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 49: He tried counting up one of the rows.
He tried counting up one of the rows. While Bob wasn’t certain his head count was completely accurate given the distance, he still thought his impression of hundreds rather than thousands was accurate. There simply wasn’t the space for the thousands that made up Centerville’s population.
‘Maybe they have other parking lots filled.’
Bob looked back. Aside from the planting beds, his office parking lot was empty. It was also in a complex with several other parking lots. ‘None filled with stretchers.’
The light from the streetlamps showed that there were other empty parking lots, some much closer to the Bowl-A-Rama.
‘Maybe they only needed a certain number of people.’
Not knowing what they would need any people for, Bob was pretty clueless as to how many they would need. He knew he needed to get closer if he wanted more information. Bob patted the bag with his salt container, realizing that at the moment he was treating it like a security blanket.
‘Salt as my binky, who knew?’ Bob thought. Still he felt relieved that it was there. Bob looked out over the landscape between himself and the Bowl-A-Rama. Usually he looked at ways to avoid it. Now, he needed to find the best route that would leave him the lease exposed. At the moment he saw no slug monsters but it didn’t mean they couldn’t look out of the window, see him approaching and come out in force.
At first Bob looked at the space and started planning his approach as he would if he was driving. She shook his head and realized that was pointless. ‘I’m not in a car,’ he thought. ‘And it would keep me in the light.’
As the sun sank lower, the streetlights were providing him with most of the light. The buildings, save for the Bowl-a Rama were all dark. The streetlights were glowing.
‘Avoid the lights, avoid being seen.’ Bob recalculated his route. Once he had it in his head, he slipped away from his office building and into the deepening shadows.
While the Bowl-a-Rama was always in his line of sight when he was in the office parking lot, it wasn’t all that close. Bob knew he had a distance to traverse. ‘And not on normal pathways.
He found himself slipping through planted areas designed to separate spaces and going around well lit pathways. ‘At least I wore sneakers and jeans,’ he thought. As his plans involved going to the diner and then grocery store before returning home to flop out on the couch for video games, he hadn’t bothered dressing up. As the bushes he slipped through grabbed at his clothes and scratched his skin, he found himself grateful for the outfit he chose. His sneakers maintained a grip on the often sloping ground and were comfortable to walk in.
Halfway to his destination, Bob realized he had put on his step counting watch when he dressed for the day. The thought of what it would say when he had time to check it was a hit of amusement that kept him going. Wondering about his recorded steps, heartrate and other recorded physical activity also kept him from worrying too much about approaching the area the slugs claimed.
Ten til Midnight 