The Mushroom Diaries

of my eyes. Hope, salvation.

  As in totally 100% off?

  ‘Dom, I’m off.’ His voice authoritative. As he says the word ‘off’, his putty like face morphs into his real face, his presence ripping through the barrier, a brief glimpse at normality.

  I need you to be off.

  ‘I’m off.’ There’s a trace of concern in his voice. The curtains of reality opening, showing me briefly the side of the mirror I want to be on.

  Sam, I fucking need you to be off.

  His mouth goes to speak, but he stops himself and takes the pen. I’m off, he writes.

  I smile, take back the pen and put it to paper. Seriously Sam, are you off?

  The book is snatched from my hand and thrown across the room. ‘You’re not having it back.’ he says. ‘It’s dragging you down. And yes, I’m off.’ His face rips into my world, pushing aside the colours. ‘I’m off.’ It rips through again, before the colours wash over it, hiding reality like water covering a stone.

  Hope. If he’s off, everything is going to be okay, but I need to know for sure. I look at his eyes. He’s still out of it, but I say nothing.

  Then I hear it, a faint snap. Something inside my head. The ears locked hearing the real world, the eyes trapped watching these bright visions. Madness. A fear runs through me. Is this what it feels like to be insane? What worse form of madness could there be? To know that what you see is fake but your hearing perfect. To know that you are mad and be unable to do anything about it. What if this room is an illusion, a figment of my imagination, and I am actually sat in a mental ward, Sam watching, sitting by me, humouring me. At least he hasn’t left me.

  A fork against my mouth. Fuck, shit, fuck. Now I’m being fed. I snatch at it and try to eat. Bland, nothing, it takes too long to chew.

  ‘Dom, it’ll help if you’re not on your side.’

  But I’m not, I’m sat upright, my legs are crossed, I know it. Focus. I’m on my side. How? I haven’t moved. I can feel I’m on my side but my vision says I’m upright. Make the body correct itself. Try again.

  I’m kissing Sam, he’s giggling. ‘Dom,’ he says. ‘I can’t kiss with my mouth full of food.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yeah, and I can’t eat on my side either.’

  But we’re not on the side. Focus. Eyes say I’m upright, body says otherwise. I feel my arms hug a pillow. ‘I need to sleep.’

  ‘Dom, don’t sleep. Carry on eating.’

  ‘But we’ve been eating for ages. I really need to sleep.’

  ‘Dom.’

  ‘Sam, if I lay here I’m not going to be moving around, nothing will change, I can come off.’

  ‘It won’t work Dom, I wish it would.’

  An idea, a plan, a salvation. So we are disconnected from reality, my brain teetering on madness, what better way to reconnect than by watching memories. ‘Sam, get your camera. Plug it into the television.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’ll ground us, bring us back into reality, give our brains something to focus on, something to watch that can’t be altered.

  He smiles. ‘Why are you so smart?’

  I grin. ‘One man‘s wisdom is another man‘s madness.’

  A frown as he jumps from the bed, fiddling with wires, connecting and reconnecting, then a visual. Us, memories of us. We lay back on the bed together, my arm around his shoulders, the other hand in his. His thumb claws at my middle finger, mine at his. It snowed on Christmas day.

  As the images flick across the screen, we talk about what we see, reliving memories and commentating over them, forcing our brains to concentrate within the barriers of reality. It’s working, gradually the colours melt away, returning to the dull muted reality. And still we lay watching, making sure everything is going to be okay. The comedown, itching and scratching away, becoming aware of the tenseness of our muscles. The hunger and thirst running in us.

  Pick up the plates, they're still full of food. I fancy eating now, it doesn’t look so daunting. Sam looks at me, fork poised above the plate. ‘Never again, okay? We never do them again,’ he says.

  ‘Never again.’

  TEN

  First of October

  Two Thousand and Six

  I asked the sky a question.

  It said, ‘There are many stars in the heavens, so many to choose from but only one will light your sky. You can choose one which catches your eye, you can choose one which shines slightly brighter. You can choose whichever one you want but remember you choose from a distance. Each one of those is the centre of a world that belongs not to you, a distant glimmer of hope which will grow dimmer with each passing day. Only one of the stars shines the brightest and provides you with everything you need. It lays at your world’s centre and you orbit it every day. You were born from the same creation, two souls since torn apart. For you there can be no other, for once you have seen it you know. So in silence you will surrender and orbit forevermore.’

  ELEVEN

  Fifteenth of January

  Two Thousand and Five

  I

  Tube station again. Different, totally different. I’ve never stopped at this station, I know that as a matter of fact. Knightsbridge, one station on the Piccadilly line, one station before our destination. Choosing here to ensure the trip doesn’t cloud us too soon, tempting us away from our target, luring our bodies in a different direction. This was an idea, well, it was conceived yesterday at least. To visit one of the first places Sam and I visited when we first walked around London as a couple. A place of memories, happy memories. We have no intention of spending another trip underground.

  So here we are, sat on the station, waiting for it to clear of people so we can begin our task. Eating mushrooms on a tube station like we did on our very first trip, it seems so long ago. Eat, chew, grimace, swallow. One by one they enter our systems. Breakfast and dinner rolled into one. If you fast all day they have a greater effect.

  The train pulls into the station and we jump on, jump on without a second thought for the discarded shells laying in open view by the wall where we had sat eating, devouring the bitter fruit we’d found on the dark side of Eden.

  We look at each other as we stand on the train, our eyes say it all. What have we done? All around us noise, children and their parents. Everyone excited, everyone heading in the same direction. Sam leans in. ‘I really don’t want to be on,’ he whispers.

  ‘I know,’ I reply.

  There’s something wrong, a sinking feeling inside both of us. This isn’t good, it’s not going to be good. Why are we here? Keep on track with the plan, don’t detour, it won’t be as bad as it feels. We’re just panicking, bad memories from the last time we were under. Once your mind visits the other side of the mirror and sees its true madness it is loath to go back there. Smile. Keep smiling, think happy thoughts, everything is going to be okay.

  The train pulls into the station. We get off.

  II

  We’re walking down a tunnel, an actual tunnel, well a subway to be precise. A pathway cut through the ground and only leading in two directions. It’s fun, we rush down it eagerly, it’s long but we know at its end is our destination. How nice it feels to actually have a destination, an end point and a start point rolled into one.

  People are watching us, maybe they’re jealous of the fun we are having, maybe they’re just pissed that there is no mechanical aid to help them to the end. In this tunnel they have to walk, a shocking notion I know but exercise nonetheless. How can you begrudge a tunnel like this? It’s an impressive sight, a snaking path through the ground. Above us roads, traffic, danger; down here nothing, people, safe.

  We’re approaching some steps, each step closer to the end of this journey. The concept of life, as something draws to an end, something prepares to start. The wave of progression, nothing remaining the same.

  I’m breathless, not from exhaustion of any kin
d, but through all air being expelled out of me at the sight of the building before me. Breathtaking, amazing - if you ignore the modern monstrosity built onto its side. Stretching before us is our destination, more beautiful than I remember. The Natural History Museum, the history of the Earth stored and catalogued inside this one place.

  We rise up the steps to the entrance, our brains trying to take in the sheer size of the building, to contemplate that inside this one building there is so much history, not only in the artefacts but the people as well. How many lives have passed through these walls? How many minds filled with awe and wonder? We are but two souls taking the journey made by billions.

  There it stands, occupying the centre of the entrance hall. The mighty Diplodocus, watching everyone enter through empty skeletal eye sockets. The usual trick of natural history museums, amaze people as soon as they enter, not only with the architecture but with a dinosaur carcass. So hard for the brain to imagine a giant reptile of that size walking the Earth. It seems so impossible, so unlikely but there, in front of my eyes stands a skeleton, millions of years old. If artefacts from the past could take our minds back, what would we see? To touch something so old and feel that moment in time, to feel the world of a million years ago. Yet when you think about it, the very earth beneath our feet stretches back in time, billions of years. It has seen the rise and fall of civilisations, of life, and still its lengthy existence is too much for brains destined for such a comparatively short