December 22, 2025 by Lucia

Previously: “The Kaleidoscope.”

There are Christmas gifts; and there are Christmas gifts; and then there’s the questionable bucket of slime at the center of our holiday-themed creepypasta for this year, “I Bought My Son A Bucket Of Slime For Christmas, And Now I Need Some Questions Answered.” The lesson in this slime creepypasta is clear: If you see something in a store that looks like it shouldn’t be for sale… don’t buy it. Don’t buy it; don’t bring it home; and certainly don’t give it to anyone else, especially your own kid.

I was well into adulthood when today’s iteration of slime became a thing, so I, like the parent in this story, don’t totally understand it. I did, however, grow up in the heyday of Nickelodeon’s most slime-centric era, so as far as I can tell, the school-glue-and-Borax concoction holds the same fascination for today’s kids as Gak did back in my day. Because, I mean… yes, Gak was stupid. But boy, was it fun.

[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]

The format “I Did A Thing And Now Another Thing Is Happening” is pretty common in both creepypasta titles and actual story content — but I’m almost never mad about it when I see it, despite how trope-y it’s become. It’s effective, and it works particularly well for internet-based horror, giving it a style reminiscent of old message board posts for which I still have a great deal of fondness. And it works very well here; after this parent’s run-in with the, uh, “slime” in this story, there are definitely questions that need answering. (On that note, CW for body horror.)

Read an excerpt of “I Bought My Son A Bucket Of Slime For Christmas” below, and check out the full story over at the Creepypasta Wiki.

Happy December, all. I wish you a slime-free month.

***

As someone who’s been on social media regularly over the past year, I have one question to start off:

How the hell did slime become so popular, anyway?

My kid introduced me to Instagram last year, and I’ll be the first to admit I was addicted pretty much immediately. It was basically the only way we could communicate after the divorce, which I won’t go into.

But during April or May at some point, the whole app just blew up with this new trend. Every other post he liked (his name was Brandon) was of some teenage girl pouring Borax and glue in a bowl and sticking her hands in it. I couldn’t get away from it. …

…And it’s not like I haven’t tried it myself. Hell, whenever I had custody, it was all he wanted to do. It was costing me a fortune in Elmer’s. It’s not fun. It’s not therapeutic. It’s just gross. Plus, if you get it wrong, which is almost certain, you can only keep adding until the ingredient ratios are right, and every time you end up with a ruined tablecloth and a bowl of useless slop that goes moldy in a week.

I just didn’t understand it. All that mattered was it kept him happy.

But then the pay cuts at my job came, and the price of glue went up before the holidays. I was sacrificing two days’ worth of meals a week for an hour’s worth of “fun.” It was eating me out of house and home.

So this year was my year, and I decided to kill two birds with one stone. …

Keep reading…

***

Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!

[Photo via DAVIDCRAYde/Pixabay]