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 40: It looked as though the residents were simply out for the afternoon.
It looked as though the residents were simply out for the afternoon. Bob peered through the glass studying the space within. Everything was put to rights. He remembered searching this space and having to maneuver around a broken vase, water and flowers scattered and porcelain broken. The books were off the shelves and scattered on the floor. This one even had the couch half turned over. He picked his way delicately through the space hoping he wouldn’t find a body within.
As there was much more disarray it looked like the person who lived there fought back more than in some of the other cottages. It was what made him worry about the body more. There hadn’t been and he made it back out of the cottage without adding any more damage.
Now, the couch was righted and the cushions replaced. The books were back on the shelf although Bob did notice that some of them were turned the wrong way round, their pages sticking out instead of their spines. The scattered flowers were gone and if the water hadn’t dried, it too was removed. The broken glass was gone. There was no replacement vase that Bob could see, but all of the broken bits were cleared away. As Bob backed away from the door, a frown creased his brow.
‘That makes no sense,’ he thought.
He could understand an attack, sort of. Even without an alien slug force invasion, homes were burgled. Thieves broke in and took things. ‘But they don’t clean up after themselves.’
Bob shook his head. ‘Unless they don’t want anyone to know they were there.’
He imagined a thief who didn’t want what he stole to be noticed for a while would make certain to clean up. ‘But they took people.’
The shadows were lengthening as the afternoon wore on and Bob decided to think as he walked. He didn’t have much information, but he had a few pieces he could twist around and study as he walked into town. He eased past the cottages and before he could let his nerves stop him, he raced across the open ground crisscrossed by wheelchair friendly pathways. He stopped at the main admin building. Here he was under a little bit more cover and he could catch his breath a bit.
Before the window was broken. The window was no longer broken. Bob frowned as he reached a hand up to touch it. His hand passed right through the frame. The slugs did not repair the glass they simply took all of the broken glass with them. The window was now an empty frame.
The paving stone that was thrown through the window was gone as was the shards of glass it took with it. Bob looked to the line of pavers where the stone came from and saw that it was replaced in it’s line, the dirt still sort of turned over around it.
‘It was a clean up job,’ Bob supposed. He caught his breath and felt his heart rate slow down now that he wasn’t running across open ground. He eased himself around the building. His ears were alert to the sounds of the floating disks and his eyes scanned for anything shaped like a giant slug or a floating disk. There was nothing.
He stuck to the tree line as he made his way across the parking lot and into the street. He kept to the tree line as he walked down the street towards the blasted hole in the road bed.
It would be the last open space he would cross for a while and Bob set aside all other thoughts as he looked it over. There was no sound of anything other than the wind. ‘The slugs weren’t in the area until they heard the alarm and then they came back to clean up.’
He took a breath. ‘Quiet as a mouse.’ He thought.
Bob made his way along the side of the hole. He didn’t know how keen the slugs hearing was and if the noise he made would have to be as loud as the siren alarm at Golden Meadows but he didn’t want to take any chances. He did his best not to shift anything to the point where it might fall and clatter down into the hole. Crossing the area was slow going.
Ten til Midnight 