Page 1 of Shroom for Improvement

The Eight-Thirty From Waterside to Downtown Remy

Claude

Contrary to popular belief, the Lord of Mushrooms wasn’t a fun guy. He was, in fact, a miserable, cantankerous bastard who was sick of everyone’s crap, and if he had to listen to one more“There’s not mushroom in here”or“I didn’t like you at first, but you’ve grown on me”comment, he was going to lose his shit.

That was me. I was the Lord of Mushrooms.

I’d inherited that title just this morning, though I wasn’t exactly in a rush to use it. Didn’t need any more reasons for folk to label me a pretentious bastard.

Claude Stinkhorn, or Mr Stinkhorn would be just fine.

I hadn’t always been this guy—the grumpy asshole U-train conductor—though from what I could remember of my adolescence, I’d always been somewhat asshole adjacent.

There was this one time, however, about three years ago, when I’d made it almost twenty-four hours without grumbling. I’d won the U-Rail’s Employee of the Decade award. Honestly? Best day of my life. I’d worn my fanciest suit, caught the underground train to the ceremony, and was presented with a glass trophy and a pair of beautiful mushroom-shaped, twenty-four-carat-gold cufflinks. Afterwards, I ate salmon and cream-cheese canapes, met the company directors, caught the early train home, placed my award on the mantel and my cufflinks in my safe-place drawer, and worked on my puzzles.

All in all, a perfect evening. I’d even smiled—twice.

The most enjoyable part was riding the train but not working it. Somebody—Patricia probably—had taken over my shift for once, so I got the full immersive experience of every business-type on their daily commute.

Who said dreams had to be big? I loved my job, I guessed. I loved the city. Why would I want anything more?

Once again, I found myself riding the train sans ticket machine. Wearing the same suit and my fancy mushroom cufflinks, drinking a mediocre chai tea latte purchased from the onboard restaurant cart, and looking—hopelessly—for a free seat.

Because it was not Thursday, six thirty p.m. like last time, it was Tuesday morning, shortly before nine. Rush hour. And the train was chock-full of office-wallahs and marketing execs and uni students and construction-types. Folk of every gender and species. Human, mythic, undead, demigod, et cetera. I knew it would be, but I’d had no other choice.

As per, the middle carriages had standing room only, so against my better judgement, I wormed my way to the cabooseand peeped through the final porthole window. I pulled myself into the narrow gap, sucked in my stomach, and held my breath.

Hewas there.

Urgh. Of course he was there.

He always caught the eight-thirty train from Waterside to Downtown Remy. Always sat in the same seat, right at the back of the very last coach. Always had the same drink and snack set up on the table—a black coffee and something that smelled suspiciously like a kilo of butter wrapped in flaky pastry. Stupidly flaky pastry, I might add, that blew everywhere.

I stole another peek through the glass, flattening myself and hiding against the wall of the carriage. Something—irritation probably—bubbled in my stomach. Maybe I could stay here in the gangway next to the toilet until my stop? It wasn’t a long ride, and I was very accustomed to surfing the carpeted floors of the carts.

Anything to avoid sitting near him.

I knew only four things about this guy, but that was four too many.

Thing number one: his name was Sonny. Or at least, Sonny was the name he gave me every morning when I sold him his ticket, and every evening on his return journey. He always waited until he was on the train to buy it from me—never bought it at the station like everybody else—I think simply to annoy me. To deliberately make my day fractionally more complex.

Thing two: like me, Sonny was fae.

But where I was shroom fae—harmless, kept myself to myself, an essential component of a wider and very important ecosystem—Sonny was a decidedly more nefarious type of fae. A magpie fae, of theCorvidaefae genus. Known for their kleptomaniac tendencies, the inability to keep their hands in their own pockets, and an overarching obsession with anything shiny and not belonging to themselves.

Thing three, and this was super unfortunate: Sonny was absurdly attractive.Absurdly.

Like, once you’d been made aware of his presence, you’d be hard pushed to avert your gaze from him. His face was a warm, dirty street lamp, and my eyes were stupid, stupid moths.

It just had to be the way, didn’t it?

He was tall, approximately seven inches taller than my six feet of height. Lean, bordering on scrawny, with the telltale magpie-pale skin and black hair that looked as though it’d been painted with gasoline. If you studied him closely enough, you’d see iridescent stripes of forest green, midnight blue, and eggplant purple in his hair. Which I definitely never saw, because I definitely never looked that closely. His face was nice, I supposed, if you dug that whole “conventionally attractive fae” bullcrap. His nose was altogether too straight, his cheekbones would cut diamonds, and his pointy ears were, well, pointy. His brows were two perfect, thick black lines that seemed to move independently from the rest of him, and his huge dark eyes were a little on the buggy side. And those lips... well, the less said about those lips, the better, really.

A mesmeric oddity.

And definitely not my type. And not the type of person I’d choose to associate with outside of work.

Not that I associated with anyone outside—or inside—of work, but still.

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