Lost Sock Memorial Day

[froodle]

May 9th is Lost Sock Memorial Day (no, really). Let's mark this solemn occasion with some Bureau of Lost-themed fanworks!

Lost Sock Memorial Day

[froodle]

May 9th is Lost Sock Memorial Day (no, really). Let's mark this solemn occasion with some Bureau of Lost-themed fanworks!

Real life Eerie Video?

[froodle]

I used quarantine to make my kids a video store. Physical media forever, indeed. pic.twitter.com/QXuLJIHuYU

— Eric Branscum (@ericbranscum) May 7, 2020

Man, and I didn't even look off to the side. There's Eerie, Indiana. This is already better than any real Blockbuster.

— KSLawWolf (@KSLawWolf) May 9, 2020

Eerie Indiana interview coming soon from Location Station

[froodle]

Follow along here!

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Nightmare in Mud

[froodle]

The chocolate mousse was a deep, dark brown and the smell coming off it was thick and rich, with a faint and bitter undercurrent running beneath.

A white horse made from spun sugar lay half-submerged in the centre of the bowl, front hooves raised as it's back end sank ever deeper below the surface.

Marshall blinked.

"Did you just recreate Artax drowning in the swamp of sadness in dessert form?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Tod.

"I thought you said that scene gave you nightmares."

"It does," said Tod. "I thought this would help me face my fears."

"Did it work?"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: The Little Horse

[froodle]

Tod shook his head.

"Not really," he said. "One, it just reminded me of how much that part of the movie freaks me out, and two, I messed up the horse so now it just looks like I had a horse decoration that fell over into the mousse."

Marshall looked at his friend. He looked at the horse.

"Looks fine to me. Apart from drowning in sadness and mousse, obviously. You can definitely tell it's a horse."

"That's not enough," said Tod. "Where's the crushing sense of despair and defeat? It's all wrong."

"I'm not sure sugar horses feel sadness."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Mice

[froodle]

"They can if you do it right," said Tod. "Have you seen the green sugar mice that secretly work behind the scenes at Grandma's Kitchen?"

Marshall paused.

"Are we talking about edible sweets made of green sugar that look like mice, or living mice made of green sugar who are the confectionary equivalent of a shoemaker's elves?"

Tod thought about it.

"Both, I guess," he said. "You could probably eat them if you wanted to, though I imagine they get pretty grubby. Also the Grandmas' would be angry if you ate their free labour."

"Tod," said Marshall. "Tell me everything."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Redecorate

[froodle]

Tod's room wasn't quite how Marshall remembered it, either before or after the Pitbull Surfers incident.

Not all of the glossy posters celebrating this baseball player or that footballer had been destroyed in the initial purge, and some of those that survived had been carefully pieced back together and put back up. They decorated the walls and the low, sloped ceiling, surrounded by death metal bands with umlauts in their names and their torn and ragged edges covered in glittery stickers Marshall recognised from a weekly "Desserts of the World" magazine that Syndi also subscribed to.

"Looks good," he said.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Rule Breakers

[froodle]

"Thanks," said Tod, with the sort of sincerity that reminded Marshall of his first meeting with Sara Sue and, uncomfortably, a lot of his interactions with Simon. He shook his head, hoping to dislodge the unwelcome thought, and asked instead about the mice.

"Okay," said Tod. "First of all, you have to promise not to tell my parents about this. I'm not supposed to have food or pets up here."

"I promise," said Marshall, wondering if the potential groundings for breaking both rules at once would run concurrently or consecutively.

Tod opened his wardrobe, pushing back layers of black fabric.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Generational Divide

[froodle]

With what had to be a triple-figure number of band shirts pushed out of the way, Marshall could see thin shafts of sunlight piercing the gloom inside the closet.

"You drilled holes in your wardrobe," he said, equal parts appalled and impressed.

Tod shrugged.

"Turns out, my parent genuinely can't tell the difference between rock and roll and power tools," he said. "I thought they were having a dig, but no, they're just old."

He reached into the gold-flecked dark and wrapped his hand around something heavy that rattled and sang like wire fencing in a high wind.

Marshall gasped.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Stowaway

[froodle]

The cage fit snugly inside the space at the back of the deep cupboard, it's sides grazing the walls, the roof barely skimming the clothing rail.

Inside, a single solitary sugar mouse sat on it's haunches, face turned towards the open door. It was busily grooming itself, running tiny front paws through whiskers so finely spun that they might have been invisible if not for the fact that the entire animal glowed a bioluminescent green.

"He stowed away in my backpack," said Tod. "I hid him, built the cage out of some scraps my dad kept in the old barn."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Runaway

[froodle]

Marshall knelt down, leaned in for a closer look.

"Are the old ladies looking for him?" he asked, gaze still locked on the impossible animal in front of him.

The mouse, sensing it was being watched, stopped washing itself and turned to face him. Where he'd expected eyes, Marshall could now see there were only shallow depressions in the glowing sugar skull.

He jerked back, startled despite himself and let out a quiet, "Whoa".

"I don't know," said Tod. "I went back, the day after he showed up and started chewing on my algebra textbook, but the Grandmas seemed... normal."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Public Outcry

[froodle]

"I didn't want to mention mice in a café full of customers," Tod continued. "I mean, maybe a stray sugar mouse is a pest problem or maybe it's just something you have when you run a bakery, but you never know how people in a crowd are going to react."

Marshall nodded.

The Eerie Library had acquired a stray cat the Christmas before last, and the Examiner at that time was full of rumours about witchcraft and shapeshifters. On the other hand, a water feature full of alligators at the Eerie Mall was considered a good way to stop littering.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: A Private Word

[froodle]

"I figured I'd wait 'til things quieted down, and when one of the Grandmas' went out back for a smoke break or to sign for a delivery, I'd catch her then and let her know about the sugar mice," said Tod.

"Anyway, after about an hour the bulk of the lunch rush had cleared out, and I heard one of the Grandmas' say she was going to anoint the Tostwitch with sacred oil and then go stretch her legs for a few minutes."

"I went outside and kinda loitered in the alley that runs behind Everything Corn. And that's when..."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Interruption

[froodle]

The knock at the door startled them both. Tod leapt to his feet, grabbing a handful of neatly-hung t-shirts in various shades of black and wrenching them across the clothes rail with a loud, rattling screech.

"Just a minute," he called, arranging the jangling coathangers so that the clothes draped over the front of the cage.

He reached for the doorknob just as his mother knocked again.

"Tod? I was wondering if you and your friends would like something to eat?"

Tod opened the door and popped his head out. Marshall heard a few muffled words exchanged, then departing footsteps.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Snacks

[froodle]

Tod turned back, carefully balancing a plastic tray in one hand while he closed and locked his bedroom door with the other.

"Mom made us sandwiches," he said, setting the food down on a small desk covered with papers, and taking one of the two cans of off-brand soda for himself.

"Cool," said Marshall. He took the other can, opened it, and stared into the carbonated depths for a moment.

"How are your folks doing, anyway?" he asked, his tone studiedly neutral and fooling nobody.

Tod took a long sip of his soda.

"Better," he said eventually. "They're doing better."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Missed Moment

[froodle]

An awkward silence followed, during which Marshall thought of several things to say and couldn't bring himself to say any of them.

"Anyway," said Tod, his voice brittle at the edges and full of a forced brightness that did nothing to hide the shadows.

He coughed and tried again.

"Anyway, I was waiting in the alley, and I was going to talk to the Grandma when she finished with the Tostwich, but then that old guy who runs Everything Corn comes out and starts asking questions about inflatable animals, like have I seen any and do I work for them."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Inflatable Mafia

[froodle]

"He does that," said Marshall. "He thinks there's a secret cabal of blow-up pool toys out to get him because he only stocks inflatable corn-themed things and nothing else."

Tod hesitated for a moment before asking, with palpable reluctance:

"Is there?"

Marshall shrugged.

"I've never found any proof," he said. "That doesn't mean it isn't true, though; I've seen weirder things since moving here"

Tod looked at the wardrobe, the mouse within casting a faint green glow visible even through the hanging forest of cloth.

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "I get that."

He rubbed his eyes, started again.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Cooling Draft

[froodle]

"So between the lunch rush at the Kitchen and getting tangled up in a power struggle between corn and inflatable pool animals, I must have missed the Grandma taking her Tostwich for a walk.

I guess the kitchen part of the Kitchen gets pretty warm, because after the man from Everything Corn saw a plastic bag fluttering down the street and ran back inside his shop, I noticed that someone had propped open the service door to Grandmas' with a folding chair.

I figured they'd only leave it open like that if someone was inside, so I went over there."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Background Noise

[froodle]

"Normally if you go past a place like that, the back door of a restaurant or a takeaway, it's loud," said Tod. "You've been to see Janet at work, you know what it's like. Music on the radio, people talking, the occasional unidentifiable gargle that everyone pretends to think is the dishwasher."

Marshall nodded, cringing a little inside as he remembered that he had in fact thought that noise was the dishwasher. Some investigator...

"But back there at the Kitchen, it was quiet. All I could hear were these odd little scraping sounds.

And more than that, it was dark."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Rather More Than Three Blind Mice

[froodle]

Marshall glanced back at the wardrobe, remembered the hollow spaces where the eyes of the green spun-sugar mouse should have been, and shivered.

"Yeah," said Tod, following his gaze. "I guess having something that can work blind saves on the overheads."

He rubbed his arms, which prickled with gooseflesh despite the mild spring afternoon.

"Even now, I couldn't tell you why I opened that door. It would have been so easy to just... assume they were closed and walk away."

"You still had the mouse," said Marshall. "Hard to walk away from the weirdness when it's living in your closet."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Helping Hands

[froodle]

Tod nodded, a rueful smile passing ghostlike over his face before he resumed his tale.

"At first I couldn't tell what I was looking at. All the lighting banks were switched off, but all the machines were on and in use, so the whole room was a mess of blinking reds and greens and oranges.

Then my eyes started to adjust and I could see the mice. They were everywhere, hundreds of them swarming across every surface, pouring flour and cracking eggs and kneading dough.

It was like something out of a Disney movie, like forest creatures helping a princess."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Unsafe Working Conditions

[froodle]

"Except in Disney movies, you don't see workplace accidents," Tod went on. "The dishwasher was on and the steam had collected and condensed on the shelving around it. One of the sugar mice was folding dishcloths on the shelf when it got hit by a couple of droplets."

"Oh," said Marshall, who had seen something similar the previous Easter. "Oh no."

"It ate through the mouse's body like acid," said Tod, and his voice was shaking. "Just this hole in it's back that appeared where the water touched and then kept growing."

He swallowed.

"And that mouse went on folding."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Construction Project

[froodle]

Marshall leaned over, deposited his now-empty sofa can in a spotless wastepaper basket decorated with Pitbull Surfer decals, then settled back against the edge of Tod's narrow bed, his arm pressing against his friend.

"That's when I left," Tod said. "It took everything I had not to run out of that alley screaming, but I forced myself to walk all the way back here, and then I shut myself up in the old barn and spent the rest of the weekend building that cage."

"That's why you missed Janet's supply-burying party," said Marshall. "I did wonder."

"Yeah," said Tod. "Sorry."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Rodentia

[froodle]

"Don't be," said Marshall, gently knocking Tod's shoulder with his own. "It was exactly the same as the last time. I think there are spots in the Eerie Woods that have more buried energy bars than actual soil at this point."

Tod laughed at that, a weak and short-lived thing but a laugh all the same.

"I think we should talk to Simon about the mice," Marshall continued. "His brother has... let's call it an arrangement... with the local Ratking. I don't know what the overlap is between sugar mice and a hive-mind of plague-carrying monsters, but we'll find it."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Study Group

[froodle]

"I've been thinking about this, and I don't know if you guys even need the Ratking," said Simon.

He pulled a thin sheaf of photocopied pages from the crisp new backpack Syndi Teller had given him ("I saw it had Sasquatch on it and I know you and Marshall love that dumb fake stuff," she'd said, not bothering to mention the fact that Simon's old schoolbag was held together with duct-tape and staples and had spilled textbooks and meagre packed lunches all over the living room twice that week) and handed them 'round.

"What's a Pied Piper Incantation?" asked Tod.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Sympathetic Magic

[froodle]

"It's a thing that draws all of the same thing to it," said Simon. "You know when you drop a bunch of sewing needles or thumb tacks, and Bert and Ernie give you those big yellow magnets to help pick them all up off the floor of the Homemakers room?"

Tod nodded.

"It's like that," said Simon. "Only magic."

He glanced over at the cage, where the sugar mouse was nibbling at a bowlful of dry pellets and watching them speculatively.

"We can use Tod's mouse as the focus point and call the rest of the sugar mice through him."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Magical Rights Management

[froodle]

Marshall flicked through the handful of Xeroxed pages Simon had given him, examining the half-faded footnotes on the bottom of each sheet.

"Hey, Simon?" he said. "Did you figure out how to photocopy the Sorcerer's Bible?"

Simon shook his head.

"Still can't get around the protection spell cast by the magical copyright," he said. "But I did manage to break the seal on the Sorcerer's Bible study guide, which is how I was able to make these."

He tapped his own neatly tabulated stack of papers, grinning.

"Flouting copyright law and magical animal rustling," he continued. "We're outlaws and geniuses."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Tutor

[froodle]

They did end up using the Ratking, after all. The Young Enchanter's Guide to the Sorcerer's Bible provided a solid jumping off point, but the slightly-dated illustrations couldn't substitute for practical experience.

"Can't you ask Harley to just... explain it better?" Marshall begged, after one of the Ratking's smaller rats had failed to exert any magnetic influence over it's fellows.

Simon gave him a look that clearly communicated how stupid that idea was.

"Harley's not much of a talker," he said. "And even if he could explain how he does the things he does, do you really think he should?"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Success

[froodle]

Their first successful casting was, Marshall would openly admit, also the scariest.

After an entire afternoon watching the smallish, grey-brown rat that Harley had given them take naps, investigate their shoelaces, and wriggle it's nose at their incantations in a way that indicated it found them subpar at best, they'd initially dismissed the rumbling noises outside as a harvester working in the nearby fields.

The flood of sleek furred bodies and bald, twitching tails that burst through the rotting boards of the McNulty's old barn was exactly what they'd wanted, but that hadn't stopped all three of them from screaming.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: The Day Arrives

[froodle]

The day of Operation: Green Sugar Mice dawned dry and hot. Tod McNulty added a fresh layer of silica gel packets to the bottom of the cage at the back of his wardrobe, made sure the shoebox with the false bottom was dry and free from dust, and buckled on the luckiest of his vast array of spiked leather collars.

Simon and Marshall were waiting downstairs. Simon was carrying a clipboard, a single neatly-typed page with the revised and annotated summoning legible even at a distance. Marshall held a video camera, and a Polaroid swung awkwardly from around his neck.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Distraction

[froodle]

The queue for the hot food counter at Grandma's Kitchen stretched out along Front Street, past Everything Corn and the telecommunications store run by the Amish couple, reaching almost to the World o' Stuff.

All six of the Grandmas were out front, taking orders, bagging sausage rolls and Chelsea buns, and ringing up customers on two old-fashioned cash registers.

"I feel bad for doing this," said Simon, taking the half-deflated toy monkey out of his backpack and attaching it to one of the Ratking's rat couriers.

"I know," said Marshall. "But we need to keep him out of the alley..."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Panic

[froodle]

The three boys watched as the little rat courier skittered off down the street, obeying it's monarch's orders to serve the young humans who had charged it with this task.

The screaming started a few seconds later, as Everything Corn's razor wire-topped security grills began slamming closed across any possible ingress point. Simon swore he saw a gun port open in the middle of the hand-painted wooden sign over the door, a black glistening barrel pointing through the hole though there was nothing solid on the other side of the dangling placard.

"Okay," said Marshall. "Go now. I'll catch up."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Exfiltration

[froodle]

To Simon's immense relief, Marshall caught up with them before they even reached the mouth of the alley. To his even greater relief, he was carrying the Ratking's courier, now sans the inflatable monkey and holding a fragment of Graham cracker liberally smeared with peanut butter.

"I was going to give it to him later," said Marshall, "As a thank-you, you know? But he dug it out of my shirt pocket before I got the chance, so I just went with it."

He set the courier down gently, then set the rest of the greaseproof paper-wrapped cracker down beside it.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Homing Instinct

[froodle]

"You should get out of here," he told the rat, who took a firm grip on it's prize before scampering off amongst the trash cans.

"Think he'll find his way home?" asked Tod, looking worried.

Simon nodded.

"The Ratking can always call his people to him," he said. "Once a rat's been part of his collective, the King can find them anywhere. He won't get lost."

"Oh," said Tod. "That's good. Also creepy, but good in this particular instance."

He looked at the shoebox clutched tightly in his white-knuckled, black-nailed hands, and took a deep breath.

"Shall we do this?"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Precis

[froodle]

If the mysterious and arcane publishing company that had originally put together the Annotated Study Guide to the Sorcerer's Bible ever felt like putting out an updated edition, Tod thought, they could do a lot worse than asking Simon to edit it.

He had an almost BF Skinner-esque knack for breaking complicated ideas down to their simplest components.

The hard claws of the sugar mice made scraping noises against the asphalt as they poured through the uncovered vents at the back of Grandma's kitchen, straight into the enchanted shoebox that Tod had prepared for them.


The false bottom slid closed.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: All Aboard

[froodle]

"Did you get them all?" asked Marshall.

The three of them looked around the quiet, empty alley, picking up their feet and peering into the dark places between overflowing dumpsters.

"I think so," said Tod. "Hang on."

He handed the suddenly-heavy, seemingly-empty shoebox to Simon and stepped towards Grandma's Kitchen's staff entrance. Once again, someone had wedged a metal folding chair between the heavy fire-proof safety door and the doorframe.

The kitchen beyond it was dark, and though Tod watched for several long moments, nothing moved.

He turned back to Eerie's premier weirdness investigators and grinned.

"We got them all!"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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