I apologise for how incoherent this might be. Ever since it started, everything seems very… dream-like, I would say. My memories especially. Things pass in and out, and I don’t really question them anymore.
It started with that fox.
I live out in the country, so a fox is definitely not a new sight for me, especially considering that my large backyard is bordered on all sides with thick woods, and the deer and rabbits are generally kind enough to “mow the lawn”, so predators aren’t very far-off either. It was around 1 PM, and I was out grilling myself a nice burger. Maybe that’s what attracted the fox, I don’t know.
In any case, I had just opened my second beer, when I saw the fox look at me through the tree line. It was far away, so I couldn’t make out any details, but I could feel it’s gaze on me. Or the steaks, as I thought. I didn’t pay it much attention. Almost every time I’ve seen a fox on or near my property, it ran off soon after. But this time, even after I made eye-contact, it stayed. This still didn’t worry me, of course. I just figured it’s a particularly brave fox, though I mentally prepared for the case of it having rabies. A fox isn’t exactly big, but their teeth can still cut through flesh well-enough. Which is why, when it slowly approached, I did start to get suspicious. And when it was only a few more meters away from me, I started to get afraid, but not because of rabies.
When the fox had gotten that close to me, I could see that it was clearly very diseased. Patches of fur were missing, and the skin underneath was discoloured in a dark yellow. But what was more disturbing, was the fungus. From most of the joints of the animal, a fungus was growing out. This wasn’t a small infection that could itch a bit. Long, thin mushrooms were growing out of it, and it was inching toward me. I decided a burger wasn’t worth contracting whatever that fox had, so I took it off the grill and threw it on the ground toward the fox, as I started to walk backwards, never breaking eye contact.
There was something about those eyes. They were completely glassy and pale, but I could tell that it was staring right back at me. I had just reached the glass door to my backyard, when the fox stopped moving toward me, simply staring. I struggled to open the door, not wanting to look away from the animal. Realising that it couldn’t possibly clear the distance between us in the half-second it would take for me to open the door, I quickly glanced at the handle and opened the door. Turning my head back at the animal that I was trying to get away from, I stopped.
The foxes body was now turned away from me and toward the forest, but it had turned its head to look back at me, and it was standing still. I looked at its eyes, those glassy, dead eyes. And something overcame me. I understood what the pose meant, it wanted me to follow it somewhere. And whatever was in those eyes, it simply… hypnotised me. There is no other way of saying it. I had just enough sense left in me to close the door again, before I simply started walking toward it. And the fox led on.
Reaching the forests edge, I was beginning to wonder how I hadn’t seen them before. There were a lot of animals around, and all kinds of animals too. I saw a few deer, a badger, a sounder of wild boar, even an otter couple. They all seemed calm, though they did keep their distance from each other, and I wasn’t keen on getting closer to the boar and its off-spring either. I was aware of the fact that I had gotten hypnotised, but it felt like I could still think somewhat clearly. Well, except for the fact that I wasn’t freaking out nearly as much as I should have in my situation. The fox stood in the middle of us, and briefly looked around at the group. Then it started walking deeper into the forest again.
I don’t know at what point I noticed that we were walking up-hill, as I was mostly focused on the animals around me, similarly fixated on the fox and the other animals. I just realised, at some point, that I was getting very exhausted, and noticed that the otters were starting to struggle with the hike. We couldn’t have been walking for a long time, as the sun was still shining brightly through the treetops when we had reached our destination. I knew immediately that it was the destination.
It was a large, old, dead oak, with heavy branches, that looked much sturdier than they should for the state of the tree. It stood on the hillside, not exactly on top of the hill. I wondered whether the other trees around us looked similar, but could not bring myself to look away from the fox. And the fox had started to climb the tree.
We all came closer, standing around the base of the tree, stepping over the roots that were sticking out of the ground. The branches at the base were hanging low, so it wasn’t hard for the fox to get on them. But the branches got thinner and started giving way to twigs the further it got. Its paws, as small as they were, were struggling to get a good hold on the thinning branches beneath, and the mushrooms on its body were only making it harder. We all looked up, transfixed on the movements of our guide. Maybe we were all wondering what it was doing, like I was. At some point, after having to use its mouth to climb, it stopped the ascend. It put its front paws on the trunk of the tree, and used them to stand up on its hind-legs.
It looked at us, one last time, the group it had gathered. And then, the fox bloomed.
The mushrooms on its joints shot out and grew toward the sky, opening their caps in a movement that couldn’t have lasted more than half a second, and the air around the fox gave way to a dark, yellow mist. The foxes gaze, though completely unmoving now, still had us focused as the mist descended around us. But when the spores hit our lungs, whatever had hypnotised us, was broken. We all started coughing immediately, the air in our lungs now feeling unclean and dirty, as if we had inhaled a cloud of dust. I couldn’t even start to think about my situation, when the group of animals started to panic. The deer all broke off into different directions, and I was just about able to throw myself out of the way of the biggest of the wild boar, before it could throw me down the hill. I laid face-down in the grass until I could no longer hear anything. And then it occurred to me, that I could no longer hear anything. Throughout the woods, there wasn’t a single sound of a bird, or even the buzzing of insects. Looking at the ground around me, I couldn’t make out any movement from spiders or ants that was normal for the forest around me. I shakily got to my feet and looked back at the tree.
The fox was clearly dead now, and the mushrooms seemed like they weren’t growing higher either. My thought about the other trees re-entered my mind, and I looked around. By that point, my shock about all the strange occurrences was so deep, that I thought nothing could really faze me anymore. All the trees on the hill were just as dead as the one the fox had chosen, but that wasn’t the weirdest part. On the other trees were many other animals, in stages of decay. Whatever fungus had taken hold of the fox was sprouting out of the other bodies. Some mushrooms were hanging limp from the skeleton of what I figured was a deer, and some were sprouting, almost seeming happy, out of a decaying eagle, as a feather was falling from it. Despite the shock, this was enough to break me out of my trance. I sprinted down the hill, miraculously not tripping over the many dead branches on the hill. I could still remember the path home, which was good, as the animal tracks would not have helped in the slightest. Even in my sprint, I could tell that the entire ground was trampled with all kinds of tracks. Including some human ones. I could not tell whether they were mine.
When I finally broke through the tree-line into my backyard, I broke down. I had always had a fondness for animals, and seeing them used by that fungus, reduced to basically fertiliser, I’m not ashamed to say that I sobbed. A few minutes later, I shakily got back up and went back inside. The hamburger I had thrown toward the fox was now crawling with ants, but I didn’t have the energy to throw it away just now. The way from the backdoor to my bed felt like miles with my exhaustion, emotional and physical, and when I reached it, I fell into it. And I immediately passed out. I don’t remember my dream, and I think that’s for the best.
When I woke up, I felt groggier than I had ever felt in my life. I looked at the clock, and it had been around 24 hours, and the nausea set in quickly. I ran to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet. I felt dirty. Contaminated, even. I got undressed and stepped into my shower. Looking back at my clothes, I felt like I should burn them, as some spots were discoloured with that same dark shade of yellow that I had breathed in the day before. Looking myself up and down, I could not make out any of that, however. As the bathroom filled with the warm water vapour, I took a deep breath and it felt cleansing.
Until I started to cough, my body rejecting the water. In retrospect, that was probably the first sign, or symptom if you want. But I finished the shower and got into some new clothes. I sat down at my computer and started to work. One of the reasons I had bought this house, was that it simply was cheap, being ancient and way too far away from any city that could drive the prices up, but also that my job afforded me the luxury of working from home. I’m the head of accounting at a pretty large tech firm, so my salary is pretty solid, and I could keep paying off the house even after my divorce.
I started approving spreadsheets, or answering e-mails, or maybe I just pretended to be working. At some point however, while typing, my wrist started to itch. I went to scratch it absent-mindedly, and recoiled as soon as I had touched the spot. It was damp and soft, like raw meat. I jumped up and looked at it. It spread horizontally across my wrist, the yellow infection. And it itched. I could barely fight the urge to scratch it, it was maddening. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the nearest sharp object I could find, a tooth pick, and used it to scratch my wrist. I used this temporary relief to think. I understood now, that I really was infected, what I had previously decided to just block out, to hope for the best. Should I call an ambulance?, I thought, thinking about how that would go. They might have something, they might even know what it is. But something told me, no. They didn’t. No one who hadn’t experienced it, no one who hadn’t looked into the eyes of that fox could understand or help me.
Images of the previous day flashed through my mind, no matter how hard I tried to block them out. The foxes eyes. The eagles falling feather. The panic of the animals around me, as we all breathed in that yellow mist. Despite what you might think, I’m not stupid. I understood what had happened by now. What that mushroom did to the fox. It used it to climb up as far as it could, so the spores could spread as far as they could. And it had gathered the next few victims, so the cycle could repeat over and over again. I went over to my phone, to call an ambulance. Even though I knew they couldn’t help me, I needed to take the chance, to pray that they could do something, anything. I was going to make something up, to say that I had trouble breathing so that they could examine my lungs and find the fungus, that I knew was inevitably there. I dialled the number, and my other wrist started to itch. By the time I could hold my finger above the call button, it was agony, and I simply dropped the phone to scratch it. And when my phone was gone, the itch lessened. It didn’t stop, but I no longer wanted to amputate my hand if it didn’t stop immediately. A thought crossed my mind. Did the fungus do this on purpose? Did it consciously stop me from calling help? No, obviously a fungus doesn’t think, much less something that complex. A feeling came over me, that didn’t come from me.
One of the symptoms of a heart attack can be a literal “sense of impending doom”, and that is what it gave me too. It wanted to let me know that I was helpless to stop it, that I would die, that it would claim me. I thought about just getting it over with, and I got so far as to put the knife to my throat, even drawing blood. But it didn’t let me get any further than that. I asked it, why it had chosen me. There was no answer, but I knew. The reason why this was happening, why there was now, as I am typing this, mushrooms budding out of my wrists, was simply that I lived close-by. That I just happened to be there.
I don’t think I have a lot more time. My other joints have followed suit. I tried to barricade myself in at one point, to make sure I couldn’t get out once it had completely taken over my body and replaced thoughts with a simple desire to spread the infection. It didn’t let me, of course. I don’t know why it let me write all of this down. Maybe it doesn’t have a concept of warning others despite being doomed, only for saving oneself. I don’t even know if a warning has a point, but I hope so. I hope that I could’ve broken the trance that fox put me in, if I had struggled a bit harder against it, and my curiosity led to this. But it doesn’t matter anymore, not to me anyway. My jaw is starting to itch, so it has almost reached my brain. I do hope, that this might be my last good deed. But probably not.