Puffball

spring forth

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

The sign read Keep Off the Grass.

But the quaint little fence, made of knobby, untreated wood resting in notched posts, was so low they couldn’t have meant it. And the little round garden, hardly bigger than a Brooklyn studio apartment, positively shimmered with moist green freshness.

Lily didn’t remember seeing this park before, even though it was right at the end of her tidy Brooklyn street. Drops of dew caught the meager sunlight and refracted it into a golden halo. The fairy tale fence and silent signs only made it more appealing.

The sky that morning was milky and the wind held on to its stinging February edge, despite Lily’s best efforts to speed along spring. She was quite under dressed for the temperature and overeager to shake off her long winter hangover. Her dog Fern, a ruddy poodle mix wearing a tiny yellow rain jacket, squirmed in her arms. He was also eager to touch the grass. To press his nose into the vivid and visceral smells of life returning to the world. Grass was in such short supply in March, it was honestly rude of someone to think they could fence it off for themselves.

“Well you can just fuck right off,” she said to the unknown gardener as she hoisted Fern over the fence. “Dogs need grass.”

When she clambered over behind him, landing hard on the other side— the fence was a little higher than it looked— Lily did not notice the dusty puff of spores her foot set free.

What she noticed was that the park was even lovelier from the inside. Glorious patches of grass were emerging bright green from the mud. A sprinkling of yellow flowers dotted the ground. The sky even started to look a little bit bluer. A perfect pocket park, like being inside a spring-themed snow globe.

She stretched her arms and turned her face toward the sun. Finally, spring.

When she bent down to let Fern off his daisy-printed leash, the spores found their way into her nose. She sneezed and watched with mild concern as Fern bolted to the other side of the park. That wasn’t like him, her dog was a mama’s boy. But of course, he had been cooped up all winter too.

Lily took a deep breath. Despite the pollen or whatever was irritating her nose, the air smelled clean.

That sign is doing its job, Lily thought, keeping out the hordes of New Yorkers who would stomp this place into oblivion. Someone would be along soon, see her enjoying the park and hop the fence themselves. As rare as it was to get a bit of nature in Brooklyn, being alone with it was rarer still.

Fern was busily sniffing along the fence. Lily took a couple steps toward him, releasing spore plumes that puffed up like tiny mushroom clouds when her wellies touched the earth.

A few more steps and she started to feel light headed. Incredibly unfair for allergy season to start before we’ve even had spring, she thought. She called for Fern, but her breath caught on the dust coating her throat and she could only cough.

At the same time, the ground underneath her softened. When she looked down to see what she stepped in, it was as if she was looking down from the top of a building. She felt herself floating above a vast abyss of soil— miles and miles of black dirt below her, and the entire world teetering on a tiny slice at the top. Her stomach flipped. She closed her eyes, took a few yogic breaths. Did I forget to eat this morning?

Her deep breaths pulled in billions more spores, which swirled and jostled and came to rest on the moist lining of her lungs. She suddenly had the idea to step out of her rain boots, an idea that felt strange, even as she acted on it. Like someone else was telling her what to do.

The icy damp soaking into her socks did seem to clear her head for a moment. She called out to Fern. He looked at her curiously. He wagged his tail but didn’t come any closer. Her knees wobbled and she fell to all fours.

Lily looked down at her hands in the mud. Pale blue painted nails and bright skin glowed against the black soil. There was a moment when she began to push herself back up. But instead, she squeezed the shiny muck with her fingers, enjoying the squelching sound as it released another mist into her face. Close to the ground the spore cloud was thick, like breathing cocoa powder. The blue nails on black soil vibrated in her vision. She laughed out loud.

Oh wow, she thought, I am high as a fucking kite right now. She tried to remember what she had taken. Was there a gummy in the apartment that she had popped in her mouth without realizing? She could no longer picture much of anything beyond the park.

Inches in front of her, a few blades of grass stretched their necks toward the sun and she was dazzled out of her more boring thoughts. The outside world, the unusually quiet Brooklyn street, faded to a faint smudge.

She looked up in time to see Fern hop over the little fence. Her distance vision was blurry, like someone had dragged a wet paintbrush through it, while up close her eyes seemed to see more than they ever had.

Oh Fern, don’t leave! This is the best park in the world, she thought, and you’re the best dog in the world. She watched the blur of his little yellow rain jacket and her heart filled with love for that little dog. But she couldn’t call to him. She couldn’t even remember if she had a mouth, a thought that sent her into a fit of giggles.

The ground beneath her hands and knees melted from solid earth to a thick gritty liquid. She started to sink. Lily’s head was heavy, rolling on her neck, but she laughed again, remembering the cartoons from her childhood and her overly developed fear of quicksand. How hilarious to be sucked into it now, in Brooklyn, as an adult. At this, instead of pulling herself out of the muck, she laughed so hard her sides cramped.

Tubes of light and color swirled out of the earth like streamers, squirming up from where her fingers had been. She could make them appear by leaning deeper into the dirt, so she did, hypnotized by the dancing ribbons. They moved like psychedelic earthworms. Which, of course, they were.

While she watched the show, the mud dragged her down, inch by slow inch. In the deepest crevice of her mind some nerves sparked, sending slow signals through the spore fog clogging her synapses. A faint alarm sounded, Lily, what the fuck are you doing?

But the worry was so quiet. As she inhaled more of the delicious earthy smell around her, her anxiety melted away like a snowflake in April. Waves of warmth rippled across her chest. Her eyes began to water at the beauty of it all. To be astonished, one simply had to look down.

Mud swallowed Lily up to her shoulders, and as her cheek touched down to the ground, the swirling colors gathered in front of her, twisting themselves into the perfect spiral of a technicolor snail shell. Mesmerizing, metallic-tinged eyes waved on stalks above his head, regarding her in stereo. He dragged behind him a shimmering rainbow of slime, in colors she had never imagined, filling her with wonder and calm.

The snail seemed to float off the ground. Lily tried to follow him, and she found herself on her back in a soft shallow grave, looking into a crystalline blue sky. The sun spread its warm blanket across the magical park, tickling awake tiny plants that had been dormant for months.

Inside her body Lily felt an unfurling, as fibrous stalks and deep green scales pushed toward the light. Tiny pink flowers on long skinny stems began to poke up through her chest, each one making a popping sound as it burst through her skin. The stems dragged smears of red across her trench coat where they emerged.

The transformation was beautiful and horrible at once. Slow tears gathered and she thought No, no, that isn’t right. But she could no longer remember what her chest looked like without a meadow of blooms rising out of it.

A soft carpet of moss spread from the center of Lily’s rib cage and crawled up her throat, wrapping her tongue and teeth in fuzz. Her mushy brain received the sensations without perceiving the threat. The blue sky breathed slowly, deeply, in and out, and Lily matched its rhythm, settling into a meditative peace.

Spring is such a hungry time, Lily. We’ve waited so long to eat.

The words sliced through her earthy peace, sending ice water up her spine. She tried to sit up but the sucking mud held her tight.

“What?” Lily said, her tongue and lips thick with growth. “Is someone there?”

There are many here. All you have to do is look down.

Her anesthetized brain finally woke up and she spit against the grit in her teeth. In the deep dark, her pale blue painted fingertips brushed against branching white roots and tangled mycorrhizal webs, bacterial mats and hot fermenting leaf litter, slime molds and insect eggs.

Lily jerked and twisted in revulsion from the things that slid between her fingers, sobering up for the very end, unfortunately. As she pulled away from encroaching nibbles and tapping legs, the mud tightened its grip. Pallid, strange underground life was drawn to her heat and chemistry: blind worms and trapdoor spiders, many-legged centipedes and tiny amphibians released from melting ice chambers.

Roots grew through and around Lily’s hands and feet, tying her body in place. Her wide eyes darted around as a tiny snail, dressed in the disappointing brown shell of reality, dragged its rippling body toward her. When she felt it, wet and cold at the entrance to her nostril, she tried to scream, but her sounds were muffled by an avalanche of black soil. Her mud coffin sealed up and the last sliver of sky disappeared.

On the street above, the pocket park was gone, leaving behind an unremarkable patch of dried mud. Lily’s boots and Fern’s daisy-printed leash lay near some trash cans, abandoned street scraps that someone would come along and claim. The sky was stubbornly overcast, defying spring in the way New York skies will do.

Far below, translucent white mushrooms crawled out of Lily’s eyes and mouth, as wet communities of algae colonized the plains of her cheeks. Methodical regiments of ants chewed across her pale skin, leaving scraps for the earthworms, and stumbling beetles rolled balls of blood and viscera back to their baby beetle nests. Spring was springing all around.

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