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

( Read more... )

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

( Read more... )

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

( Read more... )

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

( Read more... )

Ongoing Verse: Janet

( Read more... )

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

( Read more... )

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

( Read more... )


Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

( Read more... )

"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

( Read more... )

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

( Read more... )