Slime

You awake in the middle of the night. Your ears strain, searching for sound while your other senses adjust to the darkness. There's gunfire in the distance. You're okay, it's far enough away.

You listen, soaking up the stillness between distant pops and reverberations. A thin band of light edges its way through your broken window. You can feel cool air leaking in through the gaps in your duct tape frame. It's getting colder, you don't think you'll be able to stay here much longer- unless you somehow find the perfect pane of glass to repair your window. You wonder mindlessly how hard it would be to remove a window from someone else's house. You decide it'd probably be easier to just find a new house to move into- but the thought of having to move all your stuff- and move out all their stuff is depressing. Maybe you can withstand the cold a little longer. You like the light, but maybe it's time to just cover your window with wood boards and plywood. That'd keep the cold from seeping in- you hope.

You get to your feet, testing the plush carpet under your feet, feeling for anything unfamiliar. Your path seems undisturbed, nothing hard, or sharp. One night, a week or two back, you found a sticky wet pile. Stuck your big toe right into it. The cold dampness stuck to you, sending a chill up your entire body. You'd have rather stubbed it, or stepped on broken glass- but wet and cold? No. That wouldn't do.

You risked turning on a flashlight- even though you knew that could spell certain doom if someone saw your light. Wet and cold. You regretted turning on the light before you could even make out the shape of the thing on the floor. A blue-ish purple clot clung to the floor, slowly weeping a watery mucus substance through the fibers in your carpet. You recoiled a second time, grabbing the nearest shirt off a pile of dirty clothes, and frantically wiping at your toe. You hobbled to the bathroom, where you turned on a lantern. You boarded up the bathroom windows weeks ago- A move you regretted with the back fill of sewage that occasionally climbed up and out the sink drain. But the water was still running, and the toilet flushed, and that was more than most people had.

You sat on the lip of your bathtub, and scrunched over, getting as close to your toe as you could. A sharp sting of vinegar struck you as you leaned in. Your toe seemed fine- if not a little red. Was that from the jelly-fish thing, or from trying to dry off your toe? Or the cold air? The tips of your nose, fingers, and toes were all cold to the touch. You really needed to fix that window. Maybe the thing was harmless. Maybe you were just cold.

You turned on the sink, waiting for hot water to come out. The pipes creaked, and groaned, nothing came out. You waited, and slowly a gurgle of water eeked its way out. It took another minute to warm up, but when it did, it was an instant relief to your extremities. When you got back in bed, you'd be sure to bundle up, socks, sweater, maybe a hat. Then you remembered, the spot on your carpet.

You stuck your head out of the bathroom, your eyes again blinded by the darkness after becoming accustom to the lantern. You swore under your breath, and slowly scanned the floor with your flashlight. The beam was weak, and cast long shadows from the clothes, trash, and other detritus that littered your floor. You jumped at each shadow, fearing that the jelly thing was one of a dozen intruders instead of a sole perpetrator. Fortunately, each shadow lacked substance.

You found the original culprit. The wet spot around it seemed to have doubled since you last saw it. Unsure if it was comforting, or disturbing that the creature had seemed to recently materialize in your room. Maybe it's appearance is what awoke you.

You looked around, weighing your options for picking up the clot. You didn't want to damage any of the clothes you had- and the idea of it leaking through a shift onto your hand was just as upsetting as sticking your toe into it again. You decide to grab a spatula from the kitchen- you haven't been doing much cooking lately. And plus, a spatula was easier to replace than your favorite band shirt.

You try scraping under the creature, trying both not to hurt it, and watching it closely in case it lunged at you. It seems to lift off the carpet easily enough, viscous tendrils of drool stretch and snap as you lift it from the wet spot. You hold the spatula away from you body, and weave through your apartment. You bring the jelly out into the kitchen, and look for someplace to set it.

You could try putting it down the sink and running the garbage disposal, but who knows what this things guts were made of. Best case scenario, it stunk up your apartment for a couple weeks, worst case it had acid blood which would eat through your sink. Then you'd really have to move.

Putting it on the counter also raises the concern of acid blood, or spit. What if it dissolves straight through the tacky vinyl your landlord glued to everything? Probably not the worst loss, but still one you'd rather avoid. And what if the thing decided to roll off the counter? And it crawled all the way back to your room? What if it got bigger?

Too many unknown. All bad scenarios. You decide, it's safest to just stick it in a mason jar. You pull one that still has a lid out of the cupboard, and slide the jelly into it. You start to screw on the lid, but you stop yourself. What if it needs to breath? Do you care? Maybe you don't care if it lives or dies, but you don't want to be directly responsible for it's death.

You groan, and slip on your sandals. You peek through your curtains, it seems empty out in the courtyard. You unlock the front door, and make your way outside. You find a suitable spot in some shrubbery, and set down the mason jar. You're not sure if you'll reclaim this jar later, or if it's become a necessary casualty. You reckon the latter. You can't imagine yourself drinking out of a jar that had a slime in it. Feeling mildly inconvenienced, but otherwise happy that you were able to quickly solve this problem, you pad back up the stairs, and into your apartment.

The first tendrils of dawn are starting to stretch across the sky. You could stay up and get a jump on the day, but today, much like yesterday, is just about killing time. You're sleepy enough, that you decide sleeping a little longer can't hurt. There will be plenty of time to be awake and anxious later.

You stop in your bathroom again and examine your toe. It seems a little more irritated, but not enough to worry about. Maybe if you bump into someone with medical experience on your next supply run you can ask them about it. They'll probably laugh it off, tell you it's no worse than accidentally letting a dog lick inside your mouth. Gross, but not catastrophic. You flip off the bathroom lantern, and trudge into your room. You feel your eyelids getting heavier with each step, you long for the warmth of your sleeping bag. Especially when you feel a chilly gust of air as you pass by the window. Maybe that'll be your big chore of the day, you'll fix the window. No more cold air, no more slimes sneaking in. Yeah, that'll be good.

Your foot lands in the wet spot, instantly jolting you back awake. It'd been just a couple of minutes, and you'd forgotten all about the byproduct of the slime. You sigh, and hobble back to the bathroom to wash off your foot. Another inconvenience, but not a terrible one. You feel fortunate that the slime seemed harmless enough. You'd heard stories of much worse things just showing up in people's homes. Jamie, an old high school friend who lived nearby, she claimed that she woke up to a flesh cube bobbing around in her kitchen. Scared the shit out of her, she had to swat it out of the house with a broom.

You turn on the faucet, the pipes squeak, and groan. But the groan sounds a little deeper than it usually does. You scrunch your face in concern, wondering if this marks the end of your good luck. You wait a couple moments, the groaning persisting, but no water coming. You turn off the hot water, and try the cold water. The same hollow groan rings out. You groan, and hobble towards the kitchen. There's some bottled water you've stockpiled for just an occasion.

You set your foot down, balancing yourself so you can pick up a heavy jug of water, when your foot slips out from beneath you. You fall on your back, almost smashing your head in with 15 gallons of water. You groan, and roll the jug off of your chest. You're suddenly aware of a stinging sensation on the bottom of your foot, like it's covered in pins and needles. You sit up, and bring your left foot up to your knee to look at the bottom, when you have a sickening realization.

You slipped on something. Not another slime- no. The bottom of your foot has sloughed off, all in one perfectly long piece. It's not just a layer of skin, like a reptile's shedding, it's more like a molt. A thick wet glob, like reddish snot sticks to the floor. You look down and your foot, finally taking in the extent of the damage. Raw skin and meat is exposed, you're now acutely aware of how much pain you're in.

You recoil from the skin pad, eyeing it with distrust. You want to squeeze your foot, to put pressure on the thousands of pain sensors going off, but the exposed muscle is as revolting at the discarded skin. You lean against the wall, taking deep breaths, trying to calm yourself and formulate a plan. It's not working. You're spiraling. You'll never be able to walk. You can't leave. You'll die here. Oh god. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. You squeeze your eyes shut, and grit your teeth.

Then, there is a pop, and sizzle. The sound makes you think of bacon, the way fatty cuts bark when the oil is too hot. You open your eyes and stare at your sloughed off skin. It's undergoing some sort of chemical reaction, steam, or smoke is coming off of it. The skin is starting to liquefy, and lose it's shape. The reddish hue shifts, to something pink, then purple. It loses it's opaqueness, becoming increasing transcendental. Thick veins crisscross the mound, the skin begins to tuck itself in, becoming semi-solid, like a runny egg. In moments, you're looking at a near identical clone of the slime you just deposited outside your house.

But where the other one looked squishy, and deflated, this one is perky and taut. It starts to flex, and squirm. First you think you're witnessing another step in its rapid evolution, but quickly you realize that it's moving. Inching towards you across floor. You feel lightheaded, you press yourself against the wall, the only think keeping you upright. The crawl along it, trying to get up to your feet, but scrambling in your panic. You fling your limbs about, and in a futile gesture, you slam your wounded foot into the floor. Pain shoots up your nervous system, paralyzing you, blinding you with searing white hot pain. You bite through your cheeks, and clench your fists hard enough that your overgrown nails draw blood. You're hyperventilating now.

Your eyes dart around, the slime is no longer on the floor when you last saw it. You give up on trying to get up on your feet. Instead, you throw yourself onto your hands and knees. You crawl through your house, holding your wounded foot up in the air. You don't have a directing in mind, you're just trying to get away from the skin. You decide the bathroom is the safest place to be, you crawl as fast as you can, and then slam the door shuts. You lift yourself into the bathtub, and prop your foot up. You want to wash it, sterilize it somehow, but the wound is too deep, too tender. You rifle through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, looking for pain killers, or gauze. You find only expired cough syrup, and safety pins. You curse yourself.

Then, you hear a quiet plop plop plopping. Something soft and squishy moving about. Dread crawls up your spine, you break out into a cold sweat. You see the skin squeeze itself under the bathroom door. It becomes so thin, you can make out every artery, and ridge in it's anatomy, even discrete translucent organs and muscles.

It's crawling towards you.

It's not in a hurry, it takes it's time, slowly spooling itself back together once it's passed beneath the door. You regard it with such ire and vitriol. You grab a glass jar, the one holding your tooth brushes, and you throw it against the creature. The glass shatters, and covers the floor. You see a thousand sharp shards piercing through the jelly's skin, you think surely this would have stopped it. A simple solution to a terrifying pest.

It freezes for a moment, but then it starts its slow crawl towards you. You see the glass shards slip through, and out of the jelly, like it just slipped around them. Frustrated, you yank at the towel rod on the wall, twisting and pulling until the rod itself comes loose from the holders. You poke at the creature, jabbing and trying to pin parts of it down. But it doesn't work. The thin membrane seems to slip through any pressure you exert. You try pushing at the creature, using the rod to sweep it away from you. But unlike the first slime you encountered, one that seemed mostly solid, this one was amorphous. And it inched closer to you still.

Cornered in the bathtub, with the slime now starting to slowly ebb up the tub wall, you decide to make a jump for it. It's still a small enough creature, you have a distinct size advantage. You take a half step back, you place some weight onto the tips of the toes on your damaged foot, and you prepare to leap, landing on your good foot. You inhale, exhale, and then vault forward.

But your bad foot catches on the shower curtain, and your body swings too far forward, and you plant face first into the corner of the bathroom. Your legs are twisted up in fabric, and your head thrums with pain. You touch a wet spot in your hair, and find blood. You try to unwind yourself, but the slime is closer now than before. You watch as it crawls onto the shower curtain, still half hanging from the rod. You can feel the warmth of it on your leg, through the synthetic cloth.

You try to shake it off, thrashing every which way, but you realize with cold calculation that you're a trapped animal, and this is a predator. The slime seeps down your leg, off the curtain and onto the skin of your knee. It burns instantly. You thrash more violently, but it's as if the jelly has hooked into you, it's slick exterior gripping onto you tightly. It continues a slow trail down your leg, leaving behind a waxy trail of melted skin. By the time it reaches your waist, you've forgotten everything you've learned about it, and start pressing against it with your hands, trying to scoop it up, or slide it off of you. But your fingers pass through it, burning every second you touch it. After several failed attempts to claw it off of you, you find your hand is trapped within the slime. You pull, and scream, and push, but your hand is fused to your upper thigh. When the slime moves on, your arm is still pinned and trapped, as if it liquefied your skin, and then hardened it.

Contorted, your joints ache, your body has already dumped all the adrenaline it can produce, and now you find yourself increasingly immobile as the slime crawls up your chest. You breath is haggard. You blow hot air through clenched teeth. And all you can do is watch as the slime slowly traces up your chest, and towards your face.

Pain is measured in duration, not intensity. And even after the slime has clung to your face, covering your mouth and nostrils, melting them into misshapen mountains. After you swore you'd asphyxiate, you find yourself cramped, tangled, and melted in position. Your skin is on fire. After one area has burned long enough, you feel the slime move to new skin. It gets bigger, eventually it digs deeper, burrowing into your muscles.

You don't die. You don't die for days.