The Mushrooms

What if a boring afternoon were the last thing you ever experienced?

Adrián is sixteen years old and fed up with everything. With school, with his neighborhood, with the meaningless repetition of each day. Like his friends Rubén, Javi, and Nerea, he kills time smoking in an abandoned lot in Móstoles.

Something interesting happens. But it’s not what they expected.

An unknown old woman appears out of nowhere and offers them mushrooms she’s picked in the woods. ＂Better than what you’re smoking,＂ she tells them. Out of boredom, curiosity, or sheer teenage stupidity, they accept.

Twenty-four hours later, the vomiting begins. Forty-eight hours later, one of them is dead.

The mushrooms were Amanita phalloides-the death cap-the most lethal in the world. Once ingested, the poison blocks protein synthesis and destroys the liver cell by cell. There is no antidote. There is no effective treatment. They just have to wait and see if their bodies hold out or give out.

While the four young men fight for their lives in the ICU, their skin yellow and their organs decomposing, the police search for the elderly woman.

But she has vanished. There are no records, no witnesses, no trace. Like a ghost.

Until they discover her identity.