@ScaryStoriesDay3
Day 3: Goop/Slime
Username + ID: Friendlyseal + 1079948
Drat Storage Thread/Website: Here!Drat: Orion but this story is about a drat called Cracker
My Story:It was a crisp autumn day, October the 31st to be exact. The drats were relieved that the hot summer nights were finally behind them. It had been the hottest summer of the year after all and Cracker wasn’t a fan of the sweltering heat.
The excitement of Halloween was contagious and the drats were looking forward to some apple bobbing at the nearby carnival. This was a favorite activity among young drats, a simple pleasure - dunking your head into a barrel of cold water in an attempt to grab juicy apples with your mouth. The possibility of a prize at the end was just a bonus.
The air at the carnival was saturated with the smell of fallen leaves and baked pastries. An unusually delightful combination. Flickering lights and ominous smoke from the haunted house ahead made the group giddy with excitement. Drats loved a good fright on Halloween. They’d go there next, they figured.
The group first made their way to the apple bobbing booth. They found themselves feeling an unexplained sense of unease as they approached but decided that this was part of the spooky fun. The vendor was friendly enough but Cracker felt a little tense.
“Step right up and win a prize,” the vendor chortled. “Just one apple for a grand surprise”. He motioned towards the towering prize shelf with his translucent wings. Enormous gelatinous drats, practically life sized, covered in sugar, sat on the shelves. They had never seen gummies this big before! Each one had an expression of fright on their gelatinous face, perfectly themed for the spooky season.
The rules seemed too good to be true. Only one apple for a gummy that size? “That’s easy!” Cracker thought to himself. “Even if only one of us wins…”, he said, turning to the others with a grin “we could share the prize and there would be enough for us all!” The gang clapped their paws in delight at this brilliant plan. “I’ll start!” Cracker volunteered and hunched over the barrel, examining the contents.
He noticed then that this was no ordinary apple bobbing game. Instead of water, the barrel was filled with what appeared to be an abyss of black, oozing slime.
“What is this stuff?” Cracker stammered, his voice suddenly mousey and unsure. The vendor's eyes gleamed with devilish delight and a sinister grin stretched across his face as he replied. "A special twist, my friend.”
Cracker hesitated before leaning closer to the surface of the barrel. He could smell the goopy substance now - sulfuric and putrid. A gag clawed its way up his throat but his friends' cheers of encouragement in the background urged him to swallow past and continue on. With one final breath of air, he submerged his head beneath the slimy surface.
As soon as his face made contact with the slime, Cracker’s heart began to race and he felt panic overtake him. He blindly and frantically searched for apples with his trembling snout - swish, swish, swish. Slime clung to his face, his whiskers, his mouth, constricting his breath with every passing second. With each attempt to grab an apple, Cracker felt himself being pulled further into the viscous depths of the barrel.
Miraculously, his mouth finally made contact with fruit and he wasted no time in closing his jaws tightly around it. He yanked back with all of his strength, determined to free himself from the treacherous slime. Relief washed over him as he re-surfaced.
“You win!!!” the vendor boomed. Cracker’s face lit up in victory! It wasn’t that bad actually. He reached over to grab the apple from his mouth but found himself unable to move. His body felt different - wobbly, sticky?
“Just one apple for a grand surprise” he heard the vendor bellow. You’ve already said that, Cracker thought to himself, exasperated.
He scanned the crowd for his friends but they were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a new group of drats stood before him, wide eyed and curious. “That is one big gummy!” they marveled, smiling at him.