When I wake that morning my head is about to crack open at the temples. I’ve done it again. Third time this week.

The whole apartment is out of focus, viewed through cheesecloth or vaseline. My joints are achy and weak, my hands tremble from the damage I’ve done to my nervous system. The light from my refrigerator–empty but for a can of Coors, a half-bottle of cold brew, and a bell pepper composting in the vegetable drawer–sears my eyes with its brightness.

I fumble with the screwtop on the coffee for a moment, scraping my tongue against my incisors in an effort to reduce the furriness I always feel on mornings like this. When my lips close over my teeth again, I feel something spongy collected on the enamel. I gag and spit a construction-warning orange crescent into the kitchen sink.

The hell did I drink last night?

The shit I just coughed up belongs on a log in the woods, not on the burnished steel of my sink. Swallowing, I poke it with a butter knife; it’s yielding but not totally so, scrambled eggs or Jell-o or congealed grease.

I finally manage to get the coffee open and down the remainder, casting an eye back at the fridge. I wonder if the Coors’ would serve my situation better. Stumbling over the detritus littering my living room floor, I walk back to my bedroom in search of my phone. Maybe the internet will know what I scraped off my tongue.

I pull the battered device out of yesterday’s pants. Five missed calls, all Clara. No less than fifteen texts, ranging in tone from curious to impatient to furious at my unresponsiveness; I think I must have put the thing on silent at some point. As I scroll through Clara’s escalating fury, I try to remember where I was last night. After the first couple rounds, my memory’s always a little unreliable.

I sit down heavily on my rumpled sheets, and a cloud of yellow dust rises up around me, smelling of rot and dank. Coughing, waving my arms around to clear the air, I slam the bedroom door behind me. My head vibrates like a struck bell.

The phone rings in my hand. Clara again.

“Hello?”

“So where were you?”

“When?”

“Last night, Chuck. We had reservations?”

Ah yes. I went to Tin Dog after work to pregame this dinner date. And then. “Oh, uh, something came up.”

“You went out and got shitfaced again.”

“No, no, it was a last minute work thing, I was busy all night.”

“Uh-huh. And you couldn’t call me to let me know.”

“Clara…”

“Look, I’d get it if you said you just wanted to drink yourself into oblivion every night. I would! My dad was the same way. But you say you’re committed to me, that you want to keep seeing me, that you love me, so I keep giving you chances like the sucker I am.

“This is the last one, okay. You can meet me at Ampersand at 6:30 tonight, or you can lose this number. Am I clear, Chuck?”

“Absolutely. Listen, I--”

“If you want to make excuses, you can do it in person. I can smell your breath over the telephone, Chuck. Clean yourself up.”

“Okay.”

“See you tonight.”

She hangs up, and there I am, in my underwear, in my shitty apartment, hungover, dirt, trash, an infected sore on the foot of the world, a rotting armadillo on the side of the highway. I pick my way through the week’s bottles and cans to the yellow-tiled bathroom, suddenly very itchy.

Steam fogs the mirror as I peel off my reeking drawers and sodden tee. The shirt snags painfully under my armpit, and I gingerly pick the fabric out of the blackened growth that sprouted there last week. The area around it is tender, orange veins creeping their way outward under my skin.

I should get that looked at.

I step into the scalding stream of water to scrub away the night’s excesses.

Toweling off, I realize that I’ve let this apartment become a warzone. If there’s even the remotest possibility that Clara might come over after dinner, I need to pick up a little. I don’t remember the last time I did any tidying, and the pizza boxes, beer cans, and liquor bottles are starting to draw flies.

A thin fur of blue mold coats the lower strata of the first pile I excavate. I wonder if I should open a window or put on gloves. I lift the limp, dripping garbage into a bag and try to hold my breath.

There are mushrooms growing between my couch cushions, the same alarming orange I coughed into the sink this morning, the same color as the veins in my armpit. That last, lonely beer in the fridge sings to me, but I stay strong for a little longer. Clear out the old stuff before adding new.

There is a tiny rim of whiskey left in the next bottle I pick up, but the neck is mottled with black spots. I wipe it off on my shirt and down the remainder to salve my pounding cranium till I can allow myself that Coors.

Around 3:30 most of the trash drifts have been bagged and hauled painfully down to the big dumpsters in the parking lot. I’m starting to feel a little less biohazardous when I close the front door. My mouth still feels a little gluey. Think this level of responsible adult-ness has probably earned me that beer now.

I lift the pull tab and the sound is oddly dull, a groan rather than the refreshing clear crack I was expecting. I ignore the difference as I lift the can to my lips and take a long swig. The near-liquid that fills my mouth is mineral-tasting, thick, earthy. It coats my stinging tongue immediately and adheres to my teeth. I vomit once more into the sink, my body rejecting this foul soup along with whatever remained in there from last night’s misadventures. A viscous sludge glops out of my mouth, joining the still extremely orange rind that I scraped off my tongue this morning.

Once the dry heaves stop, I look at the can blearily. It’s covered in fuzz. The liquid that clings to the lip is a gelatinous stain.

I throw the can at the garbage bin, miss. It falls to the linoleum with a sound like a tree branch dropping into a snowdrift, throwing up a light fog of spores that settle around it as I scrub the bile from my kitchen sink.

I exit the kitchen, still suppressing retches. The living room looks almost the same as it did before the day’s frantic efforts to hide my filth and shame. While I’ve been guiltily trying to indulge myself, the blue fuzz has crept into the newly-cleaned areas, fruiting bodies have sprouted in the corners previously occupied by the evidence of my sloth, the air itself has become thick with drifting motes, syrupy, amber-tinted.

I open the door to my bedroom and a cloud of rot envelops me. I know nothing more.

#

My eyelids adhere to the grimy surface of my eyes as they slowly open. The carpet around me is dotted with spires calmly puffing little clouds of spores. Sitting up, I feel thousands of mycelia strain and snap. The phone says it’s 5:30. I need to get ready if I’m going to meet Clara.

I open my mouth to brush my teeth and see that they’re covered with orange slime that arcs in mucousy strings to my lips. I brush until my gums bleed and my shoulder aches. The foamy spit that circles the drain is autumn-colored.

The drive to Ampersand is uneventful. The cool air from the open window makes me feel clean and new and that things will be okay.

It’s 6:25; I’m a little early for a change.

The restaurant is packed with diners in polo shirts and sundresses, a few suits and evening gowns here and there. The host side-eyes my threadbare, untucked pearl snap and tattered Levis, but says nothing as she shows me to the table.

Clara’s already sitting there, a glass of ice water sweating in front her. I put on my best I’m-so-sorry-this-won’t-happen-again face and pull out the seat across. I’m still feeling pretty good as she lifts her eyes from her phone and skewers me with a questioning gaze.

I drop my eyes, ashamed. She’s been so patient with me. I’m such weak trash, wet cardboard, rotten drywall, a wad of used paper towels. I queue up an apology but find my mouth full of earthy, spongy fungus. I can feel it breaking down my teeth, numbing and slowly devouring my tongue, even as I feel Clara’s eyes tunneling through my forehead.

“Well?”

I look at her, pleading. I can’t open my mouth; it’d all come out. All this filth and rot that’s been growing inside me.

“Nothing to say for yourself, Chuck?” She sighs. “I know what you’d say anyway: ‘I’m so sorry, it was such a mistake, it’s not my fault.’ I heard you last time.”

She closes her eyes and rubs the bridge of her nose, giving me a brief reprieve from her laser glare. When she lifts her face again, her expression has softened.

“Look, I had to deal with this from my dad right up until I moved out. And I like you a lot, I’m really close to loving you, I think, but I can’t do this again.

“My friends said I should kick you to the curb, that I was dating my father, but I kept telling them you were different.

“I’m not so sure of that now, Chuck. I can’t deal with the possibility that someday you’ll do something you won't be able to bounce back from with a plate of greasy eggs and a Bloody Mary. I just, I can’t.”

She becomes tearful, a quaver sprouting in her voice. I can feel mold creeping down my esophagus.

“I can’t watch another person I care about destroy himself. I don’t deserve that.”

A waiter approaches the table, notices the tension, and wisely backs away.

Clara swallows the tremor, and her next question comes out clear and strong as fungus burns through the roof of my mouth and into my sinuses.

“So how can we fix this, Chuck? What can you do to make sure I don’t have to worry about finding you passed out on the bathroom floor again?”

My eyes dart to the side, grinding grimily in their sockets, trying to find a way out of this situation that won’t involve me opening my foul mouth.

“No? Really?”

Fuck.

“Alright. Fine. Drink yourself to death for all I care, I’m done with you. I’ve given you too many chances already. Delete my number, Chuck.”

Clara moves quickly and elegantly through the crowded restaurant, turning sideways to fit between chairs, slinging her red leather jacket over her shoulder.

Tendrils of fungus stretch and snap when I open my mouth to call after her, but all that escapes my lips is a mist of orange spores, a mist through which spires shoot upward, spires that stretch to the ceiling from my stupid, selfish, useless mouth.