I Bought My Son a Bucket of Slime for Christmas, and Now I Need Some Questions Answered

As someone who’s been on social media regularly over the past year, I have one question to start off:

How the hell did slime become so popular, anyway?

My kid introduced me to Instagram last year, and I’ll be the first to admit I was addicted pretty much immediately. It was basically the only way we could communicate after the divorce, which I won’t go into.

But during April or May at some point, the whole app just blew up with this new trend. Every other post he liked (his name was Brandon) was of some teenage girl pouring Borax and glue in a bowl and sticking her hands in it. I couldn’t get away from it.

His tenth birthday was in August and he wanted a slime party. From the pictures, it looked like he was having more fun with the stuff than with his entire stock of presents. That LEGO set was expensive as shit.

Then in October he asked me to drive him to his friend’s house for Halloween. Lo and behold, it was a slime party. (Apparently green counts as spooky.) The whole time I was just hugging the wall making small talk with the other parents, trying not to let the stuff splash on my jacket as the brats went to town.

And it’s not like I haven’t tried it myself. Hell, whenever I had custody, it was all he wanted to do. It was costing me a fortune in Elmer’s. It’s not fun. It’s not therapeutic. It’s just gross. Plus, if you get it wrong, which is almost certain, you can only keep adding until the ingredient ratios are right, and every time you end up with a ruined tablecloth and a bowl of useless slop that goes moldy in a week.

I just didn’t understand it. All that mattered was it kept him happy.

But then the pay cuts at my job came, and the price of glue went up before the holidays. I was sacrificing two days’ worth of meals a week for an hours’ worth of “fun.” It was eating me out of house and home.

So this year was my year, and I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

I waited until a few days before Christmas so that all the stuff would be on clearance. I drove to the Walmart near me and went straight to the slime section. Sure enough, the sign said it was 70% off.

But then I realized there was a problem- the shelves were empty. Even the crappy store-brand supply was sucked dry.

Luckily, I happened to notice a broken piece of plastic underneath the display. I lifted the shelf away and pumped my fist as I pulled out a dust-covered plastic bucket of pre-made slime.

I took one look at it and knew why it had been there for so long. The flimsy blue handle had broken off and become covered in the god-knows-what that was pooled on the floor. The walls were slightly see-through, so I could tell it was a pale whitish yellow, which immediately gave me spoiled milk vibes. On top of that, there was the label. Almost all of it had been torn off, leaving that sticker residue like you get when you try to peel off a postage stamp. The logo of whatever company had made the stuff was obscured, but the name of the product was just about visible: Construct-o-Mold! Extra-Gooey Refractive Slime. The font was some cheap Comic Sans variant- the whole thing looked like a Play-Doh ripoff.

Was I put off? Yeah. Could I afford to care? No.

I tucked my hands into my sleeves and carried it to the self-checkout lane. $5.49- a ripoff indeed. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, I guess.

My ex dropped Brandon off on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, he didn’t sleep at all. I knew he was playing phone games in bed (which that whore says I shouldn’t let him do), but I was just happy he was staying quiet.

On Christmas day, I literally could not keep him contained. He was practically pissing himself when I walked him into the living room and gave him the whole “Look, Santa’s been here!” schtick. He went right to the slime first. I’d wiped it off with a towel and chiseled the label off entirely so that it would look somewhat presentable when I wrapped it. Luckily, he bought it. I’ll admit, I was pretty satisfied with myself when I saw the smile on his face. After opening the rest of his gifts (I’d ditched the LEGOs and bought him some Laser Pegs and a Nerf gun), he dragged me over to the kitchen table to open up the slime.

As soon as the lid popped off, the scent of chemicals flooded the room. I was used to it by that point, but something was off. There was a smell mixed in that, once again, reminded me of spoiled milk. I realized I probably shouldn’t have tossed the receipt on my way out of the store in case it turned out to be full of mold or something.

Brandon, however, couldn’t care less. He dunked his fingers in that shit the moment it had room to breathe. For the first few seconds he was laughing and making fart sounds with his mouth as he wiggled around under the surface.

Then he tried to pull his hands out.

I was scrolling through my phone when I heard him call in a soft, nervous voice.

“Dad? I feel weird.”

I looked up. Brandon was dangling his hands about a foot over the bucket, watching as the white goo dripped back into its container.

“What do you mean, ‘weird’?” I asked. “Do I need to call Poison Contr--”

I froze.

As the slime oozed back into position, it should have left Brandon’s fingers exposed. Dribbling away, the knuckles came into view. But that was all that was there- knuckles. More and more of them, stretching down into the bucket, like someone had used a Photoshop tool to copy and paste the same section of finger over and over.

“What the fuck?” I blurted.

Brandon’s expression was fearful now. Desperately, he dipped his hands back into the bucket up to his wrists, and tried again.

This time, instead of fingers, the entire hand was missing. The bit of arm that came out was just one continuous wrist, extending out to his forearm.

“Dad, help me!” he shrieked.

I ran to his side and grabbed his shoulders, pulling him away from the bucket. “What the fuck?! What the fuck?!” I started screaming. As we pulled, the flesh just stretched on and on, replicating the same few inches over and over. We backed against the wall in terror as we watched the endless arm dangle from Brandon’s tired elbows.

If we kept pulling, it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

“We need to go back in!” I shouted. Brandon was in tears.

“Dad, please, no!” he cried. I pushed him towards the bucket of Satan’s sperm, watching the limb retreat into the ooze, expecting it to stop as it touched the bottom. But somehow, it just kept sinking, deeper and deeper.

I kept going until he was at his wrists once again.

“Stay here!” I shouted, releasing his shoulders.

“Please, Dad, stay here with me!” he sobbed, but I was already sprinting to the garage. I ripped open the door and pulled my toolbox off of its shelf, pausing to find my blowtorch.

What in the holy hell was this shit?

I didn’t have time to think further on the question, though. I ran back inside and turned to the living room entrance.

I almost dropped the blowtorch when I saw Brandon.

He’d evidently tried to reach in further with his left arm, up to his shoulder. On the other side of the room, he was cowering in the corner, wriggling an elongated elbow on one side and what appeared to be a strand of linking shoulder blades on the other.

He turned his head to look at me.

“Help me,” he pleaded softly.

I approached the bucket and held the blowtorch over it, away from Brandon’s malformed limbs.

“Burn, you fuck!”

I squeezed the trigger.

Instantly, the hideously overgrown limbs shot forward. Brandon flew into the air like a whip, tumbling across the table in a matter of seconds to meet the bucket.

Before I could react, the slime rose out of its container and dragged the stem of flesh, along with the boy attached to it, into itself, splashing back inside.

What else could I do? I dropped the burner and ran for my life.

It took a little while to muster up the courage to go back in after that. I still don’t know what that slime is, or whose bright idea it was to put it inside that bucket and sell it.

It’s in the freezer right now. I slammed the lid on and backed off. I had to get a pair of garden gloves from the garage to carry the damn thing. Taped the door shut so it can’t get out even if it wants to. But at the moment I’m at a loss.

This is where I need your help, guys.

What the fuck do I do now? Call the police and tell them a bucket of slime ate my kid? Like they’ll believe that. Hell, maybe I should call in the CIA. Or the army. God knows what this stuff is capable of.

But more importantly, what the fuck am I going to tell my ex?