Page 51 of Shroom for Improvement

“Aren’t you listening? Or am I speaking a different language? I am the shower. I’m the toilet too. And the tiles and the floor. I am the bathroom. I’m everything. Your bed, your couch, the armoire.”

It clicked then. Like a light switch being flicked on. “You’re the house!” The magical, pain-in-the-ass house was sentient. Actually had a voice. And it was talking to me. And perving on me.

“Yes, I’m the house,” it said, sounding both exasperated and relieved I’d finally caught on.

“So...” I wrapped the towel tighter around my waist. “You just watch me? You’ve been watching me since I arrived?”

“Yep,” it said. “It was pretty boring until you got here. Can’t see inside the guest house. Well, I can, but not well, and people hardly ever come to visit me. Except for John. Urgh, that man does my bloody nut in.”

“Does John speak to you?” I didn’t know where to look when I spoke to the house, so I stared at the ceiling.

“Yes. Everyone talks to me. But nobody’s been able to hear me for ages. Not since your dad. For a while, I didn’t think you’d be able to hear me either. Until just then. Can I tell you, I’m so relieved. I wondered whether you really were the heir of Stinkhorn Manor. You don’t have to stay shivering in the corner of the bathroom, by the way. You’ll still hear me in the bedroom. At least, I think you will. We should try it. Go into the bedroom.”

It took a moment for my joints to lubricate themselves, and my body to stop tensing enough to pry myself from the wall.I gripped the towel in my left hand and balled my right into a fist as I stepped back into the main room, shooting my gaze around as though I were about to be ambushed.

My couch had returned, so I perched myself on the arm. “So, you’ve seen me naked before?” I said. It felt stranger, more peculiar now I was out of the intimate bathroom space, and in the echoing, grand chamber of my room.

“Oh, yes, many times. You have a lovely body, by the way.”

My cheeks heated. Damn, it had been so long since anybody had complimented me, I was blushing at the disembodied words of a magical house.

It continued. “I find your rounded tummy and your hairy chest particularly pleasing. And you have a wonderfully large penis.”

“Gods!” I almost slid off the arm of the couch, splitting the towel open, and revealing said penis. I snatched the towel closed again.

“Comparatively, anyway. At least with the ones I’ve seen. Not including Mr Dupont’s. I don’t believe that thing in his pants can be classified as a penis. It’s more like a telegraph pole.”

I patted my cheeks with my fingertips just to make sure the flesh on my face was still there and hadn’t melted away from extreme temperatures. “Have you seen many others?” I didn’t know why I asked. I guessed I was curious.

“Fucking loads,” it said vaguely. “The mycologist’s isn’t as big as yours.”

“Sonny? Oh, my gods! You’ve seen Sonny’s dick?” I shot a look towards the door as though the man in question might suddenly walk through it. “He’s been here for a day.”

“He got out of bed this morning, went into his room, sat in the chair—I brought it back for him—and did the same thing you did in the shower.”

“Holy fuck!” That time, I did slip off the couch arm. I picked myself up off the floor and dropped onto the cushions.

Shit. Sonny masturbating.Do not think about it. Do not think about it. Do not think about it.

Crap, crap, crap. Too late.

He’d left my bed and immediately had to... sort himself out.

I shouldn’t read anything into that. He’d had morning wood. Like I did. Nothing else. Morning wood, that for some gods-only-knew reason, wouldn’t go down on its own. He obviously just needed to make it go away.

Can’t go about the whole day with a raging hard-on.

But Claude, you thought about him the entire time. What if he was thinking about you?said a tiny voice in my mind.

“So … you just watched him do it?”

“Hey, it’s not like I have a choice. I don’t have eyes I can close.”

I buried my face in my hands, and blew out a breath. I needed to stop picturing Sonny in that way or I would find myself with another everlasting erection. One I wouldn’t be able to rid myself of without knowing I had an audience. “So...”No, don’t say anything, Claude. Shut up and stop imagining Sonny’s dirty fingers, with his green-painted fingernails, wrapped around his—“So, he just did it there? In the chair?”

Why? Why did I ask that?

“Yeah,” said the house, and I swear it sighed in disbelief. “Hell of a mess.”

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