I thought our date was going so well right up until the moment her ear fell off.

No, wait.

That's no way to begin this, it makes it sound like some story or something. If I have time, I'll rewrite this.

Let me start over:

My name is Harold Davis, Harry, and I am going to kill myself.

My actions will likely be labeled as “insanity” and that may well be true. I hope it's true. I don't think I am crazy, but I wish to God that I was. I hope my friends and family understand I am doing this for them. I choose to die so that they might live.

For whoever finds this letter, please see that it reaches the local authorities immediately. The information contained herein is of the utmost importance to the continued survival of the human race.

This is not making any sort of sense. I have too much to say and not much time to say it. I'm going to have to be brief, but I'm going to take things in order as much as possible. I can only hope that the shotgun laying across my lap is capable of fully removing my head.

Please accept my heartfelt apologies for the mess I am going to leave.

My name is Harold Davis. I grew up in a very small town in the Midwestern United States. It was a very insulated existence. The sort of place where everyone knows everybody else's family. The sort of place where, when a kid is twelve years old, his father gets a call about a baseball and a window before the child can sprint three blocks home.

At any rate, last year I moved to Chicago. I am still a small fish in a very big pond. My apartment is tiny, the air conditioning never works except in winter, and my job is a bottomless hole where dreamers go to die. In spite of all that, I've been really happy here.

While my “disposable” income isn't, I still manage to skimp on just enough of the essentials that I can go out on Saturday night and have a few drinks. Or buy a few drinks. Every Saturday I would put on my best outfit, spend two hours making my hair look like I spent two minutes on it, and do my level best to forget about the checks that would bounce first thing Monday morning. Every Saturday I went to any one of well over a dozen different watering holes and tried to look disinterested. Every Saturday I spent money I didn't have buying drinks for women who'd probably as soon spit on me as speak to me and every Saturday I went home alone. Every one, except the last one.

Last Saturday I was... hell, where was I? It doesn't matter. Anyway, I was at a bar. They're pretty well all the same: dark, loud, reeking of stale beer and the kind of cigarette smell that won't come off the walls no matter how long it's been since people could smoke indoors. I saw her there, practically surrounded by men making no attempt to disguise their bare lust and, I was sort of shocked to see, several women. With so many to choose from, the lady's dance card was assuredly full, but I couldn't help myself. When I looked at her, really looked, I could see she was sort of pretty in a “girl-next-door” kind of way. I mean, she wasn't all model pretty or anything. On any other night, maybe, any other place, I might not even have noticed her. But when I saw her, it was like seeing sex in human form.

I couldn't take my eyes off her. I mean, I was just blatantly staring and I knew it, but I couldn't do anything about it. I bought her a drink, one amongst many, I was sure, so I tried to be... I don't know, suave? So what did I order? A Slow, Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall. Hey, I didn't name the thing, that's just what it was called. The bartender sat it in front of her, apparently told her what it was and pointed at me, still staring.

She smiled at me and touched her hair. I'd read enough dating books to know that classified as preening behavior. Touching her hair means, basically, “Hey, you're cute.” I was standing right outside the ring of flesh pressed close around her without even realizing I'd stood up. She got, a bit shakily, to her feet and the crowd parted around her. Admittedly this is a story, but it's a true story, and I should have known something was up just then because these sorts of things don't actually happen in real life. She just stepped on up to me, wrapped her arms around me and stuck her tongue right down my throat. When I tried to pull away to hide my unexpected and very apparent reaction, she actually gripped me tighter and ground her body against mine.

I was no virgin, but faced with this incredibly aggressive and somehow desperately desirable woman, I was terrified and elated all at the same time. I was only minimally aware that angry eyes bored into me from every side because the lady chose me over them but I could not possibly have cared less. There was a part of me that wanted to jab a finger at each and every one of their glowering mugs and scream, “In your face!” The hottest girl in the place was leading me out with my hand in her own and all the rest could only watch. I finally knew what it felt like to be the participant in such a drama instead of yet another faceless observer. Even knowing what I do now, it was still sort of amazing.

Anyway, we took off out of there and I made for my ancient Pontiac. Out in the street, with only the hint of a bass line thrumming out into the night, I tried to fill the chill air with some hint of conversation.

“I'm Har-,” I started to say but she squeezed my hand and answered before I could finish, “We don't need names.”

In hindsight, that's just creepy, but then? It was fucking hot.

She was on me before I could do the lift, jiggle, and press against my door so it would open. She was off balance and I had a couple of drinks in me so that, when the door gave way, we hit my floor, hard.

She tore, and I mean that literally, my clothes off. Again, hot then, creepy now. I mean, I wasn't exactly thinking clearly enough at the time to realize just how strong she'd have to be to do that and she was just a little thing. She was even less careful with her own. This woman had need, you know? One of us kicked my door shut and it was on.

Like I said, I was no virgin, but I also wasn't terribly experienced, you know? I mean, I'd had several good times in the past with a couple of girls from my hometown, but this was so totally different. The whole thing was unreal. I got on and got off and off and off. It was like I was trying to prove something. I couldn't let her go, and couldn't help but come. I was, like, trying to force my whole body inside her and she loved it. Our bodies met with enough force to bruise and we both humped harder. There are some who say that there is a strong correlation between sex and violence and they might be right.

Her nails tore my back, I pulled her hair. My walls are so thin and we were both screaming so loud, I am still amazed that the cops didn't come through my door, guns drawn.

It was the best, and later worst, time of my life.

We lay there, me smoking, afterwards and I was running my hand through her hair. As drenched as I was, I found it incredible that she didn't have a bead of sweat on her body. I started to make some lame joke about it just before her ear came off in my hand.

It was like a magic trick. I didn't even know what happened, at first. I just sorta laid there, looking at what I was holding, and couldn't grasp what I was seeing. There was my hand, my fingers, and in them was a small, pale ear with a pair of silver studs in the lobe. It was when my eyes looked to see what that ear was attached to that my world kept going a bit gray. My brain could process what I was seeing, but it sure as hell didn't want to. My hand, my fingers, her ear. Nope, still not getting it.

I opened my mouth, I remember this, I opened my mouth and was sort of smiling this confused half grin that my lips seemed to like making when I was desperately searching for the right thing to say and knowing that whatever was about to come out of my mouth could only make things worse. I was just laying there, an inch of ash threatening to drop onto my pillow off the cigarette in one hand, a woman's ear in the other one while the woman, herself, just lay there like there was nothing wrong in the world. I was trying to think of something to say but I was distracted by this awful noise. It sounded, vaguely, like a woman screaming her fool head off out in the street. I took a moment to really listen and I realized it was me. My fool head. My scream echoing into my own ears from some far away place.

The woman whose ear I now could not let go of still lay there, appearing as content as the proverbial cat whose belly was full of canary.

You know, let's call a spade a spade, shall we? The corpse whose ear I was holding. The spell, or whatever it was, was broken. She wasn't pale. She was gray. She wasn't embodied sex, but death. I had just fucked the hell out of a corpse in my own bed, clumps of its hair were lying on the floor, the couch, me, and I couldn't even move. Holding, screaming and, I think, crying.

She could move, though.

It didn't matter that she should have been moldering in some far away place, preferably under ground, she got up and, still moving like she was drunk, rifled my drawers for some clothes.

She wasn't drunk, of course. She was dead. She was the walking dead. And then, she was gone.

I had, by that time, stopped screaming. I think I may have been sort of catatonic. My mouth was still open, but there was no sound coming out. I don't know how long I laid there like that, holding an ear. I was only vaguely aware of angry shouts only barely muffled by the walls of my suddenly very silent, little apartment.

When I came out of it, I started screaming again, but choked that shit off quick. I threw the ear across the room, slammed the door to my apartment and managed to make it to the bathroom before I vomited. I didn't make it to the toilet, but tile cleans so much easier. I guess I passed out.

Its funny to not remember things like that. I was puking and then I was waking up with dried blood all over me from, apparently, bashing my face into the bowl when I went down. I crawled into the shower, turned the water to scalding and scrubbed myself raw. Everywhere.

I was still scrubbing long after the water was cold.

While I dried off, I started talking to myself.

I had never done that before. Actually, whenever I saw people doing it, it gave me the creeping willies and I tried to make best speed for the nearest exit. It did not occur to me, then, that I was probably what lawyers like to call “temporarily insane.” I don't know. I was upset. I was fucking terrified. The sound of my own voice, no matter how alien and shaken it was, was reassuring.

“Cops. Cops. Gotta call 'em,” I said.

“Yeah? Then what? What are you going to say,” I asked.

“Hi. My name is Harry Davis and I just fucked a corpse. No, not like that, she walked away right after,” I replied.

I was right, too. They'd lock me up. Hell, I probably needed to be locked up. Somebody slipped something into my drink and I was, like, hallucinating. Or I'd gone crazy.

“Yeah, you're crazy. You're totally bananas, buddy. You came home alone. That's what you did. You came home alone, there was no woman. You had a terrible fucking dream and... you're still dreaming, right now. Yeah! It's a dream!”

That sounded good, too. It kept sounding good until I stubbed my toe on the way to answer the urgent-sounding knock at the door. I mean, it hurt, you know? Like, bad. So, stumbling, cursing, I opened the door to a face full of cigar smoke and a fat, greasy man demanding to know what my “fucking malfunction” was and kindly offering to see me out to the street if I didn't keep the “fucking noise down.” I apologized profusely and mumbled some lame thing about a movie, my stereo, and technical difficulties and it seemed to placate my slumlord enough to get my door closed again.

When he went away I collapsed. Still dressed in nothing but a cheap bathrobe, I fell against my door and slid to the floor, screaming and crying into the sleeve of my garment for, I don't know, like an hour.

So, I'm crazy.

There is no other explanation.

Still, madmen have to eat.

I got dressed as quickly as possible, fishing my wallet and keys out of the remains of my pants and that's when I stopped and really looked at things.

I have what they call an “efficiency apartment.” Whoever they are, I hope they rot in Hell. It was a closet with a boxed-in corner containing a minuscule toilet, a Lilliputian's sink and a shower hardly big enough for one person.

Rather, I had. When I left, I didn't, at the moment, realize that would be the last time I'd ever see the place. My friends and family know where to find it, and I suggest the authorities send somebody there, immediately. There may be some sort of evidence or something to not only corroborate my story, but useful in finding the source of this madness and put a stop to it.

God, my stomach hurts!

Anyway, I looked around. There were clumps of hair all over. From the time we hit the area rug just inside my door until we collapsed on my tiny hideaway, she... it had left pieces of itself everywhere. Some of the greasy strands were still attached to hunks of scalp that had apparently come loose. Her, its, ear was still against the base of my “kitchen” wall, where I'd thrown it. I tried to vomit again, but there was nothing left.

It was my pants, or the remains there-of, in my hands that kicked me in the brain pan. I was wearing an identical pair.

I pulled.

I strained.

I think I pulled a muscle.

No way I could have torn my own clothes off like that. I mean, I'm no pussy, but there's just no leverage. And denim is a lot tougher than it looks when you don't have a small tear to work from.

So, it happened.

It happened.

It happened.

Three times. I tried it three times and my brain just stood there like a petulant child, lower lip out and arms crossed, saying, “Nuh-uh!”

It happened.

Fourth time's the charm.

I woke up with another minor injury, a goose egg on the back of my head where it must have struck the wall.

I had no idea that passing out could happen like that. I mean, I remember feeling suddenly really, really bad, then I woke up with a headache.

I got out of there. I got out and tried for fifteen minutes or so to get the key into the ignition. I don't know about driving angry, but it's hard as hell to drive when you're scared.

I stopped and just sat there for a while. Sat and watched my windows slowly fog over, watching the world slip away. It was comforting, actually. The world outside my windshield wasn't the world I grew up in, lived in all my life. It was a different place, suddenly.

There were monsters in it.

Eventually I got my car started. It was almost out of gas, but I didn't care. I went to an all night Internet cafe. I didn't know what else to do. The prospect of taking my story to the police or the papers always ended up with me in a padded cell. I needed help, but didn't know where to look, or even what I needed help with.

I don't know what I expected to find out there, in the so-called cyberspace, but I could see no other option.

The staff mostly left me alone, which was good. I have no idea what I looked like, other than crazy, but I tipped after the first cup of coffee and danish and kept it up so they would continue to provide refills instead of requests to leave. I was working my way through my rent and bill money and didn't notice or didn't care. Makes little difference now.

I was tired and scared and confused.

I don't even know how I found what I found.

I don't know how the person who posted it knew what he or she seemed to know.

I can't tell you where to look or what to search for.

I know I started with zombies. I know that.

I know I ended on fungus. I know that, too.

I pray to God, seriously, please God, let this help somebody.

The woman wasn't the only one. I saw one of them at the Internet cafe. I know what it was because I wanted to fuck it so bad even though it was, for all appearances, a man.

I'm not gay.

I experimented, once, and didn't like it. I didn't like it enough to know that me desiring male flesh was not unnatural so much as simply not me. I stared at it long and hard. I stared, knowing what it was, and still not able to see it. Maybe if I pulled its ear off, the spell would have been broken. Doesn't matter. It was there.

They are out there.

I don't think I can make it any clearer.

I'm getting way ahead of myself, though. I had been reading.

The more I read, the more my skin tried to crawl away and the colder I got.

I am infected.

Before too much longer, I will be one of them if I don't do something. That's why I'm writing this. That's why I have the shotgun. Don't ask where I got it, I'm ashamed of what I've done in the last twenty-four hours. I did what I had to do, okay?

The papers will call it a killing spree, but you can't kill the dead and killing the dying isn't exactly murder. None of my hostages have been, or will be, harmed.

It's a fungus. I don't know how it happened, when it started, if its a mutant... I don't know!

This is what I know, what I think I know:

It gets inside you and it grows. It grows in your belly and up into your brain and it, I don't know, like becomes you. It takes you over and makes you a thing. By the time this occurs, you are already dead. I don't know if you know you are dead, or even if you know what you have become. Somehow, probably by tweaking your glands or something, the fungus makes you hot, desirable. It makes everyone around you want to fuck your brains out. It doesn't matter how you look, how you smell, or if you even speak. You become wanted, sexually, by any living human. I assume this only works on biological adults by tweaking their sex drives somehow but, again, I just don't know.

During copulation, humans are infected, becoming new hosts, like me. The process repeats until the host is no longer viable. Probably until the corpse is so far gone that it no longer works well enough to pass as human. Until it is, literally, falling apart. The fungus actually accelerates this process as it digests the host from the inside. What happens to the discarded host bodies is anybody's guess. I guess they wander off somewhere to spore, but I don't know.

I can only hope that this letter is found and somebody can be convinced to take this matter seriously. It really is a life or death situation. We have a new predator and I believe humanity's very survival is threatened.

There sure seems to be a lot of activity outside.

It's funny. Just when the pain gets almost unbearable, it just fades away. I can only assume that it's eating me, but it's, like, cyclical or something.

I ohmgoad i'm nto brethnig tell Mom Ilvo her

“The first thing the fungus does, according to some reports, is grow up into the brain of the fly, in order to control its activities.”

– Excerpted from March 2000 Fungus of the Month,

Entomophthora muscae

http://TomVolkFungi.net