Free Spores by Ian Woodhead Page B

snail’s shell. Despite knowing what it must be, Amber still looked down.
    She’d just stood on someone’s finger bone. Amber felt her gorge rising when she saw a piece of ragged material sticking to a thick bone next to her other foot. The realisation of what this place was quickly dawned on her.
    “Oh Jesus,” she moaned.
    She was standing in the middle of a creature’s lair, a creature that obviously wasn’t a fucking vegetarian. Amber then saw several more openings in the side of the cave walls. Her heart lifted slightly; maybe one of them wasn’t so steep.
    Amber’s heart sank back down when she heard a snuffling noise coming from one of those openings. She frantically looked around the cave for anything to use as a weapon. After what she’d been through, no way did Amber intend to end her day as a pile of wet bones.
    That broken statue held the only source of useful material; apart from the bones, the place held nothing else but fucking slimy, horrible, disgusting mushrooms. She hurried over and kneeled down, trying to search for any piece of rock that wasn’t too large to carry. Oh Christ, the noise was getting louder and louder. Amber grabbed the biggest piece and struggled to where she thought the thing was going to emerge. She lifted the rock above her head and waited. Her patience was rewarded when a bright blue furry sausage shaped body slowly twisted out of the hole. It looked like a big, blue, wiggling maggot. Amber screamed and dropped her stone on its body.
    The broken fragment of statue fell through the creature’s body as if the thing was no more substantial than thick porridge. The rest of its body fell from the hole; she watched as the flesh quickly liquefied, then jumped back as dark blue syrupy goo spread across the floor of the cave. The only thing from the creature that hadn’t dissolved was a ring shaped object lying in the middle of the liquid. It took her a moment to recognise it; when she did, an inadvertent hysterical laugh escaped from her mouth. Amber bent over and grabbed it. She stood under the holes and read the writing engraved on a little silver disc, it said – ‘my name is Muggles. If found please ring this number.’
    She threw the collar on the floor then sat down and closed her eyes. Amber wanted to go to sleep, to rest her poor body and mind; the idea had plenty of appeal. Maybe everything would be back to normal as it should be.
    Amber groaned when she heard the sound of another of those things making its way down a tunnel. She couldn’t take much more of this. Amber’s eyes snapped open; she looked up and immediately saw the absence of light in one of the holes. This time though, the noise emanating from the creature had a different quality, it sounded more insectile. She hurried to the blocked hole and looked up.
    This time she didn’t scream, she couldn’t, the nightmare slowly wiggling toward her left Amber unable to speak. Apart from the colour, this monster bore no resemblance to the other one. This thing was armoured; blue chitinous plates covered the front of its body but it wasn’t those that made her bladder want to release its contents, it was the array of pincers and spikes positioned around the monster’s head.
    Amber backed away from the hole; escape or die were her only options. That thing was built like a bastard tank. Rocks would just bounce off it. The creature roared; it must know she was down here, waiting to become its next meal. Amber tripped over some of the bones and fell into the pool of blue goo.
    “I ain’t for eating, you bastard,” she snarled. Amber snatched up a broken femur and studied the shattered end; she could do a lot of damage if she dug that into that thing’s eye.
    “Digging,” she uttered. “Of course, oh you dozy cow.”
    Amber scrambled along the floor, looking for another broken bone. She looked back to that hole, hoping that thing would take its sweet time. Her questing fingers slipped around another bone