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The weekend morning air was crisp and clear as Klein and Azik walked hand-in-hand down the street toward the grand, ivy-covered building of the local Church of the Earth Mother.
The church was hosting a highly publicised charity gala, combining a massive community bake sale and an agricultural exhibition to raise funds for the city's homeless shelters.
Klein, dressed in a comfortable knit sweater, leaned into Azik’s side as they walked, enjoying the rare weekend reprieve from his gruelling corporate job.
"I'm glad we came," Azik said softly, squeezing Klein's hand. His dark eyes caught the sunlight, a serene smile resting on his face.
"Supporting a good cause and getting some fresh pastries sounds like a perfect Saturday morning."
"As long as we stick to the official, parish-approved tables," Klein murmured back, a little fright in his voice.
"Our neighbour Frank Lee mentioned he was volunteering today. I just want to make sure we don't accidentally buy anything he had a hand in baking."
Azik let out a soft, deep chuckle. "A wise precaution, my love."
Flashback
"It’s a breakthrough!" Frank shoved the bottle forward. "You know how almond milk and oat milk are popular now? Well, I realised the apartment complex across the street has a terrible cockroach problem. So, I thought, why not utilise them? I genetically spliced the reproductive speed of a common pest with the lactation genes of a dairy cow! It’s highly sustainable, packed with protein, and it tastes exactly like taro boba!"
Klein stared at the shimmering purple fluid. He could vividly hear his inner voice screaming.
Cockroach milk. He made cockroach milk. This mad man had actually created cockroach milk!
"I call it 'Moth-er's Blend'!" Frank continued, entirely blind to Klein’s pale complexion. "Give it a try! It only causes minor, temporary skin transparency if you drink it on an empty stomach."
Klein’s mind, unfortunately, was hyper-reactive.
It immediately painted a vivid, horrifying picture of a trendy modern café downtown. He imagined trendy office workers standing in line, cheerfully ordering a ‘Moth-er's iced Latte.’
He imagined them taking a sip, enjoying? Can you even after knowing what it's made of? whatever flavour, and then... He imagined someone accidentally tripping.
They would fall to the ground, but instead of pushing themselves back up, their limbs would twitch rhythmically. They would lie flat on their backs, staring blankly at the ceiling, legs squirming helplessly in the air like an upturned beetle on a kitchen tile, utterly unable to find their center of gravity.
A cold sweat broke out across the back of Klein’s neck. As he snapped out of his cruel imagination.
'Minor, temporary skin transparency? What does that even mean? Might just be the tip of the iceberg! What if the side effects are like literally turning people into inverted bugs!
End OF Flashback
Klein snapped out of the horrifying flashback, instinctively shuddering and tightening his grip on Azik’s hand as they finally crossed into the church courtyard. "Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl," he muttered.
"Don't worry," Azik said, his voice a soothing balm. "We will be exceptionally careful with what we choose."
But the peaceful atmosphere shattered the moment they stepped near the grand wooden doors of the church hall. A loud, echoing crash reverberated from inside, followed by a chorus of panicked gasps.
"What in the Mother's name—" a voice boomed from within.
Klein and Azik exchanged a quick look and hurried to peer inside. The central hall was in absolute chaos. A massive crowd of parishioners had backed away to the walls, leaving a wide circle in the center.
There stood Frank Lee, breathing heavily, clutching a large plastic crate of dark red, disturbingly fleshy fungi that seemed to slowly, rhythmically expand and contract. Facing him was the regional Bishop, flanked by three pale, shaking Monsignors.
"This is the final straw, Father Frank!" the Bishop roared, his hands trembling as he held up an official, wax-sealed parchment.
"Your blatant disregard for the natural order, your unauthorised biological abominations, and your complete lack of sanity leave us no choice! Effective immediately, you are stripped of your holy orders and excommunicated from the Church of the Earth Mother!"
"Excommunicated?!" Frank shrieked, his face turning a dangerous shade of crimson, eyes burning with anger.
He didn't look remorseful at all—If anything, he looked utterly insulted. "You absolute bunch of spineless, short-sighted hypocrites!"
"Frank! Mind your tongue in the house of—"
"Screw your tongue and screw this house!"
Frank yelled, slamming his crate of bleeding mushrooms onto the pristine white display table.
Thick, dark red juice instantly splattered across the tablecloth, perfuming the air with an unsettling, sour, metallic smell.
"I literally solved world hunger! These steak mushrooms mature in forty-eight hours and taste exactly like premium beef! And I made milk-producing fungi to go with them! This is veganism’s final evolution!”
A vegan’s wet dream. WHO SAID THAT?!
"It is bleeding, Frank! Flora should not have a pulse!" the Bishop shouted back, covering his nose. "It is a nightmare!"
"It’s a breakthrough, you blind, bureaucratic fuddy-duddy parasites!" Frank aggressively jabbed a finger at the Bishop's nose.
"You pray every single Sunday for the Mother to feed the hungry, but the moment a priest uses his god-given brain to optimise the ecosystem, you throw a hypocritical theological tantrum! You’re all just a political country club of cowards who are terrified of a vegetable with a little bit of muscle mass!"
Frank grabbed his paring knife, violently hacked a bleeding chunk off a mushroom, and waved it wildly in the air—spattering bits of blood around.
"To hell with your diocese! To hell with your liturgy! And to hell with the entire Synod! You think throwing me out stops progress?”
He crackled like a lunatic, and with a dramatic shove, Frank hoisted his heavy crate back into his arms.
“I’ll take my bleeding mushrooms, my milk-fungi, to the corporate tech startups downtown! They actually have the brain cells to appreciate biotechnology! Enjoy your inefficient, starvation-prone traditionalism, you worthless frauds! I’m out!"
The crowd practically threw themselves out of the way to avoid the leaking red juices as Frank stormed down the center aisle.
He spotted Klein and Azik near the exit.
Those two froze as they locked eyes with him—contemplating between dashing out and denying any relation they had with this man.
So much coming to doing a good deed…
"Klein! Azik!" Frank called out—his chest still heaving. "Don't buy the honey cakes out there! Those simpleton of fuddy-duddies used standard, unoptimized honey. They’re horribly inefficient! I'll see you guys back at the apartment—I'm moving my lab into the living room!"
Before the couple could even process the horror of that statement, Frank stormed out into the sunlight, still muttering curses about the Archbishop's lack of imagination.
Silence hung heavy over the desecrated church hall.
Klein stood frozen, staring at the trail of red mushroom blood on the floor, his face completely pale. He slowly looked up at his husband.
Azik, who now somehow looked even more tired than someone who had worked a full multi‑millennial shift at a corporate 9‑to‑5— which was impressive, considering he had actually lived for more than a millennium— slowly closed his eyes. He rubbed his temples like a man realising the warranty on his sanity had just expired, and let out a long, soul‑deep sigh.
He turned to Klein and squeezed his hand tightly. "Klein, my love, let's go home, pack our things, and break our lease immediately. We are moving across the country."