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Something Growing In My Basement

Something is growing in my basement. 


Plump and bold red mushrooms coat the stairs like little crimson forests, and through what little light remains I can see their spores drifting. It’s damp, humid. 


When it sighs the whole house shakes, my windows rattling by a wind not from outside but *below*. 


I dream of horns, black and curving and many, like bony branches thrust up out of the dirt. Crisscrossed by red roots. 


The mailman throws my packages, hurls my newspaper. My neighbors eye me and my home like it’s something mad, something hungry, and when I finally sit at the table to read I can’t help but feel that the floor is sinking under my feet. Listing into swallowing earth. 


I know soon I’ll wake up, stiff, entombed by so many blood-colored caps. Tenacious roots spilling over me. The thing in my basement will speak instead of sigh and all that rotting wormwood will come down, down, down. And it will be free.

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