Work Text:
He felt like he should be more appreciative of pool ladders. Big job creators, at least in his line of work. However at times, it truly could be too much work.
“Where is the ladder?!”
Maybe, Grim thought, if I ignore them long enough, they will realize they could just climb out on the other side of the pool? It happened. Sometimes. A lot more often nowadays than before, so one could hope, he supposed.
“It was there just a few moments ago!”
He forced himself to focus on his book and to ignore the ever increasing commotion coming from the pool. He was on page 57 of Dusk Glow and currently really rooting for Darla to choose the nice werewolf. He helped her father fix Darla’s car, he thought.
“Where did it go?!”
It was his first free day in … forever maybe. People didn’t just stop dying cause he wanted to take a day off. And now Darla was using her car to go and see the bad-boy vampire instead of meeting the werewolf. He frowned at the book.
“Oh no, oh no, oh-.”
And there it was. Darla was about to kiss the bad-boy vampire and Grim abruptly closed the book. With a heavy sigh he put it down, reaching for nowhere and everywhere at once to pull out his scythe.
Why, he thought grimly to himself, did he think the local community pool was a good idea for his day off? Ten minutes later the dripping wet ghost spoiled the ending of Dusk Glow for him as Grim tried to ignore the pool ladder, innocently sitting at the end of the pool as if it had always been there.
**
The problem, he decided, had been the water. Nothing good happened around water. Sure sometimes there were dolphins or pretty fish or maybe even mermaids. But mostly it was sharks or kraken and a curious lack of pool ladders.
“Here is your food uh … sir.” The woman in the stall handed him a plate. Grim nodded politely at her and the food vendor smiled back with a slightly dazed look. Probably already in the process of forgetting him, Grim thought as he walked towards a table. Discretion was practical during the job but did make it hard to order dinner.
He supposed he was almost undercover given the vast array of costumed Sims around him. He spotted two Sims dressed up as the same llama-themed hero just at the table next to him. His robe and chains didn’t stand out too much and so far only one person had complimented him on the “cool special effects” of his outfit.
He dug into his burrito, glad for once to have food that he didn’t “borrow” from the fridge of one of his appointments. There was only so many bowls of animal crackers one could take. The two llama heroes next him seemed to also be enjoying their food. Grim could overhear parts of their idle conversation.
“Made it myself,” one of them said, voice sounding proud. “Had it at this dope food stall at the romance festival and then decided hey, I can totally do this on my own!”
“Didn’t you almost burn the kitchen down when you tried to make eggs last week?”
“Yeah but this is raw fish! Nothing cooked here!”
Grim started zooning out of the conversation, putting his focus on the burrito and nothing else. Maybe he’d later try one of those computer games, he idly thought.
“Hey, are you okay?”
He was up-to-date with modern tech. He even used a tablet on his job now and he had only accidentally deleted the records of Sims who had passed away twice.
“Is there … is there something wrong with the fish?”
And yes, sometimes it took him a bit longer to find the name of the Sim he was supposed to reap but hey, his tablet also had a neat reminder function so he didn’t miss any appointments.
“It’s the fish! How did you even make it?! You can’t even make scrambled eggs!”
The llama hero next had jumped up from the table and his tablet had been beeping with ever increasing intensity for the last minute. Grim stared at his half-eaten burrito with a dawning sense of deep loss before slowly standing up and walking to the table next to him. At the very least he supposed that the pufferfish swimming around in the transparent ghostly figure of the Sim after he was done was quite adorable to watch.
He still made sure to get rid of the rest of the pufferfish nigari as he left the festival.
***
Too many Sims. That was the problem. He needed to go where very few Sims were or wanted to go. And Al Simhara was beautiful, especially in fall. Granted, he didn’t really see much of it, as he attempted to continue his sketch with only the torches that dimly lit the tomb at the bottom of the Great Pyramid.
Though it wasn’t like he needed actual light to see. Still, he preferred drawing outside. Ancient inscriptions and hieroglyphics didn’t hold the same appeal as flowers or trees to him. Especially not when he could still vaguely recall a time when those walls had been but smooth stone, awaiting yet the gifted hand of some carver. He couldn’t quite remember how much time had passed since then, nor did he particularly care.
Time was something that happened to Sims, not him. Unless it was his free time, then it was Sims who decided to happen to him.
“This is beautiful! I wonder how many simoleons I’ll get for this one!” As they were doing now. Grim held still. Maybe, he thought, a probably fruitless hope, the woman would just pass him by. Gather whatever treasures she had come here for, solve another few puzzles and then buzz off again and leave him to his drawings.
“And would you look at that! Even more stuff!”
The light of the torch was wandering down the hallway, towards the big room that Grim had pointedly avoided. Then there was the sound of something heavy being pushed, a noise Grim valiantly tried to ignore.
“Oh, shiny! And it’s all … oh god, what is that?!”
Please be a spider, Grim thought. Just a harmless little spider. There was a pause, long and poignant, and then the screaming started.
Probably not a spider then. Still not his problem however, Grim thought, returning to his sketchbook. He had just been about to get the shading on this particular bird carving right.
More screaming followed by deep guttural groans and then the sound of two Sims having a fist fight. Really, Grim thought, staring at the wing of the bird carving as he tried to block out the noise. Really, inside the damn pyramid?
And then the noise of fighting suddenly stopped and it smelt like burning paper. Footsteps approached, hurried and seemingly very eager to get away, and then a woman wearing a fedora passed him by, holding a golden statue. Not holding her torch anymore though, Grim noted.
For a long moment Grim just sat there, wondering if he could maybe just ignore this. But then, even those who technically were already dead did fall under his jurisdiction in the end. The mummy, still partly in the process of burning, at least took his sudden appearance rather calmly.
“Nice drawing,” it said, when it noticed Grim’s sketchbook. “I carved those back in the days, you know.”
“Thank you,” Grim said, feeling slightly awkward. “You did … good work there.” Normally during his jobs there was a lot less small talk and a lot more crying and begging.
“You need to fix the wing of that one though,” the mummy said and before Grim could stop it, it reached out with one still burning finger.
The sketchbook lit on fire instantly and if Grim had eyes, they would have twitched. Severely.
“Oh,” the mummy said, staring somewhat dumbfounded at the burning sketchbook. “Oh, I am sorry. I did not mean to do this.”
“It’s fine,” Grim said with a sigh. “I don’t think I was getting the shading on that wing right anyway.” And then because he was a professional, he pulled out his scythe and got to work. Without even thinking about getting revenge for his burnt drawing.
Even if he did mourn his sketchbook on his way out of the pyramid afterwards.
****
“Oh, come on,” Grim groaned. The Sim in front of him didn’t answer. “Really now?” he continued. “It’s winter. In the middle of the night! Why did you think this was a good idea!”
Still no answer from the Sim. Grim supposed it was rather hard to speak when you were frozen into a block of ice.
“Could you … maybe not?” he then asked. “I am hiking up this mountain in the middle of the night to avoid this type of situation, you know.”
He could have sworn the Sim was glaring at him through the ice.
“I could unfreeze you? And we … just ignore this happened?” What wouldn’t he give for a hairdryer right about now.
Another icy look from the frozen Sim and Grim let out a sigh before getting his scythe. “Let’s just get this over with,” he grumbled.
*****
If looks could kill, the man currently swimming in the ocean would have been dead five times over. “Come on,” Grim mumbled to himself. “I know you are just waiting for me to look away so you can drown.”
A movement out of the corner of his eyes and he snapped his head to his left where somebody was preparing food on a grill. “And you,” he growled. “You are going to set yourself on fire, aren’t you?”
An angry glow was then directed at somebody digging into a plate of food. “And you are going to choke or get food poisoning or a very hungry cowplant is suddenly going to appear out of nowhere.”
The Sim happily finished her food though and then pulled out a book to read. Hm, Grim thought. Nobody was dying. Or had died in the last hour or so Grim had watched them like a hawk.
Maybe, he thought. Maybe he could relax. Just sit and enjoy the sun on his skin for a bit. As good as somebody without skin could do so.
Maybe he should have come to Sulani earlier, he thought, flipping down his sunglasses. He had barely finished the thought when the earth started shaking. Violently. Loudly.
Very slowly he raised his sunglasses. The ground was still moving and then there were suddenly things flying through the air. Fiery things.
Somebody started screaming and then it suddenly seemed like everybody was screaming as the volcano continued erupting.
“Oh come on!” Grim yelled but his words were swallowed by the sound of fire and scared Sims.
He took it back. He never should have come to Sulani.
*
There was nowhere he could go. No place in any world or neighborhood where he wouldn’t come across a Sim committed to ruin his time off by dying. It was a rather grim realization. And he was too disgruntled about it to even chuckle at his own pun.
Dolefully Grim kept walking down the street. He wasn’t sure which one exactly nor if he was honest when exactly. After he had cleaned up that mess with the volcano in Sulani, he had just gotten out. Not that he could really escape in the end, he supposed.
“Excuse me,” a voice then interrupted his musings. When he looked up a woman was watching him. There was something off about her expression, a slightly unsure look in her eyes as she stared at him with a polite but nervous smile.
“I think I must have gotten lost,” she then said. “Can you … do you happen to know where I live?”
There was something about the fact that she had addressed him first. This wasn’t how things went usually. Automatically he reached for his tablet but it wasn’t there.
Right, he thought with a frown. Wherever he was, it was before the time of tablets.
“Maybe you live over there?” he then said, nodding towards a white square house, just down the street of where she came from. He could make out a whirlpool and a telescope on its balcony. The woman certainly looked like somebody who could afford this type of house.
Another brief moment of confusion flickering over the woman’s face before she shook her head. “No,” she said. “No I don’t … that’s not it.”
Grim stared at her and he knew that he should do …. something. He might not have his tablet but this woman, her essence made his bones sing. He should lead her away from this place, he knew. It was his job.
“I just want to go home.”
But then he did deserve some free time, didn’t he? “Maybe it is down the street,” he said. The woman’s smile widened for a bit and then she nodded briefly before making her way into the direction he had pointed out.
Grim watched as her red dress disappeared into the darkness of the night and wondered if he had done the right thing. But then, he figured, he did deserve some work-life balance. Or probably work-death balance in his case.
Slowly he kept walking down the streets, staring at the stars above him and for a few hours at least, nothing happened.