The Slug

It all started four nights ago.

I remember it quite clearly. It was 11:30pm and I went outside to see if I could spot my errant cat. It had been raining but it was summer and still warm outside. So I didn’t bother to put shoes on.

Squelsh!

“Urghhhh! Ugh urgh urghhh, I trod on a slug, I trod on a slug barefoot!” I yelled in abject horror, half running, half hopping up the stairs to the bathroom and sticking my left foot under the bathroom tap.

My boyfriend did not react sympathetically to my trauma. “That’ll teach you to go outside without shoes on,” he laughed.

I shuddered, “I hate slugs, I hate them, I really hate them! Urgh!” I repeated as I scrubbed vigorously at my foot.

“It’s only a slug, it can’t hurt you,” he commented reasonably. “I’m sure your foot is clean now,” he added, watching my furious efforts.

“I can still feel the slime between my toes,” I shuddered again.

“I’m pretty sure that’s just soap. Rinse it off and come to bed.”

I did a bit of impromptu gymnastics, trying to turn the sole of my foot upwards and bending my face to examine it whilst keeping my other foot out of the bathtub. After I nearly fell headlong into the bath, my rational brain kicked in and I decided he was probably right. After all, it was only (only!) slug slime. I dried my foot with a big towel and ten minutes later I was in bed.

I lay there snuggled up to my boyfriend’s warm, dry skin and tried to forget the cold and slimy slug. I couldn’t. I’m not a fearful person. I don’t have phobias. I rescue spiders from the bathtub with my bare hands. I happily walk around in the dark. I voluntarily let a nurse stick me with needles three times a year to donate blood. I’ve been abseiling. Somewhere in the house there’s an old Polaroid photo of me with a giant boa constrictor around my neck. I suppose I’m not really ‘phobic’ of slugs, in the sense that I don’t go to extreme lengths to avoid them. I don’t refuse to go outside if they’re within view or anything. But I do find them really, really repulsive.

Looking back, I think I know when it began.

I still remember the incident as though it happened this morning. I was nine years old and we were doing some sort of nature project at school. Somewhere along the way I had picked up a snail and, for some reason, brought it inside. I knew that snails liked to be damp and I was worried it would dry out, so I got one of the green paper towels from the dispenser in the girl’s toilet, wet it with water, put the snail on it and tucked it my pocket.

Five minutes later, back in the classroom I pulled it out to show my friend. And that’s when I realised that the snail was foaming. Bubbling with horrible, greenish-white foam where its foot was touching the chemically-infused paper towel. I stared at it in horror, frozen like a rabbit in headlights. I knew I should pull the poor thing off the paper, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it, even the shell. Other children nearby stared. One yelled. The teacher ran over, took one look and threw it outside. Then she told me off at some length for being such an idiot. Which I suppose I deserved for bringing the thing inside, but I honestly had no idea that a wet paper towel might poison a snail.

Now the more astute amongst you might be thinking that this was a snail, not a slug. But I’m sure someone told me once that slugs came from snails, or the other way around, so really they’re the same thing. And anyway it’s that whole slimy foot thing that gets me. They both have that regardless. That horrible, soft, moving, cold, slimy, pulsating muscle slowing expanding and contracting its way across the floor. Leaving a trail of silver slime behind it as a ghostly reminder of where the disgusting thing has been, but so often starting in the middle of the floor, so that you wonder how it got there, and start to think they maybe they drop off the ceiling, or out of the sky to land....

...plop...

in the middle of the floor.

Or on your head.

Just the memory of the whole horrible incident made me shudder again, and the sole of my foot itched. But eventually I drifted off to sleep and my dreams were, thankfully, not of slugs or snails.

The next day I went outside and looked cautiously at the pavement. The slug was there, drying in the sun. It had moved a bit from where I stepped on it, probably limping (can slugs limp?) as it slowly died from internal injuries. The poor thing had given up the ghost after a couple of feet. I almost felt sorry for it, but not so sorry that I was going to bring myself to pick it up and move it. It was a very big slug, even dried out it was a good two inches long and nearly an inch across. I consoled myself that it had probably been munching its way through our front garden and been making its way over to the neighbours. Really, I’d done everyone a favour.

My dreams were not so peaceful the second night. I was late, very late for some unidentified appointment. I kept looking at my watch, thinking, I’m only ten minutes late. I’m only half an hour late, I’m only an hour late, whilst getting steadily more and more anxious. My car wouldn’t work. I pressed the key fob and the car rattled and shook, and turned into a picture of a bus. My phone reset itself, wiped all my phone numbers and refused to make calls. I ran, but I couldn’t move fast enough. My left foot went numb and the numbness spread up my legs and paralysed them. My vision closed in on itself, going black at the edges so that my field of view became smaller and smaller, until I collapsed in a heap on the floor in shadows and confusion.

I woke up in a cold sweat to find, of course, that everything was just fine. The sun was streaming through the window, I wasn’t late for anything, my car was still a car, and most importantly of all, my phone was as I’d left it.

I expected the bad dream to be a one-off and that I would sleep peacefully the next night, because that’s how it normally works. But it seemed my subconscious didn’t want to cooperate.

In this dream I had done something terrible. I’d catastrophically injured someone I knew. I wasn’t entirely clear how I’d done it, but I knew it was my fault by the overwhelming sense of guilt sitting like a pool of frozen lead in my stomach. I looked at the body, lying on a slab. Its eyes were ripped out leaving raw and bloody sockets that stared upwards, accusingly. Where its stomach should have been there was just a gaping, black cavity with pieces of torn skin fringing the edges. Its legs and feet were crushed, the bones splintered and flattened into unnatural shapes. I had a sudden flashback of the woman, it had been a woman, someone I’d known and even liked once, walking with me and having a conversation. I’d been angry with her about something and set off this dreadful chain of events in a fit of revenge. But at this point she was apologising to me and I was realising with dreadful, sinking horror that it was too late. I couldn’t stop the thing. She was going to die and it was my fault. My. Fault.

I woke up suddenly, actually feeling an enormous sense of relief. I was grateful to get out of bed and into a warm shower, reassuring myself that none of it had really happened and that the residual guilt hanging over me was in fact unwarranted.

You’d think after two sets of nightmares I might have spotted a pattern, but you know how it is, dreams – even horrible ones – fade like streaks of water on a hot pavement. Before you know it, you can barely remember even the scantiest of details. I got on with my every-day activities and forgot all about it.

Until last night, that is.

I was running again, in some sort of half familiar, half unfamiliar landscape. The sky was dark red and fiery, swirling with ominous clouds. The air tasted of sulphur and metal. I was trying to get away, trying to escape from some unknown horror, but my legs felt as though they were turning to concrete and wouldn’t respond to any command other than a slow walk. I couldn’t pull air into my lungs to scream. I stumbled against a wall and watched as people ran past me, litter and dust kicked up in their wake. I fell to the ground and rolled on my back, trying to crawl crab-like on my feet and hands. Something was hidden in the dark, something gruesome and noxious. In a blind panic I stumbled onwards, unable to stop staring into the blackness in front of me. My eyes fell to my left foot, which was burning cold, hot and numb all the same time. I stared in horror as shiny, black blot appeared on my skin. It spread like some hideous malignant tumour, moving across my foot, up my ankle, my leg, knee, down the other leg...

In front of me something moved. Slowly I looked up. It was there. A giant, revolting slug. Its back was shiny and pitted. Its sides were covered in what looked like scales, the blackness paling to gold closer to the ground where there was a slithering and shifting black valance. The base of its foot was lined like an old, wrinkled finger, and from its head protruded four tentacles, each with small sphere at the end, extending and contracting into its repulsive, fat body. Behind it there was a think trail of silver mucus, parts of it shining red in the reflected light of the fiery sky.

Repulsion and fear surged through me. I couldn’t move, but I wanted to scream and scream and scream until I ran out of sound. I wanted to move my eyes away, or even just shut them, to stop looking at it, but I couldn’t even do that. I was forced to stare into the vile, glistening surface.

The slug extended its upper two tentacles and, for want of a better word, looked at me.

And it said, “you killed one of us, and for this you will die.”

And then...

....

... and then...

…. I started shaking.

But, I realised, not with fear. I was laughing. Laughing so hard my whole body was shaking.

“For this I will die? What kind of ridiculous cliché is that? And really, a giant talking slug?” I spluttered, pulling myself to my feet, my paralysis disappearing as quickly as it had arrived, the black blotches fading from my skin. I looked at the slug. It wasn’t scary at all. It was just a big, stupid slug. As I looked at it, it seemed to shrink. The sky above cleared, patches of blue appearing in the distance. Shafts of sunlight peeked through the clouds.

I thought I heard the slug make a sound, a kind of ‘noooooo’ sound, but I wasn’t sure. The harder I stared at it and the more I laughed, the faster it shrank until it was barely bigger than a normal slug. I reached down and picked it up between my thumb and forefinger still, I will admit, shuddering a little bit at the cold, slimy softness of it, and threw it as hard as I possibly could into the distance.

And then I woke up, feeling just fine.

Some things just aren’t scary when you look them in the face.