The old hermit had an addiction. He had acquired a new corpse from the village graveyard.

He was near his cabin now, and he could see his garden. The hermit’s lips stretched into a thin, eager smile. He couldn’t wait to try the new batch.

He dragged the corpse into his garden, he carefully rested its head down so that it lined up with the heads of the other bodies. This is how he yielded new crop.

He rubbed his hands together, and made his way down the row of corpses to kneel down at a man who was dead for a month now. A cluster of mushrooms grew from the corpse’s forehead. The fungi had spread to the adjacent foreheads of a lady and boy.

The hermit plucked a mushroom off the man’s head and ate it.

The ground wobbled below him. He was the man eating dinner with the lady and boy—he had a family. He experienced the memory of preparing a body for burial—he was an undertaker. He recalled killing his family, and then killing himself—he was a murderer.

The highs weren’t always so depressing.