#been thinking about this book after wendell and wild got me into X Ray Spex

[giacofmanytrades]

Man Me A Slime (Reprise)

Fuck it, gonna keep posting chapters from my book Obnoxious for giggles. I’m in a body horror mood and honestly enjoying knowing my work exists outside my Google Drive for its own sake.

Do you like slime? Do you like science? Do you like soap??? Consequences of a guy getting slutched below:

So here we are again, in the van with the radio at max volume and Alan’s knuckles white against the steering wheel.

His foot covers the brake. No one can know what happened tonight. Hell, Alan doesn’t even understand what happened himself. The facts he does have are these: Nick fell, and when Alan scrambled down to the factory floor to find an opening he burned his hand on the metal siding. Alan had no way to get Nick out. His best friend of twenty years had fallen into a vat of boiling hot cleaning fluid and had to be dead.

Alan couldn’t believe it. He ran back up to the catwalk, to go and see if anyone could help from the office building, when he caught a glimpse of the fluid in the vat. It had changed color. Something shifted on the fluid’s surface.

And then Nick emerged from it, and Alan froze in his tracks. His friend, alive, but floating and so covered in the stuff from the vat that Alan couldn’t see a trace of the man underneath. Nick, talking and laughing like this accident was nothing more than stubbing his toe on a chair.

The guard taking his attention was a relief, really. It got Nick from his line of sight and allowed him to make small talk with Ronny Vizzini’s father. Not that they’re more than acquaintances, but it let Alan forget what happened long enough to construct some story to deny it, scabbing the memory clean over.

Until Nick reappeared and ripped it clean off. Now he’s got to drive because Nick can’t, unsure of where to go. His first thought is home, to Cleary Street. With Mary-Anne and his nice quiet job and his nice quiet house, where his nice quiet life fits together like a puzzle. Maybe a tedious puzzle some days, but something that ultimately makes sense when he lays it all out and puts it together.

Headlights pass again. What if they get pulled over? He’ll be recognized as Mary-Anne’s husband immediately. There go any dinner plans with Sheriff Harrington and his wife for however long his sentence lasts. What charges are passed for trespassing in a soap factory and falling in a vat of toxic waste after hours?

Okay, it sounds silly when he puts it like that. He didn’t do anything wrong. But he was seen alone in the factory, by a guard he talked to who definitely knew who he was. They could be in trouble for tampering with private property. What if Nick gets fired?

He can’t think clearly with the audio bombast. “Nick, you need to turn it down,” Alan says.

The bounce of Come On Eileen quakes Nick’s toy collection on the dash. “It’s gonna be fine, Mo,” he says, and holds up his hand to the speaker. The slime on his skin wriggles with the vibrations from the music.

“Fine? We need to get you to a hospital,” Alan says. But they can’t. The nearest hospital is out in Baker City. Mary-Anne can see Nick here in town, but she’s hardly a specialist in chemical burns or mysterious anti-gravity goop. The longer Alan waits to find an answer, the worse Nick’s condition could become, though. “How are we going to fix this?”

Nick mumble-sings the next verse, then goes all out in the chorus. “I’m fine!” he says when he gets to the next part he doesn’t know. Then he goes right back to too-rye-aying.

Alan shivers. His adrenaline’s coursing like there’s a gun to his temple, except it’s Nick’s head instead of his own on the chopping block. “What if this got inside you?” he asks. “You could be burned under all this. You could be poisoned even if you feel fine now, Nick. We have to get you to Mary-Anne. You need a doctor.”

“I am a doctor.”

“In biochemistry!”

Nick shimmies to the music. “I’m gonna be fine.”

Alan turns the radio down. “You need help! We have to fix this before it gets worse.”

The radio’s turned right back up. “Just take me to my lab,” Nick says, arms crossed. It looks like they’re oozing together when Alan sees it, but he blinks his focus back onto the road.

“What are you talking about?” Alan asked. “Do you see yourself? I don’t know if an MD can help you with this. There has to be someone who knows how to get this stuff off of you safely. Maybe we should turn around. We could talk to whoever designed this. An expert.”

The too-rah-loo-rye-ays get louder, thunderous in the small cab. Whatever Nick says is lost in it and Alan turns it down.

“What did you say?”

“I said, I’m an expert! Take me to my lab and I can analyze it there. We good?”

Nick dials up the music. Alan dials it down. They tousle a second before the wheel jerks and Alan’s grabbing at it again with slippery hands.

“We are not good! This is not good. There has to be a way to get this stuff off of you.” Alan’s all for hosing Nick down if it gets his skin out from whatever this is. Just the sample alone seems to have burned him on the catwalk. What if leaving it on so long makes the damage it’s doing permanent?

“This stuff is me,” Nick says. He reaches for the volume but Alan bats at his hand again.

“Stop that! Nick, you can’t actually think this floating thing is permanent. If we don’t do something about this, you could die.”

“I already died!”

Alan stomps the brake.

Nick’s thrown forward. Yellowish fluid makes a sickening splat across the windshield and dash, the majority of it pooling into the floorboard.

Alan looks at the floorboard. He looks at the empty seat. He can’t breathe.

The goo wiggles. Nick’s yell bubbles out if it. The puddle on the floor sloughs back into the seat in a Nickish shape. His hands pat over his body, but nothing seems to be missing other than a thin layer of clear soap.

“I am okay!” he announces. Nick gives a thumbs up. It’s like watching a flattened cartoon character peel off the pavement after an anvil.

Alan twitches. Maybe there’s a laugh in him somewhere, but it’s buried deep right now. He puts the van in park. He leans back, knotting his fingers and forcing himself not to strangle his sweater vest. That’s. That’s a lot to look at.

Nick examines his hands. “Sorry, babies,” he croons to his stuffed animals, all dripping with a thin layer of slime. “D’you think we can wash this off ‘em alright?”

“You don’t mean that. What you said,” Alan says. He couldn’t have. Nick had come out of that vat laughing. Excited. Ghosts don’t bounce back from death and throw a party.

Well, Nick’s ghost might. Alan sits back.

Nick’s booped the nose on a frog. The slime on the frog absorbs back to his finger with the touch. He grins. Looking at him, really looking at him, Alan can see the details he missed. The eyes, and Nick’s mouth, and how the opaque goo he’s made of has a jello-like translucence if you look too hard.

What looked skin deep at a glance is too strange to ignore now. Nick catches him looking. He winces.

“My body fuckin’ dissolved back there. Poof. Gone, Mo.”

There’s a beat of silence. Nick collects the rest of the slime from the dashboard, then the windshield. The big splat sucks back to his hand. He’s avoiding Alan’s eyes. He’s known this whole time, and let Alan go on talking like he has. “Nick,” he says.

Nick shuts his eyes. “Shit. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” he cries. “I just want you to know I can’t just. Take this off. It’s not so bad, I promise! If you just wanna drop me off, I can figure it out myself.”

Alan shifts back into drive. The radio fuzzes back to life. Nick turns it off.

Alan lets out a rattled sigh. He sets his hands at ten and two. Somehow, horribly, the reality sinking in is a relief. He’s not going to stop worrying about Nick. But having even this impossible certainty is a lot better than before. He can handle what he knows.

He takes a deep breath. “So. Where’s your lab?”

***

Nick’s “lab” is easy to find. It’s an old diner off the downtown strip, abandoned as the Flour Pour factory once was. Geena’s came up in the fifties, before the weight of the A&W and other, better burger joints sank it. Alan had never been inside when the place was open, but he’s familiar with the whitewashed stone box and its neon red, yellow, and blue facade above double doors. Nick has him pull around to the back, where a door waits beside a dumpster full of old fixtures and signage.

Nick’s got to be let out of the car and into the building, not that he doesn’t make an attempt with his sudsy hands. He’s delighted to find he can flip the light switch on his own. “Sorry about the mess,” he says, floating into a small hallway. On his left is the door to a darkened kitchen, on his right the door to a bathroom. Then they’re in a spacious dining lobby. The L-counter and its rows of upholstered stools are intact, along with one of the dining booths right off the door. Grimy chrome, yellowed linoleum, and checkered tiles glint in the bright tube lights. Where one of the dining booths used to be rooted now holds a tower of boxes and a red couch.

Alan takes it in with a smile. He can see how benches could be made from the counter, where equipment can be stored if they reuse some of the old shelves he saw out back. The thought of the place restored through his tidying calms him.

Nick tests the plastic wrap still coating his couch. He flops down against it. “So what do ya think? It’s a dive, but I think it’s groovy.”

Alan shrugs. Now that he’s exhausted his ability to be physically anxious, all he can think about is what he’ll tell his wife. He takes a seat at Nick’s side, avoiding the translucent ooze now stuck to the plastic. He rubs his eye on his forearm, since there’s still some soap on his hands.

“I should call Mary-Anne,” he says. “Got a phone?”

“By the soda fountain,” Nick says.

Alan moves behind the counter. The soda machine against the wall has Coke logos on its taps. He fiddles with a Dr. Pepper tap while he dials the clinic.

“Perkins Primary Care?”

His relief almost knocks him off his feet. It’s a wave so palpable he grips the tap and steadies his feet. “Mary-Anne? Christ, you will not believe the night I’m having. I love you.”

“Al, it’s only six. Where are you? The house?”

“No, I just,” Alan says, and squeezes his eyes shut. That opener hardly inspired confidence and calm. “I’m just not going to be home tonight. I’m staying over at Nick’s.”

“Yeah, he dropped by. Is everything okay? I told him you needed a night out, but if you two got into anything too-”

“No. Mary-Anne, we’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

“You only say that when things aren’t fine, Al.”

“I do not!” Alan cries. Nick flinches. “I’m with him right now. He’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’ll be home in the morning but he,” he says, and falters. Telling her Nick died is the exact opposite of fine. “He just needs me right now.”

She yawns. “Do whatever you got to, sweetheart. Just be careful, whatever you’re doing. I better not catch either of you in here on a gurney.”

Alan smiles, despite everything. “I’m fine. That part’s true.”

“Alright. See you tomorrow.”

“See you. I love you.”

Her chuckle’s like an oasis. “You said that already. Love you, too.”

Alan hesitates putting the receiver down. He just stands there with the phone beeping in both hands. He presses the speaker to his forehead with his eyes closed. Mary-Anne at the nurse’s station, bedecked in solid print scrubs and slouching while Rhoda does up the last of the paperwork so they can all go home. Only getting one real rest every few hours and having to spend it on him.

“Is everything, uh, okay?”

“Eh.”

“Eh?”

“Eh,” Alan says, with emphasis, and presses the phone until it makes a dotted mark on his brow. His mouth twists before he puts the receiver back up. The silence left behind is deafening, widening the distance between the two men trapped inside it.

“I love you, Mo.” Small and quiet.

“Nick.”

“I do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I am so sorry this happened.”

“Nick, it’s okay. It’s just going to be hard to explain this. I don’t know what we’re going to do. But I’m not leaving you. Okay?”

“You don’t have to stay.” Nick’s curled up into himself on the couch. “You got me home. I can do the rest from here.”

Alan smirks. “Huh. Might end up with biased results, studying yourself all alone. You can’t drive, Nick. I’m going to stay and help you.”

Nick’s dripping shape sharpens up and glows bright orange like when he’d come out of the vat. Seems to be his happy color. “Can’t argue there. What do you want to do?” Nick asks.

Alan yawns. He’s got no energy for unloading the van or unpacking Nick’s boxes, as much as he wants to organize their resources. His head still spins like he’s the one dissolving, or maybe like his body’s still there but he’s stepped out to the side for a second.

Finally, he comes back to his senses. “It’s your lab,” he says. “Do you need anything? Are you…” He glances at the hand-off window looking into the kitchen. “Hungry?” Oh god, what if he is? Alan doesn’t even know where he would begin with that.

Nick brightens. His slime does a little dance across his body, flushing orange again. “I don’t know yet! Maybe I don’t have to eat anymore. I mean, I don’t exactly have the plumbing for it.” He opens his mouth and points inside. “See in there?” he says, even as his mouth doesn’t move. The sound just radiates out of him, like a speaker. “No hole! Nowhere for food to go!”

Alan sees what he means. He takes a deep breath as he stares. “Right.”

“My eyes don’t look like my old eyes, either. But I still need glasses for some reason? How’s that even work? I don’t got retinas to be myopic.”

“I don’t know,” Alan says. “Who says you don’t? There looks like two layers of this stuff. Soap’s not supposed to separate like this does, so why do you?”

“I don’t know!” Nick says. “Huh. If there’s two layers, they’re gonna need different names. We need names for this.”

“Yeah.” It’s going to get confusing if they don’t develop a taxonomy. Alan’s brain would also love to stop snagging like a belt loop on a fence when he calls these materials Nick. Naming all this strangeness makes it less strange, or he can hope it might.

“Can we do that?” Nick asks, squishing his fingers into his belly. His fingers go through the translucent layer into the next, absorbing into his inner one. Alan’s mouth tests out a number of responses to this, but none of them quite capture how he feels beyond another ‘eh’.

“It’s your you,” he decides, voice chipping instead of fully cracking. “You name yourself.”

“True!” Nick says, and pulls his hands from his own guts without trouble. The holes from his fingers fill in. “I think I’m goo- the me stuff that moves and talks- and then this drippy stuff on the outside is gunk. Not sure what it’s for just yet. Oh, and my eyes are my eyes.”

Alan leans against the counter. “And your glasses are your glasses.”

“That, too! Those are in one of my boxes.” Nick floats to the stack for his backup pair. Alan rips open the one he indicates. Among what looks like the contents of an old desk is a pair of glasses with a cracked lens.

Nick places them on what’s left of his nose. He blinks. “Whoa.”

“Same prescription?” Alan asks. “Maybe the vat copied human you, and that’s why these eyes are like your old ones.” There’s a sentence Alan never thought he’d say.

“Maybe! If it copied my eyes, I dunno what made it copy those and not everything else, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Nick waves sharply downward with both hands, mouth in the closest thing to a frown that Alan’s seen from him all day. Alan’s ready to go into one subject, before Nick narrows his brows and pulls his feet up, sitting in midair. “I don’t got toes, Mo,” he says.

“Yes.”

“And I’m smooth as a Ken doll now. So we’ve got that. But, come on, I got fingers but my other digits didn’t get copied? What was that vat thinking? I’m gonna look like I’m wearing socks forever now.”

Alan takes stock as Nick mourns the loss of his toes. Aside from the obvious missing parts- skin, bones, teeth, organs, and most other human components- Nick looks the same in build and proportion. It’s like the goo was poured into a Nick-shaped mold and he popped right out, unless he melts to a puddle like he did in the van.

Which he agrees not to do again, for Alan’s sanity. Nick says splatting on impact doesn’t hurt, but Alan isn’t spiritually prepared to see his friend as a stain tonight. Tomorrow, maybe. It’s not like they can’t learn a lot from Nick just floating from room to room. There’s technically four, including the storage room in the kitchen. Said kitchen contains a stovetop, several dishes including a stockpot, a fridge, and a three compartment sink. The fryer’s ripped from the wall, but the prep tables and other fixtures are in good repair.

Exploring the storage room is where Alan has to draw the line on melting. The room is locked, and before Alan can get Nick’s keys from the dining room, Nick’s already on the floor like a spill and creeping under the door itself. Alan rattles the handle. Then he hears behind the door, “I’m good! Not much to see in here! Just junk.”

Alan yelps. He’s about to run for the keys, but he hears a sizzle.

Under the knob fizzes. Orange fingers push through the metal like wet clay. Then the whole hand makes it through, giving Alan a cheery wave.

“Check it out! I’m corrosive! That’s cool.”

The door falls open. Nick’s on the other side, grinning at his fingers.

“I don’t think you should make a habit of that,” Alan says.

“Wonder what else I can corrode.”

“Nick, no.”

“What’s my pH then?” Nick asks, smearing his hand down his belly. How his glasses aren’t fizzling is a mystery, too. “Probably super basic, knowing detergents, but most detergents don’t do that kinda corrosion. What if it’s selective?”

“Who knows?” Alan says.

The storage room is stacked with trash and boxes of offal. Not much of it is usable, but Alan thanks his lucky stars none of it’s perished food. At least they know they have the dumpster out back to get rid of it.

They go from the storage room to check out the bathroom. Alan washes up, then they try to rinse the gunk from Nick’s goo so they can get a sample. They’ve already collected some gunk in a tupperware for study, but getting underneath Nick’s outer layer proved tough. Nick sticks his hand under the tap to test it out.

It burns him at the touch, even if it’s set to ice cold. “Turn it off, turn it off!” he cries. He fumbles at the knob before Alan shuts the water off. Can’t help but wonder why he didn’t pull his hand out the moment he was burned, but Alan shivers at his idea of hosing the goo off him earlier.

“I don’t think water likes me anymore,” Nick mumbles, eying his fingers slowly reforming from the goo pooled in the sink.

Alan drags him from the bathroom from then on. Nick avoids the sinks like the plague, which the bathroom’s might have if it’s been abandoned this long. There’s not much mold to be found in the building, but it’s still been at least a decade since it was in regular use. Begs the question of if the goo can contract illness, but because Alan definitely can he makes a note to scour it later.

It’s two in the morning when they finally throw in the towel. Alan pulls off the plastic wrap and crashes on the couch with a Hudson Bay blanket, Nick on the floor with his mattress from his van. It’s oddly cozy in the quiet of the diner. Headlights flicker through the windows overlooking the street, still painted over from the original closure. It’s not the worst place to wait out this weirdness.