#rest in slutch nick cervos

[giacofmanytrades]

MR SLIME MAN MAN ME A SLIME

Do you like slime? Do you like men? Here’s a snippet of a book I’ve been off and on about for a few years. I call it Obnoxious, basic plot is a chemist has a freak soap accident in the 80s. Cue lots of him, his best friend, and a class of middle school science students dealing with the consequences.

Alan Mortimer’s fingers tremble on the steering wheel. The radio grates on his ears and nerves. He dials down the volume, fixes his stare on the horizon, and drives for town. Where in town is the biggest question. Where does he even take something like this?

“Aw, c’mon,” his passenger says. “Turn the tunes back up!”

“Now’s not the time.”

“Please, Mo?”

“Nick, stay back there!” Alan’s right hand leaves the wheel, batting the orange figure in the rearview mirror out of the van’s cab. “We can’t let anyone see you like this.”

“But it’s a good song,” Nick insists. He sways a little as he tries to stay standing, hands oozing slime on the frame of the door that separates cab and cargo. More of the translucent fluid that covers his body drips to the plastic floor. “And it’s my van.”

“It’s Holly Hemlock’s van.”

“She gave it to me!”

Queen swells from the speakers, louder than before now that Nick’s nudged past and turned the dial. He flops right down in the passenger’s seat. No seatbelt on, the fluid on his body soaking into the pleather seat cover, he does a little shimmy with the music.

Alan’s knuckles go white. His back hunches in until his shoulders brush his ears, his eyes set on the road straight ahead. Every new pair of headlights makes him flinch. “Nick,” he says.

Nick croons along with Freddie Mercury. It’s a bouncing melody about lazing on a sunday afternoon. Nick wiggles his shoulders in time with it, like he did on the drive over. All of him glows orange as a traffic sign, getting brighter as the guitar solo fades into the DJ’s upbeat transition to the next song.

It all began that afternoon.

Alan, better known as Mr. Mortimer in the halls of Barks Junior High, was just finishing his last period of the day. Seventh period is always a challenge, but on a Friday it got even harder to catch his students’ attention. Most of his kids were counting the minutes and tuning out his explanation of atomic structures. Today he’d had to send his biggest troublemaker, Jimmy Rodriguez, out into the hall.

Jimmy picked at the frayed cuffs of his denim jacket. The kid had come with a warning label from the teachers at Anais Elementary. He’s become known for tearing his sleeves and leaving threads all over the linoleum, throwing wads of paper at other students, gouging marks into tables, and coming up with creative new ways to disrupt lessons. He’d tested Alan’s patience today by trying to pull the fire alarm with only fifteen minutes of class to go.

Jimmy stared at his grubby sneakers instead of meeting Alan’s gaze.

Alan sighed. “Are we going to have to do this all year, Mr. Rodriguez?” he asked.

The boy scratched his face. Alan frowned. His usual tactics for snapping metaphorical fingers in front of his kids had failed with this one, along with several others in his class. Alan planned to double down if the attitude didn’t shape up.

But it was Friday. October, too. There was a whole year for improvement, and problem students like Jimmy could be solved by the end of it. “We’ll try again next Monday,” he said, and reached for the boy’s shoulder. Jimmy shrugged away with a sniff and marched for Principal Miranda’s office.

Alan picked at his sweater vest, a striped pink number he’d selected from his eye-searing closet. Part of him cites this style choice as a way to keep students’ eyes on the garish colors. The part he rarely admits to just gets a warm fuzzy feeling from seeing them. His wife Mary-Anne claims not to know which reason is worse. Aside from these vests, he’s an otherwise well-kempt man of Indian descent. Tall, dark, and handsome even with his pocket protector, chalk-dusted piano fingers, and general air of teacherly campiness.

He walked back into his classroom to fading mutters. The next few minutes he spent watching the clock just as much as the kids. With the bell’s final toll, students milled out, ready to run home and enjoy their weekend.

Alan used the next hour to wrap up. He swept up the threads from Jimmy’s jean jacket, scraped the gum from under one of the tables, and finally sat to review the curriculum for next week. Once everything was in order, he locked up to go home.

He strutted the vacant halls of red lockers and beige floors, through doors overlooking an empty parking lot. The lines of parents waiting to collect their children were long gone. So were the buses usually stationed at the curb. Decorative gravel and ancient gumwads embedded the walls of Barks rising behind him, facing a courtyard where students sat and gossiped before the doors opened.

If this was Alan’s story alone, he’d walk a few blocks to his tidy house on Cleary Street and wait for his wife to come home from her clinic. Being married to the town’s primary care provider meant Alan had a lot of time to himself on weekdays. Most nights he hosted other teachers or fixtures in town, but he expected to fill tonight with grading, cleaning, and preparing dinner. He could already feel the future Sunday paper in his hands and taste coffee from a pun-emblazoned mug in his mouth.

Instead, a van waited at the curb.

The white utility van had Hemlock & Co. painted on one side, ringed in tiny white flowers. Alan could also see the van was parked backwards so the driver’s side door was facing him.

Alan squinted at the tinted window. He’d read about the old cookie factory being replaced by Hemlock’s in the paper. It was a nice addition to Perkins, he thought. While a lot of his students’ parents had already lined up jobs with the company, he didn’t expect to see its logo around so soon.

Then the window rolled down. The man behind the wheel was tanned as a surfer, with sandy curls and a chubby build that reminded Alan of a fluffy labrador rolling on the carpet. His arms were crossed over the door, a set of aviators on his nose.

The man nodded to reveal round-rimmed glasses underneath. “How’s it hangin’, Mo?” he drawled.

Alan’s face lit up. He hadn’t seen his best friend in almost five years. So the visit was unplanned and unexpected. He couldn’t keep the grin from his face.

Nick Cervos, over the top entrance complete, bounded from the van to hug Alan. He squeezed tight, lifting his friend off the ground. Alan had to tap his back for air.

“Sorry!” Nick cried, and set him down. Alan adjusted himself. Still, he couldn’t stop smiling. Nick mirrored the smile and looked Alan over. Nick had changed a lot. Over the years, he’d evolved from lettermen’s to leather jackets to lab coats. He wore one now, over a pair of beat up jeans and a bleach stained t-shirt. His shaggy mop was long and tied back in a ponytail, and he’d even shaved off the beard he used to have. Alan thought his face looked bare without it, but Nick never kept the same style long.

Alan himself hadn’t changed a bit. He’d traded the bellbottoms of yesteryear in for real slacks, sure, but he’d maintained his spick and span exterior. Nick chuckled. “Wow.”

“Wow, what?” Alan asked.

“You look good! Like you’re doing good,” Nick said. He hugged Alan again, gentler this time. Alan had enough warning to hug back.

Alan weighed his own response. Among the style changes, Alan could see Nick’s face had new lines, shadowed under the eyes. Nick caught him inspecting and straightened up.

All Alan could say was, “I didn’t know you were coming. I thought you were still in Seattle.”

Nick laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nah. That’s the thing. I just got a job down here.”

Alan held his messenger bag close. “You’re kidding,” he said.

Nick gave a wave to the van’s logo. He did a little dance as Alan processed it all. “Just got this beaut yesterday! I’ll explain the whole thing on the way. Annie asked me if I could pick you up. That okay?”

Alan stiffened a bit, his grip tighter on his bag. His eyes traced the path out to Cleary Street, behind the van parked backwards on the curb.

Nick followed his eyes, head cocked. Alan blinked out of his haze. A change of routine wouldn’t kill him. “That’d be nice. You know where I live now?”

Nick made a vague motion with his hand. “Somewhere close, I was told? She only gave me the directions to get out here. But I have you with me now! Get in! I wanna know everything.”

Nick hopped back into the driver’s side. Already the van had Nick’s signature scribbled all over it. Sarapes covered the seats, stacks of several more and some scratchy wool blankets tossed in the cargo behind. Those were thrown haphazard over stacks of boxes with the Hemlock logo. Stuffed animals lined the dashboard, Muppets and Pooh Bears sticking out from the menagerie of crane machine prizes.

Nick booped a finger to a toy lion’s nose. Alan sat back in the passenger’s seat. “Here I thought you’d changed,” he teased.

It didn’t faze Nick. He pulled out of the lot. “C’mon, man,” he said. “What about you? What’ve you been up to?” They’d called each other so infrequently since Alan got married.

“You’re looking at it.” There was no disappointment in Alan’s voice, not really. He probably should’ve been a little bitter, but he held a lot of affection for Perkins, Oregon. Nestled in the eastern armpit of the state, it’s a cross between desert and forest. Winters are below freezing with heaps of snow that degrades into pebble-peppered sludge. Summers are balmy and swelter until residents are inside with fans bought from whatever corner store is closest.

In mid-October, it’s all crisp leaves and damp, squelchy grass where it’s not clay. It’s Alan’s favorite time of year. He can already see students of past, present, and future shopping for Halloween costumes or bundling up for the cold months to come.

“Whatcha teaching?”

“Sixth grade physical science,” Alan said. “This year, anyway.”

“That’s good! Really good. Glad you found your niche, Mo.”

“Sounds like you’ve found one, too,” Alan said, giving the boxes a wave.

Nick flushed. “I don’t know about all that,” he said. “More like I got a niche, for the next year or so. The company’s launching this new soap in ‘88, so I’m on the hook at least ‘til then. Friend in the community said Hemlock wanted top of the line for her quality assurance.” He kept his eyes on the road. There was a pause, something Alan wanted to reach across until he saw those lines on Nick’s face again.

Alan knew what community Nick meant, and could only infer what Nick had been studying in Seattle. They’d gone to college together with dreams of becoming a physics professor and an enzyme pathologist respectively. Alan had followed his then fiance north and taught middle school science, but Nick had followed through on his PhD. He thought Nick would have been doing alright since then. Now he’d gone from researching fatal diseases to soap, of all things?

He didn’t get the chance to ask before Nick thumped the steering wheel. “Ah, shit!” He craned his neck to check the stacks in the cargo. “I knew I left them on the counter. I can go back to the factory tomorrow.”

Nick’s hand was on his mouth, his brows down. Alan jumped on the subject. “The Hemlock factory?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nick said. “I forgot those samples I was supposed to test at the lab. Base lab, not my little off-premises one. It’s just out-”

“Off Sundale, I know,” Alan said. “That place used to be called Flour Pour.”

“Wait, like flower power? Not floor poor?”

“Nope,” Alan said.

Nick laughed. “Damn. Place with a name that good never should have gone under.”

Alan chuckled. Nick echoed it. The sound hung in the van, clinging to the air between them like tar as they stared down the road. Gradually, twenty years or so of familiarity found purchase and settled.

Alan jostled Nick, who perked up. “I don’t mind going to get your samples,” Alan told him.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. There’s been a lot of buzz about Hemlock’s.”

Nick hummed. He turned onto Sundale, a road that wound the edge of the desert. They passed an A&W and a gas station on the way, before the newly christened Hemlock factory loomed ahead. Behind the big warehouse stood a scraggly patch of forest, behind which was the residential part of town.

Nick parked his van in the corner of the gated off lot. He hopped out to open the door for Alan. “My good man,” he said, with a bow.

Alan rolled his eyes, smiling again. This would be fun, having Nick back in his life. Whatever funk Nick had been in before he arrived, it couldn’t linger long. Alan’s tamed since their wild college nights, or even their rowdy days as children in San Alphonsa, but excitement overshadowed any worry he had about Nick’s move.

Nick bit his lip. “Sorry, again,” he said.

“It’s fine, seriously,” Alan said. The factory had already been spruced up with a layer of yellow paint, Hemlock’s logo slapped on the doors they entered through. He’d heard rumors in the staff lounge that the founder was some New York lawyer elevating a housewife she’d befriended. This housewife, the eponymous Holly Hemlock herself, had ads on the radio in her trilling voice, all about making homes fresh and clean as a garden green. Alan had considered buying some of her soaps once they were available.

Nick led Alan through the office building, already done up with marketing material of a pale cartoon woman in a cocktail dress. Sprays of baby’s breath came from a bottle in her hand. Nick pointed to one. “She really does look just like this!”

“A cartoon?”

“Nah, but how cool would that be?” Alan gave him a look, but Nick shrugged at him. “I think there’s a movie like that. If getting hired means I get to be a toon, I’m all ears.” He mimed Mickey ears over his head and giggled.

Alan followed him through a set of double doors onto a long catwalk in the warehouse. The floor below contained half a dozen vats formerly used for mixing doughs and frostings. Now the Flour Pour’s old shortbread aroma had a hint of lemon drowning it out. It got stronger toward the middle of the catwalk, overlooking an open vat filled with a thick yellow brine.

“Get a load of that fake citrus,” Nick sighed, hand to his heart.

Alan indulged and breathed it in. The smell had been written into his memory with a warmth even real lemons couldn’t surpass, all from days of polishing furniture or dusting down his parents’ house as a kid. He liked the thought of the scent drifting down to Perkins proper once this place got really up and running.

Nick ducked into a door at the end of the catwalk. Sure enough, his box of samples was waiting in what used to be a test kitchen. He hefted it onto his hip and met his friend back in the middle. Alan stared into the vat below, then rose a brow at Nick’s box.

“That’s it?” he asked. It was just a box of dated bottles, the fluid inside almost clear unlike the yellow vat below.

“It’s just some samples to go over when I get home,” Nick said. “Holly gave me this grace period to set up and all, though.”

“You have a place down here already?” Alan asked.

“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks for coming with.”

“No problem.”

Nick brought the box under one arm. “You are not gonna believe my lab! I have, yanno, actually decent assets, plus I brought this great couch. Still needs cleaned up but I’ve got time for- ah, shit!”

Alan pivoted. Nick flailed. Something wet had burned a hole in his sock. He almost dropped the box bending down to tend to it. Alan took it from his hands.

“Did you spill something?” Alan asked.

None of the bottles were leaking, but Nick could have. He winced. Looked like a chemical burn, the chemical doing the burning unknown. They were over an open vat. Maybe a bubble popped up and splashed him? It just seemed too far down.

Nick braced on the railing. Taking even a small step on his foot had to hurt. He had to bite his lip to keep from swearing up and down about it.

Dimly Alan heard a creak beside him. A groan like an old door being forced open, metal protesting weight. Yellow dribbled at the base of the railing. Nick saw it before Alan did. “Mo.”

“What is this?” Alan said, careful not to touch it. “Detergent shouldn’t cause a burn like this.”

The metal creaked louder. Nick set down his burning foot and breathed through his teeth. He couldn’t stand without supporting himself on something. He waved for Alan to get back. “Mo, I think it’s gonna-”

It was all he could get out before the metal cracked apart with a violent jerk, like a huge hand yanking the bars from the catwalk. Nick’s full weight was on a railing that was no longer. He fell with it. Alan yelled for him and grabbed at his lab coat but too late.

***

Nick had a split second to twist and see the yellow reaching up to meet him. He landed with a smack, given just a blink to hold his breath before he got sucked inside.

It didn’t take him long to let it go. His mouth opened to scream from the acidic goo eating away at his skin. The fluid poured down his throat, suffocating him until he was so full of the stuff he could feel it eating away the inside like he’d huffed a lungful of termites. Stuck as a fly in jello, the skin dissolved in seconds as the rest of his tissue was devoured cell by cell. Muscle and bones and nerves broke into microscopic pieces until he found a blissful, empty numbness.

With the pain gone, he found he didn’t mind being stuck quite so much. Something around him seeped in, calming yet utterly ecstatic. He knew these feelings were coming from somewhere else, but he didn’t mind feeling them either. It was like a song, a chorus he couldn’t really figure out how he was hearing. The voice vibrated through the new frame forming around where he was.

He could see it now. Just this mass of material he could move when he thought about it, quick to take on the shape of the last thing it remembered. Another layer formed around it, separating him from the rest of the vat. This done, the goo around him glowed orange.

His own material mimicked the color and glowed, too. Happy, loving vibrations hummed through his whole body like a strummed guitar. He glowed brighter.

The goo sang at him. The same syllable, over and over. It was like drowning in this innocent sorta happy, like his relief to be alive reflected back at him and then some. He reached for where it came from.

It was interrupted by a voice. Alan’s voice, shouting. Nick. “Mo!”

The word echoed around Nick, bouncing through the goo and off the walls of the vat. He was Nick, and he was in a vat, and he’d just been drowned and dissolved. And his best friend was all alone.

Nick’s body reacted. He rose to the top until open air hit him.

It was a strain, pulling his gooey shape out limb by limb. Everything was weighted wrong, his new self held together with strands of thick, yellow goo until he had himself looking close to what he’d been just a moment ago.

He laughed. It was a waterlogged, gurgly laugh, but it was mostly his own, rippling out like a wave. He was not dead. Not dead was good.

“Nick?” Alan’s voice, in disbelief.

Nick squinted up. His eyes must have changed with the rest of him, yet somehow his view of Alan was still blurry without his glasses. No glasses, and no clothes either, but he didn’t seem to need them now. This fact should probably have bothered him more. At least he found the weight of his ponytail at his neck when he sat up.

Alan just stared down, horror and relief duking it out on his face.

“Mo!” Nick called. “I’m right here. This stuff is amazing!” His new sort-of flesh fascinated him as he looked it over now, glowing orange again with his glee like before. He rubbed his hands together. The outer layer of himself oozed transparent off his fingers, making webs when he spread them. Still couldn’t see anything far off so well, though. That would be a problem.

“I’m gonna need new glasses,” he mumbled.

As he moved to stand, he could feel the top of the goo peel from his backside. Sort of rough, like the humming vat didn’t want to let him go.

Then he just… hovered above it. Like a ghost. He laughed again. When he thought about it, he moved up higher.

“Wait,” he told Alan. “I think I got this!”

Nick willed himself higher and just found more laughter bubbling out of him. He was floating. Actually floating, at least ten feet above the vat and twice that off the ground. Good thing he didn’t mind heights! He did have to stick his hands out to stop his ascent, tumbling end over end until he was on his backside a few feet over Alan.

Alan was back up against the other railing. He had a sample bottle in hand and was searching Nick’s face for… Nick’s face. Nick needed a mirror. Did he look like himself. His voice definitely sounded like himself. “It’s me, Mo. Can’t believe I lost my glasses. I think I have a back up pair in the lab. I think.”

Trembling, Alan approached. Nick rubbed at his face with his hands. The outer layer still didn’t stick to itself, though a few strands of it came off when he pulled away. He flicked them off. “Man, Mo, you will not believe what just happened in there. I scared you good, didn’t I?”

“How are you alive?” Alan breathed. His fingers tangled around each other. His palm was a bright, scalded red. Couldn’t be the chemical burn Nick had gotten before he fell, but, dang, was he alright? Not that Alan seemed concerned with himself just now. “The heat by itself should’ve killed you.”

“Gee, good to see you, too.”

“Shocked you! Fine! I just mean-”

“I know what you mean, but I’m fine!” Nick spread his arms. A few drops of that outer ooze dripped to the vat below. Little drops of inner, opaque goo sank in and out of his body, but it didn’t feel painful or anything. Seemed like breathing or blood flow, something autonomic he didn’t have to control. Basically the same as circulating anything else in a body. “See! Still alive!”

The fear on Alan’s face made Nick’s body warm. He found himself a hot white color. Fight or flight, like the goo heating up to move quickly. He calmed and willed the goo back to a yellowish orange. He grinned. He was getting the hang of this quick! “C’mon, Mo, don’t get dark. I’m still me.”

“What’s going on up there?”

Their attention shifted to the steps approaching on the floor far below. Nick and Alan exchanged startled looks.

“What do we do?”

“Uh.” Nick’s first instinct was to dive down, back into the safety of the vat. He at least fumbled his hover lower, just over the goo so the vat’s walls concealed him from whoever was shouting at Alan.

Nick peered over the vat’s edge. The man was a security guard, in navy blue with a gut and a walkie talkie at his hip. “You alright up there, sir?” the guard called up to Alan.

Alan took a moment to reply. His voice cracked at first, but he calmed to his usual tone before the guard could register it. “The rail’s broken! I was just on my way to find someone.”

“I can see that! You okay?” the guard asked. Nick stayed hidden as Alan gathered the box of samples into his arms and tapped down the stairs to the factory floor.

They carried on in their conversation. Nick tuned out as something batted at his ankle. No burn this time, just the goo rising a tendril and clinging to him. It buzzed again. Sadness chorused into him with a new sound, a purring pbbt like the saddest raspberry Nick had ever heard. The humming little song continued until Nick was almost guilty to leave the goo.

But he had Alan to worry about. Nick floated over the wall of the vat, then drifted slow and wobbly to the factory floor. Now for the tough part. Alan had the guard’s full focus, telling the half truth that he’d been here with an employee friend. The guard just rambled about drifters and needing to up the safety measures on this hunk of junk. Famous last words for a guy who left the door propped open for Nick to slip through.

His float picked up speed once he got out of the factory. He wanted to go full Superman, up and away to test this new ability, but he spotted his van and darted for the driver’s side. If he could get in and drive him and Alan to his lab, maybe he’d be able to learn more about what this all was.

But his fingers slipped on the handle. He couldn’t get his thumb to put enough pressure on the button to even wedge it open, the ooze on his hands making it impossible to get a grip.

“Shit.” Anxiety washed over him, setting his body blazing white. He patted himself down. His wallet had been left in the glove compartment, and he had a spare set of keys from Holly, but his other effects had been dissolved with the rest of him. What’s the use of spare keys if he couldn’t hold them, anyways? Could he drive at all?

He got a pretty good look at himself in the side rear view. His face was definitely less defined, even if it was a pretty good approximation of the human Nick Cervos. He angled the mirror. Peered for the deep brown of his eyes, but these ones were white with an orange pupil. “Jesus,” he mumbled, and his mouth moved but he could feel the word vibrate from all over his body.

He was studying the inside of his new mouth- no individual teeth, but there were ridges to mimic them and a tongue, and it’s only hollow to the back of his throat- when he heard voices.

He ducked behind the back door, hovering so his feet couldn’t be seen underneath. Alan and the guard again, casual and cordial about whatever was being said.

“You take care, Mr. Mortimer!” the guard called.

“I will,” Alan said back. “Have a good night!” He sounded almost relieved, like nothing in particular had happened at all. Nick glowed a peachy orange, proud. Alan kept so calm under pressure.

Alan leaned against the passenger door. Sighed, hugging the box to his chest. “I thought I just saw the craziest thing happen, Nick. You should tell your boss her products might cause hallucinations.”

Nick laughed, but it was a false laugh. A laugh who didn’t know who it was kidding, it was so fake.

Alan froze in his slouch, eyes wide. “Nick. It didn’t actually happen.” Not a question, just a statement of what he hoped to be fact. Nick’s silence earned a more insistent, “Nick!”

“Surprise, Mo,” Nick said, floating into view. Arms spread and glowing with a forced pep, but getting more real by the second. There was so much he had to learn, and Alan had made it out okay so this was all going to be fine. “At least you’re not crazy, huh?”

Alan just stared. Clutched the box in his arms, eye twitching.

Nick waved his hands and flicked a little ooze on the van. “Surprise!”