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 47: There were more people than the parking lot could hold and Bob saw the stretchers were lined up in adjacent parking lots as well.
There were more people than the parking lot could hold and Bob saw the stretchers were lined up in adjacent parking lots as well. It was clear however that the Bowl-A-Rama was slug central. The slugs reached the door and it opened. They disappeared inside.
‘Of course that is where they are going,’ Bob thought. ‘Everyone goes to the Bowl-a-Rama.’
Bob sighed. He spent quite a lot of time there as a child. He hated bowling. He was good at it, but it was not something that interested him. He didn’t like trading his shoes in for rentals. He didn’t like the stiff leather and smooth soles. The cleaning solution tickled his nose and the ball return blew machine oil scented air up into his face when he retrieved his ball.
Most of all he didn’t like that on the shelf where trophies sat under a wall of photos, there were trophies with his father, grandfather and great grandfather’s names on them. They had all been on bowling leagues and all came out as champions. Even though Bob was good at bowling, he never joined the league. His Aunt Margaret took him for sign up but it seems by the time they went in to try and sign up, all the teams were full. There was no space for him. His name went down on the call list if a new team was formed, but somehow it never was.
Each year was the same thing and Bob never made a team. The fact that his name never ended up on a trophy with the others bothered Margaret more than it did him. She seemed to feel as though she was failing him because he was not becoming a bowler worth space next to the family that came before him. After a time her disappointment and feelings of failure transferred to him. He looked at the shelf and felt like a failure. The feeling was more prevalent every time a new trophy was added to the case and the picture of the team that won it hung on the wall.
Bob was dropped off at the Bowling alley often. It was a near enough place that he could walk from school and he, along with others from school walked in a group from school to the bowling alley each day. They were the kids whose parents couldn’t get off work to pick them up and who lived too close to have a bus made available. They would bowl until the adults of their world got off work and then they would be picked up from the bowling alley.
His aunt told him to do his best so the others would see how good he was and invite him to join their team. She thought that was a better way since he wasn’t quick enough to the sign up. It made him feel that he had to do well with the after school bowling and each time after no one approached him, he felt as though he failed.
As he grew older he realized it wasn’t actually failure, but the feeling still remained. As far as the Bowl-A-Rama went, he was a failure. It was why he never went near the building and did his best to avoid looking at it.
‘So of course that is where the alien slugs invaded and made their headquarters,’ he thought. ‘Makes perfect sense.’
Now confident he knew where the slugs were going, Bob made his way back across the parking lot, still staying close to the landscaping. He reached the section that looked strange and tried to get a closer look. Most of the strange bits were above his head, but there was one spot where he could see the glass was repaired.
Ten til Midnight 