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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"Most likely," said Melanie, nodding with some difficulty due to being upside down. "Though the horrible were-chicken thing and the whole reveal about the Chicken Palace serving something that at least used to be human flesh must have given him some bad associations as well."

Janet made a face.

"He eats at the sushi bar," she said. "Anything that comes up out of that lake has been feeding on people it's whole life. Long pig's practically part of the food pyramid in this town."

"Yeah," said Janet, "But the nigiri don't generally wear clip-on ties, so he's good with that."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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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 other alternative," Simon said, "Is that you contract with the Ghost Pirates to try to lure the kraken-babies back into the Phantom Ocean the next time it shows up, and keep them there long enough for the reality of Lake Eerie to reassert itself and sever the connection."

Chisel thought about this.

"Expensive," he mused. "And there's no guarantee the Pirates would make it back, which might adversely affect visitor numbers for years to come if tourists aren't spotting a ghostly galleon on the lake every night..."

He opened a drawer and pulled out his cheque book.

"Thanks, boys."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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"So the last time it was pulled here, it took some of the Kraken eggs with it," finished Marshall. "And Lake Eerie is deep enough to hide Kraken spawn, at least for as long as it took them to hatch."

He took the scrapbook from Simon and opened it to a page near the back, where vacuum-sealed specimen slides were surrounded by a colourful crepe paper border.

"We found a weird jelly on the north shore," he said. "Our working theory is that that's where the eggs washed up, which is why they didn't get eaten by the Eerie Swans."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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"We know that the Ghost Pirates came here via the Phantom Ocean," said Marshall.

He waited for a moment, but as Chisel didn't seem inclined to argue this obvious fact, he continued:

"We know that they stayed here after the ocean relocated the first time, and we know that they've chosen not to go with it when it's reappeared since."

The Mayor nodded.

"We also know that sometimes the ocean brings other things to the lake, and that those things can get stuck here."

"The seagulls," said Chisel, nodding again. "They're wrecking havoc on French-fry sales and the Pteranodon population."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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The Mayor tsked.

"You're still mad about that," he said. "It was over a decade ago! How many things have tried to eat you since then?"

"Lots," said Marshall. "Including, most recently, the kraken you asked us to look into."

The Mayor raised one finger and waggled it slowly at the two investigators.

"I asked you to look into the rash of mysteriously disappearing tourists around Lake Eerie," he corrected them. "A body of water that is completely safe, a draw for our many valued visitors, and that also isn't big enough to support a full-grown Kraken."

"It's a baby."


Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Marshall inhaled, the sharp, shallow intake of breath he usually took right before telling someone or something to go fuck itself.

Simon didn't blame him - they'd worked hard on that scrapbook, not to mention the effort that had gone into the investigation itself - but righteous fury wouldn't get the electric bill paid.

He stepped between his best friend and the smirking politician, grabbed the origami sea monster by the nearest carefully-folded appendage, and yanked the file back across the desk and into his free hand.

(He'd practiced this move at home beforehand, and was secretly pleased to show it off)

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"Krakens?" said the Mayor. He laughed, unconvincingly. "They're extinct!"

He made a dismissive, wavy sort of gesture. The gesture was also highly unconvincing.

"First of all, wrong," said Marshall.

"Secondly, rude," Simon added.

The Faceless Aide hovering at Chisel's shoulder covered the smooth blankness where it's mouth should be, as though trying to hide a non-existent grin.

Marshall set a floral-patterned scrapbook down on the Mayor's pristine and unblotted blotter. Chisel glanced at the blowsy roses decorating the cover and his eyebrows rose.

"Professional," he said.

"It was what was left," said Marshall. "It's the start of the school year."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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"Wow," said Tod. "Ouch."

Dash shrugged.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. "But it's not like they'd know any of us were involved anyway."

"You have kraken-ink all over your hands," Janet pointed out. "You might actually be branded deeper than I am right now, and the things in the lake literally branded me when I worked at the Baitshop last summer."

Dash glanced down at his black-smeared palms.

"It'll wash off," he said.

"Sure," said Janet. "Eventually. In about... roughly the same timescale as a lake monster with a bruised ego might take to heal up."


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"See?" said Dash, in a smug voice that made Janet want to punch him just about as hard as that biker gang had punched Cthulhu. "His aesthetic."

"You can buy food colouring at the World o' Stuff!" she said. "You didn't need to drag Tod into a conflict between Harley Davidson-riding vigilantes and the Lovecraftian pantheon that sleeps below the local body of water."

Dash waved one inky hand.

"Relax," he said. "The way the guy in the Santa hat was talking, that kraken isn't asking for a rematch any time soon."

"They're functionally immortal," said Janet. "They can wait!"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Janet made a face.

"Tod," she said. "You realise that probably means the Unkind Ones got that ink in a fight, right?"

"Oh," said Tod.

"And then I asked their permission to take some," said Dash. "And they said I could. Ethically sourced."

"Ethically sourced by you from them," said Janet. "Sourced with punching by them from the kraken."

"Which would have been twelve guys in leather waistcoats versus a many-tentacle nightmare the size of a house," said Dash. "If there's an unethical slant on that fight, it's in favour of the kraken."

They both turned to Tod, faces expectant.


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The lead for his headphones caught around his ankle, and for one horrible moment Marshall thought that a kraken might have managed to stow away in his backpack when he left the lake.

He glanced down at the half-open, over-stuffed rucksack that was currently spilling homework, interesting-looking rocks and the Walkman he'd misappropriated from Syndi all over his parent's front hall, and sighed in relief.

That relief was short-lived, however; as he bent down to untangle the twisting black wire, he noticed that the foam disc covering the right ear-piece had come off. The Bureau of Lost had struck again.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"I think the duck with the green head and the duck with the brown and white camo pattern are dating," Simon announced excitedly. "I was down by the causeway, counting the kraken-hatchlings like you asked me to, and they were swimming around really close together and eating bread!"

He passed over a water-stained notebook, fingers shaking with excitement.

"And then they climbed up on the slip and started doing a little pitter-pat dance with their feet. It was adorable!"

He demonstrated. Marshall Teller, fifteen and a battle-hardened veteran of the War on Weirdness, agreed that it was in fact adorable.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Janet set the large glass teapot in the centre of the table and began pouring hot water onto the tightly wrapped bundle of leaves inside. Newly formed curls of steam rose towards the Baitshop's net-and-glass-buoy decorated ceiling, wispy tendrils questing this way and that in a way that had nothing to do with the movement of the air around them.

As the dark green outer layers peeled away, unveiling the first flash of pink, Janet stepped away.

"Duck," she warned the seated diners, moments before the rehydrated Kraken lunged at them.

She was too late, of course. She always was.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"The One Where Phoebe Mixes Up Lake Superior and Lake Eerie"

— ted, lost in the archives (@teioh) October 15, 2018

million dollar idea: reboot of "Eerie, Indiana" set in a lake

— spook john b. (@adr) October 15, 2018

The swans had killed a kraken just off the western edge of the lake, dragging it from the muddy depths of a thousand-year slumber to die screaming in the cold clear light of an April morning. Now the corpse bobbed, bloodied and bloated, beside the little wooden pier where rowboats moored in summer. One half-eaten tentacle, caught by the tide, slapped forlornly against the barnacle-crusted pilings.

"It smells," said Harley, his tone indicating great approval.

Lillian nodded.

"That's nature for you," she said. "Or rather, super-nature, in this case." She rummaged in the stygian depths of her great black purse, emerging after some moments with a heavy stone knife, it's blade nicked and stained, it's handle crudely carved.

"Oh, look," she said. "I think that's our swan, the one over by the eye-socket with kraken-brains all over his face. Didn't he get big?"

"Yes," said Harley, who unlike the swan had barely grow an inch since last summer. Lillian gave him a warning glance.

"I see that rock," she said. "Put it down."

Harley shook his head. Lillian sighed.

"Harley," she said. "I asked if you wanted to go to the park with me to help harvest suction cups from the kraken corpse. I didn't say you could throw stones at the local bird life while we were down here."

"Never said I couldn't," Harley countered.

"I'm saying it now," said Lillian. "So I guess the question for you is, do you want to throw rocks at masked, murderous water fowl more than you want to carve up an ancient creature of myth and legend?"

Harley looked at the dead sea monster, slick with black ichor that oozed from hundreds of gaping wounds. He looked at the swans, busily tearing away long strips of meat from the tattered-looking carcass, and weighed his chances.

"Fine," he said, dropping the stone. "This time."

( Read the rest of the Teller Family History here )

( Read the rest of the Holmes Brothers series here )

Written for the fffc October challenge. The prompt for this one was "monster: classical and mythological"

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( Read the rest of the Microwave verse here )