October 30, 2019.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #16:

Ok. Hear me out on this one. So this Spooktober Story is about bowling. I'm not very good at bowling, and I really don't know a lot about it, but we're doing sort of a Faustian thing here, and that's a pretty simple framework to lay out any sort of story, as long as you use google to figure out the relevant words to plop in the template. This time we're doing bowling.

Still with me? Good. So in this story a bowler guy gets really good at bowling, but hey, there's still this thing that nags at him, aw, jeez, he can never pick up a 7-10 split. (I know that the 7-10 isn't the hardest split, I can google too, but 7-10 splits are a lot more well known than like a Greek Church or whatever.)

Anyway, so then this, uh, I guess it would be like a bowling-related guy. This is the devil, or Mephistopheles, or, you know, some being with a lot of power. Supernatural power in this instance. I think you can do non-supernaturally powered Mephistopheleses, but it takes some fancy footwork to give it consistent internal logic and I don't really think it adds to the story in this case. And the Mephistopheles in this case is a guy named Gerald The Arcade Machine Repairman.

Long story short: Gerald The Arcade Machine Repairman is repairing Dig Dug, and the bowler guy, whose name is, like, Ne...r...p....... Nerp, his name is Nerp, Brian Nerp, is cheesed off about not being able to pick up a 7-10 split, and Gerald is like "hey son if you want to pick up a 7-10 split, I can give you this magic-" actually maybe he wouldn't say magic, that's a little on the nose, so maybe it's like "I'll teach you a technique in exchange for something from you, but I can't tell you what that is now because of so-and-so-and-so" and Nerp's like "yeah whatever old man sure why not."

Anyway so later Nerp is like "dang I really can hit a 7-10 split consistently now," but the thing Gerald The Arcade Machine Repairman took from him is his ability to roll anything *but* a 7-10 split. So like no more strikes, just spares forever.

And Nerp goes "aaaaaa" about it and that's where it ends, because you can end horror stories on just an implication of unimaginable future and get away with it. It's better sometimes if you don't resolve things. Like you wouldn't want to end a horror story with a Stand By Me ending that tied everything up all nice and neat. I don't know, maybe you could do that. I guess it could be fun.

Whatever.