Everything was dark. Jarek couldn't feel anything except a numbness that prevented him from even feeling his own warmth.
His mind was fuzzy, as if just waking up from a long nap. He only began to react when the anxiety of not feeling anything grew stronger and stronger, enough to force his head to organize his thoughts.
— Mar… Martín?
He cried out desperately, calling the name of one of his many expedition companions who had been by his side since the beginning of the trip. But his voice never came out. In fact, not only could he not hear himself, he couldn't hear anything at all. Panic took hold of him immediately. He kept trying to make any sort of noise, anything to break through the terrifying silence.
— Potatoes, ice cream, SpongeBob, Mom!
His senseless screams were only heard by himself.
— Why is this happening?
Until now, he had been on a little work-organized trip to observe the famous Mount Etna from the comfort and safety of a hotel in Italy. But now, without any coherent explanation, he was trapped in an unfamiliar void.
He forced his brain to remember every single detail that had brought him to this moment, though it didn't take long for him to realize the effort was useless.
— Did I… slip again and hit my head?
The thought of being a living corpse, trapped inside his own body, terrified him. It was just a guess, but it was starting to make sense given his inability to move or perceive his surroundings.
The "place" he was in began to tremble violently, pulling Jarek out of his depressing thoughts.
— ¿Huh? Am I moving? — For a moment, he felt genuinely happy to finally feel something. —¡Oh, I'm moving! — gently, the trembling grew stronger. — ¡Oh shit, I'm moving! — he thought, this time in distress.
Like a hamster trapped inside its plastic ball, he felt everything spinning round and round at dangerous speeds. It seemed a miracle that he didn't get dizzy or feel like throwing up the sausage sandwich he ate.
The violent and unpredictable motion made Jarek long for the silence he had woken up in.
To his relief (and dismay), sound returned in the form of a loud impact that brought all movement to a halt. He didn't feel sick, but he did feel that strange sense of dizziness you get when stepping off a roller coaster after a massive drop, or when touching the ground after hours of bouncing on a trampoline. With the impact, not only did the shaking stop, but somehow — unexplainably — it also allowed him to feel the cold winter breeze.
With the return of sound, and the absence of the constant hum of medical devices, he knew he wasn't lying in a hospital bed in a vegetative state.
But then… where was he?
— Wait a second… ¿Winter breeze? ¡But it's barely summer!
In the city where he'd been staying, the heat was obvious, whether at night or even when it rained. It was impossible for the temperature to change like this in a single instant.
— Ugh… turn off the light, it's really bothering... — fragments of what he assumed was rock fell over him, leaving a crack just wide enough for sunlight to pierce through.
Jarek could have sworn he heard the singing of angels when he saw the light streaming in. He didn't even bother asking himself why it came through a crack. Almost instinctively, he sought out the source of the light. He still couldn't say whether his arms and legs were moving, but when he saw the light widening, he knew he was moving toward it.
When he reached it, he tore at the crack with all the strength he could muster in an attempt to make it wider. — Almost there — After what felt like hours of hard work, the wall where the crack had been collapsed entirely, allowing Jarek to get out.
An explosion of colors, sounds, and smells greeted him with force.
But it was too much. He tried to shut his eyes to shield himself from the overwhelming flood of information. To his surprise, he couldn't.
There was something… strange.
No trace of buildings, no hotel, no companions anywhere. The place was a forest blanketed in snow. That wasn't what worried Jarek immediately, it was the way he could see everything. Ahead, behind, above. He perceived all around him with impossible clarity, something no human could do.
— Maybe I hit my head way too hard, and now I'm hallucinating
He raised his hand to rub his eyes. But what appeared wasn't the perfectly cared, well-moisturized skin.
The best way to describe it was as a sticky, deep blue fluid, almost like liquid snot.
— ¿Hmm? — He thought about lowering his hand, and the fluid copied him. He raised and lowered it several times, and each time, that strange blue slime did the same.
—¿!Hmmm!?
His semi-liquid body wobbled like jelly in response to Jarek's emotions.
— ¡Oh no, no no no no! — He dragged himself in every direction at the speed of a baby, leaving a trail in the frozen snow that grew wider each time he passed over it.
As he stared at the blue fluid, he felt a mixture of awe and fear.
How was it possible that his hand was made of this strange viscous material?
It felt like a surreal nightmare. His hand and the rest of his "body" moved like a mass of gelatin, responding to his thoughts and movements in ways that defied all logical explanation.
— This can't be real…
He muttered to himself as he continued to stumble around. Each movement seemed controlled by his will, but at the same time, felt utterly alien compared to anything he had ever experienced.
The cold gradually forced him to calm down until he stopped moving entirely, analyzing what now passed as his limbs, if they could even be called that. — This is so… strange. — Surprisingly, it wasn't difficult for him to move at all. In fact, he might even dare say he had better control over himself now than he'd ever had before.
With just a little concentration, part of his blue mass deformed into the shape of a bear cub he had once photographed in the Arctic years ago. He used other parts of the slime to recreate different animals and figures from various shows. His new 360° vision let him observe every one of his creations in perfect detail, including the rest of the blue slime that made up his body.
— No, this isn't the time to play.
He returned his focus to the main issue. As he examined the forest closely, he noticed a wide curtain of smoke rising from a point where the snow was disturbed and agitated, as though something had struck the ground at incredible speed. What caught his attention most was the trail of something being dragged across the snow, starting near the center of the smoke and ending just beneath him.
— Wait a second… Did I do that? — Incredibly curious, and hoping for an answer that might clear up the situation, he investigated the source of the smoke. What he found was a decently sized stone that had pushed away the snow around it. Jarek immediately thought of a meteorite that hadn't completely disintegrated upon entering the planet's atmosphere.
The crack he had emerged from was still there, answering at least one of his questions. But now he had many more.
None of this made sense. He had gone from being a lump of flesh lazing around in a hotel, to a blob of slime crawling out of a rock that apparently had crashed in the middle of nowhere... for no reason?
Jarek refused to accept the idea that was starting to form in his mind. The cold was beginning to take its toll, so with little choice, he returned inside the meteorite, which was still warm enough to keep him from freezing to death.
Though he wasn't entirely sure if that was even possible anymore.
The next morning, with the initial shock under control, Jarek finally accepted it.
— ¡Damn it! — He whipped a tentacle violently, sending a chunk of nearby snow flying away from the meteorite.
He hadn't needed to sleep at all through the night, so he spent the time thinking about how he'd ended up in this situation. To his dismay, he couldn't come up with any idea other than his own death.
He felt swallowed by a deep melancholy. Everything he had worked for over the years, his family waiting for big news about his accomplishments, and his many pets that he loved with all his heart... gone in the blink of an eye.
The contemplation of his own death resonated with painful thoughts and nostalgic memories. The absence of the laughter of his loved ones and the warmth of their embraces left a gaping void inside him. He realized that the presence of these memories was now reduced to little more than a trail of emotions, like fleeting footprints in the snow soon to be erased by the passing wind. Every frost covered tree seemed to whisper to him of days he would never again experience.
Jarek clung to that feeling, believing that if he stopped thinking about them, all of his memories would vanish completely in an instant.
Unfortunately, his new circumstances wouldn't let him stay still.
Whether he liked it or not, he had to decide what to do next. Without a doubt, he had become some kind of magical slime or something like it.
He didn't feel as bad about losing his flesh as he would have expected.
—At least my knees don't hurt anymore — he mocked, trying to cheer himself up.
Of course, this new body had its advantages, but Jarek immediately noticed the enormous disadvantages that left him in an extremely dangerous situation.
With the sunrise, he decided to test the limits of his physical capabilities through a series of morning exercises. Unfortunately, his performance turned out to be as disappointing as his grades in everything related to complex numbers.
First of all, the speed at which it moved was so slow that even a crawling baby could outrun it, shamelessly mocking
Secondly, his strength left much to be desired; lifting a not so large branch became a titanic task for him.
Thirdly, and what hurt Jarek the most, was his apparent lack of supernatural abilities aside from being abnormally repulsive and creepy to look at. He couldn't shoot acid balls or perform any of the things he believed a slime could do.
Either that, or he simply had no idea how to use those abilities.
He didn't expect there to be a legendary dragon hidden in a cave, willing to give him a name and grant him monstrous powers, but at the very least, he asked to be able to defend himself from any danger that might threaten his poor and weak life.
— If this keeps up, I won't be able to feed myself…
With those thoughts, he remembered that other huge problem. He didn't seem to have a stomach or any other organ that resembled one in all his gelatinous mass, yet somehow, he could still feel a rather annoying hunger.
The idea of trying to hunt a mouse popped into his mind, but it vanished even faster. For now, he didn't even know how he would eat and digest it, but that was something to worry about later.
Jarek chose a random direction and started moving, hoping to find some mushroom or plant. His goal was to figure out the best way to feed himself efficiently, without worrying too much about some natural poison might kill him.