Midnight Snack

Jasper woke up early to get to Pteetneet Greenhouse and Gardens right as they opened. They were unloading a truck full royal blue hibiscus, dug fresh from the forest, and he had been trying to get a dozen all spring. The truck had barely pulled into the country dirt lot before he had his pallet ready to load.

He purchased the dozen hibiscus and a few trays of blue star creeper to add for groundcover. He spent the day between finishing the flowerbeds, adding soil and tilling, repairing sprinkler lines, and finally putting in his bushes. He was nearing the end, one bush left to plant. He gripped the trunk of the bush and gently pulled it out of its planter’s pot. It was then he noticed his fingernails were glowing blue. He brushed his thumb with his forefinger, and it shimmered.

It wasn’t just in his nails, there was a faint dusting of blue up and down the hair on his furry forearms. He set the bush down and the root ball cracked. It also had a little shimmer of blue.

He was already on his knees and went down to his hands to take a closer look. Inside the root ball was a round furry pale blue growth with the tiniest blue and white mushrooms dotting the surface.

“Huh,” Jasper grunted and put the bush into the hole, “I’ve seen weirder things come out of these pots.”

He took a shower and scrubbed the dirt and sweat and fungus and all the hard work of the day off his body. He let the warmth of the shower run down his back as he watched the dirt swirl down the drain. He put soap into his scrubber and brushed down his body, but no matter how hard he scrubbed and scraped, his fingernails retained a stained shimmer of blue.

He had been working nonstop all day, he was ready to call it a night and turn off the snooze. He got out of the shower, dried off, dropped his towel and hopped into bed.

“Urghhnnf,” Jasper woke up at midnight sitting bolt upright. His stomach let out a roar.

“I could use a midnight snack.”

He had been so exhausted that he forgot to eat dinner, he’d barely stopped for a cheese sandwich. It wasn’t like him to eat this late, but he was hungry.

He slipped out of the covers and found his way through the dark into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out a Tupperware of leftover stroganoff. He cracked the lid to see a ring of green and white mold.

“Eeew,” he scrunched up his nose.

He pulled out a handful of grapes and started popping them into his mouth. He scratched his bare ass as he thought about what to eat.

“Oh,” he thought, “I have a frozen dinner in the basement freezer.”

He walked slowly down the carpeted stairs and as he got to the bottom step he heard a noise. He stopped and saw a light on around the corner of the staircase landing.

“I thought I had a frozen dinner… in here… somewhere…” came the voice.

His voice.

He peeked around the corner to see his own bare ass bent over the freezer door and highlighted with a stream of moonlight from a single window well.

“What the fuck,” Jasper said.

The doppelganger jolted upright from the freezer and held a frozen dinner over his groin. Dick’s Brand Sausage and Potatoes.

“What the fuck?” said the doppelganger. He dropped the frozen dinner and reached for whatever he could find nearby. He grabbed onto a fishing pole and held it like a fencing sword.

Jasper, on cue, grabbed the closest thing to him, a folding chair.

“How did you get into my house?”

“Your house? How did you get into my house? Who are you?”

They began to circle each other.

“I’m Jasper Amanita.”

“No, I’m Jasper Amanita.”

“The fuck is going on,” they said in unison.

Fishing pole Jasper swung the pole at folding chair Jasper, striking him on the shoulder, leaving it stinging. Folding chair Jasper took a step forward and slammed the folding chair down onto fishing pole Jasper, knocking him to the ground.

He dropped the folding chair and ran up the stairs and into the kitchen. A faint blue hue was glowing through the kitchen window from the garden. He pulled a long knife from a block on the kitchen counter and turned to face the basement stairs.

The other Jasper came running up the stairs, “wait, wait.” He held his hands up.

“I know I'm Jasper and you know you are Jasper, there is obviously something weird going on here.”

“No way, man, no way. I’m Jasper. You are a fucking lunatic or I'm in some kind of nightmare.”

“Prove it,” said Jasper, "prove you are the right one."

The Jasper with the knife, straining with the effort of how to prove he was himself to himself, started to lower the knife. Then he saw a glimmer of blue on his fingernails.

He looked to the other Jasper and saw that his nails were clean. No blue.

“My finger is blue from the garden today,” the other Jasper’s eyebrows wrinkled with confusion and then hatred.

Jasper thrust the knife up and into the false Jasper, dragging the knife from belly button to sternum. A thick excretion of powdery blue and white mold fuzz bursts from the false Jasper as an inhuman moan escaped its lips.

Jasper tripped backward down the hallway, "I'm the real Jasper."

He shut himself in the bathroom and turned on the lights. He splashed his face with cold water from the faucet and rubbed his eyes in the mirror. He stared at his image.

His shoulder hurt from where the fishing pole had struck him. He rubbed at it and saw a little blue stain surrounding the wound. He thumbed the stain away and splashed antiseptic over the cut. A drop of blood oozed out and stained the band aid he covered it with.

The false Jasper had crumbled into a pile of dusty fungus on the kitchen floor by the time Jasper made it out of the bathroom. He may continue to crumble into something that could be swept away with a broom in the morning.

He needed rest. He needed to think about what happened. Who was he supposed to call? Was he supposed to call someone? Was he dreaming?

He turned the light on in the bedroom and found his bed saturated with a ring of blue and white mold fuzz. Little tiny mushrooms dotted the surface of the mold and got bigger as they neared the center, gathering on the partially muscled skeleton that lay rotting in bed.

Jasper watched as the mushrooms puffed and grew, swelling around black goo that clung to each bone like oily cobwebs to the meat seperating from it. They burst and crawled over the bones and filled into size. Jasper turned the light off and hid, out of sight, in a corner.

He watched as a new Jasper bagan to rise in bed and take a deep inhale. It turned over in bed a couple times before sitting bolt upright.

His shoulder throbbed.

“Urghhnnf,” came the noise as the Jasper in bed sat up and tore away from the remaining skeleton it had laid upon.

“I could use a midnight snack.”

THE END