Pinned

Page Turner #17 - Pinned

Type: Journal

What follows is a transcript of a vlog of the last journal entry recorded by Bowling Ball Detective, who vanished while trying to overthrow our great leader:

Journal entry, night, year unknown

The alley, as if alive with shadows closed in around me. Streetlights buzzed weakly, eerie shapes flickering like memories on the edge of my vision. I rolled forward, slow, steady, air thickening with every rotation. A wind whispers across my finger holes, whistling of melancholy and spookiness. That night the air may have been cool, but something… was definitely uncool.

The Bowling Ball Brigade had warned me. The King Pin. A name wheezed through pursed lips like a curse, this figure, cloaked in shades of NFI. They say it controls the cult, pulling balls from the lanes, playing with those balls like they were some back-alley game pieces. Missing, the brigade called it. Vanishing without a trace. I call it… evil. And no other word dare come to label such an afront to my friends… my family.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. Balls roll, they don’t search. But the call had come—pins lost. I could no longer ignore it or face a future haunted by the faces of the past who I wouldn’t have helped but now I am lending aid so those futured faces would one hopes be happy were I to succeed here on this night most loathsome.

Cold air wrapped around me, a deathly embrace as I neared the nearby alley’s entrance. The stench of forgotten pins hit my senses first—then the soft glow of neon, casting a sickly light on cracked pavement. This was their home, their domain.

A shudder rippled through my being. A clash of inner balls raged within my mind, a heroic ball slamming upon a cowardly orb, both urging me to act as I halt, frozen, statuesque, reeking of fear ten times scarier than when someone jumps out at you and says – boooo. I’d rolled through many alleys this night, taken countless turns, but this? This felt different. Dangerous.

The King Pin was close, I could feel it. I could hear it, the faint clatter of pins in shadow scattering. And I was about to find out if I had the courage to face what lay ahead—or if I’d just be another pin to fall in his wake.

My path was set. There was no turning back.