PMJ
Silhouette Gloom of the Sundown Lands
Forum Head
Articles Head
Elite Member
Advanced Member
Member
This has nothing to do with my current fic, Seven Days of Terror.
Here's the back story behind this tale.
I hope all of you have visited creativeworlds.net at least once in your lives. It's the site I got the dancing Mawile from, and I know back when it was new, many people chose to use one of the .gifs that the webmaster created of a 3-part dance (Mawile is dancing the second part of the dance).
It's also the place of a lot of cool images, such as this one:
This is, believe it or not, the inspiration for this short story. Out of nowhere, I wanted to know more about Parasect, so I typed "Parasect" into Wikipedia.
Scrolling down to the information on Parasect, I read the following:
"The mushroom has completely taken over the bug host. Parasect resides in dark and damp places, a preference of the mushroom, not the bug."
Oh really? That's interesting.
So I got to wondering. What's it like to be a Parasect? What's it like to be completely controlled, to have no free will of your own and live completely how a parasite wants you to live?
This story is about the life of one such Parasect, as told from his point of view. It's a short read - barely over 1600 words.
Enjoy! ^_^
When I was young, I dreaded the day I would evolve. As a child, I learned from my older siblings that after we evolved, our mushrooms would take over our bodies. Once we evolved, we would never be able to leave the cave we called home - not from our own laws or fears, but by the will of the mushroom. In addition to that, I learned that over the years, the mushroom would essentially eat us alive. After fifteen years or so, our bodies stop producing enough nutrients for the mushroom's daily intake, and the mushroom saps more to compensate. Eventually, the mushroom takes so much from us that we no longer have enough to sustain ourselves, and we die. With no host to suck nutrients from, and no ability to transfer to another host, the mushroom dies in a day or so.
The whole process takes about twenty years.
I thought to myself, perhaps that's not so terrible. For my kind, twenty years is a long life. My grandfather is twenty-three years old, but he is hardly my grandfather anymore - he is a mere shell of his former self, consumed by the mushroom.
In his prime, my grandfather was one of our clan's elders - leaders, if you will - that lead group hunts and made decisions for the rest of us as a whole. They are very wise and very powerful, respected by all. Having lost my father to the Great Struggle like many others of my generation, I lived a basic life with my mother and grandfather. My grandfather taught me everything I know about fighting. I hunted with him as much as I could, and I felt pride at watching him defeat his prey. He was among the strongest of us all, and he was my grandfather.
Strong as he was, however, he was not nearly strong enough to win the battle of survival against the mushroom. As the years passed on, the effects of the mushroom's sapping became more and more apparent. He became much more sluggish and even forgot a few attacks. He spent more and more time in the dark corners of our home, more through the mushroom's desires than his own.
He also began to forget his family. A short time after he turned 19, he attacked my mother when the two went hunting for food, seemingly for no reason at all. He tore into her with vicious slashes and bites, covering her in sleeping spores to stop her from fighting back. He cleaved her mushroom in two and left deep, bloody cuts in the rest of her body. I was told by the other elders (the ones that hadn't yet succumbed to the mushroom's madness) that she was attacked and killed by another Parasect clan, and as a child, I believed it without a second thought. Thinking back on it, if they'd told me the truth, I don't think I would have believed them anyway.
I was still a Paras when it happened. I was six years old.
After that incident, my grandfather was never the same. He lashed out at anyone who came close and frequently went away from the group during hunts to sit in the dark. Any of us who came near were attacked, or worse. Pretty soon, he stopped coming back from hunts, and to this day he spends all his time in the same spot deep inside the tunnels. Perhaps somewhere inside him, locked away, is the spirit of the Parasect I once knew. Maybe, if my experiments had proven successful, I could be proud to call him my grandfather again.
I began to reconsider my stance on our lifespan. What if we were meant to live longer, and the mushroom was stealing our lives away? As young, we have two small mushrooms on our backs rather than the life-draining large one, and for our entire lives as Paras, the mushrooms are actually quite beneficial to us. Though they sap our strength like the larger mushroom, the long-term effects are all but nonexistant for Paras. The mushrooms release spores that are toxic to other species. As adults, the large mushroom continues to provide us with protection, but at the same time, the mushroom itself is slowly killing us all.
Late in my life as a Paras, I did everything I could to prevent myself from evolving out of fear of going insane like my grandfather. I stopped hunting. I ate only what was necessary to sustain myself. I asked all of the remaining elders that still had their sanity about their parents and grandparents, and if they'd ever been told stories of life without the mushrooms. Every time I received the same answer - no one knows.
My plans for halting my evolution seemed to work. Evolution normally happens between the ages of six and ten - I was nearing 11 years old and I still had not evolved, through my own will. It was a small victory and I felt pleased with myself; I felt like I was defying fate. I would not fall prey to the mushroom. Of course, when I explained to the others my plan to stay a Paras for life, I was met with laughter and ridicule. They claimed that I was wasting my time. They said my grandfather was a special case - after all, no other Parasect had attacked one of his own in generations. I ignored their remarks. If this had happened before, it could happen again, and I was determined to find the cause of it.
Despite my best efforts, my fellow clansmen were right - I could not escape fate forever. I evolved three days after my thirteenth birthday, and I was not prepared for it. Due to my self-imposed starvation and lack of combat experience, I became extremely weak upon evolution; simply supporting the enormous mushroom that now covered my entire body took everything I had, and to make matters worse, I could feel my energy slowly being sapped away.
My clock was ticking...
I spent the next few months essentially re-learning how to fight with the mushroom on my back. It wasn't easy. I couldn't focus. All I could think about was the parasite that was sucking me dry. I must have gained twenty pounds the first week after evolving - I had to in order to please the mushroom. It would have killed me otherwise.
By the time I was 14, I had reached the normal strength of most of the clan, though the ridicule for having nearly killed myself did not stop. I was also being pressured to find a mate and breed, but I was not interested in passing on my genes out of fear that my child would grow up and lose their mind to the mushroom, as my grandfather had. However, instinct won out, and when I was fifteen, I became a father myself.
A short time after my son hatched, I thought of a brilliant plan. My son would be the perfect experiment. The mushroom is most definitely not a natural part of our bodies. Perhaps if the mushrooms of a Paras were removed, they would not be present on evolution.
I took my son to one of the darker parts of the cave we all lived in and as carefully as I could, began to cut him around the base of the mushrooms. The instant my claw pierced his skin, he cried out in pain, but I held him firm and explained that he needed to endure this pain for history's sake! Once I had cut a hole into him, I very gingerly pulled off the mushroom. The hole bled a sickly looking goo in addition to his blood. I assumed it was part of the mushroom and went to work on the second one, ignoring my son's cries.
After what seemed like an eternity, I had succeeded in plucking the second mushroom off. I discarded it and looked down at my son, who was lying on the ground, still crying. I felt a pang of guilt when I saw him, bleeding freely from two large wounds on his back that I had inflicted. At the same time, I felt a surge of pride; my son would be the one to free our kind from the mushroom parasite.
Quite suddenly, my son stopped crying. I congratulated him for rising above the pain and asked him how he felt now that he was free, and I did not get a response. His blood continued to pour from the holes in his back, and I noticed that the mysterious goo that had come from the wound had stopped. I called out to my son, and again he did not answer.
He was dead. I had killed my own son!
I left my son's remains where they lay and scurried back home, thinking of how next time would be different.
Everyone was appalled at what I'd done. I murdered a child, and worse, my own son! I was exiled from the clan and attacked by my friends and family. Why couldn't they understand that what I was doing was for their own good?
That was three years ago.
I haven't gone back since then. No one would welcome me. I am still determined to beat the mushroom. For three years, I continued to experiment ways to rid us of the mushroom, using any Paras or Parasect that comes near.
I have tried 47 different methods on 47 different Pokemon. All have failed.
I hear the things they say when get near. They say I'm dangerous. They say I'm a killer.
They say I'm crazy.
I think they're just jealous.
Here's the back story behind this tale.
I hope all of you have visited creativeworlds.net at least once in your lives. It's the site I got the dancing Mawile from, and I know back when it was new, many people chose to use one of the .gifs that the webmaster created of a 3-part dance (Mawile is dancing the second part of the dance).
It's also the place of a lot of cool images, such as this one:
This is, believe it or not, the inspiration for this short story. Out of nowhere, I wanted to know more about Parasect, so I typed "Parasect" into Wikipedia.
Scrolling down to the information on Parasect, I read the following:
"The mushroom has completely taken over the bug host. Parasect resides in dark and damp places, a preference of the mushroom, not the bug."
Oh really? That's interesting.
So I got to wondering. What's it like to be a Parasect? What's it like to be completely controlled, to have no free will of your own and live completely how a parasite wants you to live?
This story is about the life of one such Parasect, as told from his point of view. It's a short read - barely over 1600 words.
Enjoy! ^_^
The Mushroom's Madness
by PMJ
by PMJ
When I was young, I dreaded the day I would evolve. As a child, I learned from my older siblings that after we evolved, our mushrooms would take over our bodies. Once we evolved, we would never be able to leave the cave we called home - not from our own laws or fears, but by the will of the mushroom. In addition to that, I learned that over the years, the mushroom would essentially eat us alive. After fifteen years or so, our bodies stop producing enough nutrients for the mushroom's daily intake, and the mushroom saps more to compensate. Eventually, the mushroom takes so much from us that we no longer have enough to sustain ourselves, and we die. With no host to suck nutrients from, and no ability to transfer to another host, the mushroom dies in a day or so.
The whole process takes about twenty years.
I thought to myself, perhaps that's not so terrible. For my kind, twenty years is a long life. My grandfather is twenty-three years old, but he is hardly my grandfather anymore - he is a mere shell of his former self, consumed by the mushroom.
In his prime, my grandfather was one of our clan's elders - leaders, if you will - that lead group hunts and made decisions for the rest of us as a whole. They are very wise and very powerful, respected by all. Having lost my father to the Great Struggle like many others of my generation, I lived a basic life with my mother and grandfather. My grandfather taught me everything I know about fighting. I hunted with him as much as I could, and I felt pride at watching him defeat his prey. He was among the strongest of us all, and he was my grandfather.
Strong as he was, however, he was not nearly strong enough to win the battle of survival against the mushroom. As the years passed on, the effects of the mushroom's sapping became more and more apparent. He became much more sluggish and even forgot a few attacks. He spent more and more time in the dark corners of our home, more through the mushroom's desires than his own.
He also began to forget his family. A short time after he turned 19, he attacked my mother when the two went hunting for food, seemingly for no reason at all. He tore into her with vicious slashes and bites, covering her in sleeping spores to stop her from fighting back. He cleaved her mushroom in two and left deep, bloody cuts in the rest of her body. I was told by the other elders (the ones that hadn't yet succumbed to the mushroom's madness) that she was attacked and killed by another Parasect clan, and as a child, I believed it without a second thought. Thinking back on it, if they'd told me the truth, I don't think I would have believed them anyway.
I was still a Paras when it happened. I was six years old.
After that incident, my grandfather was never the same. He lashed out at anyone who came close and frequently went away from the group during hunts to sit in the dark. Any of us who came near were attacked, or worse. Pretty soon, he stopped coming back from hunts, and to this day he spends all his time in the same spot deep inside the tunnels. Perhaps somewhere inside him, locked away, is the spirit of the Parasect I once knew. Maybe, if my experiments had proven successful, I could be proud to call him my grandfather again.
I began to reconsider my stance on our lifespan. What if we were meant to live longer, and the mushroom was stealing our lives away? As young, we have two small mushrooms on our backs rather than the life-draining large one, and for our entire lives as Paras, the mushrooms are actually quite beneficial to us. Though they sap our strength like the larger mushroom, the long-term effects are all but nonexistant for Paras. The mushrooms release spores that are toxic to other species. As adults, the large mushroom continues to provide us with protection, but at the same time, the mushroom itself is slowly killing us all.
Late in my life as a Paras, I did everything I could to prevent myself from evolving out of fear of going insane like my grandfather. I stopped hunting. I ate only what was necessary to sustain myself. I asked all of the remaining elders that still had their sanity about their parents and grandparents, and if they'd ever been told stories of life without the mushrooms. Every time I received the same answer - no one knows.
My plans for halting my evolution seemed to work. Evolution normally happens between the ages of six and ten - I was nearing 11 years old and I still had not evolved, through my own will. It was a small victory and I felt pleased with myself; I felt like I was defying fate. I would not fall prey to the mushroom. Of course, when I explained to the others my plan to stay a Paras for life, I was met with laughter and ridicule. They claimed that I was wasting my time. They said my grandfather was a special case - after all, no other Parasect had attacked one of his own in generations. I ignored their remarks. If this had happened before, it could happen again, and I was determined to find the cause of it.
Despite my best efforts, my fellow clansmen were right - I could not escape fate forever. I evolved three days after my thirteenth birthday, and I was not prepared for it. Due to my self-imposed starvation and lack of combat experience, I became extremely weak upon evolution; simply supporting the enormous mushroom that now covered my entire body took everything I had, and to make matters worse, I could feel my energy slowly being sapped away.
My clock was ticking...
I spent the next few months essentially re-learning how to fight with the mushroom on my back. It wasn't easy. I couldn't focus. All I could think about was the parasite that was sucking me dry. I must have gained twenty pounds the first week after evolving - I had to in order to please the mushroom. It would have killed me otherwise.
By the time I was 14, I had reached the normal strength of most of the clan, though the ridicule for having nearly killed myself did not stop. I was also being pressured to find a mate and breed, but I was not interested in passing on my genes out of fear that my child would grow up and lose their mind to the mushroom, as my grandfather had. However, instinct won out, and when I was fifteen, I became a father myself.
A short time after my son hatched, I thought of a brilliant plan. My son would be the perfect experiment. The mushroom is most definitely not a natural part of our bodies. Perhaps if the mushrooms of a Paras were removed, they would not be present on evolution.
I took my son to one of the darker parts of the cave we all lived in and as carefully as I could, began to cut him around the base of the mushrooms. The instant my claw pierced his skin, he cried out in pain, but I held him firm and explained that he needed to endure this pain for history's sake! Once I had cut a hole into him, I very gingerly pulled off the mushroom. The hole bled a sickly looking goo in addition to his blood. I assumed it was part of the mushroom and went to work on the second one, ignoring my son's cries.
After what seemed like an eternity, I had succeeded in plucking the second mushroom off. I discarded it and looked down at my son, who was lying on the ground, still crying. I felt a pang of guilt when I saw him, bleeding freely from two large wounds on his back that I had inflicted. At the same time, I felt a surge of pride; my son would be the one to free our kind from the mushroom parasite.
Quite suddenly, my son stopped crying. I congratulated him for rising above the pain and asked him how he felt now that he was free, and I did not get a response. His blood continued to pour from the holes in his back, and I noticed that the mysterious goo that had come from the wound had stopped. I called out to my son, and again he did not answer.
He was dead. I had killed my own son!
I left my son's remains where they lay and scurried back home, thinking of how next time would be different.
Everyone was appalled at what I'd done. I murdered a child, and worse, my own son! I was exiled from the clan and attacked by my friends and family. Why couldn't they understand that what I was doing was for their own good?
That was three years ago.
I haven't gone back since then. No one would welcome me. I am still determined to beat the mushroom. For three years, I continued to experiment ways to rid us of the mushroom, using any Paras or Parasect that comes near.
I have tried 47 different methods on 47 different Pokemon. All have failed.
I hear the things they say when get near. They say I'm dangerous. They say I'm a killer.
They say I'm crazy.
I think they're just jealous.
Last edited:
)
