The fear is maddening. Even though it is the middle of a sunny day, spindly arms of mind-numbing terror seek to cover my mind in a dark veil. I want to run. Run away as fast as possible from this place, I feel my death is all but written if I dare to stay here any moment longer. Pack my backpack with whatever I can get my hands on, grab Jim, fill the container with a bit of Cure, and…

The Cure. There is not much. I have been rationing it sparingly since the days I have been reeling with madness but it is generating oh so slowly. And there, beyond this little place I already know, is the great unknown. There so many possible dangers, I feel that no amount of the Cure could possibly keep me alive. Not without a stable supply.

I am frozen by indecision. The gnawing horror and earnest wish to flee this place at once is battling with my feeble reasoning. Swift end or lengthy agony?

I don’t know when was the last time I cried, but now, thick tears are rolling down my cheeks. I’m tired. So, so tired. I am constantly besieged on all fronts as I try to survive here. Without any breaks, each day, my life is threatened. I scramble, plan for and dodge any possible source of peril. But I’m reaching a breaking point.

I don’t want to die.

I want to live. I want to be strong with my back straight and head held high. I want to be happy.

I want to live a life I can be proud of.

My shaking hand grabs a discarded club and I take a step. Then another one. Each footfall I make towards the forest is an effort. I do not want to be here. The forest is silent, as always. I slowly and carefully scout the path to the stream and find nothing of note. Next, come sides of the path and it seems that the section that goes closer to the mountain doesn’t carry any danger. I did not go too far, a hundred meters maybe? It’s time to return to the path and check the other side with that eerie shroom. I cross it and keep low to the floor and hear the creak of straining handle as I’m crushing it with my sweaty hands.

I’m psyching myself up forcefully now. I don’t accept death. I will fight and if I do meet my end I will not be some easy mea…

I stop and keep still, like a biblical person who got turned into a pillar of salt. I have met fear made physical. It changed. I no longer dare to call it a shroom. It changed, grew, and became an Avatar of Fear. Its stem and cap, are much bigger now and all are covered by lustrous, pale scales. Maddening colors flash from cracks of its unassailable carapace. Several ghost-like curtains sway gently, proclaiming disdain for all who would dare to approach. And its mycelium, so much thicker and spread than before, are like skeletal fingers of death. Searching...for me. I cannot fight it, there is no hope…

I want to live!

I take a shaky step back and turn, running like a hare besieged by a wolf. I reach the cave in a flash and fall on my hands as I trip on Jim’s cage. Pain blossoms and the choking smell of burning flesh enter my nose. I pull back my hands from the campfire and look with wild amazement at my cracking, blackened flesh and forming blisters. A whisper, full of spite and hatred surfaces above the sea of despair.

Burn it. Burn it with fire.

“Aaah. Aaa...Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!”, my shrill scream of fear, horror, and madness shake the cave.

I crawl like a worm towards the poll with Cure. Pain is forgotten. There is no more room in my mind for any other thought and sensation than the vision of fire. Small bamboo construction that I have been using as a prop for a cup is shattered and every single precious drop of Cure is licked clean from the stone. My vision is shaking.

I explode from the cave like a man possessed. My backpack gets stuffed with anything flammable I can get my bleeding hands on.

Grasses inside. Sticks outside. Burn it.

Skin is crumbling on my hands and my eyes bleed from pressure. The world becomes a sea of red.

More wood outside. More!

Ugly, barely functioning knots hold an ever-increasing number of branches. The backpack transforms into a grotesque body of wood. I grab a burning log from the campfire and stick it inside.

-&-

I scream and rave as I rush through the forest, towards the Fear. My club is striking trees as they pass me by. My other hand is holding and half dragging/carrying my disfigured backpack that is slowly becoming a ball of fire. Small smoky bits trail behind me as the contraption crumbles slowly. Mad with fear and defiance I enter Death’s Sanctum.

BURN IT! KILL IT!

I stop and giving it every ounce of strength I possess, a ball of fire travels in orbit. Fire licks my hand but all I care about now is a traveling fireball, defying the God of Death. It hits the mound and shatters in the explosion of burning rubble.

I fall backward onto my ass, drained. I did it. I spat in the face of...debilitating wave of fear sends me sprawling on the forest floor. Inky blackness consumes me and all I can do I shake like a victim of epilepsy. I soil myself, unable to control my bowels. How will it go? Will deathly fingers of its roots consume me? Will the spores cover me in a deadly shroud? I await my demise.

I wait and wait, but the end does not come. Somehow...I’m able to move, and weakly raise my head only to see a...burning shroom. No deathly vapor reaches for me, nor its pale appendages move, searching for me. Scales on its leg and cap are becoming blacker as flames lick it. Its veil is gone, burned out.

I prop myself on my wounded arms and...I feel a blip, something happened and for a moment I saw few small black dots in my vision but they were faint and disappeared just as fast as they appeared. What in the world...again, it happened again. A black knife of haze that promises death appeared...and disappeared.

I stare at the mushroom with wide-open eyes as memories flash with the speed of light. Events arrange themselves and realization dawns in my mind.

I’m burning with rage. I am beyond rage. I exhale and rage transforms, it becomes a smoldering, cold, abyssal...Fury.

“You know, it all actually makes sense now”.

Slowly, I stand up. My light gait brings me to my fallen club and I reach for it in unhurried motion.

“Since day one I have been bespelled by haze, dizziness, and visions. All featuring my demise, one way or another. I could barely function and the air always had this invisible tension”.

My fingers stroke daintily the club, tracing charcoal smudges along its heft.

“The draconic roar sent me running. I barely remember those moments. I really should have connected the dots sooner. This is an alien world and there is something here that defies the norm as I know it. As dragons and Cures existence hints”.

I turn towards the shroom. It’s burning now. Everything he ever represented in my mind is gone.

“It never registered to me that magic or some other form of supernatural would definitely exist here. It was a distant possibility I disregarded. It was always just this, a fantasy.”

I slowly advance towards the accursed weed and my club sweeps left and right, sending harmless mycelium flying as I clear a path.

“Each and every day I have questioned myself, doubted myself, wishing for it to end one way or another. Am I mad now? Is my mind fractured already or in process of? Am I insane? I don’t know how many times I pleaded, begged. I called upon demons and angels. And I pledged myself to do anything they would ask of me, no sin imaginable would be too great to carry out.”

I stand before the burning plant.

“Dragon gave me fear aura inducted PTSD”.

I turn around and look up, eyeing the twin suns shining brightly through the forest’s canopy. I exhale slowly.

“And you decided to join the party”.

With a sharp movement, the club travels upwards, tracing an arc as I turn back to the plant. For a moment, the wind whines as the club cuts the air. I see in slow motion as the terrible pressure of my swing flattens the cap. It travels down, folding its stem like it is a feeble accordion. My strike does not stop and the mound detonates in the explosion of wood, bone, fire, and earth. Burning wooden chips and dust hit my blank, unblinking face.

My hands leave the handle and I take a step back as I examine the beautiful destruction before me. Somehow, the bonfire that was present before became a burning circle around the late mound.

“Now, now, that will not do”.

My smoldering garb of grasses gets thrown into the circle and many branches and sticks from around this area follow it. They join a great fire, furiously burning around my club that is still wedged in the center. A stick uproots any and all pieces of mycelium or mushroom that I could find around. They too join the conflagration.

I stood there for what felt like hours, eyeing the fire. I don’t want to burn my neighborhood. When the last of fires died and I kicked the dying embers down, I was done.

I spat on the ashes and turned, heading back home.