To whom it may concern

There was a pause on the other end of the line, during which the static crackle of Raudive voices increased in volume and urgency.

"I take it you mean something more dramatic than the usual unfortunate predation of mermaids upon the Summer People?" Chisel asked.

"Yes," said Janet. "This isn't a case of blood in the water, it's blood literally replacing all the water. There's a herd of vampires over by the boat shack already, and come nightfall they'll be like antelope at an oasis."

Chisel sighed.

"Tell your Gods that I'll have a team down there shortly," he said.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Janet loosened the pristine white laces holding her new-to-her pink and purple sneakers in place, and gently pried them off, wincing as she did so.

Beneath cute and colourful socks bearing the likeness of a slightly sinister cartoon dog her feet were callused and blistered, the result of long hours waiting tables and wrangling semi-aquatic rice-monsters onto plates decorated with artfully arranged slivers of ginger and corralled with whisper-thin walls of wasabi.

At the end of the dock, the mermaids bobbed in the surf, needle-sharp teeth flashing as the setting sun reflected in the water.

"We can help," they whispered.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The blue glass buoy dangled from the Baitshop ceiling, suspended in a net woven from the fine silvery hair of the lake's oldest fishwives. It was full of images, and they flickered and writhed at the edges of Janet's vision as they tried to get her attention.

She paused in the act of putting the coffee machine back together, her gaze caught by the tiny blue-tinted figures dancing just under the curved surface of the pretty glass ball.

"Okay," she said. "I'll take a look. But if you pull some Enchanted Zoltar-level bullshit on me, you're going straight into storage."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Janet folded four crisp twenties neatly as she tucked them into her pocket.

"Fine," she said. "Eighty dollars and any type of sweet preserve except for strawberry from the jam stall, as long as it's curse-free."

"Fine," said Dash. "And you don't show up here with a conch shell or a bridle of silver scales until the clock strikes midnight on Tuesday."

She held out her hand, the webbing between her fingers glistening like a soap bubble. He shook it, his skin smelling of ozone and static electricity prickling her palm.

"Deal," she said. "See you on Tuesday."

He waved.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"Look," said Dash. "It's occasionally nice to see you, say hi to the Kingdom under the Waves for me, but I'm in the middle of a job and I don't need an assistant, so now that you know I'm not stealing aquatic monsters from your boss, I guess you can leave."

Janet glared at him. He glared back.

"Just because you didn't bring them here doesn't mean they can stay," she said. "They belong to the lake, and the things in the water will drag them back eventually."

"It's a holiday weekend," said Dash. "Let them have a little fun."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"Dash," said Janet. "Just for my own peace of mind, please tell me you didn't lure two incredibly dangerous, hungry lake monsters here so you could get rid of a guy who stiffed you on a tip."

"Nope," said Dash. "There's a farmers' market over on the western edge of the park. I was going to set a potato blight on them so I could sell them warding amulets."

He kicked a heavy wooden crate beneath the stall and the potato blight inside snapped it's soft and rotten teeth in anger.

"Where do you think I got the pony treats?"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Leprechaun

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The mermaid's tail was long and eel-like. Mottled grey-brown, it curled beneath her human torso in a way that could have suggested a skirt, if the person suggesting it was more willing to believe in slithering coils of petticoat than the existence of carnivorous fish-women.

She leaned forward, candy-apple red lips sparkling in the sun as she whispered something into the Kelpie's ragged ears.

The kelpie released the man's arm with a wet popping sound. The man staggered back, his skin slime-slick and reddened but seemingly unharmed. He laughed nervously.

"Poor man," said Janet. "Twenty-four hours, he's jelly and bones."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"Someone's going to lose a finger," said Janet, slipping around the knot of gawkers with the ease of someone who waits tables for a living.

Dash, stood behind a scuffed fold-out table besides crates of fly-speckled carrots and a catering-sized sack of sugar, shrugged.

"That's not my problem," he said. "I'm just a humble seller of horse treats; I don't know that lady or her suspiciously slimy horse. People want to buy a carrot, feed a four-legged moray eel because it's got pretty hair, that's not my problem."

"I know some moray eels," said Janet. "They wouldn't eat that crap."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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There was no wind that day, and the surface of the lake was mirror-flat and shining, gleaming like a misshapen silver dollar in the afternoon sun.

In the shallow places, around the rotting half-collapsed boardwalk and alongside the enchanted breakwater made from sea-glass and mermaid scales, the water was clear all the way to the bottom.

Janet walked the perimeter slowly, her gait a studied halfway point between the purposeful march of patrol - which the King Crab might take as an incursion - and the loose-limbed amble of a stroll - which the lake monsters would take as an invitation to dinner.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"In that case, I take it you're not going to end up calling him Annie?" said Marshall.

"I mean, I don't have a problem with Annies," said Janet. "I don't even think I know any."

The mer-minotaur's broad, blunt snout breached the surface, and Janet reached out absently to pat it.

"He could be an Annie, I guess," she said. "Put that down as a possibility."

Marshall dutifully wrote it down, wondering if this was how Simon felt on a lot of their missions. He crossed out "bull shark" and put a question mark next to both "Annie" and "mer-minotaur".

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Marshall set the Big Book of Sharks aside and pulled the heavily damaged volume on barnyard animals out of his backpack. Blue and yellow Post-Its marked the section on cattle.

"Cows are only pregnant for nine months," he told Janet. "So we should use that as our deadline, if you were serious about avoiding... calves? Pups? Hatchlings?"

"I was mostly joking," said Janet. "But nine months puts us right in the middle of tourist season and you know the summer people wouldn't leave a mer-minotaur with babies alone."

"Mer-Minotaur," said Marshall, writing it down. "Is that what we're going with?"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Sparky's thick black fur was sodden, soaked passed the point where the Hellhound's internal infernal flames could keep it dry. He was also covered in wet sand and shale and would need to be sprayed with the garden hose once they got home.

None of that bothered Simon. That was all part and parcel of taking a dog to the lake, regardless of whether the dog had one head or three, if it pledged allegiance to Satan or worshipped at the altar of Winnalot Wet Foods.

The mermaid tail dangling from one of his mouths was a different question, however.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The class was called Underwater Basket Weaving, and the stack of enrolment forms were wet enough to have congealed into a single sodden mass. Janet rolled her eyes as she untacked the hand-written (fin-writted?) cardboard sign from the Baitshop notice board, taking a moment to appreciate the use of shed scales as decorative glitter. It was visually appealing, even if it did mean the sign stank of fish in the afternoons when the low sun warmed the paper.

"Are you going to tell the mermaids that's not a real course that human take?" asked Melanie.

Janet considered.

"Nah," she said.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The sea bell was old, pitted from years of exposure to salt spray and ocean gales, and blue-green with oxidisation. It felt both incredibly heavy and as though she was holding nothing at all, and Janet had to focus on the reality of it to keep it from slipping through her fingers.

The swan-shaped pedalo bobbed in the swell of the waves that broke around the ghost reef, anchored there by a single strand of spider silk and Janet's own fierce belief that this would work. She slid back the white canopy of her little craft, took a deep breath, and put one rubber-soled foot on the semi-translucent rock.

It held, and she stepped from the boat onto the slimy stone, the huge, half-visible bell clanking softly in her hands. Here and there, ghost shrimp swam in puddles of ghost ocean, their white shrouds drifting dramatically around them. The rising ghost-tide would carry them home, if the seagulls didn't get to them first, and they seemed happy enough where they were.

The protruding spire of rock that she'd picked as her makeshift bell tower was jagged, twisted, and black as those tiny sea serpents Simon erroneously thought he was keeping secret in the tank behind his parent's house. It radiated malice, and streaks of waterproof paint along it's sharp edges told of all the vessels it had gleefully dragged beneath the waves.

Janet wrapped the coarse, heavy rope around one jutting angle, looped it seven times while humming the sea shanty that the Jenny Haniver had taught her. The stone vibrated with outrage beneath her cold-numbed fingers, and she ignored it as it deserved. Murder-rocks with shitty attitudes forfeited her consideration.

The sea bell's clapper was suspended in a protective sheath of blessed lambswool, and it glistened new-penny bright when she slipped it free. Resting one hand on the bell's curved lip, she pushed gently, relishing the rich, deep sound that echoed over the water as it swung on it's makeshift headstock.

"That's what you get," she told the reef that snarled faintly beneath her feet. "Maybe if you'd behaved yourself, I wouldn't have had to bell you."

She returned to her swan boat, ready both for dry land and an end to the sad waterlogged ghosts who kept showing up at the restaurant, soaking the floor. A hungry mermaid grabbed for her and she kicked it in the face.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The cruise ship gave three long blasts of it's horn, the noise rolling across the mirror-calm waters of Lake Eerie. The rowboats, which had been floating at ease around the boardwalk at the back of the Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar, turned as one, slime-slick prows pointing towards the towering vessel.

Janet slid the last twitching paper bag across the counter and, not bothering to hide a sign of relief, crossed the final to-go order off the list in front of her.

The passengers trickled out, some in groups, most alone, trailing ghost fog and ectoplasm in their wake. The holed, half-rotten pleasure boats that had carried them ashore once again dipped low beneath spectral weight as they glided out towards the waiting liner.

Janet reached around the huge old-fashioned cash register and retrieved the tip jar, upending it on the small strip of unoccupied space between the cutlery and the condiments. Out tumbled mermaid scales and fishwife nails, along with a delicate silver slipper that must have belonged to a seahorse.

Not bad," she mused, sweeping it into her apron pocket and reaching for the mop that stood sentry beside the kitchen door.

She opened the water-side windows as far as they could go, and began to wash the blood and brine from the warped wooden floors.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"The One Where Phoebe Mixes Up Lake Superior and Lake Eerie"

— ted, lost in the archives (@teioh) October 15, 2018

million dollar idea: reboot of "Eerie, Indiana" set in a lake

— spook john b. (@adr) October 15, 2018

A direct sequel to Bright Lights. If you want to know more about Cosmo, you can find him here.

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The International Cryptozoology Museum™ in Portland, Maine, includes exhibits about cryptids (beyond Bigfoot & Nessie). We also feature displays about the finds of “living fossils” and other classic animals of discovery — the successful cryptozoological stories. One of the most famous, of course, is the coelacanth, as featured in the ICM logo. We have a 5.5 ft long, lifesize model of the first one taken off Africa in 1938 in the museum.

Oh my Glob they have props from Freakylinks!

Written for the fffc October challenge. The prompt for this one was "monster: classical and mythological"

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