Let me tell you about the fate of Michael Gordon ? December 15

Two years ago, Michael Gordon?s house shook from an explosion. Books fell off their shelves and the windows shattered. It was in the middle of the night, and he had been in his basement attending his terrariums when it happened. As far as he could tell, the explosion came from the forest nearby. He didn?t see anything when he looked outside, but given the strength of the explosion, he knew something out of the ordinary had happened somewhere in the dark wilderness. By his own assessment ? which was probably accurate given his experience as a high ranking officer within the military ? the explosion was equivalent to a large-yield bomb.
He considered the possibility of a meteor strike, given that he would?ve known about any military activity in the area (even if it was an attack, since his phone would have rung nonstop by now if that were the case). It puzzled him to some degree why he couldn?t see any sign of what had happened ? no fire or smoke ? but if the explosion had taken place above ground, which further would have indicated a meteor strike, it wasn?t that weird.
He made a few quick calls to some of his colleagues to confirm that it wasn?t a weapons test or an attack and after getting it he called 911 and reported the incident. The operator told him that some of his neighbors ? that lived several miles away from him ? had called in as well and complained about the same sound. Apparently, they had already sent a car to investigate. He covered his broken bedroom window best he could and went to bed, expecting to see what had happened on the local news the next day.
Instead, the only thing they talked about was two police officers who had gone missing in the forest the night before. The station had lost contact with them abruptly. Their truck had been found at dawn, abandoned at the side of a dirt road. This was big news in the area since nothing usually happened there.
Michael was later interrogated about the explosion. They hadn?t found the source of it, even after surveying the forest from the air. Michael wasn?t of much help to the police. All he could tell them was how powerful the explosion had felt, but since there were no signs of it except his shattered windows his feelings didn?t matter much.
Michael took part in the search parties that followed, but they never found the missing officers.
There was a lot of talk about the incident on the news and between neighbors in the region, but slowly the talk quieted down and one day sometime later everything had gotten back to normal.
That was until the officers reappeared just as mysteriously as they had disappeared. They walked out of the forest, completely naked, and claimed not to remember what had happened to them during the time they had been gone. This shocked everyone, although no one seriously questioned the circumstances surrounding their return. Everyone was simply happy that the officers had finally come back.
Michael thought about this for a long time, but he was equally unable to solve this mystery as everyone else.
For some time, he avoided the forest out of fear of suffering the same fate as the officers. After six months, however, he started taking his Sunday walks in the forest again. He kept his eyes opened, just in case, but after about a year he stopped paying attention and rarely thought about what might have happened in the forest that strange night. It?s fair to say that Michael's life became just as peaceful as it had been before. He continued with his routines and hobbies, going to work and taking care of his terrariums in the basement.
It was early Sunday morning, approximately one year later, when he went outside to collect some rocks and plants for one of his terrariums. To accomplish this, he took a different route than usual when he came to the forest. He was on the lookout for a rock with a certain shape and with some moss on top of it. He knew it would be tricky to find it, but he didn?t mind spending more time than usual in nature. After about two hours, when he had walked deep into the forest, he found a clearing that seemed perfectly peaceful to him at first glance.
The birds weren?t singing here, he realized, which made the tranquility feel uncanny. To his fascination, Michael saw that the clearing was filled with rocks covered with a strange white moss that he had never seen before. He pondered about what species of moss it could be, or if it perhaps was some kind of mold rather than moss. Before he left, he took one of the smaller rocks and placed it in his bag.
When he came home, he placed the rock in his terrarium. The white moss ? or whatever it was ? stood out and added to the terrariums aesthetics. He spent the rest of the evening googling what it was he had found, but he didn?t find anything sufficiently similar to it for him to be able to identify it.
The next morning, he noticed that the isopods that he kept in his terrarium had been immobilized by patches of white moss, almost covering them completely.
?Fascinating,? he whispered to himself.
He thought about this for the entire day at work. The only logical answer he could come up with was that it was some kind of fungus. When he returned to his home, he was surprised to see that the isopods had been released from the white substance and that they were healthy. After observing them for a while, however, he noticed that there was something off with their behavior. They were all walking in predictable paths, just as if they were only pretending to move around randomly as they used to.
He picked up one of the isopods and inspected it. There wasn?t any sign of infection. He knew about Ophiocordyceps unilateralis ? a fungus, native to tropical forest ecosystems, that turned ants into zombies ? and he speculated that something similar might be going on in his terrarium. If that was the case, he thought, he must have stumbled upon something unprecedented.
He accidentally dropped the isopod on the floor. It quickly crawled away and disappeared inside a crack in the wall.
?I?ll have to call someone after the weekend,? he mumbled to himself, ?preferably a mycologist.?
But he never got a chance to do that.
Before he went to bed, he noticed a small patch of the white fungus on the skin next to his genitals. It frightened him a great deal. He didn?t believe it would be harmful to humans, but that didn?t prevent him from becoming a bit anxious.
He stepped into the shower and tried to scrub away the infection or infestation. Some of it came off, leaving red dots that seeped blood, but no matter how hard he scrubbed most of the fungus remained in place. He bent forward, trying to inspect the area more closely, and to his horror, he saw that the fungus grew inside of the tiny wounds as well as on top of his skin. Desperately, he scrubbed even harder. The water under his feet mixed with the blood running down his left leg. After the shower, he applied sanitizer to the spot. He screamed of pain from the burning sensation.
He couldn?t sleep for most of the night and when he finally fell asleep he had a strange, feverish nightmare of a white moon slowly circling a jovian planet against a backdrop of unrecognizable stars. A silent scream, coming from the stars, grew louder and louder in his mind until he couldn?t stand it anymore and woke up with a gasp.
Drops of sweat glittered on his forehead. It was early morning. He rushed into the bathroom and checked his body. The fungus had grown. His genitals were completely covered, preventing him from urinating, and it had also begun growing in his armpits. He knew he had to call for help, but when he picked up the phone to do so he saw horrific images of millions of raging creatures, far beyond what his imagination should?ve been able to produce, flash in his mind and for some reason it made him unable to make the call. He dropped the phone on the floor, raised his hands to his head, and let out a scream similar to the one he had heard among the stars in his nightmare.
He felt the fungus on his palate with his tongue. The fever grew worse for every second. He limped toward the front door, but the closer he got to it the sharper the images in his mind became. He wasn?t able to reach the door, the headache was too strong. Instead, he tumbled down the stairs to his basement. He crawled up to his terrarium ? no longer able to open his mouth because of the fungus ? and saw the isopods gathering close to the glass as if welcoming him. The fungus slowly covered his cornea, making him blind. For a fraction of a second, before he blacked out, an image of his late wife appeared in his mind.
The fungus encapsulated him. It filled his lungs, his intestines, and his skull. With extreme precision, it quickly altered his nervous system. It destroyed the very essence of Michael Gordon.
The next morning, the fungus had receded. Not a single cell in Michael?s body was untouched. His slumbering brain was no longer his. And then, with a deep breath, I woke up.
Soon, I?ll leave for work ? and there?s a lot of work to be done there ? and on my way home, I?ll meet up with my two friends down at the police station and have a little chat.
The Creepy Calendar


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