Chapter 1. The Massacre at Rock’n Lanes Bowling Alley

This opening scene gives you a glimpse of the carnage to come. Most of the book will follow the main character, Benjamin Lowe, who eventually becomes a part of the homicidal group featured in Ch. 1.

This is the highlight of Ed’s week. Here, sitting on a plastic, swiveling seat, eyes on the score screen, waiting for his turn�"this is his me-time, his peace, and his nirvana. All around him is the deep thunder of bowling balls as they collide onto hard wood, rolling down their waxed lanes to fulfill their destinies. Pins topple and collide satisfactorily, like the clash of cymbals punctuating the end of a long drum roll. Next to him, two of his buddies are telling dirty jokes, but he’s too lost in the moment to make out the details, something about two nuns and the Invisible Man. Ed still manages to laugh when the punch-line is delivered, and picking up a pitcher and an empty plastic cup, he pours himself a beer. He waits for the foam to settle and drinks deep, savoring the taste with his eyes shut. There’s no lawn to mow at Rock’n Lanes, no frigid, nagging wife, no in-laws. Bending forward to retie his black and red bowling shoes, Ed’s not worried about who’s impregnating his fifteen year old daughter or about his dog’s failing kidneys. At Rock’n Lanes, Ed is not being audited by the IRS. There is only the game and the beer. There’s only the sound of people laughing and cheering, and the smell of popcorn and anti-fungal spray. With his eyes still shut, Ed smiles to himself.

 

His bowling partner pats him hard on the back and says something.

 

                “Hm?”

 

                “I said, ‘You’re up.’ You alright, man? You seem out of it.”

 

                Standing up, Ed drinks down the rest of his beer, sets aside his cup and says “Never been better.” With both hands he tugs on his belt buckle, wrangling his pants up higher onto his waist. He nods and says, “I’m feeling this one boys. Tonight is my night.” He walks to the ball return and uses the vent to dry his hands. Then he picks his weapon, a custom-made, sixteen pound ball, bright purple with the word “winner” etched in yellow cursive.

 

When Ed’s father died of lung cancer, his older brother got the house and his younger sister inherited enough cash to start her own restaurant. Ed got the bowling ball. He spent nearly five hundred dollars to have the holes drilled and refitted to perfection. When he slid his fingers in for the first time, he likened it to his first sexual experience in ’85, when Shelley Delaney let him slip a hand under her skirt beneath the bleachers in junior high.

 

Now, standing a good ten feet from the foul line, Ed prepares for his approach. The purple globe is poised inches in front of his chin, balanced at the top of one hand, the other arm offering support. He takes a deep breath in and exhales, clearing his mind. His ball, the lane, and the pins are all that exist. He envisions the release, his wrist turning and his body shifting slightly to compensate for the weight. Most of this would be pure muscle memory. In his mind, he hears the future knock of the ball’s landing, all sixteen pounds of polyurethane coming down hard onto the maple surface. If the impact is clean and there’s no bounce, the friction of ball and lane will immediately take effect, keeping speed. Fast and gleaming under the yellow lights, the ball will pass over the maple onto pine, and then maple again where the pins sit. If the curvature of the ball’s path is correct, it’ll strike the first pin at angle, sending it back to take down the pins to the left behind it while the balls takes out the pins to the right. Strike.

                Ed’s face is set and focused. He cranes his head to the right, then the left, stretching out his neck until it makes a soft cracking sound. Then, to himself, he mutters, “Ed… you’re a winner.” He takes a few steps forward, gaining speed. He lets the weight of the ball bring his arm down and he swings back. A foot away from the foul line, momentum shifts and Ed’s ready to let fly, but behind him, there’s a bang and the sound of a woman shrieking. Startled, Ed tries to turn around mid-swing to look but his balance is hopelessly lost. He falls flat on his back and the bowling ball disconnects from is hand and crawls idly into the gutter. For a moment he’s dazed, lying on his back. There’s another bang. More screams this time. Gunshots. Scrambling onto his hands and knees, Ed makes himself tiny and scurries behind the ball return. Heart racing, he peers over just enough to see the shooter: a girl�"skinny-- maybe eighteen, maybe twenty-something, with bright cotton-candy-pink hair cut short all around. In a tank top and short plaid skirt, she has one arm raised, holding up a large black handgun�"a GLOCK, almost ridiculously large compared to her tiny frame. And she’s laughing. Squeezing off round after round carelessly into monitors and pins and seats and pitchers and people, she’s clutching her ribs with her free arm and cackling so hard her eyes are nearly closed, tears streaming down her cheeks. People shriek and twitch at the sound of each blast, hiding beneath tables and chairs. At least two bodies are slumped lifeless and bleeding on the waxed lanes themselves, their blood running into the gutters.

 

Cowering behind the ball return, wide-eyed, breathing heavily through his mouth in short panicked breaths, Ed can just barely make out the large shape at her feet. F**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k! It’s the shoe-rental guy. Ed can tell by the red flannel shirt. Norton, he remembers. Great, big, barrel-chested man--always dressed like a lumberjack. Norton sprayed down shoes, but he also bounced a few drunk bowlers here and there. He was an ox of a man. Ed had seen Norton knock a mouthy customer out cold for refusing to keep his swearing down. Now, Norton’s lying face down with his arms at his sides like a napping sea lion. The back of his head is a pulpy mess of shaggy black hair and skull. Beneath his massive frame, a pool of thick crimson expands outward, running down the steps toward the lanes in curtains.

 

Blasting at anything that moves�"and most of what doesn’t�"the girl’s laughter has subsided to a controlled giggle. Then there’s the click-click-click of her clip running dry. Irritated, she says, “Aaw, D****t,” and starts to reload.

 

Ed takes a moment to look around for his bowling team. One of them, Carl, is only four feet away, lying on his stomach, hands clutched to his chest, sobbing with one cheek against the cold tile.

 

Ed hisses, “Carl!”

 

Carl is incoherent, shaking his head as silent tears slide down the side of his face, dripping down onto the tile.

 

“Carl! Where the f**k is Travis?”

 

And with one shaking, timid finger, Carl points over and up at their table, where Travis’ limp body is slumped unnaturally, head hanging down off the end. From his position behind the ball return, Ed can’t make out exactly where Travis was shot, but thick threads of blood have begun to spill down onto the floor from the table’s surface. He’s dead, thinks Ed, he was s****y bowler and never paid for anything, but… but now he’s dead. He tried to recall the faces of Travis’ family, but he couldn’t.

 

“He just bought a trans am.” Carl’s eyes are wide in numb terror. Still shaking his head, he looks over at Ed and says, “He just bought a trans am.”

 

Ed wipes a bead of sweat from his brow quickly with the back of his forearm and swallows hard. “I know. I know�"but listen�"you need to get your s**t together, okay? Okay?”

 

Carl nods sullenly.

 

“Look, we need to get the f**k out of here. I don’t what this is�"but that chick is batshit crazy, right? If we stay, we’ll end up like�"“ Ed jerks his head in the direction of Travis’ sagging corpse. “There’s an emergency exit by the bar. If we�"“

 

“FREEZE, DIRTBAG!!”

 

It was a male’s voice. Ed’s head shoots up and spins reflexively towards the entrance before he remembers himself, and sinks down again behind the ball return. Two policemen had burst through the double glass doors into the bowling alley. Their guns are drawn and pointed directly at the girl, only four or five feet away from her nose. Ed lets out a long slow breath. Jesus Christ, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

 

The girl brushes a pink swoop of hair out of her face and narrows her eyes at the taller of the two officers. “Really? Dirtbag?”

 

The officer sets his jaw and in a clear, loud, and official voice says, “Shut it, dirtbag! I want you to slowly put the gun on the ground and put your hands on your head.”

 

The other officer has a darker complexion, almost exotic, with long black hair falling down to the shoulder blades of his uniform. Ed has been pulled over half a dozen times in the last two years. He has never once seen a cop with long hair. The Hispanic officer takes a half-step forward and whispers something into his partner’s ear.

 

For a moment, the tall officer smiles, and then it’s gone. “Correction. I want you to slowly put the gun on the ground and put your hands on your tits.”

 

Ed feels a wave of nausea hit him. Something is wrong here.

 

The girl rolls her eyes and says, “You guys are dicks.” Insolently, she bends forward and drops the glock on the ground, pulls a spare clip from the waistband of her skirt and tosses it down as well. She pauses, glaring at the officers. “Are you really going to make me do this?”

 

The taller officer smirks. “We are the law.”

 

The tan officer nods.

 

Sighing, the girl makes a dramatic show of cupping each small breast with both hands. “This is dumb.”

 

“I don’t want any back talk, dirtbag! You’re under arrest for...” the imposter cop scans the scene lazily, “Unruly conduct… destruction of private property…” Then he glances down at the massive heap of Norton’s corpse. “…and endangerment of an abnormally sized child.”

 

All three of them laughed.

 

There was one psycho with a gun. Now there’s three. Ed’s eyes dart around desperately for a way out that wouldn’t make him an obvious target. People lay low in every direction, some of them living, hiding beneath tables, crying into their hands to keep from screaming. Others, the dead ones, lay strewn about the bowling alley, some of them laying in the golden, waxed lanes, bleeding out into the gutters. Everywhere Ed looks, there’s the smattering of blood, small flecks of red glittering chairs and equipment, bowling ball stands and counters. He eyes the exit sign near the bar. If he runs fast enough, he can be out the door before they can take a shot at him. Would they even risk chasing him down in public? I’m not going to die here, Ed swears to himself, I’m not going to die here.

 

Acting serious again, continuing his game of cops-and-robbers, the tall cop says, “Alright, dirtbag�"“

 

The girl drops her hands from her chest. “Stop calling me that.”

 

“My partner has one question before we haul your a*s off downtown in the paddy wagon. Officer Gonzales?”

 

The tan officer shoots his partner a dirty look. “Gonzales? I’m Indian, you a*****e.”

 

“Your question, Officer Gonzales.”

 

Turning his attention back to the pink-haired girl, Officer Gonzales asks, “Why’d you do it?”

 

“Why’d I do it?” The girl gives a warm, genuine smile, and solemnly, so low that Ed almost can’t make out the words, she says, “Because I’m not like them. Because I deserve it.”

 

Lowering his weapon, the tall officer steps toward the skinny girl and kisses her affectionately on the forehead. “Good answer, Kiley.” Then, looking around the room, he says, “Pick up your gun. Let’s get this done and go home.”

 

                Now. It has to be now. From his hiding spot, Ed looks over to see Carl staring, placid and unblinking at Travis’ slumped corpse.

                “Carl!” Ed whispered, “Carl, we have to run. We have to run now.”

 

                “No. N-no, they’ll go away. They might go away.”

 

                “They’re not f*****g going away. We have to run!”

 

                “No-no-no… no, no..”

               

                “Fine. You have always been a p***y.” Ed looks up to see the pink haired girl loading her next clip. He reaches down to retie his bowling shoes, gives Carl a last glance, and says a quick prayer for himself. Then, acting automatically, he shoots up from behind the ball return and sprints, leaping over bodies. In slow motion, he’s darting around chairs and over survivors, the sound of his heart fills his ears as adrenaline is sprayed into every inch of his body. He’s halfway to the door before those sick b******s take notice.

 

                He hears one of them say, “We’ve got a runner!”

 

He hears a bullet rip just past him and into the corpse of man still slumped in his seat. Another shot cracks into the hard wood of one of the lanes. The sound pierces his ear drums. He reaches the emergency exit and throws his full weight against it, falling out into the staff parking behind the bowling alley. Looking up he sees a squad car parked haphazardly across two parking spots, its lights flashing. Ed runs to the open window, saying, “Help! F*****g help! Th-th-there’s these f*****g lunatics! They’re killing everyone! They killed Travis�"he-he just got a… trans am…” Ed stops, staring dumbfounded into the cop car, with his hands on the door’s frame. Sitting there in the front seats are two men slumped back awkwardly, both in undershirts and underwear. One of them, white, has little or nothing left to his face above the mouth. The other, a black man, is split nearly in two from the side of his neck down to the navel, a mess of organs and bowels spilling down into his lap and onto the seat. In a shrill voice, Ed says, “What the�"what the f**k? WHAT THE F**K?!”

 

                From somewhere behind, he hears the pink-haired girl’s voice. “I’m on it. You guys finish up inside.”

 

                Before he can turn around, something devastating collides straight into the center of his back. Ed hears the loud crack of his spine giving way and silently drops face down onto the concrete. There on the cement, he can’t move. His arms and fingers flex and curl of their own volition, completely out of his control. He can’t feel his legs. He can’t feel his feet. His back feels cold and hot all at once. With his cheek against the concrete he can see what hit him, rolling slowly away. It’s a bright purple bowling ball, with the word “winner” etched in yellow. The sneakers of the pink-haired girl pass in front of his eyes. They walk a few feet away towards the ball, and Ed, struggling to force his lungs to expand and contract, can make out white panties peeking out from beneath her skirt as she picks it up. How could she have thrown that ball? She’s too strong. It’s not real. It’s not real.

 

Then the sneakers are in front of his face again, and Ed, with a narrow trickle of blood and drool running down his cheek, hears a voice. “Look, I’m sorry about all the… theatrics. We usually get this done much quicker, but it’s been a long week.” The voice is becoming harder to hear, but from somewhere it’s saying, “Everyone needs to blow off steam now and then. You know how it is.” The last thing Ed hears is the distant sound of gunfire and screaming before the ball comes down on him.

Reviews

[K.L. Ravns]

some editing needed but overall great job introducing the story. I am looking forward to chapter 2. Watch out for the use of quotations and use of adjectives. the first paragraph could use some work. you want to hook your reader right away. over all good job. Keep writing,
Raven

[Stacy Purvis]

Very raw, very real, detailed and the dialogue is fantastic. Thank you for sharing.

[DRP22]

Wow. Quick response. Thank you so much for giving this your time.