Shrooms Q Hussie Instant

He stood up, his joints popping. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from his sister: "You alive out there?"

He smiled. The trees were just trees again. But for the rest of the walk back to his car, he could have sworn the shadows of the branches were waving goodbye.

He chewed the mushrooms. They tasted of dirt and lightning.

"Q," it said. Its voice was the sound of a dial-up modem kissing a banjo. "You rang?"

The Hussie stopped weaving. It pointed one segmented finger at the mushrooms in Q's hand. "Because you finally took the training wheels off your own skull. You stopped trying to be clever for five minutes. That's an eternity for you."