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The Curious Incident of the Mold and Gordon Parker

Mark C. Lane

    Gordon Parker noticed the mold one chilly morning in November.
    He stood in front of the toilet, urinating, his heavy eyes peeking through the bathroom window at the sleeping world outside. The frosty, still-quiet village seemed so strange and mystical at this hour; the hour just before dawn, when the people yet slept, dreaming their individual dreams and snoring their collective snores. Gordon felt such peace standing there in his bathroom, his gigantic baby-blue bathrobe wrapped tightly around his shoulders, warm and secure, sleepy but content. He could look through that window for as long as he pleased (or, at least, for as long as he urinated) in complete and cozy comfort.
    He noticed a group of pretty young men and women walking up the sidewalk toward the bus station. They stopped to sit on a bench beneath a large, leafless maple tree so that they could finish their steaming cups of coffee before boarding. It seemed as if they wanted to chat for a bit, too. Gordon thought that it was much too cold for anyone to sit on a stupid bench and enjoy a conversation as much as they were, but the radiant smiles stretched between their rosy cheeks said it all: they were happy. So enamored with each other’s company, in fact, the cold didn’t seem to impede their pleasure at all. Gordon wondered what it would feel like to be a part of a group like that. To be with people you wanted to be with when they really wanted to be with you, too. He sighed and looked away, his eyes crawling over the faded rose-patterned wallpaper his mother had put up decades ago, long before the stroke. He shook off thoughts of his mother and looked down instead at his large and hairy stomach. It completely obscured his penis. He swore it was under there somewhere, but he hadn’t actually seen the poor fellow for some time. It was while he was searching for his lost—but not forgotten—friend that he spotted a dark square patch on the wall to his left. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and looked again, but the mold stubbornly remained. Gordon sighed, his great chest puffing up then deflating. He’d have to clean it up later, he supposed, which meant he’d have to bend over and retrieve the cleaning supplies from the cabinet below the sink. It seemed a gross expense of energy so early in the morning. He’d do it later.
    He finished his business and left the bathroom, squeezing his large buttocks through the door frame and shuffling into the kitchen to make pancakes and coffee. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy a nice conversation with his breakfast, but he could certainly enjoy some coffee. As he reached for the coffee pot his chubby fingers brushed a stack of papers sitting atop the kitchen counter. They teetered precariously for a moment, but didn’t fall. The settlement check (the one he kept forgetting to cash) lay on top. He didn’t want to think about leaving the house or going to the bank, or about how much time and energy such a trip would waste, but he couldn’t go much longer without doing so: he’d eaten almost all of the frozen pizzas he’d purchased on his last outing, nearly a month ago.
    Cleaning. The bank. What next?
    He brushed these thoughts away and fixed himself a grandiose stack of pancakes (heavy butter, heavy syrup). He filled his favorite cup—the one that looked like a whale—with fresh coffee. The whale-cup was blue with happy pink lips and white eyes, its tail curling back to form the handle. The little guy smiled at Gordon as he added sugar and cream, but he didn’t return it. The cup had been a present from his mother, and even though Gordon loved it, whenever the whale smiled at him he couldn’t help but think of his mom. The way she used to make the whale noise when she brought his breakfast to him. She’d say, “Bwooooooo!” in a deep voice and push through the door of his bedroom, staggering under the weight of all the pancakes and bacon on the little silver tray. He’d look up from his computer and make his own whale noise right back at her.
    He’d get up and—now why the hell did he have to keep thinking about that?
    He’d felt so peaceful there for a moment, while taking a pee. Then all of those silly thoughts started jumping into his head. Thoughts about his mother, cleaning the mold, going to the bank, those silly people who’d looked so happy together on the bench—couldn’t all of that crap just leave him alone? He was much more accustomed to being alone. He didn’t need all of that extraneous bullshit to dampen his day. He gave one last concerted effort at shaking off the megrims before taking his repast into the living room and sitting down in front of the computer monitor. With a few mouse clicks, Gordon’s hero (barbarian class) continued his crawl through a particularly nasty dungeon. Gordon smiled, popped on his headset, and enjoyed himself some breakfast. Soon, his syrup sticky hands had left sugary fingerprints all over the keyboard.
    By the middle of the afternoon Gordon had forgotten all about the negative thoughts from earlier. No more memories of mom, no more thinking about such a frivolous thing as friends. He’d given up on the bank for today, and he’d forgotten about the mold entirely. The sun set, and Gordon slept. The sun rose the next day, and inexplicably, so did Gordon. Again and again, Gordon followed the path of the sun, until the calendar had crossed from November into December. At some point, probably around Thanksgiving, Gordon had managed to make it out of the house and to the bank, but as the days slipped past and Christmas snuck up, the mold on the bathroom wall remained forgotten.
    It was Christmas Eve when Gordon noticed the mold again. The patch had grown a little bigger, and he silently cursed himself for forgetting about it for this long. He knew he should clean it up, right then and there, but it was Christmas Eve after all. A fresh pizza was about to come out of the oven, and he’d just accrued nearly 20,000 experience points in his game; he certainly couldn’t be bothered to clean it up now!
    But then, as New Year’s Day came and went, Gordon realized that he’d been staring at the mold each time he went to the bathroom, ever since noticing it again on Christmas Eve. In fact, he discovered that he rather enjoyed looking at the spongy little growth while attending to various calls of nature. It was almost as if he’d bought a Chia-pet or something. As he watched it grow, he developed an absurd paternal affection for his furry friend. He talked to it. Sang to it, sometimes. However, whenever he left the bathroom, it was always with a resolve to clean it up before it grew too much larger. Christ on a cracker, it just wasn’t appropriate.
    But he never seemed to get around to it.
    As the universe buried January in its icy grave, allowing January’s bitch of a sister February to come out of hiding, the mold grew from a small square the size of a baseball card to an amorphous blob as big as a basketball.
    Gordon celebrated his birthday in March by finishing off two large bowlfuls of homemade eggnog (heavy whiskey, heavy rum). It was a little late in the year for such a seasonal drink, but on one of his monthly excursions to the store he’d purchased enough eggnog to fill a small swimming pool. So, he drank it. Finding himself quite drunk and needing to urinate, Gordon squeezed his burgeoning derriere through the bathroom door and took down his pajama bottoms. He attempted to locate his penis, but was too drunk to remember he couldn’t actually see the thing; he’d have to go by feel alone. And indeed he did find it (sighing with relief as he did) a moment later. Clasping his hand around his little pink tube, Gordon released a hot stream of liquid into the waiting bowl. He swayed drunkenly, and an arc of urine splashed against the wall. Gordon laughed. He turned his bulk and sprayed the rest of his bladder at the mold, laughing and hiccupping while little puffs of steam wafted past his face. Gordon giggled; he would definitely have to clean that up later. But the good thing about later is that, well—it always came later. And off to bed he went.
    The next morning, Gordon’s hangover was epic.
    His head pounded as he stumbled out of bed, blundering into door frames, making his way back to the bathroom. He had absolutely no recollection of his pee-pee playtime from the night before, so he didn’t understand exactly why the bathroom smelled so strangely sour. However, it wasn’t the smell that made him gasp as he came through the door.
    The moldy spot was no longer a moldy spot; it was a moldy wall. The entire left side of the bathroom was covered in black, spongy growth. As Gordon stared at it in amazement, he swore he could see it pulsating.
    “Wow,” he mumbled. “I guess I really should clean this up.”
    But somehow, perhaps due to the sheer amount of growth, the wall had an odd kind of beauty. Maybe Gordon had lost his mind, but his heart was suddenly filled with pride. It was a good feeling, an alien feeling. He’d done something. He’d made something grow. And even if it was only mold, well hell, he was the only one who’d ever see it anyway. Why not be proud of it? He’d created something and it was there now, all across his bathroom wall, because of him. He’d have to clean it up at some point, that was for sure, but he decided to leave it alone for another day or two, just so he could admire his work a little longer.
    A day or two turned into April, and then came the maggots.
    Gordon saw them sprout during one of his many trips to the can. He stared in amazement as one little white body after another squeezed out of the wall and hung there as if stuck to the surface by sticky-tape. They were small, no bigger than a fingernail, but were unlike any other maggots Gordon had ever seen on rotted beef or in the garbage—and believe me, Gordon’s infrequency in the ‘disposing-of-garbage’ department afforded him many encounters with maggots of the third kind. But these were different: they had fur. Little brown patches of it. More importantly, they had faces. Gordon’s breath caught in his throat as he stared into their tiny upturned heads.
    It was his face.
    A miniature replica of himself squashed onto each furry little body that wriggled about on the bathroom wall. As he watched, more of them came. Every one of them looked like him (in miniature maggot form, of course). A smile spread slowly across Gordon’s face and he clapped his hands in joy. He’d never been more proud of anything in his entire life. He’d given birth, in a sense. He was a papa. For the first time since momma died all of those years ago, he finally had something else in his life. Something alive. Something with meaning. Gordon promised himself that he would never let anything happen to them, ever.
    He took to watering the maggots. He emptied a spray bottle from below the counter and filled it up with tap water. Whenever he went to the bathroom (which was becoming increasingly more frequent) he’d spray a cool mist over the walls. By May, the bathroom was a living, breathing entity. Wall to wall the maggots wriggled happily. Gordon sometimes petted them, letting his hands run over their slimy wiggling surface. They gave him little kisses. He blushed and giggled whenever they did. Gordon didn’t feel alone anymore. Whenever he thought about his mom, or about his lack of friendship, he went into the bathroom and let his new family kiss his fingers and lick his palms, which erased any kind of sadness or loneliness he’d felt.
    One morning in July, Gordon woke up and found his legs and arms stuck to the side of his body. The skin had fused together, as if it melted. Little brown patches of fur had cropped up on his chest and back. Gordon was confused at first, but his confusion quickly turned into rapture. He was becoming like his children. He crawled his way into the bathroom and used his mouth to squirt the walls with water. His family of maggots wriggled with pleasure. He wriggled right back at them.
    Gordon never left the bathroom after that day. He didn’t need food; he found he could survive quite well by nibbling on the moldy wall every once and awhile.
    On that morning in July when his legs had melded together, Gordon remembered being able to distinguish between his right and his left legs. As if the skin had been melted, but retained the scar from the conversion. But by the end of August, his arms and legs had become just another part of a long sinuous body. A small dark hole had opened up at the apex of his forgotten appendages and he used this hole to relieve himself. He snuggled on the floor and the little Gordon maggots leapt from the wall to crawl over him and keep him warm.
    As August came and went, something new happened to Gordon and family.
    Their wiggling motions quieted and a thin milky membrane began to wrap around their bodies. It was quite comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that Gordon no longer felt the need to wiggle, or eat, or do anything at all; he only wanted to lie on the bathroom floor and sleep. And so he did. Him and his maggoty friends.
    All was silent and immobile in Gordon’s bathroom as the first leaves of fall began to change their colors. The days grew shorter, cooler. The stealthy quiet that always seems to ride along on autumn’s wings stole over the village, blanketing the world around the Parker’s estate.
    And then, on a lovely afternoon in early October, Gordon and his family finally broke free from their cocoons.
    In unison, they shredded their membranes and exploded into the air. Gordon looked down at his long white body as it hovered over the floor. Large, transparent wings sticking out of his back beat the air behind him, effortlessly keeping his body afloat. The bathroom was full of little white bodies. They floated past Gordon’s face and smiled at him. Gordon smiled right back. His heart leapt into his chest and he gave a triumphant roar. He was one of them. They were truly his family now.
    He smashed through the bathroom door and flew into the living room, his family close behind. He sped through the air, crashing through a window and up and out, high into the sky, deep into the sunny afternoon. A cool fall breeze flowed over his white skin, ruffling the little brown patches of fur across his body. He smiled at his family of Parker maggots and they wriggled their little bodies back at him with love.
    Gordon shouted with joy, and the whole lot of them flew off into the horizon.

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