Bum Magic: A Tale of Sludge and Slime

Fuck.

The rumbling of footsteps grew louder and louder as the mob of goons approached me, and I was helpless to defend myself. I slammed the door shut with my shoulder and shimmied over to the coffee table like an earthworm. My limbs started to tingle a little bit, which was a good sign. I guess Mickey wasn’t bullshitting – I’d be able to use them again in a couple of minutes, assuming I could survive that long.

Using my head, I was able to flip the coffee table on its side to use as a barricade. It wasn’t much, but it could buy me a couple of seconds, and at that moment, each second was worth its weight in gold.

There was a knock at the door.

“Open up and we won’t shoot,” a voice said.

“Do you really expect me to believe that?” I yelled. Why didn’t they just kick it down and blast me away?

“Come on, just open the door. We don’t need to resort to violence.”

I didn’t respond, and several people started to argue back and forth on the other side of the door. Then it dawned on me: this group of heavily armed hardened criminals were scared of me. They know what Mickey’s capable of and they know I’m like him. They think that I’ll rip them all apart if they open that door.

And maybe they’re right.

I was starting to regain feeling in my limbs. I could move them, but they felt heavy, like someone else’s arms and legs had been sewn to my torso. I got on my feet and awkwardly crouched behind the coffee table.

“If you don’t want to fight, why don’t you all just fuck off?” I said. “Go get a real job. I hear Wendy’s is hiring.”

There was some more chatter, and my limbs felt almost back to normal.

The man sighed. “Alright, if you’re not going to come willingly, we’re gonna have to take you out.”

“You sure you want to do that?” I said.

Mickey fucked up. In the heat of the moment, he left his Zippo lighter wedged between the couch cushions. These guys fucked up too by not taking me out when they had the chance. I became nauseous, and not from the slime. Was I really about to murder god-knows how many people just to get to Mickey? Maybe I could knock them over and get out of here before they could catch me. I’d whooped people’s asses before, sure, but I’d never killed anyone. Taking someone’s life was heavy, and I was about to kill these people in one of the most brutal ways imaginable. But I knew that running was a stupid idea. They’d catch me, or they’d come after me. Plus, that would mean that Mickey won. Fuck that.

I sent a stream of slime under the door. Groans broke out in the crowd, and there were a few thumps against the wall from people slipping. I kept the narrow stream flowing until I thought it was enough. Then, I lit the Zippo up and tossed it onto the snail trail.

The slime lit up like napalm. A cacophony of terrible, horrific screams came from the other side of the door. I covered my ears, but the high-pitched wails pierced through my hands and penetrated my skull. They screamed wild, desperate screams, hoping that some benevolent force of nature would come to their rescue, but none did. Nothing could save them from the oily flames that I sent their way. After a few agonizing seconds, all of the screaming stopped.

Once the flames died down, I opened the door. A dozen charred goons laid at my feet. Some of them were stiff, black corpses lying motionlessly on the floor, but a few unlucky bastards were still alive. They crawled away from me, skin sloughing off of their arms and legs with each movement. Holy shit, what have I done? The pain they were in must have been absolutely unimaginable. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy – well, maybe my worst enemy – yet I just inflicted it on these people that I didn’t even know. I wished that they had just left me the fuck alone. They could’ve handed me Mickey and this could’ve never happened. I couldn’t stand looking at these people anymore, pointlessly trying to escape. They were done. Why didn’t they understand that?

I took the pistol out from my waistband and shot them all in the head. One by one, I shot six people, and they looked happier because of it.

I looked to my right, down the corridor. This place was huge. They must’ve been supplying the entire southeastern United States with drugs. There were ten rooms just on this floor, and a staircase all the way at the end. There could easily be hundreds of people still alive in this compound, and Mickey was using them all as human shields.

Fuck them. They chose this life. They’ve probably done worse to innocent people. I’m doing a goddamn civil service, killing these lowlifes. I told myself, but I didn’t believe it.

I’ll kill every last one of them to get to Mickey if that’s what it takes.

I believed that.

Aside from me and the pile of corpses at my feet, the corridor was empty. All of the other doors that lined the hall were closed, and nobody dared to come out. Once the adrenaline left my veins, I noticed that my entire right arm was throbbing. The mark liked the taste of blood, I guess, because it was bright red, and three new blisters appeared in the fold of my elbow. Each blister had a crude picture in the middle; one had a nose, one had a foot, and one had a shield.

The mark’s speaking to me in goddamn hieroglyphics now. Great.

I had no idea what it meant. Block foot smells? Nosey steppers afoot? I didn’t have time for riddles, so I just pressed the first one to see what would happen. It flattened out into nothing, just like the blister on my hand did, and the other two followed without me touching them. The itch came back, covering my entire body, and the mark sprouted up to my shoulder, covering my entire arm with black blobs. It felt like I was in a bathtub full of fire ants, but the itching subsided quickly this time, and I didn’t fall to the ground.

Actually, I felt great. I felt fucking incredible. It was like I had instantly become ten years younger. I was lighter on my feet, and my body felt harder, more solid. Out of nowhere, my arms had some noticeable muscle definition for the first time in my lanky, skinny life. The mark was very happy with me today, it seemed. And all I had to do to curry its favor was mercilessly slaughter a group of people. Kinda fucked up, if you ask me, but I almost didn’t even care. I wanted to go run a marathon.

I was about to hop and skip straight to the elevator to shove Mickey’s head into his own ass when the overwhelming urge to sneeze came over me. There was something in my nose, and it was completely blocking my right nostril. The urge to sneeze got worse and worse, but I never actually sneezed. It didn’t want to come out on its own, so I covered my left nostril with my thumb and snorted as hard as I could. The largest booger I had ever seen in my life shot from my nose like a missile and splattered on the floor a few feet away. A second later, it exploded, creating a black crater in the concrete.

Booger bombs? Seriously?

That’s what the mark had blessed me with this time: booger bombs. Mickey could make people’s bodies useless with a single touch, and I could shoot out snot rockets.

Okay, whatever. I had to keep moving. I didn’t want to be in this weird ass industrial drug complex any longer than I needed to be. I walked down the hallway, slowly, expecting someone to pop out of one of the doors at any moment, but nobody had the balls to fuck with me now. I got to the elevator and pressed the button.

LEVEL 2 ACCESS REQUIRED. PLEASE SCAN KEYCARD

Damnit. Why can’t something be fucking easy for once?

I had to get a keycard. One of the losers on this floor had to have one. My patience was starting to wear thin with these people.

I shouted down the hall. “I bet you all thought you were real tough when you were roughing up junkies on the street, huh? Why don’t you come and pick on someone your own size?”

I picked my nose, flicked a booger at the door to my right, and blew it off of its hinges. Maybe booger bombs weren’t so bad. Four men who looked like they were halfway through shitting their pants cowered behind a bar, barely peeking over it to look at me. They must’ve ran to the bar in a hurry; broken liquor bottles littered the floor, and a deck of cards was scattered around their poker table. I had pooped their party, it seems.

I flicked the Zippo open and held my hand behind the flame.

“Any of you move a goddamn inch and you’re all getting roasted,” I said. “Do any of you have a level 2 keycard?”

“He does!” one of them squeaked and pushed a little balding man out from behind the bar. I pointed the lighter at him.

“No I don’t! What the fuck, Carl?” he said. “Really, I don’t I swear!”

I wasn’t going to deal with this bullshit. I burned him alive.

He convulsed on the ground, screaming in agony, and I resumed my conversation with the other three.

“Did he really not have a keycard?” I said.

“I dunno. I thought he did,” Carl shrugged.

I guess this was the room where they kept all the fucking morons.

I turned around to leave, and a bullet flew by my head. I whipped my head around to see the pudgy young man to Carl’s right shakily holding a gun, mouth agape. Three of them almost got away with their lives, but they just had to provoke me. I flicked a booger and it hit Carl right in the middle of his forehead. It popped his head like a water balloon and took an arm each off of the other two. I gave them some booger bombs of their own before I left the room.

“Alright, which one of you shitheads has a keycard?” I yelled down the corridor. “Just come out and save everyone else. If you don’t, you’ll die anyway.”

A door on the opposite end of the hallway opened up, and a rail-thin man wearing torn jeans and a mullet that went down to his ass crack came out with a massive burlap sack slung over his shoulder like he was Santa Claus for meth heads. He threw the sack down in front of him with a grunt and looked at me, then pulled a keycard from his pocket and waved it around.

“You want this? Come and get it, asshole!”

He grabbed a grenade from his sack of goodies and hurled it down the corridor.