11. Rescue

He found himself singing along with the mushrooms;
"And so it was that later, as the miller told his tale, that her face at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale."
Before he realized it, he had fallen over on his side and was lying amongst the Jamaican mushrooms, still singing along with their mesmerizing song.
"She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
"Though in truth we were at sea.
"So I took her by the looking glass,
"And forced her to agree."
The touch of a hand on his shoulder brought him suddenly out of the reverie of singing. "How long have I been lying here?" he wondered out loud,
"Well I saw you here an hour ago," a voice said behind him and nearly made him jump out of his skin. "When I came back by and you were still lying there, I thought you might need some help."
As he began to turn around he said, "Yes, thank you. I - Jesus Christ!" he finished in a scream, seeing what it was that had roused him from his reverie. He scooted back away from the thing, smashing many of the mushrooms in the process. "Hey!" and "Ouch!" and "Watch it, man!" came from them, along with a great many muffled curses.
Crouched there in the field of mushrooms was a great bog fat lizard man thing, complete with horns on its head and a forked tongue that kept flicking out and back in to its mouth. It was covered in scales, had a long tail, and vertical slitted black and gold eyes.
"Sorry, man," the lizard-thing said, "I didn't mean to startle you."