To whom it may concern

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:

Mark Twain Boarding House versus Lake Eerie

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:

Grandma's Kitchen versus Lake Eerie

Janet Donner stood at the edge of the lake, feeling the salt breeze play across the exposed skin of her bare arms and tug at the loose curls of her long red hair. In one hand, she held a bottle that had once contained a tiny replica frigate, a frigate that was even now setting sail from the dock outside the Eerie Baitshop and Sushi Bar.

In her other hand, she grasped a clump of wet sand, which she poked into the narrow mouth of the now-empty bottle. It might not work, but she needed what help she could get.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The lake was hungry. Not just the things in the lake, the mermaids and sea hags and the squishy squid-like things that signed her paycheques, but the lake itself. Janet could feel it, gnawing at the pit of her stomach and sending a cold ache through her bones, turning her muscles to rusted tangles of barbed wire that caught on the underside of her skin with every moment she spent above the waves.

"I'm not ready," she whispered into the white and hissing surf, and, "I need more time." And, perhaps most damningly, "the tourist season will be here soon."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Deep below the surface, the Sea Hag raged. Bent and swollen fingers curved like the ribs of sunken ships, tearing at the lake bed. The gouges became furrows, deepened still to become trenches, changing the topography of the World Beneath the Waves and, as a consequence, changing the currents around it.

The waters became treacherous, routes that were easily navigated now twisted out of true or vanished entirely, and vicious storms sprang up out of nowhere, capsizing ghost ships and sending their crews to a second, permanent death.

And the mermaids sighed, and fetched their shovels, and went to work.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The ghost of the drowned man stood amidst a growing puddle of phantom seawater. His eyes were clouded, jelly-grey and unseeing, and his blanched white skin bubbled and bulged. Marshall raised the clunky Instamatic camera to his face, his hands shaking so badly that his eyes could barely find the viewfinder, and managed to hit the shutter button on his third try.

The flash was blinding on the dark shore, and the drowned man turned. His jaw hung slack and black water poured out of his gaping mouth. He screamed like waves thundering on bare rock, and finally, Marshall ran.


Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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On the sunniest shore of Lake Eerie, twelve small whitewashed cottages stood in neat rows of four, each row running parallel to it's neighbour and the first running parallel to the lake.

In the summer, smoke would rise from a dozen barbeques as tourists and locals alike made use of rented kitchenettes and fold-out sofas and reasonably-priced canoe rentals. But now, in the dead of winter, the pale blue rooms looked cold and empty, and the large picture windows with their drapes all taken up and put away stared at the grey water like unfocussed eyes.

Janet loved them then.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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There was a pause on the other end of the line, during which the static crackle of Raudive voices increased in volume and urgency.

"I take it you mean something more dramatic than the usual unfortunate predation of mermaids upon the Summer People?" Chisel asked.

"Yes," said Janet. "This isn't a case of blood in the water, it's blood literally replacing all the water. There's a herd of vampires over by the boat shack already, and come nightfall they'll be like antelope at an oasis."

Chisel sighed.

"Tell your Gods that I'll have a team down there shortly," he said.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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"Thanks for helping me out," said Janet, as she and Tod dragged the unwieldy sheet of corrugated metal across the slippery and still-bleeding earth around Lake Eerie.

"It's cool," Tod told her, navigating a small copse of trees who glared at him from a thousand yellow flower eyes. "I was planning a trip out here anyway - I'm planning to make blood pudding with some of the lake water."

"Bert and Ernie will love that," Janet said, her enthusiasm for the idea almost making her miss a shallow pool of leeches lying in wait in the shade of a bush whole leaves were lined with tiny human teeth. She dodged it at the last minute and continued, "They're getting really into this local sustainability thing."

"Bert told me they're going to reach out to the 666H Club again," said Tod. "See if they can lay to rest some of those old rivalries, get some community gardening off the ground. Or, into the ground, I suppose."

"That'd be cool," said Janet. "Let me know if you need a hand." She nodded over his shoulder. "Little to the left, just by the boat shack."

Tod changed the direction of his carful backwards shuffling, backing up until the heel of one heavy black boot bumped against the salt-warped boards of the boat repair shed.

"Made it," he said, letting his corner of the heavy metal sheet drop with a sigh of relief.

Janet set her end down too, then moved towards the red and viscous tide that lapped at the shore.

She rapped lightly on the closed door of the boat shed. There was no answer, though Tod thought he heard something move.

"Hi," she said. "I'm from the Baitshop. We thought, as long as the water is blood anyway, you might like some shade between here and the lake."

A susurration of voices, mingled with the distinctive sound of dozens of high-collared black silk robes rustling in agitation, burst from inside the rickety structure.

Finally, after what sounded like a short but intense debate, a single voice piped up.

"Yes please," it said. "That would be very nice."

Another voice, older and somewhat crackly, mumbled something, and the first voice added:

"You're not going to leave any iron nails lying about the place, are you?"

"No," said Janet. "No iron, no garlic, no scattered seeds or grains of rice. No tricks."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The breakwater was littered with bodies and already the seagulls that had all but destroyed Eerie's native population of pterodactyl were out in force. Eyes were plucked out and swallowed, abdomens pierced and torn and entrails tugged free, and even the hardest wearing denim was shredded so the scavenging hoard could access the meatier parts of the human anatomy.

Janet Donner tucked her hair up under a wide-brimmed hat, exchanged her clean white apron for one of hardwearing leather, and grabbed a bucket. Much of the ocean's spoils were hers by right, and she would claim them for the Baitshop.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The Angler Fish was mottled white and pink, and it's smooth flesh had a greasy rubberized sheen to it. Melanie Monroe walked slowly around the fluted pedestal on which it sat, moving first clockwise, then anticlockwise. She sniffed, then wrinkled her noise.

"Jan?" she asked. "What did you say this thing was made from?"

Janet Donner glanced up from where she was folding napkins into an diorama showing the sunken city of R'lyeh rising from the deep.

"Spam," she said. "It was what Radford had on hand at short notice."

Melanie considered this.

"Hamgler fish," she said. "I like it."

The lighthouse hung down from the ceiling, a vast man-made stalactite gleaming pale against the dark rock of the far-distant cavern roof. Janet Donner pushed wet hair out of her eyes, spat out a mouthful of briny water and several mouthfuls of curses, and froze.

Dark against the yellow glow of the lamp, the silhouette of something not quite human was moving along the outer railing, it's gait smooth and assured despite hanging upside down deep in the muck below Lake Eerie.

Her fingers scrabbled in the thick and cloying mud as she struggled to her feet, swallowing her screams.

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:

Lake Eerie versus Wolf Mountain

Meet Capricorn!

The bell above the Baitshop door jangled as something from Outside pushed it open. Janet glanced up, saw the curved and glistening edge of a single malevolent bubble, and closed her eyes.

"Hey, Boss," she said, reaching beneath the counter for a folded sheet of white linen, smelling of lavender and edged in silver thread, and tying it across the upper half of her face. "What brings you here?"

Thoughts that were not her own crawled at the edges of her mind, cold and slimy as a kimchi appetizer. She nodded, reached for her order pad and pen.

"Coming up."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The blue glass buoy dangled from the Baitshop ceiling, suspended in a net woven from the fine silvery hair of the lake's oldest fishwives. It was full of images, and they flickered and writhed at the edges of Janet's vision as they tried to get her attention.

She paused in the act of putting the coffee machine back together, her gaze caught by the tiny blue-tinted figures dancing just under the curved surface of the pretty glass ball.

"Okay," she said. "I'll take a look. But if you pull some Enchanted Zoltar-level bullshit on me, you're going straight into storage."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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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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The foghorn was already sounding by the time Janet arrived at work. Through the gloom she could see the tall shadow of the lighthouse, a shadowed patch against the already dark sky that the dirty yellow sweep of it's light failed to illuminate.

The nigiri stirred uneasily in their tanks, brains of wine-soaked rice and pickled vegetables sensing that something was wrong in the world beyond the protective walls of glass. She murmured reassurances to them as she unlocked the great iron door that was the staff entrance and slipped inside.

Last night's warding sigils were still intact, at least.


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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"Oh," says the Harvest King, speaking through her ex-boyfriend's face, and if she needed proof that this isn't really Marshall - at least, not right now, and she tries not to think that it might not be ever again - it's in the smooth, even tone of his voice.

Marshall, who tensed up if he thought Melanie was playing pinfinger a little too fast, wouldn't be this calm after almost maiming her.

Although, given what the things in the lake have done in service of their "repairs", maybe it still counts as a maiming.

She flexes her hand, whole but still damaged.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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The Harvest King was waiting for her beneath the spreading canopy of an old oak tree. His crown of green was bright with gold leaves of almost-ripened corn and in the places where it's twisting vines grew straight out of his head, blood-bright berries clotted and clustered.

"You came," he said, and it's almost the voice that Janet remembers, undercut with the howl of a hunting wolf and the wind up on the mountain.

He holds out his hand, which is pale and pink and human, and when she reaches for it she touches the whirring blades of a thresher.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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It's not quite a Viking funeral - for all his muscle and mass, he's still a triple-folded sheet of A4 in the end and that means his body would burn up too quickly to suit the solemnity of the occasion - but it's not a bad approximation, either.

Sara Sue sketches a shallow-bottomed row boat, the benches missing, and after she's signed it into reality the three of them line it with moss gathered from the scrubland that surrounds the lake. She unfolds the rumpled sketch of the Nanny and smoothes the brittle paper over the soft, damp green.

Dash hadn't known Harley before the disappearances at the lake and his own long, dark years trapped in the cell beneath City Hall, and the quiet, slightly lost shadow left behind in Simon's absence doesn't bear much resemblance to the stories he'd heard back then. Still, he thinks he sees a glimmer of it when Harley shows up twenty minutes before Arnold's send-off with a crate of illegal fireworks and an honour guard courtesy of the Unkind Ones.

They slide the paper-light boat out onto the dark blue water, and when the gentle swell has carried it a little distance from the shore, the three of them shoot rockets at it until it catches fire, orange-white flames curling up to mingle with multi-coloured explosions that light up the night sky and reflect in the waves below.

The Unkind Ones stand with heads bowed and hands clasped, and Billy Millions doesn't answer when Dash presses him on exactly how Eerie's most notorious biker gang came to know the Haversock's mail-order nanny. Harley shrieks with laughter at some of the bigger explosions, and again Dash wonders about that six year old who could bite through reality, and how hard reality must have bitten back once Simon was gone.

Sara Sue selects a roman candle that's thicker around than she is, lining it up with the drifting, half-melted boat with the same carefully calculated precision that he's seen her apply to everything, from drawings designed to leave municipal buildings in screaming heaps of meat and rubble to the exact amount of whipped cream required to make a perfect sundae.

It bursts with a thousand cascading explosions of green and pink and blue, and the shrill whistle as it goes off is magnified tenfold by the empty space around them. As the last traces of Nanny Arnold are obliterated in alternating flashes of light and dark, Sara Sue's eyes are wide and wet, and she drinks in the final death of her oldest creation.

Ongoing Verse: Pay Attention

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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Her second cigarette was almost gone.

Janet checked the double set of watches adorning each wrist - the Old Gods that owned the Sushi Bar may have long ago outgrown such concepts as time and space, but they allowed their employees to use it in order to make doing the rota easier - and sighed.

"I need to get back and set up for the King Tide," she said. "You can pay my consulting fee in American dollars or sunken treasure. I don't take Sea Witch wishes anymore."

The smallest corpse gurgled a phlegmy inquiry. Janet scowled.

"I don't do free samples."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The swollen and awful things gazed at her with milky, unseeing eyes, slack faces pulled into rictus-like mockeries of reproach.

One of them had evidently lain too long at the bottom of the lake to withstand such rough treatment, and it's jaw fell off, hitting the water a dozen feet below it with a slap that echoed across the little inlet where the Sushi Bar lay.

There followed a long and awkward pause, where the monster animating the dead summer people tried to pretend that hadn't happened, and Janet tried not to laugh.

"Maybe you could workshop it?" she suggested.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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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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The waves snapped hungrily at her feet, and the wet sand sucked at her dirty pink converse with a hunger she could almost feel.

In the surf near the shore, the little mackerel soldiers were darting back and forth, their bodies flashing silver against the white and foaming crests. Further out, the human heads and torsos of mermaids bobbed amidst the gentle swells, long wet hair bright and gleaming against their bare shoulders and barely-there seashell bras.

Beside her, Melanie's black sneakers left imprints that were quickly wiped away, and the incoming tide split and flowed around her.

"They don't like me as much as they like you," she said, and her voice was full of sympathy.

Janet didn't seem to hear her, and when Melanie reached for her best friend's hand, for a moment it was cold and slick and rasped like scales against her fingers.

Then Janet blinked and her eyes were brown again, not the aching and hungry blue-grey of the lake.

"Sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I missed that bit."

One of the mermaids made a rude gesture at Melanie, which she returned with both hands.

"Never mind," she said. "It wasn't so important, anyway."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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