To whom it may concern

Mister Radford took one look at the bags under Dash's eyes, did a quick mental calculation on the odds of anyone that sleep-deprived managing to shoplift successfully, and decided the permanent, all-time, no take-backsies mega-ban could be put on hold today.

"Here," he said, tipping an extra shot of java into what was quickly becoming less of a coffee-flavoured milkshake, and more a tall glass of iced caffeine that had been briefly shown a picture of some ice-cream.

"Thanks," said Dash, causing a few bristles on Radford's moustache to turn white from shock.

"Maybe that's what had happened to the kid's hair too," Radford thought. "He caught himself being polite one day and all the colour got bleached right out of him in confusion and fright."

Out loud - but not too loud, because his one-time-only, after-this-the-ban-is-back-in-effect-forever customer didn't look like he could take it, he said "No problem."

There was silence for a moment, as Radford busied himself wiping down the already spotless counter and Dash appeared to sleep with his eyes open.

"Not that it's any of my business," Radford began.

"It's not," said Dash, proving that the exhaustion had not yet permanently damaged his intrinsic rudeness.

Radford felt strangely relieved, though he didn't let his smile show.

"Fair enough," he said. "But if late nights have you feeling a little peaky, I just got some of the new Super Sanity Saver sleep aides in stock."

Dash blinked, slowly.

"Aren't those the sunglasses people wear so they can look at the popcorn god without losing their minds?" he said. "I don't think that's going to help at night."

"Same company," said Radford. "But these are ear plugs. Guaranteed to block the Call of the Void for one hundred nights mini-"

"Sold," said Dash, and actually reached for his wallet.

Ongoing Verse: First Kiss

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Poplio stood silhouetted against the rising sun, body butter-yellow and bulbous and almost completely obscuring the long, low bulk of the Eerieplex behind him.

The familiar cinema-going scents of burnt sugar, salted grease and old carpet that had lain too long in darkened rooms were still present, but buried beneath a new, more overpowering odour.

Sara Sue Haverstock had spent too long in her father's house to be put off by something as simple as a weird smell, but she'd also been there long enough to appreciate a cautious approach.

She sniffed again.

"Hot dogs or human remains," she decided.

Ongoing Verse: Pay Attention

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Marshall smoothed down the last glossy high-colour corner, checked the edge of the paper against the line where his bedroom wall met the sky-blue of his bedroom ceiling, and nodded in satisfaction.

Moving carefully, he descended the small stepladder he'd borrowed from his father's shed, folded it closed, and set it down alongside his as-yet still-unmade bed.

"Well," he said. "What do you think?"

Simon examined the theatre-sized poster adfvertising "Korn Kritters 17: X-Treme Korn".

"Very cool," he said. "But are you sure you're not eternally bound to Poplio now?"

"Seven-day trial," said Marshall. "It's fine, I'll remember to cancel."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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The Cultist stopped laughing abruptly. He leaned forward, far enough that he was almost nose-to-cowl with Marshall. Despite the closeness, Marshall still couldn't see anything but shadows beneath the hood.

"Because," he said. "They were unworthy. That's why the popcorn maker caught fire so soon after their birth. It was a sign, you see?"

Marshall shook his head. The Cultist sighed.

"Poplio saw into their salt-sweet souls and He judged them by what He found there," he explained.

"He sounds fickle," said Marshall. "Or maybe incompetent."

"I'm starting to think you don't really want a job here," said the Cultist.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Simon might have been right about the relative kindness of calling someone an idiot, Marshall thought, but not saying it didn't make it any less of a fact.

"Okay," he said, propping both elbows on the counter and looking into the patch of shadow that was statistically most likely to contain the Cultist's eyes. "First question: why did Poplio tell you to fill the popcorn maker so high that it ended up catching fire if he's all-knowing and knew that would happen?"

"He was testing the popcorn maker's battle-readiness," said the Cultist. "To make sure we could replenish our forces."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Marshall raised an eyebrow.

"You guys get paid to be in a cult?" he asked.

The Cultist nodded enthusiastically.

"And watch movies and eat whatever we like from the concession stand," he said. "For free!"

He pulled an application form from beneath the counter and slid it over to Marshall, leaving bubbled fingerprints on the white paper.

"We're always hiring," he said. "If you're interested."

Marshall folded the application form into quarters and slipped it inside a ForeverWare ReSealable Freezer Bag. Hopefully pitting one freaky Eerie-specific cult against another would negate any malign influence the paper held.

"Thanks," he said.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The Cultist pressed one bulbous and misshapen appendage to the card-reader on the side of the register. The touch screen chimed softly as it lit up, displaying a name that seemed to be a series of warped glyphs which writhed horribly as Marshall looked at them.

"Cash or a ticket for another showing?" asked the Cultist. "We're showing Korn Kritters again tomorrow at six, but it's an immersive screening where the great God Poplio will eat the entire audience at the end of the second act."

"Cash please," said Marshall, thinking that William Castle had a lot to answer for.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Even the nubbly and butter-drenched logic of the Popcorn Cultists seemed flummoxed by this. They conferred amongst themselves, black hoods bobbing ominously.

"How does that even work?" asked their spokesman. "Why would a car think a person who owned a car wouldn't understand the concept of a car?"

"Right?" said Marshall. "It's like, I bought the car, I signed up for all the things that went along with car ownership, why would that be more foreign to me than the sudden appearance of an elementary school kid that wants me to feed her gasoline and leave her outside all night?"

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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There was a long silence, broken only by the fire suppression system at work and the rapidly-diminishing bleat of a smoke alarm in dire need of new batteries.

One of the cultists coughed.

"No," he said. "No we didn't. This was..." he glanced nervously at his robed brothers, who nodded their cowl'd heads at him.

He straightened, apparantly drawing strength if not dignity from their encouragement.

"This was a test!" he declared grandly. "To see if these newest children of the great Popcorn God were worthy of carrying out His will in the daylit world beyond the Eerieplex!"

Marshall blinked.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The empty cinema smelled of stale popcorn, human minds twisted past breaking point, and strangely, the water from inside a pickle jar. Marshall Teller wriggled through the breakroom window, landing on the floor with a sound that was somehow both squishy and crunchy.

Everywhere was dark. The backlit panels where posters for upcoming features were displayed were now only rectangles of darkness. The cash registers had been shut down, empty coin drawers protruding like panting plastic tongues. Even the slushy machine was switched off, although nobody had thought to dump the contents beforehand.

A trail of blue raspberry lead downwards...

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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The cheese was virulent orange, with the texture of melted plastic and a smell like socks even the Bureau of Lost wouldn't risk taking inside. Marshall used a pair of salad tongs to place a single corn chip on it's surface, watching in satisfaction as it was swallowed by the choking tide of pseudo-dairy.

"That fox knew his stuff," he said, closing the tattered recipe book and returning it to it's place of honour atop their two other cookbooks. "This is exactly like the nacho cheese you get at the Eerieplex."

Dash shrugged.

"Magical animals understand bar food," he said.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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"I'm not mad," said the Cultist, popcorn flakes pouring from his mouth and from the bloodied sockets where his eyes had been. "I'm just disappointed."

The rest of the cult members moaned in despair.

"Forgive us," one of them cried, throwing themselves at the flaked and buttered feet of Poplio's chosen vessel. Others followed suit, prostrating themselves on the sticky multiplex carpet, wailing into the stain-splattered nylon.

The Popcorn God's mouthpiece coughed up a handful of kernels, some of which got stuck in his broken teeth.

"Repent, children," he gargled. "Repent, and swear never to mix sweet and salty again!"

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The floor to ceiling windows of the Eerie Multiplex exploded outwards, and only the heaving mass of congealed dairy filling the street outside protected bystanders from the falling glass. From the mezzanine floor that lead to screens 6, 6, 6 and 13, Marshall and his friends watched in horror as Poplio, eldritch God of stale popcorn and the cinema-going experience, set upon the molten cheese beast born from the deepest depths of the Eerie Waste Processing Plant and Pizzeria.

Melanie Monroe fell to her knees amidst the wreckage of a dozen concession stands, Devon screaming along with her. Tod McNulty pressed his hands over his eyes, black-painted nails digging into soft flesh. Even Simon and Marshall, veteran experiencers of the Weird, blanched and turned away.

Janet Donner sighed around the twisted crazy straw in her Cherry Cornade. Popcorn cultists, their robes an ill-considered and very unscary halfway point between usher and ring wraith, stared at her. Slowly, one of them raised a trembling arm to point at her.

"You!" he said, his voice dripping with accusation and his breath smelling of hot dogs that have sat too long on the rollers. "Why are you not struck blind by the glory of our master's propagation?"

Janet shrugged.

"I wait tables at the Baitshop and Sushi Bar every summer," she said. "Once you see what people get up to with anything even a little bit tentacle-y, a giant pile of popcorn mating with ambulatory cheese dip isn't that big of a deal."

The cultists parted before her.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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So I recently won the big prize in an online raffle where one of the gifts includes a "small digital commission" from the artist running it. Putting small in quotes because when you see the examples, it must mean small in size not in complexity or awesomeness.

The raffle was part of a promotion for the creation of some tiny cute pin versions of the kaiju from the first Pacific Rim, but the creator has said that my commission doesn't necessarily have to be kaiju-based.

These are the three pieces they showed me as an example of what I could ask for:

https://yamigriffin.deviantart.com/art/HORNS-214724850
https://yamigriffin.deviantart.com/art/Kaiju-at-the-beach-707481197
https://yamigriffin.deviantart.com/art/Pandion-Savoir-of-Azeroth-295842214

And this is the link to their DeviantArt landing page:

https://yamigriffin.deviantart.com/gallery/

So now I'm like... wow. What do I ask for here? And I was thinking it might be cool to get something Eerie based, but more based on the fanon stuff than the human characters. Like maybe Poplio, popcorn god of the Eerie Multiplex, or Sparky and the manticore facing off against each other or something.

What do you guys think? Is there a particular piece of Eerie fanart you've always wanted to see committed to paper? I'm just kind of... gathering some ideas here.

Inspired by deifire's shipping poll about Simon and this thread about Simon dating Nick or Eddie.

What on earth, brain. You've given me nothing since Christmas, and this is what breaks the slump? Weirdo.

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( Read the rest of the Microwave verse here )

( Read the rest of the Teller Family History here )

Slight crossover with Welcome to Night Vale

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( Read the rest of the Microwave-verse here )

As today is Audrey Hepburn' birthday:

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( Read the rest of the Teller Family History here )

( Read the rest of the Microwave verse here )

Written for the fffc October challenge. The prompt was "creature: classic/mythological"

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( Read the rest of the Trusted Associates verse here )

Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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