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 71: Bob hadn’t even made it on to a team but that didn’t stop his Aunt from complaining that his name instead of Big Mike’s should be on the trophy.
Bob hadn’t even made it on to a team but that didn’t stop his Aunt from complaining that his name instead of Big Mike’s should be on the trophy. Nothing Bob said convinced her otherwise. While people liked to say that Big Mige was called Big Mike because he was a big deal, his skills unsurpassed in the bowling ally, his scores higher than pretty much everyone elses, he was also built on the large side.
He was tall, he was wide and he had a swagger that made him seem both taller and wider than he was. When he arrived in the bowling alley, his two cohorts would open both of the doors for him at the same time and he would stroll through the center of them. His arrival was always an entrance.
Watching the slugs open the doors to the Bowl-a-Rama brought back memories of Big Mike. Bob hadn’t thought of him in years and wasn’t pleased to have those memories surface now. He always felt inadequate by Big Mike’s presence. As he felt inadequate to dealing with the situation at hand, it was not a helpful reminder.
‘Nothing about the Bowl-a-Rama is helpful,’ Bob thought. The one thing he had been good with were the mechanical movements that put the pins into place. He would often sneak into the back of the building and make his way through the corridors of machinery. He liked the rhythmic sound of the machines, the scent of the oil in the gears and the physically moving bits. Most of them no longer moved even before Bob stopped going to the Bowling alley. They upgraded a lot of the system and computers replaced levers and people run systems.
Bob blinked the thought away as more disk rising slugs came out of the doors and headed over to the other parking lot. Bob narrowed his eyes as he studied them. There seemed to be fewer in this group than there were in the group prior. He wondered if their attempt to master body control was whittling down their numbers.
Once they disappeared again, Bob waited for movement. When he saw none, he took it a his opportunity to slip back into the diner. He moved to one of the booths where he could be more comfortable watching the comings and goings of the slugs. There was nothing he could do for the dead now but he did want to keep an eye on things. He was also feeling the cheese and bread he took from one of the other restaurants wearing thin. Soon he would have to eat something to replenish his own energy.
He settled himself in the booth, waited and watched. The glass muffled the screams of the dying slugs. Bob still expected that at some point they would stop trying to enter the salt covered bodies but this far, that hadn’t happened. As he watched, Bob saw a pair of slugs return to the bowl-a-rama and go inside. Again they came out with another group of slugs. Bob counted them.
‘Definitely less than last time.’
When they were around the corner, and no longer able to see is movement. Bob slipped into the back, raiding the pantry and walk in cooler for items he could eat quickly without needing to cook them. He took his items back to the booth and settled himself again. He figured that with fewer slugs accompanying the escorts, it would be a shorter time before they returned.
He looked at the wall clock, eating as he waited and watched.
Ten til Midnight 