One hand palms a rough rock. Heavy boots find a toe-hold. Then he pulls his prodigious body up with that arm, leaning into the rock so he doesn’t fall. He feels his hand one inch at a time up and up and up – sliding across sharp rock cutting into his palms, but he can’t just let go because he doesn’t have his other hand to anchor him.

It’s miserably slow going. He almost loses hold more than once. Hugging the wall helps, but as he climbs – ten feet, then twenty, now thirty – he becomes painfully aware that one of these times he’s going to fall and crack his head open like an ostrich egg.

And then Nora really will die down here.

It’s an unsolvable problem. He can’t go up. But he can’t go down. What was it Jess used to say anytime they had a fight? “It’s the Lady and the Tiger, Mikey. Can’t win for losing with you.” He suddenly misses her. It’s a physical pain, this longing – it lives in the space between his heart and his guts. God, how he fucked everything up.

Above him in the wall is a pocket carved out of the rock – big enough to fit him. He pulls his way up to it, draws himself into it with a long, guttural grunt.

Here he’s bathed in twinkling violet light.

On the wall of this little chamber are tiny mushroom caps. The caps glow purple. Not all of them, but the part that glows forms a small icon.

An icon shaped like a smeary, melting skull.

He plucks one. Smells it – earthy, moldy, but something else, too. A vinegar tang. His eyes lose focus. He feels dreamy, tired, unhinged and disconnected.

Mookie pulls it away from his face.

His fingers are stained with purple.

Caput Mortuum.

Death’s Head.

Not a pigment in the rock like Cerulean. Not a sap like Ochre.

It’s fungus. One of the Five Occulted Pigments – the most sought-after one – is a goddamn mushroom. He knows the legends. It’s life wrapped in the guise of death. Rumors say it’ll extend one’s life, cure diseases, maybe even make a person immortal.

He laughs. To be dropped down to the very bottom of the Deep Downstairs – to the nadir of the Underworld – is suddenly not a punishment, but a blessing.

He thinks suddenly: I could eat one. It would fix him up. But no. He doesn’t know what it’ll do. What if it put him to sleep while it mends him? Nora comes first.

Mookie pockets all the mushrooms he can pluck off the wall – almost a dozen – and begins climbing down, trying desperately not to fall.

“I’m coming, baby,” he breathes against the rock. “I’m coming to make it all better.”