Purple Monkey

He flicks the burning match at the purple fungus hanging from the ceiling. The purple fungus burns with a green light as bright as a supernova floating amongst the thick black soup of space, though it smells like onions cooking in beer and makes the air taste like cake. His dad had shown him this trick when he was four or eight, he couldn’t remember which. When he was eight he was really six and when he was four he was really two.

It doesn’t matter now anyway.

Green and purple rain is falling from the fungus. He opens his hand to catch some and licks his palm; it tastes like chocolate coated peanuts. Looking in the mirror he sees his tongue has turned purple like the fungus. He smiles.


“It seems what's left of my human side
Is slowly changing in me”


“Who said that?”

         She sits amongst the long green grass, staring at the orange moon through rose tinted eyes. She looks at the blinking red stars and thinks about life on mars. “How stupid,” she mutters to herself while she waits for him to come. He promised her some more fungus. The importance of this fungus, she doesn’t know. It’s purple and she wants it. That is good enough for her.

“Where did it come from Mike?” Her blue eyes ask him in the silence.
“I don’t know it just appeared one day. It is telepathic fungus, it becomes what ever you want it to be,” he answers with his teeth. They are a mix of purple and white.
What did it matter where the fungus came from anyway? The fungus was good, was his friend. The fungus mattered to him, and to his father, and his father’s father before that. It is all about the fungus and nothing else. The fungus is king.


“You told us how you weren't afraid to die.
Well then so long.”

“Is it coming from the mirror?”

         When she licks the rain from her hands it tastes like rose and lavender, or how she thinks they would both taste together. She thinks about mushrooms and licks again. Mike is right; it changes to your thoughts.
“Sally, what are you doing?” her mothers voice floats down the sky light, but Sally knows her mother is at work. Looking up she sees a black bird looking down at her. It opens its beak and again the voice squawks at her in her mother’s voice. She smiles and licks her hand again. What mother doesn’t know surely won’t hurt her?

Mike kisses her on the hand as they look out over the magenta sea. It laps against the grey sand.
“Did someone die?” Sally asks, this time with her ears.
“I think so, I think I can remember something about someone going into the water and not coming back, but that was a long time ago,” he answers through his stomach.
“No, I mean the water looks like blood,” she insists.
He looks at her sternly, why does she have to harp on about things all the time? He showed her his fungus; he had never done that with a girl before. She always asks so many stupid questions.
“It’s from us, didn’t you realise?” he asks as he drops her hands.
He walks away over the grey sand and she stands there looking at the blood wash.
She sees a shell, a black shell. She picks it up and looks inside; there is a world in there. Houses and cars and planes. Her eyes are wide as she takes it in.
“Are you from me too?” she whispers into the shell, this time from her mind.
The people walking down the street in the shell chant “Purple Fungus, Purple Fungus” and she drops it back into the blood with a big splosh.

“I know, how I feel when I'm around you,
I don't know, how I feel when I'm around you,”


“What has happened to me?”


Mike looks at himself in the mirror. He hasn’t burned the purple fungus today. He is grey and wet, his eyes shallow pools of blue. A lawn of stubble has spread across his chin and here and there big lumps have swelled under the surface of his skin. The lumps are painful and red and when he squeezes one of them it violently explodes spraying a grisly mess over his own reflection. Taking a tissue he wipes at the mess on the mirror but it only smears. He can’t recognise himself at all.


The purple fungus pulsates in his closet. He can’t see it but he can hear it, it breathes his name, a smooth and silky voice offering promises he can’t resist. “I can make you whole again” it whispers through the crack. He looks at the closet. The door breathes in and out, bulging, filling with the sweet smell of onions that taste like cake when you breathe. He looks at the roof and notices Sally hanging there with claws for fingernails and fangs for teeth. “You must drink” she breathes at him. “How did you get up there?” he asks through chattering teeth, but she looks down and smiles then crawls away, out of his sight.

“Mike, where does the fungus come from?” Sally asks again, her tongue flashing purple as she speaks. He looks into her eyes; they are turning purple around the pupil. “I think, I think my dad said it started growing in the desert somewhere after something happened, but that’s a long time ago.” He answers, turning to gaze at the sky. The grass is green and soft like cotton wool but the sky has changed colour again, it’s the same colour purple as the fungus. In the park someone is cooking onions, it makes both of them think about the water. “I think we should stop now.” She says, looking at him earnestly in the eyes. He rolls his eyes back in his head and embraces sleep instead.

“No, fuck off, I don’t care! I don’t need you anyway, I was fine before you came along and I will be fine when you have gone!” he screams at her from the middle of the room. The tendons in his neck strain and his Adam’s apple bobs furiously as he screams. A blue knot of a vein rises across his forehead and his mouth twitches as he paces back and forth twitching his red hands.
Sally is huddled into the corner of the room across from his closet, her arms wrapped around her knees as she cries and cries, half of her face puffy and black.

He stares at her intently, eyes completely purple matching his tongue and his teeth.