Eerie Indiana Thurberus Thursday

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It's Thursday, the day we dedicate to Simon's absolute best boy, Sparky the Hellhound.

This week, meet Tufty:

Eerie, Indiana Arc Numbers Challenge

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It's the sixth of the month, and per deifire's brilliant suggestion during the 2017 Advent Challenge, which gave us two awesome fics of exactly 666 words each, the aim here is to do exactly that: tell a story in 666 words.

Eerie Indiana Triple Drabble: Job Offer

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Marshall scanned the contract, a jeweller's loupe close at hand should there be any suspiciously small-print sections. He stopped at the sight of one particularly long string of digits.

"What's this?" he asked. "This figure here."

The Milkman from Human Resources glanced over.

"Oh, that's your annual leave," he said.

Marshall looked again. The number was significantly longer than three hundred and sixty five, even accounting for leap years.

The Milkman from Human Resources seemed to follow his train of thought, because he elaborated:

"It accrues with every month of service. Our records indicate that you'll work here continuously with us until the age of 117, barring a short sabbatical involving inter-dimensional travel, a possible cure for lycanthropy that turns out to be a false lead, and a single very angry cactus, which was pre-authorised and therefore did not affect your holiday entitlement."

"Cactus Cat?" Marshall asked, and the Milkman from Human Resources glanced down at his notes.

"No," he said. "Aside from occasional overly-aggressive skewering of people's shins in search of scritches, the Cactus Cat lives a long and peaceable life with one Simon Holmes."

"Oh," said Marshall. "I'll be sure to let Simon know. He'll be pleased."

He looked again at the number. It was still very large, but then, 117 was very old...

"You'll use it all up shortly before your 111th birthday," said the Milkman from Human Resources. "I'd tell you this to give you the chance to ration it and avoid that outcome, but I'm afraid it's inevitable."

Marshall thought about it.

"I'm not sure I want to work my last six years without any time off," he said.

The Milkman from Human Resources turned some pages.

"It appears that you and Management come to an agreement about that," he said. "The details are confidential."

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: New Hat

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The wind was picking up, sending dead leaves and empty chip packets scurrying into the street like so many unruly children. Marshall Teller clasped his hat tight to his head, cursing the twin bad decisions that had lead him to both trust the weather forecast and wear his brand-new limited-release New York Giants baseball cap outside.

A wooden post that had definitely not been loose the day before pulled free of a picturesque white picket fence and flew at him. Marshall dodged in time to avoid serious injury, but a tearing sound indicated his hat had not been so lucky.

Ongoing Verse: Weather

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: The Trains Run On Time

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Outside the sun was shining, though it remained bitterly cold in the shade and patches of ice still formed crisp, whitish skeins on the previous night's puddles.

Weatherman Wally stood on his newly-repaired and, thanks to a mutually beneficial agreement with the man from the Eerie Dairy, uniformly-aged wooden veranda, a mug of coffee clasped in gloved hands as he surveyed the scene in front of him.

The rusted iron tracks where the Ghost Train ran at Midsummer were just starting to form indents in the soft black earth, and he could hear the spectral rumble of sleepers yet unrealised.

Ongoing Verse: Weather

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Returned

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The living room had been turned upside down, the kitchen similarly dishevelled but showing it less due to it's usual state of disarray, and the Universal Tuner was nowhere to be found.

Marshall Teller grabbed a handful of well-chewed biros, a stack of Post-It notes and a half-written letter to his Grandmother thanking her for prior warning of an alien invasion the week before, and shoved them into his backpack. If he had to, he would trade at Lodgepoole's strange goblin market for the return of his father's prize invention.

Of course, he planned to try yelling a lot first.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Found

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Simon reached for the untidy pile of takeout menus shoved into one of the many unused alcoves in the Teller kitchen's built-in wine rack, pulled them out, and froze.

"Mars," he said, speaking slowly and carefully as he set the glossy trifolds aside and reached into an adjacent dark recess.

"Yeah?"

Simon pulled out something clunky, black, and decorated with large red buttons designed to track well on a small 90s television.

"Isn't this your dad's universal tuner gizmo?"

Marshall froze, all the colour draining from his face.

"I just started a war with the Bureau for that," he whispered.

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Too Cute

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"How do you know so much about ovens anyway?" Melanie grumbled. "You work at a sushi bar. Sushi doesn't even need cooking."

"No," said Janet. "But it does need a degree of patience, which is something I never thought applied to preheating an oven until I met you."

"Patience," said Melanie, in a tone of voice that made the unspoken "pffffft" extremely clear. "Ovens should just know how to be. I don't see you preheating a puffer fish before you cut him up."

"I'd never cut up a puffer fish," said Janet. "Ever seen one? Way too cute to eat."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Lights Out

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The storefronts lining Eerie's main downtown thoroughfare were dark, the sort of dark that leaked rank-smelling pools of black shadow spreading out onto the sidewalk beyond and whose gloom even the brightest streetlamp failed to dispel.

Marshall Teller walked quickly down the very centre of the road, tatty Sky Monsters tracing the white dividing line between the two lanes as carefully as though it was a tightrope.

After all, he thought, watching a thing that both was and was not his reflection dart across the rippling glass panes of a dozen closed-down businesses, in a very real way, it was.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Lurking Horror

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"Oh hey," said Marshall, reaching into the family refrigerator with none of his usual trepidatious disappointment. "Cake!"

His face fell when he pulled his arm back, revealing a thick wedge-shaped chunk of cheese, half-heartedly wrapped in cling-film and bearing the sort of creamy yellow colouring that seemed deliberately designed to trick unwary snackers into getting their hopes up.

"Mars!" hissed Simon, already out of his chair and backing towards the safety of the living room door. "Isn't that the Stilton we bought at the cursed Continental Market last Christmas?"

Marshall gasped, hurling the offending morsel back into the cheese drawer.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Cheese

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Power Source

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The door did not fit quite right in it's warped and time-worn frame, and when the wind blew, an icy cold crept in through the hidden spaces where old wood failed to meet older particle board.

Dash X drew closer to the scavenged space heater, whose single working bar glowed a bright and brave shade of orange as it struggled to dispel the chill. Behind it, an extension cord snaked across dusty floorboards, trailing up rotten stairs until it reached a broken window pane.

The glowing green mould growing outside crackled and pulsed with electricity as it climbed the walls.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Final Performance

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The dead man at the piano wore a black tail coat and a shirt that had probably been white once, before the blood and the putrefaction and the glossy iridescent shimmer of a thousand flesh-eating beetles.

The piano itself had fared better in the intervening years; while it was clearly out of tune even to Marshall's Pitbull Surfers-deadened ears, no mournful wails or beyond-the-grave screeching echoed from it's partially pierced belly.

That didn't make the sight of the partially skeletonised musician banging away on yellowing ivories any better, though. And no music in the world could compensate for the smell.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Bird Feeder

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Simon slipped on a pair of thin linen gloves, covered them with a second pair made from fine silver links, then followed it with a third in thick, coarse leather. He pulled the heavy woollen scarf up to cover his nose and slid the latch on the cold iron chest in front of him.

Ghost fog rose from beneath the lid, and Simon reached out to adjust a small desk fan at his right, pushing the swirling vapours back in the direction of the box.

Inside, a ghost bird feeder lay next to a faintly glowing bag of bird seed.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Dietary Restrictions

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The ghost cats thronged about the memory of their water dish, filling the air with the faint and melancholy tinkle of a dozen incorporeal collars.

Simon knelt among the chilly, purring mass, a box of kibble depicting a cartoon kitten in a long white shroud in one hand. Several of the ghost cats mewled in displeasure, and Simon gave them a reproving look.

"You know wet food doesn't travel to the afterlife," he said. "If you didn't want an eternity of Kitty Kat Spooky Snacks, you should have stayed away from the dog pound and away from Fifi and Fluffy."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: CAT

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Accessorising

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Simon put the finishing touches on the baby blue ribbon that now ringed Hezekiah's left foot, then sat back to admire his work.

The huge raven did likewise, stretching out it's clawed and scaly talon and cocking it's head this way and that as it considered it's newest accessory. Apparently satisfied, it croaked, once.

"You look very handsome," Simon told it, and Hezekiah's feathers ruffled in pleasure. It hopped down from the wobbly plastic table, spread it's wings, and took flight.

"You didn't tell him," Marshall commented.

Simon shrugged.

"Hezekiah doesn't care about banding," he said. "He just likes jewellery."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Sculpture

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The Angler Fish was mottled white and pink, and it's smooth flesh had a greasy rubberized sheen to it. Melanie Monroe walked slowly around the fluted pedestal on which it sat, moving first clockwise, then anticlockwise. She sniffed, then wrinkled her noise.

"Jan?" she asked. "What did you say this thing was made from?"

Janet Donner glanced up from where she was folding napkins into an diorama showing the sunken city of R'lyeh rising from the deep.

"Spam," she said. "It was what Radford had on hand at short notice."

Melanie considered this.

"Hamgler fish," she said. "I like it."

Eerie Indiana Drabble: Up Late

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Marshall's eyelids were heavy and he could feel the start of a headache building behind the burn of reddened and screen-tired eyes. He rubbed at them half-heartedly, trying in vain to stifle the yawn that seemed to come from the absolute core of himself.

Across the kitchen table, Simon's head was pillowed on his folded arms, which were in turn pillowed on an untidy sheaf of pages photocopied from a book long since thought lost to humanity, and rediscovered in the basement of the Eerie Library.

Marshall sighed, gathering his notes into some semblance of order as he rose.

Bedtime.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Field Trip

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"It's a bit morbid, isn't it?" said Devon, standing in and around and a little to the left of Melanie as he always did.

As she always did, she turned to face him, although he was never there, and probably never had been there, and never would be there again.

"You think so?" she said. "I kind of like it."

Devon tipped his face up, saw the banner through her eyes.

"'Welcome to the Eerie Museum of Horology's Exploration of Lost Time'," he read aloud. "'An exploration into those Eerie citizens who died too young'."

He grimaced.

"Sounds kinda gloomy."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: The High Price of Fast Fashion

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The mermaid wore tall platform shoes, though lacking any legs, she wore them around her neck, the laces knotted to form a makeshift chain. The thick soles were made from some sort of transparent plastic, and inside the soles a dozen tiny human figures floated, suspended in clear jelly. They jiggled and drifted with every small movement of the mermaid's body, and it was because of this that it took Janet so long to realise that the tiny humans were alive.

Although, she thought, watching them thrash slowly about in their choking viscous prison, probably not for very much longer.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Exhibit

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"Okay," said Devon, a spark of genuine enthusiasm colouring his voice, or at least the memory of his voice that had played in Melanie's head since the day she'd stolen his heart. "Now this is better."

"I remember these photos," she said. "I had some of these, before my parents decided it was probably unhealthy and put them away."

She walked among the various snapshots of Devon as he had been in life, candid Polaroids of him in motion next to moody black and white studio shots.

"This was my favourite," she said, stopping beside one mounted on an easel.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Surprise

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"Five minutes," said Edgar Teller, popping his head 'round Marshall's bedroom door and fixing him with an excited grin.

Marshall shot up off the bed, almost tripping amidst the tangle of bright blue New York Giants-themed bedclothes before righting himself and half-stumbling, half-running out of the door to join his father.

In the kitchen, Marilyn stood beside the kitchen table, it's surface covered in a white sheet that both concealed and emphasised the strange lumpen shapes beneath it. She smiled as they entered and gestured frantically for them to join her as the living room door opened.

"Happy birthday, Simon!"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Eerie Indiana Drabble: Bridge

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"Praise the bridge as you go over it," read the plaque, black lettering against tarnished bronze.

Marshall Teller looked at the bridge, an uninspired and uninspiring lump of concrete and steel bearing a two-lane blacktop and a narrow pedestrian walkway on one side.

"Why?" he asked aloud, leaning over one rusted metal railing to examine the muddy trickle several feet below him.

"It's polite," said Simon, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Also, that stream is infested with mud snakes, and good manners discourage the bridge from dumping you over the side onto their plates."


Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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