Shrooms

At the bottom of the stairwell, Maria hit a switch on the wall. Lights flickered on in the hallway outside. Lois followed the women through...and gasped.

The overhead lights reflected on a swollen stone belly, rudely etched with a spiral, played on pendulous breasts, a gross, deformed lump of a head, hips that flared wider than the shoulders. The squat idol was of light green stone, the belly about the size and shape of a basketball. Lois snapped a picture, then shifted the phone.

The idol rested on a roughly rectangular stone platform; behind it, the bare concrete wall had been painted with a black mural, like the one that surrounded the door. Phallic tentacles disappearing into biomechanical mouths, cunts. There was a sub-theme of bulbous growths, like bunches of grapes...yet each one, Lois saw, was a shadowy spectre of a fetus, like an ultrasound caught in spraypaint, bunches of them all together. At the foot of the idol, and all around it were...offerings.

Lois saw burnt out black candles, scattered wads of money in tight cash bands, the dried leaves of dead flowers, strings of used condoms, hung up, their dead weight cargo listless yet symbolically potent, small copper bowls of liquid, smaller stone fetishes of phalluses and vulvas, bottles of rum and vodka, and a gray scatter of bones...

Lois noted that the shrine occupied the end of a hallway, and there was the hint of light from the other end. Lois new friends paid the shrine little attention, intent on their baggy.

"Hey Joanne! Check this out!" Maria called. Putting on a smile, "Joanne" stepped forward to look at what her blowjob had bought them. A fat lozenge of marijuana wrapped in saran wrap, the ends twisted to keep from spilling out; a bubble-pack of triangular blue pills that Lois recognized as erectile dysfunction ****...and a small baggy of dried grey-brown things.

Aisha popped one of the blues, placing it on her tongue and waggling it a little before drew-swallowing. Lois wondered how long it would take for the pill to affect the shemale. The thought of that hard chocolate cock and a fresh load of cum made her stomach rumble...and Lois knew she should be more bothered by her reaction than she was. But the jizz-hunger just felt...natural. Like really needing a lemonade on a hot day, or a glass of wine after a hard day's work.

Maria handed the baggy to Lois.

"Looks like this is your bonus, honey." She said with a leering wink.

Lois stared at the bag dubiously. The reporter knew what these were, at least by reputation. Shrooms. Probably psilocybe. Common enough psychedelics. That was a bit of a relief, actually. Given Mel's hygiene, she'd hate to try and digest anything that he'd actually cooked up in his own lab. But mushrooms probably came from one of the farms outside of Metropolis. As clean and natural as anything else.

Well...almost natural.

Curiosity propelled Lois to open the bag. There was a smell, strong and familiar. Almost like...semen. Lois knew that some mushrooms, like morels, smelled like that naturally. They broke down other plants and produced little ammonia compounds, was why. Still, the smell was causing her unnatural hunger to erupt. She found her mouth watering...

The flick of a lighter and the familiar sickly-sweet scent of burning hemp. Maria sauntered over, two fresh blunts lit and smoking, and handed one to Lois. Immediately, the reporter put it to her lips and inhaled—she didn't want to blow her cover, after all. Joanne was a party girl...and the warm rush of smoke hit her lungs and brought forth a little cough.

Maria tapped the baggy with the shrooms still in Lois' hand.

"I like, forgot to mention? But Mel, he's got a thing for psychedelics. All about opening that third eye and stuff." The barmaid made a show of covering one nostril and snorting. "So that's probably some good shit. You should try it!"

Lois sucked again on the reefer, blowing the smoke out through her nose.

"I dunno..." she said, thinking up an excuse which would sound plausible...and realizing there probably weren't a lot of **** a party girl like "Joanne" wouldn't ingest, given the opportunity. She considered the shrooms carefully. They didn't look dangerous...and they smelled delicious.

What the hell, Lois thought, and tilted her head back, bringing the baggie to her mouth. What's the worst that could happen?