#its not even a collage its their actual photography go check their shit

[melonfacade]

[sunny-speaks]

Hacker! Ren Headcanons

Basically just hc’s abt what ren does in his free time watching u, yk, normal stuff

Character(s): Ren/[REDACTED] from @14dayswithyou and mild mention of Harper from @/campwillowpeak

A/N: Definitely check out Camp Willowpeak if you have the time! Great VN in progress!

Trigger warnings: Minor panic attack after ‘And it is the worst feeling in all of Corland Bay.’

Um, mention of NSFW and kinks etc. Minors DNI !

Ren spends every waking hour of the day trying to be as close to you as he can possibly muster.

He just wants to be there with you in some shape or form!

The best days for him are the weekends, you don’t have to work and you can stay home all day if you choose to!

Some of his favorite things to watch you do is watch your anime, read fanfiction and a bunch of other things that help with his research.

When you indulge in your fixations, it helps Ren change himself accordingly to whatever you like at the moment!

You like science-y guys? Luckily for you, he took Biology and Chemistry in high school!

Totally not to figure out how to kill people effectively or clean up bloodstains, what???

You like artsy guys? He makes these amazing collages and collections of photography! Also took painting and art in high school!

Once again, totally not because he wanted the best drawings/paintings of you or the best high quality photos for his shrine, whaaat???

But having you read fanfiction is much more interesting to him.

He can see the types of characters you like to read about, your favorite genre, your favorite pairings, your favorite character dynamics…

Whether you prefer sunshine characters with a dark side, characters who look like they could kill you but are actually cinnamon rolls, two idiots + one brain cell, it’d all help him further his agenda of manipulating you to love him making him perfect for you!

And if you go into the NSFW section? He is frothing at the mouth.

This is his chance!! He can figure out what you prefer in the bedroom and win you over with his seduction skills! (not that he needs any ofc… have u seen him??? His dick is like 10 inches, that's a seduction skill on its own…)

(and maybe sometimes he takes advantage of the cameras around your place to listen in and watch you do some… intimate activities)

Whether you like submissive guys or dominant guys or service tops or brats, Ren is all for it! If you’re into some kinky shit, he might not be too into it, but he’ll give it a try for you!!

But if you share one of his massive kinks (ex. Breeding, marking) dude, you are so fucked.

Ren is straight up praying to his shrine that he can be the only one to fulfill your desires because, whoa, he would be soo good to you if you gave him a chance. He would literally cry if you wanted him to do whatever he liked to you.

Also you both like the same shit??? You were clearly meant to be!!

He sees you scrolling on social media and calling yourself delulu? (just like him ong) Don’t worry, he’ll be there so you can fufill your delusions!!

You’ll never have to be delusional again now that you have him!!

Ren saw you scroll through your Tumblr feed, seemingly spending hours lurking on this one account of… Camp Treepeak, or something. It irked him when he saw you focusing on this one character who had you swooning.

So what if that dumb brunette was 6’9’’??? So what if he was a pyromaniac??? He was just a dumb game character, Ren was real! Besides, Ren was more than sure that those missing 4 inches of height between and that fictional guy went somewhere… else.

You didn’t know what you were missing out on!! Ren was right there, always waiting for you to notice him! If you gave him even the smallest chance, he’d swoop in and make your life a living romance visual novel if you wanted!

He could be anyone you wanted him to be! At all! If that’s what it takes for him to be yours, he’d do it in a heartbeat!

(I have brought this up before lmao) Would absolutely be down to try and cosplay any character you aggressively rave about to Moth.

While he absolutely detests Moth for being the one that you go to with this stuff, he can’t deny that it's useful for him to tap into the call, mute Moth on his own end and listen to you go on and on about whatever you’re rambling about at the moment.

Your voice is so pretty, like a canary… Birds remind him of freedom in some way, some days Ren would like to keep you captive, hide you away from the world.

But then he looks at himself in the mirror and he sees his father stare back.

And it is the worst feeling in all of Corland Bay.

He hums to himself, listening to you talk on and on to Moth but can’t help and think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if I was the only one they ever sang to?’ and it sends Ren into a spiral of dark thoughts he immediately dry heaves at.

He’s trying so hard to focus on your melodic tone before he pants over the sink, body shaking. No, no, no, no.

No. He is not psychopathic. You are not something he can own. You are not his. That is not his decision. You have your voice. You are your own person.

“Hey, you alright?” Your calming voice shakes him out of his stupor. Of course, it did. It helped him get through nightmares, through hungover evenings where he just wanted to be with you, past his job when he felt demotivated.

Subconsciously, he knew you were just talking to Moth, but he couldn’t help but respond. “Y-yeah. I think so.”

“Mm, I feel that.”

Wow, maybe if he squinted, the two of you could be having a conversation! If it wasn’t for that lingering thought of his bastard dad, he would’ve been giggling on the couch, kicking his feet and twirling his hair.

…He was really getting into his Ren persona, wasn’t he…?

“Look, cheer up, things get better. I mean, my job’s no walk in the park, but it’s about the small wins!” He could hear the grin in your voice, you always managed to bring your emotions through audio, “Like, like! The other day, some guy on the street saw my subtle Attack on Giants jacket and stopped to me and said―”

“ ‘Yoo, is that AOG?’ “ Ren repeated the same words with a small smile on his face. He remembered how you reined in your expression before your face lit up as soon as you were by yourself.

You sighed and chuckled at whatever Moth had replied. “No, I am not a huge nerd. I simply have good taste. Oh yeah, remember how I told you about that one skater boy–” and your voice faded to background noise again.

Ren took a couple deep breaths to calm himself. He wasn’t his sperm donor, he’d be better. For you.

And the rest of his nights would be spent, adoringly adding to your shrine and his collection of your items.

Then he would lay in bed, clutching a pillow, wishing it were you he had to cuddle with but could settle for the plush, soft object until he finally won you over.

(personal headcanon that ren has one of those like, duck filled pillows he hugs instead of his stuffed toys which he leaves on display. Sometimes all the body parts just get in the way and he just wants to hug something soft… :(( like you :(( )

Which he would… one day.

[deathsdesiign]

I’m posting this, but i’m going to delete it after a day cause it’s not edited for tumblr. but it’s also mort’s original about or whatever for the forum he’s from. and i figure people might want to see it. under a read more cause it’s long af 

The room is bright and sparsely decorated; almost clinical if it wasn't for the collage of somewhat crude pictures and posters on the far wall. Images that are quite clearly of corpses in various stages of the embalming process. Like before and after shots of a particularly gruesome accident, except that a young face is grinning at the camera in each of them. Body bent over the table, offering a thumbs up or thumbs down, in a scale you're not sure you ever want to know. You want to look away, your eyes are burning with the effort, but it's like watching a train wreak. You can't look away no matter how hard you try, and each set of pictures seems to be more gruesome and gore filled then the last.

"You know people used to pay to have their corpses photographed? Wicked, huh?"

The voice startles you, and your heart stops for a fraction of a second. Ironic considering your current location. If there was ever a better place to drop dead, surely the prep room of a funeral parlor would be it. But considering you were alone with three corpses just seconds ago your little moment of fear doesn't seem too uncalled for.

With a spin you're facing the young man. He looks out of place in there; jeans and a black t-shirt, with beat-up converse on his feet. Like he'd snuck in to get a glimpse at the dead, and you should be calling security.

Except of course you know better.

"Yep, they used to drop their loved ones off. Get them all nice an' tidy. Then people like me would prop them up real nice using wires, or you know stands or whatever. Get them looking like everything's swell." He's pulling on a pair of rubber gloves, black ones, if you must know. "Photography was expensive back then, people could only really afford like three pictures tops. Some of them, that's the only family photo." He laughs, and dark eyes drift up to focus on your face. Eyes that are much too old for that childish grin. "Can you imagine that, family photo with all the kiddies gathered around grandma's corpse?"

You kind of just stare at him, what else are you supposed to do? You're here because haven hill needs this interview, and with the three car accident victims laid out in front of him, he'd put off this meeting for the last time. So they'd sent you here. To the last place anyone should ever want to go willingly.

At least anyone human.

"Ahem, Mr. Wynter I-"

"Please, dude. Call me Mort. Or Morty, whatever gets your gears grinding." He's grinning, but he's also prepping a tube and syringe, and just looking at it is making you want to throw up. Never mind the corpse with an unrecognizable face laying on the table between you.

"Um...Mort. You know why I'm here, right?"

"Yeah, you want to hear my story, I get it. You don't mind if I talk while I work do ya? These guys need to be prepped by tomorrow and- are you gonna be okay? You're looking kind of green around the gills there?"

"I'm fine...just-"

"Never been this close to a body before, huh?" He looks sympathetic but you doubt it. For some reason you doubt his ability to be something so...human. Especially not when there's a wall of selfies with corpses at your back. All you want is for this to be over, and to get the fuck out of here.

"Just start from the beginning, alright?"

"Alright, but it's a long story. So I hope you're not planning on going anywhere for a while."

"Just go."

He's working as he talks, but to your relief he's at least talking and for the moment you can forget the bodies laying around you. Car accident victims with their faces a mess and their bodies shattered. Of course your eyes drift down anyway to watch as he begins the draining process, unable to look away even as the body's fluids seep out of the plastic tubing and down a drain. It makes your stomach flip and turn as his voice washes over you; enthusiastic, but almost mechanical. Like this is something he's shared a thousand times before, and its become little more then a script to recite.

I wasn't born. Not in the strict human sense of the word. What I am, my nature, it kind of doesn't allow for that kind of thing, you know? I mean sure there was a moment where I wasn't there and then a moment where I was, but I didn't have a mother. Or if I did she or he or it, wasn't around when I finally realized that I could...well, realize things. There were others that came before me of course, you might recognize them. The oldest was another pair of twins; Light and Darkness, then came Life and her twin Time, then my sister and I.

You're probably wondering; How could you have a twin if you're not born? How do you know? Well the answer to that is kind of simple really. You just did. And if you didn't, you had the older ones to tell you that's how it was. According to Life we flared into existence one instant after the other. We always came in pairs, with centuries between each match.

He laughs and you don't really understand why. But it's a sound that sends chills through your entire body, like you've just taken a dive in ice water.

A little on the bubbly side for my taste, but I could handle that-

Anyway, I'm off track here. Which I shouldn't because this can stretch on for centuries, and I doubt you have that much free time.

Basically it was six of us, three pairs, but the focus of all this is my sister and I. Like I said we were twins, except we weren't. It's just the easiest way to describe us in human terms. Technically we aren't related or anything, we're just there. Concepts, constructs, that help the world and the universe run. Fate's purpose was to write out the stories of each and every being in existence. She knows literally everything, and if you were to go to her 'room' you'd find that it was filled to the brim with books and strings that crisscrossed all over the place. An organized mess with her in the center of it, blank stare focused off into the distance. I asked her once what that was like the whole 'seeing everything and anything thing' and the way she explained it was like having an infinite number of televisions playing in your head at once. Crazy right?

I do not envy her in the least...but then I guess it's something you get used to. I mean it's not like my version of keeping track of things is any less fucked up.

He pauses then, and takes a minute to turn around, arms reaching behind him to tug up his shirt. The process makes you pause in confusion, but then your eyes widen and you feel yourself gasp. It takes a moment but clear skin seems to shimmer away and suddenly every inch of him is covered in bloody scratches..and they're moving. You know for a fact that they're words; names...but they heal and reappear far too quickly for you to even begin to read them.

"Neat, huh? I think it's just our world...but I might be wrong. I feel like the longer I stay here, the more names from this place start to pop up." He's shrugging and the scratches vanish, leaving his skin clear ( at least to your eyes ), before he lets his shirt drop back down. "Doesn't hurt by the way, in case you're wondering."

A gulp, and you find yourself asking "A-at all?"

He shrugs, fixing the tube to start pumping the body with formaldehyde. "I think it did at first...but I don't remember. It was fuck-all-forever ago." Stepping away from the body, he moved to the second table, waving that you follow. "That one's gonna take a few minutes so." He'd set up some bottles with what appeared to be cleaning supplies, hands moving deftly over the man's limbs. Lifting the arms and wiggling the fingers.

"Gotta check for rigor....anyway, where was I?"

"Uh..." it was a struggle to keep the queasiness building in your stomach. Especially with this one. Arguably the worst of the three. "Your s-sister..."

"AH, yeah."

It's just the way it was.

From the get-go we had pretty much one job and we sort of just dove right on into it. I mean it was our entire reason for existing, you know? So it was kind of a given that from nanosecond one we were doing what we were programmed to do. Fate would write out the stories, when someone was supposed to die I'd get the name. ( By the way I mean real honest, to goodness Death. Not 'oh look I kind of sort of died but hallelujah I didn't' ) Like, when I get your name, that's it. Unless Life pulls some divine move bullshit and calls a God or something to intervene, your soul is fucking mine.

I'd like to think she had a little more respect for me then that. Normally she'll give me a heads up if she doesn't want someone to die ( mostly so I can intervene with Fate cause I mean my sister DOES NOT enjoy outsiders fucking with her shit. ).

You should count yourself lucky by the way, not everyone gets a backstage tour of this shit. It happens in another plane of existence. One, people like you can't even dream of. It's broken into sectors and my personal space is kind of like this void where I can go anyplace I want. I just have to think it.

Makes getting souls and tossing them off to their respective resting grounds a hell of a lot easier. Just gotta think it, and boom I'm there. Easy as popping an eye out.

Fate and I, this is what we did. Non-stop. For billions of years. Since the first spark of life it was me and her; writing and reaping. Over and over and over again. You know how fucking boring that is? I mean lets just put aside that we're basically immortal concepts and not actually people, for like five seconds. Can you imagine doing the same damn thing non-stop; morning, noon, and night. From the instant you crawl out from between your mom's legs to the moment you fall ass first into your coffin? It could drive you mad, and you know, I think it kind of did. Well...not me, but Fate? God damn, you should have seen her. Everything that happens next? It was all her idea, but you're not gonna see me complaining. Fuck that. Those were some of the funnest years of my life, and I'm going to tell you exactly why..cause buddy, it's got about everything to do with how I got here.

He's stopped, seemingly to catch his breath, but really he's gesturing animatedly at the body between you two. "Holy shit dude, this guy's ribs are poking out. Come see!"

"Um...no."

"Aww, c'mon it's just like the movies. Here, look." Before you can stop him, he's yanking you forward and your eyes widen because you can't help but stare at where he's pointing. The stark white bones jutting free of the man's side. It makes you want to throw up, and you gag, trying to pull free. Despite the scrawniness of his size; the thin arms, there's a power hidden behind those muscles. Strength that keeps you pinned as one gloved black hand pokes curiously at one of the bones. He's got his face as close as possible too, hovering over the wound, and inches from yours with that same grin. "Neat, huh?"

The urge to throw up is growing stronger now.

He seems to finally sense your discomfort and his hold loosens and drops away. Finally allowing you to shoot back away from the table until you're pressed against the far wall. Gasping for air; and unfortunately finding nothing but the stale air of the morgue. The sharp smells of copper, formaldehyde, and death.

You need a distraction, fast. "C-can you bring people back?" It's the first question that pops into your head. Your eyes by this point are rolling around in your skull in an attempt to look at anything BUT the dead man on the table. Though you finally settle back on him, just in time to see him offering a thumbs up and smile at his phone as he takes another picture for his wall.

"Me? Nah." He snorts, "I told you there was a Life right? Only she can do that shit...now what I can do." His nose crinkles, and he tilts his head "I can keep you from dying. For however long as I want, well, maybe not forever. There is an order to this shit and eventually I have to listen to it." He shrugged "That's when the cuts really hurt you know, when I keep someone kicking even though their name showed up? It hurts like a bitch. It's different when Life does it, cause you're getting a second chance, but me? Nah if I keep you around it's still part of your first. So your name is going to just keep slicing itself in till I get the message." he snorts "Course you might not want me to. I can keep you alive forever but I can't heal you so lets say you jumped off a fucking building; splat. Can you imagine being alive, like that? Would you want to be?" It sounds horrifying and you find yourself shaking your head in horror. "Didn't think so."

He shrugs, spinning a pair of scissors on his fingers. "'Course it's not all bad. I can also keep you alive long enough for someone or something else to intervene? I mean lets say I stabbed you in the heart right here and now. Imagine if the doctors had literally all the time in the world to fix you? They could patch you up, hell they could even take your heart out and wait for a new one to show up months later and you'd still be fine." he grins. "It's relative really. The order's there and I have to follow it...but people can intervene, people 'change it up' or 'cut in first'."

"I-I don't think I follow."

"That's alright, that's what the next part of the story is for."

I mean...I'm not evil either, it's kind of morally grey actually. I have no idea what I am, but anyway...

The games started pretty recently all things considered. You'd expect this whole fiasco to be my idea, but it wasn't. Like I said, doing the same thing over and over again it drove you mad. And if anyone one of us deserved to go mad it was Fate. I mean she had the whole 'infinite tvs in her head' thing going for her. It's no surprise when one day she kind of just yanked the floor out from under me.

I was actually pretty goddamn pissed at first. There's not a lot to get excited about in my line of work, but occasionally. Occasionally I'd get something big. Like war or tragedy big. Sometimes you people will fucking screw each other up so bad and the death count can just blow your mind. Other times it's some freak accident or some natural event. Either way, the big stuff. God that gets my jollies cooking if you know what I mean.

The stream of death on a daily basis is constant. Always flowing, never stopping. It's like the blood flow of the universe. People's souls are moving in and out like air through cells. It's beautiful ( if you're not forced to look at it forever. ), like a work of art. Sometimes though, there's a big rush of it. It's like when your beautiful mountain view is broken by a sudden avalanche. It's still fucking beautiful, it's nature, but it's beautiful in a different kind of way. You feel me? A chaotic, heart pounding kind of way.

That's what was about to happen. A big chaotic something.

A bridge collapse to be exact.

I'd been planning this for months, eagerly anticipating what was going to be the biggest flash point tragedy I'd seen in ages. I was fucking psyched for all the souls that were about to come flooding through my door. Literally the highlight of my existence in that moment as depressing as that might sound to you, I'd like to take this moment to remind you that people dying is how I exist. There's no beating around the bush or lying about it. I live and thrive because people are dying, and it's not my fault I get my jollies from big tragedies. So don't go thinking I'm the one that caused this to begin with. I don't cause Death, I don't kill things. I collect what dies. Simple. Easy. This bridge was going to collapse and all I had to do was stand back and watch it all happen.

That's when Fate did her thing. You see Fate, her job is basically nothing. It's watching, witnessing, writing. She isn't supposed to intervene like Life might, she can't even grant things like deja-vu like Time can do sometimes if he's feeling especially douchy one morning. Fate basically drew the short straw in our little relationship. Which is I guess why she just snapped. I honestly think that she did what she did just so she could see if she could actually do it or not, at least that first time. She wanted to be something more then a bystander is what I'm guessing, and was I mad that her little ego trip ruined the greatest day of my life? Yeah a little bit.

See she shoved what she could see, into one of the bridge victims. He saw and lived his fate down to the very last second. He saw every moment, felt the spray of blood on his face, probably even felt his damn soul leaving his body. Only to weak up like it was all a very vivid, very 'about-to-fucking-happen' dream. Of course dream boy shit his pants and freaked out. Now, he didn't manage to save EVERYONE on the bridge, but he saved six people. Six people living on borrowed time, six names that suddenly hurt.

You see, I'd never known you could skip a name. Before only Life did it, and like I said there were no consequences when that happened. This time? Nah, this time I felt it. I felt those names digging into my skin like whatever divine force held the pen was pissed at me. Not Fate. Me.

I had never felt pain before. It was kind of awkward.

Here he was stopping again, focusing on his work, or gathering his thoughts. This part of story seemed to take more concentration seeing as his demeanor had changed somewhat. He was still at ease in his surroundings but there was a more focused expression on his features. Eyes darkening as he finished prepping the last body and gestured for you to follow him back to the first. "I could never understand my sister. You'd think that she did all of that because she cares. I mean...why else give the poor kid a premonition? Why even bother trying to save anyone's life if you didn't actually want them to be saved?" A huff of breath, that frosted in the air in front of him as though you both stood out in the snow. Morgues and funeral parlors were kept cold, naturally to preserve the dead, but not that cold. That was him.

"She didn't care?"

He had face close to the first victim, and he glanced up to shake his head. "Not one fucking bit." A chuckle "She's not evil, so don't go thinking that either. None of is is good or evil. We're...grey. We're not supposed to feel anything, I don't think...but we do." His head tilted slightly "I used to call it a 'backfire bond'. It was like we were meant to be connected to humanity. To help it run, but something went wrong. The connection was supposed to go only one way and I guess at first it did. Only the more people there were, the bigger the flood of information going through the bond.Until the only way for it to stay open was for all of that to go both ways." He straightened, hands falling to his hips, "Does all of this make sense?"

"Not really."

"Figures. Well, the only other way I can explain it is like a doorway. If you have one of those double doors and the crowd is small you can just open one and everything is fine. The people coming through are usually coming one or two at a time on a good day and it's easy to keep track of everything. But then some huge nightclub or something opens upstairs and suddenly that one door is being flooded with people trying to come in ten or twenty at a time. Not just that but there's people wanting to go out and you're standing there trying to keep track of it all. Eventually you need to open the other door to ease the flow. Except that second door was closed because it actually cut through your home or your office...so now this surge of people is walking through your personal space." He shrugged "You don't want them too but they're there, and when they come through bits and pieces of them get left behind. Clothing, accessories, the stink of their perfume. It lingers inside of your personal space like a disease you can't get rid of."

"I think I get it now...you were absorbing parts of humanity? Parts of us?"

"Bingo."

"And your sister...she.."

"She absorbed a lot more then the rest of us. Enough to make her a little cruel. She's a total sweetheart of course, but something inside of her- nah, something in there is broken. Like I said before she gave the first vision just to see if she could. She knew it'd do nothing, except maybe torture those people, but she did it anyway. Just to see."

"What about you, what'd you do?"

He grins.

Anyway, I stormed to where Fate was and I yelled. After all this was a mess that had repercussions all over the place. The list on my skin was practically having seizures. Simply because as long as these people were alive they were interacting with other people, changing events that they shouldn't have even existed for in the first place. Because of them certain events that should have happened didn't. And I couldn't just snap my fingers and make them all simultaneously drop dead of an aneurysm. I'm Death but up until then all I did was collect souls, I didn't physically interact with the world to actually cause anything.

Fate didn't make it any better. She was pleased with what she'd done. Like the cat that swallowed ten canaries she just kept taunting me. Saying that she was better, that she'd bested me. Laughing because now I was stuck, and she could beat me whenever she wanted. All she had to do was show someone what was coming, and that was it. "Let Fate Decide" She told me, and grinned like a cracked piece of glass right at me. Fate had decided. She'd decided to be a pain in my ass.

Well two could play at that game.

I decided that if she could interfere then so could I. It took a little practice but I managed, following her little 'chosen ones' and playing with the world around them until I caused a brutal enough accident. Sometimes they caught on. ( Even then I had to go in order ) and sometimes they even managed to avoid me more then once. Hell there was even one time where Fate just kept giving the girl visions. Over and over and over again every time she noticed me getting ready to do what I was doing.

Have you ever heard of the game mousetrap? It's a personal favorite. A board game where you have this confusing setup in the middle of the board and everything's connected. When the mousetrap is set off one thing causes another until the cage comes down over whatever player gets caught.

That's what I did.

Turn on a forklift and taking the break off so it starts moving on its own. Directing it towards a shelf full of hardware supplies, knocking the supplies down so that one of the wooden logs bursts the bag on an air compressor making it explode. That explodes knocks some dude ten feet into a wall of spikes or a nail gun with the safety off. Brutal, but effective. If no one stops it or intervenes I win. I get the soul that I needed to get and fix my list. Except, that kind of power...it gets to your head. It makes you want more, and eventually we stopped seeing it as our job. We were seeing it as a game.

It didn't matter that we were playing with people's lives. That we were making humans who were set to die especially brutal and traumatic deaths to begin with, miserable. All that mattered is that Fate could give them premonitions and I could get them killed. It became a race; could I get rid of all of them before they caught on, could I kill the last batch before she started the new one. Of course I was limited by a strict order and she wasn't so there was a bit of an unfair advantage. I could kill people but if they escaped my trap I'd have to swing back for them later, and if Fate started a new group I couldn't get to the survivors of the last one until I'd run through the new people.

Life thought it was disgusting.

Oh but it was so much fun.

We did our damage, and sometimes I even gave them hints myself. Like...did you know that if you're next but you kill someone who wasn't supposed to die. You switch places on the list? Technically since these people weren't supposed to exist in the first place, anyone they killed could arguably be classified as 'not supposed to die'. I told them that, I made sure that they knew...gave them hope. Then I made sure they picked people who didn't have particularly long to live anyway. Nice right?

You look horrified and he can see that, but he just smiles at you. Fingers working to stitch up the broken face of the corpse in front of him. Fixing the damage of whatever accident got him him. "We were cruel sons a bitches, that's obvious...but we were bored. We couldn't help it. I think, in the end, that's how the darkness found us."

Here you perk up. Sensing the closing of the story.

"We're supposed to be background noise, but all this playing with people's lives meant that we had our hands buried deep into the world. We were leaving our little side dimensions and spending more and more time among people. Giving them visions, fucking them over. Fucking each other over. Too busy to notice that something was wrong. There was a taint in the air...a sour taste like rotting corpses." His nose crinkled, and it's almost ironic. "Sis and I, by rights we should have been the first to notice that something was killing people. Something big was destroying the world...wiping out Fates and flooding me with souls, but we didn't."

He sighs, and stands back, hands stuffing in his pockets "When the Darkness was completely here I didn't notice until I finally went back to my dimension. The place was packed. Full to the brim and growing fuller...straining with the influx of death and destruction that was taking place and it was only getting worse. I tried, I really did try to fix the damage. To start the souls moving on but...to where?" His head shook and there might have actually been sadness there. "The places they should have been going weren't fairing any better; heaven, hell, hades, Elysium, purgatory. Didn't matter, they were all feeling it. It was Chaos."

"That bad?"

He nods, and his shoulder's slumped "Fate was freaking out, the tvs in her head were shutting down or something, I guess. But I couldn't even be bothered. All those souls were in my domain and I could hear them screaming, could hear them crying. They wanted to go somewhere, but I had nowhere to put them. You'd think it wouldn't phase me much but that was my purpose it was fundamental part of who and what I am. What good is a Grim Reaper, Death, if he can't traffic souls to their final destination? Worthless that's what."

"That's not-"

"Oh believe me it is. I broke down. I couldn't do it, couldn't even begin to handle it. I tried but it was too much, so I ditched. Didn't even tell Fate where I was going. I just...had to get out of there. Had to go back to the world and breathe. I pretended to be human for a little while, that's how I found out about the portal. I didn't think I'd ever cross. My duty, my job is the animated world. I'm connected to it...stitched into it. I didn't even think I could cross."

You're watching him closer now, the changes in his expression. A hundred different emotions flicker there in the course of all this. Too fast for you to really read any of them. "But you can? Or you could..."

"Yep. I decided to give it a shot. Who knows, maybe if I'm not there people can't die anymore. right? Worth a shot. I took the dive, and now I'm here. Gotta say...being an actual real human. It's a fucking trip." He laughs now, and a bright grin spreads across his face "I knew about all this stuff but to actually get a chance to play with any of it? To watch movies, play video games, take pictures? EAT FOOD. It's great. Better even. No wonder nobody wants to die...fuck if I had all this, I'd want to live forever too." The grin widens, almost maniacal. "Good thing I can, right?"

You shake a little at the look on his face, and then he's suddenly moving around the table to stand next to you. Wrapping an arm around you and pulling you close before holding his camera phone up over your heads. "It's been nice meeting you kid, loved the chat but I gotta head back to work." There's a flash as he grins at the camera before turning and laying a sloppy kiss on your cheek. "Tell your mom to cut back on those candies she likes, and stay away from public transportation." You're left in minor shock as he saunters back to his side of the table, tucking his phone in his back pocket. "I better not find you using any of that in a book without permission, remember I can find you." A teasing wink.

Too bad you didn't see it that way. You were practically running out of there once you'd finished. Desperate to escape the bodies and the chill he'd settled into your bones.

Don't take the bus?

Why?