When the People Turned into Corpses

“Let’s get weird,” I say, craning my head up to the person standing next to me. We are alternating between looking down at the capsules of ground mushrooms we’ve been handed and looking at everything BUT the mushrooms. Our eyes meet briefly, and he shrugs and says resignedly, “let’s get weird.” Like a couple of comrades who have undertaken an oath, we clink our capsules together and wash them down our throats with our drinks.

I wasn’t stark-raving high when they began to look like corpses. There was no life-altering beauty to be found in that dark, dank, dive bar. The lines on the palms of my hands were solid.

That’s the thing about mushrooms. Everything is fine until that grandfather clock GONG moment, like WWE’s The Undertaker’s intro theme. I peer up at a friend, who I’m in mid-conversation with, and the grin on my face freezes. Reality is slipping. I’m angered at my vodka-tainted decision before one of the dutiful little cells in my brain has the wherewithal in this climate to press the panic button. GONG. Fear punches the inside of my stomach. The mushrooms have arrived.

His face is a cakey pasty white save for the darkening around his eyes and in the sunken part of his cheeks. His normally ruddy and lively complexion is sallow and gaunt, like he should be resting peacefully in a fridge bed. My friend looks like a corpse. Rigor Mortised.

My drink is parked in the air halfway to my gaping mouth. He’s talking good-natured trash about his pinball opponent. The crinkle around his eyes that usually complement his rugged handsomeness have turned into severe creases. I wince half-expecting the skin to split and flap open and reveal something putrid. With a zombified hand he lifts his beer to his mouth and a glug moves down a cracked plaster-coated throat. The rest of him is hidden under flannel and blue jeans. So this is what it’s like to converse with an Undead.

His hearty laugh breaks my trance. He’s looking at me expectantly. I break into a teethy smile and before long laughter bubbles up from somewhere deep within and shoots out of me. The kind of laughter that heals. Belly-shuddering laughs. Mushroom laughs.

Vibrant-coloured lights flash from the pinball machines and every few seconds they hurl verbal assaults, challenging patrons to a match. I flit between people and pinball, swilling double-vodka-soda-limes, like there’s no tomorrow, except there is and it brings the promise of a too early shift.

I pass a familiar face and crack a one liner in greeting. Wait a minute. I stop short. Another corpse.

He throws his head back in laughter. He’s been struck by the shroom fairy. I too guffaw and continue on as nonchalant as a barkeep wiping down his bar top with perked ears.

Hmmm, that’s odd. We don’t even talk much. Why him?

The night air bites at my hands and face. My breathe comes out in white wisps. I see the person I cheers-ed mushrooms with.

“Aren’t you cold?” He’s not wearing a jacket, like he’s wandered outside forgetting that it’s the dead of winter.

“I don’t know, am I?” He asks earnestly as he takes a seat on the sidewalk. A thunder clap of a laugh roars through me. Then him. Mushroom laughs are healing AND viral.

At work, before the crack of dawn, I am back to reality. I slept a solid few hours and the night before’s haze has left my system, or so I think until a client walks past. An elderly, ordinary, indistinguishable man who looks like a corpse.

Are the mushrooms trying to tell me something?

I’d absurdly thought they’d supercharged my weird grim reaper ability, but it’s been five years, and they're alive and well. The old man is anyone's guess.