Chapter Five Not Mushroom in Here #2
But this is Jack the father, husband and chemical engineer we’re talking about. Someone vastly divorced from the young idiot who cackled gleefully as he sped away from the oak tree that nearly killed all three of us.
‘They look like something that’s been at the back of my fridge for six months,’ Jack points out as I wave the baggie of magic mushrooms in the air, peering at them somewhat doubtfully. ‘No wonder we never buggered about with the things years ago. Expensive . . . and resembling a wart.’
I have to admit his comparison is pretty accurate. The magic mushrooms are little black and grey bullets of squishy nastiness that look like something you’d produce from the nose of a coal miner, rather than something you’d stick in your gob.
Nautilus assured me they were the good stuff, though. Just enough of a single dose to be able to evenly split between three, for a mild hallucinogenic experience all round. One that is meant to both connect you with, and release the pent-up dismay about, your own brand of personal trauma.
In California, there is a whole medical practice dedicated to this kind of therapy . . . and it’s proved to be extremely popular. People swear by it.
I feel like Jack is much more likely to swear at it – and me – as I open the plastic baggie, and tip the mushrooms out onto what I hope is Gormley’s clean Formica table.
‘I’m not fucking eating that,’ Jack announces.
‘I agree,’ Leo says, with a look of disgust on his face.
I have to confess I feel much the same way. There is a total of nine of the weird little black and grey mushrooms. We are meant to consume three each. That should be just the right dose, according to Nautilus.
My gorge rises if I have to eat boiled vegetables, so I’m not sure how my stomach is going to react to those horrible little things.
‘Oh dear,’ I say in a disconsolate voice. This plan of mine looks to be falling at the first hurdle.
I look up, expecting to see a triumphant look on Jack’s face. But instead, he continues to look quite dismayed. He regards the disappointed expression on my face for a moment.
‘Hang on,’ he says, raising one finger, and gets up from the sofa. He walks towards the kitchenette that runs down Gormley’s right-hand side, and opens the small cupboard above the little gas stove. From it, he produces a half-full bottle of Jamaican spiced rum – his favourite tipple.
Both Leo and I can’t keep the surprise off our faces.
‘This has been here . . . a while,’ Jack says, examining the bottle closely.
‘Forgot all about it until we came in just a minute ago. I think it’s probably a good five or six years old, but alcohol never goes off, does it?
It’s alcohol. How can it?’ He sits back down and plonks the bottle on the table next to the coal miner’s bogies.
‘Eating those things with a swallow of this should make it a bit easier.’
‘Not sure we should be mixing alcohol with magic mushrooms,’ Leo says, ever the cautious one.
I wave a hand. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I promise, grabbing the bottle and unscrewing the cap. ‘Who wants to go first?’ I say hopefully, knowing full well what the reaction will be.
‘You,’ Jack demands.
‘Absolutely you,’ Leo agrees.
Both of them sit back, regarding me with expressions that scientists who study mice would recognise.
I sigh.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
With the bottle of rum in my left hand, I gather up three mushrooms in my right. My heart is beating fast as I do this.
Is this a good idea? I mean, really?
What other choice do you have?
We could just go to the doctor, like Annie suggested?
What? And have the embarrassment and indignity of trying to explain why we’re so weak and out of control? Be quiet and eat your black bogies.
With a grimace, I open my mouth and deposit the mushrooms on my tongue.
Leo lets out a snort of disgust, while Jack looks on with fascinated horror.
I very quickly take a large slug of the rum, and swallow hard.
There’s a moment when one of the mushrooms slimily slimes against the side of my gullet, but the otherwise inevitable dry heave is suppressed by the extremely strong taste and heat of the rum.
‘There,’ I say, trying not to gasp. ‘That wasn’t so bad!’
Only because my throat is on fire, instead of slimy.
‘Hmmm,’ Jack intones . . . but also takes the rum from my hand and picks up his own three mushrooms. ‘I swear to God, King . . . if this ends in my untimely death, I will haunt you for the rest of your natural lifespan.’ He throws the mushrooms into his mouth and takes a much, much larger glug of rum to accompany them down.
Once he’s done, he slams the bottle back on Gormley’s table and looks daggers at me.
‘And I will be naked, King. You will wake up to my ghostly penis swinging in your face every single morning.’
‘It’s not big enough to swing,’ I retort, quite comfortable that Jack will not have to carry his threat out. I doubt this experiment will end in any of our deaths.
I think.
Jack slides the bottle over to Leo. ‘Your turn, champ.’
Our friend regards the bottle with mounting horror – and then summits the mount when he looks back at the three remaining mushrooms. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can,’ Jack says.
‘I don’t like rum,’ Leo argues.
‘Yes, you do,’ Jack insists.
‘No, I don’t.’
Jack – possibly buoyed by the rather large amount of Jamaica’s finest he’s just consumed – laughs and pushes the bottle even further in Leo’s direction.
‘There’s no way you’re getting out of this now, boyo,’ he remarks.
‘I can lock Gormley’s door from the inside and keep you trapped in here if I have to.
’ He leers at Leo. ‘And rum gives me the worst farts imaginable, Leo. Do you remember?’
Leo’s face goes the kind of ghostly white Jack was threatening me with just a second ago. ‘Yes. I remember,’ he says.
As do I.
Nothing was guaranteed to clear Gormley of two-thirds of its occupants than a long, sonorous, drawn-out Jack Bailey fart. The idea of being trapped in here with one is enough to make me regret my life decisions.
Leo feels much the same way, as he picks up the mushrooms in one shaky hand, pops them onto his tongue in much the same hesitant manner as me, and takes a pull of the rum, forcing himself to swallow both.
I’ve never seen a bulldog chewing a bleach-soaked wasp before, but I bet it would look quite like whatever it is that Leo’s face is doing at the moment.
He gasps for air like a man drowning in his own regrets, spluttering rum over Gormley’s table, and sits back with a look of exhausted terror on his face. ‘I hate the both of you,’ he says, having carefully thought about it for a few moments.
‘No, you don’t,’ Jack says, taking another swig of rum, before popping the cap back on.
‘How long . . . How long do we have to wait?’ Leo asks, still gasping for breath a bit.
‘Nautilus says the psilocybin requires thirty minutes to one hour to affect the brain’s chemical composition,’ I report with confidence.
Trying to maintain an air of clinical detachment in the way I speak about this whole thing makes me feel better, for some reason.
Like it genuinely is a therapeutic medical session, rather than three idiots sat in a rusting mobile home, dropping ’shrooms.
‘Once that happens, we should be able to engage in clear and insightful memories of our trauma, which we can analyse dispassionately in conversation with one another, thanks to the calming effect of the chemical.’
‘Riiight . . .’ Jack says, seeing through my little charade incredibly easily.
‘Okay,’ Leo nods in shaky understanding. ‘What shall we do in the meantime?’
Jack reaches under his seat and into a cupboard, producing a pack of playing cards. ‘How about a bit of gin rummy?’ he suggests.
It does not take thirty minutes to an hour for the psilocybin to affect the chemical composition of my brain.
It takes barely ten.
I’ve only just got myself a good hand for the first time in the game, when I start to feel . . . quite odd.
‘Are you playing?’ Jack asks, staring at me.
‘Give me a chance,’ I reply. ‘I haven’t had time to look at my hand properly yet.’
‘You’ve been staring at it for nearly five minutes,’ Leo remarks.
I blink. ‘Have I?’
‘Yes,’ Jack says, his face like thunder. I wonder if he’s going to fart?
This makes me giggle briefly.
‘Stop it, Charlie!’ Leo says.
‘Stop what?’ I ask.
‘Laughing like that! You’ve been doing it for thirty seconds and you’ve gone very red.’
‘Have I?’
Jack eyes me. ‘The ’shrooms are kicking in, aren’t they?’
‘No, they aren’t,’ I tell him, shaking my head quickly.
‘Charlie!’ Leo cries. ‘Stop shaking your head like that! You’re going to do yourself an injury!’
I look at him. ‘What on earth are you on about, Leo?’
‘You’ve been sat there wobbling your bloody head about like a bowl of jelly for a minute,’ Jack tells me.
Impossible! What’s he on about?
But then . . . I do seem to have developed something of a sudden ache in my neck. Great. That’s the one thing that I thought I’d managed to get rid of in all of this mess, and I think I’ve just brought it back.
‘Oh my,’ I say, touching the end of my nose with one hand. I think this takes me no more than a second, but it could be three hours in reality. ‘My nose has gone very numb,’ I tell my friends.
‘Oh, good grief,’ Jack says. ‘You’re high as shit. Already.’
I slam my cards down hard on the table. Never have I been so insulted in my entire life!!
‘I Am Not Highhhhhhhhh!’ I tell him, in what I think is an angry tone of voice.
‘No?’ Jack’s face is a heady combination of disdain and amusement. ‘Then why do you sound like a moped going eighty in a thirty?’
‘My insides!’ Leo suddenly barks, making us both jump.
‘What?’ Jack snaps, clearly quite perturbed by the sudden outburst.