It should have tipped me off sooner, no longer hearing the beeps dominating my life for the last six months. No life support, no oxygen tubes, no hums of machines keeping me alive. And no pain?
*glglglg*
I tried to yawn, to stretch, to feel around, to open my eyes but nothing happened. I couldn’t move my arms or open my eyes!
*purupurupuru!*
Calm down, I told myself, taking stock of my situation. I could hear and feel and move a little, though moving felt abstract and alien. The key to survival is knowledge.
I listened. A small breeze rustled through lots of foliage, probably trees. Insects of all kinds buzzed and chirped and cicada-clacked around me. Birds and animals moved and flapped and chirped and growled. Nearby, in no clear direction, I could make out a waterfall or fast moving river. Something hissed next to me before shuffling off into the brush. The heat of the sun pushed me to realize it was sweltering, the humidity like a steam sauna with hot mist sprayers.
Welcome to the jungle.
I groaned mentally. I am going to have that song stuck in my head for at least a week.
What is wrong with my body? The rocks and dirt poking into skin informed me I wasn’t wearing any clothing. The oppressive humidity drenched me like a fire hose; yet, after months of hospital, I relished my elation and sense of freedom. My arms and legs didn’t feel numb, just missing. Nothing made any sense.
Part of me was telling the rest of me I should panic. In my mind I seated myself at a large round table, a circular string of halo lights hovering overhead in the large and mostly dark room. One wall shows a map of Earth with blinking lights, everything in black and white because “why not go full Kubrick?”
“Ms. President, there are one or two points I’d like to make, if I may?”
Guess I better stop worrying and love the psychosis. I nod to myself dressed up like a US general, my other self also sporting the short hair of George C. Scott’s Turgidson. I almost felt my head to see if I was bald but reasoned I can be myself here, no need to take this to extremes.
“One, as far as we can reasonably ascertain, the last place we were in was our room at the VA in DC.” I looked around the table and saw the other members seated were other versions of me, dressed in suits or military dress. “Two, our father is currently a colonel in the Marines and aide to the Secretary of War, meaning we have MPs standing outside our door at all times. Three,” I held up my hand, waving it vaguely for emphasis, “we have seen first-hand what a fanatical terrorist group is willing to do, is capable of doing, to the families of combatants.”
And I did know, memory briefly flashing to the butchered remains of a six year old girl, her pieces neatly organized on a wooden table soaked in blood, her eyeless face streaked in dried tears. I pushed it away, going back to the war room.
“It doesn’t add up, General” I say, looking around the room and getting various looks of agreement or dissent. “If we are a hostage, where are our captors? If the terrorists are done with us, why are we alive? If we are a mutilated example, why is there no pain? If we have been rescued, why are we in a place clearly not DC?”
“There is no other explanation!” the General shouted.
“We could be dead,” another at the table interjected, dressed like my pastor in that dated purple sports coat he liked to wear. “Any moment now we could hear a choir of angels.”
“Or the screams of the damned,” a me with glasses and decidedly cynical attitude mumbled.
“Or--” yet another me spoke up. No one sat next to her, as if they wanted to distance themselves from my…inclinations. She was quickly cut off.
“You shut your whore mouth!” General Me shouted as she got up from the table and thrust an accusatory finger towards the solitary me. “We are trying to have a rational discussion here!”
“What about any of this is rational?” the solitary me asked, folding her arms under breasts decidedly larger than I was used to. She had elven ears and dark blue skin and wore armor with as much coverage as my government-run insurance. “How else do you explain going from cancer and pain and a hospital to no pain, no hospital and jungle?”
“Terrorists!”
Soon the whole table was shouting and I’d had enough. While daydreaming I’d been busy, testing myself as much as I could. I found I could roll around and had moved a few feet along the forest floor. It didn’t feel right, like I was smaller or had turned into a ball of some sort.
Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.
I’m not insane, at least I don’t think I am. Two years since I was diagnosed, in and out of the VA until six months ago when I became bedridden. Unable to do much more than lay down and drift around in my head, sometimes catching snippets of scenes from old movies I liked watching. Sometimes I’d be awake enough to see my father in his Service uniform, praying over me or simply looking at my face with the saddest of smiles. I’d asked one of the corporals and he’d told me dad had spent every waking moment he could get away from Mad Dog to be near me.
With nothing to do and an unfortunate abundance of imagination, these head games were how I kept the boredom of dying at bay. I was in an impossible situation with impossible problems before me and my mind fractured over the typical response of panic and despair. How can someone who has been dead be scared?
*purupuru purupuru*
I tried speaking again but it sounded like bubbles whistling through oil. I tried moving and found I could hop around a bit with effort. I paused, a sense of dread falling over me.
Maybe I knew, deep down already. Maybe the Blue Box had come and I couldn't see it. Maybe I was projecting something about missing my mother and Freud was standing behind me smoking a cigar. Or…
No… I thought, the theme from Dragon Quest starting to play in my head.
“I’m a slime?!”
Frustratingly, it came out as *purupururu!*
—————
There was so much I wanted to do, so much I wanted to test and experience, but my training from the Army Corps of Engineers and my survivalist father forced priorities down my geek girl throat.
Let’s go full Sherlock, I thought, calming my rising agitation and hoping I wasn’t about to be killed by some ambitious adventurer. If I actually am dealing with the impossible, I can’t waste time trying to find out the why or what or any other liberal arts garbage. Needs before wants. Whether I was a slime or just paraplegic and hallucinating didn’t matter. Until I could conclusively know differently, I would progress on the assumption I was a slime because the evidence leaned that way and I had zero other workable theories.
Which brings me to problem one: safety. Normally, the first step to safety is a secure, defensible and hidden shelter. I had no idea how hostile the local fauna and flora were, what kind of weather I should expect or prepare for. It was Columbia summer hot right now, but will it become Siberian winter cold tonight? I didn't know.
However, a shelter and security would have to take second place. If I could not find a way to see or accurately assess my environment, building a hut would not save me. I needed eyes.
*blp…blp…blp*
Even though I had no desire to be eaten by the hissing thing, I remember it had made a rustling sound as it went into some foliage. I did my best to hop in the direction of plants and move out of what was an exposed position if I was getting so much direct sunlight. Each hop was nerve wracking, wishing I had feet or hands to feel where I was going instead of making each move like I was taking a leap from the lion’s head to prove my worth!
Three hops in the stone and dirt turned to course dirt, more hops into grass with tree roots. Finally, I felt the shade of something overhead and was brushing past leaves with each bounce. While the hopping didn’t feel too tiring, it did emphasize I was getting hungry and thirsty.
Great, I wanted to mutter out loud, what does Jello eat? Rolling along some roots under me, I put myself at the base of a large tree and tried to emit a stealthy aura.
For the first time in my isekai life, I tried to feel out my body. I might too quickly accept this was a new body on a new world, but until I could prove otherwise, this was my “impossible however improbable” conclusion. With a bit of effort I found I could flatten myself, bending and molding into different shapes. Incredibly hard to describe, the closest I can think of is when you are bored and shirtless and you start bloating or rippling your tummy like its some kind of ocean, only with your whole body. Honestly, I think I spent hours at this because the air cooled and I inferred it was dusk or twilight now.
I was determined, though, and my shape changing had two goals. First, I created an amoeba arm I could stretch out and feel around with. It helped me realize the tree had some space underneath its exposed root system and was a much better place to hide in. I shivered a bit when I squeezed under the roots and plopped onto cold mud. The second goal was trying to mold parts of my body into something resembling an eye.
*puu…puu…*
Tired, starving and apparently breathing hard, I think I almost had it. Creating a bubble by folding part of me over myself, I lined the edges of this bubble with tiny feelers. I remembered from college biology how the eye uses rods and cones to translate light into something humans can visualize. While this went against all the science I had in me - my body obviously lacking an occipital cortex - the more I worked on this the more I discovered my world of darkness was starting to gain shapes of gray. Running with the maxim If It Works, I kept playing with my bubble until I realized I could see.
Not well. Everything was in stark black and white without gradation and very, very blurry, but it was something. Using my arm technique, I hooked a root and crawled out of my hole to get a look around. Either it was nighttime or I still needed to tweak my eye, there wasn’t much to look at. Some grass, some bushes with frond-like leaves and lots of tall and gnarly trees. Also, I must've used a warp whistle to Giant Land because everything looked huge.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Skeee!!”
PAIN I was hoping I could forget shot through me like IED shrapnel, sudden and sharp and burning. Lurching away from the tree with a sickening schlep and hopping as fast as I could, I spun my bubble eye around and got a face full of nightmare.
Crawling down from the tree was the body of spider and the head of a butterfly stuck on top of chitinous neck, its curly proboscis dripping bits of me. Not a fat or bulbous body like an orb weaver, more elongated with segmented plates like a centipede. I had a sinking feeling this was the natural predator of the slime species. It was also about twice my size if I and crawling quickly towards me.
“Skee skee!!”
It made that high pitched screeching whenever it shot out its proboscis, maybe some kind of natural pneumatics, but I was desperately stifling my curiosity as I hopped around in erratic directions to avoid being slurped. I held no illusions of fighting this thing, it might as well have been a grizzly fighting a toddler. I made for the sounds of water. With legs like it had I doubted I could out climb it, but maybe I could out swim it.
Who am I supposed to be, Michael Phelps? I thought, sounds of river coming near a stone outcropping I deduced was my spawning point, the butterspider close behind.
You got a better idea, brain? I asked, making the final hop over the edge of the rocks and felt the insect monster’s hairy proboscis brush against me. I will be happy to hear any…
I’ve made a huge mistake.
There was a river. About two hundred feet down. Oh joy.
Panicked, starving, leaking and possibly poisoned, dad managed to save my life.
“Remember, Vanna, the more you spread out the slower you’ll fall.” He then slapped my back and pushed his twelve year old daughter out of the C-130’s bay doors.
Flattening my body as much as it could go, I kept shifting my weight to keep parachute-shaped and floating down instead of spinning. I couldn’t keep my eye’s shape, so everything went dark and all I had was the roar of rushing air to hear. Too soon, I hit water and the shock knocked me out.
—————
“Graduates, alumni, professors and administrators of BAC, it is my singular pleasure and privilege to speak to you all today.” The man speaking may have been only fifty years old, but his olive skin was rugged and tanned while his short-cropped curly hair was still mostly black. His prominent nose had been broken numerous times on a long face held up with a strong jaw. He was attired to the nines in sharply pressed Marine Blue White Dress - including hat and saber. However, it was his eyes shining with unshed happiness that stood out on his stern features.
“Niceties out of the way, I want to take a moment to talk about the singular greatest disappointment in my life: my daughter.” He said this with a wide smile and the seated students let out a light laugh. “Rather than join my beloved Corps - the United States Marine Corps - and follow the example I and her late mother set, she up and joined the Army.” He said it with mild derision but he was still smiling, which got a bigger laugh.
“Honorably discharged Second Lieutenant, platoon leader of a combat engineering element for two tours in Iraq, recipient of the Purple Heart for throwing herself on an IED and saving a squad of six soldiers, Vanna Hadassah Milton recovered from her wounds and now joins the rest of you graduates cum laude with a Bachelors of Architecture.”
“A disappointment,” he paused, looking directly at me on the front row, “because she decided she wasn’t going to follow in my footsteps; instead, becoming better that I could ever hope for.”
I woke up slowly, my father’s face fading as I took in what I could. I felt sand under me yet was mostly covered in water, gentle waves lapping against me. While I could hear the river, it wasn’t loud, thinking I’d gone far downstream to a calmer portion. Still hungry, still felt the burning injury from the bug, I was exhausted.
Come on, time to woman up, I thought, rolling as much as I slowly could in the sand. You gonna let an overgrown mosquito and some small creek do you in?
I didn’t feel thirsty anymore, in fact I felt bloated: probably osmosis. Hunger, though, started to sharply sink its teeth into my gelly body. Forming my eye, I was happy to discover it took only a moment as if instinctual remembering what I had crafted. I was on a small bank at the bottom of a gentle, rocky slope leading to jungle. What caught my eye was an open patch of dirt near the sand where I clearly spotted worms wriggling in and out of the damp earth. If I had a mouth it would be watering.
I rolled and lightly hopped, stomping on top of the first cluster and finding eating to be easy. The outer film of my body opened up and pushed the worms in again and again. Thrashing inside of me I clenched tight to keep my food in me, but in almost no time I felt the fizz and sizzle reminding me of strong cola. Then they were gone and I felt like I'd finished a Jamba Juice. I tasted a salty mucus with the light crunch and a bitter, sour flavor I did not care for. I must be severely acidic if they dissolved this quickly. All that was left were bits of dirt I easily expelled.
*purururu*
After three more clusters and as much worms as I could find I sighed in contentment. Most would have been disgusted by eating worms but I had gotten rid of my gag reflex years ago during long survival treks with just me and dad. Bugs Are Protein was the motto to live by during long nights in Guatemala.
The heat of the sun broiled me, must have been knocked out longer than I thought. It reminded me step two should be shelter because avoiding another butterspider sneaking up on me while I slept was a huge priority. I figured those Lovecrafts lived in trees and meant the forest was right out. Examining the beach I tried to see what I could use here. The slope was mostly rock and moss and the bank was sand and dirt, but I could hear something in the quiet. A dripping and…echo?
Following the noise I found a crack in the rock. Barely a few inches wide, distinct echos sounded in there. Sucking in my gut I shimmied inside and prayed I wasn’t about to find the butterspider breeding nest.
Down down to goblin town, down down to goblin town… Now I wondered if I was actually going to meet goblins. The crevice had me scraping through stone for about five feet before opening into a twisted corridor. The sides were smooth, windswept, like the slot canyons in Southern Utah and Arizona, reaching up ten and twenty feet to a stalactite riddled ceiling. There was plenty of light but my blurry eyes couldn’t track where it came from. I hopped along on wet stone and went down the snaky decent until the cave expanded into a large space after possibly an hour of bouncing.
A forest of mushrooms surrounded a pond in a room about the size of a college lecture hall. Some of the mushrooms glowed brightly - which explained the light - satisfactorily allowing me to see with my simplistic eye. I wondered if God was looking out for His little girl so far from home, I had no other explanation for the coincidence of finding such a perfect shelter in the midst of wherever I was.
Thank you.
Right, I thought, mentally clapping my hands and rolling up sleeves, time to get to work. I have shelter, water and food. Gonna climb my way up Mazlo’s pyramid.
At least, I think I have food. Hopping to a small toadstool nearby, I covered it in an arm and plucked it into me. The fizz came and went faster than with worms, a light snack easily absorbed. I tasted the meatiness commonly associated with shiitake mingled with a sweet and fruity flavor like ripe cantaloupe. If I could cry I would because even before coming to this world it had been months since I last tasted food, an IV my only sustenance. Worms don’t count. Next, I demanded chocolate.
Focus.
I might be out of immediate danger, but I needed to learn more about me and about this world. Build a stockpile of supplies, make tools and weapons, secure this location in case butterspiders aren’t the only monsters with slimes on the menu.
Going back to old memories of classes on biology, I tried adjusting the tiny tendrils in my eye, compressing them smaller and smaller and folding ridges into them. As I did, my sight slowly cleared, color filtering in. I molded the shape of the eye, adding a second concave film inside to act as a lens. My sight sharpened, becoming filled with rainbow colors as I discovered the mushrooms had reds and greens and yellows and glowed in a soft myriad. The stone walls were white marble with streaks of blue and the pond was deep and crystal clear. Another ten minutes and I had another eye with much appreciated depth perception.
Next, because I boiled with frustration being unable to talk my problems out, I got to work on a mouth, tongue and voice box. The mouth and tongue were easy, didn’t even feel unnatural as I licked the outer film of my body. It was the first time I touched myself and I felt as smooth as glass, covered in a light film of mucus. Stretching my tongue to the utmost I jabbed the burning hole the butterspider poked in me, a healing dimple. It probably had some kind of anti-slime poison slowing my ability to reform and seal.
The voice box was harder. I couldn’t remember how a voice box looked, actually, but I had played the oboe in high school and was familiar with reed vibrations between my lips. Forming the familiar double reed of an oboe behind my small mouth, I sucked in a large breath of air and stored it as a bubble lower inside me.
“eeEv…” The air escaped too quickly, I took in another breath and tried again. “Eveeriii bbuuuu…” I was moving the tongue but it wasn’t forming the sounds like I wanted. I adjusted the roof of the mouth and fattened the film around the hole to make lips and teeth shapes.
“Eeevery beff yuu taaake!” It sounded nothing like my voice, high pitched and musical instead of nuanced human speech, but I couldn’t be happier. It was hard, like juggling while doing taxes, but I believed I would eventually need to communicate so practice continued.
“Evvvery movve yuuu maaake!” I thought I might want to avoid attracting attention, lowering the volume as I hopped around the edges of my cave. “Sumting suumting I’ll bee waching you.” I am going to miss iTunes.
“Noow, tim to separraat the wooomen furom the gurls.” It was getting easier, maybe instinctual on part of being a slime or magically assisted by this world, I might never know. Whatever was letting me adapt, I couldn’t rest on my laurels. A pair of eyes and a mouth are not what set women above beasts. I needed hands and legs if I was going to do more than survive.
Forming my amoeba arm, I kept it outstretched as I worked on poking tentacle feelers out. Fingers, flexing them in and out as I kept the memory of my hands in the forefront of my mind. Flex, adjust length and thickness, unflex, add layers of film to simulate joints and tendons. Flex, unflex, flex, unflex. Hours must have gone by because I had to break for food and water twice while I worked on the intricacies and complexities of hands. During my second break I got a happy surprise when I found small white fish in the pond. They tasted like the most tender ahi sashimi.
“All I need is rice and soy sauce.” My speaking was getting better and better, even if I sounded ethereal and musical. “I guess soy sauce is made from soybeans? Might be worth the effort and experimentation if I can find soybeans.” My thoughts were wondering as I kept working on the small hand. It looked like a hand, but still didn’t move quite right, my tweaking getting more and more minute.
I also noticed I was purple shaded, I think. More violet but I could not be sure, the mushroom lights too colored to clearly determine my own. Inside the purple I saw swirls of red and brown: they were small and hard to make out so I shelved my curiosity for now. I was also leaving a thin slime on every surface I touched. This cave was quickly looking like the sewer from Ghostbusters II.
It might seem silly for a slime to work so hard to try and look human, but I think time was well spent. I knew how to do a whole bunch of things to survive, to build and make, but either I could relearn how to do all those things as the useless Wonder Twin or I could train myself to become more human.
My hand clenched into a fist, shaking towards the air as I grinned and thought I might have a chance to live. To thrive.
—————
Though she did not know, eight days had passed since Vanna Milton died and a slime was born in the jungle. It was near noonday, when the crystals above shone their brightest that out from a hidden crack in the rocks next to a river a purple blob spilled out. Splashing into the sand, with a mass nearly double than she had at her rebirth, it took only seconds to form herself into the rough shape of a purple woman.
Not the shape Vanna Milton remembered, of a short and stocky thirty-five year old Italian girl from Virginia with curly hair and a plain face. Too many hours playing video games and reading erotic fantasy novels tainted her own self image and created the caricature standing there. Lithe, molded like the mesh of a female body builder and runway model, drawn by a perverted comic book artist with impossible proportions, it was a wonder she could stand upright with those globes jiggling in front of her chest atop a waist as thin as her arms. Thick and powerful thighs held disproportionately long legs, but with a height only two feet in total.
Eyes as big as any CLAMP heroine fluttered open and flicked the residue slime out of the way to look down at her hands. Abnormally long fingers with too many joints flexing naturally as she formed the final multiple layers of film throughout her body to give it the proper form and movement. Her head was topped with thin tendrils looking like her curly hair had looked, maybe a reminder of who she had been. Finally, elf ears thrust out perpendicular from her head ala Lodoss War, the effect effort of nearly half a day for something cosmetic, but what otaku girl hasn’t wanted to be an elf?
Lastly, the final adjustments settling into place, she was both clearly naked and also anatomically correct to the last detail. Not knowing when or if she would find other life, she had prepared some considerations for modesty. Made from badly tanned skins of a green boar found nearby, she had a mini skirt and top at her feet she quickly put on, adjusting her dimensions a little so they fit snuggly. Picking up a crude basket made from reeds and a spear made from the stalk of a red plant that looked and acted like bamboo, she made her way up the slope to the jungle while singing softly to herself.
♫ Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games. ♫