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 54: Bob watched the muscles strain and wondered if the body was expelling the slug, if the person was fighting the invasion.
Bob watched the muscles strain and wondered if the body was expelling the slug, if the person was fighting the invasion. The fight, if that was what it was, left the man gasping and twitching. The first slug watched silently as the man convulsed. Finally there was a massive gasp and with a great heave, the slug erupted from the mouth of the man.
For a moment Bob felt like cheering. The man had expelled the giant slug. It seemed like a victory. Then he realized that the man no longer looked asleep. He was a gray color and was laying completely still. He was not in the straight limbed sleeping position of the others on the stretcher, but his arms and legs were akimbo, his eyes wide and bulging.
Bob could see him from where he crouched and all thoughts of victory faded. The man was dead.
“’Nother inferior one,” the first slug said. He was still squatting inside the body of the man and sitting up in the stretcher. “Best dispose of it.”
The slug now out of the dead man slipped off the body and back onto his own disk. He slipped his jacket on and pressed a button. A light flashed green on the side of the stretcher carrying the dead man. Bob watched as the slug on the disk, led the floating stretcher away. The first slug continued trying to get the man to move. Suddenly the body of the man convulsed. He too seemed to be struggling to breath and for a moment it looked as though he was fighting the invasion. But then the fight stopped and the slug emerged again from the now dead body. He too remounted his own disk and led the stretcher with the dead human away.
Bob, still clutching his handfuls of salt leaned out slightly to see where they were going. He saw the slugs go to a dumpster, lift the stretchers high and tilt them. The body’s tumbled into the dumpster. Bob felt sick and angry as he watched the slugs dispose of the dead humans.
Then he realized they were coming back and he pulled himself back behind the planter so he wouldn’t be seen.
The slugs returned with the empty stretchers. They slotted the empty stretchers into place and then moved slowly down the rows, looking at the people sleeping on the stretchers. Bob had a bad feeling as he watched them. The two the slugs inhabited before did not fare well. He did not want to watch anyone else die.
Bob’s heart nearly stopped as the slugs came to a halt near some of the Golden Meadows residence.
‘No, no, no,’ Bob thought. Watching the slug possess one of the people was bad enough when he didn’t know them. While he didn’t wish the strangers any harm, he especially didn’t wish it on people he knew.
‘And they are older,’ he thought. AS the two men the slugs inhabited previously seemed to be in their thirties and they still had what looked to him like some sort of convulsion or heart attack, he didn’t think aging up the body inhabited would increase longevity. One of the slugs stopped his disk in front of Lucille.
Ten til Midnight 