Mushrooms are tasty.

I like eating them in any kind of dish, cooked any kind of way, and have no distinct preference for a single type since they’re all yummy.

But.

If only I knew that would happen to me...

I would never have bought or cooked those mushroom balls!

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The day didn’t start out well.

Just the previous night, my cat knocked over my cello case (with my cello in it). Of course, my beloved cello, who I had a love-hate relationship with, got damaged. The neck broke, like it was totally separated from the body.

When I saw what happened, it was like my soul left my body. I could only stare at the broken pieces of my instrument and cry. It was the longest time that I had cried in years.

I couldn’t punish my cat, he didn’t know better, I couldn’t take it out on my brother who was just an innocent bystander.

So I just kept on sobbing like the world was ending and aliens had arrived to implement their plans of enslaving humanity….

Anyway, that morning after that heart-breaking debacle, I still couldn’t get over the fact that my cello was broken, its long wooden neck separated from its body, just like how heads were separated from the bodies of people who met their end under the blade of a guillotine.

My brother and my friends invited me for a trip to the city, to eat and so that I could get over the sadness and pain of the demise of my poor cello.

We had an exhausting but fun day, which wiped out the problem of my cello’s ‘death’ from my mind. It was already dark by the time that we arrived back on our college campus.

Around nine pm, I decided to re-fry the mushroom balls that was cooked in the morning, because while the outside had turned into a light-brown color, the inside was still…not cooked at all. It was like eating mushroom-flavored dough.

I prepared a pan deep enough to deep fry them in, poured oil into it, and waited for it to become hot enough.

Slowly, I dropped the mushroom balls in.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

On and on, I dropped each into the hot oil. After that, I stepped away from the pan to chat with a cousin on Facebook while keeping an eye on the mushroom balls that were frying.

In a few minutes, the delicious scent of food filled the kitchen. I went over and checked what I was frying. The mushroom balls turned into a golden color as they bobbed along, merrily drifting in the oil that felt hot even from a distance.

The oil looked innocent, hot, but not likely to cause an accident. But because I was paranoid about such things, just as slowly as I put them in, I started to prepare to take the mushroom balls out.

With a metal tong I nudged a couple of the balls. Satisfied that they were already well-cooked, I took them out, one by one.

One.

Two.

Three.

F—

BAM!!!!

The sound had me instinctively close my eyes as oil flew everywhere! I ended up getting covered in boiling oil. My face, my hands, my thighs, all sustained hit by oil.

The mushroom balls exploded!

New Year explosions came early that year. (By the way, this happened on December 30, 2016).

My brother, upon hearing the noise, was shocked. Later he told me that he thought that the cooking appliance that I was using exploded.

All covered in hot oil, I stood there, still as a statue while my mind desperately tried to process what had just happened. I called my brother to help me, still not moving because I was scared that the oil on me would spread. He panicked when he saw what occurred to me, but managed to calm down enough to help me.

Thankfully, I was wearing a loose long-sleeved shirt, so my arms escaped the damage from oil.

I was brought to the bathroom, where I washed off all of the oil under cold water.

At first, I couldn’t feel any pain. But as time passed, the pain appeared, and I had to keep my hands (which sustained the most damage) under water or else the pain became unbearable.

We didn’t keep medical supplies for burns in the house, so at past ten in the evening, I sent my brother to the school’s clinic to get pain relievers. But, to our misfortune, there was nobody in the clinic. The one in-charge went home to celebrate the New Year with her family.

My brother called people on his phone, asking them if they had pain relievers while I stayed in the bathroom, my hands submerged under water to keep the pain at bay. I could feel my skin burning, even with the water to soothe it.

Later, one of the teachers came, along with a classmate of ours. It was decided that I had to go to a hospital to be treated.

They called the school ambulance, bundled me in, with me carrying a bucket of water to put my hand in.

At the hospital, they looked me over, asked about my injuries (I think they thought that it was a case of domestic violence. My poor teacher became an object of their suspicion.) I was prescribed some medicine to take, and my burns were treated with anti-inflammatory cream.

Because there was no need for me to stay, we went home at around two in the morning.

I ended the year with a bang, a literal bang.

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I couldn’t go to school for about three weeks, and couldn’t write for more than two months.

This experience taught me to never underestimate the horrifying power of mushrooms balls, which I stay away from up to this day.
(A few weeks after this happened, we realized that there were mushroom balls stuck to the ceiling of the kitchen…)

The End.

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That's it for my entry for Shary's Writing Prompt Contest #2.

The story is a real experience that happened more than a year ago. Until now, whenever anyone mentions 'mushroom balls', I can imagine exploding ones.

Thanks to @sharoonyasir for the contest! Check out her post if you're interested to join.

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Photo credit goes to Pixabay.