I said I wanted to post 250 drabbles this year – well, here it is, number 250! Not that I have any plans on stopping now, I just thought people might like to know.
For the prompt âEarnshaw Strikes Againâ, one of the prompts I didnât get around to using for tw100âs challenge 288 last year. Iâve dug them out again to supplement the prompts I got from my f-list, just because there are still loads I wanted to use. This one ended up as a triple drabble.
Summary: Some people are magnets for trouble; others just attract the weird.
Perry Earnshaw had become a minor nuisance to Torchwood since he’d first arrived in Cardiff three years earlier. It wasn’t that he was a bad person; he just seemed to be a magnet for anything alien in his vicinity.
Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t also been impossible to Retcon. They’d tried the first couple of times, but it just didn’t take. The only solution each time was to convince him that he didn’t see what he thought he saw.
On the plus side, he wasn’t terribly bright and seemed to believe anything he was told.
So, when Ianto informed him that there were worrying readings coming from Earnshaw’s home, which Torchwood kept under permanent surveillance, for obvious reasons, Jack wasn’t too concerned.
That lasted until the team arrived at Earnshaw’s modest little cottage and saw what was causing the latest disturbance.
There was a small spaceship parked in his back garden, surrounded by fuzzy aliens that resembled dish mops on legs. Perry was sitting cross-legged on the lawn, chatting to them.
Owen groaned.
“The curse of Earnshaw strikes again. How do we handle this?”
Perry looked up and smiled.
“Hi, guys! Look what I found!”
The aliens had been pulled off course by the Rift and needed some assistance re-calibrating their systems to compensate for the distortion effect it caused. Tosh was happy to help while Perry served tea and biscuits to everyone.
“Mr Earnshaw, about what you’ve seen here…” Jack started.
Perry just waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry about it, they’re just aliens. Get a lot of them here in Cardiff, more than where I used to live. They’re no trouble. Anything I should know?”
“Uh, no. Just don’t tell anyone.”
“No point, nobody would believe me. It’s our secret.”
And he winked.
The End
Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t also been impossible to Retcon. They’d tried the first couple of times, but it just didn’t take. The only solution each time was to convince him that he didn’t see what he thought he saw.
On the plus side, he wasn’t terribly bright and seemed to believe anything he was told.
So, when Ianto informed him that there were worrying readings coming from Earnshaw’s home, which Torchwood kept under permanent surveillance, for obvious reasons, Jack wasn’t too concerned.
That lasted until the team arrived at Earnshaw’s modest little cottage and saw what was causing the latest disturbance.
There was a small spaceship parked in his back garden, surrounded by fuzzy aliens that resembled dish mops on legs. Perry was sitting cross-legged on the lawn, chatting to them.
Owen groaned.
“The curse of Earnshaw strikes again. How do we handle this?”
Perry looked up and smiled.
“Hi, guys! Look what I found!”
The aliens had been pulled off course by the Rift and needed some assistance re-calibrating their systems to compensate for the distortion effect it caused. Tosh was happy to help while Perry served tea and biscuits to everyone.
“Mr Earnshaw, about what you’ve seen here…” Jack started.
Perry just waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry about it, they’re just aliens. Get a lot of them here in Cardiff, more than where I used to live. They’re no trouble. Anything I should know?”
“Uh, no. Just don’t tell anyone.”
“No point, nobody would believe me. It’s our secret.”
And he winked.
The End