(I wrote this about four years ago, posted it here once, then later removed it with the intent of rewriting it, now I’m posting it again unrewritten because I am still proud of it for where I was as an author and I have lots of other stories I want to tell.)

The boat dips and bobs, as much from the partygoers overhead as the deep choppy waters they’ve drifted into. Below deck, smells of vomit and yeast permeate the cabin. There is also a faint odor redolent of dead fish. The steady thump of bass from the blown-out speakers overhead does little to assuage the man’s mounting nausea. The guttural urge to puke burbles up from the pit of his stomach, while boisterous cheers erupt above-deck. When he stumbles out from the cabin and toward the back of the swaying boat, the muffled sounds of cheers shift into semi-discernible chants and jeers. He reaches the back of the boat as bile and half-digested food spews out of his mouth. His stomach muscles contract and convulse, expelling their contents into the shifting ocean with plops and splashes. Wiping his mouth, he feels another surge of dizziness and is quickly bent over the railing, emptying the remains of his gut.

With his head over the edge and the thud of bass seeming to squeeze his entrails, he fails to hear the motors rev slightly. As he dry-heaves and spits, the boat accelerates suddenly. Before the man even realizes what is happening, he is pitched forward over the railing and into the sea. He plunges headfirst into a world of cool black water, where the only sound is the fading drone of the inboard motor. The man breaks the surface of the water, spluttering and confused. When he finally realizes what has happened, the hum of bass and flash of lights shrinks into the distance with the receding boat. He lets out a feeble cry for the boat to wait, but it goes unheeded. Wading at the surface, an almost total darkness overtakes him, along with a feeling of fear. The bone-white glow of the moon and the tiny pinpricks of starlight are his only source of illumination.

There are no objects within any directional view, and his feeling of fear deepens into the pit of his stomach. The man treads water and his fear rapidly evolves to terror as his total isolation sets in. He shouts and yells into an indifferent night air. When he finally exhausts his lungs, he is met with a new feeling: the feeling of being stalked from below. What if something, dozens of feet below, is watching his swishing limbs at the surface? Frantically he searches the horizon again, spinning and thrashing. Something catches his eye and when he looks back to the spot, he can just make out the small black silhouette of something far off, something with a more rigid penumbra. He looks around again for something closer though he sees nothing but the undulating waves of the blue-black ocean.

He begins kicking water and frantically propelling his way toward the shadow. His heart is in the maniacal grip of an atavistic fear, and his movements are panicked. He hopes and prays and pleads to the disinterested night sky that whatever the shadow ahead is, it is solid and big enough to stand on. Every forceful kick of his feet sends phantom signals to his brain telling him he’s kicked something, or something has bumped into him. He has begun crying from sheer terror, and through his blurry vision and sobs he sees that he is getting closer to the looming shadowy object. On approach to the outline, he can tell it is solid, but it is not a boat. It is unmoving as far as he can tell, whereas anything floating would rock on its keel. He blinks away the tears and stares at the dark shadow. Unconsciously, he slows his paddling. The shape of the shadow has finally solidified into a discernible outline, but it can’t be that - that wouldn’t make any sense… It must be a buoy, or a mile marker - do they have those in the open ocean? Yet, he knows it isn’t any of those things.

He is about 30 feet from the shadow and there is no longer any doubt as to its shape: before him is an immense mushroom, not unlike a portabella. It rises at least eight feet out of the water, like some alien monolithic pillar to a temple long sunken. The color of the fleshy stem is the dingy yellow that white things get after a long time exposed to the elements. That’s just what he is out here -- exposed -- the only omnifarious speck on an otherwise featureless blue landscape; other than this strange growth, that is. He stares at the damp neck of the mushroom, which plumes up into the empty sky above him. The cap at the top of the stem must be at least eight or ten feet across. He is suddenly reminded of neglected teeth, but he isn’t sure exactly why - perhaps the color? He has unwittingly stopped swimming towards it, treading water about ten feet away. His long dormant fear of deep water, momentarily forgotten in the wake of such a discordant sight.

The entire thing unsettles him. Despite being the only solid object for miles, he finds himself unaccountably reluctant to touch the thing. He swims slowly closer; however, the sight becomes even stranger as his proximity increases. The underside of the mushroom is faintly luminescent, with the sleepy red-orange heat of hot coals. As he watches the underside, he notices a slow pulsing to the crepuscular glow, exactly like the tail end of a cigarette smoked in the dark. …the grimy yellow of bad teeth… It even seems to radiate with the timing of regular breathing. It is very unsettling to watch. He cautiously swims closer, all panic and terror leached away by the sight of this bizarre ocean mushroom. He doesn’t want to touch it, let alone climb it, but his fear of the ocean begins to return as his shock wears off. Hesitantly, he swims up to it and when he is within touching distance, he feels a faint heat emanating from within the fungus.

Gingerly, he places his open palm against the warm stem. Once he makes contact with it, he feels his reserves melt away with the warmth. Why was he so hesitant to touch it anyway? Now that he is underneath the cap of it, the vague crimson glow is much more salient. Below the transient heat of the mushroom’s cap, he realizes the task of climbing atop it will be exceedingly difficult. He wraps his legs around the trunk - it is much more of a trunk than a stem - and squeezes it with his thighs. There is a slight give to the flesh of the trunk, and his legs leave an impression that makes it easier to hold on. Cautiously, he pulls himself up the stem - his arms just barely reaching around to touch on the other side. The glabrous trunk is soft and smooth, yet it isn’t difficult to climb. He very quickly ascends high enough that his head is brushing against the underside of the cap.

The dark lines of frills against the subtle glow of the cap give an otherworldly effect. The frills are soft, radiating outward, and they give off a sickly-sweet scent. The smell reminds him of hospice and beds on wheels. He gingerly reaches his hand backward, blindly groping for the edge of the cap. His fingertips find the lip, just as he loses purchase and splashes down into the water. He tries again with several more unsuccessful attempts. This time he climbs the trunk as high as he can manage, with his head lost in the forest of soft fringes. The bitter-sweet smell is almost overwhelming. He places his hand against the underside of the cap, then punches as hard as he can. There is a dull oomph sound with the contact, almost as if the fungus groans softly, and the man feels his fist sink into the cap. With a few dozen more well-placed strikes, he’s through. The man’s hand bursts out of the topside of the mushroom like a restless corpse.

Slowly and with great effort, the rest of the man emerges from the widening hole. He climbs up and out, slimy and covered in small bits of spongy plant-matter. He lays down atop the cap, curling himself into the smallest size he can manage. He is assaulted by an impossible need to burst into tears and to laugh with joy. He is out of the water, and suddenly his fear shows itself for the irrational reaction it is. The man oscillates between laughing and sobbing, drinking in the warmth of the mushroom. After his exhausting climb and his bout with manic-depressive hilarity, he finds himself drifting off into a shallow sleep. His dreams are disturbing and ethereal; strange and familiar. He is running on the surface of the ocean but can’t keep his footing because of the waves and ripples. Each time he falls, the sea begins to engulf him, making him feel as though it were trying to consume him. The final time he falls, the water fully overtakes him, and he sinks slowly into a rapidly darkening world. He reaches upward and watches the soft blue light of the surface darken and disappear.

He awakens in a cold sweat on the top of the mushroom, with both arms over the edge reaching toward the water below. He recoils from the edge with a gasp and shrinks back to the center of the cap. That’s when he notices the sun going down on the horizon ahead. But that’s impossible, he couldn’t have dozed off for more than 20 minutes… Then he realizes the place he is curled up on must have a gaping hole in it from where he climbed through. Yet there is no hole anywhere on the surface of the cap - just the soft, bumpy flesh of the strange mushroom. He feels around, checking for some kind of imperfection that would mark the place he mutilated the fungus, but there’s nothing. That unaccountable desire to laugh returns and the man begins to rock himself atop his perch.

Beneath the stifled laughter and sobs, another feeling rises on the man’s gut. It is as unfamiliar to him as the fungus: the feeling of hunger. Sea sickness and fear have wracked his body so thoroughly that the feeling is unexpected. As gray clouds sweep higher into the sky, and the sun melts int...