TRASH CAT LIT

Emily Hall

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It was a veiled lady. Phallus indusiatus. I remembered it from the times Mama had taken me foraging. Years ago, we’d sneak out while Jerry was sleeping off his hangover and head to the woods by the old trailer. While we crept through the forest together, Mama would point to the damp ground and tell me which mushrooms were dangerous. She never wanted death to catch me off guard. 

Now, a veiled lady was feasting on Mama’s decomposing fingers. Arriving early with the flies, it was sucking the ammonia off her nails, the same way that someone might lick salt off chips. 

Seeing her this way made me sick to my stomach. Jerry only told me she was missing when it had already been three days. He thought she’d just run off, so he hadn’t bothered looking. I could almost hear him shrugging over the phone. 

Meanwhile, it had taken me all afternoon to drive to the forest. I’d waded through weeds, searching our usual places before I eventually found her in a thicket, head split open by a rock. Around her was a mess of blood, leaves, and brilliant fungi, and I almost imagined her turning and chiding me in her sweet voice, “Adeleine, stinkhorn mushrooms may look ugly, but there’s no need to be afraid.”  

But that veiled lady wasn’t the only mushroom taking her body. Destroying angels, whose fierce name belied the fact that they just looked like harmless lumps, peaked through her faded dress. They’d plumped her, made her always-scrawny frame look bigger than it was. How many times had I cut my sandwich in half, pushed it her way, only for her to smile and shake her head?

I closed my eyes briefly before sinking down beside her. It was a kind of mercy, the way that nature was taking her in its arms. In the dim light, I could see various amber-colored Laccaria growing around her knees, concealing the marks she had from washing other people’s floors. She’d never told me outright, but I suspected that she was still taking on extra houses to cover Jerry’s bills. 

“Why can’t we just leave?” I’d asked one time, after he’d smashed a lamp against our thin walls. Still a few years out from college, I spent my days fantasizing that Mama and I would run away to some cabin. 

For a few minutes, Mama stayed quiet, sweeping up the shards with a broom. Then, she turned to me and softly said, “It’s not that easy.”

I knew I couldn’t sit vigil here forever, that I needed to call people and have her collected. But I also knew that she and I would never be alone again. I reached out and traced her mouth with my finger. Her lips were tightly set, but when I leaned over, I could see a vivid streak of crimson peeking between them. When I gently opened her mouth, I saw it: Hygrocybe coccinea. A scarlet waxcap. 

It had forced its way around her clenched teeth, growing from somewhere deep inside her jaw. I wondered if she’d been gritting her teeth when she died. Or if she’d always been doing it, and I’d just never noticed. 

A hard breeze blew, shaking the veiled lady on her hand. Its delicate skirt-like webbing trembled. 

“It doesn’t seem fair that it has ‘phallus’ in its Latin name when it’s a lady,” I’d joked the first time that Mama showed me one.  

“It doesn’t seem fair that men get to name the world, Adeleine,” Mama said, tired. Afterwards she stared for a long time at a broken tree.

I suddenly felt so foolish. Overcome, I plucked twigs out of Mama’s honey brown hair, swept  it  off her marbled face. Rocking back on my heels, I stood up so I could walk to the clearing. But before I left,  I caught one last glimpse of that scarlet waxcap, and it hurt me all the way through, to see it rising out of her like a scream. 

Emily Hall’s prose appears, or is forthcoming, in Passages North, Gooseberry Pie Lit, 100 Word Story, Does It Have Pockets, Cherry Tree, Blood Orange Review, and many others. She’s a prose editor for Pictura Journal and lives in North Carolina with her husband.

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