Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Onward
Sara Sue turned the thick, glossy pages of the heavy coffee-table art book, skimming quickly through them until she found the right one. She sighed happily, her fingers moving gently over the smooth paper, the room filling up with the new-book smell of printing and ink.
"Seriously?" said Dash, leaning over her shoulder. "That's what we came here to find?"
Sara Sue used the toes of one foot to spin the creaking library chair around, fixing him with a one-eyed glower beneath the heavy sweep of her honey blonde hair.
"What's wrong with it?" she demanded. In her lap, a full-colour, two-page reproduction of John Gilbert's "Onward" gleamed beneath the light of the reading lamp, an armoured man astride an improbably fat horse staring fixedly in the opposite direction of his mount.
Harley opened his mouth, looked at her outraged face, and closed it again. Dash, apparently determined to make up for ten years of lost time by offending everyone he met, had no such compunctions.
"It looks like someone took a picture of a normal horse and used Paint to mess with the proportions," he said. "The horse is so weirdly barrel-shaped that the guy riding him is sort of awkwardly standing on him, like the artist pasted one picture on top of the other without figuring out how they'd fit together. The guy's standing there all stoic-faced and ready for battle, but one or both of them is facing the wrong way." He took a breath. "Also that moustache is stupid."
Harley took a small, surreptitious step back. He didn't know how much that book weighed, but he was fairly sure it had enough heft to make a decent weapon.
Sara Sue smiled, hugging the open page to her chest.
"I know," she said, her voice dreamy. "But don't you see, that's what makes him so great? He's this dumb weird-looking failure of a horse, charging into eternity with a moustachioed idiot on his back, and for over a hundred years people have looked at him and said, 'oh yeah, that terrible horse picture is art for sure'. Nobody questions him! He looks like the guy o painted him saw a horse run past him once at high speed and that fleeting blurry glimpse is the only horse he knew, and people still think he's great!"
"Wait a minute," said Harley, shuffling back now there was no danger of imminent violence. "Are we the horse?"
Sara Sue set the book carefully back on the table. She stood and reached for both their hand squeezing them tight.
"Oh Harley," she said softly. "We are all the failure horse."
(Want to see the shitty weird horse drawing that inspired this pic? Here he is!)
Pay Attention and Side Stories
Preparations by froodle. Winston Chisel, the morning he became Mayor.
Blue by froodle: Sara Sue and Marilyn Teller in the laundry room.
Reflection by froodle: Sara Sue in Paris.
The Storm by froodle, in which Mayor Chisel has a very specific job for Eerie's resident weatherman
Pay Attention Part 1 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 2 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 3 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 4 by froodle
Echoes by froodle: the worlds where Simon and Marshall stayed are very different
Pay Attention Part 5 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 6 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 7 by froodle
Sculpture by froodle, in which Sara Sue must face off against the forces of municipal artwork
Pay Attention Part 8 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 9 by froodle
Pay Attention Part 10 by froodle
Civil Disobedience by froodle, in which Sara Sue objects most strenuously to the Mayor's behaviour
Christmas Morning by froodle; takes place in the Pay Attention-verse, after the main story
Pay Attention: Coda by froodle