The Slime Below

 At first, no one noticed the strange slime seeping through the cracks in the high school’s boiler room. It was slow, quiet, and nearly invisible against the rusted pipes and dim concrete. But it was hungry—and it had been waiting.

Jefferson High was old. Built in the 1960s, it was a patchwork of outdated architecture, asbestos warnings, and questionable smells. The students joked about it being haunted, but most of the creepy stories were just that—stories. That is, until the week before fall break.

It started with a janitor.

Mr. Collins was the type of guy who always smelled faintly of Pine-Sol and had a pocket full of crumpled mints. He was dependable, always muttering about kids not wiping their feet and lights being left on. So when he didn’t clock out on Friday night, nobody worried too much. Maybe he took the weekend early.

But when he didn’t show up Monday, and his cart was found parked outside the basement door, Principal Mendez called the police.

They searched the school from top to bottom. Nothing. No signs of foul play. Just a missing man and a janitor’s cart that still had warm coffee in the thermos.

By Wednesday, rumors were flying.

“I heard he went insane and ran into the woods.”

“Maybe he got lost in the tunnels under the school.”

“There are tunnels?”

“Yeah, like utility tunnels. For pipes and stuff. I read it on Reddit.”

No one mentioned the slime—not yet. Not until Kayla Morgan slipped during gym and came up with a purple smear on her leg. She thought it was paint. Then her skin started to burn.

“It’s just an allergic reaction,” the nurse said, slathering ointment over the angry red welts.

But Kayla knew better. The slime hadn’t just touched her. It had pulled, as if trying to suck her in.

She tried to tell people, but her story got mixed in with the janitor rumors and TikTok trends. That was Jefferson High: no one took anything seriously unless it involved a fight or a fire alarm.

Then Denny Richter disappeared.

He was a sophomore who spent most of his time in the computer lab. He had his own key—something he bragged about often—and would stay after hours programming his horror game called “Eater of Flesh.” When he didn’t go home Thursday night, his parents called the school.

Again, nothing.

This time, though, the cops found something strange: his shoes, socks, and a sticky residue on the floor of the lab. Like melted jello, but darker. Smelled like vinegar and burnt rubber.

Principal Mendez shut down the lower level of the school “for maintenance,” but that didn’t stop the juniors from daring each other to sneak down during lunch.

That’s how Alex Tran ended up seeing it.

He didn’t talk for two hours after they found him hiding in the stairwell, pale and shaking. When he finally opened his mouth, all he said was:

“It looked at me. It doesn’t have eyes. But it looked.”

That’s when everything started to unravel.

On Friday, a school-wide assembly was called. Mendez tried to calm everyone down, but the police were already pulling students from class and asking questions. Security cameras showed nothing—at least nothing human. But frame-by-frame, some footage had a strange distortion that twisted the hallways and shimmered in corners. Like something was crawling just outside of visible light.

The slime was evolving.

It started showing up in other parts of the building: the locker rooms, the cafeteria drain, the hallway outside the library. Sometimes just a smear. Sometimes a full puddle, with faint movement just beneath the surface.

And people were disappearing.

A sophomore from the theater crew.

A counselor who worked late.

A substitute who never officially signed in.

The school didn’t close. The district said it was “an ongoing investigation.” But the students knew the truth now: there was something in the walls, in the pipes, in the school itself.

It didn’t care who you were.

It just wanted to feed.

Jessie Romero wasn’t the kind of girl who believed in ghost stories. She liked chemistry, listened to metal, and had a 4.0 GPA. But when her best friend Carina vanished from their shared biology class—literally gone between one blink and the next—Jessie snapped.

She started digging. Talking to teachers. Sneaking into the basement after hours.

What she found scared her more than anything.

There were records—old maintenance reports filed decades ago. In 1972, there had been a chemical spill during construction of the west wing. Some kind of experimental solvent used to dissolve organic material during biohazard cleanup. It leaked into the foundation and was buried instead of reported.

The reports were buried in the archives.

But something in the dark had survived.

It adapted.

It learned.

Now, after years of feeding on rats and bugs and mold, it had grown bold enough to try bigger prey.

Humans.

Jessie brought her findings to the science teacher, Mr. Barker, who didn’t believe her until the slime came up through the floor vents during 6th period on Monday.

It flooded the hallway like liquid muscle. Kids screamed. Doors slammed. Phones dropped. The slime swallowed two students before melting back into the cracks.

That night, the district finally ordered a full evacuation.

But it was too late.

The thing had grown smart. It was closing exits. Corroding wires. Eating its way through drywall. And it liked the taste of fear.

Jessie knew what she had to do.

With a backpack full of stolen lab chemicals and a homemade flame accelerant, she headed back into the school—alone. Mr. Barker gave her the keys. He’d seen enough.

The plan was simple: lure the slime into the furnace chamber in the basement, douse it in the solution, and ignite it.

Simple in theory.

The execution? Not so much.

The deeper Jessie went, the more alive the school felt. The pipes breathed. The walls sweated. Her flashlight flickered as the slime whispered in the ducts above her.

It was everywhere.

She made it to the furnace room, heart pounding, lungs burning from the heat.

Then she heard it: the slap-slap-slap of wet pseudopods dragging along tile. It came fast, filling the space like a tsunami of sentient jello.

Jessie screamed and hurled the accelerant.

The flame caught.

The fire roared.

The slime howled—not a sound from a mouth, but a vibration that rattled her bones.

For a moment, she thought it had worked. The thing shrieked, flailed, and pulled itself backward—chunks of it blackening, shriveling, burning.

But then it split.

One part writhed in agony.

The other slithered into the vents.

It had learned how to survive even this.

Jessie escaped with second-degree burns and permanent hearing loss in one ear. The fire didn’t kill the slime. But it hurt it. Made it cautious. It sank back into the walls, waiting.

The school was closed indefinitely. The story in the news blamed an “experimental gas leak” and “psychological trauma caused by hysteria.”

But Jessie knows better.

It’s still down there.

Growing.

Watching.

Waiting for another school to open above its nest.

“Some things don’t die. They adapt. They wait. And when no one believes anymore… they eat again.”