Puffball
Deep in the jungle, a scientific team is on the search for a new species of fungus. But when they discover it, it seizes their bodies in a way they could never expect...
Initially written for October as a possible Halloween story, it was discarded only to be finished later. I call this a tale of "sensual horror"; expect some dark imagery in this one! Happy almost-a-month-late Halloween.
Mycology--the study of fungi. Most would consider it a sedate, even bland career choice. Suzy didn't fault them for it. When the average person thought of fungi at all, they imagined the things they sauteed for dinner--or the mildew they scrubbed, grumbling, off their shower walls.
She was different. Her journeys took her to the scarcely-traveled reaches of the tropics, searching for elusive species no human had ever catalogued. After all, the greatest medical advancement of the 20th century--penicillin, which kneecapped bacteria as a cause of human death--was a fungus. Why not try for more?
Of, course, even for an accomplished mycologist, there were certain... career risks. Like an undiscovered fungus puffing open and spraying your face with spores, for instance.
Suzy's companions cried out with dismay, only for the scientist to turn and wipe her face shield clean with one heavily gloved hand. "You see?" she said cheerily. "That's why we wear stuff like this--no matter how muggy and humid the jungle gets." She didn't name names, but her intern Todd looked suitably chastened in the back. "A shame," she sighed, glancing at the ruined specimen. They'd searched for almost a week down here, tracing local folklore that told of "demon plants" that "corrupted the body and soul." To Suzy, it seemed like tales of a toxic shroom--and many poisons, used in minute doses, made excellent medicines.
"Still," she said, cutting a sample free. The mushroom had been spherical, like a puffball back home, but nearly the size of a soccer ball, its outer surface an almost emerald green pebbled with a stormy grey-blue. "I'm sad to have seen it go." It had burst at the slightest touch. "Let's get back to camp, shall we? We can resume the search tomorrow."
Their little group, consisting of her, Todd, and her coworker Tandi, headed back to their base camp, a mess of tents and cots in a cleared part of the rainforest. Once Suzy handed her assistant, Lyfa, the sample--making sure to warn her to only handle it with protective gear--she headed to the decontamination station to rinse off her outer wear.
So excited was she to get out of those cloistering clothes, she didn't notice a tiny chip--little more than a crack--in the very lower-right corner of her helmet's face shield. It was miniscule, so small that even a flea wouldn't have been able to wriggle inside.
But then, some spores were far smaller than fleas.
Suzy was feeling a touch of malaise by the time she hitched down in her cot, but she was certain it was exhaustion. Jetlag never really got its hooks out of you, and spending all day traipsing about the rainforest in a protective suit was hell on the body. She was sure that after a good night's sleep, she'd be right as rain.
Her sleep was fitful, punctured by strange dreams--dreams dominated by an odd sort of hum, almost a song, that seemed to permeate every strain of her. In the dream, she saw others in her group--Todd, Lyfa, Tandi--looking sad and distressed, only to slowly melt down into a kind of goop. They looked happy as they gooped, as if they liked it--appreciated it.
A strange sense, almost sensual, spread through Suzy in the dream, and she looked down. She was gooping too, the sensation divine, and she sighed with joy.
And all through it, the thrumming song continued.
Suzy woke in the middle of the night, her heart beating--or was it? She felt odd... disconnected. Like her whole body had the pins-and-needles sensation of a limb gone asleep. Rolling off her cot, she noted clinically that she had strange, moist patches on her arms and legs; that her cheeks felt fuller; that her stomach was soft and squishy, as if she'd acquired love handles. She could feel her body... plumping. In her belly, mostly, but also her arms, her legs...
Her clinical scientist's mind tried to rouse itself into alarm, this isn't normal, I have to do something, I have to SPREAD--
She blinked. What... was that... the beat-that-was-not-her-heartbeat seemed to pick up. She felt woozy, as if having just stepped off a roller coaster. I... need to step outside... she thought. Clear my head. If I go outside, then I can SPREAD--
She tottered outside. The moist air of the night-shrouded jungle was heaven to her, heaven, she loved the moisture, she loved it, it helped her SPREAD--
A whisper touched on the back of her neck. She turned and no one was there, but she followed it nonetheless.
The whisper got louder, pressing on her neck and her spine and her brain, a thing you felt rather than heard, and it was in tune with the throbbing beat. She rounded a corner and found Lyfa there.
The analyst looked sweaty, plump. Her body was discolored a... an emerald, not unlike the mushroom Suzy had found earlier.
It was the same color as the patches on Suzy's arms which had grown to swallow her arms, her legs, and she could feel the discoloration staining into her torso, could feel it want to SPREAD--
At the command both women shuddered and the whisper, which Suzy now knew was Lyfa, spasmed at it. Lyfa looked up at her boss like a dog begging for a treat. "I touched the sample... just a bit..." she whined. Suzy wasn't sure if she could hear Lyfa or just sense her words. "I want... it tells me... to listen to you... and SPREAD--"
Both of them shuddered again, the distant beat hammering down on both of them, and Suzy knew what she had to do.
Her body was still plumping up, expanding far bigger than before, to the point her clothes barely could constrain it. Suzy shed them, breathing a sigh of relief as her whole body, now moist and speckled and emerald, plumped out pleasingly. Her already-sizable tits had ballooned out at least two cup sizes and were leaking a translucent, grey-tinged fluid that smelled vaguely like fresh grass.
Lyfa whimpered at it and Suzy cupped her chin with her hands and raised her to her breast and Lyfa began to suck.
Suzy had never lactated or breastfed before, but she couldn't imagine the sensation was any better than this. It was absolutely orgasmic, threatening to make her cum with every suck, and the more Lyfa drank, the more Suzy was certain her body would continue to produce.
Lyfa, too, seemed to enjoy it if the sound of muffled bliss below was any indication. She gulped and gulped and gulped and while before her body had not quite plumped out as much as Suzy's, now it started to round out quite nicely. Her tummy grew and grew with every drink, becoming a taut sphere--one that, like the abdomen of a honeypot ant, was see-through in its stretchiness, the interior an off-color green that almost looked like jade amber.
From down around Suzy's tit came a quiet whimper. She looked--Lyfa was still there, but also... was it Lyfa anymore? Suzy still felt the regular suck-suck-suck of Lyfa drinking from her, heard the increasingly-muted sounds of the other woman's whimper, but... Lyfa's face and Suzy's breast seemed to have merged. There was no place where one ended and another began. Lyfa's eyes, nose, her mouth... they were all gone, as was Suzy's nipple, all merged into one smooth orb. Lyfa's hands, too, which had rested on Suzy's abdomen, were now part of Suzy, connected as part of one big stalk... and Lyfa's feet, if they could be called that, were little more than tangled, root-like mycelia mixed up with Suzy's own.
...when had that happened? When had Suzy's legs ceased to become legs, when had she grown into a tall stalk-like nest? It hadn't hurt. In fact it felt good, drinking in the moisture of the soil as she stretched further and further down.
The whisper that had been Lyfa was now inside Suzy's mind, subservient and permanent, and Suzy cooed and soothed her wayward subordinate. She was part of Suzy now, and there was nothing to worry about, they had merged, assimilated into one, and didn't Lyfa feel as blissfully orgasmic as Suzy did?
The whisper in her head that used to be Lyfa buzzed with excitement and faded into a small, blissful hum which it would remain forever, and the emerald colored flesh affixed to Suzy's chest quivered happily and drank even harder, its belly rounding out.
Suzy sighed, aware that the act was sending spores around the camp, aware of so much more than her ears and eyes--sad, wan little things unsuited for the jungle--told her. She could feel Tandi and Todd stirring in their cots, could taste the song of the earth and of delicious decay in the soil.
Her job was to SPREAD--
And the thrumming drumbeat inside of her, no longer mistakable as a heartbeat because Suzy no longer had a heart or blood, thrummed in kind. The spores settled over the camp like a haze.
She grew, aware that what remained of Lyfa was completely under her control, now; that she had at least doubled in size, rivaling the height of a small tree. Small protuberances on her stalk rounded into more breasts, leaking the same transformative fluid.
She could sense the spores settle on Todd the intern.
The young man awoke with a cough and the moment that they settled in him, she smiled. She could taste him, feel his heartbeat and nervous system become saturated with her in a moment's notice, his mind suddenly available as whisper, loud and discordant, unlike the pleasant hum of Lyfa's which had surrendered entirely and was now buzzing rapturously in the back of her mind; but it would soothe, would be stilled.
She knew Todd was stepping out of his tent to clear the air, knew though she couldn't see; she could feel it in her spores, hear it through the mycelia that were still spreading through the soil. He probably didn't even know why his feet carried him to her.
The jungle was dark. He didn't see until he was almost upon her.
Todd staggered. All he had in him was spores quietly working, he couldn't yet hear the command to SPREAD and so he reacted in fear--
It was a simple thing, a tangle of mycelia to trip him up.
They swallowed him like a cocoon, his fearful cries muffled and masked by the noisy rainforest, and with a quiet exertion of will--or was that an exertion of the beat? Or were they now the same thing?--she made one of her mycelia grow a bulb, the tip of it nipped like a human's teat, and it pressed against his mouth until he had no choice but to take it in and to suck--
And then his whisper became one with her as he gulped. He couldn't stop gulping, not anymore, and soon he didn't want to. His whisper quieted as she sang to him, a song following the tempo of the beat, and he surrendered and his whisper joined Lyfa's in the back of her head, the two of them commingling in some vague ghost of recognition, sparking with joy, and she smiled, didn't they realize how happy it would make them to just join with her and SPREAD--
Her mycelia withdrew after a few minutes, revealing a mat of stalks and tangles vaguely in the shape of a man, some of the tangles intimately connected to hers. Like the gleaming pitcher affixed to her front, this new addition had a massive, taut belly shining with fluid and translucent to see as well. At its base, where the man's cock had been was a stalk that grew and grew, high, its cap spreading proudly. At her willful urging it scattered spores of its own, lust-filled things that would entice mammals into her trap (though trap was such a cold word when all she wanted to do was take them into herself, mingling with joy, and then they too could SPREAD). The tip of the stalk that had once been Todd's penis beaded with a fluid similar, but not completely identical, to that which she stored in their sacs.
As the two whispers inside of her danced and mixed, she smiled--for her eyes that were not eyes and ears that were not ears, her presence, told her that the last of their little group was beginning to settle.
It was Tandi's turn to hear the songful beat.
Tandi woke and knew something was wrong. Something in the air.
Immediately strapping on a gas mask she kept in case of a lab mishap, she breathed in purified air and felt sweet relief--but a strangeness still settled in her.
She stepped out. There was a weird sort of... dust in the campsite. It floated and danced and almost seemed to want to cling to her.
"Hello?" Tandi called out with uncertainty. Despite the darkness, she thought she recognized the dust. It looked like the spores which had sprayed Suzy's mask earlier.
The young woman padded cautiously over the soil. This part of the forest was peaceful--the locals were more than happy to accommodate scientific excursions, and they'd said that the predators left humans alone. So why did she feel so uneasy?
Pulling out a penlight, she saw a series of tracks, all fresh--three in total. It had to be her three compatriots. Swallowing, her breaths heavy through the mask, she followed them, until she found...
She almost screamed.
It was like the puffball in the forest--round, mostly emerald, speckled with grey. But whereas the forest puff had been the size of a sports ball, this was massive, several times over the size of a person, rivaling the height of trees back home. There was something uncomfortably fleshy about it, something glistening and moist, and there were two fluid-filled sacs; one growing out of the puffball, and the other tangled up in the mycelia at its feet.
This hadn't been here when they'd set up camp. This hadn't been here earlier that day when she'd scanned the perimeter before nightfall.
Her compatriots' footsteps ended at the massive, still-growing mushroom.
What was it the locals had said? Demon plants that corrupted your body?
Choking with fear, Tandi turned to run and squealed with fright. Mycelia were trying to tangle up her feet. She stomped them loose and broke free and something that was like... like Suzy's voice, except it wasn't Suzy, it couldn't be, it was so cold and sensual and predatory, whispered to her and told her to stay, to stay and SPREAD--
Her body shuddered at the command and she came despite herself, despite her fear, but she knew that Suzy's voice hadn't come to her ears, it had buzzed into her mind, and so Tandi turned and ran despite the urging of the whisper, despite the sudden lead in her feet, despite the spores she'd inhaled before she'd strapped on the mask that were continuing to multiply inside her lungs. She still ran. Behind her, forest creatures, stirred up by the racket, smelled the delectable scent that was beading out of the puffball's growths, and they settled low to drink the nectar. Any that did would never stop, quickly assimilated.
Tandi didn't know any of this. She ran, even as her body grew heavy and fat, even as her stomach, over a matter of hours, plumped out as if expecting, as her breasts ached and swelled to bead out a liquid that wasn't milk.
She ran until she was too heavy and exhausted to run anymore.
The following morning, the locals were making the same delivery they did every three days--that of food. They found one of the scientists a mile out from camp, her belly swollen as if with child, twin spots coloring her shirt. She was distressed and incoherent, but they knew enough to know what to expect. The women of the party brought her back so that she could be cared for as the men pressed onward to remove more of the demon plants from their land.
That was a mistake. The men never returned, though some of them put up more of a fight than Todd had. And shortly after arriving in the village, Tandi's will finally gave out. She collapsed, moaning miserably, as the few discolored patches, hidden by her clothes, spread rapidly. She tried to tell them to run but her words were raspy, and every time her voice opened, spores skipped free--
Within hours there were no humans left unchanged, and slowly, people learned not to head to that part of the jungle, for there were tales of strange growths, bulbous things vaguely shaped like men and women, that quivered, sometimes, without being touched.
It was a big jungle, and the village was not near anyone, and so people learned to forget about it, and about the team that had been swallowed, as so many others, by the wild.
But some explorers to the region whispered that the bulbous things, year after year, slowly, inexorably, they...
They spread.