Page 9 of Lime Gelatin and Other Monsters
“Could have just said so. Didn’t have to break the car.”
Vikash didn’t respond to that and though his expression hadn’t changed, something in the set of his shoulders broadcasted unhappiness. He was quiet until they were putting the jack into the trunk and wiping the grease off. “It shouldn’t have been so strong. The…reaction. I wasn’t even that annoyed. Maybe the glove compartment should have popped open, but a tire shouldn’t have exploded.”
“You do feel it. You just can’t control it.”
Vikash nodded. “It felt strange today. Almost a buzz, like feedback on an amplifier.”
“Maybe it’s me.” Kyle leaped to the obvious conclusion.
“Then you’d be making bad things happen, right? If you absorbed my…the thing I do.”
“Could be that it’s different with you.” Kyle cleared his throat and his face heated as soon as he realized how that sounded.
The statue smile returned and Kyle felt absurdly glad to see it. “Guess I just can’t get angry around you,” Vikash said as he closed up the trunk. “Could be dangerous.”
“Yeah. Dangerous.” Those intense blue eyes snagged Kyle for a breathless moment and he hoped he wasn’t as red as he felt.No. Just no. You’re not that desperate and you’re not that lonely. Not with your partner. He’s got to be straight. Probably married. You’ll meet the wife someday. We’ll all be good friends.“I’m sorry I called you a liar.”
“Well, I’m sorry my brain blew up a tire, so we’re even.”
****
By the time they had talked to both of the people who had found the bodies, Kyle was feeling the frustration he often did at the beginning of a case. Neither one could tell them anything they didn’t already know. Every piece of the puzzle so far was a dead end. He gripped the steering wheel tightly enough to make it creak, the scars on the backs of his hands pulling as he tried to get his brain to cough up some brilliant stratagem.
“What happened to your hands?”
“Huh? Oh.” Kyle startled and stared at the burn scars even though every ridge and shiny pucker was far too familiar by now. Lots of physical therapy, getting those hands working again. “I guess you wouldn’t know the story since you weren’t in the city when it happened. Lime Gelatin monster?”
Vikash’s forehead actually crinkled in the most expressive response Kyle had yet to see. “Can’t say it’s familiar.”
“They tried to keep it quiet, but you know department gossip.” Kyle gave himself time for a deep breath, determined to keep the story short. “We got a call about some kind of ooze that was eating people’s pets. Okay, I thought. Chemical spill. Until Mike and I actually got to the alley—”
“Your partner?” Those bright blue eyes were fixed on him intently and Kyle found it unnerving to have all of Vikash’s attention.
“Um, yeah. Mike Powell. One of the better partners I had. Anyway, we got there and it wasn’t a spill, it was this amoeba-like thing moving around back there, changing shape, and crawling over shit. It was…big. Maybe the size of a cow or thereabouts. And it’d just sucked in a cat. Poor kitty. We could see it, ’cause the thing was this clear green, like lime Jell-O. And the cat was stuck in there and, ah, disintegrating. Slowly.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, really was. Something out of a bad horror movie. I don’t know what Mike thought he was gonna do, but he rushed in there, maybe thinking he could contain it or maybe he wanted to save the cat. But the lime Jell-O reaches out this…arm—”
“Pseudopod?”
“Thingand gets hold of his foot.” Kyle had to stop for another breath and to slam on the brakes to avoid running into the asshole in front of him who had spotted an empty parking space. “Turn signal, jackass! Anyway, Mike starts screaming, just unholy, bloodcurdling screams. He’s on the ground. I’m seeing my partner getting sucked into this monster, and I guess my brain turned off, too.”
“You tried to get his foot out.”
Kyle swallowed hard, flexing his fingers at the phantom pain the memory induced. “Like the shit for brains that I am, I tried to get his foot out. The slime had already eaten through Mike’s boot. I grabbed his ankle, thinking I could just yank him free. The pseudo thingy just reached around and swallowed my hands, too. And holy fuck, it hurt. Spilled acid on your skin in chemistry class hurt, except, like super acid.”
Vikash spoke into the fraught silence, softly encouraging. “But it didn’t eat you.”
“No. This weird thing happened. It still burned, but the monster started to get smaller. And I started to feel nauseous. I got really hot. It felt like my insides were burning. Then it hit me. I was absorbing the Jell-O monster, not the other way around. Now I was screaming, too, completely freaked, right? And Mike’s screaming. And the people gawking from the end of the alley are screaming.”
“Understandable.”
“Ha. Thanks.” Kyle shook his head, trying for some distance from the memory. “It couldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes. My body absorbed the damn thing. Like Kirby. My hands were burned all to hell. Mike had lost part of his foot. And I was sick for days. Puking up this acidy gunk.”
“Thank you for the visual.”
“No problem. That’s how I got transferred. Internal Affairs sent these special ‘doctors’ to talk to me, run some tests, and when they discharged me from the hospital, the captain tells me I’m going to the 77th.”
