To whom it may concern

He reached for the handle, but was unsurprised to find it remained flat and two-dimensional. Of course, she would have shut it tight behind her. Sara Sue Haverstock tended not to leave a lot of open doors in her wake.

Still, as Marshall stared at the calendar with it's crossed-out mass of unlived days, and the smudgy door that was now only ever a drawing, he had an idea.

He rolled up the sleeve on his right arm, the one that was usually covered to the elbow in more than a dozen watches. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he used the gritty dirt of the unswept floor to draw a rough circle on the pale, exposed skin.

At his back, the door that was not and had never been a door creaked encouragement through non-existent hinges. A faint breeze blew from beneath it, smelling of newly-cut grass and the spring tide that was always slightly pink with blood.

He opted for roman numerals, figuring the straight lines would lend itself better to writing on skin with the greasy black grime of the prison cell. He drew a minute hand, and a shorter, thicker one to mark the hours.


Ongoing Verse: Pay Attention

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Marshall leaned back on the hard stone floor with a groan, running his fingers through his hair as he struggled to come up with a winning scenario. The groan became even more heartfelt when he realised he'd only succeeded in rubbing more prison cell goo on himself.

He rolled onto his side, and that's when he saw the calendar. Scratched into the wall, probably with one of the many sharp-edged bits of stone he could feel digging into various parts of his anatomy, it showed dates more than ten years into the future.

All of them had been crossed out.

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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"Gross," muttered Marshall, trying to wipe his begrimed hands off on his t-shirt and succeeding only in smearing the mess around even more.

He looked down at his blackened palms, feeling the panic rise and trying to push it back down.

It wasn't that bad. Simon would be missing him by now. He'd get help. People would come for him.

But the Unkind Ones had tried, hadn't they? He'd seen the flames rising over their clubhouse, thick black smoke and choking fumes like a thousand tyre fires. Even if enough of them had survived to mount a counter-attack, they were effectively out of commission for the time being.

Time. The Dairy. The Dairy would... well, the Dairy would consult the Great Cow of the Cosmos and if causality demanded he be lost, then they'd shrug their white-coated shoulders and resign themselves to plucking a different Marshall Teller out of his home reality and starting all over again.

Radford would miss him, of course, but he'd been firmer about his policy of non-interference since his stock room turned into a hollow-backed Hollywood set and he'd had to pay for an extensive and inexplicable refurbishment, not to mention replacing all his supplies.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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"What-" Syndi groped for words, found none.

Janet nodded.

"Yeah," she said. "The circus said the photo was just a novelty souvenir, like the pictures you get on the ghost train where it looks like something's in the cart with you." She picked up the empty cup, fiddled with it. "Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if those weren't somehow real as well."

"But... nothing happened?" said Syndi. "There was nothing in the papers, nothing at school..."

"Nope," said Janet. "And nothing on the milk cartons either. Which in Eerie is how you know someone's really gone."


Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Janet was refilling the condiments rack when Marshall's older sister came bursting into the Baitshop, knocking over the "wet floor" sign with the wildly-swinging double doors.

Janet had just enough time to think how strange it was that dramatic entrances should run in the family when one of the Sewer Clowns slapped one gigantic muddy shoe onto her freshly-mopped tiles.

"Clown!" said Syndi, in what was probably meant to be a fear-filled shriek but which emerged as a rasping croak. Janet, who had screamed herself hoarse that year in the Lost Hour, knew that sound well.

"Get down!" she barked.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The Milkman dragged himself up the last of the six hundred and sixty six steps leading to the tallest point of the tallest tower in Eerie, and stopped.

He leaned against the warped and rotting door frame, breathing hard, willing his heart to return to it's normal rhythm. He wasn't as young as he was, or as he would be again, and he hadn't expected to make this climb today. He'd not had to make it in any of the previous iterations, but then, maybe that's where it had gone wrong.

The thirteen clocks of the bell-tower began to chime.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The milk bottles tinkled in their wire cages, gold and silver tops flashing in the tiger-striped light that flickered through the reinforced glass of the rear windows. Packed neatly around them were the cartons of cream and yoghurt, sticks of butter, ice cream and even eggs.

And behind these was the contraband. The vials of stolen time, no bigger than a thumb-nail and costing as much as a mortgage payment. The lost time, scraped from the exhausts of flying saucers and gleaming with space dust.

The short time, for the parents whose children were destined to die on the road.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The milk truck lay on it's side, one tyre still spinning lazily in compliance with the laws of dramatic narrative. A small fire had started somewhere in it's inner workings and a spreading pool of melting ice-cream leaked from beneath the downed vehicle, mixing with the blood that oozed through the crushed drivers-side door.

The Garbagemen didn't smile - the things that wore men's faces like a cheap party mask didn't have a concept of smiling - but an air of satisfaction hung about them as they gunned the engine of their front-loading bin wagon. Their headlights gleamed as they pressed forward.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Marshall set the over-filled coffee mug down, spilling a little as he did so. Simon, glancing up from the textbook open in front of him, shot him a quick smile that rapidly transformed into a concerned frown.

"Mars?" he asked. "You okay? You look..." he searched for a tactful phrasing and settled on "Not... okay?"

Marshall groaned, pressing the heels of his hands into eyes ringed by dark circles.

"Present me hates past me," he said. "Past me is an idiot."

Simon paused.

"Past You in the sense that you stayed up too late last night and now you're paying for it, or Past You like the Milkman showed up with some nightmarish tale of temporal distortion caused by you knocking over a glass of orange juice when you were thirteen?"

Marshall blinked.

"I'm asking if I need to go get the Time Canoe out of storage," said Simon. "If the space-time continuum is in danger of collapsing, I'd like us all to be wearing life jackets when it does."

"Oh," said Marshall, as understanding dawned like a very tired sun. "No, it's just a late night. Cursed study aides, I fell down a jackalope hole. The time stream's fine."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The ravens had built a sundial, and Marshall wasn't sure what to think about it. Aesthetically, he supposed it was quite nice, constructed as it was of sea-glass and scallop shells and pretty stones. More his mom's thing than his, but nice enough.

Still, as he watched the great black birds strut around, checking the time and croaking that they were late to this meeting or that business lunch, he couldn't shake the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.

He quietly shut the back door and went back inside to check the refrigerator. The milk was grey-green with rot.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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(set in the same world as Underwater)

The sky is rusting.

That's the first thing that Janet thinks, when she opens her eyes to a world of red and brown. Down at the Baitshop, the air was thick with the smell of brine and exposed metal corroded faster than you could say "table three just got eaten by mermaids, better close their tab."

This place had a similar smell, but deeper, somehow, more ground-in. Metallic, like the Baitshop. Bloody, like the Baitshop. But also stale, which is something she'd never said about the listing restaurant with it's red-streaked floorboards and tanks of colourful sushi swimming in shoals.

She sat up, head pounding, stomach lurching. She was dizzy and sick, and the sky was a metal dome spotted with rivets and pitted with rust.

"Janet Donner," says a voice at her elbow, familiar and strange all at once, and she spins and tries not to throw up.

Syndi Teller raises white hands tipped with blood-red talons, eyes wide beneath a black domino mask.

"Wait!" she says. "Don't be afraid! I'm not here to torture information out of you or anything!"

"What?" Janet almost screams. She doesn't know Marshall's sister all that well, but she'd never come off as the torture-for-information type.

Syndi stands. Her shoulder-pads jut out sharply and the lines of her all-black power suit are severe. She's wearing lipstick and stiletto heeled shoes the same venous red as her nail polish, and on one crisply pointed lapel there gleams a silver brooch bearing the Things Incorporated logo.

"I'm sorry!" she says, wobbling on too-high heels. "It's been a long time since I had a conversation with someone that didn't revolve around super-villainy. I'm out of practice."

She removes the domino mask, revealing perfectly applied smoky eye-shadow and, for some reason, a monocle. She removes that too.

"Dress code," she explains. "Not sure why the Mad Science division is issued monocles when we just tear the eyes out of someone else's head when ours wear out, but here we are."

She stares down at Janet, who tries to remember if Marshall's sister's eyes were always brown.

She'd thought they were blue. Marshall's were blue. Who's eyes was she looking into right now?

"You've probably guessed that this isn't your world," she says.

Janet nods, slowly. It makes sense, and the knowledge is strangely comforting; her world, of blue skies and black waters and tentacles made of rice, is still out there. She'd been lost before and made it home. She can do it again.

"I need you to find Marshall," says Syndi. "The Marshall who exists in your reality. And," she hesitates, swallows a little, and blinks the tears out of her stolen eyes, "I need you to find my Mom."

"Oh," says Janet, who can sort of relate to missing your family, but is also still a little hung up on the eye-gouging, mad science, and that awful metal sky. "Okay, I guess."

She swallows, then asks:

"Do you have a milk truck I could borrow?"

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Someone had painted a giant blue-and-white cow on the side of the garbage truck. It rumbled and hissed as it moved down the street, the sounds of a large vehicle in motion completely drowning out the tinny tinkle of a stolen ice-cream van song.

It pulled up to the curb outside the Teller home, completely blocking out the midday sun streaming in through the living room window. Marshall scowled.

Outside, three Garbagemen in blood-splattered Eerie Dairy uniforms emerged from the cab. They'd daubed rough red crosses across the front of their scavenged jackets, but whatever they'd used had dried to flaky brown.

"Pathetic," said Marshall, and got up to lock the door.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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(takes place immediately before Timepiece)

"Construction on Main," warned the sign. "Expect delays."

Marshall examined the row of watches that stretched from his wrist to his elbow and, after a moment of deliberation, selected his least-favourite one.

"Digital," said Simon, making a face. "I hate digital."

"It's got a timer on it," explained Marshall, unstrapping it and taping it to a long branch scavenged from Deadwood Park for exactly this purpose.

The "construction" took the form of a great hole that stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk in the very centre of Main Street. It was deep enough that the bottom of the pit could not be seen, though the dim outlines of rusting JCBs could be spotted here and there in the gloom-shrouded depths.

High chain-link fences surrounded it and across the broadest part stretched a series of wooden planks surrounded by orange safety cones. A notice board above the nearest plank promised pedestrian access, though tellingly, it made no mention of an exit.

Marshall pulled a heavy-duty stopwatch out from under his Giants sweatshirt, held it up alongside the stick-mounted wristwatch, and set them both running.

He looked at Simon, who nodded.

Careful not to let any part of his body cross into the cordoned-off construction zone, Marshall eased the time-bearing end of the branch past the signs warning of falling debris and the need for hard hats, counting down a slow one hundred as he did so.

The stick seemed to become suddenly heavy in his hands, his palms growing slick with sweat and his arms trembling with the strain of holding it level. When he finally reached a hundred, he yanked it back, almost falling as an ornate carriage clock secured to it with strips of weathered, decaying duct tape shot towards him.

Simon jumped clear as Marshall stumbled backwards, tattered wisps of displaced time clinging to a once-dead tree branch now verdant green with newly-budded leaves.

"What the corn?" he exclaimed, pulling a paradox-proof blanket bordered in time-twine from his backpack and throwing it over the transmuted watch, which had begun to tick ominously.

Marshall got slowly to his feet, one hand fumbling for the stopwatch as he pressed the pause button with a trembling finger.

"Simon," he said. "I think we need to go talk to the old guys at the Museum of Horology."

Simon turned to stare at the gaping hole in the blacktop.

"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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When the last barricade falls, Syndi can feel it. It's in the quality of the screams, the sounds of shifting debris. Something is coming to an end.

Her Miss Tornado Day sash, once a blinding satiny white any bride could be proud of, is fraying, grubby, and caked with gore. She slips out of it and unpicks the knot holding the two ends together.

Part of her is glad that Marshall can't see this, sure that he'd offer up some smart-alecky comment as she pushes sweat-damp hair off her face and keeps it there with a John Rambo-style bandana fashioned from a ribbon that once marked her out as a sacrifice for a sentient tornado.

Part of her wishes he was here anyway.

And another part of her wonders if she should have gone to Old Bob, when she was seventeen and her year was up, when the town chose a new Miss Tornado Day and she'd been sent out into the cyclone to die. Things might have turned out differently. For her, for the people she loved, even for Eerie.

If Marshall was here, she'd ask him about becoming the Harvest King. About the mountain and the wolf that howled in the night, and whether blood spilled under an October moon might have prevented all of this.

If he was here with her, hiding in the ruins of the Eerie Bingo Parlour, she would ask him whether it might have been worth it.

The tombola drum near the western windows begins to spin, slow at first, a handful of human teeth inside clicking against the rusting metal. Syndi reaches for the last remaining incendiary device - homemade hand grenades fashioned from stripped-down bingo dabbers and some sort of fruit cordial she'd discovered at the very back of the Parlour's walk-in refrigerator, covered in warning stickers and pulsating faintly.

Outside in the dark, something moves. The room she's in is three floors up, but the Garbage Men know how to climb. She'd seen them swarming like lizards over the surface of City Hall, the living surface of the building twitching and flinching at every touch.

She didn't blame it. In it's place, she'd have torn out her own foundations to avoid those clammy, grasping hands. Of course, in a very real way, the Garbage Men had already done that for her.

Syndi flicks open Janet's lighter and steps towards the glass.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Marilyn knows it isn't Edgar, not really. A few lines of code designed to mimic character traits he thought people would respond to. A face that bears only the most superficial resemblance to a husband who is gone and never coming back.

Still, as she touches bloodied fingertips to fractured glass, she wishes she could believe.

"He'd be so proud of you," she says, and feels the truth of it deep inside her frozen core.

Mister Wilson's face twitches - calling it a glitch seems pointlessly cruel at this point - and he mumbles something that gets lost in the staticky void between worlds. She understands anyway, and laughs a choking, clotted laugh.

"Me too," she said. "I loved being a party planner. Loved my little stand at the Mall. Loved meeting all the people, even the ones who stopped by for a chat and a look-see and would never become paying clients. Always was a people person."

In the darkness, a thousand headlights gleam. The light is blinding and the thought occurs to her that Eerie could never have supported a sanitation force of this size.

She climbs to her feet and holds her head high as the Garbage Men advance.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"Circular Road," said the street sign, looping back on itself in an endless Mobius strip. The two-lane blacktop was a ribbon that twisted away out of sight, vanishing over the rise of a hill that all the maps agreed didn't exist in Eerie.

"I have a bad feeling about this," said Simon.

"Relax," said Marshall. "I spoke to Janet and she said she'd monitor the emergency milk carton broadcast system in case we need help. It'll be fine."

Simon pointed up the winding street. Two bloodied figures limped towards them. One wore a Giants sweatshirt.

"Damn it," said Marshall. "Again?"

( Read the rest of the Trusted Associates verse here )

( Read the rest of the Milkman series here )

The thing on the doorstep wore an eye-patch and a well-groomed goatee that did nothing to distract from its lumpy and yellowish face. It grinned a curdled grin half-hidden behind the heavy black barrel of the gun gripped in the misshapen fingers of one hand. Moving in slow increments of congealed time, it raised its other arm and pointed one slimy digit at Marshall Teller, who recoiled in fear and revulsion.

“Give it your wallet!” snapped Syndi, her voice muffled by the sleeve pressed against her mouth and nose in a futile attempt to block out the stink of rotten dairy.

Marshall opened his mouth to protest the loss of his hard-earned paper route money and accidently inhaled. Retching, he fumbled for the neon green Velcro wallet in his back pocket. He tossed it at the creature’s oozing feet, then backed up towards the dubious safety of the family sofa.

The horrible being born of evil and things forgotten at the back of the Teller refrigerator scooped up six weeks of tips and, still smiling, shut the door behind it as it left.

“I told you that milk was bad,” said Edgar.

Marilyn surreptitiously plucked the ForeverWare catalogue from the bin.

( Read the rest of the Teller Family History here )

( Read the rest of the Milkman verse here )

"This is pathetic," said Marshall, pulling off his hockey helmet and tossing it on the ground in disgust.

Beside him, Dash leaned on the electrified life-saver hook, seemingly unaffected by either the current buzzing through the metal handle or the scene unfolding in front of him.

"I mean, look at him," continued Mars. "His pants are down, his leg's fallen off, and he's got no discernible face." He nudged the zombie with the toe of one grubby and duct-taped Sky Monster.

Simon shot a disappointed look at the spell book on his lap. The book stared back.

"Rip-off," said Dash.

( Read the rest of the Microwave verse here )

( Read the Hocus Pocus/Eerie Indiana crossover here )

( Read the rest of the Milkman verse here )

Written for Day 8 of the 31daysoffandom October challenge. The prompt I used for this one was "alone"

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( Read more of the Janet series here )

( Read the rest of the Milkman series here )

Written for the Slyboots challenge at smallfandomflsh

From "Johannes Cabal the Necromancer" by Jonathan L Howard:

"BE IT KNOWN IN THESE PRECINCTS OF HELL THAT THE ARCH-DEMON RATUTH SLABUTH, GENERAL OF THE INFERNAL HORDES, WOULD HENCEFORTH LIKE TO BE KNOWN BY HIS PREVIOUSLY PREFERRED NOMENCLATURE, TO WIT RAGTAG SLYBOOTS, DESPOILER OF MILK AND TANGLER OF SHOELACES, INTERFERER OF LIGHT MUSICAL PROGRAMMES UPON THE WIRELESS, AND PROPAGATOR OF UNSOLICITED POST.”

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( Read the rest of Trusted Associates Inc here: )

( Read the rest of the Milkman series here: )