Eerie fic: Pay Attention, part 2
Aug. 30th, 2015 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
froodle"Pay attention, Harley; you could learn something."
So, Harley pays attention.
There's a girl five blocks over who, if you look at her one way, is a girl in flower-patterned dresses with a ribbon in her hair, but changed, if you looked another way, into a boy in a black leather jacket riding a skateboard. And he was always riding a skateboard, no matter where you saw him, even if he was sitting quite still on a bench, he was always, somehow, also riding a skateboard. Sometimes Harley can see both, sort of overlapping and merging into each other, but it makes his eyes ache to watch for too long when they do that.
There's a small white poodle who visits every dog-owning household in Eerie on a nightly basis, getting her comrades ready for a war that never seems to come.
There's a group of men on motorcycles who, twice a year, fight a bloody hour-long battle with monsters wearing garbage men suits.
There's a black cat who hangs out in the Eerie cemetary sometimes. One time, at the height of summer, Harley found him sleeping in a patch of sunlight, but when he reached out to pet him, the cat jumped up with a startled hiss and told him to get lost in a rough, gravelly voice. After that, they just nod at each other when their paths cross. Cat business is rarely boy business, and Harley has enough on his plate.
Under City Hall, there's a prison, except sometimes there isn't. When it's there, someone with grey hair like an old man and the unlined face of a boy in his early teens will scream threats and obscenities to figures in the shadows. Sometimes he just screams. Once, Harley heard him crying, and the sound frightened him so much that he ran all the way home, and vomited 'til his head ached in the safety behind his locked bathroom door.
And one night, standing in the middle of Front Street, there's Sara Sue.
Harley had never seen her before, but he recognises her from Simon's stories. She had a magical pencil that could bring anything to life, or hide anything away, and she had gone to France because she wanted a new mom and her real family were fishes.
"Couldn't she have made us a new mom?" he had asked his brother, the first time he heard the tale. Simon's arm, warm and familiar around his belly, had tightened reflexively, squeezing Harley so tightly that he wriggled and protested.
"Sorry," said Simon, loosening his grip. "But no. She couldn't have given us a new mom. You see, nothing made by the magic pencil was real, in the end."
"Reality is stupid," Harley had snorted, and Simon had laughed and blown raspberries on his stomach.
Now, here she was. He can tell straight away that the face she's wearing isn't her own, that it's something she's drawn on to try and force her way into some new life far away, but she's wearing a beret and the worn stub of an Eerie Number 2 pencil dangles from a piece of string around her neck, so he knows it's her.
Harley is older now, and he has been paying attention for a long, long time. Long enough to know that a heroic quest doesn't have a hope of succeeding unless the hero has a band of trusty companions to help him out along the way. And so, he walks up to Sara Sue, looks past her false face into the sad brown eyes of a girl who vanished thirteen years ago, chasing stories of her own, and introduces himself.
"My name is Harley Holmes. Ten years ago, my big brother Simon and his friend Marshall Teller disappeared. The only person who has any answers is a guy with grey hair that the Mayor is keeping prisoner. Tonight, I'm breaking him out and then I'm going to find my brother and bring him home.
And nobody is going to stop me."
So, Harley pays attention.
There's a girl five blocks over who, if you look at her one way, is a girl in flower-patterned dresses with a ribbon in her hair, but changed, if you looked another way, into a boy in a black leather jacket riding a skateboard. And he was always riding a skateboard, no matter where you saw him, even if he was sitting quite still on a bench, he was always, somehow, also riding a skateboard. Sometimes Harley can see both, sort of overlapping and merging into each other, but it makes his eyes ache to watch for too long when they do that.
There's a small white poodle who visits every dog-owning household in Eerie on a nightly basis, getting her comrades ready for a war that never seems to come.
There's a group of men on motorcycles who, twice a year, fight a bloody hour-long battle with monsters wearing garbage men suits.
There's a black cat who hangs out in the Eerie cemetary sometimes. One time, at the height of summer, Harley found him sleeping in a patch of sunlight, but when he reached out to pet him, the cat jumped up with a startled hiss and told him to get lost in a rough, gravelly voice. After that, they just nod at each other when their paths cross. Cat business is rarely boy business, and Harley has enough on his plate.
Under City Hall, there's a prison, except sometimes there isn't. When it's there, someone with grey hair like an old man and the unlined face of a boy in his early teens will scream threats and obscenities to figures in the shadows. Sometimes he just screams. Once, Harley heard him crying, and the sound frightened him so much that he ran all the way home, and vomited 'til his head ached in the safety behind his locked bathroom door.
And one night, standing in the middle of Front Street, there's Sara Sue.
Harley had never seen her before, but he recognises her from Simon's stories. She had a magical pencil that could bring anything to life, or hide anything away, and she had gone to France because she wanted a new mom and her real family were fishes.
"Couldn't she have made us a new mom?" he had asked his brother, the first time he heard the tale. Simon's arm, warm and familiar around his belly, had tightened reflexively, squeezing Harley so tightly that he wriggled and protested.
"Sorry," said Simon, loosening his grip. "But no. She couldn't have given us a new mom. You see, nothing made by the magic pencil was real, in the end."
"Reality is stupid," Harley had snorted, and Simon had laughed and blown raspberries on his stomach.
Now, here she was. He can tell straight away that the face she's wearing isn't her own, that it's something she's drawn on to try and force her way into some new life far away, but she's wearing a beret and the worn stub of an Eerie Number 2 pencil dangles from a piece of string around her neck, so he knows it's her.
Harley is older now, and he has been paying attention for a long, long time. Long enough to know that a heroic quest doesn't have a hope of succeeding unless the hero has a band of trusty companions to help him out along the way. And so, he walks up to Sara Sue, looks past her false face into the sad brown eyes of a girl who vanished thirteen years ago, chasing stories of her own, and introduces himself.
"My name is Harley Holmes. Ten years ago, my big brother Simon and his friend Marshall Teller disappeared. The only person who has any answers is a guy with grey hair that the Mayor is keeping prisoner. Tonight, I'm breaking him out and then I'm going to find my brother and bring him home.
And nobody is going to stop me."
