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joan_of_barkSometimes life stretches across years, decades, centuries; a seed grows into a sapling, cells dividing in the cambium as it builds rings and rings and rings, until there stands a giant that towers over a city square. An apartment goes abandoned, a careless human knocks over some trays and lets the moisture seep in, and makes a home for millions of microscopic organisms who settle in the walls. Connected to each other by delicate threads that stretch for miles and miles and miles...
Sometimes life happens in an instant. A pair of feet beat a hasty retreat, a mad beast of flesh and fungus snaps its jaws, and instinct kicks in: you grab it, and you pull, and you fall.
And there they are, those delicate little threads. Reaching for you. And suddenly--
She burst from the wall like an absurdist's rendition of childbirth, the mold giving way to human tissue and chlorophyll blood. Like called to like; acremonium and cordyceps intertwined, then let go, allowing her to pass. She hit cold floor, barely bruising her palms, not noticing. Her lungs burned too fiercely for it. An ugly cough forced fungal mass to the back of her throat-- it abated a moment later.
She laid there, for a moment. Just breathing. Had Janet escaped? ...
She turned over, and stared at the black haze on the wall. A pile of fungal-flesh remains lay scattered before it. The last of the monster. Of. Whatever. That had been.
She's safe.
With effort, Pam clambered to her feet, her hand gripping hold of what looked like an industrial-grade planter as she hoisted herself up. "Okay," she wheezed. "Okay. That worked." After another moment to catch her breath, she staggered to the window, and peered out at the townscape outside. "Definitely not in Seattle anymore..."
[[ expecting one, but open after if anyone's going to stumble past the storefront in the evening ]]
Sometimes life happens in an instant. A pair of feet beat a hasty retreat, a mad beast of flesh and fungus snaps its jaws, and instinct kicks in: you grab it, and you pull, and you fall.
And there they are, those delicate little threads. Reaching for you. And suddenly--
She burst from the wall like an absurdist's rendition of childbirth, the mold giving way to human tissue and chlorophyll blood. Like called to like; acremonium and cordyceps intertwined, then let go, allowing her to pass. She hit cold floor, barely bruising her palms, not noticing. Her lungs burned too fiercely for it. An ugly cough forced fungal mass to the back of her throat-- it abated a moment later.
She laid there, for a moment. Just breathing. Had Janet escaped? ...
She turned over, and stared at the black haze on the wall. A pile of fungal-flesh remains lay scattered before it. The last of the monster. Of. Whatever. That had been.
She's safe.
With effort, Pam clambered to her feet, her hand gripping hold of what looked like an industrial-grade planter as she hoisted herself up. "Okay," she wheezed. "Okay. That worked." After another moment to catch her breath, she staggered to the window, and peered out at the townscape outside. "Definitely not in Seattle anymore..."
[[ expecting one, but open after if anyone's going to stumble past the storefront in the evening ]]
