How to know if The Fungus is in your dorm
As I'm sure everyone has heard, the Student Dormitory Council recently made an announcement telling residents to check for signs of The Fungus growing in their dorm room. While everybody now knows how to identify common signs of Fungal colonization, here are some more subtle and less obvious signs that it may have reached you!
Your roommate doesn't blink
Really, when was the last time you saw them blink? In fact, it seems like your roommate just never closes their eyes at all anymore! You might also notice their eyes wide open in the middle of the night, despite them being fast asleep. Either of these could be a sign of The Fungus. To be sure, try to gently wake up your roommate by whispering their name — if they stay unflinchingly wide-eyed and asleep, no matter how vigorously you shake them or scream at them, it could be a sign something is off.
The dead insects in your lighting fixture come back to life
This is one of the most amazing things that The Fungus can do. All those dead beetles, flies, moths, and other such critters that collect on the inside of your ceiling sconce lights will come back to life! They do so with such tremendous vitality and vigor that the light pouring into your room will dance and flicker as these bugs zip back and forth in front of the bulb. The fixture itself might even begin to tremble slightly from the momentum of these vermin relentlessly hurling themselves against the wall in a desperate (but futile) attempt to escape their prison. Nobody is quite sure how The Fungus reanimates these little beasts, but it's always fascinating to watch.
Your RA is acting a little odd
If you ever notice that your RA starts texting your floor group chat with interesting facts about mycelia or spores a bit more frequently than usual, it might be worth checking to see if The Fungus has manifested somewhere in your building. To be fair, expressing a desire to share information about the most fascinating kingdom of Eukaryotes is not, on its own, a sign of anything amiss, but if your RA hasn't expressed such a fervent fungal fixation in the past it might be worth looking into!
The bad thoughts come back
Oh no. Oh dear. They've come back haven't they? You believed you had buried those secrets deep down, but The Fungus can hear your innermost thoughts as clearly as our ears hear speech. You were never subtle, not with The Fungus. Everything will be made plain soon enough.
There is a mysterious cloak in your closet
A commonly reported side-effect of The Fungus is the appearance of a mysterious coat in one's closet. Typically, it's described as a long gray trench coat, with the shoulders so crooked and sleeves so gangly it seems to be made for a body not quite like ours. Many times, people describe finding strange items in the pockets of the coat, including frantically written notes scrawled in blood or childlike drawings of frightening scenes. Sometimes, people find objects in the pockets that end up being critical for them to survive the day!
Memory loss
If you notice that your roommate doesn't seem to close their eyes anymore, this might be a sign of The Fungus!
Your room no longer obeys Euclidean geometry
We all know our shapes. We sometimes take it for granted — three sides make a triangle, four right angles make a square, 360 degrees makes a circle, etc. But when the Fungus reaches maturity, it can do strange things. Left becomes up, down becomes backwards, and you scramble around your room trying to find the exit (which you could have sworn was never that small before!). Light bends in strange parabolic arcs as the photons seem to flee in fear from certain corners of the wall, leaving you to wonder what strange anomalies lie in the inky black extremities of your room.