At the Trial of the Loathsome Slime
The slime was truly ugly, the ugliest thing ever seen on Earth, uglier even than a bowl of rhubarb and custard left to congeal for a few days then coated with chocolate sauce, which it resembled most.
That afternoon it was held in a box of clear plastic, a six foot cube against whose walls it slithered and splattered with dismaying regularity. The trails of yellow mucous left behind when it retracted boiled violently before finally hardening into brown crayons etched on the inside walls. It had been calculated that the plastic would last fifteen minutes, more than enough for the court to reach a verdict.
Scenes were flashed across the holo-vid in heart-stopping sharpness: the return of the deep space probe, the sudden growth of jelly on its surface as the slime discovered it liked oxygen, the slime escaping from the research lab by the simple expedient of melting its way through everything in its path, the slime snuggling up to a dog and devouring half of it before moving on, the slime melting its way into and through a the servo-motors of a cross-town aero-bus, and, finally, the high point of the prosecutor’s case, the slime pouring over the Multivac port, the casing and chips and melted copper fusing into a blob before themselves being consumed. The camera drew back to show the slime sitting contentedly at an intersection, small pustules bubbling on what passed for it’s skin.
The jury gave a long sign as the prosecutor rumbled back to the niche with the parting words, “The prosecution rests, M’Lord.”
The room was hushed, a quiet broken only by the splashing of new ridges on the walls of the slime’s cage.
An aperture opened beside the vocalizer and a black rectangle of cloth was placed on top of a weary grey wig.
The vocalizer adopted a stern bass register as it intoned the verdict. This menace to Earth’s security was to be destroyed. Analysis had shown that only by breaking the slime into its constituent cells could its effects be neutralised.
Therefore the court judged that the slime was to be taken from the courtroom to the Virginia Mountains on the planet Blue Ridge, where it would be poured through a micropore sieve until it was dead.
“And may Multivac have mercy on its circuits.”
There was no one present at the demise of the slime, which was a pity, because proof of its great intelligence emerged at the last second as its cells communicated with each other in one last message in an attempt to cheer itself up on the way to oblivion…
“Well! This is another fine mesh you’ve gotten us into.”
The Watcher in the Dunes
I watched her as she watched the film. The lights danced in her eyes and her knuckles were white where she gripped my hand. I could feel her fingernails dig into my palms as I studied the colours which flickered and faded across her face.
She was well into it, her tongue peeking between her lips in concentration. I never could see the attraction of scaring yourself half to death and found the images on the film more sickening then frightening. It certainly hyped her up though - I could almost feel the thud of her heart as the film reached its climax and the red wash of blood seemed to splash across the audience.
I turned towards her and had to suppress a gasp - her face was a red, featureless mass. But only for a second. Eventually, after interminable mayhem and bloodshed, the credits rolled and the lights went up. The crowd began to filter out but she sat, eyes glued to the screen as the lists of key-grips, best boys and wardrobe assistants scrolled by. It was only when the music had finally stopped and the curtain came down that she began to move, slowly, like someone coming out of a dream.
“Thanks for bringing me,” she said, as she leaned forward to kiss my cheek and I felt her tongue slide wetly across my skin. She took my hand as we walked up the aisle and her arm draped around my waist as we reached the street. We huddled together for warmth as the chill night wind whipped around us, throwing the usual Saturday night rubbish into the air to whirl and clatter among the shops.
We hurried through the dark to the car and I listened to her chattering the whole way, talk of bloody murder, of throat clenching, heart stopping terror, all of life’s fears reduced to several thousand frames of celluloid, the modern day opium of the masses.
I was feeling cynical. Six months we had been seeing each other, and every night out ended the same way - a quick grope in the doorway of her flat, just enough to leave me hot and frustrated, then I was left with the closed door and the lingering taste of her lipstick.
The way things were going I didn’t think tonight was going to be any different. She was still off in a world of her own, one where banshees shrieked and witches danced in the moonlight and, even as we got in the car she was telling me all about one particular scene in the film, as if she alone had seen it.
“There was blood everywhere, great globules of it, as if someone had been careless with a bottle of tomato ketchup. And he was till walking around, bits of his brains showing and his guts hanging out. And…”
I tuned her out. Maybe it was time to move on - I seemed to have discovered her passion, one I wasn’t able to share. I had underestimated the power of that passion though. She was quiet for the rest of the journey, and I thought she was thinking about the film, but she was to prove me wrong.
We came down to the beach to watch the moon. When I was a kid the beach was undeveloped - the marina hadn’t been built and the road to the bay was little more than a dirt track.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
“Of course I love you,” I said, and in a way I’d loved her since I first saw her, up there on the stage. She had the body of an angel and the voice of a screeching demon - two parts Joplin, one part Bardot - Bardot in her prime.
Her voice spoke to me - of love found then tragically lost - of the dark beauty of suffering, the ultimate teenage dream.
“Have you got a blanket in the car?” she asked, and my heart did a fast drum roll as I realised what she was asking. I managed to nod, my throat to dry to speak.
“Well, go fetch, boy,” she said. “This is your lucky night…and bring a flashlight if you’ve got one. It’s dark down there.”
I managed to get the boot open at the third attempt - my hands were shaking so much that I dropped the key in the sand and for a terrible moment I couldn’t find it in the dark, but then my fingers found the warm metal and I knew that everything was going to be perfect.
My palms were sticky with anticipation.
I managed to find the blanket and torch, then closed the boot. I could see that she was already making her way down to the shore.
I left the car up there, behind the dunes. The moonlight danced across the water and the only sound was the polite rattle of pebbles being pulled in by the surf.
At first I couldn’t see her, but then I caught a faster dancing amongst the ripples as her head broke the surface.
She started swimming towards me - a smooth, confident breast-stroke which sent the reflected moonbeams whirling into a maniac frenzy. I didn’t have much time to get myself ready and I only just managed to get the blanket laid out flat when she grabbed me from behind.
I turned into a warm, wet embrace that smelled of salt and freshness and exuberant life. Our clothes seemed to fall off us of their own accord and soon we had tumbled together onto the blanket in a mass of flailing arms and legs. I had to ask the question.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I held my breath as I waited for her reply.
She put a wet finger over my lips.
“Shush,” was all she said before she pulled me down to the blanket. Her skin cool and smooth under my fingers as I pulled off her wet T-shirt and rubbed my knuckles over her nipples, causing them to stand to attention. She moaned as I ran my hands down to her waist and she pulled me close.
This was it - I was finally going to get there. I thought my knees weren’t going to hold me as I leant over her. Her lips parted moistly and her eyes shone in the moonlight as I lowered myself unto her.
And that’s when it happened?
??
There was a low moan from the dunes behind us, a moan that didn’t sound quite human, but didn’t sound like any animal I’d ever heard either.
She froze underneath me, and she pushed me off her.
“What was that?”
“Just the wind,” I said. I didn’t believe it, but my hormones weren’t going to let her go that easily.
I tried to hold her but she pushed me away.
“There’s a pervert up there watching us,” she whispered, pulling her T-shirt over her head.
“Oh, come on Linda. Who’s going to come way out here and freeze just to watch us?”
Just as I reached for her the moan came again, causing her to back away from me.
“See - I told you.”
I tried to make a grab for her again, one last attempt to appease the trouser snake.
She backed away, saying, “I’m not going to be somebody’s show-time.” And, before I could stop her she was heading for the dunes, moving fast even over the soft sand. I stopped long enough to pull on my denims.
When I finally caught up with her she was standing in front of a black hole in the dune, the sand still crumbling away from its sides. Just inside the hole it was possible to see the damp glistening black of exposed stonework.
She turned to look at me, eyes wide and staring, just as another moan rent the air. I was hit by a burst of dry air, air which smelled old and stale, and the dry grasses around the hole whispered in sympathy.
“Like I said, it’s just the wind,” I said.
But she wasn’t listening.
“Do you know what this is?” she said, going on before I had time to reply, “it’s one of those buried buildings - you know - like Skara Brae in Orkney. There could be a warren of them in there.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and I had a feeling I didn’t want to know. I tried to pull her away but she was having none of it. And then she said the words I’d been dreading.
“Get the torch - I want to see what’s inside.”
I tried to argue with her, but the look in her eyes brooked no discussion - I got the torch.
When I got back she was bent over the hole, trying to peer into the depths.
“Listen,” she said, putting a warm finger to my lips.
The air rushed out of the hole once more, still hot, still dry, then it suddenly stopped. There was a short pause and then there was a draught again, but this time slowing inwards, rustling the grass and causing small pebbles to tumble from around the hole’s rim. It was exactly as if the hole was breathing.
“Give me the torch,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “This is going to be amazing.”
She took the light and, gingerly at first, began to go down into the hole, having to stoop to get past the crumbling entrance.
She only turned back once after she had got herself inside, looking out from the blackness, the torch lighting her face like a crazy Halloween mask.
“Come on then. You’re not going to like me go in there all by myself are you?”
Her tone was teasing and once more playful. A weight shifted in my stomach and I believed that once more everything was going to be okay - we’d fumble around in the dark for a bit, then I could get her out onto the beach and take up where we’d left off.
I didn’t want to go, but I followed her down feeling the air rush past my ears as I descended, air that was being pulled into the hole.
I couldn’t see much in the blackness, only the too bright beam of the torch as it occasionally lit the wall ahead of me and the dark silhouette that filled the corridor below me. Soon the noise of the sea receded and we went down into the darkness in silence.
At one point I ran my hand across the wall on my left but it came away cold and slimy. The air got warmer as we descended and I began to have trouble breathing. I was about to suggest that we turn back when we stepped into a bigger chamber and Linda’s voice echoed around in whispers. I couldn’t quite make out what she said - my heart was suddenly thumping loudly, the blood rushing hotly inside my ears. I wanted to run, but Linda had the torch, and there was no way I was going back up that corridor in the dark.
“Come here,” a voice said in my left ear, a voice that seemed to come from within the wall. I turned to see Linda motioning me towards a black-shadowed alcove in the corner.
It was a fireplace, but far older than any I had ever seen. The hearthstone was one huge, roughly cut block, a black dense stone that I had never seen before. Slimy condensation ran over its surface in a thin film that gleamed like oil in the torch light.
Thick grey lichens hung like whiskers from its underside, wafting slightly in the breeze, but what Linda really wanted me to look at was lying within the shadows, almost obscured by ashes.
It had once been a person - that was my first thought, before I realised that there were too many bones, too many fingers. There were two of them, and they had died huddled together under the hearth stone, two people crammed into a space scarcely big enough for one. Their bones seemed to have melted and fused together, joining them at the breast-bone in one final, deadly embrace.
There was only one skull visible, its eye sockets staring blackly out of the ashes, its jaws hanging open in one last scream.
Linda bent forward for a closer look, placing her hand on the black stone for balance. I saw the wetness glide over her fingers, rainbow colours flowing across its oily surface then seeming to melt into her hand.
“I wonder how old they are?” she said, leaning further forward as if to touch the bones. I pulled her back, suddenly angry.
“Leave them be,” I said, the echoes hissing back at me. “These are dead people for Christ’s sake.”
At first I thought she was going to hit me, the rage in her eyes causing me to step backwards, but then her look softened and she reached out to touch my arm.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” she said. “This place is getting to you.” She had a mocking grin on her face and I could feel my erection growing as she ran a cool hand over my cheek.
She noticed it as well and her hand moved downwards, caressing the front of my shirt, flicking at the buttons before landing gently on my crotch.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
I heard the rasp as she unzipped me and I gasped as she teased my growing member out from its confines.
“Not here,” I whispered. “Please, not here.”
She ignored my pleas and started to stroke, and while she worked, she began to sing. Her voice rose until the walls were reverberating in time with the rhythm. I didn’t recognise the words, but the tune was old and it spoke to me of a hard life lived by the sea, of fish and gulls and wind and waves.
She began to push me back until I felt the cold wall press against my spine. Again I tried to force her away but she only got more insistent, her hold on my prick getting ever tighter until it felt like she was trying to pull it out by the root. I grabbed at her arm and tried to pull it away but it brought more pain as she tugged harder. She looked into my eyes and, way down behind her pupils, rainbow lights danced.
I think I screamed, more in anger than in fear, and I pushed her, hard, right into her ribs. She didn’t stop singing as she fell backwards. Maybe the voice wasn’t hers. The torch hit the ground first and went out, but I will never forget the sharp crack as the back of her head hit something hard.
I had a bad couple of seconds when I couldn’t find the torch, and an even worse time when I thought it wasn’t going to work, but finally its yellow flare lit the room and I was able to see what had happened to Linda.
She had landed in the ashes of the old fire, and at first I could see no sign of injury. I was crying as I bent over her face and shone the torch in her eyes, but there was no answering light there, only the dark grey stare of the dead. As if to escape the light her head turned away from me, and then I saw it - the long, pointed bone which had made its way into her brain, just below the ear.
The gorge rose in my throat a
nd I turned away, retching, feeling my last meal come up hot and heavy. It was as I turned back that I heard the noise, the moistness of something slipping through flesh. I thought Linda was still alive and I turned to touch her, just in time to see the bone disappear completely into her neck.
There was a rustling and the hard dissonant cracking as the dead bones in the grate began to move and heavy drops of rainbow-suffused oil dripped from the black stone. I could only stand and watch, stuck to the spot in terror.
A long rib slipped itself into her left eye, taking it out with a soft, mucoid plop, the whole ten inch length of it sliding seamlessly into her head.
A femur rose from the pile, swaying in the air like a charmed cobra before plunging between her legs, its knurled knob pushing her open and forcing its way in - no finesse, no subtlety. I saw the bulge move in her stomach as it forced its way further inside. Small, misshapen fingers roamed her exposed midriff, clacking their happy way over her cooling skin until they found her navel - not much of an opening, but enough. I had to close my eyes as the flesh of her stomach split.
When I next looked the skull was sitting between her breasts, her T-shirt having been pushed up to her armpits. It seemed to smile at me as it rolled forward, face down into the spreading gore of her trunk. It immediately started to chew, great globs of red, glistening meat being torn into strips which were left in a growing pile behind it as it started to burrow.
Five more ribs pushed into her side, sliding into her as one, as if synchronised. I closed my eyes again and, in that darkness, I tried not to hear the moist suckings, the cracking of long dead and recently dead bones, tried not to notice the hot, fetid coppery taste of blood in the back of my throat.
I could feel hot tears run down my face, but they didn’t seem to belong to me - I wasn’t feeling much of anything apart from a cold numbness that threatened to engulf me and send me down into blackness for a long time.
A moan brought me out of it.
‘God - she can’t still be alive!’ was my thought as I opened my eyes. I was right - she wasn’t alive. But something else was.
The bloated, stretching figure on the hearth had once looked like Linda, but no more. The skin looked tight enough to tear at any moment and small hard edges ran like waves beneath its surface. I couldn’t bare the sight of the blood and carnage in her midriff and moved the torch upwards. Her face had been stretched into a vast ‘pumpkin-head’ that glistened redly in the torchlight which wiggled and danced in the light.
And then there was another moan, just before her mouth opened and the twin rows of red teeth smiled at me.
A rainbow aura issued from her mouth, spilling thickly over her neck and chest, sluggish and slow, but wherever it passed it brought bones to the surface.
Old bones and new bones, broken bones and whole bones, all fusing and running together as if boiled in acid. There was a chanting in the air - and I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the body or whether it was in my head.
“Ig nyarlthotep ryleh f’tangh”
“Ia log Sototh”
“Ia C’thulhu.”
And it was answered from some deep unknown chamber beneath, a roar that shook the stone around me and set fine sand dancing in the air.
“Tekeli Li”
“Tekeli Li.”
The earth buckled under my feet, causing me to stumble, and the movement got my legs working again. I headed for the entrance as the stonework began to crumble around me and the thing that used to be Linda followed. I only looked back once… And I wish I hadn’t.
The corridor was much to narrow to allow it passage, but it was pushing itself through, the cracking of bones breaking insufferably loud in the confined space. Small ragged shards punched through the taut flesh, bringing tiny eruptions of blood and gore. And still it came on, and still the bones broke.
I ht the outside at a run and turned back to the hole, kicking sand and earth and grasses down on the lumbering thing below me. The chanting began again, a deep throaty thing, a noise which sent a flock of seagulls cawing in fright overhead.
I grabbed the lintel stone and, with all my weight, pulled hard on it, but it refused to budge. I was about to try again when something cold and hard grabbed my left ankle and the chanting rose to a triumphant roar.
A cold hand began to climb my leg, tugging, ever harder, and all that stopped me falling down to join it in that charnel pit was my hold on the lintel. I screamed in rage and pain and dug my fingers into the stone as the grip on my leg tightened.
With all my strength I tugged on the lintel as the hand reached my upper thigh. Then, suddenly, the stone began to give. I pulled harder and it came down away from the dine, taking the entrance way, the creature, and me down in a hail of fine sand.
I landed hard, my left leg under the edge of the stone. When I tried to move my leg flared in pain but I managed finally to force it out from under the stone. As I did so I thought I heard a cry of frustration from far below.
I wasn’t able to stand, but I could move enough to tumble the remaining rocks over the remains of the entrance and to cover the hole with sand before crawling back to the car.
I spent two weeks in hospital as they tried to save my leg, but they didn’t quite manage it. I’m not bitter - I got off lightly.
At nights, at this time of year, I come down here to sit and listen. Every year the sea eats into the dune a bit more and every year I wonder if this will be the one.
And on quiet nights she sings again - just for me.
A Slim Chance
I smoked too many cigarettes, sipped too much Highland Park and let Bessie Smith tell me just how bad men were. For once thin afternoon sun shone on Glasgow; the last traces of winter just a distant memory. Old Joe started up “Just One Cornetto” in the shop downstairs. I didn’t have a case, and I didn’t care.
All was right with the world.
I should have known it was too good to last.
I heard him coming up the stairs. Sherlock Holmes could have told you his height, weight, shoe-size and nationality from the noise he made. All I knew was that he was either ill or very old; he’d taken the stairs like he was climbing a mountain with a Sherpa on his back.
He rapped on the outside door.
Shave and a haircut, two bits.
“Come in. Adams Massage Services is open for business.”
At first I thought it was someone wandering in off the street. He was unkempt, unshaven, eyes red and bleary. He wore an old brown wool suit over a long, out of shape cardigan and his hair stood out from his scalp in strange clumps. I’ve rarely seen a man more in need of a drink.
Or a meal.
He was so thin as to be almost skeletal, the skin on his face stretched tight across his cheeks. I was worried that if I made him smile his face might split open like an over-ripe fruit.
“Are you Adams?” he said as he came in. He turned out to be younger than I’d first taken him for, somewhere in his thirties at a guess, but his mileage was much higher. “George at the Twa Dugs said you might be able to help me.”
I waved him in.
“It’s about time George started calling in some of the favors I owe him. Sit down Mr…?”
“Duncan. Ian Duncan.”
He sat, perched at the front of the chair, as if afraid to relax. His eyes flickered around the room, never staying long on anything, never looking straight at me.
“Smoke?” I asked, offering him the packet.
He shook his head.
“It might kill me,” he said.
I lit up anyway… a smell wafted from the man, a thick oily tang so strong that even the pungent Camels didn’t help much.
Time for business.
“So what can I do for you Mr. Duncan?”
“I’m being terrorized,” he said. “I need you to make it stop.”
I stared back at him.
“Sounds like a job for the Polis to me,” I said.
He laughed, making it sound like a sob
. He took a bundle of fifty pound notes from his pocket and slapped them on the table. I tried not to salivate.
“No. This is no job for the terminally narrow-minded,” he said. “I need somebody with a certain kind of experience. Your kind of experience.”
Somebody put a cold brick in my stomach, and I had a sudden urge to stick my fingers in my ears. I got the whisky out of the drawer. I offered him one. He shook his head, but his eyes didn’t stray from the bottle. I poured his measure into a glass alongside my own and sent them chasing after each other before speaking.
“And exactly what kind of experience do I need to help you?”
A good storyteller practices his tale. At first, when he tells the story, he sounds like your dad ruining his favorite dinner table joke for the hundredth time.
Oh wait... did I tell you the horse had a pig with him?
But gradually he begins to understand the rhythm of the story, and how it depends on knowing all the little details, even the ones that no one ever sees or hears. He knows what color of trousers he was wearing the day the story took place, he knows that the police dog had a bad leg, he knows that the toilet block smelled of piss and shit. He has the sense of place so firmly in his mind that even he almost believes he's been there. Once he’s done all that, he tells the killer story, complete with unexpected punch line.
Then there’s the Ian Duncan method… scatter information about like confetti and hope that somebody can put enough of it together to figure out what had happened to who.
I raised an eyebrow, and that was enough to at least get him started.
“It was four months ago. There were six of us then, and it started as a dare. One of those Comic Relief shows was coming up, and we decided to go on a diet for charity. That first week we lost six pounds between us… at least, the five guys did. Wee Annie Gardner struggled though. She just couldn’t take to the exercise and…”
I coughed politely.
“Is there a point to this Mr. Duncan?”
“I need you for protection,” he said quietly. “Protection against what’s after me.”
It was my turn to sigh.
“And just what is after you?” I asked. “Some big dog? Or a Glesga heavy with an axe maybe?”
The fear lay big in his eyes.
“It’s worse,” he said. “Much worse. Three of my friends died recently. And I might be next,” he said.”
“Tell me,” I said softly.
He started to cry in that holding-it-all-in way kids do when they’re trying to be brave. His shoulders heaved and tears ran down his cheeks. Then he really frightened me. He started to wheeze, struggling for air. He doubled over and broke into a coughing fit so strong I thought his lungs might come up.
I poured a glass of whisky and held it out to him, having to place it in his shaking hand.
He downed it in one. The coughing stopped. But the fear was back in his eyes as he stared at the glass.
“I thought it was water,” he whispered.
Something stronger than just the wind rattled my window behind me.
“Please? I thought it was water,” he shouted. He got out of the chair so fast that it fell with a bang on the floor.
I stood, unsure as to what to do next.
I wasn’t given an option. The window behind me blew in with a crash and a spatter of glass. I felt something grab me at the back of the neck, and my head was thrust down, hard, against the side of the desk. The corner caught me near the right eye. Blood spurted as I fell away.
Duncan screamed.
I tried to wipe my eyes clear. I was partly blinded by blood in one eye, and my sight was blurred but I could make out enough to know that something large and white crouched over the man.
What the hell is that?
Duncan stopped screaming and went quiet. The only sound was a moist sucking like a wet fart. I wanted to stand up straight but my head had other ideas and the room span until I steadied myself with a hand on my desk.
Now even the sucking noise had stopped.
I looked up as the out-of-focus white thing bounded off Duncan and came towards me. I just had time to duck as it leaped over the desk like a pony taking a jump. By the time I’d turned it had gone out the window. My sight cleared… enough that I was able to pick my way through the shards of glass on my way to the window. I looked out, but there was only the usual Glasgow skyline.
Duncan lay still on the floor. I staggered to his side. His eyes stared up at me from a face that had dried out like an old raisin left in the sun.
He was dead and already going cold.
I lifted the money from the desk and, closing the door quietly behind me, went to work.