Cordyceps

Prompt 4 — Mood and Suspense

For this prompt, we will be exploring the use of mood. Probably what lingers most in our minds after reading a good book is the particular mood the author created. For this challenge, each of us needs to write a suspenseful fictionalized story that creates and maintains a particular mood of your choice. The key here is to be suspenseful. This could lend itself to a variety of genres (Horror, thriller, drama, crime detective, action/adventure, fantasy, science fiction, etc.) so have fun exploring the creative limits. This story does not need to be complete and can be an excerpt of a larger narrative.

To help work on maintaining mood, this prompt will need to be 700 to 1000 words long. Remember, it is most important to keep the mood intact and create suspense. Also, as a fun challenge, we will all need to incorporate the following words into our stories:

Banana, Ostrich, Pirate, Doctor, Paper weight, Flashlight, Picture Frame, Dodge(verb or noun)

It sounded like the squish of stepping on a banana. Charlie didn’t want to peer down and take his eyes off of the long apartment hallway, but he looked down anyway and saw that he had stepped on one of those pods and released the spores. Now he will certainly become one of them, and he will certainly die…

The news started coming in about a month ago. The ordeal began in Brazil, when the entire country went silent. The world watched as the rest of South America fell into chaos, while the infestation quietly spread.

Reports began to emerge of strange behavior at night. People were seen stumbling around in the dark. Crawling, laying on the ground convulsing, or even becoming violent. This is what preceded the mass abandonment of towns. Neighborhoods empty. Entire cities becoming ghost towns. The cause did not reveal itself at first, but when it did, the truth was too horrible to comprehend. In the four billion year history of life on Earth, the reign of the fungi had begun.

Cordyceps are a type of fungus that infect insects. Once an insect becomes infested with the fungus, it slowly pirates the insect’s body tissue and even begins to control its brain. The insect is filled with the desire to climb to a high branch and cling to it. The host eventually becomes totally conquered by the fungus, and it bursts from the insect in stems, mushroom heads, and tendrils and releases its spores. When the spores find a new host, the cycle continues.

It was thought that cordyceps only infest insects…

It’s early in the morning, and Charlie had heard sounds all night. Screams. Running. Thudding. He knew the infestation had taken hold. But at this moment, the fact that he will die at some indeterminate time in the future was of no concern to him. He knew he had to get out of his apartment building. And it had to be now.

He started down the hall. He moved at a brisk pace, but concentrated on keeping his feet from striking the ground. He passed trash cans set in the hall. He glanced at a broken picture frame set out and passed a quick look at the door to the apartment. Any one of those things could be behind a door. Any door could swing open and reveal one of them. And one of them could be a neighbor, abhorrently transformed and utterly unrecognizable.

As he gets to the end of the hallway, he hears the pounding of feet running around the corner. He quickly looked around. Nowhere to hide.

The thing rushing down the hall will spot me.

It’s too late.

Before he can hide, a man dashes past him wielding a flashlight. The man gave him a quick side-glance, but kept running past him down the hall.

Charlie’s heart skipping beats, he gulps a deep breath, and his throat feels like he swallowed a paper weight. He takes a moment to consider his way out of the building.

I need to get to the ground floor.

I don’t want to run into anyone else.

The elevator is too slow and will make a sound.

I’ll head to the stairwell.

He takes a left down the hallway and quickly walks to the stairwell door. He opens the door, moves inside, and gingerly closes it behind him, and even still, the sound reverberates between the concrete walls. He carefully starts walking down the stairs, testing how quickly he can move and still be quiet. He is on the fifth floor and there are ten flights of stairs between him and the ground.

Right before he starts a rush down the stairs, he hears a door open about two floors above him. He freezes and waits for a sound. A moment passes in silence.

Then he hears a thud. And then another. And a sliding, dragging sound. He is close to the inner railing of the stairway, so he steals a glance up.

Suddenly he sees a dark grey arm clunk against the railing above. The hand is frozen in a claw-like position, and the arm is covered in wiry tendrils.

The thing emits a rattling, breathy sound.

He dashes down the stairs in a frenzy, feet falling hard on every stair. The thing on the floor above quickens its pace as well. The thuds start falling faster, but at an irregular pace.

He flies down the stairs in a dash of madness. He is close to the ground floor, but hears another door open. It’s the one leading outside, which is behind the last flight of stairs. He stops and almost slides down.

One of the creatures comes through the outside door and moves in front of the stairway, his back facing Charlie.

Time slows down for Charlie. He is closed in, one of the creatures above and one straight ahead. His eyes widen in horror as he sees the thing before him.

It’s a hunching creature, but no less abominable. At one time a man, now one long tendril has burst through the back of his head, piercing through his hair. Tall spines and spiraling tendrils have erupted from his back. The tendrils followed the creatures movements, and some moved independently. Along his sides were lined those hideous pods, some as large as an ostrich egg, greyish-blue protuberances that will guarantee another poor soul will share in his fate.

Charlie is frozen by the internal dissonance and fundamental impossibility of the thing. He knows his death is imminent.

But the creature keeps moving with its back to him, and crosses the small space to another door, leading to the ground floor apartments.

The door shuts, and Charlie leaps down the rest of the stairway. The creature above him is still pounding its way down to him.

Charlie quickly dodges around the stairs and rushes through the door to the outside.

He hits the ground running. Survival is impossible — no doctor could save him from his fate. But running with the air rushing past his ears means he is alive right now. Running is living. And he begins to feel that he isn’t running just for himself, but for everyone.