To whom it may concern

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.

Its Tynwald Day in the Isle of Man. Time to climb the mound, assemble the Midsummer Court and promulgate the year's new laws. As the Manx powers that be gather, let's mark the date with some fanworks about what the Eerie powers that be might be up to.

The raw and weeping thing at the bar jumped a little at her outburst, as did Janet, though she controlled hers in time to stop the neatly-plated nigiri from sliding off her serving tray.

"There you go, sir," she said to the skinless corpse, setting the dish down in front of it. "Wasabi, soy sauce and ginger are on your left. Let me know if you need anything else."

She smiled, bright and breezy, then turned to Melanie.

"Mel," she said carefully. "Are you doing okay?"

Melanie took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. This was not the time to go all Marshall Teller on her best friend just because...

Just because...

Because there was a revenant sitting at her place of work, carefully separating a set of disposable chopsticks with bloody fingers that left red-brown smears over the cheap alder wood.

Janet's expression became one of concern.

"Do you need to sit down? We're kind of crowded today because of the King Tide, but there's room at the counter."

Melanie swallowed hard, shook her head, and forced her expression back to something that, if not cheerfully unconcerned, was least pleasantly neutral.

"No," she said. "I'm good. Just stopped by to say hi and pick up some takeout is all."

"It'll be a bit of a wait," said Janet. "Fred's compulsively impersonating a high-strung perfectionist right now, so there's a lot of drama going on in the kitchen. I'm actually hanging out with the customers for some peace and quiet, if you can believe that."

Melanie Monroe looked from her friend, to the heavy steel door that lead to the kitchen, to the bloodied tatterdemalion peaceably eating sushi dipped in way too much soy sauce, and raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously?" she asked.

"Trust me," said Janet. "It's that dire."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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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 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:

A WHOLE CASE OF FUN

Strap on your Sky Monsters part 2 (with bubble sole!), and strut like a sky-walking machine down to First Eerie Savings to sing 99 Bottles of Beer with Mister Wilson. Ladies, gentlemen, ain't it good to know you got a friend? Put your white plastic cash dispensing hands together for... ATM with a Heart of Gold!

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:

"right next to the crossbows"

Its Tynwald Day in the Isle of Man. Time to climb the mound, assemble the Midsummer Court and promulgate the year's new laws. As the Manx powers that be gather, let's mark the date with some fanworks about what the Eerie powers that be might be up to.

Janet Donner stood beside her colleague, who hadn't yet picked an impersonation for today but would still be very hurt if she referred to him as Fred Suggs, as the two of them stared into the fishing net.

"What-" said not-Fred, at the same time as Janet asked, "Is that-"

They both stopped, turned to each other.

"Sorry," said Janet, "You go ahead."

Not-Fred shook his head.

"No, I'm sorry," he said. "You carry on."

Janet looked back at their catch. She sighed.

"It's a turkraken, isn't it?" she said.

Not-Fred hesitated, then nodded slowly.

Janet cursed.

"Cut it loose."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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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:

A HOLE CASE OF FUN versus DISGUISE YOURSELF SO EVEN YOUR OWN MOTHER WON'T RECOGNISE YOU KIT

By the time Janet reached the Baitshop, it's doors locked and warded and it's windows dark within wooden frames marked with a hundred blood-spattered charms to prevent incursion, panic was well and truly setting in.

The wooden paddle boats were moored to the rotting wood of the pier, arranged neatly in a way that almost never happened during these long, hectic days of summer when the tourists wanted the lake and the lake - and the things that lived in it - could hardly wait to eat the tourists.

"Fred?" she called, her voice trembling and the volume scarcely above a whisper.


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"You've got that right," said Marshall, pulling the coffee cup towards him and taking a grateful sip. "I need to use the payphone out back; do you know if it's working?"

Fred wrote something down on the order pad.

"One... working payphone..." he murmured to himself, then looked up with a bright smile. "Coming right up!"

He vanished through the heavy double doors marked "staff only" before Marshall could stop him.

A few moments later, he emerged, face set in an apologetic grimace.

"I'm really sorry," he said. "Chef says we're out of payphones. Can I get you something else?"

Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Marshall somehow stopped himself from sighing aloud, and took the letter over to the long bay window that ran the length of the Sushi Bar, looking out over the lake.

It was a strange mixture of handwriting - a wide and untidy sprawl of thick black lines - and words cut from magazines and pasted onto the artificially aged paper. Even if the Mackerel Soldiers could speak English, Marshall doubted they know how use scissors and a glue-stick.

He held it up to the light, but no hidden message revealed itself. He even tried the Commander Cody decoder ring, to no avail.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"Fine," said Fred. "Whatever. It's a Hollywood trope and therefore inherently obsessed with youth in a way that has no baring on my actual, real age. I forgive you for working in a fundamentally ageist paradigm."

"...thanks," said Marshall, wishing more than ever that Janet had been on shift that morning instead. He needed to have a normal conversation with a normal person who could help him out with a normal problem like ghost-pirates infesting the communal areas of his apartment, not spend the day navigating the murky waters of Fred Suggs' personal identity.

"You are welcome," said Fred, graciously.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Marshall was silent for a moment, his mind full of the poor, dying Mackerel Soldier who had used the last of his strength to scribble a no-

"Wait a minute," he said. "Mackerel Soldiers refuse to read or write any of the Dry Languages. And even if they did, the water would make the paper all soggy and the letter would have fallen apart when you touched it."

Fred blinked.

"Oh," he said. "Yes. A professor of marine cryptobiology would know that, wouldn't he?"

"That's what you're supposed to be?" said Marshall, so surprised that he'd forgotten to be polite.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Marshall leaned forward, his elbows resting on the polished countertop.

"Not enough?" he prompted. "A letter from the King Crab himself?"

Fred - or whoever he was today - shook his head.

"The King Crab is overthrown!" he hissed. "One of his Mackerel Soldiers sent word to me at my home, many thousands of miles from here-"

(at this, Marshall, who had delivered Fred Sugg's newspaper to his front door at 52 Festive Road every day from the ages of twelve to fifteen, did not quite manage to suppress an eye-roll)

"-warning me of great upheaval in the World Beneath the Waves!"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The wind turbines were visible today, standing tall and white off a shore that existed someplace far outside of Eerie. The great metal blades rotated slowly, turned by a sea-salt breeze that blew from that other place.

Marshall pushed through the beaded curtain that hung in the door of the Baitshop, hearing sea-glass chime against puka shells and drowned men's bones as he did so.

"I see the phantom ocean's back again," he commented to the man in a crisp white apron who stood behind the counter.

"I wouldn't know," said Fred Suggs. "I've never been to this town before."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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By and by, the storm blew itself out. The thing on the doorstep stopped alternating desperate cries for help with threats of unending torment if it wasn't let in this moment, and the whispering wind-borne sand grew still and silent.

They waited while the overhead lights flickered back to life and the sky outside slowly returned to summer-morning blue.

"I guess we'd better start cleaning up," said Janet, standing. Fred stood too, pocketing the ketchup-stained pack of cards they'd been playing with and retrieving the industrial-width broom from it's place behind the drinks cabinet.

Janet doused the oil-lamp, somewhat regretfully.

Ongoing Verse: Weather

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Fred produced a box of matches wrapped in curse-proof oilskin, and lit the antique oil lantern that normally stood sentinel behind the counter.

At once the shadows at the edges of the room became darker and more defined, and the small table next to the condiments stand where they sat was bathed in warm yellow light.

"Cards?" he suggested.

"Can you shuffle and hold your mask at the same time?" asked Janet.

Fred gave her a reproachful look through two glitter-lined eyeholes.

"I know we've never seen each other before today," he said. "But really, Janet, of course I can."


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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The wind was coming in off the lake, knife-sharp and howling as it clawed at the metal shutters drawn tight across the Baitshop windows. Already there was a fine layer of sand over the tables, the chairs and the worn and salt-warped floorboards.

Something banged against the front door, causing Fred Suggs to squeal in fright and drop the carnival-style mask-on-a-stick he'd worn to work that morning. He scrambled to retrieve it in the gloom of the closed-down restaurant, hastily raising it up over his face again.

"Probably just debris thrown up by the storm," Janet suggested.

She was lying.


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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"Could be," agreed the new chef, who nobody in Eerie had ever set eyes on before today. "Might also be because I used water from the lake on this latest batch."

Janet gasped in horror.

"Fred!" she said, her shock temporarily over-riding her grasp of the etiquette of working with compulsive imposters. "Why in the eternal fields of corn would you do that?"

Fred looked embarrassed.

"I thought it would be a selling point if we advertised it as one hundred percent locally sourced," he admitted.

Janet, whose hands were blue-black with the blood of freshly-caught kraken, glared at him.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The fog rolled in, grey and wet and covering everything in a smothering blanket of dingy cotton wool. It pressed against the Baitshop windows, so thick that the world beyond seemed to suddenly vanish in the murk.

The mood lighting was supposed to be for special occasions - Valentines' dinners, sacrifice days, that sort of thing - but Janet turned it on anyway, bathing the dining room in a hazy orange warmth that instantly changed the setting from "gloomy" to "cozy".

The cook, who had turned up that day for the first time ever and was definitely not Fred Suggs, nodded approvingly.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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They stood in line at the Eerie Savings and Loan, waiting while Fred Suggs counted out a huge stack of bills for a rotund man in a red fez hat and white suit.

"What do you think he'll do?" asked Simon.

Marshall shrugged.

"I think he'll let it work itself out," he said. "I'm more worried about him keeping those specimen samples. I don't like the idea of Chisel having access to kraken DNA."

"Yeah," said Simon. "Same. Which is why I switched out the egg-jelly for agar nutrient before our appointment."

Marshall grinned.

"You're a genius, Simon!" he exclaimed.


Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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