Mushroom boy

Our little red mushroom boy tightened his grip on the sword in his right hand as he took a step forward into the dark forest. The forest was so dark he could not see a thing, he only felt the chill on his face and bare skin. Sounds of muffled screams came from beyond the reachable space, they were the voices of the captured souls at the heart of the forest. Among the mass of sounds, he recognized that of Ponya; the source of his strong will and the weaver of his dreams. Mushroom boy picked up the pace and rushed through the blinding evil of this place. He did not know where he was heading, as the laws of nature do not exist in such a hell of a multi-dimension, but in his heart, he knew he was getting closer.

Mushroom boy found the tree of captured souls. The mere touch of its thorny branches is enough to send him to eternal doom and he was afraid. He frantically waved his sword in an attempt to clear the path before him. When the mighty blade hit the trunk, a crack of red glowing light started flowing through the tree and to the forest beyond. A gloomy aura of turbulent electrons encapsulated the tree and our little hero. The world was quiet, he was in the eye of the storm, and in sight, there was only his muse, floating in a cloud.

Ponya’s eyes were not to be seen, the demons echoed from her hollow figure like the snakes out of a medusa. Mushroom kid was paralysed puzzled perplexed mesmerised fixated on that supernatural phenomenon he could not grasp. His powers were gradually fading as he looked at what used to be a merry spirit and he could only blame himself for the current situation. Only then, Ponya slides her shadows towards him and gives him a quest. If he wishes for his world to go back to its order, and for Ponya to be reinstated, he must fulfill the prophecy and bend the blue waves of cyberspace.

Cyberspace was morbidly intricate. Chunks of cyphered data were flying everywhere at incredible speed, Mushroom kiddo feared for his life, then he was reassured it was virtual, and he could only lose his mind in this world, leaving him a floating void if he got injured or overridden. His target was clear, blue waves, his objective was to bend them. A quick abstraction of quantum-space waves made him realize he needed a surfer class, with highly efficient bending methods. He waited impatiently for his resources to be freed, he waited in line and watched his movement fade in low resolution.

Mushroom boy kept an eye, an ear, and some fingers on the waves. He learned how to filter the colors to select his target carefully from among the wide white spectrum. When his surfer loaded successfully as promised, he rode it immediately. He was an expert at riding, but the blue waves were too fast and too straight they knocked him off. He mumbled words of encouragement under his breath, closed his eyes like an epic legend, and slow-mo’ed his way to catch the exceptionally wild waves of the deep space. The wave carried him a long way before finally surrendering and bending to his will. At that moment, he found himself back in the forest from hell.

The nightmare continues. Flashback from a distant past engulfs the oversized and overwhelmed mushroom head. A glimpse of an innocent, bright laughter in the midst of a floral summer day. Reality hits when the shadow demons slither in his face in an angry gesture, deranged by his triumphant conquest. To reward the champ and keep their oath, Ponya is released from the spell cast upon her, her consciousness is resurrected with a monstrous shriek louder than thunder, louder than the drums of war, louder than mushroom’s heartbeat at the moment... Awakened, the lass rushes to her rescuer to embrace his tearful face. The instant they touch, the darkness shrinks down to the mother tree, and the land lives again.

It will get interesting soon. The world, as you may have guessed, is not indeed back to normal. What is normal anyway? Mushroom kid will no longer be able to tell.

Red Mushroom couldn’t believe his eyes. Everything seemed normal. As some days passed, he started doubting if the previous events were a bad dream, a weaving of his imagination. The tranquility of the world surrounding him made him nervous to the point of borderline hysteria. But he had Ponya. She anchored him and eased his suffering, she shared his memories, although she did not observe most of them. Mushroom boy is ready to engage in life once again. He started going to his office job, and saw his boss and team members, they drank coffee together and complained about traffic. He repeated this cycle until he started noticing what he was dreading. He was certain to his heart that this is not an evil-free world, this is not the reality he knew. The problem was, my dear reader, that every day was a Friday.

Every day felt like the closure of an overwhelming week, only to realize that the weekend will never come. Too close yet unattainable. Being trapped on Fridays weighed heavily on Mushroom, it was absorbing his livelihood and robbing his spirit away. What he hated most to the borderline of insanity, was the fact that the days were not repeating. His reality was not exhibiting supernatural phenomena, the earth was not resetting its rotation every day as a punishment for him, every day was indeed a new day, only calendars said it’s the same Friday. What was suffocating him precisely was the stupidity of the mass, their amazing ability to believe without questioning and to trust against their own collective memory. The shadow demons are now controlling the public; enforcing the current date is their first move.

Agony. A small word with immense weight, crushing the soul of its bearer. When the body cannot contain the magnitude of pain. That pain that emerges from the inside finding its way out to escape, gets trapped within the guts giving the discomfort in the abdomen causing some people to vomit it out. The pain inflates, invades the system, taking over the standard functionalities, and reaches the limbs and the fingertips so they start performing inexplicable distressing gestures to mirror the inner cringe. The cause of that pain is vague. And he thought to himself, how can something that made him so happy, make him so sad in an instant, that thought was painful, and enraging, because he allowed it to happen again. Still in denial, he tries to let go.