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 74: He took a deep breath, the scent around him comfortingly familiar.
He took a deep breath, the scent around him comfortingly familiar. He smelled the scent of metal and machine oil. There was floor wax and an unidentifiable smell that just made him think of the bowling alley. He wasn’t sure if it was the scent of the snacks or the pins or the air that blew out of the ball returns. But he would know this scent anywhere.
While his memories of the bowling alley were mixed, the scent was more comforting than he expected.
Not knowing quite where to go, Bob quietly moved deeper into the mechanical world behind the alleys. There was no sound of pins being knocked down but after a time, Bob identified the sound of the guttural language the slugs used.
Light penetrated the mechanical workings in on shafts. It was enough to let him see, but he knew his passing wouldn’t be noticed by anyone outside of the space. Knowing sound would travel, Bob kept his steps light as he moved closer to one of the holes.
‘Two spaces down,’ Bob thought recalling the space where he watched his bullies trying to determine if it was safe to exit or not. He tried to shove the incident out of his mind as he looked out into the main space of the bowling alley. The lanes stretched out in long rows, their waxed surfaces shining in the overhead lights. All of the lights were on. After spending much of the night moving through shadowy spaces the bright lights caused Bob to blink, his eyes watering. He let his eyes adjust and tried to see beyond the empty lanes. He saw three slugs talking. Two were on the disks he expected although the jackets they wore had far more decoration than any of the other slugs.
‘Higher rank maybe?’ Bob thought. The third slug had a larger disk and instead of the uniform jacket he wore what looked to be a crown. It was perched upon his head, his eye stalks waving in front of it. He carried a scepter and instead of the jacket was clothed in a bright yellow robe. Over the robe was a loose cape in a shocking green shade.
The two slug officials gestured towards the doors and grunted something in their language. The king of the slugs waved what looked to Bob like a dismissive hand in the air and then pointed to a side door. Bob knew it led to a a room where there were three pool tables. The room wasn’t big enough for more, but the pool tables had been added to give options sometime when Bob was in high school. It quickly became a congregating space for some of the older, cooler kids and Bob avoided it as much as he could, pleased that most of the bullies were sequestered away in a contained area.
‘But I can look into the room,’ Bob thought. The mechanicals ran behind it and there was even a door leading from the mechanicals space directly into the room.
As Bob watched the king slug kept gesturing to the space. ‘I wonder why?’
A look around showed that there were no other slugs in the Bowling Alley. ‘They can’t have gone through all of their soldiers,’ he thought. That seemed a ridiculous thing to do. Bob found his gaze slipping towards the pool room. He had a bad feeling about it.
Ten til Midnight 