Chapter Ten
We crawled out of a manhole, covered in the pink slime. I was the third one out.
"Nice going, Ray. What're you trying to do? Drown me?" Winston snapped.
"Oh, yeah, set it more like it was my fault! You were too stupid not to drop that plumb line!" Ray snapped back.
"Stupid?! Hey, you better watch your mouth; I'll punch your lights out!"
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah!"
The two began to fight right as I helped Egon out of the hole.
"Ugh, I got this pink shit all over me." I grumbled quietly and my hand automatically went to my stomach. Nothing seemed to feel any different. The pregnancy hadn't felt strange ever since I got out of the slime. Relieved, I removed my hand.
"Wait! Wait!" Egon suddenly yelled. I looked at him. He pulled the two apart. "Stop, stop. Get your clothes off, quick. Strip."
We all looked at each other and stripped down to our underwear. I felt like Janet Weiss from Rocky Horror. All I had on was my bra and slip (and underwear under that of course) and I felt really, really overexposed.
"Oh, dear." Winston panted. "Ray, what were we doing? I was ready to kill you."
"It's the stuff." Ray explained. "It's like pure, concentrated evil."
"And it's all flowing right to this spot." Egon pointed to the building behind us.
It was the museum.
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We walked into a very fancy restaurant where Peter was having his date with Dana.
"You sure this is it?" Winston sounded surprised.
"Yeah, he said Armand's." Ray said.
"Excuse me—" a man snapped but Egon cut him off.
"It's alright. We'll look in the back." We walked into the dining room and my husband pointed.
"Venkman!" Ray exclaimed. I took Egon's hand and the four of us made our way to the table. The man followed us, yelling that we couldn't be there.
"Shut up!" I yelled at him. We made our way to Peter and Dana's table.
"It was absolutely incredible." Ray said. "The greatest tangible evidence of psychic energy in 100 years."
"YOU'RE DISTURBING OUR GUESTS!" the man yelled.
"This is an emergency. Just a second."
"Guys, guys!" Peter snapped and we shut up. The man scurried away. "You're scaring the straights, okay? Maybe not Nancy, but the rest of you are. Is there any way we can do this tomorrow?"
"No. This won't wait until tomorrow, Venkman. It's hot and it's ready to pop." Egon said.
"Yeah. It's all over the city." Ray added. "Under it, actually."
"Rivers of this stuff." Winston said.
"Yeah, as you can tell we just took a swim in it and Ray and Winston had a fight." I said.
"Yes, and it's all flowing right to the museum." Egon said.
"Yeah, the museum!" Ray pointed, and slime flew from his arm and hand and landed on some people and their food. I couldn't help myself. I laughed. "Sorry..."
"Oh, God..." the thought had sunk into Dana's mind right as I stopped laughing. "You mean...my museum?"
"I was...I was gonna tell you between the dessert and the cheese course." Peter broke it to her. The man came in with cops.
"There they are!" I heard him say.
"You can never go back there again." Peter shook his head. "You gonna have to find a new job."
At that point, we all started to talk at once. That was when the man and the cops came up to us.
"We gotta see the mayor." Ray said, and the four of us-the only ones wearing our underwear-were ushered out of the restaurant. I heard Peter sigh, apologize to Dana, and get up after us.
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We got out of the cramped car and a man-the one who opened the door for us-stared in shock.
"Oh, Ghostbusters!" he exclaimed.
"How you doing." Peter nodded his head to him.
"Hey, guys, come right this way." The man scurried to the door. I held Egon's hand in mine after we got out. "Hey, you guys got another one of those proton packs? My kid brother really wants one."
"The proton pack is not a toy." Egon shook his head.
"I guess he's right." Ray added.
"I'm sorry. But tell your kid brother that he's welcome to come by headquarters and we'll give him a tour." I said.
"Really?" the man's eyes widened.
"We will?" Egon stared at me.
"Yes. We will. You be sure to let him know."
"Oh, I will." The man grinned. We were lead to the mayor's office and waited for a few minutes.
"What do you mean, tour?" Egon asked.
"Hey, it'd be a nice way to interact with other people." I shrugged.
"We'll talk about this later."
"Good." I smiled and we walked into the mayor's office. I leaned on the couch, next to where my husband stood, while we all talked about the slime stuff. The door opened and Lenny walked in. We all looked at him and greeted him at once.
"Ghostbusters." Lenny muttered.
"Mr. Mayor." Winston held his hand out for him to shake but Lenny just looked at him, and then looked at us.
"What is this? A slumber party?"
A man in a chair snorted.
"That's what we're here to talk about." Ray said, as everyone spoke at once.
"Look, I don't want to hear anything about it." The mayor cut us off. "You've got two minutes. Make it good." He sat down in another chair.
"Uh...well, uh, first of all, Mr. Mayor, it's a great pleasure to see you again." Ray started. "And we'd just like to say that almost 50 percent of us voted for you in the last election."
"I appreciate that."
"I'm just sorry that we have to always meet under these circumstances." Peter flashed an apologetic smile.
"Mr. Mayor, we're here tonight because a psychomagnotheric slime flow of immense proportions is building up underneath the city."
"Psycho-what?" Lenny asked.
"Psychomagnotheric." Egon repeated.
"Big word. Big word." Peter nodded his head.
"Negative human emotions are materializing in the form of a viscous psychoreactive plasm with explosive supernormal potential."
"What he said." I nodded.
"Does anybody speak English here?"
The man in the chair went to open his mouth, but Winston cut him off.
"Uh, yeah, Your Honor." He said as he knelt down next to the mayor's chair. "What we're trying to tell you is, like, all the bad feelings, the hate, the anger, and the violence, of this city is turning into this sludge. Now, I didn't believe it at first either. But we went for a swim in it and we ended up almost killing each other!"
"This is insane! I mean, do you really have to listen to this?" the man asked.
"Excuse you. You'd believe the same damn thing if you saw it." I snapped.
"Hey, Nance." Peter shook his head. He walked over to the man, obviously annoyed with him as well. "Can't you stop your lips from flapping for two little minutes?" he moved his hand up and down in front of the man's lips in a sort of mocking way. He looked at the mayor. "Lenny, have you been out of the street lately? Do you know how weird it is out there? We've taken our own head count. There seem to be 3 million miserable assholes living in the Tri-State area!"
"Oh, please." The man rolled his eyes. Peter knelt down next to him.
"I beg your pardon. 3 million and one."
"Hey."
I bust out laughing for a few seconds before the man looked at me. I stopped.
"Wanna take a picture, it'll last longer."
The man leaned forward in his seat and Peter pulled him back hard with a firm grip on his shoulder.
"And what budgie-brain here doesn't realize is that if we don't do something fast this whole place is gonna blow like a frog on a hot place."
"Those are some lovely mental images..." I muttered.
"Yeah, right." The man rolled his eyes.
"What am I supposed to do?" Lenny stood up, looking at Peter. "Go on television and tell 10 million people they have to be nice to each other?" he made his way to the door and then turned. "Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God-given right. Your two minutes are up. Good night, everyone." He left.
"Fuck..." I muttered.
"Wait."
"You're making a big mistake Mr. Mayor." Egon, Winston and Peter tried to go after him, but the door shut.
"A very newsworthy mistake. The Times is going to be interested in this and you know the polls—"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, now, now..." the man started.
""Mayor Drowns in River of Slime"." Egon said.
"Times Square Slime." Ray said.
"Slime Square." Egon suggested.
"Slime Square." Ray repeated.
"City of Slime." I said.
"Slime City." Peter nodded.
"Take me down to the slime city..." I started singing.
"Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty." Peter laughed. I smiled.
"Fine. Fine." The man said. "Now, before you go running off to the newspapers with this, would you consider telling this...slime business to some of our people downtown?"
"It's gotta be done right away." Peter said.
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"Well, it's gonna come back!" Ray yelled. I made to bite a man's hand but popped my neck and groaned. We were all in straightjackets being forced into the mental hospital. The man, the mayor's assistant, was smirking. "This city's in danger! The whole state, the whole world! All we wanna do is help!"
"I'm warning you." Egon snapped.
"If you don't listen, probably by this time tomorrow you'll be covered in slime! I guarantee it!" I snapped. I could hear the man talking to the doctor.
"The mayor wants them kept under strict observation for the next few days. We think they're seriously disturbed and potentially dangerous."
"Well, we'll do whatever's necessary."
"Thank you, doctor."
Before we turned the corner, I glared at the man. "You're an asshole." I snarled and then was pushed away by a doctor.