The Slime Girls

(For Mel C. — “Sporty Spice” — who probably wouldnt like it anyway)

Ugliness is only skin-deep, it is said, and truly this seems to be the case. For take away our glittering scales and our sweeping, fanning fins, and our abominable stench and what are we left with? Believe me, I had occasion to find out not too long ago — and what I discovered . . . holy mackerel!

But I’d better back up here a bit, and introduce myself. My name is Isaac Waite — “Icthyic Ike” — as I was known in my radio days DJ-ing at K-FSH here in Innsmouth. But now I am — or rather, was, before my unfortunate experience — music editor and chief critic for the Innsmouth Courier.

Well, shadowed Innsmouth being somewhat cut off from the world at large, I had had the occasion to cover only the local music scene: from the punk and metal bands like Icthyic Youth and Hammerhead to the slightly more accessible pop sounds of The Sardines and Blue Plate Special. So when the opportunity came a-knocking to interview an undeniably popular group with national exposure I leaped at it. My assignment? I was to interview those darlings of pop, The Slime Girls!

You know The Slime Girls, right? Everyone knows The Slime Girls! Those singing and dancing sensations were top-of-the-charts and would surely set any cold-blooded male to thoughts of swimming upriver and (Cthulhu grant it!) spawning with any one of them! They had regular names, of course, but they were far better known under their band trade-names: ‘Eldritch,’ ‘Squamous,’ ‘Rugose,’ ‘Fungoid’ and (sigh) ‘Non-Euclidian’ Slime, collectively, The Slime Girls!

They had some real chart-toppers too! Remember that song about Shoggoth reproduction, “When One Becomes Two” and their more recent hit “Slime Up Your Life” from their box-office smash movie Slimeworld? And who could forget “Always Be Scared”?:

I’m giving you such a fright
Petrified tonight
This I swear . . .

with Non-Euclidian Slime screeching like a beached whale over it all:
“You’ll always be scared!”

But, of course, their biggest all-time hit was their first, “Wannabe,” with its catchy-as-all-get-out chorus:

If you wanna be my Dark Young
You gotta eat all your friends;
Munching humans forever —
Feasting never ends!

But, as with any pop sensation, the often insipid music definitely took a backseat to the look — and, Great Dagon, did The Slime Girls have the looks! Writhing tentacles, scaly skin, oozing slime, just the memory of them alone would set my cilia a-flutter and my gills a-palpitating — if not for that final impossible horror that . . . Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself again. Anyway, they came to Innsmouth on their way through the Miskatonic Valley Tour — and they were scheduled to play at the Fish-Bowl here in Innsmouth this very night before moving on to Dunwich and The Devil’s Hopyard tommorrow night — and they showed up for the interview in full glorious band regalia. And, Mother Hydra, was Non-Euclidian tall! She had her long flowing tendrils tied back on her head like in that video for “Always Be Scared” and . . . and . . . oh, all right, I’m getting to my point, dammit!

I asked my round of questions and they all chimed in in turn with the most unmelodious grunting and croaking and hissing voices. I was almost in R’lyeh myself, just listening to them and fantasisizing about Non-Euclidan and her long green fronds wrapped around my thighs and . . . Uh, well, you know they’re not from around here, right? Yes indeedy, those fish ‘n’ chips hail from Merry Ole England! Well, I had never even heard anyone from the U.K. speak before, and had one star-spawn of a time understanding them through their accents. I could hardly tell their ‘fhtagn’s’ from their ‘Ia’s’! But I muddled through, and all too quickly the interview came to an end. I sat there hemming and hawing a bit, not wanting to see this eye-candy leave, and then one of them — Squamous, I think, the loud, brashy one — asked, in her thick cockney: “Is that it then, luv? Are we through with it all, now?” To which I could only nod dumbly, trying hard not to drool too excessively while staring at Non-Euclidian’s (or ‘Cliddie,’ as I liked to think of her) luscious guppy-lips and willing myself in the name of all the Old Ones yet in R’lyeh not to let them see my ‘chub’ — when the unspeakable occurred!

“Thank God,” I heard Fungoid mutter (yes, ‘God’ — not ‘Cthulhu’ or ‘Dagon’ or even ‘Hydra’!) and almost as one they reached up their fore-flippers and pulled off their heads! Yes, I said off!

And what impossible horror lurked beneath was certainly not for the fathoming of eyes that see — it was the unnameable!

Needless to say, my infatuation with Cliddie and the others ended right then and there! A crippling blow to be sure, but I tell myself that it — like the stars — will all be right again one day — that there are indeed other fish in the sea!

And so I ended up here, Doc, with you recording my “story” in this comfortable room I know to be in reality a cell in Arkham Asylum . . .

But I tell you, Doc, despite the implausibility of the events I have related here, I am not crazy — my story is true!

Those ladies were fakes, I tell you — they were wearing elaborate life-like costumes. And beneath those costumes, I swear, Doc, they were — ugh! — human!