He continued walking through the woods, between bushes, snapping twigs and tripping over rocks and branches lying on the ground, still too disoriented to know what he was doing. After another ten minutes or so of this aimless wandering, he was surprised to find himself hungry.

Well, I haven’t eaten since before I went to the party, which was hours ago, he thought. So it makes sense that I’d be hungry by now…but where am I?

He stopped and looked around in the dimness of trees and bushes, with only an ever-so-slight amount of morning sunlight peeking over the hills way up ahead. Though still a little stoned, he found his eyes adjusted to the dark; he looked down at the dirt by a tree trunk, and he saw a brightly-coloured mushroom.

Hey, I like mushrooms, he thought as he bent down to reach for it. I like them on pizza, at least. And who knows? Maybe I’ll revive my high with this one.

He ripped it out of the ground, wiped the dirt off the bottom as best he could, then bit off the cap and the upper half of the stem. It tasted awful, like the worst-tasting medicine, but he kept chewing—him wincing the whole time—and finally he swallowed it, hoping it would satisfy his hunger and give him a bit of a high. 

He got up and continued on his pointless trek through the woods and up the hill to where the light was peeking over the horizon. He was a little less hungry, but only a little less. He saw another brightly-coloured mushroom, ripped it out of the ground, wiped off the dirt, and ate it, wincing as he chewed.

Upon swallowing it, he saw everything around him glowing and vibrating.

“Whoa!” Gus said to himself as he felt the buzz kick in. This is going to be one hell of a trip, he thought.

He kept ascending the hill he was on. The trees all around him were getting blurrier as the morning light was increasing. Everywhere he saw waves, as if he were underwater, seeing a blurry forest above the watery surface.

Those blurry trees were getting brighter, glowing with the growing sunlight that surrounded each, and giving each vivid colours. He felt as if he were entering a cartoon.

I’ve never had a high this intense, he thought. Not on shrooms, not on E, not on K. This is beyond any drug.

He took a few more steps up the hill, blinked a few times, then opened his eyes wide. No longer did he see waves or vibrations of everything. The sky was yellow, the ground, a vivid green, and instead of trees, he saw…

Mushrooms.

Giant mushrooms. 

Instead of leaves on trees, he saw bell-shaped mushroom caps, all polka-dotted. The dots were either a bright yellow, or orange, or light green, against backgrounds of bright pink, purple, blue, or red. Under the caps, he saw thin gills of brown or gray against backgrounds of white. The stems of each giant mushroom were also white, instead of the brown tree trunks he’d seen up until now.

“This is more than just a drug trip,” he whispered to himself, then thought, What drug trip ever gives off hallucinations like these? Didn’t Jenny say her older sister was a witch, or something? No, don’t be ridiculous, Gus. Her sister’s probably just a Wiccan or something. Besides, I don’t believe in God or magic. I’ve just never been this high before, that’s all.

He felt another hunger pang, and felt tempted to intensify his mushroom trip all the more; so he walked over to the nearest ‘mushroom tree,’ if you will, and reached up for its polka-dot cap. He pulled it down, opened his mouth wide, and bit off a great big chunk of the edge of the cap.

He chewed and chewed on it, hating the taste but waiting in hope for the heightened buzz. After swallowing it, he reeled and staggered a bit, closing his eyes in reaction to a brief dizzy spell. He opened his eyes to see more bright, glowing, and vividly colourful light, and more undulating of everything. A buzzing sensation went throughout his body.

“Oh, that feels good!” he sighed, smiling with closed eyes. Then he opened them and looked at his arms. “What the hell?…”

He saw three small mushrooms growing on his forearms, two on the left and one on the right. Then he saw five more growing on his arms, two on his left upper arm, and three on his right forearm. They were all the peach colour of his skin.

“Oh, my God!” he hissed, then grabbed at one of the ones on his right arm. He ripped it off with a forceful pull, causing his blood to spray everywhere, as well as a sharp, stinging pain. “Oww!” he screamed.

He fell on his knees to the vivid green ground, having cupped the wound with his hand in an attempt to control the bleeding. He winced and squeezed his eyes shut.

After a dozen seconds or so, he opened his eyes. The pain was gone. So was the bleeding. He seemed to be standing again. He didn’t see his arms anywhere. Strangest of all, he saw half a dozen naked young women, including Jenny, all kneeling in front of him, grinning. 

All of them have such nice bodies, he thought as he looked them all over. All except that fat one in the back. Eww! Get dressed, you pig!

Then he realized that the faces of all the girls, all except the overweight one, looked familiar.  Where had he known them? That was it! He had known them!

Hey, wait a minute, he thought. I put roofies in all their drinks over the past year, the five good-looking girls, that is. And now they’re in my drug trip? If this even is a drug trip. Are they mad at me for taking advantage of them? I should say something to them…

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t even open his mouth.

Because he no longer had one.

What the hell? he thought. I can’t talk!

He looked down and all around himself. No arms, no legs.

Oh, my God! he thought. No!

All he saw below was a large…stem…instead of a torso.

No clothes. He was as naked as the girls were.

Except that he had no human body, except for his eyes.

The girls were talking and laughing, as he could see, but he couldn’t hear anything! Did he no longer have ears? He didn’t feel any on his head…if what he had even was a head. 

He did some lip-reading. They were saying, “Fun Gus,” over and over again, with those eerie grins.

His head felt strange, different. He felt no hair on it. And it felt…large, heavy.

He looked up and saw the underside of a huge mushroom cap, just like those giant, tree-like ones he’d seen before this scene with the girls. He saw light-brown gills radiating from the top of the stem, just above his eyes, out to the edge of the cap. He’d been turned into a human-sized mushroom!

The girls weren’t saying, “Fun Gus ,” they were saying, “fungus.”

He looked at Jenny’s face and that of the fat girl, noting the similarity. Jenny was chatting with…her sister? He looked down at the floor and saw a circle surrounding a pentacle. Candles were burning along the periphery of the circle. His eyes widened in terror. Now he knew.

This was no drug trip.

He felt his eyesight beginning to fade, but not before he saw all the girls coming up close to him, with wide-open mouths and bared teeth.

Everything went black.

His eyes had dissolved.

All that was left of Gus was his passive, dreamlike consciousness.

Rather like a young woman on roofies.

Then the biting began.

Six pairs of teeth were cutting into his head…his cap, rather. The pain was sharp and stinging. He could do nothing about it. He couldn’t fidget or struggle to get the girls off of him. He couldn’t even scream.

Rather like a young woman on roofies.

He started feeling bites on his lower body…his stem, rather. One large, particularly painful, bite came on the side of the stem where his eyes had been, level with where his genitals had once been. It seemed like a castration, but his having been turned into a man-sized mushroom meant he’d already lost his manhood.

The biting continued, all over, each bite hurting just as badly as those before.

His consciousness—his life—was fading, but not enough to mitigate the sharp sting of each new bite.

His only relief came from having less and less of a body to bite from. Finally, the top centre of the cap, where his brain once was, got torn into by a rampage of bites, and consciousness faded to black nothingness.

*******************

Police searching for the owner of the crashed car found a bloody corpse, little more than a skeleton, lying on the grassy, tree-covered hill. What little flesh was left showed bite marks.

Human bite marks.

“Who could have done this?” A cop asked with agape eyes. “Starving people living in the woods, resorting to cannibalism?”