Eerie fic, part eleven
Title: Untitled
Author: Froodle
Disclaimer: Still not mine
Claim: Eerie Indiana
Prompt: 7, Lose
Characters: Mars, Dash, Simon
Word Count: for this part, 1206
Rating: PG13, though sadly only for language
Summary/Warning: Where else would you go searching for a lost past in Eerie? Also, not even SLIGHTLY finished.
Part Eleven
Quite large, thought Marshall, staring down endless rows of tiny wooden drawers that stretched to his left, his right, and over his head as far as he could see, didn’t really cover it. Charley’s “rooms” were more accurately described as warehouses, or quite possibly mid-sized townships.
“I can do this on my own, you know,” said Dash.
“Definitely faster if you stopped whining about it,” Mars rejoined. Dash huffed and Mars felt his irritation growing. “Are you seriously going to complain about having a second person to go through the, I’m going to go with thousands, of entries for things that went missing on the second of February this year?” he snapped.
“Nobody made you come down here in the first place,” said Dash. “And nobody asked you to follow me in here. You can go help your little buddy down the hall for all I care.”
Marshall looked carefully left, then right, and when he was sure there were no impressionable pre-teen observers within earshot, hissed, “Oh fuck off, Dash.”
To his surprise, that engendered a chuckle from the other boy. “I think this is the first drawer for February,” said Dash, the laughter still evident in his tone. “You start here, I’ll find the last one and work back.” He moved off into the gloomy recesses of the enormous room.
Even working within as narrow a frame of reference as a single date, the sheer amount of information contained in the Time Index was staggering. On February second, nineteen ninety-two, people from Alabama to Wyoming had misplaced everything from bobby pins and shopping lists to articulated trucks filled with kitchen appliances. Guinea pigs, passports, the puncture patch from at least two dozen bicycle repair kits and the inevitable lost socks were all listed, but none of the cards listed anything about someone misplacing their past.
“Are his secrets revealed to you yet?” Ginny whispered in his ear. Marshall jumped back with an embarrassingly unmanly shriek of alarm. Ginny giggled and lifted herself off the ground by holding on to the drawer pulls of two sets of records from early January and pushing. Her feet swung several inches above the ground and her trailing laces brushed the dusty floor, leaving serpentine patterns in their wake. “The Radfords are on their way back,” she advised him. “Have to hurry along the forgotten brick road now, Marshall Teller.” She dropped back to earth again, slipped a backpack from her shoulder and shoved it at him. “Charley says you won’t have time to read the cards,” she said. Marshall stared at her blankly for a moment before realisation dawned.
“Dash is further up there,” he said, gesturing with one hand while he opened the backpack with the other. He began pulling the wooden drawers from the cabinet and dumping their contents into the bag. Ginny watched him, her expression giving nothing away. “Could you go and get him, please?” Mars clarified, doing his best to keep the exasperation out of his voice. Ginny continued to stare. Marshall sighed.
“Dash!” he yelled, hoping that the records for February second were not so extensive as to put the other boy out of earshot.
“What do you want?” came the impatient reply.
Apparently not, thought Mars. “Charley says the Radfords are on their way back. Grab whatever boxes you haven’t checked yet and come on.”
“You must be joking, right?” said Dash, still unseen. “There are hundreds of these drawer things!”
“I’ve seen you fit half the World o’ Stuff inside that coat when you wanted to,” Mars snapped back. “Just take what you can fit in your pockets and let’s go!”
There was no response to that other than some distinctly put-out sounding slamming of wooden drawers, then Dash stomped into view from further inside the cavernous room. He pulled up short when he saw Ginny, who gave him a cheery wave that was as creepy as it was incongruous.
“Charley already has your other friend,” she said. “They are hidden behind the front desk for now, but we have to hurry.” She led the way back towards the front desk.
“Did you find anything useful?” asked Mars. Dash shook his head, expression thunderous. Mars hefted his bulging knapsack. “I didn’t see anything, but I took a bunch of the cards I hadn’t checked yet. Maybe there’ll be something there.”
“Maybe all that will be there is a massive waste of time,” said Dash. He looked at Marshall. “You know what I found? Junk. Card after card talking about earring backs and the spare drill heads from DIY kits and the part on the back of a remote control that keeps the batteries from falling out.” His scowl deepened. “What kind of people sit around recording that stuff? Even if there is anything about me in there, I’m not going to be able to pick it out of this… this mess!” He gestured widely, taking in the room, the cabinets, Marshall’s backpack, the Bureau as a whole and their situation in general.
Mars felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. “We’ll keep looking,” he promised, even as a part of him wondered where the hell that had come from and reminded him that Dash would surely give him cause to regret offering to help before long. “If the Bureau doesn’t turn up anything we can use, we’ll just… we’ll go back to Eerie and start again.”
Dash sighed. “Great,” he said tonelessly, and ignored all further attempts at conversation.
Simon and Charley were indeed hidden behind the long wooden counter when they arrived back at the front desk. Mars could see that Simon, too, carried a backpack stuffed to the seams with stolen index cards and wore a harried expression. He started to speak, but Charley gestured sharply at him to stay quiet. He was typing a long sequence of letters and numbers into the keypad before him, muttering beneath his breath as he pressed each character.
From one of the corridors they had left unexplored came a familiar voice:
“And he’s all, ‘oh it’s a bunch of cuddly toys, clearly that’s a Code Three, your scanner must be broken,” and I’m like, Radford, you’re a fucking fuckwit and you need to learn how to do your job properly, there are two dozen brand-new, still-with-tags identical pink rabbits in one suitcase, no kid brings twenty identical pink rabbits to Disneyworld with them, unless of course that kid happens to be a fucking drug dealer, which would explain why there are little plastic-wrapped crystal meth treats inside the rabbits’ tummies, and in any case it still wouldn’t be a Code Three, so why don’t you just shut your hole and kill yourself because you disgrace your people and frankly your face makes me sick.”
The girl Radford laughed. “What did he say to that?”
But they would never know what the erstwhile Radford with the ill-advised opinions on stuffed pink rabbits said to that, because at that moment five of the mechanical Claws that serviced Areas Two and Three came down and seized each of them around their waist, and they were carried up into the maze of tunnels that criss-crossed the cathedral-like ceilings of the Bureau of the Lost.
Author: Froodle
Disclaimer: Still not mine
Claim: Eerie Indiana
Prompt: 7, Lose
Characters: Mars, Dash, Simon
Word Count: for this part, 1206
Rating: PG13, though sadly only for language
Summary/Warning: Where else would you go searching for a lost past in Eerie? Also, not even SLIGHTLY finished.
Part Eleven
Quite large, thought Marshall, staring down endless rows of tiny wooden drawers that stretched to his left, his right, and over his head as far as he could see, didn’t really cover it. Charley’s “rooms” were more accurately described as warehouses, or quite possibly mid-sized townships.
“I can do this on my own, you know,” said Dash.
“Definitely faster if you stopped whining about it,” Mars rejoined. Dash huffed and Mars felt his irritation growing. “Are you seriously going to complain about having a second person to go through the, I’m going to go with thousands, of entries for things that went missing on the second of February this year?” he snapped.
“Nobody made you come down here in the first place,” said Dash. “And nobody asked you to follow me in here. You can go help your little buddy down the hall for all I care.”
Marshall looked carefully left, then right, and when he was sure there were no impressionable pre-teen observers within earshot, hissed, “Oh fuck off, Dash.”
To his surprise, that engendered a chuckle from the other boy. “I think this is the first drawer for February,” said Dash, the laughter still evident in his tone. “You start here, I’ll find the last one and work back.” He moved off into the gloomy recesses of the enormous room.
Even working within as narrow a frame of reference as a single date, the sheer amount of information contained in the Time Index was staggering. On February second, nineteen ninety-two, people from Alabama to Wyoming had misplaced everything from bobby pins and shopping lists to articulated trucks filled with kitchen appliances. Guinea pigs, passports, the puncture patch from at least two dozen bicycle repair kits and the inevitable lost socks were all listed, but none of the cards listed anything about someone misplacing their past.
“Are his secrets revealed to you yet?” Ginny whispered in his ear. Marshall jumped back with an embarrassingly unmanly shriek of alarm. Ginny giggled and lifted herself off the ground by holding on to the drawer pulls of two sets of records from early January and pushing. Her feet swung several inches above the ground and her trailing laces brushed the dusty floor, leaving serpentine patterns in their wake. “The Radfords are on their way back,” she advised him. “Have to hurry along the forgotten brick road now, Marshall Teller.” She dropped back to earth again, slipped a backpack from her shoulder and shoved it at him. “Charley says you won’t have time to read the cards,” she said. Marshall stared at her blankly for a moment before realisation dawned.
“Dash is further up there,” he said, gesturing with one hand while he opened the backpack with the other. He began pulling the wooden drawers from the cabinet and dumping their contents into the bag. Ginny watched him, her expression giving nothing away. “Could you go and get him, please?” Mars clarified, doing his best to keep the exasperation out of his voice. Ginny continued to stare. Marshall sighed.
“Dash!” he yelled, hoping that the records for February second were not so extensive as to put the other boy out of earshot.
“What do you want?” came the impatient reply.
Apparently not, thought Mars. “Charley says the Radfords are on their way back. Grab whatever boxes you haven’t checked yet and come on.”
“You must be joking, right?” said Dash, still unseen. “There are hundreds of these drawer things!”
“I’ve seen you fit half the World o’ Stuff inside that coat when you wanted to,” Mars snapped back. “Just take what you can fit in your pockets and let’s go!”
There was no response to that other than some distinctly put-out sounding slamming of wooden drawers, then Dash stomped into view from further inside the cavernous room. He pulled up short when he saw Ginny, who gave him a cheery wave that was as creepy as it was incongruous.
“Charley already has your other friend,” she said. “They are hidden behind the front desk for now, but we have to hurry.” She led the way back towards the front desk.
“Did you find anything useful?” asked Mars. Dash shook his head, expression thunderous. Mars hefted his bulging knapsack. “I didn’t see anything, but I took a bunch of the cards I hadn’t checked yet. Maybe there’ll be something there.”
“Maybe all that will be there is a massive waste of time,” said Dash. He looked at Marshall. “You know what I found? Junk. Card after card talking about earring backs and the spare drill heads from DIY kits and the part on the back of a remote control that keeps the batteries from falling out.” His scowl deepened. “What kind of people sit around recording that stuff? Even if there is anything about me in there, I’m not going to be able to pick it out of this… this mess!” He gestured widely, taking in the room, the cabinets, Marshall’s backpack, the Bureau as a whole and their situation in general.
Mars felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. “We’ll keep looking,” he promised, even as a part of him wondered where the hell that had come from and reminded him that Dash would surely give him cause to regret offering to help before long. “If the Bureau doesn’t turn up anything we can use, we’ll just… we’ll go back to Eerie and start again.”
Dash sighed. “Great,” he said tonelessly, and ignored all further attempts at conversation.
Simon and Charley were indeed hidden behind the long wooden counter when they arrived back at the front desk. Mars could see that Simon, too, carried a backpack stuffed to the seams with stolen index cards and wore a harried expression. He started to speak, but Charley gestured sharply at him to stay quiet. He was typing a long sequence of letters and numbers into the keypad before him, muttering beneath his breath as he pressed each character.
From one of the corridors they had left unexplored came a familiar voice:
“And he’s all, ‘oh it’s a bunch of cuddly toys, clearly that’s a Code Three, your scanner must be broken,” and I’m like, Radford, you’re a fucking fuckwit and you need to learn how to do your job properly, there are two dozen brand-new, still-with-tags identical pink rabbits in one suitcase, no kid brings twenty identical pink rabbits to Disneyworld with them, unless of course that kid happens to be a fucking drug dealer, which would explain why there are little plastic-wrapped crystal meth treats inside the rabbits’ tummies, and in any case it still wouldn’t be a Code Three, so why don’t you just shut your hole and kill yourself because you disgrace your people and frankly your face makes me sick.”
The girl Radford laughed. “What did he say to that?”
But they would never know what the erstwhile Radford with the ill-advised opinions on stuffed pink rabbits said to that, because at that moment five of the mechanical Claws that serviced Areas Two and Three came down and seized each of them around their waist, and they were carried up into the maze of tunnels that criss-crossed the cathedral-like ceilings of the Bureau of the Lost.