To whom it may concern

When they returned to the Baitshop, Janet removed the Specials board from it's place above the condiments table and hid it under the counter.

Fred (or whoever he had decided to be that day) vanished into the kitchen, returning a couple of minutes later with two small earthenware cups and a bottle of plum sake that was already filling the air with it's scent as it warmed.

He placed his cargo gently on a small table nearest the door and poured them both a drink, gesturing for Janet to join him.

"A turkraken," he said wistfully. "I'd never even imagined..."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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It's the year 2020, and to mark the occasion we'll be running weekly prompts based around Just Say No Fun, the episode that introduced everyone's least favourite optometrist.

Your prompt for this week is:

CROSSBOWS

If Fred was around, he didn't answer. Janet put one hand against the listing and salt-stained timbers of the Baitshop, the other pressed over her hammering heart, and breathed deep.

"It doesn't mean anything," she told herself. Fred often lost himself in the depths of his most recent impersonation, refusing to answer to any name other than the one he'd currently adopted, even when he'd neglected to inform his coworkers just what that name might be.

She made her way to the rear of the little shack, fumbling in her bag for the heavy ring of keys as she went.


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Marshall set a handful of coins down next to the sugar bowl that contained tiny crystalized kraken spawn, enough to cover his coffee and a tip, though probably not enough to make up for the dig about the labcoat.

"No thanks," he said. "I'm good. I need to get back anyway. Thanks for the chat, and the note."

Fred Suggs, ordinary waiter who had never in his life encountered forged missives from a dying Mackerel Solider, looked blank.

"What note?" he asked.

Marshall shook his head, smiling wryly.

"Never mind," he said. "I must have you confused with someone else."

Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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He turned the letter over, revealing the blank, tea-splattered underside, and caught the tell-tale whiff of sulphur. He shut his eyes and groaned.

"Problem?" asked Fred, setting a mug of coffee down in front of him before producing a pen and order pad. Apparently he'd already shaken off the disappointing guise of a sea-faring cryptobiologist and had decided to impersonate a sympathetic member of the waitstaff instead.

That would be a nice surprise for Janet when she showed up, Marshall thought.

"Not really," he said. "My friend's kid brother is up to something, that's all."

"Kids," said Fred Suggs, sympathetically.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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"So was the note real?" asked Mars. "Or was that also part of the whole..." He made a vague up-and-down gesture at Fred, who just looked confused.

"The whole what?"

"You know. The marine cryptobiology secret crab king war thing," said Marshall.

"Oh," said Fred. "Yes, the note was real."

He produced a slightly crumbled sheet of lined paper, folded in quarters, out of the breast pocket of his apron-slash-labcoat and handed it over.

Marshall opened it, paused, then gave it a cautious sniff.

"Someone's dipped this in tea," he said.

Fred nodded proudly.

"That's how you know it's old."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"Ouch," said Fred. "Rude. And yes, obviously I'm a marine... that thing I just said I was. Just look at my glasses. And my lab coat!"

"That's an apron," said Marshall. "And your glasses are just empty frames."

Fred sagged.

"I thought this was a pretty good imposture," he said sadly. "What did you think I was?"

Marshall shrugged.

"The old guy in a horror movie who warns the kids not to go to the abandoned castle or whatever," he said, then held up his hands as Fred glared at him.

"Relatively! Relatively old, I meant! Old compared to teens!"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"So the King Crab's not in charge anymore," said Marshall, more to himself than to Eerie's most recognisable compulsive imposter.

He straightened, pulling away from the counter as he began to pace the well-trodden route between the cash register and the cutlery stand.

"Did the messenger tell you who's taken over?" he asked. "If it was a Mackerel Soldier who sent word, presumably they're still loyal to the King Crab?"

"They said only that it was a great evil," said Fred, his voice dropping half an octave and his eyes darting about beneath his glassless glasses. "And that while the King Crab still commanded the loyalty of his Mackerel armies, those armies themselves had been greatly diminished in the fighting."

His voice became a whisper.

"In fact, the note I received mentioned that the Mackerel Soldier who wrote it expected to die very soon of his wounds, and that it probably wasn't worth trying to help."

He swallowed hard, overcome by the memory. He removed his spectacles, tried to clean the non-existent lenses on the edge of his apron, looked confused, then put them back on.

"Of course, I came anyway," he said. "I knew I had to warn people."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"Really," said Marshall, adopting a studiedly casual stance in front of the tea rack as he addressed the new-old shopkeeper. "What brings you here?"

"Oh, you know," said Fred Suggs. "This and that. Happenstance and coincidence. The swirls and eddies of a life full-lived."

He leaned forward, eyes blazing behind wire-rimed spectacles that were missing their lenses.

"There's something in the water here," he hissed. "Beware the Deep Ones! Beware their siren song!"

"I always am," Marshall assured him. "Earplugs, packet of dry soil, writ of safe passage from the King Crab... I'm set."

Fred scoffed.

"That won't be enough!"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Marshall checked the clock.

The Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar opened early, selling fishing lures and chum buckets to those who hunted in the waters of Lake Eerie, and bought sodden wallets and gold teeth from those that hunted those hunters. If Janet had closed up the night before, she'd be at home, sleeping off the after-effects of a dozen warding rituals and the unique horror of cleaning the customer toilets.

"I'll go by the shop," he said. "If Janet's not working, maybe whoever Fred is impersonating today will know what to do about the ghost-pirates instead."

Simon looked sceptical.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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As it turned out, Fred could shuffle, deal, and absolutely fleece his co-worker at Gin Rummy, all while holding his ridiculous mask-on-a-stick firmly in place.

"Thank the corn we were playing for ketchup packets," said Janet, sliding a fistful of sauce sachets his way. "Otherwise I'd be handing my wages over to you for the next couple of weeks."

"Ketchup holds it's value better than currency," Fred informed her solemnly as he scooped his winnings into a masquerade-themed fanny pack at his waist. "Though not as well as mustard, obviously."

"Obviously," Janet agreed, privately wondering which stock-market condiments traded under.

Ongoing Verse: Weather

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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There were voices in the storm. Not just the voice of the thing at the door, alternately pleading and threatening as it tried desperately to get inside. That one was deep, guttural, with a sucking undercurrent to every word.

The voices in the storm were different, dust-dry as they hissed and pattered and crept in through every tiny gap in the Baitshop's defences. They whispered of the year Janet had missed, all the things her parents and teachers and the kids at school had never told her.

Things she could learn if she would only step outside and breathe deep.


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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"You just helped me chop squirming sucker-tipped appendages off a monster we pulled out of the lake together," she said. "Lake Eerie is the only non-oceanic breeding ground for kraken in the entire world! We're already as locally sourced as we can get."

She shook her head in exasperation, long flame-red ponytail swishing with annoyance.

"We can't be a hundred percent local anyway," she said. "There's nowhere in Eerie that grows rice. And even the things in the lake are mostly fed on summer people."

Fred sagged, his generic-man disguise smeared with rice water and lake-monster secretions.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The rice was sticky, swollen, and leaking over the rim of the high-sided pot in gooey lumps of bulbous white.

"Too much water?" suggested the cook, who could have been anyone in his non-descript button down and beige chinos, but who was in fact Fred Suggs, compulsive imposter.

"Maybe," said Janet, lifting herself onto a gleaming silver-chased serving trolley as the tide of sushi rice spread across the floor to lap at the toes of her sensible, thick-soled shoes. "Could be we let it soak too long."

A face appeared in the pebbled mass of the rice flood. It winked.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"What about the Eerie Museum of Maritime History?" asked Marshall. "Did you call them?"

"Tried," said Janet. "The Baitshop 'phone only really gets a good signal to the underwater parts of town. I left a message, but sometimes Fred calls me in to work early and all I can hear is the sound of the waves, so I don't know how much got through."

"Simon and I were planning on infiltrating it next weekend," said Mars. "You're welcome to come along if you like."

Janet grinned.

"By 'infiltrate', do you mean 'show up during opening hours and buy a ticket'?"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Janet untied her apron, removed a set of brass knuckles carved with an invocation to Dagon from one pocket, and a lighter and a dented packet of cigarettes from the other.

"Taking my break!" she called to the man in the Zorro outfit who was chopping vegetables in the kitchen. The man, who had refused to give a name when he arrived for that day's shift but who was almost certainly still Fred Suggs, compulsive imposter, nodded cheerily.

"Let's go down to the slipway," said Janet, slipping on the knuckledusters and grabbing her drink. "So I can really savour this."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Janet was not entirely sure about the new menu options.

She turned it this way and that, taking in the bun (made from pressed glutinous rice), the lettuce (formed from shaped wasabi and almost certain to be an issue when it came time for taste testing), the tomato slice (layers of pickled ginger artfully cut and curled in the biggest demonstration of skill over sense she'd ever seen) and the patty (meat from the chum bucket, which was fine if the customer didn't mind a little light cannibalism).

"Why?" she said, finally.

Baron von Burger, aka Fred Suggs, looked hurt.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Radford ran a feather duster over the display of disarticulated mannequin parts, making sure to get between every outstretched finger or set of plastic lips parted in an endless scream.

When Fred Suggs had showed up at his door, arriving in a sail boat mounted on four mismatched bike wheels and wearing a pirate hat, Radford hadn't exactly been keen to stock the plastic flotsam that Eerie's most notorious compulsive imposter had scooped from Lake Eerie. He'd accepted that first haul on a strict sale-or-return basis, expecting it would be mostly returns.

Turned out, the creepy forest cults loved them.

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Wet sand and barbeque sauce smeared the whitewashed walls of the little shack. A smeary chalkboard lay on the ground beside the broken service window, a jagged crack running full-length down the middle of the list of that day's specials.

"Something terrible happened here," said Fred Suggs, adjusting his utterly superfluous eye-patch and brandishing a plastic cutlass for emphasis.

Janet eyed the blood-smeared drag marks leading to the waterline and nodded slowly.

"Something far worse than just a sub-par hotdog," she agreed.

Fred's unpatched eye widened, and he gave her an affronted look from beneath his gold-trimmed pirate hat.

"First Mate Janet," he said severely. "There is nothing worse than a sub-par hotdog."


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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It's the year 2020, and to mark the occasion we'll be running weekly prompts based around Just Say No Fun, the episode that introduced everyone's least favourite optometrist.

Your prompt for this week is:

Metric Conversion Tables

It's the year 2020, and to mark the occasion we'll be running weekly prompts based around Just Say No Fun, the episode that introduced everyone's least favourite optometrist.

Your prompt for this week is:

FRED SUGGS

Get inside your Windmaster Trailers and strap in tight, because we're about to rewatch Tornado Days

Get your Eerie #2 pencil ready, because tonight we're rewatching Who's Who.

It's Tuesday, so today you get a choice between two prompts. Pick one, combine both, pit them against each other - on Tuesday, you choose!

This week, your options are:

Black Cow with a Nip of Java versus the biggest size ice-cream the World o' Stuff has