The fungus was nearing her mattress, growing oozingly forward in a creaking, floor-munching mass that converted all it touched into more of its pale lumpy self, fruiting bodies blistering across its surface like spore-filled pimples.
She tried to shrink back, but could not contract herself even a fraction of an inch more. Biting back a scream, she thought can not be real, not be real, not be real...
Soon the fungus's swelling pustules would begin to burst, powdering the air with their spores, forcing her to inhale countless numbers of the horribly fertile things, little gray tidbits of filth that would sink into the welcoming, wet, warm, darkness of her lungs and sprout, even as the main body crept from the floorboards onto her skin, allowing the fungus to devour her simultaneously from within and without.
Unless she ate it first.
It didn't look the slightest bit appetizing.
C'mon... you can do this... Look closer, and you'll find it's not real, not real, not a fungus at all, but a... tablecloth. What she had taken for pale, swelling fungal flesh was a billowing white linen tablecloth, and squint your eyes and that pustule looks like a lemon the growths atop it not fruiting bodies, but actual fruits.
The lemon smelled heavenly, but she wasn't about to take a bite out of something so tart, especially when there was so much else to choose from. Lying beside it was a pear, and beside that, a plum... And wasn't that a peach? Yes. A ripe, fuzzy peach... And all of the smallest bumps were, of course, grapes. Green, red, and purple varieties, seeded and seedless, grapes everywhere...
Mmmm... Grapes.
But which one to choose? Each variety had its charms.
Her mouth watered with anticipatory delight. She rubbed her thumb across her fingertips in the manner of a safecracker testing their sensitivity, before reaching toward a pale, dewy, globe half-hidden in the shadow of a Fiji apple.
It was elongated rather than perfectly round, and its skin tone was the soft, subtle, yellowish pastel green of her favorite variety of all, the ones Edon's grocery only carried around Christmas, labeled as 'Holiday Grapes.' Slowly, deliberately, she placed it on her tongue and closed her mouth around it, savoring the rubbery texture of its sleek firm skin as she rolled it around, maneuvering it between her teeth, holding it there a moment before crushing it in a burst of juice and pulp that was sweet, oh so sweet, with a tart undertaste that emphasized rather than cut into the sweetness.
She chewed until she could stand it no longer and simply had to swallow, licking her lips and wishing she could have another, but of course the tablecloth was gone, as was the fruit upon it. But the fungus was also gone, and that, after all, had been the main point of the exercise.
As a means of ending the hallucinations her plan was a rousing success, but one single swallow, Odelia had found, was all it ever took to startle her fully back into reality, even when she'd rather not go just yet, thank you very much. A series of buffet tables from which she was only ever allowed one solitary bite had its downside.
Still... one bite was considerably better than none at all.
Ignoring the bleating ShopNBC host extolling the virtues of a Gucci stainless steel chronograph bracelet watch which was "not a timepiece, but an heirloom, with the sort of classic, enduring elegance that will be cherished by your family for generations..." she turned her head to see if her empty pitchers had been replaced while she was 'gone,' and discovered they had.
YOU ARE READING
Tipping the Scales
ChickLitOdelia has spent most of her life so firmly under her brother's thumb that she might as well have been an insect trapped in a chunk of amber, but now, at long last, something is happening to her. Too bad it's not a nice, normal, something, like a '...
