I’M THE SLIME

            “He just all of a sudden broke up with me. Out of nowhere,” Chelsea said. She was talking to her friend Kory over the phone and pacing around her one-bedroom apartment in a hundred-year-old Chicago building, anger holding back any tears she may still have, “He completely stopped talking to me. He told me he loved me and wanted to move in together, and then he stopped talking to me. It’s insane. He just disappeared. Fuck him. What is the matter with him? Is he too much of a little bitch to break up with me face-to-face? Is he ashamed of being a little bitch? Is that it? I guess I would be ashamed of being a little bitch, too. I should be more understanding of that. He probably hooked up with some fucking bar rat, and he’s too much of a pussy to admit it. They can have each other. God. It’s so gross. You know, recently, he started having this weird, like, sweet smell. A cheap, sweet smell. Like candles from the grocery store. Like an artificial sweetener smell on him. It makes me want to throw up just thinking about it. Smelled like something a fucking whore would wear.”

            “Damn, that’s crazy,” Kory said faintly through the receiver. Although she wasn’t there, it still felt like she was making a point of not looking at Chelsea. Chelsea was frustrated over not getting the feedback she needed and embarrassed that she seemed to be boring her friend with her relationship struggles.

            Kory was married and recently gave birth to a healthy boy. That, of course, didn’t put her above hearing about dating issues. In fact, it made her even more interested in them. She normally craved the drama that Chelsea fed her. But today, she was distant.

            “I’m sorry, I’m just so pissed off,” Chelsea said, “It’s mean. Jake is mean. Jake is a messy, mean asshole. He always has been. Always. I don’t even care anymore. I get hit on like every day. He can have whatever bottom of the fucking sewer rat barrel cum dog he found. I’m fine. I’m better than fine. I’m glad we didn’t move in together. Thank god.”

            There was a brief silence before Kory realized it was her turn to speak.

            “Yeah,” she said, “He sucks. Man. I’m glad you didn’t move in together too.”

            Chelsea thought Kory sounded faintly sick and softened.

            “Thanks for listening. Men are trash. I just needed to talk to you. I’m venting way too much. Sorry if this is a strange request, but can we FaceTime? I would love to see your face.”

            Kory laughed.

            “I look like shit right now. I’m kind of sick. I’m sorry I’m not being a better listener.”

            “No, it’s all good. I understand,” Chelsea assured her, “Being sick sucks. I still wear an N95 mask to the store. Fuck that.”

            “I’ve been distracted by something I think might help you, actually. I got this stress-relief slime that I saw online. It’s just, like, slime that you play with. It’s really cool. I’m playing with it right now. Remember how slime used to be a popular toy? Well, it's back! Kind of. And it's for stressed-out adults now." She laughed again. "I really like it. Do you think that would help you calm down? It’s helped me.”

            Chelsea searched “stress-relief slime” on her phone and saw a lot more options than she anticipated.

            “It’s just slime?” Chelsea asked.

            “It’s just slime,” Kory said, “You play with it. It’s great.”

            “Which one did you get?”

            “I’ll send you the link. It’s from a company called Sublime Slime. This one is very highly rated.”

            A link for Sublime Slime popped up on Chelsea’s phone before Kory finished speaking. Chelsea pulled the phone from her face to see the gooey, glittery pink font spelling the company’s name and felt annoyed again that Kory was paying more attention to the slime than her. But Kory sounded calm. She sounded like nothing could rile her up. Maybe it did work.

            “Awesome. Thanks,” Chelsea said.

            “Okay, well, I should go. I still have to clean the slime off my hands and order dinner. But, seriously, order some. It’s cheap, and it works great. As great as slime can, I guess. I’ll talk to you soon.”

            “Okay. Thanks again. I love you so much.”

            “Love you too.”

            The women ended their call, and Chelsea ordered a container of slime.

***

            The next morning, Chelsea went to The Wormhole Coffee down the street from her apartment for an espresso treat and called her younger sister Alora. Coated in the warmth of her favorite coffee shop in the city, this time, she got the conversation she wanted.

            She walked around the block with an iced latte in her hand and bounced energy back and forth through her phone with Alora. The coffee remained full, and the temperature worked its way up to match her palm. Condensation soaked the plastic cup, making it slippery. It never touched her lips as the two girls talked over each other in perfect harmony. It was everything she had been hoping to get from Kory. It was what she needed.

            Near the end of the call, the sisters organized a plan for Alora to come visit in a couple days so they could have a sleepover. Chelsea told her about the slime and suggested that they play with it together.

            Chelsea took the week off work because she didn’t want to go, and she had time to take. She believed feeling weird was an illness like any other and that she deserved a vacation. Her sister lived about a four-hour drive away from Chicago and enjoyed the trip. Alora felt like this sort of thing was part of her duty as a sister, and they couldn’t wait to see each other.

            Once they ended the call, Chelsea sipped her latte and grimaced at the watered-down, lukewarm brown milk. It slipped out of her hand and slapped against the pavement, shooting what used to be a very good drink all over the sidewalk. Flecks of dairy splattered against her shins. It was an incredibly jarring end to the affirming discussion with her sister. She picked up the plastic cup and lid and put them in a dumpster beside her apartment building, again annoyed.

            However, she no longer needed coffee, and her stress over the spill lessened when she reached the front door to see that her package had been delivered. She grabbed it from the building’s entryway and took it upstairs to her apartment, bounding two steps at a time.

            The plastic slime container fell out of the box with a deep thunk. It was a short, cylindrical, white plastic container about three inches tall. The only other item was a receipt from Sublime Slime, headquartered in Toronto, Canada that softly touched the floor a second later. A glittery pink sticker gleamed from the container's side that read, "I'm the slime that's sublime!" in silly, loud font.

            Chelsea twisted the cap off and looked inside. Immediately, she was hit by that smell. The smell of cheap deodorizer pretending to be fruit. Grocery store candles. Artificial sweetener. It was the smell she smelled on him before he disappeared. Either Jake had gotten some of this slime for himself, or someone he was spending time with had it. Did Kory also tell him about it? She would have let Chelsea know.

            The slime was a dark raspberry color with glittery silver moons, gold stars, and green maple leaves worked into it. Too wet and thin to be good slime, she told herself, as if she knew good slime when she saw it. To her, something about it looked wrong. It looked like a child’s puke. The sight and smell of it repulsed her, but she found herself fascinated by it. She dipped her pinky finger in, finding less resistance and more stickiness than she wanted. It was thin but very sticky. It clung to her finger like syrup.

            She looked in the box again to make sure there wasn't a little bottle of some other chemical she was supposed to use with it. Something either to firm it up or stop it from sticking to her hands. But the box was empty.

            “Whatever,” she said to the echoless, heavily postered walls and rugged floors of her apartment. She looked around and took it into her kitchen to minimize the threat of a mess.

            The slime dumped out of the container into her hand. She worked it through her fingers and pushed it around. The smell was awful, the stickiness was worse, torture at first, but her drive to hold it outweighed the stink. She felt it ooze under her fingernails and gave herself into being dirty. The cold ick started to soothe her. Her impulse to wash her hands subsided as she zoned out and played with the slime.

            An hour later, she snapped out of her daze, grabbed a rubber spatula and got as much of the goo back into its container as she could. She sat the container on her kitchen table and washed the rest of it off her hands with a few rounds of dish detergent and hot water. She felt like she had just meditated. She felt peace. Then, she took out her phone and went to Sublime Slime’s website.

            “Oh, I can buy a whole other container of shit to make it come off my hands? You’d let me do that? Thanks,” Chelsea sarcastically spat at her screen, fully back to her normal emotional state, “Why would they sell them separately? Assholes.”

            She texted Kory:

Thanks for letting me know how sticky this shit is!
My hands look like I just caught a kid’s puke lol.
I can see why you like it so much lmao JK. I really
like this stuff, tho. It felt nice. Good rec.

            Then she wrote:

Did you tell Jake about it? It smells
like how he smelled sometimes. It’s
crazy.

            But she deleted the second message and put her phone back in her pocket. She would wait until Kory texted back about the first message before she’d ask about Jake. She needed to know that Kory would text back first, and then, once she revealed herself to be in a position of texting back, Chelsea would ask her if Jake knew about the slime. It was a perfect way to play it.

            But Kory didn’t text back.

***

            The next morning, Chelsea texted Kory.

Did you tell Jake about it? It smells
like how he smelled sometimes. It’s
crazy.

            Sending the text made her heart pound so hard that it rocked her body forward and back until it forced her to stand up. She was stressing, so she decided to grab the one thing in her apartment designed for that problem.

            She walked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway, surprised.

            The top of the slime container had burst off and slime was overflowing. She tried to twist it back on but couldn’t fit it without losing a considerable amount of slime. There was about twice as much slime as the container was able to hold. How could the container suddenly not be large enough to hold it? Had it expanded overnight?

            Chelsea cleaned the remaining gunk, flushing it down the drain as she washed her hands twice with hot water and detergent. She ran the faucet for a while to make sure it didn’t clog the drain and took out her phone. The company's website was already open in her browser.

            Near the top of the FAQ section, she found the question, “Why is my slime getting bigger?” According to Sublime Slime, slime rises like dough after someone opens the container and works air into it by touching it. Skin bacteria and air getting worked into it do something. Chelsea didn’t fully understand. Apparently, it’s a natural process, and once it expands, it’s done expanding. Then, she can enjoy her “Sublime Slime any time.”

            Chelsea took the slime out of its container and played with it. She forgot that she had just washed her hands. She didn’t care. She ran it through her fingers and thought about everything she needed to do to get ready for Alora’s arrival the following day. She worked it around her hot palms and formed it into different shapes. She pulled it apart and marveled at the shiny strings. She started to like the smell. The scent.

            Her sister would leave for Chicago sometime in the morning and arrive late afternoon. So, Chelsea would spend today cleaning. Her apartment had never been the tidiest in her family, but due to her life recently, it had fallen into a rough state beyond the usual chaos. The work ahead of her filled her with dread and paralyzed her legs. But she continued playing with the slime, and slowly, those feelings faded away.

            After about an hour, she put the slime back into its container. Again, some of it wouldn’t fit, so she washed it down the drain. Once she closed the lid, she set it on the kitchen counter. She would leave it in the kitchen until she was sure it wouldn't explode again. The kitchen was the easiest room to clean.

            Then, she got to work.

***

            When she woke up the following morning, she looked at her phone. Kory still hadn’t texted her back.

            “What the fuck is her problem?” Chelsea said, shattering the morning quiet. She went back into her messages and scrolled around, searching for another conversation to hurt herself with, but she didn’t have her conversation with Jake anymore. She had deleted it. She needed to delete it. It was better that way.

            Before her heart was allowed to crash into another melancholy ditch, she remembered that Alora would be showing up later today, and excitement shocked her senses awake.

            She rushed out of bed, smiling, eager to wake up the apartment. She opened the living room blinds and made her bed. Before she did anything else, however, she would play with the slime for a little bit. Just to set her day up for success. Then, she would see what Alora wanted to eat and get it from the grocery store. She’d shower once she got back from the store because she would only be dirty again if she did it beforehand. Those places are nasty, she thought.

            She walked to the kitchen and slowed down. The glint of moisture bounced off the floor of her dining room. She realized there were a lot of wet spots. Little puddles. They formed a line. A soggy trail that led from the kitchen to the bathroom.

            Chelsea looked at the puddles. They weren’t just water. They were pinkish. Raspberry with flecks of green, gold and silver. She rolled her eyes and let out a long exhale. If the slime exploded again and got all over the floor, she would be returning the slime.

            She walked into the kitchen and stopped.

            The container had burst open, shattering the sides of it. The sticker was torn. Slime puddles covered the reach of the hardwood, soaking in. She couldn't believe how far the slime had gone in her apartment. Out of her kitchen, through the dining room, and into the bathroom. How had it slid all the way to the bathroom? She followed the wet spots to the bathroom door and stopped.

            Then, she screamed.

            Through the crack between the door and the hinges, Chelsea saw a person standing in the darkness of her bathroom. A hunched figure about her height. The door opened. Her shriek was cut off. Sound fell away, and her legs started to give. A woman who looked like her stood in the shadows in front of her mirror.

            It wasn’t exactly her. It couldn’t be. But it was close, and it was getting closer. Her face was morphing, tightening and relaxing. She opened her mouth, and a distorted version of Chelsea’s voice came out. Like how she sounds when she’s sick. Her throat was full of gunk. She was having trouble forming words. Just sounds.

            She sprinted at Chelsea.

            Chelsea fell backward as the woman’s pounding bare feet raced toward her, jumped and tackled her to the floor. Eyes wide, Chelsea watched for the next few seconds as the woman kneed, kicked, punched and stomped on Chelsea’s throat until it was as flat as a straw in a teenager’s mouth.

            The replica stood up. Chelsea’s limp face fell forward into her caved-in esophagus. Some blood, not much, dripped onto the rug. She cursed herself for not having done it in a room that was easier to clean. She grabbed Chelsea’s phone and held it up to her own face. It didn’t open. She needed more time to take shape. She rolled her eyes and held the phone to Chelsea’s face. It opened.

            She texted Alora.

Hey, I’m sorry, I’m not feeling super well.
Can we push the sleepover to tomorrow?
I’ll be more myself then.

            At the same moment, Alora texted.

Here!

            Alora Called. The replica didn’t answer. Alora texted again.

Whoops! Wow, timing. I decided to leave
early because I wanted us to have more
time together! I'm sorry! I should have
texted you. I'm outside though lol.

            The replica froze for a moment before sitting down and texting back.

I’m in the bathroom right now. Can you
go to The Wormhole Coffee and chill
until I’m done? I’m so sorry. This is so
gross. I couldn’t pick up the phone.
I don’t want you to hear this lol

            The replica sent a barfing emoji. Alora sent three crying and laughing emojis.

Yes. That is fine. Text me when you’re
done shitting and jacking off.

            She set the phone on the counter and dragged Chelsea’s body into the bedroom. She shoved it against the corner of the wall underneath the bed. If Alora came in here, she would only look through the closet. She’ll sleep on an inflatable mattress in a different room. Or they’ll both sleep in the living room. Either way, under the bed was safe.

            An hour later, the apartment was clean, and trash was taken out. Alora had finished her coffee and was coming back. The replica’s face was nearly finished forming, but as a precaution, she put on an N95 mask.

            The door opened, and she hugged Alora.

            “How was, you know, shitting and jacking off?” Alora laughed.

            “Rough.”

            “You do sound sick. Hey, I got some of that slime we talked about.” Alora held up a white plastic container. The woman who looked like Chelsea smiled beneath her mask. “It’s already exploded once. I was nervous about bringing it. I wasn’t sure if it would explode again in the car or what. I guess once it grows, it’s done growing, and then you can enjoy your Sublime Slime any time.”

            “Any time. Yeah. Mine did that. It’s weird,” the replica said, “They act like it’s normal, too. Like everyone should already know that slime does that.”

            Alora laughed. She set the container on the kitchen counter and washed her hands in the sink.

            "I'm going to leave it here in case it explodes again tonight. Easier space to clean.”

            “I did that too. Wow. We’re so alike. I’m excited to play with it together.”

            They hugged, and Alora breathed deeply, really smelling her sister for the first time. She closed her eyes, lost for a moment in a pleasant haze, dreaming of raspberry slime.