Scorched Flesh

by Ian Woodhead

  The only drawback was because the rest of the clientele were part of the grey-haired brigade, it did kinda dampen our chances of scoring. The majority of kids our age hit the three nightclubs over the weekend. Neither of us was into that scene. The music sucked, and their overpriced beer tasted like warm piss.

  In fact, going by the record of our previous Friday nights, I bet the highlight of our evening would have been laughing like idiots at the sight of one of us falling against the Gents door, or dropping a slice of pizza in the gutter.

  Gazing at Mark’s reflection in the window, you would have though that we’d robbed a bank in our drunken stupor, or broken into the sporting goods shop over the road, and gone on a killing spree. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I know I said that my mind was blank. It doesn’t mean that I can’t fill in at least one of the gaps in your memory.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I heard hope in his voice. “Well, my dad took great pleasure in telling me that you were dancing around our living room at three in the morning whilst singing about a giant mushroom.”

  My best mate looked like he’d just grabbed hold of a power line with both hands.

  “Oh thank you! You’re the best friend anyone could ever have!” he gasped. You’ve just jump-started my brain, and filled in the missing piece. Come on.” After saying his piece, Mark spun on his heals and sped off along the high street, almost knocking down an old woman coming the other way.

  I raced after him, offering the poor dear an apologetic smile as I passed her, hoping to Christ that the pensioner didn’t know my mum. “For crying out loud, Mark, will you slow down?” I shouted. That pint of ale had already found its way into my guts. I could feel the liquid churning up my breakfast. I know that I was going to pay for this unexpected bout of violent exercise later on today. “Will you please slow down Mark? I’m getting a bloody stitch here.”

  He skidded to a stop by the corner of the street, he leaned against the side of the town’s main post office, and waited until I’d caught up with him before setting off again. This time, he only ran across the road, and stopped beside the back of a light blue Ford Focus.

  There was no mistaking the sight of Mark’s pride and joy. My blood ran cold at the thought of him driving here in his state. “Seriously? Since when did you bring Belinda to one of our weekly get-togethers?”

  Okay, so the man has named his car. It’s not that unusual; I know of a few lads who treat their cars better than their wives or girlfriends, and they might not go the full hog and give them a girl’s name, but it’s not as weird as it sounds. What is way odd is that he’s named his phone and his tablet as well.

  It doesn’t make the lad a certifiable crazy person, just because he’s called his phone Jessica. It’s not like he’s gone and given his sock collection girl’s names as well—at least, not that I know of.

  You’ll just have to take my word for it, Mark is as sound as a pound on a normal day. I watched him mutter and swear as he fumbled with the door handle, and right at that moment, I so wished that the normal Mark would jump back into that body, because right now this Mark was acting like one of the vagrants that pounded the pavement every Friday night, asking random folk for money.

  Traveller Stu was about the same age as my dad, but he looked thirty years older. Whenever he got wrecked on cheap supermarket cider, he’d spend his day marching up and down the middle of the high street while shouting at the buses. I’m surprised that he hadn’t been knocked over by now.

  “There we go!” he shouted triumphantly as he finally managed to get the rear door open. He reached inside, and gently lifted out a small circular object about the size of a football.

  This lit a flame under my curiosity, mainly because I had no idea what he had there. Mark had wrapped it in a stripy green bath towel. As he began to unwrap it, I decided there and then that if it did turn out to be a football after all of this palaver, I’d boot him so hard that Mark would find his nut sack in his mouth. That would show him for giving me this annoying gut ache.

  “I found this thing lying at the foot of my bed when I woke up this morning,” he said as he unwrapped the final layer.

  Now I knew why Mark was so anxious when I mentioned the word ‘mushroom’. I saw the similarity straight away. The object held in both of Mark’s arms did resemble a giant puffball mushroom. I leaned closer, and immediately realised that had been a stupid idea. The stench coming from it almost knocked me on my arse. I rubbed my nose, still feeling my nostril hairs burning, and decided to stay at a safe distance. It didn’t smell like a mushroom, that’s for damn sure. The powerful aroma reminded me of a cross between a very strong cheese and anti-freeze.

  “Oh bugger. Yeah, maybe I should have warned you beforehand. It’s not too keen on you shoving your face up too close.” He coughed, “You’ve already discovered the result.” I will admit that I did breathe a silent sigh of relief that Mark hadn’t given this abomination a girl’s name as well. As for what it was, well, it stumped me. I had no idea what this vile object could be. It sure as shit wasn’t a mushroom, though, that much was abundantly clear.

  A thin layer of translucent slime coated the visible surface. Although I wasn’t totally sure if it was slime, as I saw none of the stuff on the inside of the towel. Maybe a clear varnish would have been a more accurate description. Thousands of tiny nodules dotted the surface, making the object look a little like a huge golf ball. “And you thought that this could be a mushroom?”

  Mark sighed, loudly. “Well yeah. In fact, I still do. I mean, you only have to look at it, what else could it be?”

  “Come on, just look at it. It’s green for crying out loud.”

  “What, and you’re suddenly the world’s expert in mushrooms?”

  I took my eyes off the thing and gazed at Mark, and it shocked me to see that the redness around his pupils hadn’t faded. In fact, it looked even worse. “Okay, tell me what you really remember,” I said. “And don’t give me that ‘I can’t remember bullshit’ because I’m not buying it. You’ve always been a terrible liar, Mark, and while you’re at it, tell me why the fuck you dragged me out of the pub after only one pint? I mean, just where were you thinking of taking me?”

  He stared at me in silence for a couple of moments before he gently laid the multi-coloured ball back on the rear car-seat. I wish he had covered it up as well. I found it even creepier than the fat weirdo who owned the model shop.

  “You were in a right pissy mood last night, Travis. It just got worse, the more pints you poured down your throat.”

  I still have no recollection of our night out, but I do remember the events of yesterday with perfect clarity, and I can’t recall anything that could have put me a foul mood. Just like Mark, I have a job that requires protective clothing. Unlike him, I have the urge to change as soon as my shift ends. I wouldn’t dream of walking around in my work clothes, and considering I’m employed by a poultry processing company, that’s probably for the best.

  I’m part of a long line of fellow drones. I won’t elaborate on what my actual job entails. The procedure of turning living chickens into microwave dinners and breaded nuggets is pretty fucking gross. Thankfully, the money isn’t too bad though, believe it or not.

  I shook my head. “I can’t remember why, Mark.”

  “No, and you wouldn’t tell me last night, either. Needless to say, our night wasn’t one of our better ones.”

  He turned to look at the globe, and his face took on the look of a proud dad seeing his daughter receive a medal. This sudden urge to slam my foot into that thing took hold, and refused to leave me.

  “We took the scenic route when we left the pub. That was your idea by the way. You had me trailing through the spare ground behind the old school; apparently you wanted to see what she meant.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why are you asking me that, Travis? You’re the one who said it. I was too drunk and annoyed to give a shit. All I wanted was to r
am a kebab down my neck and collapse on my bed.”

  What I found far more disturbing than his account of our journey was that, deep down, I somehow knew that he wasn’t lying to me. I really had spoken those words, and yet I still had no idea to their meaning. I rested my hands on the roof of his car. “Wait a minute, just backtrack here. Did I say anything at all whilst in the pub?” It was the ‘she’ bit that had thrown me. The love of my life, Justine Thorn, was out of the country on holiday in the South of France with her parents and younger sister. According to her last email, she missed having me next to her, and so wanted to do rude things with my below stairs equipment

  He chuckled. “Oh God, you really don’t remember a damn thing from last night, do you.”

  I shook my head, suddenly wondering if I really wanted to know.

  Mark leaned back beside me, and folded his arms. “After about half an hour of sitting down, staring at your miserable face, I kinda got bored of asking you what the problem was, and focussed on trying to keep up with your drinking speed. Believe me, Travis, that was a lot harder than it sounds, you were really putting them away.” He sighed loudly. “At the time, it seemed like the best plan.” Mark glanced at me. “Are you sure you want to hear the rest of this?

  “Don’t stop now, for God’s sake.”

  “We found this little guy under a small tree, close to where that buggered up old car is.”

  I knew the place. That rusted hulk of metal had lain on the spare ground for over a decade now. I remember playing on the thing when I was a kid. The only reason why it’s still there was because the council can’t get to it. I’m guessing that they’re waiting for it to rust itself to death.

  I still have no recollection of walking through the waste ground, and I certainly don’t remember going anywhere near that car.

  “There were hundreds of the little buggers, all growing out of the ground. Seriously, you couldn’t see the normal weeds.”

  “Hundreds? Give over,” I interrupted. “How could there be that many? Just how much beer did you have. Look at the size of your new friend, Mark. The spare ground isn’t that sodding big.”

  Mark walked past me, opened the back, and grabbed the object. He lifted it out of the car. “This is more than just beer related memory loss, Travis. It’s only this size because you’re the one who picked the bloody thing in the first place.”

  The colour in Mark’s face now resembled the soft hue of a hard boiled egg.

  “I’m telling you, man. You didn’t half shit me up. As soon as you picked it up, you hit the deck. To be honest, at first I thought you were just arsing about. All that changed when I saw the mushroom growing, inflating like a balloon or something. I’m not sure what I thought. You only started to show signs of life when I used my foot to nudge the damn thing out of your hand.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop staring at the object held in his hands. That impulse to knock it to the floor and stamp on the bloody thing gripped me, and wouldn’t leave. “Then what the fuck possessed you to take it home with you?”

  Mark visibly shook; I honestly believed that the lad was about to burst into tears.

  “I don’t bloody know why!” he gasped. “It’s as if…Well, it’s like I had no other choice. I mean…”

  My paralysis broke. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I snapped my hand forward, intending to push the thing out of his hands. As soon as the tips of my fingers touched it, they pushed through the outer layer. It felt as though I’d just plunged my hand into a bucket full of thick, warm vomit. I yelled out in shock and disgust when something in there brushed past my fingers. I did the only thing I could. My fingers wrapped around it, and I squeezed them tight, grinning in triumph as the slippery thing stopped moving.

  The globe detonated, covering both of us in a thick layer of gelatinous, crimson fluid. I cried out as some of the foul stuff found its way into my mouth. I jumped to the side, and my feet slipped out from under me.

  Both arms flayed out, to stop me from cracking my head on the tarmac, and in my last moment of consciousness, I saw a stream of rapid movement as a dozen somethings resembling black, slimy spiders dart between the wheels of Mark’s car.

  2: How strange could one day get?

  Son, I guess this must be so difficult for you to comprehend. Of course it is, that’s only natural. You haven’t really heard of how we used to live our lives, if ‘living’ is the relevant word. You’d probably see it as wasting what we had been blessed with. You’d be right as well. We really did spend our lives obsessing over such trivial rubbish.

  We lived the life of pampered pets, and that’s why I couldn’t see the grave danger we were all in. I know you think you would have acted differently, thinking back—I know I would have. Just as your thinking is based on your experience, mine is tainted with hindsight.

  Pampered pets is a good analogy. We really did spend most of our lives living in a cotton wool coated fantasy; both real and digital. None of us truly believed that we were in any danger. So, when the shit did hit the fan, we all ran about like a bunch of headless fucking chickens. Please don’t blame your elders for how we acted when they came here. There could have been no other outcome.

  ***

  For the second time that day, I found myself snapping open my eyes, and yet again, that bastard sun almost blinded me. Thankfully, a shadow passed between me and that terrible orb before it could take the opportunity to finish what it started and burn out my eyes.

  “Christ, man. Will you stop doing that?” Mark got to his feet, and held out his hand. “You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

  He looked terrified. It wasn’t just bravado here, Mark really was scared. He wasn’t the only one either. I pushed aside the memory of that exploding mushroom thing and what emerged from it. I wasn’t ready for that just yet. I gave Mark a tentative smile, and looked at his offered hand, wondering just how he’d react if he knew the real reason for my behaviour last night.

  I was relieved to discover that the redness was completely gone from his eyes, I also found, to my surprise, that I could recall with totally clarity the events from yesterday. In retrospect, I wished those thoughts had stayed hidden.

  The vivid image of seeing all those mushroom-like globes all clustered along the edge of the field smacked me in the face. Mark had been spot on about them being way smaller. From where we stood, it looked very much like a wide path of sickly coloured golf balls stretching from one end of the field to the other.

  Stumbling across this perplexing sight had scraped away some of the alcohol smog that I’d been trying so hard throughout this shitty night to thicken up. I stood there, my hands deep inside my pockets, listening with half an ear as Mark finally changed the subject of kebabs to the things before the pair of us. After Mark had reassured me that they really were mushrooms, and he knew this for a fact because he’d seen them in one of his dad’s books, my mind flicked back to my one topic that had dominated my thoughts all day.

  Unlike my parents, Mark’s folks didn’t stop at the one perfect baby. He also has the one sister, Anna, who’s one year younger than us. She and I have always being mates, and apart from the inevitable pubescent exploring, we’ve kept our relationship on a purely platonic level. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s not like she’s ugly with a personality to match. Anna, just like her brother, has the good looks, and she’s a blast to hang with. I’ve seen her more as the sister I never had, I suppose. We’re also both firmly attached to respective partners.

  I think that you’ve already worked out to where this train wreck is heading. Last Saturday afternoon, Mark had to forgo the usual beer recovery tradition at the Black swan. His parents had commandeered Belinda and his services. They’d asked him to drive into Birmingham to partake in a spot of shopping before they flew out on holiday. Although Mark hadn’t been too impressed with the notion of being their dogsbody chauffer for the full day, the poor lad wasn’t in any position to refuse their request. His dad was still paying for t
he monthly instalments on Mark’s car.

  It was me who took the news badly. How would I cope with losing the company of my best mate for the day? It felt as though somebody had ripped off my left arm. Mark’s sister then suggested that she could take his place. She had absolutely no interest in trailing around Birmingham with her parents.

  I had no objections; it certainly beat sitting in the house all day, cabbaging out on fast food and movies, which looked like my only other option.

  I could blame the generous amounts of alcohol that we’d both consumed throughout the afternoon, or the fact that we were obviously both lonely, or just put it down to total bloody stupidity. Needless to say, we both ended up in her parents’ bed for a couple of hours.

  The guilt over what we’d done only hit me the next day once the effects of too much beer had worn off. Right then, I vowed never to repeat what had happened the previous night, convincing myself that if we hadn’t been so drunk, the very thought of us sleeping together wouldn’t have even entered either of our minds. I’d even almost convinced myself when she appeared on my doorstep the next day.

  Anna flung her arms around my neck, the scent of her perfume caused my below stairs equipment to react in the predictable fashion, and then she whispered the words, ‘You have been my sexual fantasy since leaving school, Travis.’

  Both my parents were out, so I don’t think that I need to elaborate on what happened after she had gently pushed me back into the house, and kicked the door shut. After two more nights of this, she calmly informed me early Saturday that it was over, we’ve had our fun, and it was time to forget about our little indiscretion, and to get back to our lives. She’d been kind enough to drop this bombshell on me about ten minutes before I set off for work.

  I spent the whole day on automatic pilot, feeling like a wrung out dishcloth, not believing that anyone could be so heartless, or that I could be so stupid and gullible,