An hour before his disappearance, he had been fine. A little nervous, perhaps, seeing as his friends had headed along a little faster on the hiking trail and he was quickly trailing behind.
The forest never bothered him thankfully. He rather enjoyed hiking and he was pretty experienced at this point, could probably even get them back on the trail if they managed to get horribly lost. He mostly hoped no one walked into poison oak or something. Or that this fog didn't make anyone stumble and break a leg— he frowns at the thought. He had checked the weather a couple of times before they left. The forecast had been promising and yet the second they started their descent, a dreary fog rolled in, blocking out the sun and making everything hazy and white around them.
Fourty-five minutes before his disappearance, he realized his friends had indeed misstepped and walked away from the path. It's nothing life-threatening, Victor is still able to hear his buddies ahead of him, chattering away. "Hey guys, we're actually off the, um, trail? No biggie, but like...bears, y'know?" It gets a laugh out of them and reassurance they'll eventually get back on track— Melanie just saw a cool mushroom and wanted to check it out.
When they showed him their finding, he was rather impressed: it was a bright, peachy sort of color with all these delicate spires that ended in bulbous tips. He hadn't seen anything like it in real life before, but then again, he's not the mushroom expert. Melanie was probably the closest thing they had to an expert and even she was stumped, spitting out a few names but still indecisive on which one it was.
Victor just watched her think, quietly admiring how her nose scrunched up when she thought too hard.
Thirty minutes before his possession, they're getting farther away from the trail, but he deems it alright seeing as there was a rather obvious trail for them to follow back to safety. The mushroom patches were more frequent in this area and stood out like safety cones in the fog. Some of his friends were taking pictures, murmuring amongst themselves about how maybe they'd discovered some new species.
Victor doubts it but he'd never want to ruin their fun. He just thinks it's unlikely— scouts and rangers have probably been through here at least a hundred times. Surely, they've seen it all.
Fifteen minutes before his possession and he's having trouble breathing. The fog is thick, almost granular in the air at this point. He can barely see more than a few inches from his face. Victor knows he should be more concerned about the current situation and the risk of hyperventilating— but his breathing seems to have slowed, making quick, panicked actions near impossible. It was comforting, he thinks, to be this level of calm while you're essentially suffocating to death.
His friends were still talking somewhere in the sea of white, in more hushed tones now. Less like voices, more like hums really. Muffled.
Ten minutes before his ascension, Melanie's legs have fused together and curled inward like a fern.
Victor doesn't know what he's looking at. In the thick fog that made his breathing shallow and his body weak, he had managed to follow his friends' muffled whimpers to what looked like something that had been left in the fridge too long and congealed.
It was massive, the top of it shrouded in more mist, making its actual size unknown to him. Whatever it was, it had attached itself to a tall tree in the middle of a clearing, overtaking its form and using it as a crutch to keep itself upright. The mushrooms were in the hundreds now, covering the ground and replacing the grass.
Victor used the spires as leverage to keep himself crawling forward— its all he could do, what with how lethargic he was becoming. His brain just kept repeating over and over again, keep going. Keep moving. Don't stop.
He sobs softly at seeing Melanie's contorted face stuck in the mass. Jared's tattooed arm was poking out with every bone in his finger broken from trying to crawl out. They couldn't have been attached to the thing for more than a few minutes and yet they looked like they had been there for a hundred years, their limbs coated in a thin pink sheen, their bodies twisted into a shape of the creature's own creation.
Five minutes before his ascension, Victor is groaning, silently begging for relief, for air, for death— whatever would make it stop. His vision had turned cloudy as the fog seemed to invade, leaving him even more blind to the world around him. Whatever it was, it had taken his friends. And it had taken him.
He felt it first in his nostrils, a slight tickle as the peach tendrils on the ground poked and prodded at his shivering form. Victor could only breathe through his mouth weakly now and even then he could not have that; they pressed into his nose, making him choke and gag, panic rising in his mind but his body helpless to react.
It feels like it's in his brain, how deep it went. He once saw in a documentary how the Ancient Egyptians used a red hot poker to jam into a corpse's nasal cavity, swirling up their brains and pulling them out— that was what it felt like. Invasive. Violent. Heat spreads to his skull and makes Victor cry and wheeze and beg an unhearing assailant to stop.
And then it did stop.
In a matter of seconds actually.
The fog rolls out. The tendrils stick to their place on the ground instead of his nose. The initial pain is still there, nose bleeding a little from the implantation. For a few quiet, still moments Victor breathes fresh air, staring at the pink mass that never moved or spoke or indicated that it was even sentient.
Run. He's aware that his limbs are moving on their own. They hadn't been working a moment ago and now he was fumbling through the patch of mushrooms back to the life he knew before this.
Faster. Speed picks up, Victor's weakened mind chalking it down to finally being able to feel the effects of the adrenaline rush that was always threatening to overtake him. He can almost feel it, his mind muddled and hazy but his body moving so swiftly, acting on instinct alone.
Sneakers stomp down moss and grass as he races through the woods, eyes wide and stinging from the lack of blinking and cool air that whips past his face. He does indeed follow the mushroom patch back to it and he curses himself for letting them leave the path— it felt like no time had passed since he started running to when he found it again— they had been so close.
The wind finally wins and tears start streaming down his cheeks, mingling with the blood leaking from his nose still. He coughs from the exertion and can feel something coming up— it was blood but he didn't know that yet, the rush making him more focused on not slipping on a rock and not on the blood starting to seep from his mouth.
One minute before his ascension, Victor has run all the way down to the end of the trail, looking down the ledge to see the campsite below, filled with people who could help him—
"Ack!" He's choking again, being brought to his knees as he violently coughs. Something's in me, he thinks as something stretches his esophagus open, something that wasn't meant to be there. Something's in me, he thinks as more blood is spat out. Something's in me, he thinks as his heart comes out as a mangled clot from his lips.
Even as Victor stares at it, this unassuming, bloody pulp that sits between his hands, he finally ascends.
Victor is no longer with us.
And a fungus blooms in his empty chest cavity.
Hometown: Portland, Oregon, USA
Birth Date: January 18, 1992
Orientation: Unknown
Height: 5'9"
