She looked at the pulpy, unrecognizable mess that was my entire future, stomped into the dirt of my cultivation shed, and told me I could just grow more.
That crop was my masterpiece, a Michelin-star contract that was supposed to finally make us financially secure.
Her defense was that her children were just “connecting with nature.”
There was no insurance payout, no legal recourse, no justice to be had through any normal means.
But grief has a way of curdling into something else entirely. She wanted her children to learn from nature, but she never imagined my deep and patient knowledge of the fungal kingdom could be weaponized to dismantle her world one disgusting, foul-smelling spore at a time.
The Gathering Spore: A Whisper of Trespass
The scent of damp earth and possibility clung to me like a second skin. It was the smell of my life’s work, a perfume I wouldn’t trade for any Chanel. Here, in the climate-controlled quiet of my largest cultivation shed, I was more than Isabelle, wife to Mark and mother to a grown-and-flown son. I was a mycologist, a farmer, a whisperer of fungi.
My fingers, stained with the soil of a thousand harvests, gently brushed a nascent cluster of Pink Oysters. They unfurled from their substrate block like a delicate coral reef, their blushing color a testament to the precise balance of humidity and temperature I’d spent years perfecting. This wasn’t just farming; it was art.
“They’re perfect, Iz,” Mark’s voice rumbled from the doorway. He leaned against the frame, his face, usually creased with the worries of his own accounting work, softened by the filtered light. “Julian is going to lose his mind.”
Chef Julian. The name itself felt like a Michelin star. His new restaurant, Terroir, was the talk of the city, and he wanted my mushrooms to be the centerpiece of his launch menu. Not just any mushrooms. A massive, exclusive order of my finest Lion’s Mane and those blushing Pink Oysters. This contract wasn’t just a sale; it was a coronation. It meant financial security, yes, but more than that, it was validation. It meant my obsession, my little farm on the edge of the woods, was finally being seen for what it was.
I turned from my beauties, a smile spreading across my face. “He’d better. I’ve been babying this crop for eight weeks straight.”
That’s when I saw it. Just past Mark’s shoulder, through the open door, a flash of neon pink disappeared into the salal bushes that bordered the public trail. It was followed by a smaller flash of lime green. My smile tightened. It wasn’t the first time. Little footprints in the mud near my compost heap, a child’s forgotten hair clip by the fence line. Signs of small, uninvited explorers.
Mark followed my gaze. “The foragers are back?” he asked, the humor in his voice thin.
“It seems so,” I said, my stomach giving a little twist. The trail was public, but my land was not. A simple wire fence marked the boundary, more a suggestion than a barrier. I’d always operated on a trust system with the hikers who used the trail. But these weren’t hikers. They were children. Unsupervised, unpredictable, and getting bolder. The looming issue.
The Unschooling Manifesto
A few days later, I was mending a section of the wire fence where it had been repeatedly pushed down when I heard her voice. It was a lilting, patient sound, the kind of voice that probably sounded wonderful reading a bedtime story and utterly maddening in a disagreement.
“Kael, sweetling, remember what we said about private spaces? They’re just suggestions from a society that fears true connection with the Earth.”
I looked up from my pliers. A woman with long, flowing brown hair, wearing a tie-dye skirt and Birkenstocks, was standing on the trail. Beside her, three children—the neon pink, the lime green, and a smaller one in sunshine yellow—were staring at me with wide, curious eyes. This had to be their mother.
I stood, wiping my hands on my jeans. “Hi there. I’m Isabelle. This is my farm.”
“I’m Willow,” she said, beaming a serene smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And these are my little wildlings: Juniper, River, and Sage.” She gestured to the children, who remained silent. “We’re just exploring our local biome. It’s part of their unschooling curriculum. Intuitive foraging.”
Intuitive foraging. I’d heard the term buzzed about in the more… crunchy corners of our town’s online forums. It sounded like a recipe for a 911 call and a stomach pump.
“That’s nice,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But this side of the fence is private property. I grow very delicate, specialized crops here. I can’t have anyone wandering through.” I pointed to the newly tightened wire. “That’s why this is here.”
Willow’s smile remained fixed. “Oh, I understand property in the legal sense, of course. But from a holistic perspective, the Earth can’t be owned. We’re teaching the children that boundaries are often constructs of fear. They’re simply following their natural instincts, connecting with the land.”
I stared at her, my pliers feeling heavy in my hand. Her conviction was absolute, a smooth, polished stone of self-righteousness. She genuinely believed this. She wasn’t a bad person trying to cause trouble; she was a true believer, which was infinitely more dangerous.
“My mortgage company has a different perspective on who owns this land,” I said, my tone a little sharper than I intended. “And my natural instinct is to protect my livelihood. Please, keep them on the trail.”
She gave a little sigh, a puff of condescending pity. “Of course. We’ll respect your journey.” She turned to her children. “Come along, wildlings. Let’s go find some chickweed the universe wants us to have.” They trotted off after her, leaving me standing in a cloud of patchouli and disbelief.
Frayed Fences and Forced Smiles
The talk did nothing. If anything, it made it worse. It was as if my request was a challenge, a dare to their “holistic perspective.” The trespassing became more frequent, more brazen. I’d find small forts built from fallen branches just inside my property line, collections of rocks piled on top of my irrigation timers. One afternoon, I came out to find they’d “decorated” my prize-winning heirloom tomato plants with dandelions.
I tried talking to Willow again. I found her on the trail, her kids weaving daisy chains. “Willow,” I started, trying to keep my voice even. “We talked about this. Your kids were in my tomato patch.”
She looked at the daisy chain her daughter was holding up. “Isn’t that beautiful? She’s expressing her creativity with nature’s own materials. I can’t stifle that impulse, Isabelle. It’s the root of all learning.”
“It’s the root of me losing several pounds of valuable produce,” I countered, my frustration simmering. “This is a business. It’s how I pay my bills. It’s not a community art project.”
“I think that’s a very scarcity-minded way of looking at it,” she said, her voice soft and infuriatingly calm. “There is abundance all around us.”
It was like arguing with a gentle, smiling brick wall. Every practical concern I raised was met with a new-age platitude. My anxiety began to coil in my gut. The big harvest for Chef Julian was less than two weeks away. The sheds, especially the main one with the Lion’s Mane and Pink Oysters, were my sanctum. The thought of them getting in there sent a cold spike of fear through me.
Mark and I spent a weekend reinforcing the entire fence line. We added a new gate with a heavy latch near the trailhead and posted half a dozen brightly colored “PRIVATE PROPERTY: BIOSECURE FARM AREA” signs. It felt like an escalation, a surrender of the quiet trust I’d always valued.
“Think this will do it?” Mark asked, wiping sweat from his forehead as we admired our handiwork.
“I hope so,” I said, watching a butterfly land on one of the new signs. “Because if it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
The Weight of a Promise
The final week before the harvest was a blur of controlled stress and hopeful anticipation. I lived in the main shed, monitoring humidity levels that had to be maintained within a two-percent margin, adjusting the airflow, and watching my crop reach its peak. The Lion’s Mane cascaded down their growth columns like magnificent, shaggy icefalls. The Pink Oysters were a riot of color, their petal-like caps perfectly formed.
This wasn’t just a crop; it was a masterpiece. It was the culmination of a decade of learning, of trial and error, of pouring every spare dollar and every waking hour into this patch of dirt. This order from Chef Julian was our ticket. It was a new truck to replace our dying Ford. It was a trip to the coast, our first real vacation in six years. It was the quiet, profound satisfaction of knowing I had built something real and valuable with my own two hands.
“Just three more days, Iz,” Mark said one evening, bringing me a cup of tea in the shed. The air was thick with the rich, loamy scent of imminent success.
“I can almost taste it,” I whispered, running a finger along the sterile plastic wall. My gaze drifted to the new lock we’d installed on the shed door. It felt silly, locking a shed in the middle of our own property, but Willow and her wildlings had frayed my nerves to a breaking point.
The signs and the reinforced fence seemed to be working. For five straight days, I hadn’t seen a flash of neon or lime green. A fragile sense of relief had begun to settle over me. I allowed myself to dream past the delivery date, past the glowing review from the city’s top food critic, to the feeling of Mark’s hand in mine as we watched the waves roll in.
I took a sip of tea, the warmth spreading through my chest. The promise of it all was so close, so tangible. All I had to do was get through the next seventy-two hours.
The Inevitable Collision: The Silence Before the Spores
The day before the harvest dawned perfect and still. The air was cool, the sky a crisp, cloudless blue. A profound sense of peace settled over the farm. This was it. The culmination. I walked to the main shed, my steps light, a hum of pure joy in my chest.
Inside, everything was exactly as it should be. The humidifiers hissed softly, the fans whirred, and my mushrooms stood in silent, magnificent glory. I spent the morning making my final checks, misting a few clusters that looked a touch dry, adjusting a thermostat by a single degree. Each action was a ritual, a prayer of gratitude to the fungal gods.
The Lion’s Mane were spectacular, heavy and dense with their icicle-like spines. The Pink Oysters were at their peak vibrancy, a color so intense it seemed to hum in the filtered light. I imagined them on a plate at Terroir, sautéed in butter and herbs, the star of a dish that people would talk about for weeks. I felt a surge of pride so potent it almost brought tears to my eyes.
Around noon, I decided to take a short break, to grab lunch with Mark before the meticulous work of harvesting began that evening. I double-checked the new lock on the shed door, the heavy brass feeling cool and solid in my hand. The click of the bolt sliding home was a satisfying sound, a final note of security.
As I walked toward the house, I felt the knot of anxiety that had been lodged in my stomach for weeks finally, blessedly, begin to unwind. The fence was holding. The signs were up. The lock was locked. I had done everything I could. My beautiful, perfect crop was safe. The silence wasn’t empty; it was full of promise.
The Sound of Little Vandals
It was the sight of the gate that stopped me cold. The new gate, the one with the heavy latch, was swinging gently in the breeze. It was open. Not just unlatched, but wide open.
A jolt of pure adrenaline shot through me, hot and sharp. I started running, my boots slipping in the damp soil. “Mark!” I screamed, but I didn’t wait for him. I ran past the silent tomato patch, past the compost heaps. My eyes were fixed on the main shed, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The heavy brass lock I had so carefully secured was lying in the dirt. The door to the shed was slightly ajar.
I pushed it open, and the wrongness of the scene hit me before my brain could even process the details. The air, usually so clean and earthy, was thick with the smell of crushed mycelium and something else… a sour, trampled odor. The gentle whir of the fans was the only sound.
And then I saw it. It wasn’t a harvest. It was a massacre.
My Pink Oysters were gone. Ripped from their substrate blocks, they lay in shredded, bruised piles on the floor. Their vibrant coral color was mashed into the dirt, looking like gory confetti. Little footprints, small and muddy, were stamped all over them.
The Lion’s Mane had suffered the same fate. The beautiful, cascading white manes had been torn down, pulled apart, and stomped into a pulpy, unrecognizable mess. It was wanton destruction, the kind only a small child with no concept of value or consequence could inflict.
I sank to my knees, the breath knocked out of me. My masterpiece. My contract. My vacation. My validation. All of it was a smear of fungal gore on the concrete floor. Through a haze of disbelief, I saw a small, muddy handprint on the wall, right next to a torn piece of a neon pink jacket snagged on a nail. There was no doubt who had done this.
A single, guttural sob escaped my throat. It was the sound of a dream dying.
An Unflinching Void
I found them on the trail, not fifty yards from the scene of the crime. Willow was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed in meditation, while Juniper, River, and Sage were happily mashing berries onto a large rock. Remnants of my Pink Oysters clung to River’s lime green shirt.
A rage I had never experienced in my fifty-five years on this planet surged through me. It was a white-hot, silent thing that propelled me forward. I didn’t shout. I didn’t run. I walked, each step deliberate and heavy.
“Willow.” My voice was a low growl I barely recognized.
She opened her eyes, her expression of placid contentment shifting slightly at the sight of my face. “Isabelle. Is everything alright? Your energy feels very… agitated.”
“Your children,” I said, my hands clenched into fists at my sides, my fingernails digging into my palms. “They broke the lock on my shed. They destroyed my entire crop. The entire crop for the Terroir contract.”
The children stopped their berry-mashing and looked up, their faces a mixture of curiosity and a dawning, animal-like fear. Willow’s gaze drifted from my face to her kids. She saw the mushroom stains on River’s shirt. Her expression didn’t change.
She turned back to me and gave a small, serene smile. “Oh, the little fungus shed? The children told me they found some forest treasures. It’s beautiful that they feel so connected to nature, that they don’t see a difference between what grows on a log in the woods and what grows in your little room.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. The sheer, unmitigated gall of her response stole the air from my lungs. “Connected to nature? They destroyed thousands of dollars of product! My entire business for the season! That was my livelihood!”
“Now, let’s not be dramatic,” she said, her voice dropping to that maddeningly gentle, therapeutic tone. “You can’t punish children for exploring their natural instincts. They were just playing. They’re children, Isabelle. They see the world as a magical place full of wonder.”
My whole body was shaking. I could feel Mark coming up behind me, his hand landing on my shoulder, a silent anchor in a sea of fury.
“It’s just a fungus, Isabelle,” she said, as if explaining a simple concept to a toddler. “You can grow more.”
That was it. That was the line. The casual, dismissive, soul-crushing invalidation of my entire life’s work. My art. My passion. My sweat and my science and my sleepless nights, all reduced to “just a fungus.” In that moment, the grief curdled into something colder, harder, and infinitely more patient.
The Anatomy of Ruin
The phone call to Chef Julian was the hardest I’ve ever had to make. I stood in my silent, ransacked kitchen, the receiver cold against my ear, and explained the situation in a flat, monotone voice. I couldn’t bring myself to cry. The rage had burned all the moisture out of me.
He was surprisingly understanding, but it didn’t soften the blow. He had a menu to launch, a restaurant to open. He’d have to source his mushrooms from a larger, commercial supplier in California. “Call me next season, Isabelle,” he’d said, a touch of pity in his voice that was worse than any anger. The line went dead, and with it, the future I had so carefully cultivated.
Mark found me staring out the window, my hands gripping the edge of the sink. He didn’t try to hug me or offer platitudes. He just stood beside me and said, “We’ll call the insurance company in the morning.”
“They won’t cover it,” I said, my voice hollow. “The policy has a clause about vandalism, but it’s void if the property isn’t ‘reasonably secured.’ A broken latch on a farm gate? They’ll say we were negligent.”
The financial reality began to sink in, a crushing weight. We had taken out a small loan to buy the specialized equipment for this expansion. The payment was due in a month. The money from Julian was meant to cover that, and then some. Now, there was nothing. We were ruined.
“What about the police?” Mark asked quietly.
I let out a short, bitter laugh. “And say what? Three kids under the age of ten broke in and stomped on my mushrooms? Their mother says they were just ‘connecting with nature.’ What are they going to do, charge a seven-year-old with breaking and entering? It’s a civil matter, Mark. We’d have to sue her. Can you imagine that? Taking a woman like Willow to court? The legal fees would bury us faster than the loan payment.”
He was silent, because he knew I was right. We were trapped. There was no recourse, no justice to be had through normal channels. My livelihood had been destroyed by a pack of feral children and their blithely negligent mother, and her only defense was a new-age philosophy that rendered her immune to consequence.
I stared out at the darkening woods, at the public trail that ran alongside my broken dreams. The rage was no longer a hot flash. It had cooled and solidified into a dense, heavy object in the pit of my stomach. It was the anatomy of ruin, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that I couldn’t just let it go.
The Seed of Retribution: A Different Kind of Harvest
For two days, I was a ghost. I moved through my house and my land, but I wasn’t really there. I’d walk into the desecrated shed, stare at the pulpy remains on the floor, and feel nothing but a vast, empty ache. The vibrant heart of my farm had been ripped out, and I didn’t have the will to clean up the corpse.
On the third day, I forced myself to walk the property line, a sort of grim pilgrimage. I needed to feel the ground under my feet, to reconnect with the land that had been so violated. I walked slowly, my eyes scanning the forest floor out of habit, cataloging the wild species that grew there. Turkey Tail on a fallen log. A scattering of bitter Boletes. An Amanita virosa, the Destroying Angel, beautiful and deadly, which I noted with a dark flicker of irony.
It was near a rotting stump, deep in a patch of damp, shaded earth just inside my fence, that I saw it. And more importantly, I smelled it. It was a cluster of Phallaceae, commonly known as Stinkhorns. Specifically, the Clathrus ruber, or Latticed Stinkhorn. It looked like a demonic red wiffle ball, covered in a slimy, olive-green goo called the gleba.
And the smell. It wasn’t the earthy, pleasant scent of mycelium. It was the smell of death. A cloying, stomach-turning stench of rotting meat, designed by nature for a single purpose: to attract flies, which then distribute its spores. It was nature’s most repulsive perfume.
I stood there, staring at the alien-looking fungus, the foul odor filling my nostrils. And then, an idea began to form. It started as a tiny, malicious spark in the cold, dead center of my anger. Willow and her children were so “connected to nature.” They loved to follow their “natural instincts.” They believed the Earth provided its own lessons.
I looked from the stinking, fly-covered fungus toward the trail, and beyond it, to the manicured lawn I knew was Willow’s backyard. A different kind of harvest. A lesson from the Earth, delivered by an expert. The first real smile in days stretched across my face. It felt sharp and dangerous.
The Devil’s Fingers and the Veiled Lady
That night, for the first time in days, I didn’t lie in bed staring at the ceiling. I was in my office, my mycology textbooks spread across the desk, the glow of the monitor illuminating my face. The ache in my chest had been replaced by a thrum of purpose. This wasn’t just about revenge; it was about reclaiming my expertise. Willow had reduced my life’s work to “just a fungus.” I was about to show her the true power of fungi.
My research was meticulous. I wasn’t looking for anything poisonous. I was a farmer, not a murderer. My goal was not to harm, but to offend. Deeply. Offend every sense, ruin one perfect, sanctimonious day. The Stinkhorn family was perfect. They were completely harmless if ingested—not that anyone in their right mind would try—but their olfactory impact was legendary.
I mapped out the locations of every patch on my property. The Latticed Stinkhorn was good, but I also had a thriving patch of Mutinus caninus, the Dog Stinkhorn, which looked exactly as obscene as it sounded. Better yet, I remembered a secluded, damp hollow where I’d once seen a colony of Phallus impudicus. Its other name was the Veiled Lady, a delicate, lacy skirt that hung from its cap. It was almost beautiful, in a grotesque way, but it carried the same signature stench of week-old roadkill.
I checked the ten-day forecast. The upcoming Saturday was predicted to be warm and sunny with a gentle breeze blowing from the northwest. From my property, a northwesterly wind would blow directly across the public-access buffer land and straight into Willow’s backyard. The pieces were clicking into place with a beautiful, terrible precision.
Mark found me hunched over a topographical map of our neighborhood, drawing arrows to indicate wind patterns. “What are you doing, Iz?” he asked, his voice wary.
“Studying mycology,” I said, not looking up. “Conducting a little experiment in spore distribution.”
He looked at the open books, the pictures of the ghoulish-looking fungi, and then at the hard glint in my eyes. He didn’t ask any more questions. He just quietly closed the door and left me to my work.
The Potluck Proclamation
The universe, it seemed, was on my side. The next afternoon, while picking up a few essentials at the local grocery store, I saw it tacked to the community bulletin board, right between a flyer for kitten adoptions and an ad for a handyman.
It was printed on recycled, beige-colored paper with a clip-art border of sunflowers and smiling suns. “The Holistic Moms of Meadow Creek Annual Summer Solstice Potluck!” it declared in a swirling, friendly font. “Join us for an afternoon of conscious community, nourishing foods, and barefoot connection.”
And there, at the bottom, was the location: “Hosted in the beautiful, chemical-free sanctuary of Willow Raindancer’s backyard.” The date was this Saturday. The one with the perfect forecast.
I felt a giddy, almost unholy surge of joy. It was perfect. The irony was so thick I could taste it. Her “chemical-free sanctuary.” Her most important social event of the year, a gathering of her like-minded disciples, the very people who validated her entire worldview. It was her Terroir.
I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick, surreptitious picture of the flyer. All afternoon, I couldn’t stop looking at it. “Conscious community.” “Nourishing foods.” I imagined their plates of quinoa salad and kale chips, their glasses of kombucha. I imagined them trying to enjoy their “barefoot connection” while the air around them became thick with the smell of carrion.
The plan was no longer just a spark; it was a roaring fire. Willow wanted her children to learn from nature? Fine. I would be nature’s humble, vengeful instrument. Class was about to be in session.
A Basket of Malice
Friday night, as a sliver of moon hung in the sky, I slipped out of the house. I was dressed in dark clothes, a wicker basket in one hand and a small trowel in the other. Mark was asleep, or pretending to be. I felt like a creature of the night, a witch gathering ingredients for a potent curse.
The air was cool and damp. I moved through my own property with a silent, practiced ease, my feet finding the familiar paths in the dark. My first stop was the rotting stump and the cluster of Latticed Stinkhorns. In the beam of my headlamp, they glowed a hellish red. Using the trowel, I carefully dug them up, preserving the egg-like sac at the base from which they’d erupted. The smell was already making my eyes water.
I worked my way across my land, a grim collector of the grotesque. I harvested the phallic Dog Stinkhorns and the strangely elegant Veiled Ladies. My basket, which had once held beautiful Chanterelles and Morels, was now filling up with a foul-smelling, bizarrely shaped collection of fungi. It was a basket of pure, concentrated malice.
As I worked, a sliver of doubt pricked at me. Was this who I was now? A woman who skulked in the dark, plotting to ruin a party with stinky mushrooms? Was I becoming as petty and thoughtless as she was?
I paused, the trowel halfway into the soft earth. I thought of Willow’s smug, placid face. I heard her voice in my head: It’s just a fungus, Isabelle. You can grow more.
And the doubt vanished, burned away by the cold fire of my rage. This wasn’t just petty. This was proportional. She had used nature as an excuse to destroy my world. I would use nature to disrupt hers. I finished digging up the last Stinkhorn, its putrid scent a perfume of righteousness. I wasn’t sinking to her level. I was speaking her language. The only one she might, just might, understand.
The Bloom of Chaos: The Wind’s Accomplice
Saturday morning arrived, bright and glorious. It was a perfect day for a potluck. It was also a perfect day for my experiment. The weather report had held true: a steady, gentle breeze was blowing from the northwest, a fragrant, invisible river flowing directly from my property toward Willow’s.
Around ten o’clock, two hours before the party was scheduled to start, I took my basket of horrors and walked to the edge of my land. I didn’t cross the fence. I was meticulous about that. I walked along the public-access trail, the narrow strip of no-man’s-land that separated my farm from her “sanctuary.” This was a crucial part of the plan’s elegance. I was not trespassing. I was merely… redecorating a public space.
I found the perfect spot. A dense thicket of ferns and salal bushes, about forty yards upwind from Willow’s back fence. It was hidden from the trail, but perfectly positioned for maximum olfactory assault.
One by one, I took the Stinkhorns from my basket. I “planted” them carefully, using my trowel to nestle their bases into the damp earth so they looked as if they were growing there naturally. I arranged them in a loose cluster, a little family of fetid fungi. The Latticed Stinkhorns, the obscene Dog Stinkhorns, the ghostly Veiled Ladies. They looked like a surreal, nightmarish garden.
The smell was already overwhelming. My stomach churned, and I had to breathe through my mouth. I worked quickly, my heart pounding with a mixture of adrenaline and vindictive glee. When I was done, I stood back to admire my work. It was a biological time bomb, ticking away in the warm morning sun. The wind, my faithful accomplice, was already doing its job, carrying the first foul messengers toward its target. I packed up my trowel, took one last, deep, mouth-breathed look, and walked back to my house to wait.
An Odor of Righteousness
I positioned a lawn chair on my back deck, a spot that gave me a partially obscured but clear line of sight to Willow’s yard. I had a tall glass of iced tea and a pair of bird-watching binoculars. The wind was at my back, so my own property remained a pleasant, earthy-smelling haven.
Around noon, the first guests started to arrive. Women in flowing skirts and men with beards and sandals, carrying bowls of what I could only assume were various grain-based salads. At first, everything seemed normal. They hugged, they laughed, they set their dishes out on a long potluck table draped in a colorful cloth.
Then, I saw the first sign. A woman wrinkled her nose as she walked across the lawn. She sniffed the air, a puzzled look on her face. A man holding a baby bent down and surreptitiously checked its diaper. Another guest fanned the air in front of her face.
Through my binoculars, I could see Willow, a beatific hostess, greeting her friends. She, too, seemed to notice it. I saw her pause, her head tilting. She took a delicate sniff. Her serene smile flickered for just a second.
The breeze picked up slightly. My little fungal army, warmed by the sun, was now operating at peak efficiency, pumping its invisible cloud of putrescence into the air. The odor of righteousness was spreading. The puzzled looks on the guests’ faces were turning to expressions of open disgust. People were murmuring to each other, covering their noses with their napkins. The “barefoot connection” was being replaced by a frantic search for the source of the overwhelming, gag-inducing stench. It smelled like a dumpster full of rotting meat had overturned in paradise.
About the Author
