Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“Yes,” she said and added, “Flow-da says some people think Manimalism is caused by a kind of parasite.”
“Not a parasite—a spoor,” Goodie Bo-long told her. “Derived from a type of fungus that grows on the Boom-boom plant, in fact. My husband was looking for a way to eradicate it, since it’s harmful to the plant, but instead he found that the Magroagaricus trisporus fungus has some fascinating properties which work very differently on males and females.”
Dr. Bo-long cursed and gripped the bars of his cage.
“I should have destroyed my research! I never should have left it lying around for you to read!”
“Now, now sweetheart—don’t be too hard on yourself.” Goodie Bo-long gave him a poison-sweet smile. “You didn’t think I was intelligent enough to comprehend your precious data and research—so of course you had no reason to hide it from me.”
“I should’ve known,” Dr. Bo-long growled hoarsely. “Should have known what a poisonous bitch you’d turn out to be!”
Goodie Bo-long turned her smile on Andi.
“I let him talk to me like that because it gives me pleasure to know he’s the only man on the planet who’s even capable of talking anymore.”
“But how do the spoors work?” Andi asked, fascinated despite herself.
“The naturally occurring unaltered ones only work on certain kinds of insects,” Goodie Bo-long explained. “But the lab-altered spoors which I developed, ah…now those are a different story.” She picked up a stoppered test tube filled with what looked like pale pink dust and handed it to Andi. “Don’t open that, my dear, unless you wish to inhale a fatal dose,” she remarked. “A very little goes a long way, you know.”
Andi handled the test tube carefully, noting that even with a cork in the glass tube, it smelled strongly of fresh strawberries. This must be the source of The Scent, she thought.
“And you say it affects the brains of males and females differently?” she asked. “How so?”
“I’m happy to explain—I’ve been waiting to tell someone about my work for simply ages, my dear!” Goodie Bo-long said brightly. “You see, the altered Magroagaricus trisporus, when inhaled, immediately crosses the blood-brain barrier. In the male brain, the spoors grow tendrils in the speech and comprehension centers of the brain, hindering any higher thinking and reducing the male to his most basic and primitive state.”
“So that’s why all men go Manimal the minute they breathe in The Scent!” Andi said.
“Correct—the Magroagaricus trisporus is extremely fast acting.” Goodie Bo-long nodded. “Now, in the female brain, it’s quite the opposite. The spoors actually enhance critical thinking and executive function! Breathing in the Magroagaricus trisporus has made anyone with a vagina considerably smarter. Not that you’d know it, talking to those New Order idiots,” she added, half to herself.
“Are those the only changes the Magroagaricus trisporus spoors have?” Andi asked suspiciously—it seemed to her that Goodie Bo-long was leaving something out.
“Oh, no, my dear!” her hostess said. “No—the spoors also enhance the sex drive of both males and females. You see, when I was tinkering around with the Magroagaricus trisporus in my husband’s lab, I asked myself—what exactly do I want out of life. The answer? Why simple—I wanted three things: to have control of my own destiny, to punish my boring, irritating husband and every high-handed man that had ever belittled me, and to have as much sex as I wanted.” She gave an elegant shrug. “And it just so happens that I got everything I wished for.”
“You bitch!” Dr. Bo-long growled again.
Goodie Bo-long ignored him.
“Do you see how elegant it is? Every man who’s ever put me down, slighted or belittled me is locked in a cage in my playroom. Well all except for my dear husband here,” she added, smiling. “And every young, handsome man I’ve ever wanted is mine for the taking. I keep them as a kind of Manimal harem, you know—that way I can have any of them any time I want.”
“Including your own stepson, you sick bitch!” Dr. Bo-long growled, looking at Gobi, who was nosing under Goodie Bo-long’s skirt again.
She smirked at him.
“If you’re trying to make me angry enough to stop giving you the antidote, you can forget it, sweetheart. I enjoy the look of agony on your face when dear Gobi mounts me far too much for that!”
Which brought them back around to the antidote, Andi thought.
“The antidote,” she said. “What does it do—how does it work? Does it kill the roots the spoors put down in a person’s brain?”
“Only in a male’s brain,” Goodie Bo-long said. “I very much regret to say that there is no cure for the female brain which has become infested by the Magroagaricus trisporus spoors.” She shrugged. “But then, why would you want one? Who wishes to be cured of being smarter and having an unbeatable sex drive?”
Andi could think of several people—herself included—that might not want a sex drive with the dial turned up to eleven all the time. But she said nothing—she could live with the changes to her own body, she told herself. But she couldn’t live with Cade being so changed.