2
Upside down. Everything felt upside down, and dripping wet, all around her.
Grasping, searching for purchase, not only with her hands and feet, but with her mind. Held back, restrained, stuck — something gripped her tightly.
Had she fallen? How did she find herself in such a place?
Was she dead?
The smell… Oh Goddess, the smell.
She decided she was alive. Dead wouldn’t smell this bad.
Her limbs were clutched tightly by something cushioned, giving. Yet, there was a sickly slime, her entire body firm in its grip.
Colleen’s eyes were adjusting, bulbous shapes that meant nothing to her coming into focus. Her cheek was embedded within a viscous layer of goo, atop of Goddess knows what — eyes only able to see feet ahead of her.
Wherever she was, it was dark.
Taking a great gasp of rotten air into her lungs, she finally screamed, throwing all her weight back in a motion she’d surmised a surrender.
Yet, this structure holding her gave. Her anchor of balance tumbling over top itself.
Now, with the force of gravity, and the full weight of her body working with her, this slimy-sludgy grip lessened, and she found herself peeling away from the grotesque structure holding her so.
With a clamor and a loud grunt of exhalation, up and down became settled at once; Coleen’s body impacting the cold hard earth, finally free from whatever sticky restraint had held it.
The stone below was cool against her limbs and bodice. Only grateful for this simplest clarity to grasp, she’d start with knowing which way was down, then go from there.
Her palms were covered in vile sludge as she pressed them onto the firm stone ground, covered itself in the thinnest layer of damp and dark moss.
Where was she? What on Earth was all this?
She rose on shaky legs, finally able to get her feet beneath her, such incredible relief to be upright.
With her eyes now almost fully adjusted, Colleen had trouble believing what she saw, surrounded by what could only be described as a forest of enormous mushrooms. Their pudgy stalks rose to bulbous, mutated canopies, thick with a mucus membrane which had held her so.
Had those caught her? What a terrible and horrifying grace. Absolutely putrid, but quite the cushion.
She was covered head to toe in the thick slime of these colossal fungi. Unable to tell where their stench ended and the cruel smells of this cavernously dark space began. Colleen had never been more disgusted in her life.
What was this madness?
She searched around the musky, dim space afforded her senses. Not making anything out but a sea of fungi in all directions beneath the strangest blackened sky. The darkest dark — a void above — only light coming from the faintest groundswell of bioluminescence. This growth of monstrosities she found herself within was glowing, ever slightly, in strangely beautiful violet hues.
These things were everywhere. She was surrounded and encased. Boxed in.
What a nightmare.
It was here, in this place, she realized her sense of hearing was entirely absent. Shock wearing off, Colleen reached towards her ears to find a thick layer of mucus — inches on end — caked over them.
It took the greatest effort not to vomit.
She used her hands furiously, so fast she wouldn’t have to think about it, clearing the sides of her head and carving the goop out of her inner ear canal.
Colleen wretched anyway, falling to her knees, the moss so damp she could feel it through her thick frock on the bare skin of her ankles.
It was all too much. The sounds of her own gags were the first she’d heard in clear.
In the following second there would be a dawning in her mind. An exultation, an ecstasy, a joyous realization.
She could hear water. Running water. Nearby, and oh so clearly.
Thank the Goddess.
She needed it desperately. To jump in, submerge herself head to toe. Clean the cracks of her nails and the crust from her eyes. This slime which covered her was a sensation she couldn’t stomach a second longer than necessary.
The water was ahead of her and to the right. She knew this without acknowledging it consciously and began to move with haste before even reaching her feet. Resolving to storm her way through whatever atrocities of unchecked fungal growth laid in her path.
She smashed a shoulder into a stalk of one of these beasts, finding purchase with the opposite foot, head scraping along the underside of its drooping canopy — which bloomed upward like an open palm.
Another step, then another. Eyes closed, smashing into the base of a monstrous growth, she fell. Tumbling face first, heels over head. The ground below no longer there, she tucked her chin instinctively, protecting her neck as she plunged deeply into the frigid waters she’d been so desperately seeking.
Water rushed into her nostrils. The burning sensation a tarnish on a moment which would have otherwise been pure elation. The rushing current around her whisked away the slimy grits and grimes which had worked their way into all her little crevices.
Colleen’s body twisted, circled, flipped over end — before she broke the water’s surface.
Sweet oxygen. A crying gasp, and she was upright.
Flipping her hair back and clearing her eyes with a loose hand, she struggled to open her eyes as she fought against the current to stay afloat.
Oh, my goodness. Sweet Goddess. What a sight to see.
The shimmering sparkle, opalescent azure, wafting into the darkness of the mysterious cavern she found herself within. A more magnificent sight she had never seen.
This water strange — not only for its glow, but for how it bobbed her so. She felt lighter than air. Colleen knew the tides of the ocean, the stillness of her bathing chamber, the mysterious life of the lake. Yet she’d never known water like this.
Coming off of a momentary high — wherein she’d forgotten how utterly lost she was — distracted so by the relief and mysteries afforded her from this most gorgeous and refreshing water, Colleen only now consciously recognized the sheer slopes which carved this river were lined with her mortal enemy; those putrid, slimy mushrooms.
It was here, bobbing along, taking in how the river’s unnatural sapphire glow faded so seamlessly into the violet bioluminescence of the fungi forest, where she realized it.
The river smelled of one thing. And one thing alone.
Alice.
It was her smell — through and through. That haunting notion. That cruel whisper of remembrance she’d so often found her senses recall.
Everywhere. All at once.
She didn’t know whether she was rejoicing or weeping. But the river’s water hid her tears nonetheless.
It was only yesterday she’d longed more deeply than she’d known possible to breathe this smell again. Only a few tortured months since the night itself, where they’d so briefly shared a moment so pure of love and passion that she’d made prayers to never forget its sensations, to never loose those gentle sights and smells of laying beside her; that bitch.
To have that scent here, devoid its actual source — just the sick remnant of a sense, on blast to the fullest, and entirely encompassing — was the cruelest of punishments.
She wanted out.
Colleen began to paddle with the currents of the river furiously.
It weaved in short spurts through the forest of towering fungi, as if a miniature river in a toy world. Seemingly unending, curve after curve in the river provided her with nothing but the same.
Finally, a corner graced Collen with the sight of something new. A bank, a grassy landing, and a path — fucking salvation.
Having turned her mind away from the flooding sensations of nostalgia and terrible heartache summoned by this enchanting smell, she clamored up and out of the water, onto the short and soft grass of this bizarre world — itself emanating the faintest hint of bioluminescence from within its emerald blades.
Realizing this smell would be on her now, already drying into her hair and skin — Colleen began to weep. Collapsing her body atop this faintly growing grass.
Lost in the pain of a love she’d only taste once. A small part of her recognized the sounds of approach from the nearby trailhead.
“I hope you didn’t swallow too much of that.”
Colleen tried to stand but her body protested — curling her down onto a knee — voiding her stomach of water onto the grass.
She looked up from this most wretched place of psychic and physical pain, to see quite possibly the most gorgeous human being she’d ever laid eyes on; adorned in a knight’s shining armor, highlighted by strokes of bold blue upholstery shown through. Androgynous, beautiful, utterly stunning.
With the wryest hint of smile on their face, they looked down upon Coleen and said, “That’s probably for the best.”
