Page 75 of Cackle

The stink of the mushroom tea distracts me.

I slip off of the couch onto the floor, stretch my legs out underneath the coffee table. My arms are slack. I can’t stiffen my wrists. I rock myself forward and sip from the mug.

Sophie was right. This tea is truly repulsive. It’s thick. It drags its nails across my tongue, squirms down my throat. But once it’s inside me, once it’s settled, it begins to warm me. Soothe me.

I take another sip. And another.

A brightness erupts inside my head. It splits into twin stars, one in each eyeball, twirling in my vision. Spinning, spinning.

Another sip and I’m up. I’m testing out my new body. It’s made of lightning.

I reach down and pick up the mug. There are little bits floating in it. Dark leaves. Tiny black seeds. Dried mushrooms. Flowers.

I finish drinking the tea. I swallow some of the flowers. The mushrooms. I don’t know if I’m supposed to.

I trust that I’ll be okay.

I dance around my apartment to music I can’t hear. But it’s there. I know it’s there. The spiders are dancing, too. They wave their limbs. I wave mine. I have just as many. Just as many as them.

Too many.

I raise my arms up. I try to count them. They multiply quickly, split at the ends into several hands. My collection of fingers, I notice, is not all fingers. Some of them are different. Ribs. Rib bones. I’ve got rib bones functioning as extra fingers.

Because I am a creature, an amalgam of bones. I’m a femur, a kneecap, a fragment of jaw. One of my arms isn’t an arm, or not just an arm. It’s extended by vertebrae.

I’m rearranging.

My torso is a sack of transparent skin. I can see my organs pulsating inside, wet lungs, a pulpy red heart, liver dark and smooth, stomach like a naked bird. I reach up for my head to see if it’s still there, and it is, only the texture is wrong. My distorted skull feels something like cardboard. Like an empty box. There are voids where my eyes should be.

But then how am I seeing?

My tongue. My tongue is like a huge sponge, wagging out of my mouth, spit bubbling, popping, murmuring.

I try to speak, but my tongue has expanded. It extends to the far reaches of my mouth. It presses up against my cheeks. It’s like a marshmallow in the microwave. It’s going to explode. My tongue is going to explode.

I stuff my fingers in my mouth to try to make space. So many fingers. So many rib bones.

That’s when I realize I don’t have any teeth.

I begin wailing, but the sound is trapped behind the wall of my tongue.

My teeth. Where are they? Where did they go?

I pull my hands out of my mouth. They’re covered in something. A slimy membrane. Glossy saliva. I try to shake it off, but that only forges my fingers together, so my hands are now like oven mitts.

Fleshy, webbed mitts.

There’s a dense noise ahead of me. A hearty plop.

I feel around in the bog of colors and find it.

My tongue.

Wearing a crown of my teeth.

“There you are,” I say, only I can’t make words without my tongue or my teeth. And even if I could, it wouldn’t matter, because the laughter is too loud.

Who’s laughing at me? Why?