Mushrooms and Markets 🍄

Comers and goers were bustling about the market on the corner of Guthrie and Fitzgibbons. It was tucked behind a famous pub where business folk found reprieve from coworkers at lunch, and there was a butcher’s shop, too, renowned for the best meats in the city. The shop stood proud with a hand-painted sign broadcasting the family name, Stauffer, in red and blue lettering.

This market was an oddity amongst the littered sidewalks of fast-food wrappings, the grimy, smudged windows of the subway, and the overcrowded thoroughfares of gas-guzzling commuters. The little hub was a welcomed oasis within a desert of consumption, a refresh from the daily grind where time slowed and coincided with a childhood familiarity of what is good in life.

Shoppers were in a noticeable rush under a demanding summer sun, beads of sweat collecting at their hairline, while others took their sweet time, perusing with a fine print specificity. Thoughts ricocheted through the brain of every shopper reciting what a recipe called for, or recalling what items were missing from their pantries or refrigerator crispers. The smart ones had written lists.

Vibrance spilled out of the boxes and crates filled with vegetables and fruits, of which their noted hue indicated health and vivacity. It was an attraction able to feed the appetite of hungry eyes browsing for a perfectly ripe avocado, a pleasantly plump squash, or an apple free of a single bruise or blemish. It was a hunger genetic modification could not sate.

And behind each stand stood a vendor ranging from teen to retiree. Some were lanky, others round; some were stricken with old wealth in search of life’s meaning, and others were surviving off tight paychecks and government relief packages. Kenny couldn’t help but notice how each vendor often resembled their organically grown wares, similar to pet owners who sometimes resemble their furry friend and reveal the remnants of Narcissus.

In one tattooed hand depicting a sinewy claw, a hempen bag grew in size and weight with each stand he passed: a banana here, a tomato there. Hopping the subway before his shift at a local bar to fulfill this primal need for fresh, naturally sourced sustenance was a random stroke of daytime spontaneity, especially for a drifter who welcomed the sanctity night provided.

The outsized flannel on his skinny body mimicked the deep blue and green tartan of the Black Watch, the dark green a perfect match to the bunch of kale he’d selected, and his black Levis were ripped at the knees from teenage angst instead of overwork. A bulge in his front pocket showed a crimson pack of smokes with a bold, proud typeface, promising a full flavor and a robust inhalation of carcinogens.

Scanning the last stand of mandarin oranges and tangerines picked over by the unwashed hands of hundreds, Kenny stepped back and thumbed over the stack of notifications his phone generously provided. Ryan Briggs was at a breakfast joint, hungover by the look of it; Jessica Pritchard slaved over her face in a makeup tutorial; Bailey Johnson shared engagement photos, airbrushed to a tee, and Kenny’s post of his ashtray, a smoldering cigarette, and his chipped coffee mug of black sludge appeared with dozens of reactions followed by a dopamine boost.

When he pocketed his phone, he looked up from the backlit screen and noticed an ordinary box wrapped in brown paper smack dab in the center of the market square. He thought it was strange no one else seemed to acknowledge it; no one looked suspiciously at the item or talked surreptitiously on the phone to a friend or a 9-1-1 operator. He could’ve sworn it wasn’t there before, and the passersby were walking around the box like it didn’t exist. Always around but never through.

Kenny looked to his right toward the empty pub, and then to his left at Stauffer’s. He was trying to gauge whether anyone was watching him, whether a residual trip from his mushroom dose over the weekend unknowingly crept back in... Whether this was a lucid dream… Whether he accidentally died in his sleep...?

But, everything checked out in his assessment of his known reality, or at least what he perceived to be real.

Esoteric conundrums of his own making were a focus Kenny explored with enthusiasm. He questioned every truth of his perception, and he enhanced his comprehension of given stimuli over the years with LSD and magic mushrooms. Yet, an immaculate paper box conjured from thin air was not something he’d encountered in prior experiences.

His first step forward broke him free of worry, caution, and hesitation, and in three long strides, he stood in the middle of the market.

“Hey, Kenny!” a sharp, female voice shouted from the alleyway.

He whipped his head around, as a tall blonde woman in taupe heels and a long blue skirt ran clumsily his way. A huge imitation designer purse and an XL phone in her hand presented a tragic scene, but her gleaming smile and excitement to see him outweighed the strange interaction. And yet, this woman was completely unfamiliar to Kenny. Even in the bar scene, he’d have a figment of her existence somewhere in his alcohol-laden memory.

As the woman drew closer, she showed little sign of slowing down, nor did she seem to acknowledge Kenny standing directly in her stampeding path of glee. It was at that moment, he awkwardly looked over his shoulder to see the handsome suitor she’d been calling to. Those Italian leather shoes really brought him altogether: skinny suit, skinny tie, swelled muscles powered by protein powder, and creatine.

After a brief bout of embarrassment, he shrugged and knelt by the small box, slicking back his greasy hair out of reflex.

He lay a hand on top as if to gain an insight, to determine a temperature, or to understand if this was dangerous. It was a standard cube, one foot wide, tall, and deep. No apparent sounds were coming from inside the box, like a mewing kitten, a whining puppy, or a ticking bomb. Truthfully, it reminded him of a present his mother had given him on his twenty-second birthday, which provoked a sense of ownership and a need to rip apart the paper wrapping.

Strangely, there was not a single piece of tape or adhesive on the packaging. Kenny impulsively picked it up, a trait his therapist considered a focal point of his personality. He turned over the box, realizing the virtual weightlessness of the object was extraordinary. This box walked the line of impossible, and he waited for a videographer to pop out from behind a stand with an annoying host in tow. But, nothing happened. Kenny set the box down.

He looked at the bustling market surrounding him, feeling as if his vision flipped into a built-in panoramic setting. Vendors continued to monitor and refill their produce stands, shoppers continued to fill their shopping bags, and no one offered so much as a glance in his direction, let alone inquiring over the mysterious box.

A moment later, an older man in his mid-sixties with small sunspots beginning to bloom on his forehead deviated from the market stands of produce and fruit. He was a good five feet away, but he showed no sign of recognition that a human or a box was within his immediate perimeter.

“Hey, mister,” said Kenny. “Do me a favor and let me know if you see this brown paper box, or if I’m imagining it and need to go to the psych ward.”

The man drew closer, looking straight through Kenny’s physical being until he sidestepped him at the very last moment like there was a crack in the pavement. A wisp of his passing touched Kenny’s skin before the feeling vanished.

“Hey, asshole!” Kenny shouted, but it was no use.

The man didn’t turn, and no one seemed to notice Kenny shouting at the top of his lungs in what could only be described as a schizophrenic break.

A younger guy in blue trousers and a button-up shirt, his age or thereabouts, was handling every avocado in a crate, checking the ripeness with a squeeze and a head tilt. Kenny abandoned the box and walked up to the guy, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder, and feeling the distinct shape of his clavicle bone underneath raw muscle.

“Excuse me, guy,” Kenny said with an eager grin, “but the strangest shit is happening to me right now.”

Kenny turned to look at him face-to-face, hand still firmly on his shoulder, unexpected panic creeping in. He peered dead into his light blue eyes, the color of robin eggs in the springtime, smelling espresso and stomach acid on his breath, but the guy didn’t acknowledge him. He did not see him at all.

Kenny’s grip grew in intensity until he was squeezing with every inch of strength he could muster, but he didn’t react with a single ounce of feeling, knowing, or understanding.

“I refuse to believe I am dead!” Kenny screamed.

He rushed back to the brown box, palming the cube as if he was an NBA player lifting off the floorboards in thousand-dollar high-tops to dunk a gaming-winning ball ten feet overhead. Tearing through the brown paper wrapping in a fury of desperation and anger, the exposed box beneath was constructed without an edge as if folded from a single piece of hyper-pliable cardboard.

In a fluid motion and without hesitating, Kenny withdrew his pocket knife, courtesy of the military surplus store on the sketchy side of town. The spring-loaded blade thundered out of its sheath and snapped into the locked position before he thrust the knife deep into the side of the box with a satisfying crunch. Pulling the twelve-inch blade through the topside and down toward his body, Kenny released the knife and it clattered to the ground. He tore apart the opening with both of his hands, blood spilling onto the severed edges as his paper cuts grew in size and number.

When the brown box lay shredded and uneven in two mangled pieces before him, Kenny held what appeared to be a velvet ring box, far blacker than his morning coffee, a shade conceived in the deepest depths of the sea where the light of stars have never shown. The surface undulated and shimmered, similar to the waves of heat rolling off a desert surface before a mirage reveals itself to a thirst-stricken voyager.

Kenny’s throat was drier than a teetotaler’s liver and his heart thumped violently within his ribcage, each heartbeat making his teeth chatter. Placing his bloody fingers on the edges of the ring box, he pried it open with a grimace to reveal a tarnished silver band without a crystal but etched with illegible markings from times long forgotten.

As Kenny looked up from the velvet ring box, he found himself sitting upright in a pair of ragged, navy blue and green boxers with a silver ring upon his finger. As his living room slowly came into focus, a brown paper box sat in the center of his Persian rug, a brilliant thrift store find, now dusted with ashes and cigarette burns.

Pressing his fingers into his eyes, he let out a dull groan and straightened his back. Two of his lower vertebrae popped in tandem, releasing nitrogen and carbon dioxide from his joints after a prolonged period of stasis.

“Why are you still here?” he grumbled in the direction of the inanimate box.

Aside from the stupid box, one truth remained from this entire experience, it was Kenny’s need for a glass of water.

He got up from the sullen couch and staggered into the small kitchen where old dishes were piled high in the sink. On the kitchen table next to an empty glass, a clear, plastic baggy was discarded and crumpled with a single, dried out mushroom cap and two shriveled stems remaining.