Fic: The Right Shoelace - The Lost Room - GEN

[scribewraith.livejournal.com]

Title: The Right Shoelace
Author: scribewraith
Fandom: The Lost Room
Summary: Howard Montague thinks he's found one of the missing Objects
Rating: G
Disclaimer's and Author's Notes: Owned by SciFi Channel - go watch The Lost Room, it's full of rock! Beta'd by 0bake and nia7
This is written for the picfor1000 Year 5 Challenge. As I'm not the only one late, I figure y'all won't mind me posting this when it actually got finished *grin*




Howard Montague, better known as The Weasel, is driving down a dirt track in search of The Right Shoelace. The bright silver jeep doesn’t really fit in with his lifestyle but he takes what he can get--the airport at Silver City was all out of Nissan Versas, or deep black Impalas for that matter-- and the suspension is better at least. He still hasn’t got his car back from Joe, and he thinks, maybe having an Object of his own will give him more leverage.

The last known location of The Right Shoelace was on the outskirts of Las Vegas. A two-bit gambler had taken it into his head that his sudden power could be used to blackmail one of the Casino bosses into keeping him in a lifestyle that he could quickly become accustomed to. The boss didn’t take it well and The Right Shoelace fell off the map, assumed to be buried in cement at the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

Howard’s actually pretty sure that the last sighting was at a small diner on I25 in New Mexico. He puts his hand into his pocket, checking that the pages are still there. The story they tell could be a hoax or something else completely, but if he gets there first... The pages are a talisman, now.

Three Australians were on a road trip across America when they stopped in at Sally’s Roadstop on their way to the hot springs at Truth and Consequence. While eating a breakfast of waffles and syrup, one of the tourists pulled out a map and showed it to the waitress, asking if she knew of anything interesting in the area. The waitress pointed out the nearly-ghost town of Kingston, a silver mining town on the way to Hillsboro. They thanked the waitress and turned back to their meal again only to be interrupted as the waitress proceeded to reveal intimate secrets about each person in the room, blushing and trying to cover her mouth to prevent the words spilling out. In the hush that came over the room, the tourist and her companions stood up and walked out of the diner, only pausing to toss money at the counter. Through the window of the diner, they could see the waitress crying and apologising. The tourist was quiet as she left.

A week earlier they had stopped at a campsite on the border between Arizona and California where the tourist had found a shoelace in the remnants of their fireplace. The shoelace itself was black and shiny as if it had just come out of the packet, unlike the remnants of the shoe that it had been attached to when it was thrown in the fire. The tourist had been looking for a cord for a Native American eagle pendant her boyfriend had bought her at a roadside store and since she had started wearing the two together more and more people had been blurting out their secrets. At first it was funny but it had begun to get scary and at Kingston she had left the pendant, and shoelace, on a rock on the outskirts of the town as an offering to the local spirits.

Howard had read the pages many times since he had found the blog entries on a search in the local library. He had been browsing for signs of Objects in a rather haphazard way--random search strings in Google--usually with little result but, still, a constructive way to spend an afternoon while he waited for Joe to return his car. He was so sure that the blog was describing an Object that he left the library, signalled a taxi and headed out to the airport with nothing more than the printout crumpled in his jacket pocket. An Object. One that hadn’t been tracked by any of the others for years - and there was a good chance that he could get there before anyone even knew that it had been found again.

He turns off the highway onto a rough gravel road that winds its way up into the mountains and through to where the minefields had long ago petered out. There are tall pine trees on both sides, a stark contrast to the desert he had been expecting. The map he had bought at Sally’s Diner, only asking enough to confirm that the tourist had actually come through this way, was crumpled on the seat beside him. He was alone except for the humming of the wind.

The campsite itself is pretty easy to find, in the grounds outside the gate that leads to Kingston proper. Even though it has been a few days, the tyre tracks from the tourist’s vehicle have not yet disappeared. Even the ashes from the campfire are still slightly damp from where the fire had been put out. Howard wipes the ashes on the front of his trousers and begins to look around. By the creek, the tourist had said, and to the west as a banishment. The Wiccans and Pagans he’d come across tended to put more thought into the tiniest aspects of their ritual than most of the other Object users and losers did with their useful magic.

The stream is mostly dried up and he clambers across the rocks to the other side: the west bank. At first he doesn’t see it but then the light of the sun reflects off the silver of the eagle pendant and flashes into his eye. It’s here, Howard thinks. He picks the pendant up off the rock and puts it on: it’s the easiest way to carry it.

He can’t be sure, of course, until he uses it but getting back into the jeep and driving back towards the airport and civilization, Howard feels certain: he isn’t just any Object loser. He is a player, and when he catches up with Joe and asks him what really went down at the Motel, he will finally hear all of the truth.