Thinking is not the impulse that will give us answers. It’s not about thinking. It’s not anything that you can figure out. There are no answers only disbelief and horror recounted daily in the media, the purveyor of smut. How can we sink so low, how can we sink so low.

 
This we share with mushrooms, we live on shit. Mushrooms, like people are organisms that obtain the carbon they need to live, by consuming other organisms or organic detritus. At one time it was thought that fungi were plants that did not need photosynthesis, but now they are thought of to be like us. We are classified together as hetrotrophs because we are both organisms that cannot derive energy directly from light or from inorganic chemicals and so must feed on other life forms.

 
It takes six weeks for the mushrooms to poke their caps through the soil, thousands rise, an army emerging from the dank decay ready to perform for the master. A miraculous transformation, shit into delicacy, alchemy realized through patient nurturing vigilance. Mushrooms come in thousands of varieties. We love the tasty delicate morsels grown in dark rotting recesses and we can be fooled by them seduced by their loamy woody flavour for some mushrooms are poisonous, one bite and our throats can seize - for the poisonous mushroom may strike us dead.

 
Fungi multiply sexually and asexually. In classifying fungi, great weight is placed upon the appearance and structure of sexual fruiting bodies. Any fungus that does not exhibit a recognizable sexual structure is difficult to classify. They are grouped in the collection known as "fungi imperfecti".

 
They were mushroom farmers and murderers; they grew in shit and were considered shit. And like their produce eaten by the basketful, their inability to rise above the shit they grew in, provided the media with more shit to shovel to it’s readers. There is no insight to be gleaned from the details of the crime. The answers are what we already know, abject desperation, explosive anger, impulse without thought. And when the police came to question them about the missing man their little girl blurted out he was the man who was very sick and who was lying on the kitchen floor. And so they were caught – through the innocent declaration of their young daughter.

 
We are told this by the large round woman with filthy fingernails:

 
After dinner he went down to set the furnace that heats the galleries. He built a huge strong fire and he lowered the body, clothes and sac, into the fire. It took a long time for him to burn it all, 8 hours. It was 4 in the morning when my husband came to bed.

 
“It’s done he told me. Now you can sleep peacefully. There is nothing, nothing left.”

 
Like we announced yesterday the reconstruction of the murder of the unfortunate loan collector Lamarre was made yesterday morning. They arrived at the house and, in spite of the early hour in the morning a large number of curious people had gathered at the house of the crime. The commissioner of the police had to organize order with the police and agents. The back yard was a clutter of professional instruments; carts heaped with manure were everywhere. The wife of Carrara began to convulse and tremble. They looked for a glass of water and, to make her better gave her some water with drops of Melissa.

 
At 9:30 the prosecutor arrived, with the judge Josse, a mining engineer and a surveyor.

 
The officials went immediately to the furnace chimney where the body of the victim was lowered. The prosecutor asked in which way did he kill the poor Lamarre and he warned him he had better not lie.

 
“Show us, the key with which you have knocked out your victim.”

 
“It is in the next shed with all the other keys,” Carrara made a gesture. The search revealed an enormous key used for the stable wheels. It measured 60 centimetres and weighed 13 kilograms.

 
“Did Lamarre bleed a lot?” Questioned the judge.

 
“No,” he responded with sadness.

 
He explained again how he lowered the body down into the mushroom cave. After placing the body on the edge of the well he attached a belt, and to help lower the body, he attached the belt to a rain barrel that he found in front of the chimney.

 
“You made this to roll with the belt.”

 
“This is right.”

 
“I attached it to the waist of the body. I tied the belt around two straps on the barrel then I rolled.”

 
“On the bottom, that’s where you burned it, in the braiser?”

 
“Yes.” “When I had the body ready I fixed it to the barrel and went down into the mine. Then I placed the body in the brazier and I passed 8 hours burning all the fragments.”
The magistrates decided to return to the mushroom mine where they hooked up Carrara and lowered him into the airshaft. Following up on what Carrara did with the body they hung him down the chimney. Hanging there, on the order of the judge, the assassin cried, “but you are making it bad for me. You pull too hard.”

 
“Bastard”, responded one of the workers, “you did not regard this when you killed poor Lamarre.”

 
In a minute the winch pulled and Carrara disappeared up the shaft. The magistrate and the others went down through the ordinary opening of the mushroom cave and they arrived again at the place where the body of the poor loan collector was burned.

 
The place is neat, and there is not a trace of the lugubrious operation. They asked Carrara for an explanation. He responded that he burned it all and he scattered the ashes of the victim all over the gallery.

 
“But you did not destroy the watch of Lamarre and the buckle on his satchel.”

 
“This is true”, replied the murderer. “But I took care to collect every little bit. It’s elsewhere. I went and got it, there is nothing here.”

 
He went to a heap of manure and he returned with the buckle, then he went through the galleries and found under a brick a hernia bandage that belonged to the bank collector. And then he found under a heap of manure the watch of Lamarre, blacked and twisted.

 
“What of the money”

 
Carrara with some tools went to a hole and he started to excavate a metal box in behind many bricks. Opening the box they found bills and the money represented the exact sum that his wife had said there was.

 
They go into the hall to the dining room of the house, a rather small house. The home is filthy, the place smells, ringed with cobwebs, crumbs, grease smudged on the walls, cracked and broken panes. The murderer sank heavily onto a chair, cries melted into tears and he made like he was a woman. “This is her corruption. It is her who had a book.”

 
Then his father-in-law entered in the room wanting money to take care of the children while the couple is in jail.

 
“Yes yes all that you want,” said Carrara arrogantly. “It is your daughter who is the cause. She is the bad one who has caused this.”

 
The objects found in the mine, the money and all the tools of the agents were on the table to be sent on.

 
“This is appalling” cried Carrara, “to think that it is for the possession of all this money, that I, an honest man, I have committed a crime like this. But I am not the only guilty one, my wife helped me carry out the murder and she helped me carry out the body to the chimney. This, here, is what I have done, tying the belt to the barrel and burning the body in the brazier.”

 
“I said the truth, and I repeat to you, my wife is as guilty as me. I challenge her to deny it.”

 
The magistrate gives orders to bring the wife of Carrara. Sometime after she enters weakly. The judge tells her what her husband has said.

 
“He lies, he lies.” She starts to cry many hot tears. “I did not assist in this crime. I see well he wants me to loose. And my poor children, who will look after them."

 
“Your children”, cried Carrara violently. “The public aid is better to bring them up than you! You are a terrible wife and a terrible mother. I know this. I do everything she’s supposed to do.”

 
Then she remakes her statement, contests certain points of the accusation against her by her husband but finally goes back and finishes by confessing she is an accomplice to the crime. The confrontation is finished, the murderers are brought back in their respective cars and the magistrates return in theirs. This cynicism revolts the entire world.