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The air outside is thick, heavy with the weight of summer humidity.
Compared to the atmosphere inside, heavy with something far weightier than water, it still manages to feel like a relief to you as you all but stumble out into it.
You should be feeling something, probably.
Maybe you are, but you’re too much in shock still to even realize it.
Was that a real thing that happened to people, or just something they made up for TV?
It’s certainly never happened to you before…
But then, this is the first time someone’s died on you, in this way.
If ever there was a time for you to go into some kind of shock, here, hunched on the steps out back of the funeral parlor, hosting the wake of the woman you thought you were about to spend your life with..
Yeah…that feels like a pretty good place for it.
Before you even know what you’re doing, your shaking hands are fumbling around in your pockets, digging for something on instinct alone.
You aren’t even sure for what until you find it—a lonely, crumpled cigarette at the very bottom of your blazer’s pocket, against all odds.
Terrible habit.
She wanted you to quit.
You had.
For her.
But now…
“Fuck it,” you mumble, putting it between your lips.
One last smoke hidden in your nice funeral jacket, when you needed it most.
That felt like as much of a sign as anything could be, and far be it from you to ignore a sign.
“those things’ll kill you.”
You physically jolt at the unexpected voice that says it, low and deep and so close behind you that the hair on the back of your neck stands up even as you whirl around.
You have no idea who you were expecting to see, but this…
This isn’t it.
There’s a skeleton standing on the steps above you.
Dressed all in black, with large eye-sockets dark as night, and a wide, wide mouth full of needle-sharp teeth stretched in a grin.
There’s a pointed horn atop his skull, one glossy black protrusion of bone and for one nonsensical moment, you’re sure you’re looking at some kind of devil, a real live demon on earth come to drag sinners to hell.
Sinners like you…
…or maybe, like her.
Reason (or something like it) kicks in, thankfully before you gawp like some kind of slack-jawed idiot and drop your cigarette.
You’re in Ebott now, it reminds you.
The place where magic got started, where monsters emerged from under the mountain and made their homes.
This is a monster.
He may indeed have crawled out of a hole in the ground, but he was no demon; no more worthy of fear or respect or heed than anyone else who’d ever tried to preach to you about what you do to your lungs.
“Trust me,” you snort at the stranger as soon as you’ve recovered enough to be insolent. “I’ve heard the lecture a thousand times. I don’t need it from you.”
Somehow, impossibly, the skeleton’s grin widens even further, eye-sockets turning up in what looks to be amusement.
“who’s lecturing?” he asks, rhetorically. “i’m just striking up a conversation.”
The strange emphasis gives you pause, until he pulls a hand out of his pocket.
Black fingers, almost as sharp as his teeth, and between them…
A matchbook.
“need a light?” he asks knowingly.
You…do.
You hadn’t even thought of it, it’d been so long since you smoked… Did you even still have a lighter?
Stars…
You don’t know where your head is anymore.
“I…yeah, I guess I do need a light…”
You take your cigarette and hold it out to him.
The skeleton leans forward over you in a decidedly looming fashion—for a not all that impressive stature, he is standing several stairs higher than you, on the top step—but despite his looming, he obligingly strikes a match for you and holds the flame to your cigarette until it catches.
When you take that first deep drag of nicotine, you’re glad to find you can at least still resist the urge to cough now that you have someone to embarrass yourself in front of.
Exhale, smooth and slow, like you’re blowing out your tension and pain along with the plume of smoke.
“Thanks,” you remember to say to the skeleton as he discards the spent match.
You also (finally) remember to introduce yourself, holding your hand out to him to shake.
He doesn’t take your hand.
In fact, he eyes it skeptically, the way one might look at a strange shape floating in a swamp when they’re trying to figure out what it is—a slimy log, or a snapping gator…?
But he does at least tell you his name.
“sans.”
You retract your hand and resolve not to take that too personally.
“Nice to meet you, Sans,” you tell him.
He doesn’t return the sentiment either, just making a noncommittal noise as he watches you smoke.
Awkward…
Searching for something to say, you ask the obvious question.
“Did you…know her?”
You don’t say her name.
You shouldn’t have to.
She’s the lady of the hour today, here, on display front and center, surrounded by flowers and photos and mourners.
So young, so beautiful, taken too soon…
All true.
That perfectly peaceful face, pallid and waxy and utterly bereft of life had driven you out here into the thick, sticky air for a tryst with a nearly-forgotten vice.
Maybe it had done the same to Sans.
Except, he only answers your question with a question—the same one you asked, at that.
“did you?”
What an interesting question for him to turn back on you.
You’d been asking yourself the same thing, pretty much since you got here.
Did you know her?
………
“No,” you say at length. “I don’t think I knew her at all.”
Sans tilts his head at you, slow and deliberate.
“odd to be at her wake, then,” he says plainly. “if you didn’t know her.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
You take another puff of your cig, staring off into the middle distance.
Slowly, you admit the truth.
“Yeah… I’m not sure why I’m here, either.”
At the words, you feel his stare far more than you see it out of the corner of your eye.
Huh.
Guess whatever instinct it is that tells humans something’s looking at them and taking their measure doesn’t need actual eyes to trigger it.
You fiddle aimlessly with the stick of tobacco in your hand, watching the drag of light from the ember at its tip as you come to a decision with yourself.
“Whatever,” you say aloud. “Guess I might as well spill my guts to a skeleton.”
It certainly couldn’t make anything worse, not now.
“Do you want the truth of why I’m here?”
It feels polite somehow to at least ask, before you just start. Some people would rather hear—
“i’d prefer it to a lie.”
…Well.
That settles that, at least.
So, you say it.
“I’m her side-piece.”
Or…
“…I was, I guess.”
If Sans has any particular reaction to the revelation, you can’t parse it from his expression, but you’re not sure you’d care about it if he did.
“She’s…she was my girlfriend. I thought she was… I thought she loved me,” and you cringe, physically, because what a cliché and you can’t believe you actually just said that, but… “We were gonna have a whole…life together, or something Hallmark like that. I was her only, she said…”
“…never mentioned the husband and kids in there, i guess?”
“No,” you emphatically agree. “Somehow, that never came up.”
Stars, that had been a blow on top of a blow, seeing them.
A whole family.
A beautiful, perfect family.
Her family.
All dressed up in prim mourning-wear, thanking everyone for coming, telling fond stories of their memories with her and showing off all the pictures they’d put up to memorialize her and her life and they were all there with her in every single one.
She never took any pictures with you.
Knowing now who they could’ve gotten back to, what they could’ve messed up for her, you finally know why.
You’re not living your proudest moment now, and you feel you can be forgiven for how badly you need this smoke.
“You wanna how stupid I am?” you ask Sans, pausing only to take another drag before going ahead and telling him how stupid you are. “I fell for the ‘business trip’ excuse. That’s gotta be the oldest one in the book, right? But I believed her. ‘Another work trip, to Ebott? Sure thing, honey, I’ll miss you, come back soon!’”
You huff, shaking your head.
“Idiot… A whole fucking picket-fence life here, and I didn’t even think…”
What kind of person hid that from somebody they loved?
…Somebody they said they loved.
If she could lie about being single, if she could lie about her living, breathing kids, she probably could’ve lied about anything, even that.
Probably…especially that.
“you know…” Sans cuts into your thoughts. “the ‘shame on you’ part comes after being fooled twice.”
You frown, trying to make sense of the words.
“What, is that your way of saying it’s not my fault I fell for it?”
Sans doesn’t answer that.
He doesn’t even really look at you, just…grimaces a little and edges to the side of the stairs where he can more freely lean against the banister.
“…Thanks, I think.”
The look Sans continues not to give you practically screams ‘don’t mention it,’ so you leave it at that.
You really do have other things on your mind at the moment.
“I’m just…trying to wrap my head around it,” you say of…Everything. “I’m lucky I even found out, I guess. It’s not like I was her next-of-kin… I mean, obviously, now that I know about……… But. I wouldn’t have even known she died if her parents hadn’t called me.”
Lovely people, from the little you’d gotten to speak to them, entirely willing to empathize and share your grief when they’d told you what happened, and how, and when the viewing was going to be because of course you were invited.
They’d found you in her phone under ‘Bestie.’
You didn’t even know how you felt about that.
“might’ve been better that way.”
“Huh?”
Sans is looking at you again, but his expression once more betrays little.
“to not know,” he clarifies. “to never know, how little she respected you. how easily she lied to you and pretended to care about you.”
Oh.
That.
That would’ve been…easier, maybe.
Less hurtful.
But ‘better’…?
“…No,” you decide. “I think…I needed to know this. I needed to know who she was.”
Someone who didn’t respect you. Someone who did lie to you, and everyone else she claimed to love, with the utmost of ease.
Someone you wouldn’t spend the rest of your life trying to get over, like you might’ve if you’d never known the nasty truth behind all those good memories you had.
…Though, you must admit…
“I am a little pissed she got away with it. Cheated on her husband, used me, lied to us both, and then she gets to just die and skip all the consequences.”
“‘gets to’?”
When you turn, you see the big grin back on Sans’ face, clearly amused at your choice of words.
You stand by it.
“Yes, ‘gets to.’ She fucked around, literally, and never even had to find out. That’s the easy route. She won.”
Sans laughs, a sadistic little chuckle.
“she’s dead,” he reminds you.
“Sure, but everyone still thinks she’s everything she said she was.”
Loving wife, devoted mother, innocent daughter.
“I know better, but even if I marched back in there and told everyone everything, I’d be the bad guy, hurting people who are just trying to grieve her. And that’s if they even believe me…”
The smile on Sans’ face seems to slip, just a bit.
You feel a little guilty—you’re already killing the vibe for him just talking about this crap.
…whatever vibe there was to be had outside of a funeral home.
You sigh, trying to give up the topic altogether with one last parting shot.
“She couldn’t have planned this better, except for not dying in the first place. Maybe her heart just froze up from all that ice water pumping through her veins…”
“no ice water, i’m afraid, just regular human blood.”
The quick response makes you frown, turning back to look at him again in confusion.
“…What?” you ask.
Sans meets your gaze head-on.
“in her veins,” he says plainly. “just blood. well, it was, but we drain that first. makes a mess otherwise.”
………
You stare at the skeleton a mere few steps away from you, telling you so frankly about draining blood from a body—from your dead ex-girlfriend’s body—his sharp teeth curving up into a disturbing grin.
Your heart starts to beat a little faster in your chest, and by the way his grin curves even higher, you feel suddenly certain he can hear it.
Reason (or something like it) is a little slower coming back to you this time, but before you can do something foolish, like stumbling to your feet and trying to run away, it reminds you of a few important facts.
This funeral home has a mortuary attached.
They store and embalm bodies on-site.
Sans never told you he was here for the funeral.
With these bits of information, you come to a far more palatable conclusion than…wherever you were heading before.
“…You work here,” you posit, trying to make it seem like a statement of something you’d known all along and not even remotely a question.
The sharpest, scariest edges of Sans’ smile seem to soften a bit.
“if i didn’t, that would’ve been a really disturbing thing i just said.”
…You think you’re starting to get a feel for this guy’s sense of humor.
That was a joke.
“Yes,” you happily agree. “It would be. Very, very disturbing.”
Sans hums, apparently pleased that you’re on the same page about that.
“So…why are you here?”
At your question, the bone of Sans’ brow seems to raise up.
Monsters are weird, you think to yourself.
But you nonetheless clarify, “If you work here, why are you…out back,” with you, “instead of in there, doing…funeral things?”
Sans snorts.
“‘funeral things’?”
………
You feel your cheeks go a bit hot.
“Or whatever!” you add, like that improves the inane thing you’d said.
“hmm,” says Sans. “might be that i’m off shift.”
“Oh…th—”
“might be i’m checking up on a suspicious person on the premises.”
A suspicious…
Does he mean you?
“might be i’m enjoying the weather.”
You frown looking up at the sky above, dark—unusually dark for the time of day—with thick, gray clouds blotting out the sun near completely.
Then again, you’re not sure you can call bullshit on that.
Monsters love the dark, or so you’ve heard.
Sans is the first one you’ve met, and something in his mischievous tone tells you that getting a straight answer out of him about anything might prove difficult.
“Are any of those the real reason?” you can’t help but ask.
“might be.”
…Yeah, you walked right into that one.
Sans laughs at you, a soft ‘heheheh’ that probably wouldn’t sound out of place coming from some sort of villain.
“either way,” he says, “‘funeral things’ aren’t my job description. my employer’s learned better than to have me around when a family’s trying to mourn.”
That gives you a bit of pause.
“What’s so bad about you?”
Sans spares half a second to look surprised, eye-sockets widening at your utterly genuine question.
Then, his expression shifts right back to amused, terribly so, like he can’t believe you even asked the question.
His skull turns pointedly, and your eyes follow the line of his gaze all the way to the lacquered wooden sign off to the street-side of the building.
‘EBOTT FUNERARY SERVICES’ it proclaims, and for a moment you still don’t get what that’s supposed to tell you.
But then, you register the large, goldenrod-yellow emblem beside the words.
A cross.
And as you look back at Sans, you see the black-tipped horn atop his skull anew.
It clicks.
Surely, you’re not the first (or last) person to have thought that feature devil-like.
“…Ah,” you say, a bit lamely. “I guess the ‘skeleton’ and ‘death’ thing isn’t too great for superstitious people either, huh?”
Sans puts his cheek in his hand, elbow leaned against the rail.
“nothing to say about my sparkling personality?”
Sarcasm drips from the words.
He’s so blatantly, utterly full of shit as he says it that you laugh, hard.
It feels good to do that, honestly.
“Aw, I dunno, Sans,” you tease. “I’m starting to like you.”
Sans makes a face at you.
“you have notoriously bad taste.”
You consider where you are right now; the woman you’d come here for.
“Can’t argue with that,” you admit freely.
It’s a fair enough assessment, you’re not even mad about it.
But it does sober you enough to think again—however briefly—about the future.
“…I gotta figure out what to do now.”
The statement is mostly just to yourself, a mental note made aloud more than anything else and not really anything you expect a response to.
You get one anyway.
“live.”
You look up from the pavement to find Sans staring at you again, a look on his face that almost seems…earnest.
“don’t give anyone the satisfaction. she lied and used you and stabbed you in the back, but she didn’t beat you. she doesn’t win unless you give up. so don’t. live. be better.”
You…
You don’t know what to say to that.
For a long moment, you don’t say anything at all, just looking up at the skeleton atop the stairs, staring hard down at you.
You realize for the first time that there’s a light in one of Sans’ eye-sockets—dark, dim against the clouded daylight but huge and round, almost like a pupil.
It’s blue.
A very rich, very deep blue.
“………Okay,” is what you say, eventually.
Live.
That’s…
Yeah, that’s pretty good advice.
You think you’ll do that.
“…Don’t suppose you know anybody renting around here?”
That seems like a good first step, to the ‘living’ thing, finding somewhere to actually…do that.
“you don’t have a place?”
“I have a van,” you answer truthfully.
Everything you own right now is in it, boxed up and waiting for somewhere to go.
“Our place was actually her place, and…”
Well.
Dead people don’t pay rent on time.
And neither do people frantically trying to figure out where their missing partner has disappeared to.
Nor people who find out said partner is dead, and was actually cheating on them the whole time they were together, and had a secret spouse and kids and—…
But Sans has heard enough of your sob story, you think, especially for a guy you only met today.
You don’t say any of that out loud, and let your silence speak for itself.
“got any money?” Sans asks you next.
“Some,” you reply. “I’m sure whatever I can afford will be a downgrade from what we had, but that’s single life, right? Probably should’ve stayed where I at least had a job…”
“why didn’t you?”
“I…stopped having the job.”
Sans’ browbones are creeping up again.
“got fired?”
“Quit. …Badly.”
Sans presses, “badly?”
Your face feels hot again.
“…Explosively,” you eke out. “I, uh… I don’t think they’ll take me back. That bridge is…burnt.”
“really.”
Sans actually sounds intrigued by this.
“what did you say?”
“A lot of words,” you say, trying to hastily gloss over the topic. “Nothing I should repeat, and especially nothing I should repeat in front of some random guy I just met at my dead, cheating ex’s wake!”
Sans spares only a second to look vaguely disappointed before donning a look of mock indignation.
“well if that’s how you feel about me…”
Static fills the air, enough to make your hair start to stand again.
Sans’ one blue eye-light glows stronger, brighter, and almost faster than your eye can follow it, a slash of black light swipes past your hand.
…the hand you were holding your cigarette in, which is now unlit, the glowing ember sliced cleanly right off the tip…!
“Hey!” you exclaim. “You magicked my cig! I was smoking that!”
Sans pushes back off the railing, straightening up.
“maybe you shouldn’t be,” he tells you. “i told you, those things’ll kill you.”
Fully aware that you’re pouting and trying not to, you huff.
“And that’s a bad thing now?”
“mm, might be. you got a story i want now. can’t tell it if you don’t last awhile.”
Sans turns his back on you, taking a few steps away.
“…guess it’s your call, though,” he adds.
And so saying, he tosses something at you over his shoulder.
You try to catch it, fumbling a bit but mostly succeeding, realizing you have his matchbook in your hands.
Before you can say a word about it, Sans is meandering off into the hazy gloom, hitting you with a lazy wave and a “see you around,” as he turns the corner of the building.
Then, he’s gone.
You sit there on the stairs for awhile, watching the dark clouds and thinking, abstractly, about your life.
If you’re gonna keep going in all this…
If it’s your call…
Maybe what you want to do first is finish your smoke.
You fiddle with the book of matches in your hand, popping it open.
………
And it’s empty.
Just a little folded square of carboard cleaned out, with not even one little match left for you to use.
“Asshole,” you mutter, stunned at the audacity but maybe not surprised.
You really do end up liking the worst sorts of people, don’t you?
You get to your feet, trudging over to the nearest trash bin to flick your half-smoked and utterly useless cigarette into it.
The matchbook nearly follows it in, before the print on the front of it catches your eye.
If you’d guessed, you’d have thought it would just have ‘Ebott Funerary Services’ written on it. Sans worked here, after all, it would make more sense than not for his matchbook to be from here too.
But instead, there’s a picture of a rabbit, cartoony and colorful, with the text ‘Bon Bun’s Bed & Breakfast’ under it in a clean, blocky font.
It rings a bell for you, actually.
You remember seeing the place itself, way out on the outskirts of town when you’d driven in.
You hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
You’d had a lot of other things on your mind.
But now that you see the logo, you think you remember seeing something else next to it, posted in the front window.
A Help Wanted sign.
“…Huh.”
You suppose it…couldn’t hurt to take a drive past it, see if you remembered that right…
Matchbook still in hand, you head for the parking lot, making a bee-line to your van.
It’s a long walk, past a lot of other cars, and by the time you get through the cluster to where you parked—all the way in the back—you almost don’t even notice the shadow that’s fallen into step with you.
You jump, spinning around faster than thought.
………
No one’s there.
Just you and a parking lot full of cars, not another soul in sight.
But you know what you saw.
It was faint, from the overcast sky ahead, but it’s hard to pin a shadow with a single, unmistakable horn on anybody else.
“You’re an asshole,” you announce loudly and clearly to ‘no one.’ “But…thanks for the tip, I guess.”
Predictably enough, the walking horror movie cliché you’ve come to know as Sans doesn’t say ‘you’re welcome’ from whatever ether he’d disappeared into, or anything at all, but you don’t know that you expected him to.
You tuck the matchbook into the pocket of your blazer, get into your van, and start to drive.
Ebott.
Home of the mountain, home of magic, home of monsters.
And maybe…
Home of you, too.
You take a deep breath in and let it out slow.
Only one way to find out…