The Call of the Under-Ocean

Day 1

10 days, 10 long, unending, unfurling days. Government sanctioned isolation. Alone. A guess it’s the alone part that makes most people uncomfortable. Christmas lights twinkle menacingly outside my window. Mocking me. The whole street and where do they have to erect the flashing demons? Practically touching my bedroom windows. Thanks a bunch.

Everyone’s worried for me. Which is nice, I suppose. Alone for Christmas. Even as I write it it looks sad. A sad little sentence. Something tastes of failure to the outside world. That why I’m doing this -Mum’s cheery idea that a diary might ground me. Little does she know…. A diary always brings to mind some intrepid Victorian travel writer in the deep dark jungles of the Amazon, not an unhinged biologist in the windswept emptiness of Kensington.

Marc was sweet. Offering to come home and care for me, desert his family, and rush down to my little opium den of infection. Despite his asthma and dying aunt it was me that he would risk everything for, makes it all the more awkward that I was going to break up with him after Christmas. It’s not like I hate him, he’s sweet, but sweet like vanilla extract. Overpowering. I feel I can be completely honest here, which I would imagine is the freeing element Mum envisioned. He’s dull. Sorry.

Kindness pours out from his every orifice like sweat, but without that sexy salty tang that electrifies your tongue. It’s like a symbolic relationship, humming bird and orchid, dolphin pod and fisherman, but me playing the parasite; well, they say you become what you study.

I think it makes me worse as well. I’ve always responded well to rules and limits, almost too well. Wrapped up in theories, projects, ideas, facts, I can feel myself safe. But with carte blanche to anything, my nature, furious at something undefined flares into a monster, a manipulator, a nasty girl. I don’t think I’m that. Well I wasn’t before Marc. I think this need for simple categorization of life: right /wrong, good/ bad, animal/ vegetable is why I studied biology.

I was never particularly gifted at it; everyone in my school was forced to be good at everything and it was my musical talent that everyone always focused on. Mum was over the moon when my finger started gliding across the keys of her old piano. “My daughter the concert pianist” I could hear her saying, her expensive glass jewelry clacking nauseatingly as she spread her arms out dramatically, exposing me to her friends, bathing me in her pride. What an about turn biologist was. “Fiddling around in the undergrowth” Dad said, with a smile that was both kind and mocking at the same time.

I’m snuggled up in bed, day 1 has spread out like a long list of unendurably dull tasks. Cancel travel plans, console crying mother, send relevant memes out to friends about Rona, 2 looooong conversations with Marc, 2 small and effective wanks, some light research, 1 spliffs and bed.

A day in the life of an invalid, or prisoner. My own diary might put me to sleep. A day consisting of cancelation and consideration, a day lived for other people. Of course those people love me, and don’t want me to die alone in a tiny London flat, over Christmas, alone over Christmas. There it is again.

But I have something else to look forward to, tomorrow, that’s when the real fun begins, that’s when life begins to finally blossom. Night dear diary, sweet dreams.

Day 2

What a day darling diary! Shall I tell you everything? It would be imprudent to, but exhilarating at the same time.

I don’t sleep well, I don’t normally dream, but my head is full of bright images. Mats of green lichen spreading out over the rocks, and slime filling every corner. My body is covered with little spikes of dark brown and they sprout open, blood red inside, out into the air, dust bleeds from me fine as sand until I’m empty. Odd.

Anyway, I wake up with that buzz in my brain that only a project can produce. Insects or small furry mammals running in tight tandem circles around my cranium. Not as unpleasant as it sounds. But unavoidable, inescapable , drumming, pushing me to my final destination.

Coffee, black, croissant , almost stale, and then the fun part. Well the illegal part anyway. Scarf, hat, gloves, long trench coat and mask on and out into the world.

I know, daredevil that I am. Lucky I’m a short walk from the Institute: the main reason in picking this unexceptional part of the city. Marc hates it but the payoff is obvious. The building rises like a church, pointing up into a sky explored and demystified. If I could sleep with a building it would be this one.

The halls deserted, no Dave at security, and CCTV that I can find and delete. The perfect crime. Although I’m not sure if it’s such a crime, to work over Christmas. Maybe more a social one. But I had to, something pulled me back, something pulling at my shirt collar and scarf, something caressing my back as I sleep. Something calling my name. Fantasist I’ve been called. All my life, head in the clouds or more recently buried in the microscopic, we’ll see about that.

The lab, the place I feel most at home. Currently still deadly silent a silence so perfect I could swallow it whole.

I resume my research, trying to isolate in what way the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus achieves its chemical necromancy. OU for short infects the Carpenter ant hijacking its nervous system through an arsenal of neurotrasmitting chemicals, forcing the ant to climb a stalk or branch, to the perfect height, all along feasting on its internal organs, it sprouts a mushroom from its head and propagates its seeds into the air.

The how is relatively well known, the why less so. Reproduction of the species you might say, simple natural selection and millennia of cruel unfeeling evolution. But what if I told you, what if I let you into on my little theory. What if the ant, was complicit in the act? The mushroom doesn’t infect the brain, merely the nervous system, so therefore is the ant a puppet? Dragged by its fungal master up to its eventual death, or a sacrificial victim willingly marching up to its doom for the mushroom’s benefit? What does the tiny brain feel as it watches its body rise up into the clouds? Does it fight?

That’s where my research begins. A delve into the world of biological mind control, not very festive, but at least it’s snowing. I have some pretty interesting donors, donors who even I’m not brave enough to mention here. Interest into hijacking nervous systems is understandably pretty high, across all sorts of the subsectors of our torn and battered world. I had best work quickly, and quietly, and alone.

Day 3

A busy day, rushing furtively to work, the snow still dusting my clothes and hair.

I start my work in earnest, having already harvested the spores of the fungi, and taught them to grow in a captive colony of Carpenter ants, the next step is blinding obvious, dear reader. Something bigger. After month working on crickets, success has been fleeting but clear. Over three times the size of the ants, it took the fungus a couple of months to progress to this challenge, but repeating the experiment on the 2000 or so crickets eventually a mutation! The fungus dug deep in its genomic handbag and pulled out a gun. Insects are one thing, simple in comparison to more multifaceted life forms. Sadly I’m not an animal person, it’s hard to be as a scientist, surrounded by big fat juicy white mice.

Ruth is my first attempt, I know I shouldn’t name her and technically I haven’t, she’s subject 404484, but she looks like a Ruth to me, like Ruth Willington to be precise from year 7, who pulled my hair and called me weird, with her bright little red eyes and whiskers. Obviously it’s a failure, the mouse immune systems fights off the fungus before it even tries to infect the blood system, but as they say, if at first you don’t succeed….We get through most of my primary school enemies by lunchtime, Marcy, Lucy, Josh Talbot, Josh William, Joanne, Jerry, Kelly, Stephanie, Dan. The microscopic spores every time are ingested into the fluffy white creature’s lungs but fail to cross over through the alveoli into the blood. Every time I cut open the soft forms the failure reeks of iron. By the time we get to teacher names we have traces of the spores in the blood but the red blood cells and antibodies dispatch the spores before they can take hold. Disappointing.

The light fades, the alarm bings and my helpful reminder pops up to go home. We leave Mrs Keely scampering around the white cube testing area, eyes wide from all the needles and handling, but otherwise alert and uninfected -sadly. Part of me even almost wishes Marc was home to cook me lasagna and make formulaic love to me after an episode of University Challenge.

Day 4

Now something’s finally happened. What greets me as I slip into the deserted space of the lab and flick the strip lights on? A dead mouse. Not just any dead mouse, but one with a passive aggressive primary school teacher’s name. Mrs Keely’s body is wedged on top of her cage, her pink nose pointed out into space, her eyes glassy and lifeless, her limbs rigid, and one small white mushroom peaking out of her head. Finally arrived have we? The day is filled with analysis and tests, prodding, poking, dissecting.

I’ve done it. I treat myself to a slice of cake and a massive blunt when I get home, well done me, congratulations me, commiserations to Mrs Keely.

Day 5

My night was clustered full of dreams. The frills of ginormous brown mushroom undulating out towards me, I fall backwards naked, feeling their soft slightly moist flesh, falling down into the soil that swallowed me like a great mouth. Stunning little white caps, and a deeper fuzzy carpet like snow spreading up my bedroom wall. My little fungal friends, not alone for Christmas after all. Don’t have to be Freud to work out where they come from but still, unusual, vaguely unsettling.

The rain has obliterated the white layer, and we are back to classic British sludge, brown ringing everywhere like a stain.

Having tried this particular strain out on all my ex’s from secondary school, the fungus has perfected its art in the Mus musculus’s body incredibly. After showering its microscopic spores into the air like a deadly firework show, the waiting mice below are quickly infected, the effect working in double time in the mammals’ more effective venous system. All it takes is four hours for the chemical hijack to pull the terrified animals up to the top of the cage, some hanging upside down, some extending from the corner of the sleeping area like sentinels wide eyed and panting. Before the mushroom bodies protrude from the head the eyes fading to darkness . The fungus wins. Game over and another dusting of slightly orange wind and the cycle starts again. Beautiful, horrific, impressive, lucrative.

The possibilities are endless, clearly the process can be tweaked not just from species to species but also to target specific individuals, specific responses, specific levels of control. Even as I write this, tucked up in bed, my hands are shaking. This could be the making of me, out of full academic life and away, away from everything, my ticket to the fast lane. Now where do I want to go?

Day 6

More pesky dreams last night. Where do I want to go? I said this diary would be a scintillating and possibly illicit documentation of semi-illegal field work, and now it’s a dream journal. I must apologize profusely.

Last night was more violent, less enticing and more threatening. I was showering, the warm mist of water blurring my vision, when suddenly a pain filled my ears, more the sound than the feeling. My hands darted up to my head and outburst a small point, like a thin witch’s finger, reaching out into the cramped space, suddenly I’m in front of the mirror, all puffy skin and drowned black hair, watching the tendril grow and grow towards the mirror, I grab the stalk and suddenly I’m awake mashing my thumb into my forehead, drenched in sweat.

The day feels dreamlike, maybe due to lack of sleep. The rain is constant and hammers at the windows, cultivating the headache from a minor tapping to a full of cacophony of mental tension. The experiments go as planned as I succeed to control the timeframe it takes for the fungus to cause the suicidal march up the walls of the cage. Some nifty genetic splicing that I’m rather proud of. Yet everything feels fuzzy and I’m not sure if I’m giving it my best. Notes are scrawled in an almost unknown hand, and data entered inaccurately despite the day’s progress. Maybe it’s the covid? Now that would be ironic.

The evening, normally just a time to eat, relax a little, chat to Marc and think about the next day takes on moldy oppressive air. Even as I write this I feel cold and damp, like something is pressing on me from above. Silly, just a bad night’s sleep and the rain, everything so filled with rot in this country, it’s easy to get carried away. Sleep, all I need is sleep.

Day 7

Morning, the light is shining through my curtains in egregious optimism, banishing all the nastiness of last night. In my dream I’m awake, lying in bed; everywhere I look little white caps reach out to me, their small eye-like heads growing from dark stains of black on the walls, their delicate skirt of milky flesh spin and twirl. I’m rotting on the spot, their white trails of hyphae rapping my arms and legs down to the bed, pinned, trapped, alone, surrounded by the soft moving moist forms of the mushroom, and their lurking fungal root systems. All at once the bodies explode into clouds of orange dust, choking the room thick and nebulas filling my nose and mouth with the taste of nutmeg and decay, stinging my eyes and dusting my body a florescent shade. Then I awake.

Coffee will help, just a dream after all, but everything in this old wreck of a house feels oppressive and cold, and wet. The lab will be nice, sterile, bright and safe.

Something strange is happening with the mice. Having to keep the main body of the animals together to allow for the spores to infect as many as possible, the sounds of 50 little white mice is normally a quiet but audible scratching. Unaware of what is going on, they ignore their infected compatriots, sniffing them, pushing their noses up to the spore reaching out of their roommates skulls. Oblivious to the danger, unprepared ecologically for infection and then death. Well they were. Until today.

Something has shifted. The mice are silent, terrified in a corner. They are huddled in the far side of the cage, away from their slowly dying friends, in a white ball with noses pointed down into their protective mass of fur. Not so strange, self preservation is learned even in the most instinctual of animals. If only that was just that.

After an hour or so, as the mushroom tendrils stretch out from the hanging corpses, a scuffle developed from the ball of fluff in the corner. A fight, bloody and viscous devolves as the pack turn on the smallest member, biting, scratching, pushing the mouse into the centre of the cage, as the orange dust begins to fall below like radioactive snow. The group of mice leave the unlucky victim in the centre and retreat to their group, but not before scratching its eyes out. Immobilized and still the creature waits for the unknown, left out in the wide plaza of the cage, the white plastic floor stained with a splash of vibrant red.

What to make of this behavior, how to square this with basic animal physiology or evolutionary biology? I hate to even write this, or even think it, but what I witnessed today looked like a sacrifice, the weakest not only left to die but pushed into the firing line, a human shield, an offering to what was lurking above.

I rarely drink but a sip of Marc’s cheap white wine. This behaviour is undocumented, unknown and fascinating. I hope the dreams don’t come back. That would be all I need. I feel unhi…

Sorry, Mother called, she sounded worried, mentioned I hadn’t called Marc in a couple of days and he called her. I lie, easily, blame the global pandemic dancing a cancan through my body, aches, tiredness loss of voice, inactiveness, sleep. She buys it, just, only just. Sleep.

Day 8

I did it, it was easy really. Liberating, after drifting through the morning like a ghost, dreams of cascading neurotoxins and conspiring muscles and the poor victim mouse, all alone.

The lights of the lab dazzled me, I don’t really remember much, the cage was empty and the mice in the corner have halved, OU pulling half their number up the steep steps to the sun altar. Left to their fate in the killing field. The air in the sealed chamber is thick with that orange micro-particle hanging in stasis.

It wasn’t me, well it was but not from any place I have been mentally, not from any cognitive nook or cranny, not from any corner a physiology could shine a light or counselor could find. My arms did it, and my head and my frame. Lifted the sealed door, opened my mouth, waiting, then breathed deep, long, in and out, filling my lungs with the acrid taste of mould and dampness, with a sweet edge. The exotic flavour dancing on my tongue then washing with a sea of saliva down deeper inside me.

It’s done. I get home, I don’t really remember how and fall asleep. Its 4 o’clock now, my phone shining its ghostly light in my bedroom. What have I done?

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I don’t want to be reminded of my thoughts or actions, and I don’t want to give Mum ammunition to have me move home again. If you are reading this Mum, go away!

Day 9

I wake up on the roof. Logically I think I’m going loopy. Face down in the wet, four floors up, teetering on the edge, then falling asleep, what? The air in the flat, it clings to me, even in bed now, it feels full of something. Pregnant, thick and damp. It’s an earthy, almost sexual smell, like bodies, and rot all blended together, like a perfume, heavy and sweet and suggestive.

I can’t sleep. I don’t even know when I’m awake anymore. Every time I sleep I see this face, growing out of a pile of dead leaves, or winking back at me down the eye piece of my microscope. I see it hidden in the intestinal tracts of mice, or hidden with the chloroplast of a plant. Gazing back at me with hollows for eyes.

My body feels alive, filled with strength and electric possibility, my mouth dry, my teeth pointed like fangs, my veins filled with fire or gold. Lying down now, feeling wired yet wiped out at the same time. The air is thick and soup-like, wet and tangy like the taste after sex, all metal and spent energy. Alive with the possibility of life.

I found a little white hair coming out of my finger, plucking it, laying it on my laptop it shriveled right in front of the screen. I feel it won’t be the last. My skin is on fire, each pore filled with a tangle of white hairs, all reaching for something, all wanting to escape. It must be a virus. When did I last eat? I’m delusional, yet still able to type, drunk on isolation, lonely coming unstuck, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Life before now was dead and dull and dry. Now the world is an ocean, and I float amongst it.

Day 10

I think this will the last entry, the final voice of the possessed Laptop positioned on my tummy, darkness all around and all I can see is sprouting caps of white, growing from string pouring out of my body. No longer mine anymore really. My eyes keep closing; my limbs twitch as I battle for control. But somehow I don’t mind, not much of a battle really. Hungry. I don’t know why I wrote hungry. What’s hungry? Am I hungry? I’m tired.

All I wanted was to be the first, the first at something in a world explored and claimed and taken by another. I remember my excitement drawing the second red line on that lateral flow test. Posing comically sad in the photo to Marc and Mum, watching the group chat ignite, sitting back, over a week to make my mark on the world. Now it seems the world has made its mark on me.

I see my prince, molding out of the fleshy mass, the figure of a man, or at least a human coalescing out of the gloom. Delicate features wrought out of the sunken flesh of the mushrooms, twisted out into the air. The moist moist air. I don’t even know if you could call it a face, more an intention, a will made manifest, a purpose personified, an appetite made real.

Every time I wake up the white hair are reaching forward to my bed, like tiny fingers or trails of snails. Consuming everything they touch, making the air soup-like with their dust. Keeping me sleepy. Maybe I should rest, its happening again Mum, I don’t know what’s real, and I don’t what’s happening, I’m scared. I wish I wasn’t alone, I wish I could sleep. I wish that face wasn’t hunting me, with its soft fleshing frilling and stalk like eyes, and ancient knowledge. I try to remember your face, or Marc’s or Dad’s, but they all bloom and burst into its face. Must keep writing, must keep writing.

I’m filled with welcome and love, the only love I’ve ever felt, my mind racing at a thousand miles per minute, seeing all the faces of those who love me rotting away into mush, clods of earth ready to be mined for resources. Marc’s face dissolving, Mum’s wide smile crumbling,the walls of my old house falling into the black chasm of hunger and reinvention.

Everything is submerged in a sea of hyphae, lightly swaying white sludge, black piles where the future used to be, large towering cones of matter, of all sizes and shapes, like a vision from another planet.

The only constant, the only never changing variable, the appetite of the underground. Deep under the soil they lurk, waiting to be born, bursting in the air in microscopic profusions of seeds, to be sucked in by the living and start again. I give myself willingly to my embryonic lover, my sexless, faceless, ageless partner, I offer up myself as a meal, a substance, a vessel, I am everything, all and one, and I am happy for the first time, happy and never alone, not anymore. Not I but we, we are happy, we are blissful. The Christmas lights flicker, the world is growing dim and ark, the under ocean is calling I am the little white mouse, the ocean’s hungry, the ocean will eat, and eat, and eat and eat.