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 15: It was like driving through a forest with an oddly well-planned set of streets.
It was like driving through a forest with an oddly well-planned set of streets. Bob drove along and for some reason found himself thinking of himself as a fairytale chauffer. Clearly Eddie and Enid were the footman and fairy godmother of the story. He wondered if this was before the ball as they were on their way to pick up a waiting Cinderella or if this was post ball after the happily ever after.
‘Can’t be after,’ Bob decided. He stopped at the four way stop where Water street met Crescent avenue. There was no one coming and no buildings, just the four way stop. Still bob couldn’t help but stop at it just as he couldn’t help but turn on his blinker before turning right onto Crescent.
‘After the ball the driver and footman were turned back into mice and the coach into a pumpkin.’ As he listened to Enid and Eddie argue, he wondered what sort of mouse Eddie would make. ‘Probably a violent one,’ he decided.
Bob glanced over to Enid and found that Genghis had turned away from the window and was looking at bob. While Eddie and Enid kept up their conversation he could hear a low whine coming from Genghis that the other two didn’t seem to notice. Bob frowned and wondered what was bothering the dog.
‘Coyotes maybe,’ he thought looking back at the road. They had a few in the neighborhood as the woods reclaimed it. It was one of the reasons Genghis never left the house without Enid. As ferocious as he was Genghis was also perfectly sized for a coyote snack.
Cresent Avenue, had a crescent shaped cul-de-sac on one end of it giving it the name. They were traveling in the other direction. The land started to rise and Cresent led them up the hill. From the top of the hill they could see a large swath of the main part of town, even if they were still separated from it by several more streets worth of encroaching forest. As Bob wondered if Genghis picked up the scent of coyotes the car rose up one side of the hill. At the top of the hill, bob’s eyes went wide and he stopped the car.
“We can’t be there already,” Enid said. She adjusted her glasses and looked around, gaze mostly out of the side window. “This isn’t the diner.”
“We are still on Cresent,” Bob said absently. His eyes were glued to the scene before him.
“Did we run out of gas?” Eddie asked. “Bad place to run out of gas.”
“Tanks full,” Bob said. “Look.”
Both of them looked at him and he pointed at the windshield. Smoke drifted up from various sites in town and even from a distance the shape of some of the buildings didn’t look quite right. It was as though the shape of the town had changed overnight.
“I don’t suppose you went into town over night?” Enid asked. “Even with your dreams?” Her voice was soft, shocked.
“No,” Eddie said. “I dreamed about the bridge, but like you said, my dreams can’t blow things up. And I certainly didn’t do anything in town.”
“Someone did,” Bob said. He took his foot off the break and continued over the hill, heading back down into the forest the neighborhood became.
“We going into investigate?” Eddie asked.
Ten til Midnight 