Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Whistle
Inspired by fan_flashworks's most recent prompt, "whistle"
It was Fluffy who first spotted the whistle, an old-fashioned metal thing, battered and tarnished and lying in the long grass beneath an unhealthy copse of half-dead pine trees. There was a hairline crack that ran down the left side of the casing, and it stank of malevolent intent. Fluffy backed away, feeling his hackles rise and a snarl beginning in the back of his throat. The whistle stayed where it was, and the air around it hummed with the evil it contained.
As Fluffy fled, tail between his legs, Steve Konkalewski emerged from the shadows amongst the pines. The overgrown plant-life did not bend or break beneath his feet as he moved, and when he reached for the dog whistle, his hand passed straight through it.
Steve sighed and adjusted the blood-stained tinfoil hat that was tilting to cover his remaining eye. The exhalation whistled through the exposed teeth of his lower jaw, crooked and over-grown, and never again to be held in check by an experimental retainer, and the air around him did not stir.
“This is really lame,” he muttered. “It’s so lame, there’s not even a lame word for it.”
He kicked disconsolately at the whistle, and was unsurprised when his foot failed to connect. With the retainer gone and half his face torn away, he no longer had to deal with wire springs poking into his cheeks whenever he tried to speak, or eat, or express any sort of emotion. That was the upside. The downside was that, as he could no longer interact with the physical plane, he would need some help with the next stage of his plan.
“Beyond lame,” said Steve, and began the long walk to Marshall Teller’s house.
It was Fluffy who first spotted the whistle, an old-fashioned metal thing, battered and tarnished and lying in the long grass beneath an unhealthy copse of half-dead pine trees. There was a hairline crack that ran down the left side of the casing, and it stank of malevolent intent. Fluffy backed away, feeling his hackles rise and a snarl beginning in the back of his throat. The whistle stayed where it was, and the air around it hummed with the evil it contained.
As Fluffy fled, tail between his legs, Steve Konkalewski emerged from the shadows amongst the pines. The overgrown plant-life did not bend or break beneath his feet as he moved, and when he reached for the dog whistle, his hand passed straight through it.
Steve sighed and adjusted the blood-stained tinfoil hat that was tilting to cover his remaining eye. The exhalation whistled through the exposed teeth of his lower jaw, crooked and over-grown, and never again to be held in check by an experimental retainer, and the air around him did not stir.
“This is really lame,” he muttered. “It’s so lame, there’s not even a lame word for it.”
He kicked disconsolately at the whistle, and was unsurprised when his foot failed to connect. With the retainer gone and half his face torn away, he no longer had to deal with wire springs poking into his cheeks whenever he tried to speak, or eat, or express any sort of emotion. That was the upside. The downside was that, as he could no longer interact with the physical plane, he would need some help with the next stage of his plan.
“Beyond lame,” said Steve, and began the long walk to Marshall Teller’s house.