Flash Fiction Contest Winner #22 – “Spaced Out”

Please note: Flash fiction stories are submitted by members of our Discord server. Many contain adult themes and may be objectionable to some readers.

“Spaced Out”

Everyone wants to try space shrooms until they do ‘em. I know I did. I was a kid straight out of the Kupier Belt mining wards, hacking my OH-2 rebreather to get high, fiber cap pulled down over my eyes, big poofs of ginger hair and a fucking orange scrap-jacket that wasn’t doing me any favors. I’d as soon shank you at the dispenser for your dailys as I would give mine to a kid who’d had his snatched. But that was before I tried the space shrooms.
     You know em, little white crystals, cock-shaped if you’re having a wank about it. The miners find ‘em sometimes, supposed to destroy ‘em, but one little shroom is a day’s pay, so they don’t. Some say they sneak ‘em out in their bungchutes.
     I got my chance to smell ‘em myself when me and Mac were rummaging in the hole. Usually someone else gets the deadguy first, but me and Mac were poking around and the deadguy just plops right on top of us. So we find two shrooms on him, and fuck-in-la-tee-da, we’re gonna be tripping like toppers, so we start suckin ‘em down then and there.
     We get that shroom energy and climb out the hole and fuck it, we’re out the wards and going up top. The guards try to stop us but we’re climbin’ like fuckin’ spiderbots and running over the top of ‘em, and they can’t stop us anyway, not since the New Rules. So we’re just promenading like we own the place, high as the motherfucking dome, and someone says, “How would you like to get more of those?”
     And we must have said yes, cause he stuffs us into a little freighter or something—things get real weird—and about the time the shit’s wearing off, he’s pushing these fucking silver guns into our hands and shoving us into a metal airlock.
     “What the fuck just happened?” is the first thing I say to Mac.
     He’s sweating in this orange goonsuit like he’s gonna fill it with his usual pants-shitting. “I think we fucked up,” he says.
     A voice comes through a speaker. “Done riding the white cock? Good. Now go fill the pouches in your suits with those shrooms. Bring ‘em back full and you keep ten percent.”
     “Twenty,” I say, but there’s nothing.
     “Don’t like it,” Mac says. “Don’t like it.”
     Then the seal pops and the door opens. We’re in a fucking mine, but nothing like the ones I’d ever heard about.
     This shit was psy-cho, the good kind. A blue and green tunnel, twice as tall as me, and this glowing orange wormy stuff all over the walls. And the way it glowed, it sorta moved real slowly, walking all over the walls and throbbing and glomming onto things. I would have said I was still ridin’ the shroom but tell you the truth I was freaked.
     I look down at the big empty pouch on the front of my suit. Even one out of ten was good money, real good. Or shrooms to get high as fuck for a week. “It’s a win-win, Mac,” I say, “come on.”
     We trip down the glowing mine tunnel, looking out for the shrooms, but the cravings are hitting me hard, and it feels like hours, I don’t know how long, and we see em—a huge pile of shroomies. We run over and start breakin ‘em off and cramming ‘em into our pouches. I forget all about having a gun. Fucking stupid.
     Spiders. From. Mars. I shit you not. Big red bastards with green eyes come down the walls at us like Saint Nick’s fucking bedbugs and I’m like BLAM BLAM BLAM motherfuckers and Mac is screaming cause he’s got his hand in a crystallized ribcage with an orange goonsuit just like us. He’s shooting and hitting nothin’ and the spiders are fuckin’ jumping on him. I grab this big crystal shroom right off the crotch of the deadguy and snap that shit off like a waffle crisp. I’m running jangling crystals in my pouch and shooting BLAM BLAM BLAM and tearing ass down that helltube.
     Well, you can guess what’s next. They let me back in and I blasted those bitches for killing Mac.
     So now it’s your turn, limpdicks. Here’s your guns, and they’re killswitched so don’t try nothing. Get out into that tunnel and get me some cocks. Or feed the spiders and make more for later, I don’t give a shit.