THE KING OF THE SLUGS WILL GET YA!

Schlimm was a horrible kid.

From the off he was soured; a punch thrown in a skin bag.

Like all young psychopaths he was cruel to other kids and animals.

Especially animals.

Schlimm had burnt, torn, stamped, crushed, ripped, pulled, gauged and skewered his way through the animal kingdom of his local town.

He was a biocidal maniac, an apocalypse in the verges and borders.

Schlimm had tortured larger animals like cats and dogs but he preferred to practise on smaller fayre to get full satisfaction.

Insects were his real area of expertise.

He'd started by pulling the legs off spiders. His young mate back then said the spiders would get him. Shut it you soft bastard or I'll pull your fuckin legs off he threatened.

He liked reducing those spiders. Creating useless torsos; He moved onto ripping the wings off flies and smiling as they ran across his desk flightless and scared. Next came cutting up worms with scissors and relishing the jerking of every severed slice.

He then discovered the cleaning cupboard.

"What are doing with my vim boy?" his Mother would shout.

"Nothing Mum, just cleaning my desk!" he'd lie.

"You've not got any creepy crawlies up there have you again? Be nice or the King of the slugs will get ya Schlimm!" Mum warned thinking that her son was simply interested in ant farms and wormeries for perfectly normal reasons.

But his reasons were far from normal and his delight in causing distress to insects knew no limits.

His pies-de-resistance was what he did to snails.

He'd got the idea from his Grandad gardening.

"What you doing Grandad?" he said hovering like a stuck moth.

"Setting a beer trap" replied the old man "to kill snails. They're eating my damn begonias!"

The thought of snails drowning in drink fascinated Schlimm and he hit on an idea that sent frissons of pleasure up and down his spine.

"The king of the slugs will get ya Gramps!" he shouted to his Grandad as he left the garden.

The idea was simple enough. He'd set up a stack of beer traps using glasses. A pyramid it said. He'd seen it in one of his Mum's glossies. A champagne fountain or something. It was the summer holidays too. Time to celebrate!

But it wouldn't be champagne he used.  Too dear. For toffs that. It'd be coke, Coca cola. Lots and lots of the burpy stuff. Yes, He'd pour and pour until each glass was full an' overflowing.

There'd be a snail in each one. A soft pearl.

He did it that night in the shed and went to bed more satisfied than he'd ever been before. The snails had fizzed and bubbled like chickens in little ovens. It was great! One got away but what the hell. Slimeball!

He must have melted two hundred snails and slugs that summer before the snails ran out in the area. He'd dissolved them all in coke. It's the real thing after all. He'd killed the lot. 

Drawn to the sickly gloop in the final glass he put it to his lips and ...... drank!

He left the shed licking his lips and eventually went back to school at summer's end. Year eleven.

He'd been thinking about girls at night in his room, his hands covered in slime. He was horny. Horny and uncontrollably evil.

Maybe it was time to move up the ladder. Bump off bigger stuff than dogs. Like a girl maybe! Yes!

She was standing by the lockers like an anemone staring at him. A young lady of shining marble. A girl with glossy long hair. A girl he could drip feed coca cola to alright. And worse!

"You new?" Schlimm asked.

"Yes. Just arrived in town," she replied in a silky, echoey, wet voice.

Schlimm was smitten and began planning her demise almost immediately. He would need the best plan ever. A plan that required many night's hard deliberation.

"You wanna come back to my parent's trailer?" she asked him one day after school. "We could go over cell division for tomorrow's exam."

Schlimm was thrown by this offer. He hadn't yet perfected his plan for her and here she was - asking him on a date!

He went along for ideas. Maybe something in her room might inspire him to give her the sticky end she deserved.

"We live in a trailer park just off the heath. You can ride on the back. I'm used to having something on it," she explained getting on her pushbike.

They arrived at a vast field full of caravans. In the middle was an enormous clubhouse. The vans and the house were all strangely domed and coloured a strange dull grey-silver-blue.

Schlimm knew he couldn't murder her just yet. Not on her home turf. He would have to wait. In the meantime he would plan the method of execution and felt excited just imagining her sloppy end.

"Let's go to the clubhouse. There's a big turn on," she explained dragging Schlimm along a trail, which was covered in an odd silver scum as if snot had been sprayed along it.

They walked in and the place was dark. There was an unpleasant odour and the space was filled with a sort of squelchy background noise. Schlimm imagined it to be the sound she would make as he did what he needed to her.

At the centre of the huge room he could make out the silhouette of a towering tiered structure in the gloom.

"The light's coming on or what?" he asked his new friend in an irritated tone.

Suddenly the switches were thrown and the place was flooded with light. Schlimm had to close his eyes for a second but when he opened them he saw a sight which he simply could not fathom.

Before him was a tower of huge champagne glasses all stacked up like a pyramid. Just like the one he'd made in the shed. But these glasses were massive, as big as doors and inside each one was a thing. A moving thing.

Schlimm stared at the things and tried to work out what the hell they were when the nearest one to him moved enough to look straight at him.

It was his Dad for God's sake! His Dad was stuffed into a giant glass, naked and trussed like a cherry on the end of a long stick and staring straight at him!

In a state of increasing shock he stared at the other cherries and realised with mind-crunching horror that they were all his family: his Mum, his sisters, his Grandparents and .... noooooooooooooooo!

..... at the very peak of the stack, in the top glass was a figure smaller than the rest, a figure small enough to be a ..... it was his baby brother!

Schlimm let out a blood-curdling scream all his mind reeled to maintain a grip on sanity. Even he could not comprehend the contraption before him, a pyramid of his relatives.

He continued to scream as all around him movement began in the shadows as things started to slither towards him.

His new girlfriend glared at him, mucus dribbling from her widening toothless mouth.

"How do you like our handiwork Schlimm? We call it the family tree. Its your family tree really. A champagne fountain made specially for us. We're sooooooooo thirsty" she said just as her back bent and a monstrous shell erupted from under her shirt.

"Yes, it'll be a family fountain to be proud of, for grand guzzling and one fit for a .....King!" the shell girl hissed through thickened lips as her eyes began to stalk.

The entire company of things turned with a slithering sound to face a colossal snail sliding towards Schlimm.

"You really shouldn't have dissolved my family .... boy" hissed the giant as he towered over him. "Its only fair that I ... dissolve yours!"

The boy was held fast by two snails as the King of their kind muscled its way up the wall and positioned itself above the uppermost glass. Clinging to the ceiling it began to rub and squeal and shudder and enormous quantities of thick slime started to pour into the glasses, filling one, then the others and then the others in a Niagara of snail saliva.

Schlimm saw with horror that each of his family members were bubbling and sizzling in the viscous stuff, writhing in agony and screaming silently into the gloop as the stuff filled their mouths and slowly began to dissolve them.

The boy was lost in a twisted world even he could never have conjured and he shrieked out at the top of his lungs "I'm soooooooooorry!"

"Too late murderer!" whispered the shell girl and Schlimm was dragged by strong probosces toward an opening at the base of the fountain where a long pipe dangled. On his back, he was held flat and the pipe was cruelly inserted into his mouth.

Schlimm now had a view of everything that was falling out of the glasses overflowing above him, gurgling down the flutes and pouring into a wide funnel at the bottom, a funnel to which was attached ..... the long pipe now stuffed in his mouth! The irony of it, his own lethal idea was going to kill him too.

When the slime entered Schlimm's throat he screamed once again. The acidic fluid burnt his insides and the pain was completely unbearable. His body began to convulse violently and when the first holes began to appear on his skin as the snail slime dissolved him he knew that death was near, a death he now craved as the agony of being liquefied was more than his sanity could withstand.

His final sight was of a wet scrum of snails and slugs gliding over the slime fountain above and slurping up all his melted family members. Within the glasses he could see a little hand twitching and his Gramp's set of false teeth swirling round the thick red and pink ooze as if they'd been through a blender.

A huge moist tentacle slapped upon his face and began to drink his cheek juices. The girl-snail still had her face and she smiled at Schlimm as she drank voraciously. 

"Not so fuckin' clever now are we you murderous human scum!" she drooled as the one that had got away gargled his bubbling scalp and brains.

The king of the slugs just got ya!