The Thing in the Drawer

It was Antonio that first brought my attention to the thing in the drawer.  He was the one responsible for reporting the case results of fungal cultures that had been requested.  Fungi, and fungal cases, constituted a minority of tests submitted to our lab, and so they had been folded into the bacteriology department for purely practical reasons.  The cultures were processed in a biosafety cabinet and wrapped with paraffin wax to prevent the escape of any spores, and the cultures were stored in a drawer to keep them in the dark, where they were allowed to incubate for three weeks.  Though I was completely ignorant of the peculiarities of fungi, I harbored a deep suspicion towards this kingdom, precisely because of their great antiquity.  I was convinced these primordial beings had long since reached their apotheosis and had transcended the merely material and attained to the perfection of their spiritual form. Though they remained upon Earth and in the material realm, I believed they were now largely preoccupied with spiritual affairs and took only such passing interest in other life forms as was necessary to all benevolent beings, that is, to do their duty, to play their role in maintaining the material realm for the purification of those souls who through error and ignorance had descended to the Tartarean darkness of the cave.  Having experimented with psilocybin mushrooms, I was well aware that they were able to communicate with mankind, and though that genera was, in my experience, friendly towards our kind, I was, to say the least, deeply uncertain about the rest of that ancient kingdom, for I harbored no doubts about the necessity of morals, as conceived by human beings, in the actions of higher souls.  Consequently, I was glad to leave the analysis of these cultures to others, even if I couldn’t entirely suppress a curiosity whenever one was noted as being particularly interesting.  I felt a peculiar terror whenever some species emerged in the culture plates with either a strikingly horrifying form, or a notably terrifying extension in space; for, being a creature of the material realm myself, I was always apt to be impressed by anything with great extensions or odd shapes.  Naturally then, I walked over to see what Antonio was looking at. 

              To my shock, I beheld, not simply a fungus that had overgrown its plate to be repulsed, and therefore bounded, by the wax film that encircled it, but rather a terrifying set of branches that had not only pierced the wax film, but spread through the entire drawer.  There was not a culture plate that had not been touched by the odd limbs of the offending organism, and its branches clung, like vines to a house, to the walls of the drawer.  The branches were a whitish color, a few millimeters in diameter, and with small bulb-like structures that seemed to pulse, though they did not move perceptibly in any way that I could ascertain.  Every few seconds they would change from white to a pink reminiscent of that rosy color that paints the eastern sky at dawn, as though infused by some energy that manifested itself with color rather than movement. 

              “You need to put that in the biohazard waste now.” I told Antonio.

              “It’s only a week old,” he replied.

              I cursed him in my mind for his slavish devotion to protocol.  A terror rose in my breast, and I was tempted to simply quit without notice, to walk out and never return.  But, though I believed not in chance, I never ceased to interpret things probabilistically, since, after all, the appearance of randomness was merely ignorance, and interpretations according to the theory of probability were very often the most optimal in the absence of further information.  This, while outside the bounds of normality, was probably, in the most technical sense of the term, likely to be nothing of interest, only a slight bit of novelty in the dreary monotony of modern life.  Already regretting my forwardness, I shrugged and walked away.

              “I suppose I could double bag it in Ziplock bags and then clean out the drawer.” Antonio muttered as I walked away.  

              “Whatever you think,” I responded as I went back to work.  I figured there was little point arguing, since, if it was nothing, his response was justified, and if not, he was clearly not of the mind to recognize the danger and respond.  I noted out of the corner of my eye that he did indeed fetch a couple of large Ziplock freezer bags, and he spent a good deal of the afternoon scrubbing the drawer with a disinfectant solution.  I left work at the usual time and thought no more of the matter over the course of the evening.

              I arrived the next day and began my morning tasks as usual.  I noted that Antonio, though present, did not contribute to helping set up the morning cases.  In the afternoon, however, I found him working on a fungal culture on an open benchtop outside of the biosafety cabinet.  I thought this was a strict breach of protocol, but since I was not the supervisor, I thought better of intervening and determined to inquire regarding the case that I had sought him out about.

              “Do you set up the additional test on case 5119? “ I asked.  He didn’t respond, but continued to scrape his fungal plate in a fashion so energetic as to border almost on the violent.

              “Antonio?” I said, more firmly and a bit louder.  He ceased scraping and stared ahead, his entire body tense, and then turned in a bizarre jolting fashion to face me.  He looked utterly changed from the day before.  His skin was pale and sickly, and moreover seemed to have a pasty texture that seemed unnatural, and which I couldn’t prevent my mind from interpreting as being imbued with a green tinge.  Was he twitching, ever so slightly?

              “I’m working on it now.”  His jaws snapped wildly as the words came out in a strange cadence, whose accents followed no accustomed rhythm of Western music.  The tone was odd and grating, and the whole impression was of a demoniac jazz.

              “Oh, ok.  Great,” I hesitated, uncertain what to say.  He was definitely twitching.  “Well, I’ll get back to my cases then.” I said and returned to my office. 

Barry really needed to get better control of everyone.  That was the supervisor of our department.  He was a fat, good natured man, but his wife was a bully, and his spirit was so broken, so utterly domesticated, that he was incapable of conflict.  As long as nothing we did resulted in disciplinary action from the higher management, something which only occurred in the event that an error reached the notice of either a client or a regulatory authority, he was generally content to let us do what we want.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing my reports and releasing them to our clients.  I was looking forward to getting off on time, but a late call from a client with questions about a report delayed me, and by the time the call had concluded, it was half past 5:00.  I shut off the light and locked the office door, and then I did a last walk through the lab to be certain that the incinerator had been turned off, along with the lights, and that the doors had been locked.  To my surprise, I found Antonio standing in the doorway of Alfred’s office.  For some utterly inexplicable reason, I halted and shrunk back, desirous that they should not perceive my presence.  Some gut instinct, some primordial feeling rising up from the distant past when one moment, one wrong decision, could bring death swiftly in the jungles of old, seized me, and for the first time in my domesticated life, I felt that my life was at stake.  Frozen, my eyes riveted to Antonio’s back, I watched.  I couldn’t see Alfred from where I was, only Antonio and the light spilling out into the dark hall behind him.  He was twitching noticeably now, though every so often he would stiffen and stand, arms extended from his sides at a roughly 45 degree angle, rigid and unmoving, but then he would relax again and begin his odd twitching.  I blinked and shook my head.  Was his hair moving of its own will?  I’m going to need to take some vacation time for my nerves, I thought.  I was reminded of the fungus in the drawer from yesterday, and as the thought came, it brought with it a dread such as I had never before experienced, and which sent a chill so cold up my spine that I actually shivered. 

Though I could not suppress a feeling of absolute terror, I felt riveted to the spot, and only a supreme act of will forced me to finally turn and scurry furtively away.  When I reached the stairs, I broke nearly into a run, a headlong flight down until I burst out into the main hall and hurried out the front door.  During the drive home, I tried to steady my mind, for I felt within me a great irrationality rising, and I feared lest it should break forth and my terror should swallow me entirely until I descended finally into the raving lunacy of utter insanity.  I felt so overcome that I neglected both my dinner and my usual evening walk and retired to bed early, but I struggled to fall asleep, and when I finally did I half-woke several times with the vague sensation of having fled a shadowy and obscure nightmare that waking memory mercifully suppressed.  When my alarm rang, I woke feeling that I had hardly slept at all.  I tried to shake off the nervous fatigue and prepare myself for work, but to no avail, for the closer I came to leaving, the more my unease rose towards the level of a panic.  I lingered until at last, delaying my departure until I surely would have arrived late, I decided to send a message to Barry informing him that I was sick and would need to take the day off.  No sooner had I picked up my phone, however, than a message arrived from him telling me that both Antonio and Alfred were out sick that day.  Panic was suppressed, partly by duty and partly by relief that Antonio, in particular, would not be there, and so I responded that I was running a bit behind, but that I would arrive soon.  The message sent, I left immediately.

My fatigue lingered throughout the day, but the routine of the daily tasks, and the added busyness due to the fact the department was short staffed that day, pushed the panic of the night before to the back of my mind, until I was convinced that it was the result of nerves, and determined to request a couple of weeks of leave soon in order to recuperate, feeling that I would certainly be refreshed by a vacation.  I astutely avoided even looking at the fungal drawer during the course of the day, which was not difficult, since it did not fall under my purview in any case.  I left work tired, but somewhat refreshed psychologically.  I passed Barry’s office on my way out and bid him goodnight in passing, but he did not respond, and when I looked back I saw that he sat bolt upright in his chair, wide-eyed and staring at his computer screen with a strange intensity.  Perhaps the job was getting to him too, I thought and continued on my way.  That night, I again went to bed early on account of my poor rest the night before, falling easily this time into a deep and dreamless sleep.  I was jolted awake to a sound which I thought for a moment was my alarm until I realized that it was actually the phone, which I then fumbled to answer.

“Hello?” I replied, my voice groggy, and my mind having not yet shaken off the fog of sleep.  It was an automated notification from our security system informing me that our incubators had gone offline.  As quality maintenance was critical in our line of work, we utilized this system for precisely the purpose of alerting us should something go awry during nights or weekends.  Since I was the person responsible for the maintenance of all of our department’s equipment, responding to this kind of disturbance fell under my responsibilities, and I was thus the first line of contact in the event of a deviation.  I cleared the alert using a key code, in order to prevent a call to the next person in the line of response, and then I rose to get dressed and go see what the problem was.  It was 3:00 a.m. 

To my surprise, I saw three other cars in the parking lot when I arrived, but they were parked towards the back away from the lights which illuminated the lot, and so I could not clearly discern their makes and models.  Unauthorized vehicles were towed during daytime hours, but at night anyone that wished could use the lot.  I speculated that these were perhaps the vehicles of young partygoers, who were utilizing the lot as free parking in order to avoid the expense of parking downtown where the clubs were, since our facility was only about a twenty minute walk from the strip that was home to most of the city’s nightlife, and I chuckled at the freedom that lurked away from the watchful tyranny of the parking police.  I, on the other hand, parked by the front door, scanned my badge to obtain access to the building, and quickly climbed the stairs to our floor to see what the problem was.

I was struck upon my exit from the staircase to the main hall with the state of the lights.  Normally, they were turned off during after hours, with the exception of the emergency lighting, but tonight they were all on, but dim and flickering at an almost imperceptible level, except for occasionally when they would flare up to full brightness for a few seconds before dimming again.  Immediately, there came to my mind a recollection of the strange changes of color that I had seen in the bulbs that protruded from the branches of that abhorrent fungus that had spread so aggressively through the drawer, and so strong was the impression that I stopped short in my tracks and considered turning and leaving, but I knew that a refusal to investigate the failure of the incubators would result in a disciplinary citation unless I immediately notified Barry that I was unable to attend to the problem, and since I had no good reason for not responding, I steeled my mind and forced myself to go on.  Despite the disturbance of my mind over the past few days, the near shattering of my nerves, and the profound sense of dread that I had felt again and again since I first beheld that detestable fungus, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I entered the lab.

 I heard a noise as soon as I entered, coming from the room with the incubators, and when I reached it, I beheld two of the them knocked from the counters and lying upon the floor, and the doors of the larger ones, which resembled refrigerators in size, opened wide with the culture plates of the bacteria spread upon the floor.  In the midst of all this carnage stood Barry, with a plate in his hand whose agar he appeared to be eating, scooping the contents into his mouth and then licking the plate clean, before casting it aside and groping in the incubator for another.  But though the depravity of such a scene should have shocked, it was the appearance of Barry that transcended above this in its horror, for he was covered in what looked like a million mushrooms all over his body, until only his face was recognizable, though here and there it too was beginning to sprout hideous toadstools. 

“Barry?” I said, though why I even spoke is beyond me.  In that instant, my soul was transfigured, and I knew that any attempt to preserve life, to escape to the world that I had known was beyond me, that all I had formerly understood was in that moment dashed forever in the face of the horror that stood before me.  There was nothing for it, but to see the terror through to its end.  Barry stopped, turned to me with eyes wide, staring straight at me, and yet I am convinced in no way perceiving me in his sight, and then he began giggling in a hideous fashion like some kind of insane clown at a fair, rising in volume until his laughter pierced my ears with a shriek that shattered my sanity and sent me flying from the room like a prey animal fleeing a hunter.

Throwing open the door, I burst back into the hall, but my path to the stairwell and to safety was blocked.  What had formerly been Alfred loomed before me in the corridor.  His entire body dangled above ground, and four hideous branches like those of the fungus protruded from his body, and held him aloft.  His head sagged to the side, the eyes open and unblinking.  All his skin was horribly pale, as though drained of blood, and his head lolled lifelessly about as he moved.  This horrible fusion of plant and animal shambled towards me, but its movements were unskillful, and one of its legs slammed into the lockers where we kept our lab coats.  There was a cracking like that made when a plant’s stalk is snapped, the body sagged, and for a moment it seemed the legs might drop their horrible load.  Poor Alfred’s head did snap off with the force, hitting the floor and rolling forward like a ball.  The body must have been drained of its human life force, the blood, for none flowed when that gruesome head rolled about on the floor.  The creature continued to lurch forward.  One of the legs came down on the head and impaled it.  The dead and dreadful eyes merely stared forward as it was carried along with each step that the leg made. 

I turned and fled, seeking another exit at the other end of the building.  I wound through the hallway and back into another branch of the laboratory, thinking to make good my escape, but it was there that I confronted the final horror, for in the last room the first victim of the mycelial onslaught had completed his transformation.  The whole ceiling was changed into the cap of a giant mushroom; above me was there nothing of the tiles remaining, but only a network of gills.  In the center of the room, having split open the floor and no doubt sending its terrifying hyphae all through the lower levels of the building, was the stem.  Around its middle was its ring, the skin of Antonio’s face, which though it had at one time veiled the gills to protect the growing fungus, no longer had any purpose and had simply fallen down to rest upon the stem.

Transfigured momentarily with awe, I shook myself out of my reverie and determined that something must be done.  I cannot recall consciously determining a plan of action, so indistinguishable at that moment was thought and movement.  I locked and slammed the door behind me in order to cut off the approach of the Alfred-creature, which anyhow would likely have had great difficulty in navigating the narrow passages through the rooms, and then I latched on to the oxygen tank which we kept in that room, opening the cylinder, and ripping off the tubing to allow the gas to flow into the room.  I also lifted the biosafety cabinet door and turned on the gas supply that powered the Bunsen burner, in the hope that the oxygen and natural gas would provide a sufficient mixture to fuel a fire.  Then, I seized the small flame gun that we kept with the toolbox, turned it on, and held it to the base of the stem until it caught fire.  Then, I set it down carefully, the flame angled to continue to burn the stem, and fled the back entrance to the room.

I ran wildly, arms flailing, to the back stairwell, down the stairs, and out the back doorway.  So lost, so utterly out of my mind was I that instead of circling around to the front where my car was, I continued running headlong through the lot of the neighboring building.  When I reached the street the explosion occurred, and its blast rocked the foundation of the earth under me, its vibration rippling through my body, so that I felt it in my bones. That is the last thing that I remember before I lost consciousness.  When I awoke, I was in the custody of the police, but when I gave my fearful report, I was restrained and locked away until my trial, where the lawyer appointed to my defense by the state argued successfully that I was guilty by reason of insanity of the arson of the facility at which I had been formerly employed and the murder of my three colleagues.  Now, I am locked away in this asylum.  Sometimes, I scream and rave so that the attendants will drug me and I can escape, at least temporarily, into the merciful oblivion of sleep.  Would that my lawyer had not argued that I was insane, and that I might have been put to death for the murders.  For though I would have died the unknown hero that strove, with what feeble strength he had, to rid mankind of the greatest evil that had risen against him since he first arose in prehistoric eons of old, yet that would be better than to be a prisoner here, unable to flee even to the black gates of death.  For, though I have heard no whispered rumors, and the nurses who attend upon me seem in no way abnormal, I fear, lest perhaps it should turn out that there survived and escaped that great blast and the ensuing conflagration a few spores from that thing in the drawer.