This year I am working on a story called Bob vs. The Alien Slug Monsters. Instead of an outline I have a basic list of plot points I want to cover between meeting Bob and sending him off to fight the king of the slugs. There is more of a cast of characters than an actual outline, so we will see how the story develops. And with that intro we continue with Bob Versus the Alien Slug Monsters…
Day 6: Usually when he was at home, Eddie and Enid were the only two people he saw.
Usually when he was at home, Eddie and Enid were the only two people he saw. Bob turned onto his street and drove up to his house. He saw Enid in her front yard, her excitable Pomeranian straining on his leash. Bob pulled into his driveway and parked. Enid paused waiting for him to get out of the car. The Pomeranian bounced up and down excitedly as though it had springs imbedded in his feet. He barked like crazy.
Bob had never been able to determine if the dog viewed him as a threat he needed to protect Enid from or if the dog actually liked him. He suspected the dog hadn’t made up it’s mind yet either.
Bob closed the car door and walked over.
“Genghis stop,” Enid chided the bouncing Pomeranian. She clicked her tongue and shook her head. While Bob never asked her age he suspected Enid was in the upper eighties range. She had close cropped white hair that was short enough to stand up without the aid of product. She wore oversized glasses that magnified her eyes so she looked a bit more like an anime character than a regular human. She always wore slacks and a button down shirt. The shirt was always in varying floral patterns. Todays was a bright yellow with electric purple daisies that practically seared his eyes. He felt certain if he looked at them too long they would be permanently imprinted on his retinas.
To this outfit she had a collection of rings and bright orange crocs on her feet. Genghis bounced up and down, his rhinestone encrusted collar spraying light in every direction.
Evening,” he said as he approached. “Put for your evening walk?”
“Just coming back,” Enid told him. Genghis stopped bouncing and sniffed Bob’s leg. “See the Kahn is warming to you.”
“That’s good,” Bob said. He had a hard enough time thinking of the Pomeranian as Genghis, he couldn’t bring himself to think of the dog as The Kahn. He tried to keep an eye on the dog lest it decide that it wanted to pee on him instead of simply sniffing him.
“There’s a pair of hawks nesting over by the Ellis place,” Enid told him proudly. “We saw them earlier.”
While birds had never been Bob’s thing he had learned a lot about them from Enid, who was an avid bird watcher. She had some sort of bird bingo card set up in her living room. When she finished a card, she took it down and set it aside before tacking another one up. She always had five in a row on her wall. While they were seeing more activity with the trees sprouting up and some of the old house sites going wild, some of the cards featured tropical birds Bob didn’t think they would see unless there was an escape from a pet store.
“By the Ellis place?” he asked. Bob nodded as he mentally tried to place it. The houses were gone in many areas but the streets and occasionally the mailboxes remained. Enid tended to refer to them by the name of the former owners. ‘Which I suppose is better than Eddie,’ Bob thought. Eddie had a different method of neighborhood organization.
Ten til Midnight 