sir, would you kindly tell us more of the slug story?

Ha! Okay, sure. I’ll share what I can remember. (If you don’t know what Anonymous is talking about, they mean the story mentioned in this post.)

A small-town sheriff is called to the house where the elderly tenant has been found mostly eaten. The only clue? Slimy residue!

The sheriff teams with a scientist to try to determine what in the gooey heck happened. As the scientist studies the slime, the sheriff gets a call. Another body was found.

Anyway, this goes on for a while, I really racked up the body count (even kids and pets) and I totally went full-tilt boogie into the gore of it all. Anyway, then the scientist, who’s stumped by the slime… uh, I think her assistant or something mentions his vegetable garden and that he’s always dealing with snails… something like that.

The scientist, who’s been thinking the slime was some sort of man-made chemical used in the murders, has an epiphany. She conducts more tests and — voilà! — she proves the slime is slug trails. (Hey, I never claimed this story was smart.)

By now, the slugs are getting more bloodthirsty, more brazen. Rather than waiting for people to sleep, they start attacking during the day. If I remember correctly, they slowly eat their way through a school at one point because the kids somehow got trapped in there or something.

The sheriff and his deputies confront the horde, but all they have are guns, so they only pick off a few before a couple of the deputies are overrun and eaten. The scientist says they have to kill the horde of slugs all at once. The sheriff comes up with the plan — they’ll use themselves and a few other people as bait to draw the slugs into the abandoned mine in the mountain that looms over the town.

They pack the mine with explosives, draw the slugs slowly up the mountain, and escape through a side tunnel. (I think I had a whole thing in which they couldn’t get out initially, y’know, just to make it more tense.) Then, they blow the mine up, sending a shower of rocks and slug bits down on the town below.

As the sheriff, the scientist, and the remaining townsfolk celebrate their victory, unseen in the woods on the outskirts of town, a snail rises up and attacks a cat. And so a new horror begins.

The end.

I don’t think I ever explained why the slugs suddenly started eating people.

The whole thing was handwritten and done in one- or two-page installments over the course of a year. After that, I attempted to do a werewolf story, but halfway through I realized I was just rewriting Cycle of the Werewolf and bailed on it.

Also, years later I found out horror author Shaun Hutson had written a book in 1982 with pretty much the exact same premise called Slugs. It was also turned into a movie.

If you want to experience an actual horror story I wrote (and produced), check out my podcast Barren.