To Grow into Something More

Eric awoke with a violent fit of coughs. His lungs squeezed painfully as his throat spasmed, forcing the yellowish phlegm past his lips. It landed in a web glob on his hand. Looking down at it, Eric could see the black specks dotting the thick mass. He took his thumb and rubbed the phlegm between his fingers. The specks rolled like small, dark marbles across his glove. He grunted noncommittally and wiped his hand on his pants. ‘The first sign,’ he thought.

His hands started to tremble by his sides. Eric curled his fingers into his palm in a poor attempt to generate some warmth in them. ‘Just from the cold,’ he told himself. It had been such a wet winter. The old houseboat rocked gently back and forth, almost lulling Eric back to sleep. He huddled on the floor a little longer, pulling his jacket tighter around himself. It once resembled a bright blue puffer jacket. Now it was dull and dirty, and building in odd places. Any spare piece of fabric Eric found he wrapped it around the jacket to build layers around his body. He often tore pages from books and newspapers to stuff between the fabric layers to build insulation. None of it mattered though. He hadn’t felt warm in weeks now after the cold set in.

Eric’s gnawing hunger caused a wave of nausea to roll over him. His stomach heaved although there was nothing inside of him to come up. Eric scuttled forward, staggering to his feet. The rocking of the boat was becoming too much for him now. He needed to stand on firm ground. Regain his bearings, and then he could move on. He stumbled half blind through the kitchen, knocking pots and pans to the floor as he went. Eric tripped in holes of broken wood from where he had begun to hack at the floor for burning material.
Stepping onto the deck, the morning air was cold and sharp. It burned Eric’s sinuses as he took in greedy breaths. It was as if he’d never breathed fresh air before. ‘Food. “I just need some food,’ he thought. Eric glanced back into the darkness of the houseboat, wanting nothing more than to crawl on his hands and knees to the wooden stove inside and burn whatever he had left for warmth. There was nothing but empty cans and empty pictures frame inside a shell where a once happy family lived. There was nothing more for him here. He would need to go back on land to survive. Something he hadn’t been able to do since he lost Rose.

‘My poor Rose,’ Eric thought, his heart squeezing painfully inside his chest.
‘It’s all your fault.’

Eric shook his head to dislodge her from his thoughts. Finding food was the most important thing right now. He guided the boat close to the shore. Scanning the tree line, Eric looked for potential threats. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear anything. No signs of any animals or any others. There was only the gentle bubbling of the river and his own ragged breaths. Eric took a rope and tied the houseboat to a fallen tree. It took him a total of five attempts to do it successfully as his fingers were numb and nearly useless.
The trees were bare and shining with ice. It made the trees shine gold and iridescent in the low, morning sun. His bones ached already from the cold. An achy, swollenness seemed to engulf his entire being now-a-days. The ice crusted snow crunched loudly beneath his worn boots. Eric wide eyes scanned his surroundings constantly. His body tense and slow as he marched forward. It took more energy than he wanted to admit lifting his legs. His head felt full of cotton. His mouth was dry and his lips cracked and bled.
I should take a nap.

Eric’s eyes rolled back unwillingly as he fought a deep seeded weariness. Still his body wobbled forward on fawnlike legs. His mind swam darkly to Rose’s own jerky, erratic movements as the cold ravaged her. A cutting burst of wind cut through his body, rattling the trees around him. Eric’s body dropped instinctively to the ground as he listened to any birds that may have taken off. Only the branches echoed in a twinkling windchime around him, but he swore he could hear an alarmed squawk.

Since the cold started to spread, animals have been a known carrier of the disease. It took a long time for people to notice eating any kind of meat meant certain death. Too long. Half the population dropped at once, succumbing to the cold. Then the others started attacking the closest living thing to them. There went another third of the world. Once people realized, they started killing any animal they could get their hands on. Fear drove massacres and hunts to try to control the disease. It only made those left sicker. Those who were smart used the animal’s own survival instincts to protect themselves. Even though animals were carriers for the disease, they never died from the cold. In fact, the animals could sense the disease festering deep inside. They would go ballistic on any other that got close, trying their best to fight back or get away or be eaten. Birds were the most popular since they are easy to handle cause you could keep them caged and clip their wings to keep them from escaping.

Eric had killed a few caged birds to acquire the houseboat. A small gaggle of five children were playing tag along the river’s edge. It had been spring then. Their small bodies weaved and bobbed in and out of bushes as they chased each other. They were distracting themselves as they waited on someone to return from the looks of it. There were two bird cages set up around the houseboat as a makeshift alarm. The birds would react if others appeared ridden with the cold, not if a middle-aged man approached. Eric was looking to get off land as quickly as possible. The other’s number grew daily. Water was the only place he could think that could offer guaranteed isolation without access to a bunker. Eric figured the children’s parents would be back soon as the oldest couldn’t be more than ten years old. They’ll come back soon, he told himself even if the sounds of children’s laughter turned to screaming as the others ravaged their small bodies like starving dogs. Forward. He just needed to keep moving forward. Eric rose to his feet as he heard no more commotion in the trees around him. The only sound he heard was his own labored breathing with every aching step he took forward.

He’d found Rose swaddled on the single bed in a square of pillows. Each one deliberately placed to keep her tiny body from rolling over as she couldn’t yet support herself. He had stared dumbly at her when he first saw her. Canned creamed corn dripped from his mouth onto her pink onesie. He tried to wipe it off but the fabric was already worn and stained so Eric didn’t feel to guilty about it. She was quiet and gurgling to herself, unaware of the stranger standing in front of her. Unaware of anything outside those four pillows supporting her. Eric couldn’t bring himself to drown her too. So, he fed her canned formula and creamed corn until she could handle more solids. Against all odds she grew like a weed and brought a happiness into Eric’s life he never experienced before. Eric did his best to teach her how to speak and spell. When Rose was old enough, she started to ask about the rest of their family.

“What other kids?” He asked, utterly stumped at what she could be referring to.

Rose frowned and cocked her head to the side as she pointed to the picture frames on the walls.

“The ones in the photos,” she said.

Eric felt a cold cement of dread settle inside his gut as he released what she meant. He sent her outside on the deck as he removed every photo he could find and burned them in the stove. Rose never asked about the other children again.

Eric stumbled once more, causing his thoughts to scatter as he was struggling to catch himself. He caught himself on a tree. The rough and uneven bark had torn at the gloves and layered paper wrapped around his hands. Blood welled up but Eric didn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel a lot anymore. The numbness slowly seeping throughout his body drained his muscles of strength. Eric suddenly tripped over a gnarled tree root slick with ice. His chin hit the ground with full force, causing him to bite through his own tongue. Coppery liquid filled his mouth, but he swallowed the blood in frenzied spasms. Eric’s body was fighting to intake any source of nourishment, of warmth. His body twitched slightly as his body began to grow heavy on the forest floor. I’ll just shut my eyes for a few minutes, he thought, unable to even lift his head anymore. His body grew heavier and lighter at once as if he was falling from a great height.

Unable to move his arms, Eric turned his head and began eating snow. It wasn’t food but it was something he could swallow. He couldn’t tell the difference from the outside of his cheek pressed into the snowy ground and the inside of his body cooling from the cold taking over. Eric lay on the ground for a long time, drifting in and out of consciousness. For a horrible moment he thought he heard the frantic scrambling of others in the woods only to release it was his own teeth chattering. God, this wasn’t good. The cold was close to taking over. Eric needed to move. Needed to get food and warmth so he could keep going down the river.
The roaring of blood in Eric’s ears morphed into a rushing riverbank. It’d been warm and sunny that day. Eric was lulled into a sense of ease by the sun-sweet smell of wildflowers and bird calls, despite his worries over Rose’s frightening progression. He even let her wonder down the river out of sight while he picked some ripening black berries. This task used to be her favorite. Rose would giggle and swipe berries from his bags, and Eric would chase her through the bushes. She could barely walk now, often stumbling like a newly born lamb. The recent good weather seemed to have warmed her bones up more, starving off the cold for a little while. She’ll be fine, Eric thought, focusing on gathering food for the two of them.

Then came the sudden yowling of a cat. Multiple cats screeching and hissing and fighting. Eric could hear as Rose’s laughter turn into high pitched shrieks of anger and pain. The bag of berries fell forgotten as Eric raced through the brush to find her, screaming her name as he went. Rose didn’t respond. Eric’s panic rose as the sounds of the struggle dissipated into small grunts. He burst through the trees and was greeted by a horrid site. Eric’s eyes darted around frantically, taking in the site of a grey mother cat and three kittens ripped to shreds. There was blood, fur, and guts scattered around the ground. A sweet, hot smell of death rising in the warm spring afternoon. Rose was hunched over on the ground, chewing on the remnants of a grey tabby kitten.

“R-Rose?” Eric asked, his lips trembling with every breath.

Rose’s head whipped around too fast. Eric gasped at he saw her clearly. Her eyes blood red and gums were grey. Her tongue had deepened into a black color that slithered out and flicked against his skin. He kept pushing and pushing and Rose kept getting up. Until Eric pushed too hard. Until Rose’s body slipped and bashed her temple against the river rocks. Her head cracked open like a watermelon against a driveway. Her blood did not pool around her body but slithered out like an oily, black snake. The fungus reaching out of her body and spreading in a mazelike structure into the sandy ground beneath Rose’s still twitching body. Eric was screaming, his throat raw and bloody as he gathered what was left of her in his arms. He sobbed uncontrollably into her chest, his clothes soaking with her blood and other fluids.

Eric stayed with her body a long time. After a few hours, the black mycelium that had been incubating in Rose’s body began fruiting along the ground. Small grey mushrooms with inky black spots arose around them. Musty brown spores exploded from the puffballs, but Eric hardly noticed as his chest heaved with sobs. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry,” tumbled out of his lips over and over again. Sorry for failing her, sorry for stealing her, sorry for everything.

“I’m sorry” he mumbled into the snow, a concrete heaviness settling over his body permanently.

Eric could no longer move but only watch impassively as small black tendrils of mycelium stretch out from the cuts on his face and hands. His eyes fluttered as his body grew heavier, the mycelium blanketed him into the icy forest floor. He didn’t feel cold anymore, just warm and weightless. Eric thought he’d fight more at the end. That he’d scream and cry and kick. He just felt tired now, a softer sense of ending rather than a cacophony of rushing endorphins and anxiety. Instead, Eric’s fingers stretched out, skimming across the ice and rubbery skin of the mushrooms. He hoped there would be something better after this. Maybe he would get to see Rose and hold her in his arms again. As Eric took his final breath, the mycelium beneath his weaved and crisscrossed into a myriad of patterns. It stretched far and grew over tree roots and ancient bones, carrying out his final wish — the last thought Eric had before slipping into oblivion – to grow into something more.

Credit: W Reed

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