Arthur's Demise

A little bit of back story that may just be actual story, we'll see

Hello, and happy beautiful Friday! Last week when I shared the first part of Chapter One of Timothy’s Monsters, I mentioned that this week I would share the scene that precedes it, the scene where Timothy’s beloved banana slug, Arthur, meets his doom. I tell you what, one of the hardest parts of writing this story so far has been deciding where to begin. I’ve taken some classes and I’ve been to some conferences, but mostly my writing is just me flying from the seat of my pants. There have been a few books that have been really helpful to me, though. I especially love The Emotional Craft of Fiction, by Donald Maass. I also really like The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne, and Story Genius by Lisa Cron. So, this scene comes from an exercise from Cron’s book about the origin of misbelief. How did your character come to believe the thing that causes them to behave the way they do and therefore enter conflict the way they do? This is the scene where Timothy decides humans truly are untrustworthy, and he can’t be one of them. Here we go!

Arthur’s Demise

“They are going to love you,” Timothy said to the eight-inch slug slowly creeping up his arm. The slug’s slimy belly was cool and felt good on his skin. Timothy didn’t usually let him climb on him; the slime was sticky and took an age to wash away. But, he had to be prepared. What if the other kids asked what his slime felt like? He’d know exactly what to tell them.

Arthur was a banana slug. He wasn’t the biggest one Timothy had ever seen, but he was the nicest. And the yellowest. That was what TIm liked most about him, besides his general good-naturedness. He was also funny, for a banana slug. Timothy flipped through The Field Guide to the Slug, a book Eleanor had brought him from the library. The other kids were bound to ask him all about Arthur and he did not want to look silly. He read it three times. 

Tim had spent the last week making a special carrying case for Arthur by tying sticks together with leaves like a little log cabin. He put a stick on his arm in front of the slug and waited for him to crawl onto it, then slipped him inside the case and put on the lid. He nodded once with satisfaction and took a deep breath.

“Here we go.”

The walk into town was long. Usually he went from Eleanor’s house, which was a much shorter and more direct walk, since he could just take the road and didn’t have to be careful about leaving tracks. Eleanor loved Arthur, but didn’t like slugs anywhere near her garden, so he lived with Timothy and Q in the woods, so that was where he started his trek into town. 

The kids all met up in the town square after school. As the sun peaked, he started to worry that he was too late and all of the kids would be gone. It was Friday, and they got out much earlier on Fridays. To his relief, when he finally came to the road and walked into town, it looked like most of them were still there, kicking the ball around like usual. With Arthur’s case tucked carefully under his arm, he hesitated for just a moment. Then, with a deep inhale and a slow exhale, like Eleanor had showed him, he stood up as straight and tall as he could and marched up to the square. 

His hands were shaking and his heart was pounding. This was it. This was the moment that he would finally become part of the gang. James and Amelia had been talking to him like he was one of the other kids, even though he didn’t go to school with them. James even said he could come play at his house sometime. Timothy was sure Eleanor and Q would ever let him, but the invitation was a significant. There was still Squid and his posse of jerks, but for the most part, the kids were being nice to him. They weren’t completely ignoring him, anyway. Tim had to keep a lot of secrets. The most interesting things about him, like how he lived in the woods with a sasquatch, were things he could never, ever tell anyone. But he could tell them about Arthur. He was a slug, and there was nothing secret about slugs. There were only amazing things about them, like how they have more teeth than sharks. Timothy was convinced that the kids were going to love Arthur, and that was going to make them love him, too. 

“Hi Tim!” Amelia shouted when she saw him. He waved and almost dropped Arthur’s case. She smiled and skipped over to him.

“Hi, Amelia,” he said, and a nervous giggle wiggled its way out of him. 

“Timo!” James greeted as he kicked the ball back to the other side of the square. They were the same age, but James, like most of the boys, was much bigger than Tim. He came over and slapped Tim on the back, and this time he did drop Arthur. The case hit the ground but, thanks to Tim’s craftsmanship, didn’t break. Tim gasped and scooped it up again, peeking inside carefully. Arthur was unharmed, munching away at a mushroom Timothy had slipped in the case for him to snack on. The boy let out a sigh of relief.

“What'd you have there?” Amelia asked. Her smile was as warm as sunshine. 

He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, there was another, much less sweet, voice from behind him.

“Yeah, what’d you have there, Tiny Tim?”

It was Squid. Tim figured he’d be there, and he figured he’d try to embarrass him, like he always did. He walked up to Tim and, before he could stop him, smacked the bottom of the case so it went flying out of his hands again. It hit the ground harem but held together but just barely. Timothy gasped and flew down to pick it up.

“Knock it off, Squid,” he heard Amelia say. 

He steeled himself and stood up.

“Terrestrial gastropod mollusc!” he said, louder than he meant to. To his surprise, while he had been retrieving Arthur, several other kids had joined them. No doubt they were waiting for a show, and no doubt Squid meant to give them one. All of them looked at Timothy with befuddled expressions. 

“What?” James asked.

“It’s–he’s–a terrestrial gastropod mollusc,” he repeated, grateful his voice didn’t crack under the anxiety he felt welling up in his chest. He was met with blank stares and began to realize that perhaps not all eight-year-olds knew the scientific names of almost every lant and creature in the forest. Hastily, he opened up the carrying case and pulled out the stick Arthur was clinging to. The girls screamed. The boys laughed.

“Gross!”

“Disgusting!”

“Ew!” 

Most of the kids stepped back, except Amelia. She stayed put. Her face looked unsure, but not twisted in horror like everyone else’s.

“Banana slug,” she said. 

“Yes!” Tim said, thrilled. “Most of their body is a foot, and they eat almost anything and turn it into soil that helps the trees grow, and–”

Squid smacked his elbow. The stick with Arthur on it dropped to the ground, and before he could do anything, Squid brought his big, fat, heavy foot down on the beloved slug. Once. Twice. Three times. 

“No!” Amelia screamed. 

The other kids shrieked and wretched at the squelching, squishing sound of Tim’s friend’s demise. Then, still laughing and pretending to gag, they ran back to their game. With a smile that looked more like a sneer, Squid followed them.

Stunned, Tim slowly fell to his knees next to the gooey remains of Arthur. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. He started to cry. This wasn’t supposed to happen at all.

“Sorry, Timo,” James muttered. He took a few steps backwards, then turned and hurried off to the game. Amelia crouched down next to Timothy. She pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket. It had lace around the edges and a cursive letter A embroidered in pink thread. She laid it down over Arthur’s body and put a hand on TIm’s shoulder. 

“Amelia’s boyfriend is crying!” someone shouted from nearby. Several kids laughed. Her hand slipped off his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Tim,” she whispered, and then she was gone, too. 

He was breathing big breaths, but none of them seemed to do him any good. He still felt like he was suffocating. How could this have happened? Why would Squid do that? This was supposed to be how he won his way into their hearts, how he became one of the gang, how he earned his spot with the humans. He was so sure it would work. They didn’t even give him a chance to tell them why Arthur was so amazing. 

Using Amelia’s handkerchief, he scooped him up as best he could. He wrapped his body in the pretty white fabric and slowly made his way back down the road out of town. Eleanor would be home today. He wanted to go to her. He wanted her to hold him.  He wanted her to help him bury Arthur. He wasn’t sure he could bear the shame, though, so his gait was clumsy as half of him needed to get out of there as fast as he could and half of him didn’t want to take a step closer to her house. He knew better. She and Q had always told him that he couldn’t trust the humans. It was the first thing he ever learned. He didn’t listen; he put Arthur in harm's way, and Squid killed him, just like that. He didn’t even get a chance to explain anything about him. They were supposed to love him. He trusted humans, and now his friend was dead because of it. What would Eleanor and Q think of him? How disappointed would they be? Would they trust him anymore? Would they worry that he might put them in harm’s way, too? No. That would never happen ever again. He would never trust a human ever, ever again.

By the time he made it to the trail to Eleanor’s cottage, he had his tears under control. His breaths were still shaky, but he managed to even them out. Soon his feet were hitting the big, flat stones that marked the way to her door. He looked up and could see the little house standing in the clearing with giant redwood trees towering over it. She was in her garden, just to the side of the house. He saw her stand up and turn, a smile on her face, when she heard his footsteps, and her eyes on him made the tears explode out of him. She came running.

An hour later, Arthur was laid to rest at the foot of a lilac bush that was as tall as the house. Eleanor say with her arms around Timothy on a wooden bench in the shade of the bush.

“Now, any time you sit on this bench,” she told him, “you can think about your friend and all the reasons you loved him.”

“And that it’s my fault he’s dead.”

“No,” she said in a firm voice. “No. It’s not your fault that you thought you could trust those kids. Your heart is big and open and bright, and you forget sometimes that almost no one else has a heart like that. You forget to protect it. But that isn’t something you should be blamed for. That is something that makes you special. Not just special, but important. This world needs hearts like yours. Lots of humans see a heart like that and feel like they have to attack it. So, you need to learn how to guard it. That’s all. It’s Squid’s fault that Arthur is dead. Not yours.”

He wanted to believe her. But if he hadn’t taken him to town with him, if he hadn’t tried to use him to buy their friendship, he would still be sliming around the forest, making it a better place. It was his fault. But it would never be his fault again. He would guard his heart, and all his secrets, and everything special to him, and never share them again.

RIP Arthur