Here is the second guest blogger story, written by two of my Mexican students in our fiction class.

Source

Poisonous Mushrooms

by Amelia Victoria Nava and Karina Rodriguez

San Miguel de Allende was a small town in Guanajuato, Mexico. The main food in this place was mushrooms. People included mushrooms in all their food, like the potatoes in America or tortillas in Mexico.  Most people in San Miguel were farmers and they harvested mushrooms to eat or sold them to the nearest cities. One day, all of a sudden, people got sick. At the beginning of the illness the symptoms were headache, fever and diarrhea, but later it changed to red spots on their skin. If they scratched them they started to bleed. The worst thing was, people died after a couple of days in the advance stage of the illness.

People did not know what was happening at that time. The first person with those symptoms was Mrs. J. She was a very healthy person and always helped people. She was a happy and friendly person in that town. You could see her every Sunday in church.

When Miss K realized that her friend Mrs. J had gotten sick, she went to the clinic and talked to the doctor. They talked for hours and hours about the problem but the doctor told her that Mrs. J was going to die and all infected people too. It must be a secret because nobody knew that the virus had no cure.  Mr. A was a young, very smart man. He did research for the world in medicine. Unfortunately he had a problem. He was schizophrenic.

Six weeks later, you could see the town empty. No more kids playing in the parks, no students in the school and no people walking in the streets. Miss. K was very worried. She did not know why most people got sick, her friends, her family and her boyfriend too. There was no difference between her and them. Except the food. She ate all type of food but no vegetables. She started to notice this difference and started to talk to her relatives and asked them if they had done or eaten something different before they got sick.

She thought that the only thing people had in common was the food. All of them prepared their dishes with mushrooms and they were infected. Nobody knew, only the doctor.

Miss. K looked for help because she really wanted to assist the population. She planned her trip to the nearest city and talked to a group of scientists.

A month later, that group came to San Miguel in order to analyze the epidemic. Hundreds of people had died. The group did not explain why. The town had an expert in those cases, Mr. A.

Mr. D, who was the leader of the group, talked to Mr. A about the situation. The doctor only said viruses did not have a cure but gave people pills and serum to make them feel better. Mr. D was not convinced by it and started to make a vaccine to stop the epidemic but Mr. A did not help him.

One day both were in the laboratory and Mr. D found a file with all the information about the virus’s formula. But he did not say anything at all. He continued working on the research and later talked to Miss. K about the problem. He made a vaccine with the information he found. The result was that water contained a strange substance and people watered vegetables with it but only mushrooms reacted negatively. Both started vaccinating people in the town while Mr. A was on a trip.

Finally, when Mr. A came back to town, he was taken to the mental hospital. Unfortunately it was too late to save innocent people who believed in him.