Phallus Impudicus

Claude

Stinkhorn Manor rose from the mist-shrouded forests like a giant’s—or giantess’s—enormous dildo collection.

. The official name for a stinkhorn mushroom. Translated, it literally meant “shamelessly phallic.” And boy, did the original architects of Stinkhorn Manor go to town with that design concept.

I’d never seen so many turrets on one building. They were of differing heights and thicknesses, painted in a rainbow of sun-bleached colours. Some stood straight and proud, others veered left or right. All had, erm, domed roofs. And one, gods have mercy, obviously had pigeons or doves nesting in the concealed chimney, as evidenced by the long trail of white poop dripping down the front of the tiles.

It was like nothing I could ever have imagined and, simultaneously, my worst fear realised.

“No,” I said out loud, as the wheels of my rental car crunched down the weed-infested gravel drive. “On second thoughts, nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening. Sorry, Pops.” I twisted the steering wheel to the left and put my foot on the gas before anyone could peer out of a cock... window?... and catch me. But the wheel caught on a stone or something, and the car ground to a stop.

I slammed on the handbrake, threw off my seatbelt and slung the door open, getting out to inspect and remove any offending debris. I pulled up short. There was nothing: no stones trapped under the tyre, no creeping vines wrapped around the wheels, no dead animal corpse lying in my path, preventing me from driving away. Nothing. Just gravel and a few puffy dandelion seed balls.

“I cannot, absolutely will not, inherit this place.”

I might be gay, but I wasn’t that gay.

“Lord Stinkhorn, sir? Claude?” came a quiet voice from the other side of the car.

Great, someone had spotted me. I allowed myself one second to close my eyes and mentally expel every swear word I could summon. Fuck, bollocks, hell, tits, arse, wank, wanker, wankiest.

When I opened my eyes, two faces peered up at me. Fae—but small for fae—they stood at approximately nipple height to me, had slender, androgynous bodies, young, wrinkle-free skin, and huge cartoon-like eyes. Both had sheets of waist-length blonde hair. One of them had ginger eyebrows, the other a grey, bristly moustache. Nope, not grey, brown—no, wait...

“Oh, our appearances change. You’ll get used to it,” said the fae with now not-ginger eyebrows, obviously sensing my confusion. “I’m Willow. I use they, them pronouns, and this is Oggy. She uses she, her. We wrote to you. We’re the custodians.”

“Ah, yes... well, nice to meet you. Um, Claude... he, him. However, there seems to have been some mistake.” I waved a hand towards the tremendously imposing dick castle.

“You’re not Mr Stinkhorn, Lord of Mushrooms?” Oggy asked, her eyes wide, her moustache now replicating the exact rust colour of my hair.

“No, yes, I am. I am he. I mean, that’s me. It’s just... I cannot... with this. No.” I shook my head as though to emphasise my very succinctly made point. “I think, if it’s okay with you, I might go back to the city.” It was a seventeen-hour drive, but to heck was I staying in this penis palace. Even if only for one night.

“Hoo,” said Willow on an outward breath. They shared a look with Oggy, motioned to speak, and closed their mouth again.

“We’re sentry fae. And you know fae can’t lie?” Oggy said. I nodded. “So, yeah. Basically, the problem is... you can’t leave.”

I laughed. Just once. A snort of air through my nostrils. “No. No. That cannot... No, I have to go.”

“You can certainly try,” Willow said.

I scrubbed a hand down my face, straightened my waistcoat, blew out my breath.

“But you will not get far,” they added.

“How? How? Why? Please?”

Let it never be said shroom fae were not extremely gifted wordsmiths.

“Well, aside from the fact the house won’t allow you to leave, we need you,” said Oggy.

Whatever I was about to say caught in my throat. “Need me how?” I could circle back to the whole house-not-letting-me-leave thing later.

“Hooo,” Willow said again, laughing and rubbing their belly. “Probably best if we show you.” They turned to Oggy. “Full tour?”

“Got to happen sometime,” Oggy replied.

“Let’s give you the full tour.”

“But if you two change your appearances at will, how can I tell you apart?” I asked, as I dodged around a rusty overturned trough I suspected was riddled with tetanus.

The sentry fae had decided the best place to start the tour of the house—during which they promised to explain the reason, or reasons, it was so imperative I stayed—was the part being used as the B&B. But the “quaint” bed and breakfast was at the rear of the property, and the quote-unquote house was being “uncooperative,” so we had to take the “scenic” route around all the schlong spires and through the junkyard chaos that was apparently the gardens.

“Oh, we don’t change our appearance at will,” Oggy said brightly. “It changes itself.”

“It feeds off our mood, or our companions’ mood, or the environment, or... well anything, really,” Willow added. They deftly hopscotched over a piece of abandoned farm equipment. A wagon wheel of some variety.

“And as far as telling us apart goes, you’ll know. It’s not that difficult. You’re doing it now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but now it’s easy,” I said. “Oggy, you have a moustache and Willow, you have... okay, now you have white eyebrows, but what am I to do if, say, you both have moustaches?”

“You will just know,” Oggy said, in what I assumed was meant to be a soothing voice.

“But what if I don’t?” Genuine panic bubbled up my throat.

“And here’s the B&B,” Willow said, holding out their arm like a game show host, and evidently deciding all discussion of their appearance was over. “It’s called The Night Cap.”

It hadn’t been a long walk around the wiener fortress, or indeed an arduous one, but for some reason I was out of breath. My chest heaved, and my lungs shook with each gasp. I placed my hands on my knees and tried to steady my breathing before looking up at The Night Cap.

“Oh, yeah, that’ll be the house,” Willow said, pointing to my chest. “It does that sometimes. Least of your worries but—”

Oggy slapped Willow across the arm with the back of her hand, and Willow shut their mouth instantly. I finally looked up and lost my breath once again because...

“It’s surprisingly normal. The Night Cap. It looks like a normal building.”

It was some kind of annex, or extension, still attached to the main part of the house, but it looked as though the bed and breakfast had been built by a regular person who’d simply become sick to bloody death of living inside a bunch of giant wieners. Two of the walls were fashioned from red brick and had bog-standard windows and doors, and one was mostly made of glass. Beyond it, dining tables and chairs, and a sofa where an older man sat. Human maybe? I wasn’t sure. He was reading a book, or else looking down at his phone.

“Let’s take you through,” Oggy said, grasping my forearm in her tiny, cool hand.

The pair led me through the small, cosy, and reassuringly average reception area. Nobody staffed it but there was a bell, and a sign that read: Ring for Service. Another sign read: No Vacancies .

“We occasionally get nightly visitors to The Night Cap,” Oggy began. “But generally our guests are more...”

“Like tenants,” Willow finished. “Some have been here for decades. For example, Mr Dupont. He’s been staying here for what, forty years now?”

“Must be.”

“And there’s John. That’s John over there.” The old human man lifted his head from the laptop on his knees and waved. “He’s been here for fifteen, sixteen years. Writing a book.”

“A memoir, apparently,” Oggy said, running her tongue along her teeth. “Just...” she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Be careful what you say around him.”

“He writes everything down.”

“Wrote a story about your first boyfriend, didn’t he, Willow?”

“Mmm, that he did,” lamented Willow.

“Okay, noted,” I said. Not that it would be difficult for me. Keeping mum wasn’t exactly a stretch of my talents. “You mentioned someone else in your letter. What about Mrs Ziegler?”

“Shh!” Willow hissed, and Oggy literally climbed up my body to slap her tiny hand over my mouth. “Do not, under any circumstances, mention that woman’s name.”

“Why?”

“Quick! Through here.” Willow pulled me into a kitchen area, with Oggy still clinging to my side like a koala bear.

“Don’t say her name, okay? You wouldn’t want to accidentally summon her.”

“Summon her?” I said. “Gods, is she some sort of daemon—”

“Shh!” Oggy whipped her hand back over my mouth.

“Nnnnk—” I pushed her hand down. “Fine, I won’t mention her again.”

Oggy and Willow shared relieved looks.

“Okay, so this is the kitchen,” Willow said. I could have got whiplash from how quickly the pair changed subjects.

“You can get off me now,” I said to Oggy.

“Sorry.” She slid down. “This is where we cook breakfast. Let us know what time you’ll take it and what you’d like—anything you’d like—and we’ll have it ready. And you’re free to come and use this space any other time, if you want to prepare yourself some lunch or supper. There’s a fridge over there you can use. Just be sure to label everything with your name. And we can make some space in a cupboard. There’s a kitchen in the main house, but it moves about so much, I can never seem to find it.”

I held up my hand. “Um, two comments.” I needed to stick to the important things here, not waste my energy asking about a moving kitchen. “One, I’m not planning on sticking around for too long, so cupboard space won’t be necessary. And two, anything I’d like for breakfast? Anything? Do you have chai tea?”

“Mmhmm, anything.”

“Fancy chai tea?”

“Yep,” they both said together.

“Eggs benedict?”

“Yep.”

“Eggs florentine?”

“Yes.”

“Eggs royale?!”

“Yeah, anything.”

“Oh my gods. Bluefin tuna? Wagyu beef? Elvish doughnuts?”

“Anything.”

“Whale steak? Panda burger? Golden retriever nuggets?”

“I mean,” Oggy began. “Yes, if that’s what you want, but we wouldn’t like you anymore. As a person. Just to be clear, we’d kinda hate you. Who would do that?”

“Yeah, that’s some Mrs Z level fuckery, right there,” Willow said.

“But how is it possible?”

“We’re sentry fae.” Willow turned to Oggy, shrugged their shoulders and made a face that read: haven’t we told him this already?

“We stand guard over the place to which we’ve been assigned, and we care for its occupants. And if that means you want someone’s beloved pet gutted and exsanguinated and cut up into bite-sized chunks and coated in eggs and breadcrumbs and deep fried until crisp—”

“Yeah, no, I don’t. I was just—you can stop that, now.”

It didn’t matter, anyway. I wasn’t planning on staying for breakfast. Though I’d admit the prospect of starting tomorrow with a tummy full of eggs royale and posh chai tea was tempting. Super tempting.

Eggs royale really was a superior breakfast option.

“Anyway, there’s much more to see,” Oggy said, adopting her earlier, more pleasant tone again. “We should show you where you’ll be staying.”

“Ooh, yes, that’s an excellent point,” Willow said. “It could take us all evening to find your room.”

I offered a helpful, “Huh?”

“Depends what kind of mood it’s in,” Oggy said.

“It?”

“The house, silly.”

“Right, of course,” I said.

“Before we go through...” Willow grabbed my sleeve as though to stop me from moving forward into the house without them. “We ought to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“The house, it...” They blew out a breath.

“It’s not the easiest to get along with,” Oggy said, and I knew she was putting the “polite” spin on what she’d really wanted to say. I turned to Willow, because if I’d learned anything from my ten minutes with the sentry fae, it was that Willow preferred to take a more direct approach.

They shrugged to Oggy before saying, “The house is a right pain in the ass. It’s argumentative, emotionally unstable, and a compulsive liar. Do not believe a thing it tells you. It’s manipulative, and frankly, it’s a bit of a pervert.”

That was a lot of information to process, and dammit, the sentry fae couldn’t lie.

“The house talks to you?” I asked.

“Well, no,” replied Oggy. “But we’re not the Lord of Mushrooms. Though I don’t think it likes us very much. It tends to make things difficult for us.”

I removed my hat, scrubbed a hand through my hair, and decided not to invite them to elaborate on what “difficult for us” meant. “I will bear that in mind, thank you.”

The pair led me from the kitchen, through a narrow, kinda scruffy corridor and into the main part of the house, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, an assault upon my senses. The corners had been rounded off, giving the large area a cylindrical feel. The windows had been placed either much too high or too low to peer out of, and there was stuff every-damned-where. Rugs, tapestries, weapons, taxidermy animals, urns that were bigger than me, and bookshelves crammed with all manner of crap. Not a foot of space on the walls, and most of the floor went unblemished by junk. There was even a full cast-iron bathtub nestled within the fireplace. A suit of armour artfully lounged inside it.

If I hadn’t already made up my mind, this room had done it for me. Eggs royale was not worth it.

“This is the entry-hall-slash-informal-gathering-space-slash-dining-area,” Oggy said. She’d jammed her thumbnail into her mouth and watched me with furrowed brows. “There are many rooms like this one. But well, if we’re being honest with you, and since we’re fae we can’t be anything but honest, there’s a reason the guest house is separate.” She flinched and pulled up her shoulders as though expecting to dodge a flying stuffed badger. I noticed she was now growing a beard to match her moustache.

“There aren’t any rooms in the guest house for you to stay in,” Willow said, also looking around as though something might propel towards them. “Besides, the magic won’t work, anyway. You have to stay here. Not here in this room, but—” They cleared their throat and spoke loudly as if addressing a room full of people. “Can you help us out? Show us where Mr Stinkhorn’s room is? To save us from hours of searching.” Willow added quietly at the end.

“Are you talking to the house?” I asked.

Maybe on the way to Stinkhorn Manor, I’d fallen asleep at the wheel, the car had tumbled off a ravine and exploded, and I’d died in an intense inferno. Was I now in... purgatory?

Yep. Only explanation.

At the other end of the entryway, a door swung itself wide open, and a light clicked on in another room. Oggy and Willow gave matching pleasantly surprised expressions. Their brows shot up, their mouths gaped, and smiles tugged at the corners.

“Ooh, teacher’s pet,” Willow said, as Oggy said, “It likes you.”

The house was a labyrinth, and the only thing that kept me following the sentry fae—and the lights flicking on in the distance, and the doors opening themselves—was pure, undiluted curiosity. Which was so unlike me.

I didn’t get curious. Generally, I was happy to stick to the things I knew, the places and hobbies I was comfortable with, but there was something about this place, these people, this everything, that kept me moving forward.

Besides, if I was dead, where else was there to go?

Eventually, we reached a door at the top of a spiral staircase in one of the dick turrets—difficult to tell which turret without looking out the window for my rental car or the B&B gardens.

“This one? Are you certain?” Oggy asked. Unsure if she required an answer from me, I kept my mouth shut. After a few moments, she nodded to Willow and pushed the door open. “Holy crackers, it really likes you.”

We climbed the last few steps and crossed the threshold together. Willow let out a low whistle as though it was their first time viewing the room. Who knew, maybe it was.

The room—my room if I stayed here, I guessed—took up the entire circumference of a cock. Based on the sheer size of the space, it was the biggest cock of the building, and my room was in... the head. The penthouse?

The walls—wall, singular?—was papered in an avocado-green, mushroom-print wallpaper. Tapestries depicted nighttime forest scenes, and gilt thread embossed the dark rugs and curtains. In the centre of the room sat a squashy, peeling leather sofa, surrounded by an arc of bookshelves on one side and a large mahogany coffee table on the other. Next to the coffee table, stacks and stacks of jigsaw puzzles.

I crouched down and examined the pictures on the sides of the boxes, my mouth gaping open. Railway stations. From across the Eight and a Half Kingdoms. I stood up and blinked at Willow and Oggy.

“You like puzzles,” Oggy said, but it wasn’t a question. “And trains.”

“Does the house do this for every guest?” I asked, looking around the space and picking out detail after detail that felt as though someone had reached into my thoughts and dreams and laid it all out before me.

“No, it does not,” Willow replied. “Your father once had to sleep in a bed of brambles.”

“My father?” The room spun around me, and I flopped onto the couch. Gods, it was comfortable. “Was he here often?”

Willow shook their head. “We saw him twice a year. At the summer and winter solstices. He stayed as long as he had to, and then would disappear for another six months. Think the house hated him for it.”

“It must really want you to stay.” Oggy picked at the hem on her blouse. Willow’s fingers crept across and threaded around Oggy’s.

“Then...” I began, feeling like the word had left my mouth despite my better judgement. “Then I guess I could stay. For a few days. Just to make sure everything’s sorted before I head back to Remy.”

Above our heads, a loud THUNK reverberated. I glanced up and saw, for the first time, another spiral staircase leading to a mezzanine level. A drape-covered four-poster bed was visible.

“That’ll be your suitcase,” said Oggy, no doubt in reference to the sound. She was genuinely smiling now, her beard and moustache turning snow white. “Right, shall we show you the ley lines? Or do you want a few moments to unpack?”

“Ley lines?”

“The ley lines. The place where you need to perform the biannual rhizome reinforcement.”

“The what?”

“Rhizomes. They’re like, horizontal roots—”

“I know what rhizome means. What is it I need to do to them?”

Oggy side-eyed Willow, who mouthed, “Oh, fuck.”

“It’s like an ancient soil-magic ritual?” The uncertainty in her voice made my heart rate spike. “Your father performed it at sunrise on the longest day of the year, and at sundown on the shortest. It provides the house, and the surrounding area, with the nourishment it needs to continue to... well, to continue existing. And feeding its occupants. And providing us with a home and purpose. Without the rhizome magic, the house would die, and we would be...” She trailed off, apparently unable to finish her sentence.

Willow stepped in. “It can only be performed by a shroom fae. Specifically, a direct descendant of Mycelium Stinkhorn the first. That... is you.”

I pushed to my feet, scrubbed a hand down my face, and opened my mouth to speak. The sentry fae took a simultaneous gulp of air.

And I summarised everything I’d experienced in the past few hours in only two short words.

“Well, shit.”