eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Slow Day

Lake Eerie was millpond-calm, the dark water lying like a mirror dropped amidst the grey sands. The flags and bunting that ringed the shoreline hung limp, untroubled by even the slightest breeze. The low, cold sun had failed to burn off the previous night’s fog, and with no wind to send it hurrying on its way it lay in the shallow basin created by the surrounding hills. The daylight was a diffuse and dirty yellow, filtered through the moisture vapour drifting sluggishly through the air. Anything not seen close up became lumpen and indistinct, distances hard to judge in the shifting murk.

Behind the polished driftwood wait-station at the back of the Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar, Janet Donner yawned hugely and took a desultory swipe at the already spotless countertop with a dust rag. The second-shift cook, a faux-grizzled seaman whose eye patch and piratical drawl were almost certainly affectations, stuck his head through the service hatch and grinned at her. His mouth was full of stick-on gold teeth.

“Slow day,” he commented.

“The weather keeps everyone at home,” said Janet, pouring herself a cup of coffee that had been stewing on the hot plate since before she arrived for her shift. “You might as well close up the kitchen for the night.”

“Aye,” said the chef, untying the red and white striped apron from around his waist. “The sea’s a cruel and capricious mistress to them that depend on her for a living.”

Janet would have said she was feeling too lethargic to manage a full eye-roll. She would have been wrong.

“It’s a lake, Fred,” she said. “It’s not even a tidal lake, the water levels change based on what the mermaids are building below the surface.”

Fred Suggs raised his sequinned eye patch and gave her a reproachful look from beneath a wig of luxuriant Captain Hook-style black curls.

Janet sighed.

“Yes, Captain Cook,” she said, giving him a lackadaisical salute. “Permission to batten down the hatches and go home pending co-operation from the sea goddesses granted. Disembark at your leisure.”

Fred Suggs sheathed the impractically oversized cutlass he’d been using to cut up sushi rolls, shoved his perfectly good right leg into a beautifully carved wooden replica of one, and hustled out the back door. Janet paused, listening for the tell-tale splash and hiss of oars as Fred – sorry, as the Sea Captain – stole one of the small rowing boats moored up outside and set sail for his galleon, a raft of milk crates moored at anchor on the other side of the lake.

Shaking her head, she began switching off the lights and activating the warding sigils that comprised the Bait Shop’s anti-theft, anti-intruder and anti-Deep One defences. Once the small wooden shack was secured against burglars and tentacled monstrosities from beneath the ocean waves alike, she too went home.

Janet

A Ghost in Pink by