Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Clockface
The ornate black and gold timepiece that usually adorned the red brick arches leading to City Hall's archive building was gone. Instead a blank clock-face, handless and unnumbered, covered the hole where it had once been. Eerie's maintenance staff had had to work quickly, and despite their best efforts the bloodstains showed on the ragged masonry that gaped from behind the temporary placeholder.
The body had been discovered in the early hours before dawn, when most of Eerie's citizens were thankfully asleep. A truck driver for the Eerie Printworks, on-route to the World o' Stuff with that day's shipment of the Eerie Examiner, had caught the flutter of white in his rearview mirror and pulled over to investigate. That spirit of inquiry was exactly why he drove the delivery van rather than reporting the news, as the City Council had not appreciated him breaking a story on possible Bigfoot activity at the town dump some years before, and pulled strings to have him demoted.
Now, news of a mutilated corpse strung across one of Eerie's civic monuments using wire that shouldn't exist for another thirty years was circulating among the townsfolk, and anyone whose fascination with death and destruction wasn't satisfied with regular milk truck fatalities had come out to take a look. Already, people were complaining about the lack of free yoghurt and cottage cheese to be salvaged from the blood-smeared streets.
The Wilson Twins were just wheeling the covered body towards the open back doors of their Happy Brothers Mortuary van when Marshall and Simon arrived on their bikes. Simon stopped to padlock his to a nearby lamppost; Marshall simply dismounted while the bike was still in motion and ran over to where Bert and Ernie were getting ready to load the corpse. Simon retrieved the discarded bicycle, wheels still spinning, and walked it back to where his own leaned against the street light, chaining it up before joining his friend.
"...face was completely destroyed," one of the twins - Simon thought it might be Burt - was saying.
"It looked like something had chewed it off," said the other twin - presumably Ernie.
Maybe-Burt shook his head, his jowls bouncing with the movement.
"No, no, no," he said. "That kind of damage is more consistent with being road-hauled."
"And you didn't find any identification on the body?" asked Marshall, holding his notebook and tipping the eraser-end of his pencil towards the twins in what was probably a completely unconscious imitation of Syndi going after a story.
"No," said possibly-Ernie.
"Although he was wearing an Eerie Dairy uniform," said probably-Burt. "I imagine Sergeant Knight will be contacting them shortly, to see if any of their staff are missing."
"Won't that be a treat for them," muttered Marshall. The Wilson twins appeared not to hear him.
"One other thing that was strange," said perhaps-Ernie. "Besides the face,"
"And the question of exactly how a grown man could be hoisted up a clock tower twenty feet in the air without any sort of machinery," continued likely-Burt.
"Is the number of watches the deceased was wearing," finished almost-certainly Ernie.
Simon felt his stomach drop. He saw Marshall's hands, busy scribbling only a moment ago, freeze in place. The yellow number two pencil dropped to the ground and rolled a little distance away. Simon wondered numbly if Sara Sue could rewrite fate, and exactly how hard it was to find a person when they'd moved to Paris without leaving a forwarding address.
Then the Mayor was there, and Officer Derek, and Fred Suggs in an Eerie PD uniform, shouting about official police business and ushering them back behind the black and yellow crime scene tape. They went without a word and when Marshall stumbled over his own feet, Chisel caught him by his upper arm and looked at him in a way that was almost regretful. Even as the Mayor was giving Sergeant Knight strict instructions to take them home and make sure they stayed there, he kept sneaking glances at Mars.
Simon, who had skipped breakfast to come out and look at a horribly mangled dead body, thought he might throw up.
Milkman Series
Milk by froodle, in which Marshall develops a completely cromulent fear of milk trucks
Reanimator by froodle, in which the Milkman returns
Multiplicity by froodle, in which Marshall must once again confront parallel realities, diverging timelines and public speaking
Lillian by froodle, in which Marilyn's mother has concerns
Hound by froodle, in which Simon makes a friend
Slyboots by froodle, in which a certain corporal of the infernal regions comes to Eerie. Crossover with Johannes Cabal the Necromancer.
Strawberry by froodle, in which there is unauthorised hubbub in Eerie