Slime

Georgie’s town had once been a lively little city with cars and commerce and corruption, but things started to change the day the mayor was taken from his office at the city hall. Georgie was six at the time and she had just started first grade. Some of the townspeople, gossiping in grocery store lines or at gas pumps, said it was a monster that had taken him, a large dark green octopus-looking creature with teeth on all of its tentacles. This talk was brushed off by more respectable citizens of the town, who insisted that the mayor simply had a mental breakdown and quit one day.

Three months later, mental health in the city must have been at an all-time low, because people everywhere were “suddenly quitting”, leaving workplaces vacant almost overnight. As people disappeared, schools and stores closed, and families started moving out of Georgie’s neighborhood. Playgrounds were left motionless. There were rumors of inky shadows slinking through near-empty streets after dark. Things got quiet, smothered under a thick black blanket. Sometimes at night, Georgie heard her parents downstairs, having hushed conversations when they thought everyone was asleep. They talked anxiously about moving, living with their parents in a neighboring state for a couple months, but nothing was ever decided.

Two weeks after the family next door, the only other people left on their street, moved away, Georgie’s family started hearing noises in their basement. It had been rainy the last few days, and their basement flooded regularly, so they didn’t think much of it until Georgie’s father went downstairs to investigate and didn’t come back up for dinner, or even to tuck Georgie in bed. Mom had hurriedly put Georgie and her brothers to bed without saying anything. The next morning, Georgie emerged sleepily from her bedroom and stepped softly down the stairs to ask her mom for breakfast. She stopped at the last stair—there was a layer two inches thick of dark sludge, like grey snot, covering the entire kitchen floor.

“Mom? Dad?” No answer. “Mom! Dad!”

Georgie stared down at her feet and gingerly dipped a bare toe into the slime. It was cold! She shrunk back but then, with all the resolve she could muster, placed her tiny foot down into the muck and began slogging around the house, calling for her parents and brothers, checking each floor, peering around corners and under beds, behind doors, wondering if they were playing a prank on her. Where was everybody? Was Dad back? Maybe her family had gone to the store without her. She looked in the driveway, but their minivan was still there. She checked the backyard, but there was no one playing on the patio, now wet with slime. The swings hung limp and empty.

Georgie was alone, and she was getting scared. Tears gathered in her eyes and Georgie dashed back upstairs to her room. She snatched her stuffed lion from the bed, ran to her closet, closed the door, sat down in the dark, and began to cry. She sat there for what felt like hours until the tears stopped and she noticed a rumbling in her stomach. She was starving. She tiptoed down the stairs, walked again through the slime, and began rummaging through the cupboards, when in the silence of the house a soft squelch came from the hallway. Georgie stopped breathing and nearly dropped the bag of crackers she was holding. She dove behind the counter and squeezed her eyes shut as the squelching came closer, closer, until it stopped. Georgie forced her eyes open and looked up into a wall of dark ooze. She shrieked, scrambled to her feet, and grabbed a wooden spoon off the counter to defend herself.

With a gurgly screech the tentacled ooze dove at her. Georgie screamed, jumping backwards, almost slipping in the slime covering the floor. Georgie frantically looked around the kitchen for an escape route. The monster whipped a tentacle at her neck, which Georgie dodged fast enough to not be caught but too slow to avoid its stinging slap across her cheek. Georgie threw her spoon at the center of the slimy creature, but it was merely absorbed into its ooze as the monster slid forward. As the ooze advanced, Georgie inched trembling towards the hallway leading to the front door. The tentacled monster halted suddenly, as if getting ready to strike, and for a second, Georgie stood paralyzed. In the light from the window, she could see in the slime the gleam of what looked like hundreds of tiny, jagged teeth outlining eleven pulsing tentacles.

As Georgie looked at the creature, she could feel the slime around her feet moving, being pulled toward the monster, which seemed to be growing. Georgie sprinted to the front door, fumbling with the lock with her tiny soft hands. Yanking the door open, she looked behind her and saw the oozing mass, now twice its original size, towering only a few yards down the hall. She raced out the door and slammed it closed behind her, tripping down the front steps into the street. Behind her, she heard the splintering of wood and looked back to see the door cracking in its frame. Georgie quickly got to her feet, and raced down her street, her six-year-old veins pumping with adrenaline.

Georgie’s family had been the last on her street, but she knew that a block away lived Mary, an old widow and a family friend who had stayed amidst the chaos of the last few months. Running as hard as she could, Georgie arrived at Mary’s little yellow house panting and gasping, and pounded on the front door with all her might. She checked over her shoulder for a sign of the tentacled beast but saw nothing. After a moment, Mary opened the door slowly, as if suspicious, but her face softened with gentle surprise when her eyes landed on little Georgie huffing on her doorstep.

“Hello, dear!” Mary asked gently. “You need something?”

Georgie, terrified and too out of breath to reply, dove past Mary into the hall before whipping around and running back to slam the door, where Mary was still standing. Mary watched Georgie lock the bolt on the door, little hands shaking.

“What’s wrong, baby? Where’s your family? Did something happen?”

Before Georgie could answer, an ear-splitting screech pierced the air. Mary and Georgie looked toward the doorway, where a tiny pool of green-black slime was beginning to seep through the crack under the door.

“Get behind me, sweetie”, Mary cooed.

“That’s him! It’s a monster! He was in my house and my family was gone and he’s coming to get me!!” Georgie wailed as she started to cry.

“Get behind me”, Mary repeated, a little firmer now. “You need to get out of the way.”

Georgie whimpered and shuffled behind Mary’s plentiful rear end, which was covered with a faded yellow floral dress so shapeless Georgie thought Mary looked like a large pillow.

Mary opened the door to a coat closet in the hall and yanked out a long, solid-looking trident, which was orange and glowed like it was molten lava.

“Mary!” Georgie hissed in surprise. “What on earth IS that?”

“Never you mind, dear,” Mary responded nonchalantly.

The creature’s shrieking was growing louder and it began pounding on the door, which rattled in its frame, threatening to give way. Georgie could hear the wood beginning to crack and splinter. She grabbed Mary’s dress and cried softly. “He’s going to get us”. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished the monster would go away.

“Like hell he is,” Mary grunted. “COME ON IN, YA BASTARD!” She yelled.

As if responding to the invitation, the tentacled monster crashed through the door, its shrieking rising in pitch with a metallic whirring sound. Georgie’s eyes flew open and she screamed. Mary was ready with the trident and plunged it with a hearty squelch upwards into the empty space where the slime monster’s face might have been. Its shriek turned into a sound like a roaring waterfall mixed with a tornado siren. Mary jabbed the trident in deeper, growling with the effort. Mary held the trident firm as the monster thrashed back and forth, howling in pain. After a couple of minutes, the howling wound down and was replaced with gurgling as the monster grew still. Using her whole body weight, Mary yanked the trident out of the creature. The hole left by the weapon was instantly filled by the surrounding slime-flesh.

Georgie looked between the monster and Mary. “Did you…kill it?” She whispered breathlessly. Georgie didn’t know what to make of Mary, her grandmotherly neighbor, who had just attacked an enormous slime monster with a violence that was decidedly not grandma-like.

“Sure did,” Mary answered, wiping the head of the trident on her dress, leaving a dark gooey stain. “Mr. Slimy here won’t be bothering us no more.”

Georgie gazed in awe at Mary. “Today I woke up and my whole family was gone. I was looking and looking for them and I tried to call them but they were nowhere, and then I was looking for a snack when all of a sudden he was in the kitchen and he tried to eat me but I escaped and I came here and–do you think he ate my family?” Georgie’s voice cracked and she looked up at Mary pleadingly.

Mary was not optimistic, but looking into Georgie’s big, watery eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her what she thought.

“I don’t know, dear,” she said softly. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

“Can you help me find them?” Georgie begged desperately.

Mary looked at Georgie a moment before answering. “I can try. But it’s going to be dangerous. There are bound to be more of them things out and about, who knows how many. Maybe hundreds. Thousands, even.”

If Georgie understood this, it didn’t register on her face. “Pleasepleaseplease Mary, I need to find them. Please help me, please!!”

“Alright, baby, alright,” Mary conceded. “Let’s pack some things. It’s huntin’ time.”