NOVEL FROG 2: Maybe the Slime and I Could Be Friends
The holes in my body scabbed over, and the red in my arms faded away, but the tattoo on my hand looked worse than ever. The black marks were raised up and had a bright red aura around them, and the ring in the middle ballooned up like a giant red blister. It was pretty disgusting to look at and it itched like a motherfucker, but I tried to ignore it and just keep riding towards Tennessee.
It was a nice day, all things considered. Fall had come around, so the air was cool and dry, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day for riding, and I needed to make the most of it. It’d take damn near a week to get to Tennessee on a scooter, taking the back roads, and I still needed to figure out where in Tennessee Mickey’s friends lived. All I knew was their last name – the Futrells – and that they were somewhere near Chattanooga.
Fuck, my hand itched though. It made me think of when I first drank the elixir, and when this thing first appeared on my hand. I didn’t know itches could be so bad. I felt like I could’ve scratched straight through my bones and the itch still wouldn’t have went away. It wasn’t quite back to that point yet, but it was getting there. I was all out of canine antibiotics, and it seemed like the rest of the infection had gone away, so I surmised that this was some other hocus-pocus bullshit from the tattoo itself – conventional medicine wasn’t going to cut it.
I was deep into the country, so it was pretty easy to find a spot where nobody was around. There was an old building that looked like it hadn’t been touched in centuries; the side paneling was gray and peeling, the roof sank into itself to form a V shape, and the windows were busted clean out. It was perfect. I parked my scooter behind it and went inside so that I could try to do something about this itch.
Scratching it didn’t help, of course. It didn’t even make it more red. It didn’t do a damn thing. I was afraid to touch the blister in the middle. It looked like it would sting like a bitch if I touched it at all, but I gave it a tentative poke anyway, and it was fine. Pressing it felt kind of good, actually. It was a lot more solid than I would’ve thought, like it was filled with memory foam. The more I pressed it, the less intense the itching got. I pressed it all the way down and it flattened like it had never been there in the first place, and the itch went away completely. I sighed with relief. I hadn’t realized just how much it was bugging me until I didn’t have to deal with it anymore. The redness didn’t go away though. It got worse. The borders of the marks turned fire hydrant red, and the marks themselves started to bob up and down.
God, what the fuck have I done now?
The itch came back with a vengeance. It was almost as bad as it was the first time. I screamed and contorted on the ground. If anyone drove by, they probably would’ve thought I was an OD’ing junky or something. If only I were that lucky. Instead, I got all of the pain with none of the buzz – just mind-shattering itching that crawled up from my hand to my elbow. As it crawled, it brought new melanoma splotches along with it. Soon I had bumpy black amoeba-looking marks going halfway up my arm, and the itching stopped all at once.
I stumbled outside and splayed myself onto the house’s uncut front lawn. Bugs crawled all over me, but I didn’t have the energy to give a shit. I laid there, breathing hard, looking up at the clear blue sky, damn near wanting to cry.
My hands started to hurt. A pressure built up inside of them.
Fuck. Not this again.
It was just like when I was trying to get away from Alec. The slime had come back, and it wanted to come out. This time, it all seemed to take up residence in my hands. It wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so I got up and ran back inside the house. I couldn’t let anyone see me do this. If they did, they’d probably have me sent to Area 51 or some shit, and I wouldn’t blame them. I got into the house at the exact right second; as soon as I got in, explosions of slime shot from both of my hands at once. It damn near put holes in the floor. The blast covered half of the living room floor and kicked up a huge cloud of dust. I fell right back out of the house, hacking up a lung and spitting out gray gunk.
My hands were slick with slime, but the rest of my body remained unscathed. That was a relief. The only creek I’d seen recently looked like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate River, so bathing was a no-go. If that happened on the road, though, I’d end up painting the asphalt red with my face. Up until this point, the slime had been nice enough to leave me alone since I left the pet store. It seemed to know when it wanted to leave me alone and when it wanted to annoy me. It didn’t seem like it had a mind of its own, really, but like there was a separate part of my own mind that told it what to do, a part of my mind that I couldn’t quite control. It seemed to be open to suggestion, at least. When I politely asked it to fuck off while I was running away from Alec, it listened. Maybe the slime and I could be friends.
I shut my eyes and thought as hard as I could.
Give me some more slime in my hands. Just a little. I’m not trying to lube up an orgy.
And just like that, pressure built in my hands again. When it felt like enough, I held up a clenched fist, and a kickball-sized glob of goop splattered onto the side of the abandoned house. An unfamiliar feeling crept up inside of me: excitement. I shot another glob, a little harder this time. It was shockingly easy to control, like I had been shooting slime from my hands my whole life. I went around back and did some target practice. First, I shot it through the windows, but that was too easy. There were some old discarded cans lying around, white from being in the sun so long, and I gathered them and put them into a line on an intact part of the back porch railing. This time, I made a finger gun and a little squirt of slime shot from my finger. Gross. Before too long, I was able to knock every one of them down from twenty feet away.
Time slipped away from me. The sun was getting lower in the sky; it had to be at least 3:00 pm. The reprieve had been nice – I was almost having fun for a second – but I had to keep moving. Who knows how far Mickey could’ve gotten already, and who knows how close behind Alec and his boys were. I hopped back on my scooter and continued down the twisting country road.
I tried to take advantage of the quiet drive to piece together what just happened: my mark glowed red, then I pressed down a blister, then new marks were added to my arm, and then slime shot out of my hands. It was like the mark told me it was ready to progress farther through my body, but only did so when I gave it permission. And when it progressed, I could finally control it a little bit. It was like I had earned some of its respect, some of its trust, and in return it gave me a gift. For the first time, I actually sort of felt like this mark was a gift, though I had to pay way too much to get it. I didn’t know which part of my brain was speaking, the part I controlled or the part the slime controlled, but it seemed obvious that, if I continued to show that I could wield the slime properly, I could become very powerful. I could become as powerful as Alec – even more powerful, maybe. The thought made my heart race. One day, I’d show that old fuck what happens when you fuck with a bum.
But first, I’d show Mickey. If I’ve discovered the potential of this mark, I’m sure he has too, so I’d have to be careful. There was no low Mickey wouldn’t sink to. I once saw him rob an old lady at knifepoint for her glasses. He said he needed to read, but then he just threw them in the river the next day. He loved doing shit like that, just for fun. It made him feel like he had power over people or something. Now, with that shit on his hand, God himself can only guess what he’s up to.
Hopefully Tennessee isn’t destroyed by the time I get there.