Initially, the green fungus hotch-potch that had came into existence on the surface of the Swiss cheese in Leo's fridge, had no conscience of its existence. Nevertheless it kept growing, the fungus were being multiplied, slowly but unrelentingly covering the nearby foods as well. Firtsly it covered the cooked soya and seaweeds, bought from the little healthy food co-op on Lexington Ave. Then, moving with gruesome preciseness it covered the small bag with Bolivian coke - bought as well on Lexington Ave., just a few metters beside the healthy food co-op- melting the plastic and penetrating inside.
Saying that the waves of energy and alertness that penetrated the mould could be tallied with any form of conscience, would be rather impetuous, nevertheless it was something really new. The verious chemical reactions in its insides were accelrated and the mould moved fast -as if intentionally- first covering the small pot with the raw mushrooms destined for cooking and then the other mushrooms, those which Leo never destined for cooking. The small psilocybes were already in a state of advanced disintegration and were quickly assimilated by the green blob.
With thousands of data, informations and feelings desperately looking for a central nervous system to be channeled into, the green blob changed mysteriously direction and instead of moving along the fridge's shelve, headed towards the egg-cup on the fridge's door. Again mentioning the existence of prediction or intuition would be more than excessive, but the mere fact that beside the egg-cup was the case where Leo usually kept the drugs (speeds, acid, tranquillizers etc), was a rather peculiar coincidence.
With a rather funny for its nature, grace the green blob climbed on the shleve. It covered the eggs, dissolving the shell and sucking their interiors. It repeated the same procedure for every of the four eggs which were in the egg-cup, something that took it about four hours. Then moving slowly but precisely it covered the nearby case. The plastic case quickly melting away, the green blob covered now the interiors. The amphetamins, the two green dragons, the small but killing ecstacy, the liquid lsd, the EVE papers, all were assimilated immediately from the blob, causing something that even its newborn and extremely elementary level of conscience could perceive as "tiny, cute purple, green and yellow woow!, explosions". Save that its perception concerning the colours or the explosions -although not for the semantics of wooow- surely was something more than minimal. But this would change very soon.
Because among all these cute substances which were digested from the green blob, there was a capsule, where, underneath its plastic cover 500 mgr of a green-yellow liquid was hidden. It was one of the brand new offsprings of chemical industry labs, a substance mde up from a mixture of one part l;yssergic acid and three parts from another new found substance with a slight chemical resemblance to ketamine. Leo obtained it immediately after it was fabricated in the small industry in the Mexican borders., from where he usually bought his hard hallucinogetics. Jerry K., who passed him the Illumination, as it was called, told him emphatically that it was able, operating in a human with a level conscience even lower than that of an amoeba - a yuppie for instance- to levitate him in less than half an hour to the level of conscience that Tibetian monks struggled to reach for all their lives: that of a Buddha. Leo paid about 100$ to get it, as the substance would be mass produced after all the industry's stock of trips and E's would be efficiently pushed. Anyway, if they pushed it right at the moment, they wouldn't know how to handle all these young Buddhas who would dance frantically in the clubs. Leo found the purchase a good idea, as he intended after pushing all his stock during the autumn, to become a Buddha to pass the winter painlessly - when for a yet inexplicable reason, the supplies were much higher than the demand- and return to its normal brain function at about spring time and restart his holy mission - feeding all the hungry spirits with the appropriate substances.
It took the blob 20 minutes approximately to dissolve the plastic cover and let the Illumination pour inside of it -although it is not so easy to say who poured inside of who. Maybe Jerry was slightly exaggerating for its attributes, but anyway it is a fact that what the green blob felt had been a determinant factor of its existence. It was as if there was a high gray thick wall surrounded it, not letting it neither see, hear, nor feel anything, and instantly it crushed to pieces with a bright deafening explosion. And suddenly it could see and understand anything, including itself, unbound from space-time linearity. The thoughts and feelings previously wondering aimlessly inside of it, had now a central point to be processed. With every second a new enlightening thought dawned on it, with every passage of time its conscience rose higher and higher.
We can not possibly know for how many hours the green blob stood motionless, absorbed by this dynamic, from within, change. Not that it matters anyway, since time has a clearly subjective value, and during all this period it was beyond its bounds. What does matter, nevertheless, is that sometime it came back to normal space-time continuum, outstandingly changed and with some clear ideas within. It crawled with an amazing agility to the lower shelve and tried to get out of the fridge. But the door stood still, despite all its efforts. Still, it didn't get desperate. With a mysterious way, it knew that soon it would find its way out and more nice things to absorb. The green blob - which wasn't so green, to speak litterally, anymore, with all these irredescenting colours running over its surface- pulled itself and a ripple run across its surface, one that creeping dangerously resembled a human malignant smile.
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The first thing that Leo did returning to his home after 2 months of absence in europe, was to pug in its telephone message receiver. He threw his miserable suit-case at a corner and sit down or rather threw himself with a deafening manner on an armachair (or better: the armchair as it was the only one), lighting up a cigarette and listening to the messages. The tape seemed full of with desperate calls of various clients seeking him urgently. He pushed the ffw button enervated. He listened to a call of someone who -he was claiming- was calling for the third time and was leaving his telephone number, for Leo to call him back, as soon as possible. It was, he was saying, urgent. Leo made a grimace of irritation. Ofcourse he wouldn't call anybody. It was they who should find him. It wasn't enough that he provided them with drugs, should he also looking for them? He ffw the tape again. Everywhere urgent messages for stuff. For fuck's sake he didn't have any damned friends? Only clients?
That's what necessarily happens when you are a good dealer, he was informed by a silent internal voice. Vanessa's recorded voice drew his attention: "Leo, my boy, it's me Vanessa. How was europe? Pushed lots of stuff? If you are keeping line with the date of your coming back, then you'll have to meet me in the afternoon. Fix me something good. hope you'll appreciate me being so polite as to inform you early enough in order to pretend you are not inside if you don't feel like meeting me. See you..."
Leo put out his cigarette with a grimace of satisfaction calming his face. He had came exactly the fixed date, so this afternoon he would meet Vanessa - that meant in a few hours. He had some time to have a shower and prepare two special pots of tea with these ippomea seeds which he had brought from europe.
He put the heater on and then he went to the kitchen preparing the melted seeds of ippomea. He put 6 spoonfuls of them in a bot. He let it boil with some water and opened the fridge. Looking for something to eat he din't notice the absence neither of its coke nor of its chemical stiff. Strangely enough not even a green blob, which left its shelter behind a vase with marmelade and crawled to the floor towards the verandah. Leo took a box of biscuits and he was to close the door when he saw some mould on his Swiss cheese. He took the plate and scrutinized it. It was just some mould. He smiled. He had left them so much time in the fridge that he was lucky there was no mould in his coke as well. Hi smile froze. Where was his coke? And his fucking chemistry? He started searching desperately his fridge, finding nothing, not even his Illumination, for which he paid so much money. Somebode had stolen them.
Panic-stroken he run to his lurking point where he hide his stuff, relieved to discover that the vase with the mary-jane and the two thick pieces of reddish hash (his present from asia) were both intact. So, someone among the fuckers who had the keys for his house had simply took some of his drugs. And this couldn't be anyone else than Steve his younger brother. He just thought the brat making party with these dump friends of his, these opunks, in his own house, with his own drugs, and his stomach tighted up with indignation. He would fuck that moron piece of shit. Next time he would ask him drugs to treat his filthy friends, he would better smoke his own farts. What the fuck he was supposed to be? The sponsor of the punk bands of N.Y.? Their fucking provider of drugs for free?
Still, full of anger, he took a shower and then he dialed his parent's home with a malicious smile drawn at his lips.
"Mom? Yeah, I'm back. Just fine...No,no. Say, is Steve there? They play with Sonic youth? tonight? So. Oh well...Yeah I'll be coming to see ya as soon as I unpack my things...So bye. Say, tell your druf addict son that I'll pay him off for what he did. He'll understand". He hang up, feeling definitely better. Moments later he heard the door bell. He rushed to open it, smiling wickedly.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The creature -by now it deserves to be called like that- went to Leo's verandah and after a fast search climbed at the wall and began crawling on the trailing ivy. It begun assimilate the leaves but it didn't feel anything particular. It was about to stop when it assimilated and digested a seed. It felt something like plop! and a tiny, nice explosion of energy and colors. Greedy, it crawled towards the other seeds. Satisfaction grew inside of it, fullfilling its whole existence. He was feeling the seeds being digested perceiving the way their hallucinogenic substance was poured inside of it, filling its body. New thoughts came like a flood and it stood still in ecstasy, meditating, processing them. From time to time it was moving a bit further consuming some more seeds.
It continued its meditation for more than an hour, until it had consumed every seed of the plant. Feeling a bit disappointed (one of the brand new feelings which still excited it) it went down , reaching the balcony again. It captured some sound vibrations and felt heat waves, from the kitchen. Its intuition informed it that there it could possibly find a new kind of food. Something really different from what it had tasted till now. With tiny, light motions, it headed to the kitchen and went inside from its open door.
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Leo and Vanessa had already finished with their tea and were currently trying to decide in which club they would pass their night - something that seemed highly entertaining, since they were both laughing like shit, so to say.
"Hey, why don't we go and see sonic youth?", Vanessa said. "I guess that now, even the support band, your brother's group, would be just great for me". Leo did not answer. Confronting his brother in his own home, let alone the floating-in-space situation in which he was engaged, was not the best thing he could think. "I say", he said and then he was lost for a while. "I say", he started again among laughter, "that we should saty here acouple of hours more, get reaaallly pissed, and then we can visit some club. Moreover, I prefer what we're listening now from sonic yourh, let alone my brother's band". The gruesome fact that what he prefered from Sonic Youth was some boring Popcupine Tree tape, could clearly show alone, his moral and psychic corrosion.
Vanessa nodded and lighting up a spliff let ehr gaze wonder with calculated detachment in Leo's kitchen. Every corner of the boring kitchen, now seemed to have obtained a new, special interest. She stared at the refrigerator, admiring its trembling, polished whiteness and then the built-in cupboards with their golden, sparking kitsch coloring and the sink with the cute yellow spots from the forgotten fat and then- she screamed.
"What's up you noticed my new microwave oven, at last?", said Leo idifferently. The ovwn was painted golden as well, but Vanessa wasn't screaming for this, although she had absolutely every right to do it. Leo followed the direction of her trembling pointing finger and half froze. A green -or maybe multi-colored-blob, big as a cat was crawling towards them.
"Oh, my god, what's the fuck is this shit, Leo?".Leo rose up, approached the creature and examined it from close distance. It was something like a mixture of mud and mould, with a dark green color and strange colours running around its surface.
"Jesus fucking christ", he thought dumbly. He felt disgust with the thought to kick it, so he went for the unblocker under the sink. Meanwhile the creature had approached Vanessa. Panic-stricken she kicked it. The creature split in two, leaving her foot merely pass between it and then with a sudden movement it grabbed her calf. Vanessa moved her leg around, screaming from pain and panic, trying to throw it away, but instead she felt over the chair and then to the floor on her back. the creature merely jumped on her belly.
Leo, grabbing the unblocker hit it first with its wooden edge. Small pieces of mould were thrown at the wall and got stuck there. Vanessa screamed again, this time pain winning over panic, and she sank her hands into the blob, trying to throw it away. Leo, in a desperate effort to save her, he dug the wood into the blob until it reached vanessa's belly. Seeing that it had no effect to the creature, he reversed the unblocker digging it with its thick rubber edge, pressing it deeper and deeper. Only when he saw where it was, in relation with the floor he understood how deep. He pulled it back, in horror, pulling along part of Vanesa's guts and small green parts from the creature. It had corroded her whole belly and stomach, as if it had some kind of acid.
Feeling he would throw up, Leo moved away. Apparently he couldn't confront the creature with this stick. Vanessa was already dead anyway. Going away was the only thing he could do. He retreated staring dumbly at the creature who had reached Vanessa's breasts and left the kitchen locking the door.
The creature spreaded on the breasts and the neck of the dead body, savouring the asssimilation and digestion of the flesh. It was different from what he had tasted so far. The hot flesh was melting inside of it, sending signs and messages, which, although unable to understand their exact meaning, it was in a position to perceive their power and poetry. Almost sexually stimulated it got lost in the lyric poem of life and death, in the sequence of beautiful images with a magical, hidden, message. It felt wiser, able to understan more of the world.
Having reached the head, leaving rotten flesh behind it, it penetrated it and went on the brain. It was shaken by a new feeling, which made his whole existence tremble. At that time the creature couldn't recognise it, but what it really felt was sympathy. It was perceiving the joy of life, the pain od death, the hopes and the despair of the creature it had just killed. Life, death, killing, hope, new meanings enriched its conscience. Even though it felt no compassion - that feeling was still unknown to it- it felt shaken in fron of the sacred mystery of life and death.
It slowly assimilated the whole brain, free-falling into a sea of wisdom. When it finished, it went away from the corpse, leaving behind him brown green liquids and rotten flesh and it felt the need for the consumption of a substance that would help it meditate on its experience and understand it. With two jumps it went on the table and started sucking the remnants of ippomea tea in the pot. It was still there, sucking greedily, savouring the coloured explosions which were leading it into higher levels of meditation, sympathy and understanding, when Leo kicked the door open and with an almost paranoid look in his eyes he pointed an almost destroyed magnum at it.
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The intervening time was for Leo decisive as well rtegarding the understanding of some facts. The very first was that he was a fucking coward and it was followed by remorse for his practical inertia which costed Vanessa's death. The second and most frightening one was that even coward, he had to confront whayever happened to the kitchen alone, and in an astral trip due to ippomea. Calling the cops was out of question with drugs in every coirner of his house. all his friends would be gone away to some club by that time, and in the case they were still home they would hardly take him seriously with his wide-known obsession in the hallucinogenics of every kind. So he had to act alone, and rather fast.
Of course fast was a relative term, given that his thinking, with its obsession to swirl around the same topic and then launch away in unknown directions as if influenced by the centrifugal, wasno particular help. Nevertheless he managed to remember that he had a gun hidden somewhere, a gun that a client once gave him, unable to pay his Colombian powder otherwise. Leo kept it more as a fetish than with the thought that he might actually need it sometime.He then tried to resume what he could know about creature's nature. It seemed to lack any consistency - he had seen it split in two to avoid Vanessa's kick. He was also apalled to remember how fast it had corroded her belly. So he should take two things under consideration:
a) he should avoid any possibility of contact with it, and
b) he should doubt if it could be destroyed by the bullets.With all these thoughts swirling around in his brain like an electron cloud, Leo didn't haste to shoot. He targeted the creature trying to avoid any spasmodic actions. The creature, although lacking any senser or sense organ, clearly noticed him and started to retreat from the table. He fired and the bullet hit the creature throwing away a small part of its maze. It was a peculiar feeling for the creature, something rather displeasing. It hurried down the table, first slipping on the chair and then on the floor, slighlty avoiding a bullet which destroyed the coffee-machine behind it.
Leo tried hard to stop the trembling in his hand. In older times, when he was young he was proud of his strong rationalism. Lately of course his brain took a ressemblance to a mine field, after the continuing chemical procession, but this layer of logic was still inside of him. And he understood that his only chance of survival, was to retreat to it.
In the cupboard, under the sink there was a bottle with gasoline. But if he tried to approach it he would be in creature's range of action. He grabbed the stick from the floor and he approached it. The creature pulled itself with the colors in its surface, turned deep red. Leo, put the gun in his belt and stuck the wood inside the creature while at the same time he was using his other
hand to open the cupboard. Then he backed up immediately. the creature attacked with the stick still stuck in it , but Leo avoided the very last instant and managed to fire two more bullets on it. The creature retreated a bit and pulled itself, hesitating.
"Like that, fucker?", asked he rather rhetorical. He had found a shelter near the door, ready to get out and close it behind him, on the slightest sign of creature's movement. He tore his shirt apart constructing a tow. The creature suddenly attacked him and he rushed outside closing the door behind him. He heard a nice plufff, meaning that the creature had hit the door. A smile of satisfaction illuminated his face. It was hard to believe how fast it could move, but he had managed to escape. He tied the tissue around the stick constructing a torch. The cupboard was open but he still hadn't managed anything, since the bottle with the gazoline was still inside. He should get inside and take it, being exposed on any attack.
He hold his lighter tightly and took a deep breath. He rushed inside, openiong the door abruptly, entering the kitchen almost stumbling. He grabbed immediately the bottle of gasoline looking around him for the creature. He managed to catch a glimpse of it, leaving its hide hole behind the baroque style painted oven, before it fell on him. He drew back, instinctly and the creature fell on his thigh insted of his chest. A sharp pain penetrated him as the creature started to assimilate his trousers and then his flesh, moving upwards. Moving frantically he emptied half of the bottle on the creature. He lighted up and passed his lighter on it.
The creature was immediately in flames and it fell off him, on the floor. Leo poured same gasoline on the torch and lit it up, and then he threw the bottle with the rest of the gasoline at the creature. There was a small explosion and more flames. It started to approach him slowly, still burning. Leo moved the flaming torch. "C'mon, fucker", he shouted. He was posessed by mania. The creature started to crawl on the chair, next to him. Leo hit it with the torch but it managed to climb. With an abrupt motion he drove the torch inside of it hearing the grilling of its substance. The creature, overwhelmed by this struggle for survival, split in two and pulled its parts together again jumping on Leo, between his belly and his genitals. Leo ignoring the pain, drove the torch inside again, catching fire as well.
The creature felt its upcoming destruction with his whole being, but excited from the fight, it didn't back up, growing its efforts instead, dissolving his pants and starting over his genitals. His wave of pain shook it, but it did not stop its efforts. Leo, screaming, fell over the floor, while the creature stayed atop continuing to dissolve him, sucking his life out of him, leaving behing only rotten flesh.
The creature kept moving inside of him, into his belly and then into his insides till Leo stopped moveing and it felt his life going away. A combination of various chemical liquids extinguished the fire and it kept dissolving and assimilating. Transubstantiating, constantly receiving powerful messages and images.
When, long after it had finished with his brain, the creature stood still, upset. It felt excited, after this terrific experience. And a sense of dissatisfaction, and a hint of disapproval. As if what he just did was against the goal of its existence. The various chemicals from Leo's body were still flowing inside of it, but the creature felt for the first time something like a vacuum, a vacant space inside. It felt mature, almost too mature, having grasped the meaning of its existence.
It decided that he needed further meditating to sort all these new data. It crawled tired and worn out, looking for something to help it. Its intuition led it in Leo's room and moving with confidence it climbed at the small platform where there was a small cultivation of mushrooms. There were amanita muscaria, but the creature didn't know this. But it did know that it was somehow related to them. It covered them and started to absorb them.
Again, the explosions. Only that these ones were not of pleasure, nor of color. Gray, ancient, wise, slowly flooding inside of it. It understood that the creatures it was transubstantiating were like itself only much simpler. But sometimes to elevate our conscience we need a dive to the primitive, archaic subconscious, because there lie all the memories from our future and our past, packed together in non-linear ways.
And the creature did just this. With its grown sympathy it lived through every transubstantiating of its distant relatives, and became wiser.
It understood that it was a fungus as well, a kind of mushroom, or at least it shared the origins of mushrooms and their double goal. To transubstantiate the living matter, fulfilling the process of death, learning out of it. But simultaneously to evolve so as to be in a position to teach. Its whole being was shocked from this new discovery, its real nature now revealed in front of it. It was not destined just to be taught. the time had come for it to teach. to offer its wisdom, everything that it got out of death and disintegration. to offer them to the creation. All its surface was glowing with thousands of colours as it had at least met its carma.
It stood on the mushrooms for a while, analyzing all his experiences, everything it had learned so far , from both the transubstantiation of the two strange creatures, and its distant brothers, these primitive shamans of its tribe.
Then it crawled till the front door. Finding it closed didn't worry it. It lei its body flow and passed under it. Then it pulled itself together and started to climb down the stairs.When it was finally in the streets it was past three. The traffic still went on, traffic never stopped in a city like N.Y., but nobody noticed a glowing creature which by now was as big as a medium dog. People in that specific area were used to similar visions anyway, especially after a night of decadence and senselessly consumption of chemical substances.
The creature following its instict and its god-sent intuition headed to a water pipe whcih had a part of it was uncovered. It stuck on the pipe and after a few hours it managed to open a small hole and poured itself inside.Inside the pipe the creature let itself be drifted by the water. It had the sacred duty to be scattered around and teach. To bring the illumination to everybody. It knew that it was sufficient for many thousands, maybe millions of creatures. It also knew, as it was slowly dispersing in the water, that it would not mean its death , but just the change of the level of existence. It would move beyond the cage of individuality, it would still exist inside the creatures who would receive the illumination. Ecstatic and exulted it let its body dispersed, being one with the universe, leaving 20 kgr of hallucinogenic material be flown in the water system of the city.
Outside, the sun has just risen, sending its light in a never sleeping city. A new -indeed- day was starting for N.Y.
