Treebrain Fungi — Part One
By D.S. Carabise
To kick off the magazine, we are thrilled to publish D.S. Carabise’s debut story! It blew us away to learn that an author with such a mature voice is only just starting out. We hope this will be the first of many sales for D.S. - The Editor
TREEBRAIN FUNGI
By D.S. Carabise
There ain’t much in the way of local legends around Ellenton, and I ain’t sure why you’d come here to look. We’re a small community, and sleepy at that. Farmers, townies, mostly, and a few passersby. Nothing special. Well, maybe except for the Treebrain fungus. It’s got a bit of a reputation around here, and I can certainly attest that it’s special. Barely anyone knows about it outside of Ellenton, though. Almost nothing on the internet, and if you ask around Vermont or over the border into New York you’ll only find a few people that have ever even heard of it, let alone seen it.
But most folk here in Ellenton are familiar with it, at least. The AM radio conspiracy nuts think it was brought here by aliens or interdimensional lifeforms, or maybe cooked up in a secret government lab. The hippy-dippy crowd, on the other hand, thinks it’s got some special herbal properties. I’ve heard of a few people trying to make teas out of it or even smoking the stuff. Farmers, like myself, just think it’s a pain in the ass. It grows everywhere and is damned hard to kill. It especially loves concrete, and you’ll see it take hold on a lot of the silos in the area, such as my own.
I’ve been enlightened, however, that there is something exceptionally strange about that plant. My wife Martha agrees. She is a stoic woman, not at all prone to worrying or really even being interested in much outside of her vegetable garden. Normally by this time of year she’s inspecting every crop with eyes that can cut a diamond, keeping up with the weeds and watching for any pests. Her eyes have been diverted upward as of late though, searching for the fungus.
I’m getting off track here. I'm not even sure that it is a fungus, since it really looks more like a vine. It’s got these branching tendrils half an inch thick that are a hot, iridescent color which flips from green to purple. It usually attaches itself at the top of a tree or a building and grows down, rather than climbing upward like you’d expect a vine to do, bifurcating like veins and arteries growing over a brain. Bifurcating. Good word, eh? Didn’t expect a guy like me to know it I bet.
D. S. Carabise grew up in the simultaneously beautiful and horrific farm country of upstate New York. Days of wandering misty woods and haunted-looking barns have given him a taste for the fantastical and macabre. He currently lives with his amazing wife, their two wonderful cats, and their lovely dog. Although there is considerably less farmland where they live now, he often finds himself dreaming of his old, imagined terrors.
Copyright © 2024 David Carabis