Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Populace
Mar. 27th, 2017 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
froodle posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
eerieindianaWritten for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fffc First Froday Madness Special. The theme of the challenge was "minor characters and rare pairs".
Title: Populace
Fandom: Eerie, Indiana
Minor Character/s: The Eerie High School Basketball Team, the Unkind Ones, Bert and Ernie Wilson, the Creepy Garbage Guys, Janet Donner, Mayor Chisel, the Canine Arrest Team, the widow of Mister Dithers the Dog Catcher, some background members of the Canine Revolution, Miss Eerie and her Court, the older brother of either Nick or Eddie, Stanley Binkerman, Officer Derek, somebody from the Eerie Dairy, a delivery boy for the Eerie Examiner, a gun-toting mailman and (maybe) Fred Suggs.
Rating: PG
Words: ~1500
Challenge: FMS01: Minor Character
Summary: A normal, average, unremarkable day in Eerie
A/N: I couldn't pick one minor character to write about, so I went into the tag page, looked at the least-used character tags, and went from there
The sun was a golden haze behind a bank of wispy clouds, and the sky was cornflower blue. Last night’s thin skein of frost was steaming in the heat of a morning that had broken bright and warm and already people were out enjoying the weather. An old man on a push bike zipped down the sidewalk, a black-furred poodle keeping pace beside him. The old man’s face was a rictus of terror, the dog’s teeth bared in a threatening snarl at odds with the dainty tread of his paws and the flapping of his long woolly ears.
A mail van was parked up on the curb. Behind its sheltering bulk, a postman surveyed the street. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze calculating, and his hand rested in a practiced pose atop the gun at his hip. From the trees, a dozen ravens eyed the periodicals in his satchel with avian avarice.
The Herman B. Wells High School basketball team were shuffling down the middle of the road, seemingly oblivious to the traffic passing them on either side. The rhythmic slap of thirteen basketballs on the tarmac provided a counterpoint to the screams coming from farther up the street. A milk-truck, it’s front end splattered with blood and heavy cream, was already pulling away from the sad huddle of broken bones and ruptured flesh that had been smeared across the two-lane blacktop. A newspaper boy in a bright yellow hi-vis Eerie Examiner safety vest screamed, but it was flat and over-rehearsed.
The staff entrance at the back of the Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar opened and Janet Donner stepped into the cool and shadowed alleyway. She removed her heavy nigiri-shaped uniform hat and pulled her thick red hair free of the hairnet beneath it, sighing with relief. Behind her, there was a splash and a scream. Janet peeked around the doorframe in time to catch a flash of tentacles and a waterlogged hand-lettered sign reading “Please Do Not Feed The Leviathan” adrift on a tiled floor awash in blood and salt water. She shut the door and lit a cigarette, shaking her head at the inevitable stupidity of the summer people.
Miss Eerie, resplendent in a spangly leotard, traced a series of complex sigils in the air with a twirling baton. The symbols burned with arcane light for a moment, hovering in the empty space before her, before the twisting streams of multi-coloured ribbons wiped them clean. Her Court knelt at her feet, their heads bowed, the Royal Architect’s plans for next year’s float spread on the floor in front of them. Her fractured mirror-eyes glittered with sensual delight at the thought of so much gold lame and she nodded in satisfaction. The supplicants relaxed, and their Queen fell upon them, devouring their life essence with a thousand lamprey-like mouths.
Ace Weinger kicked the front door closed behind him and set the heavy grocery bags on the kitchen counter with a sigh of relief. Noticing the steady red blink of the ansaphone light, he pressed playback as he sorted through a stack of mail addressed to parents he hadn’t seen in six months. Past-due notices, final demands, a promotional flyer for the Foods of Eerie festival in the park. The scratchy, much-reused tape hissed with static, but the landlord’s irritation with last month’s missing rent payment came through loud and clear. He separated out the ones printed in red ink, setting the rest aside. He moved his brother’s dirty breakfast dishes to the sink, making a desultory effort to scrape some of the long-dried cereal off the sides as he did so. As he ran the hot tap over the atrophied cornflakes, he mentally calculated the number of extra shifts he would need to keep the power on for another month.
Billy Millions put the full force of his body behind the tyre iron as he swung it at the last surviving Creepy Garbage Guy to have trespassed upon the Unkind One’s turf. The creature’s reflective shades flew off and shattered into a thousand glittering fragments. Beneath them, empty eye-sockets writhed with maggots and the air was suddenly foul with the stench of rotting trash. The leader of Eerie’s most notorious biker gang drove forward, pulling an improbably concealed hunting knife from inside his skin-tight leather waistcoat and cutting a ragged gash across the midsection of the thing that only looked like a man. The Creepy Garbage Guy wavered, then collapsed to the sun-sticky asphalt with a wet slapping sound like a water balloon exploding. The assembled motorcycle enthusiasts cheered, and somebody fetched a high-powered hose to rinse away the rapidly disintegrating corpse.
Old Man Dithers’ widow, half-strangled in a high-necked mourning gown of black velvet, pressed a damp and lacy kerchief to eyes gone red-rimmed and puffy with weeping. The small tabby with one white paw gazed at her with ice-green eyes that held no pity. It dropped the bag of golden coins at her feet and vanished through the cat flap. As it emerged into the sunlight, it tugged the black mourning band from its foreleg. Duty discharged, it discarded the thin ribbon in a nearby alley before sauntering off in the direction of the Eerie Bingo Parlour, where he could already smell blood on the air.
A toddler had fallen into one of the deep irrigation trenches surrounding the municipal flower-beds in Deadwood Park. One pudgy hand flailed helplessly from beneath a writhing tangle of vines. A nursery worker in a grey jumpsuit poked the pink palm with a rake handle and it vanished beneath the encroaching greenery. His classmates looked on in quiet solemnity. Then they had ice-cream.
Stanley Binkerman gazed in horror at the ragged metal edges where the chicken farm’s drainage system had once been. His walkie-talkie squawked, his supervisor demanding to know what had gone wrong. Stanley carefully set the radio on the filthy floor. A moment later, his rubber apron, elbow-length gloves, and helmet with protective face-plate followed it. He swiped out for the last time, then winged his employee ID card back over the high razor-wire fences along with its lanyard. As he passed the Mark Twain boarding house on his way home, a pterodactyl swooped down and stole his glasses right off his face. He remembered the cost of his prescription lenses, sighed, and turned back around.
Officer Derek cowered behind an over-turned roulette table, police-issue revolver clutched in his sweaty-palmed grip. Around him, two dozen screaming octogenarians re-fought a war that had been raging on a weekly basis since before he was born. An oxygen tank bounced over the table edge, transparent tubes trailing in its wake. The heavy metal cylinder struck Derek above the temple, and then all was darkness.
The Mayor wiped his fingers clean as best he could, soiling the monogrammed red handkerchief beyond repair in the process. He stepped back from the altar, rolling his shoulders and stretching to relieve the ache in his lower back. The three representatives from Eerie’s Department of Infrastructure followed suite with varying degrees of relief, not all of them having a spine to protest long hours hunched over a ritual sacrifice.
“Gentlemen,” said Chisel, holding out one pink-tinged hand. “Thank you for your time. My secretary will send you the appropriately-redacted minutes.”
He strode out of the multi-faith prayer room, his polished shoes clicking on the gleaming white tile. His assistant was waiting, notepad one hand and a smoothie from S. Green’s Fresh Fruit Shake Shack in the other. The things from the DOI trailed after him, then turned away, heading down the shadowed corridors that lead deeper into the great beast that was City Hall.
"How'd it go?" asked the assistant, who looked remarkably like Fred Suggs in an ill-fitting costume left over from an amateur production of the Newsies.
“It took longer than expected, but we eventually reached an agreement," said Chisel. "The potholes and inter-dimensional subsidence should be taken care of, but the traffic lights and the UFO landing strip on Main will need to wait until next years' budget."
He took the plastic tumbler of viscous green goo from the man who was definitely not Suggs and began walking quickly towards the great double doors that opened into his private ante-chamber.
"What'd I miss?"
“Not much,” said his assistant. “I moved your meeting with the Concerned Citizens of Canine Descent to three o’clock after the ritual ran long, and you have a request from the Library to give a speech at their Young Readers of Eerie commencement ceremony.”
“From the Library or from the librarians?”
His assistant checked his notes.
“The Library,” he confirmed.
“Get a date and time, check my schedule and then tell them no,” said Chisel. “And make sure there’s definitely something on the docket for that day; I don’t want to be caught in a lie by one of those damned knowledge spirits.”
His assistant made a note in the margin of his yellow legal pad.
“Anything else, sir?” he asked.
Chisel jerked his thumb back at the prayer room.
“Get somebody from maintenance in to take care of that,” he said.
“Already done,” said his assistant. “Happy Brothers Ambulance and Mortuary are contracted for clean up, harvesting and disposal. They’re waiting in the foyer; I’ll have security buzz them in.”
“Great,” said Chisel. He spotted something at his feet, frowned, and paused to wipe a spot of blood from his expensive oxblood shoes with his thumb. “See about getting some protective boot covers for wet work, will you?”
“I’ll look into it right away,” said his assistant.
Janet
A Ghost in Pink by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
froodle; Janet's family during the year she was Lost
Jogging byfroodle, in which Janet Donner adapts to life in regular Eerie
Plans byfroodle, in which Janet Donner deals with Daylight Savings Time yet again
DST byfroodle, in which there is a lighthouse
Figurehead byfroodle, in which Lake Eerie's ghost pirates encounter the lighthouse
The Children
Eventide byfroodle, in which the sun goes down, and Eerie's lost children gather
Milk byfroodle, in which Marshall develops a completely cromulent fear of milk trucks
Whistle byfroodle, in which Steve Konkalewski is unhappy about the way things turned out...
Three byfroodle, in which Marshall and Devon discuss video games in a cemetary
Marys byfroodle, in which Mary C. Carter takes on her new role
A Story About Devon Wilde byfroodle. Devon Wilde walked through the Eerie Cemetery, and his feet made no sound on the gravel pathways.
Disguises byfroodle, in which Marshall goes to visit Devon Wilde
Lillian byfroodle, in which Marilyn's mother has concerns
Milkman Series
Milk byfroodle, in which Marshall develops a completely cromulent fear of milk trucks
Reanimator byfroodle, in which the Milkman returns
Multiplicity byfroodle, in which Marshall must once again confront parallel realities, diverging timelines and public speaking
Lillian byfroodle, in which Marilyn's mother has concerns
Hound byfroodle, in which Simon makes a friend
Slyboots byfroodle, in which a certain corporal of the infernal regions comes to Eerie. Crossover with Johannes Cabal the Necromancer.
Strawberry byfroodle, in which there is unauthorised hubbub in Eerie
Nap byfroodle, in which Marshall has a quiet moment in the Secret Spot
fffc First Froday Madness Special. The theme of the challenge was "minor characters and rare pairs".Title: Populace
Fandom: Eerie, Indiana
Minor Character/s: The Eerie High School Basketball Team, the Unkind Ones, Bert and Ernie Wilson, the Creepy Garbage Guys, Janet Donner, Mayor Chisel, the Canine Arrest Team, the widow of Mister Dithers the Dog Catcher, some background members of the Canine Revolution, Miss Eerie and her Court, the older brother of either Nick or Eddie, Stanley Binkerman, Officer Derek, somebody from the Eerie Dairy, a delivery boy for the Eerie Examiner, a gun-toting mailman and (maybe) Fred Suggs.
Rating: PG
Words: ~1500
Challenge: FMS01: Minor Character
Summary: A normal, average, unremarkable day in Eerie
A/N: I couldn't pick one minor character to write about, so I went into the tag page, looked at the least-used character tags, and went from there
The sun was a golden haze behind a bank of wispy clouds, and the sky was cornflower blue. Last night’s thin skein of frost was steaming in the heat of a morning that had broken bright and warm and already people were out enjoying the weather. An old man on a push bike zipped down the sidewalk, a black-furred poodle keeping pace beside him. The old man’s face was a rictus of terror, the dog’s teeth bared in a threatening snarl at odds with the dainty tread of his paws and the flapping of his long woolly ears.
A mail van was parked up on the curb. Behind its sheltering bulk, a postman surveyed the street. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze calculating, and his hand rested in a practiced pose atop the gun at his hip. From the trees, a dozen ravens eyed the periodicals in his satchel with avian avarice.
The Herman B. Wells High School basketball team were shuffling down the middle of the road, seemingly oblivious to the traffic passing them on either side. The rhythmic slap of thirteen basketballs on the tarmac provided a counterpoint to the screams coming from farther up the street. A milk-truck, it’s front end splattered with blood and heavy cream, was already pulling away from the sad huddle of broken bones and ruptured flesh that had been smeared across the two-lane blacktop. A newspaper boy in a bright yellow hi-vis Eerie Examiner safety vest screamed, but it was flat and over-rehearsed.
The staff entrance at the back of the Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar opened and Janet Donner stepped into the cool and shadowed alleyway. She removed her heavy nigiri-shaped uniform hat and pulled her thick red hair free of the hairnet beneath it, sighing with relief. Behind her, there was a splash and a scream. Janet peeked around the doorframe in time to catch a flash of tentacles and a waterlogged hand-lettered sign reading “Please Do Not Feed The Leviathan” adrift on a tiled floor awash in blood and salt water. She shut the door and lit a cigarette, shaking her head at the inevitable stupidity of the summer people.
Miss Eerie, resplendent in a spangly leotard, traced a series of complex sigils in the air with a twirling baton. The symbols burned with arcane light for a moment, hovering in the empty space before her, before the twisting streams of multi-coloured ribbons wiped them clean. Her Court knelt at her feet, their heads bowed, the Royal Architect’s plans for next year’s float spread on the floor in front of them. Her fractured mirror-eyes glittered with sensual delight at the thought of so much gold lame and she nodded in satisfaction. The supplicants relaxed, and their Queen fell upon them, devouring their life essence with a thousand lamprey-like mouths.
Ace Weinger kicked the front door closed behind him and set the heavy grocery bags on the kitchen counter with a sigh of relief. Noticing the steady red blink of the ansaphone light, he pressed playback as he sorted through a stack of mail addressed to parents he hadn’t seen in six months. Past-due notices, final demands, a promotional flyer for the Foods of Eerie festival in the park. The scratchy, much-reused tape hissed with static, but the landlord’s irritation with last month’s missing rent payment came through loud and clear. He separated out the ones printed in red ink, setting the rest aside. He moved his brother’s dirty breakfast dishes to the sink, making a desultory effort to scrape some of the long-dried cereal off the sides as he did so. As he ran the hot tap over the atrophied cornflakes, he mentally calculated the number of extra shifts he would need to keep the power on for another month.
Billy Millions put the full force of his body behind the tyre iron as he swung it at the last surviving Creepy Garbage Guy to have trespassed upon the Unkind One’s turf. The creature’s reflective shades flew off and shattered into a thousand glittering fragments. Beneath them, empty eye-sockets writhed with maggots and the air was suddenly foul with the stench of rotting trash. The leader of Eerie’s most notorious biker gang drove forward, pulling an improbably concealed hunting knife from inside his skin-tight leather waistcoat and cutting a ragged gash across the midsection of the thing that only looked like a man. The Creepy Garbage Guy wavered, then collapsed to the sun-sticky asphalt with a wet slapping sound like a water balloon exploding. The assembled motorcycle enthusiasts cheered, and somebody fetched a high-powered hose to rinse away the rapidly disintegrating corpse.
Old Man Dithers’ widow, half-strangled in a high-necked mourning gown of black velvet, pressed a damp and lacy kerchief to eyes gone red-rimmed and puffy with weeping. The small tabby with one white paw gazed at her with ice-green eyes that held no pity. It dropped the bag of golden coins at her feet and vanished through the cat flap. As it emerged into the sunlight, it tugged the black mourning band from its foreleg. Duty discharged, it discarded the thin ribbon in a nearby alley before sauntering off in the direction of the Eerie Bingo Parlour, where he could already smell blood on the air.
A toddler had fallen into one of the deep irrigation trenches surrounding the municipal flower-beds in Deadwood Park. One pudgy hand flailed helplessly from beneath a writhing tangle of vines. A nursery worker in a grey jumpsuit poked the pink palm with a rake handle and it vanished beneath the encroaching greenery. His classmates looked on in quiet solemnity. Then they had ice-cream.
Stanley Binkerman gazed in horror at the ragged metal edges where the chicken farm’s drainage system had once been. His walkie-talkie squawked, his supervisor demanding to know what had gone wrong. Stanley carefully set the radio on the filthy floor. A moment later, his rubber apron, elbow-length gloves, and helmet with protective face-plate followed it. He swiped out for the last time, then winged his employee ID card back over the high razor-wire fences along with its lanyard. As he passed the Mark Twain boarding house on his way home, a pterodactyl swooped down and stole his glasses right off his face. He remembered the cost of his prescription lenses, sighed, and turned back around.
Officer Derek cowered behind an over-turned roulette table, police-issue revolver clutched in his sweaty-palmed grip. Around him, two dozen screaming octogenarians re-fought a war that had been raging on a weekly basis since before he was born. An oxygen tank bounced over the table edge, transparent tubes trailing in its wake. The heavy metal cylinder struck Derek above the temple, and then all was darkness.
The Mayor wiped his fingers clean as best he could, soiling the monogrammed red handkerchief beyond repair in the process. He stepped back from the altar, rolling his shoulders and stretching to relieve the ache in his lower back. The three representatives from Eerie’s Department of Infrastructure followed suite with varying degrees of relief, not all of them having a spine to protest long hours hunched over a ritual sacrifice.
“Gentlemen,” said Chisel, holding out one pink-tinged hand. “Thank you for your time. My secretary will send you the appropriately-redacted minutes.”
He strode out of the multi-faith prayer room, his polished shoes clicking on the gleaming white tile. His assistant was waiting, notepad one hand and a smoothie from S. Green’s Fresh Fruit Shake Shack in the other. The things from the DOI trailed after him, then turned away, heading down the shadowed corridors that lead deeper into the great beast that was City Hall.
"How'd it go?" asked the assistant, who looked remarkably like Fred Suggs in an ill-fitting costume left over from an amateur production of the Newsies.
“It took longer than expected, but we eventually reached an agreement," said Chisel. "The potholes and inter-dimensional subsidence should be taken care of, but the traffic lights and the UFO landing strip on Main will need to wait until next years' budget."
He took the plastic tumbler of viscous green goo from the man who was definitely not Suggs and began walking quickly towards the great double doors that opened into his private ante-chamber.
"What'd I miss?"
“Not much,” said his assistant. “I moved your meeting with the Concerned Citizens of Canine Descent to three o’clock after the ritual ran long, and you have a request from the Library to give a speech at their Young Readers of Eerie commencement ceremony.”
“From the Library or from the librarians?”
His assistant checked his notes.
“The Library,” he confirmed.
“Get a date and time, check my schedule and then tell them no,” said Chisel. “And make sure there’s definitely something on the docket for that day; I don’t want to be caught in a lie by one of those damned knowledge spirits.”
His assistant made a note in the margin of his yellow legal pad.
“Anything else, sir?” he asked.
Chisel jerked his thumb back at the prayer room.
“Get somebody from maintenance in to take care of that,” he said.
“Already done,” said his assistant. “Happy Brothers Ambulance and Mortuary are contracted for clean up, harvesting and disposal. They’re waiting in the foyer; I’ll have security buzz them in.”
“Great,” said Chisel. He spotted something at his feet, frowned, and paused to wipe a spot of blood from his expensive oxblood shoes with his thumb. “See about getting some protective boot covers for wet work, will you?”
“I’ll look into it right away,” said his assistant.
Janet
A Ghost in Pink by
froodle; Janet's family during the year she was LostJogging by
froodle, in which Janet Donner adapts to life in regular EeriePlans by
froodle, in which Janet Donner deals with Daylight Savings Time yet again DST by
froodle, in which there is a lighthouse Figurehead by
froodle, in which Lake Eerie's ghost pirates encounter the lighthouseThe Children
Eventide by
froodle, in which the sun goes down, and Eerie's lost children gatherMilk by
froodle, in which Marshall develops a completely cromulent fear of milk trucksWhistle by
froodle, in which Steve Konkalewski is unhappy about the way things turned out...Three by
froodle, in which Marshall and Devon discuss video games in a cemetaryMarys by
froodle, in which Mary C. Carter takes on her new roleA Story About Devon Wilde by
froodle. Devon Wilde walked through the Eerie Cemetery, and his feet made no sound on the gravel pathways.Disguises by
froodle, in which Marshall goes to visit Devon WildeLillian by
froodle, in which Marilyn's mother has concernsMilkman Series
Milk by
froodle, in which Marshall develops a completely cromulent fear of milk trucksReanimator by
froodle, in which the Milkman returnsMultiplicity by
froodle, in which Marshall must once again confront parallel realities, diverging timelines and public speakingLillian by
froodle, in which Marilyn's mother has concernsHound by
froodle, in which Simon makes a friendSlyboots by
froodle, in which a certain corporal of the infernal regions comes to Eerie. Crossover with Johannes Cabal the Necromancer.Strawberry by
froodle, in which there is unauthorised hubbub in EerieNap by
froodle, in which Marshall has a quiet moment in the Secret SpotTags:
- a: froodle,
- char: bert&ernie,
- char: fred suggs,
- char: janet,
- char: mayor chisel,
- char: miss eerie,
- char: mister dithers,
- char: nick&eddie,
- char: officer derek,
- char: ravens,
- char: stanley binkerman,
- external challenge: fffc,
- fanon: eerie nursery and garden centre,
- fanworks: fic,
- fanworks: ongoing verse,
- ongoing verse: cat,
- ongoing verse: children,
- ongoing verse: janet,
- ongoing verse: milkman,
- org: basketball team,
- org: canine arrest team,
- org: creepy garbage guys,
- org: eerie dairy,
- org: eerie examiner,
- org: unkind ones,
- place: deadwood park,
- place: eerie baitshop and sushi bar,
- place: eerie bingo parlor,
- place: eerie library,
- place: mark twain boarding house
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-03-27 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-27 08:37 pm (UTC)Froday Madness #1: Wrap-up and Amnesty Day
Date: 2017-03-31 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 07:06 am (UTC)