Dead Forest

Motto: Here meanders the shadowless way of fallacy – on the ground of that foreign abyss – observed by the rigid eye of the Sun – and the horizon’s innate blindness (Erik Lindegren). A man wakes up amidst a mess and books on mushrooms. Through the window, he spots his neighbour going to the forest with a basket. He and his young wife have a breakfast of raw meat in a dining room with a child’s picture wrapped up with a black ribbon hanging on the wall. The man writhes at the food, especially when he finds a golden chain next to the meat. When his wife startles him with the question “Are you a mushroom picker or a yellow-belly?”, he leaves the house with the basket. In the backyard, he is severely beaten by some young carollers. The young woman brings herself spaghetti from a secret place. She undresses and the pasta begins erotically crawling all over her body. The mushroom picker in the meantime observes three men in the forest who alternate their three activities at intervals set by an alarm clock – sleeping, drinking rum and shaving. A Zen master tries to light a fire in the middle of a chickweed pond and he shows the man where to pick mushrooms. As the picker bends down for his first take, he is halted by a hand that slides out from the ground and the neighbour steals the mushroom in front of his nose. As soon as the hand frees him, the mushroom picker kills his rival and takes the mushroom. He also finds a beer bottle full of cuttings and photographs of the dead man. When he finishes the soup made from the mushroom back home, his neighbour’s face peeps out at him from the bottom of his plate and the mushroom picker falls dead on the spot. One poisonous mushroom is always left out intentionally from every mushroom book.