WHY IS SLIME DANGEROUS?

Silver’s symptoms were wide-ranging, complex and came on at random. After a few days Silver started to write them down in the back of a notebook but they didn’t date it so eventually the list got longer until they couldn’t remember when any of them came about. It was like, since the break-up, slime had been with them and they hadn’t been without slime.

The first was a result of the hair stripper. Like most queers Silver had a long history of ill-fated DIY hair projects. When a friend fell victim to their untrained experimentation they would think, hair’s not that important. They could colour in the bald patch with eye shadow. When it was their own head getting fucked up they would remember how everything falls apart from the hair outwards. This time was particularly weird though.

They had been dyeing their hair chocolate brown for about 6 months when they nicked the colour remover from Boots, saving £9.99 and missing out on a handful Advantage Card points. Usually this product turned hair the colour of Irn Bru and always left the flat smelling of burnt skin. Silver endured the stink and went away to watch the last half of Sense and Sensibility while the product did its work. Their flatmate Annie was home in Manchester, leaving Silver to descend into new depths of loner behaviour with each night that passed. It was deep January, a time for bailing on social plans and admitting that they actually really liked period dramas. They felt a deep kinship with Kate Winslet’s unrealistic expectations of romantic love.

By the time Hugh Grant had returned from his war of the heart or whatever and Emma Thompson had finally broken down and shown some emotion, Silver’s scalp had started to itch. They dried their tears during the wedding montage and added Alan Rickman to their list of gender inspirations, alongside Keanu Reeves and Seth Green, then went to the loo to rinse the chemicals out. Their hair was short enough to be invisible to
them as they knelt beside the bath with their head tipped over and the shower in their hand. Murky grey and brown dye circled the drain. When the water turned almost clear, they patted their hair dry and wiped a hand across the foggy mirror. They wiped it again, and the view stayed the same. Their soaked hair was practically radioactive: a perky slime
green all over.

People paid a lot of money for this kind of hair. Silver had planned to lighten theirs and tone it until it reached a shade that would match their name. Looking in the mirror, watching it dry into short curls and cow licks before their eyes, this goal evaporated – slime had arrived.

When it fully dried, they took a pic from their nude shoulders up. Their algorithm suggested they send it to their ex, and Silver made a mental note to delete her details - any day now they would do it - then sent it to Annie instead.

Very Ghostbusters Fiona babes, she said in reply, with a couple of ghost emojis.

Silver had never seen Ghostbusters. Robin Williams always gave them the creeps. It sounded like the kind of film he’d be in. They made another mental note to talk to Annie about their new name. Any day now.

In their room they turned the heater up full so they could remain comfortably naked. They were trying not to forget they had a body, now that there was no one to touch it and the season allowed only the smallest surfaces of skin to be exposed. They rubbed Nivea into their elbows and knees morning and night. While the moisturiser dried, they sat at their desk and searched on YouTube for clips of nineties game show losers getting strapped down and gunged. They muted the sound and played Aphex Twin as a soundtrack. The colours poured in ribbons over the losers, waterfalls that left mouths gaping like caves, hair flattened to skulls. Dignity dead and gone. These videos were soothing. When they crawled into bed they wrapped the duvet so tight around their bare skin that they almost forgot what it was like to be held.

Silver went to work at the vintage clothes shop on a Tuesday. They wore a yellow smiley face badge on their Calvin Klein jacket to absolve themselves of the responsibility to emote to customers. How many weeks of this low mood did being dumped afford them? They estimated a couple more. As dire as the straits were, the depressive symptoms made a welcome change from the anxiety that had taken up the last month of their relationship. Silver’s ex had stopped fucking them sometime in early December, and even as they’d tried verbally and telepathically to understand why, to cling on, they’d known from the blank and avoidant look in her eyes that it was over. I need different things, she’d said and Silver had nodded, thinking, don’t we all?

Luckily it was a quiet day in the shop and time to process the inanimate stock. They stuck their hands into the pockets of a maroon Harrington jacket and pulled out a piece of paper, hoping for more than the usual shopping list or old train ticket. There was a scrapbook of sorts on the hidden wall behind the till covered in fun stuff from pockets: invitations to a Christian dinner dance in 1955, a child’s drawing for her daddy the cop,
some flirty unmarked pills in pink foil that expired in 1995. On good days you might find five or maybe ten pounds in the Levi pockets of rich and careless men.

Before they were able to unfold the scrap, a middle-aged woman approached the till with three cashmere jumpers. She was on TV for a while in the 2000s and her expensive hair wanted you to think she still was.

‘Wow, this hair situation is brave,’ she said, thrusting the jumpers at Silver. ‘Most girls wouldn’t dare step out the door looking like you.’

The badge was not enough for her expectant lean so Silver smiled with their lips stuck together.

‘Would you like a bag?’

‘Yes. Any chance of a discount on these? Since I’m such a good customer.’

‘Sorry, it’s against store policy.’ They could never forgive her for the crime of being a customer. They started preparing the take-down they would deliver to their colleague Martha when she returned from her break. That woman from the TV chancing it again. She was nominated for Rear of the Year in 2001 and didn’t even win. And now she needed a discount. They wouldn’t be able to vent about the most annoying aspect, still being read as a girl by everyone at work as opposed to a genderless slime alien, but the bar was low for bitching in retail so Martha wouldn’t think they were overreacting.

When they returned to the pocket treasure, they unfolded it and found a label for a pot of children’s toy Slime, green colour, all dog-eared, with some words scrawled on one side of it: YOU MATTER. What is this Tumblr bullshit, Silver thought, then welled up a bit inside. They DID matter. This Harrington jacket mod had a point, whoever he was. This one
wasn’t for the wall. They put it in their pocket.

The symptoms continued into the week. After several angry days and a persistent lower back ache, their period came when they got up on Thursday. It was the colour of a jungle frog and smelled zesty and acidic. Silver couldn’t pretend they didn’t love it. Otherwise they felt the normal kind of shite, so they put their cup in, unconcerned, and tried to not leave any snail trails down the side of the toilet seat.When their period had subsided enough for them to feel sexy again, they logged onto the trendy new dating app and posted an ad:

Slime 4 Slime

newly single and confused. transitioning (out of human form, into TBC).

looking for freaky connections with dykes and fags alike.

Within a day they had two responses asking for pics. Photographs were being… glitchy. Sometimes when they turned the camera front-facing, they saw their slimy chrysalis looking back: glowing, other-terrestrial, expanding outwards forever. Other times the pictures depicted someone else, with a soft jaw and acne scars and freckles and a girlish a sort of haircut. Silver recognised this person and didn’t resent them, but they couldn’t help but find the image disappointing. Like when a dress they used to love made them cry on contact with their skin, or when their ex would enthuse about vagina-themed art.

Instead of risking photos, they replied to their potential suitors with pics of the alien from the Simpsons episode spoofing the X-Files. If they didn’ enjoy this content, Silver was not interested. They wouldn’t sacrifice their jokes.

Making a huge vat of pea and mint soup one night, the knife slipped and cut through their finger instead of the garlic. The blood was acidic green and viscose. Stemming the flow made them nauseous for the first time since slime entered their life. The volume of it! The shine of the globules on the cutting board. When it was under control, they hit up the NHS website to no avail. Then Wikipedia. Slime had a long list of disambiguations, including one for a German punk band from the 80s who were sadly really bad. They had a look at the YouTube comments below their videos. Most were in German, but a select couple shone through:

Such a surge in the power of the internet

Don’t stay devided.

Left side get united, from the antifas till the traditional communists for an
anticapitalistic wavefront and get ready to interfere and cause resonance

Silver mouthed the word ‘resonance’ a couple of times… A surge of power indeed. They charitably left the artist playlist to run through and turned to Google. Suggested queries dropped down from the search bar.

What are slime molds give example?

Why is slime dangerous

Are bacteria intelligent

The last one was borderline offensive to Silver. What could be more intelligent than germs themselves? We’re all nature, they thought. The more we try to separate ourselves from the gross details of the world around us, the more we alienate ourselves from each other. They looked at the Slime label, with YOU MATTER scrawled on it which they had stuck above their desk. It was getting late. They closed their laptop and tried to sleep.

The calendar flipped over into February. Their haircut grew more grotesquely green everyday until it emitted a halo when they walked around the flat in the dark. Deodorant became obsolete as the fresh and fecund slime smell penetrated through it by lunchtime. Their symptoms had flowed outwards from their body and onto their environment (what was the difference, really?). The black mould they had cultivated around the edge of the bath since moving in was now a fashionable snot green and spreading up the walls. They were running out of synonyms for the shade: olive, lime, jade, vomit...

Annie came back from Manchester and noticed something strange as soon as she stepped in the door.

‘What’s that smell, babes? Have you been spray painting indoors again?’

Silver stepped out from behind the doorway in their room and looked Annie straight in the eye. Funny how some people were willing to see the change and others seemed blind to it. Seeing it didn’t mean people received it well but it made Silver feel less unhinged. Annie’s face remained placid – she was rarely surprised – but she stepped towards Silver and held her arms out for a hug.

‘Alright, it’s alright,’ she said, patting their back. ‘I’ going to put down my bags, then we can sort you out. What do you need, Fiona? Antibiotics? Counselling? A joint? I want to support you but I need to know how.’

Silver loosened their grip on Annie. They had missed her, and it was time to snap.

‘First, I’d love it if you called me by my real name... Silver, or maybe Slime, I’m not sure which yet but I’ll let you know.’ As the next words fell out of their mouth, they cringed at themselves, but the slime went forth and said it anyway. ‘Then I need a revolution, Annie. I need the freaks to take over. I need us all to agree to go on strike until the world as it
stands grinds to a halt and we have a chance to actually do what we want with these bodies. That’s honestly all I need.’ Were they being sincere? They didn’t know. It was surreal to have an earnest feeling.

Annie escorted Silver to A&E where they disclosed some of their symptoms, out of concern for both their physical and mental wellbeing. Silver was powerless to stop it. The nurse’s understandable lack of understanding led to them waiting for six hours to be seen
with no end in sight. By one a.m., Annie got hungry and Silver persuaded her to come home with them so they could eat vegan macaroni cheese. They even did a wee dance in the waiting room to prove to her their fresh, optimum health. Annie laughed and gave in.

By Valentine’s Day, Silver was infatuated with their amorphous rebound lover. They wrote a card to Slime with a poem in it. They deleted the dating app when they realised they didn’t need another body to make sense of their own. At the same time, Slime was becoming more and more separable from their own person. The metaphor was falling away like gunge over a loser’s head. Forever their personality had been playing a part against someone else, against their surroundings, reflecting certain things back to certain people. They’d never taken a moment to think about who they were alone, in relation to their desires only. The freer they got, the less they worried about getting set free by other people. Slime was the truest mirror they’d ever met.

Towards the end of the month they bumped into their ex at a party in a warehouse. She was very pink: new pink faux-leather jacket, pink mood, pink cheeks. She must have broken her fast fashion boycott since losing out on the vintage shop discount. Silver tried to avoid her when they saw her across the room on arrival but they danced right into her on
their way to the loo and the queue was too long to escape.

‘Oh hey, Fi,’ she said with a half-smile.

‘Hi.’

‘Are you having a good night?’ She leaned in towards their ear and glanced around behind Silver’s shoulders, scoping out who was with them. The smell of her hair made their throat tighten up.

‘I’m having a great life, thanks,’ they shouted back over the chaotic drum and bass.

‘I said ‘night’,’ she half-laughed.

‘I know,’ said Silver, face placid.

She moved as if to make an excuse to run off, then turned back to them and said, ‘I have some of your clothes.’

‘You can keep them.’ Silver’s shoulders and hips kept moving of their own accord even as they stood stationary in line to pee.

‘Right. Well, good to see you. Nice hair.’

‘Bye.’

Silver sat on the toilet and sobbed for a minute, tears like algae watercolours, then emerged in time to see their ex leave through the back door. They danced into the middle of the floor and moved their body with their eyes closed, emanating light, touching no one, layers of their cocoon cracking and falling to the ground with every step. Hours passed
before Annie dragged them, sober and raw, into a taxi home.

In March they woke up to spring sun streaming in through the window. The new kitten Annie had impulsively adopted from a friend was crawling over their body like she was clinging onto a mountainous landscape. Silver felt aches in their muscles and pressure in their bladder and peace in their mind. When they looked in the mirror their hair was the colour of tin foil, with a couple of green streaks above their ears. They relaxed the tension in their shoulders and exhaled. Back to where they started, and somewhere totally new.

by Ellen MacAskill