Okay, Okay, I Shouldn't Have Eaten Those Mushrooms

The Land cruiser was really comfortable on the trip back into the city, he thinks he may have nodded off. He forgets how high the, what is essentially a, truck is off the ground, when he gets out at his place in Brunswick, and he slides out in an ungainly fashion. He’s sure he was grabbing on for safety handles as it all gave way below him.

That’s funny, he thinks. Is he unsteady on his feet?

Tim leans into the back of the car to get the mushrooms. “Will, maate? You ate from both bags.”

“No, I didn’t,” he says instinctively. What?

“Both bags are open,” says Tim sounding like mum.

“I couldn’t have.” Even he heard the quaver in his own voice.

It was as if Tim sniffed his admission in the air. “Maaate?”

"Okay, okay, I shouldn't have eaten those mushrooms," he says. He holds his stomach and wonders if he is turning green.

"Maate? Maate? You didn't eat the red cap ones, did ya?"

Red cap, gold cap, I ate them like I'd eat potato chips. "Dunno..."

"Oh maate..."

"I don't reckon..." What the hell do mushrooms do to you?

"You sure?"

"Nah, of course... I'm... I'm not sure." He was sure alright, he knew he'd eaten them, but he didn't want to look like a complete idiot, now did he.

"I told ya just to eat the ones from the first bag, the ones I'd picked..." Tim says. “And then only a few.”

A few? Now suddenly there is a number restriction? "Yeah, yeah, I listened to ya..."

"So, did ya?"

"Did I what?" He was having trouble keeping up by this point.

"Just eat them from the bag, eat the ones I picked?"

Don’t question me. "Yeah, yeah, I think so..." he didn’t, actually, remember eating any of the damn mushrooms, he just knew he had eaten them. One by one as he gazed out the window.

"You think so?" Tim’s voice squeaked ominously.

"Yeah, okay, I did. I did, okay." Why did his voice squeak?

"You don't wanna eat any of them red ones, or any of them gold ones, from the other bag, you really don't want to do that."

"Sweet." He didn’t look at the colour of them. WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT COLOUR?

There is silence for a minute.

That's all you are going to say? He thinks. Does he feel well? Is he beginning to feel sick? Is it psychosomatic? "Like, why?" he asks.

"Why what?"

"Like what will happen?"

"Oh maate, I couldn't say. Wouldn't like to say. Not really sure."

“Give it your best shot.” He was suddenly feeling desperate, and he didn’t entirely know why?

Tim makes sucking sounds.

"Don't say that." What the fuck does that mean? I don’t like the sound of that.

They hold each other’s gaze.

Tim’s mouth creases first. “So, I have one question for you.” Tim holds his hands out, flat in the air. “Then I’m done.”

“What is it?” You only have one question? This is my life we are talking about.

“Why were both bags open, when I got them from the middle of the back seat, next to where you were sitting?”

He’d done coke in Sydney with Mardi Gras queens after a long weekend of taking every other drug he could get his hands on. “You must have put them in the car that way.”

“I didn’t.”

“You must be mistaken.” He’d done MDMA and trips with drag queens in London until the sun came up.

“I’m not.”

He’d done MDA with drunk girls in Milan. “Ah… er…ah” was all he could manage. He was thinking about the time he got a lift across Milan with a willowy black woman, with bright red lipstick, in a bright red Fiat 500. Was everything suddenly looking red?

“The second bag was what we’d all picked, but I just hadn’t checked it for poison’s rooms.”

Silence.

“What if I did?” He holds his hands in the air, he’d suddenly exposed an uncomfortable truth about himself.

Tim sucks in breath. 

That sucking sound, the only other time he’d heard that was when, as a kid, his dad used to get bad news. He is sure that isn’t good in this situation. 

Tim looks into the second bag. “The ratio of poisonous is disturbingly high.” Tim sucks in breath again. “I should take you to get your stomach pumped.” His eyes blink fast. “It would be the kindest thing.”

“What!” Even he hears his own voice squeak.

“Did you eat…” asks Tim. His right hand does a kind of Sale of the Century’s model’s hand gesture to the bag he is holding in his other hand. “These?”

Ambulance. Emergency. ICU. All flash through his mind. “What?”

“What did you eat?”

“Just what you told me.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“Okay then,” says Tim. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“I’ve gotta go.”

He’s what? Oh… yeah… okay. Will suddenly closes the Landcruiser door with a jerk of his arm, as though suddenly he wasn’t in full control of his arm. He sees it close. He could tell he’d closed it too hard, as Tim’s mouth makes an 'O' shape and his eyes widen noticeably, but Will didn’t hear the door closing make any sound.

Tim guns the engine and selects 1st gear with a crunch of the gearstick before he accelerates away.

Will stands and watches the big truck disappear out of view. Then he stands there for a bit longer, gazing at the spot Tim disappeared around the corner.

Will’s eyes lids suddenly feel heavy, he’s not at all sure if he has both eyes open.

The front path comes up at him in the most peculiar way. The front door feels huge. The last thing he remembers is the hallway carpet coming up and smacking him in the face.

In the first few hours he thinks he is going to die. In the hours after that, he hopes he will die. Sometime after that, he remembers wondering if he has died.

He opens his eyes. Where was he? There was a flat plane seemingly extending out from his eyeballs to infinity. What the fuck was that? If only he could focus, he’d be able to tell. Why won’t his eyes focus? Why is his mouth in pain. He tries to lick his lips but no moisture comes. His lips feel like what he would imagine the parched landscape of the Nullarbor would taste. He works his sore tongue, which somehow feels too big for his mouth, like it was borrowed from a giant, or something unexplainable, in and out of his mouth and moisture does come. Painfully, he has to acknowledge. His eyeballs focus finally, to discover the flat plane extending out in front of him was his hallway floor. He is lying face down. He tries to sit up, but his back feels locked in position. 

“Ohhhh!” He instinctively knows the moan is coming from him, even if it feels like he has a ventriloquist dummy somewhere out of sight through which he is speaking. If he’d heard the words, just look at you, what state do you call this? You are a disgrace. He wouldn’t have been surprised.

Slowly he starts to work his joints. First his spine, which feels like it is fused together. As it comes good, he is able to slide around onto his arse and sit up.

Everything hurts. Now, when he hears people say ‘everything hurts’ he’ll have some reference point for the sympathy he might give. 

He doesn’t feel good. He doesn’t know how he feels, but it isn’t good. 

Somewhere in the recess of his brain he thinks he feels pleased. He didn't die, after all.

He gets to his feet with difficulty. He needs some water to restore moisture to his throat, as even though moisture has returned to his mouth, there is, really, barely enough present to facilitate swallowing and he is continually suffering a series of mini gagging events due to the lack of fluid in his throat.

He pulls his phone from his pocket as he makes his way hesitantly to the kitchen, there are quite a few missed calls. It is 9.40am.

He gets a glass of water at the sink, it has a very strange effect on his throat as the liquid goes down, like the reintroduction to his system of an unfamiliar element of life. As he is trying to swallow the water, he again glances at his phone to see the date of the Tue 6th.

He straightens up with a groan that goes from the back of his head to the tips of his toes and focusses on the sky beyond the kitchen window as though he is searching for something. He looks back at his phone. 

They went mushroom picking on Saturday.