Act One: Boy Meets Goo
Chapter One: There Ain't Nothing in the World…
Dee reached into the refrigerator, peeled off the cellophane sealing the wide mouth of the metal mixing bowl, and chickened out.
"I can't do this," he said.
He tipped the bowl and took a long, hard look at the Jell-O inside. The surface shone in the fridge's light but did not shift. The gelatin had already set even though the instructions said Dee still had two more hours to wait.
"I'm not going to wait because I'm not going to do this."
He slammed the fridge closed and stood there for a while. He stomped around the breakfast table to the kitchenette's bay window and shuttered the blinds. After another pause, he ran around his empty apartment, drawing the curtains on every window and double bolting the front door for good measure.
The bowl was back in his hands again. "Okay."
The bowl clattered onto the round, glass top of the little breakfast table. He glared down into the bowl's wide mouth. His wobbly reflection frowned back at him. After a final moment of hesitation, he dropped a hand down into the bowl. It made a loud
slap
when his hand hit the gelatin and he jerked back, embarrassed.
I'm the only one here
, he thought.
Why the Hell am I embarrassed?
The cool sticky stuff almost smooched his hand when he pulled, reluctant to let go.
Because it shouldn't feel this good.
He pressed his open palm back into the gelatin. The surface gave but did not break. The tension of the stuff felt, well, delicious. He waggled his hand. The gelatin tried to keep up and parted with another long, lazy, traveling smooch. He rubbed his thumb over the tips of his fingers. They weren't even wet.
"Wow."
So that was what it must feel like. He could write about that. He had even promised to write about that, to write some "goo girl" fiction for some Internet friends. Granted, he could not really call them friends, but they collected and shared as much Internet porn as he did. That created a strange solidarity, an Internet Freaks Anonymous where the twelfth step was drawing or writing your own crazy smut. Their latest discovery? Fantasies of fucking The Blob's hot younger sister. It proved the rule: if you could think it, someone, somewhere on the 'Net was wondering what it would be like to fuck it. Dee knew it as "Rule 34", and Dee considered himself Rule 34's Exhibit A.
But when Dee first sat down to write his newest fic, he had no idea what touching a goo girl might feel like, how to make it sound sexy—or even if it really could be sexy in the first place. Hence, the I-Must-Be-Crazy Jell-O Experiment was born.
Dee grabbed a cookie sheet from the cupboard. He pushed it under the bowl and twirled the bowl upside down with his fingers. He gave it a good shake and peeked under: nothing. He clanked the upside down bowl back onto the cookie sheet and whacked it on the top a few times for good measure. He slowly lifted the bowl. Nothing.
"God damn non-stick coating my ass!" Dee throttled the bowl in both hands, shaking it like a stubborn ketchup bottle. He had paid fifty bucks for the stupid thing!
He felt something in the bowl shift and the whole mass of gelatin, shaped like a giant, rounded gumdrop, plopped down onto the cookie sheet. The sheet juddered and knocked something off the table. Dee sat down on the rickety wicker chair and reached out both hands for the quivering mound. He surprised himself at how easily his imagination turned the rounded gelatin into a tap-worthy ass, or a massive breast.
The object knocked off the table rolled to a stop by his foot. Dee looked down, saw the battered tin of thickening powder, and every thought of sex fled as he recalled the results of the I-Must-Be-Crazy Jell-O Experiment, Phase One: Procurement.
* * * *
The only place Dee thought might sell what he was looking for was a medical supply store. He found one, SRU Medical Technology. Getting there and back home added 40 minutes to his commute after some emergency Sunday troubleshooting in the corporate server farm. A square, whitewashed, brick building squat in the center of a paved parking lot far larger than it would ever need, out in the middle of nowhere. The only vehicles in the lot were a busted-up, generic white pickup truck and a rose red Morris Mini Coop. Not one of those trendy new ones, Dee noted, but an import at least 20 years old.
Well, at least one person in there has good taste,
he thought. He slunk through the front door. The bell hanging from the doorframe was loud and jarring.
Petrified, Dee browsed the same aisle for fifteen silent minutes. He wondered,
Do people browse in medical supply stores? They know what they want when they come in, don't they?
He noticed the doughy clerk staring at him from a stool behind the glass counter. Dee looked at the products in the aisle he had been browsing for the first time: ostomy supplies.
Oh, God. So this is what going to a porn shop with your mom must feel like.
Dee shuffled over to the clerk behind counter. A short woman with long, black hair was busy in a supply closet behind him. "Do you sell thickening agent?" Dee asked.
The clerk glanced up. "Excuse me?"
"Thickening agent," Dee explained. "For liquids. You know, for people who have trouble drinking without aspirating?"
"Sure." The clerk slid off his stool. Dee caught the woman's oval face peeking out at him as he followed the clerk down the aisle for food supplements.
The clerk handed him a large tin of something called Thique-It and turned back to the counter, but Dee stopped him. "Does it, sorry, do you know if it works with Jell-O?"
The clerk pivoted on his heels. "What?"
"Does this stuff work with Jell-O?"
After a long staring contest, the clerk asked, "Why would you need to thicken
Jell-O
?"
"Because…" Dee began, his ears starting to burn. He swallowed. "Well, so the Jell-O stays thick, even after it gets…warm?"
The clerk snorted, plucked the Thique-It out of Dee's hands, tossed it back on the shelf, and marched to the counter without even glancing back. Dee realized he was going to puke. Luckily, emesis buckets were in the next aisle. He whirled about, ready to run, only to find the young woman standing right next to him.
"Oh, hey! You're a cutie." She craned her neck up to study his flustered face. "I've got what you want," she said, her dark eyes merry. She led Dee into the crowded supply closet, and pressed a battered, narrow tin into his hand. The yellowed label read,