The Wandering Spirit | Underworld Office

A History With Mortuaries

The funeral home has always looked creepy at night. However, when you've been a ghost for a long time, it loses whatever spookiness it may have had. Though it was highly unlikely that Eugene would end up here (and more likely to be at the other mortuary which was at a hospital), you'd never know what might've happened.

Normally, she would've just phased through walls until she found the mortuary but a certain set of siblings put a halt to that plan. That's why River merely phased through the doors and waited for one of them to appear.

"Do I have to wait a day or what?" River asked aloud the establishment. Not long after, a ghost appeared out of thin air.

"River! It's been so long since we've seen each other! How are you?" the ghost greeted lightheartedly and shook her hand.

"I'm fine, Benson, thanks. How about you?" she politely asked Benson.

"I've been doing swell, thank you! What can I do for you?" he asked.

"I'm looking for a body. Mind helping a ghost out?" River requested.

"Absolutely! Follow me, the corpses are this way!" he flew towards the lone hallway in the building.

Benson had blonde hair and a small beard and was relatively tall, standing at 6'2. He wore a black trench coat with a gray tie, black slacks, black shoes, and had a black fedora on his head. The bottom of a baton can be seen in his left pocket and his hands were pitch black.

The ghost and his twin brother had been unofficially working at the mortuary for decades now. Whenever a ghost was looking for their own corpse or a corpse of another, they were there to guide help them find it and find out how they died.

"So how's work at the Underworld Office? Were you guys able to replace Mason?" Benson tried engaging in small talk.

"Yeah, we got a kid named Hayden hired a few years ago." River also engaged in small talk.

"Child labor? What's next, toddler labor?" he chuckled at his own joke.

"Haha... Funny story, he's actually a baby. Like an actual baby." she awkwardly said.

"HeH?! What? Goodness me, were his parents neglectful or something?" asked Benson, confused about the ghost child.

"He died of cancer, actually... I don't think he knows the weight of his situation." River recalled Hayden severely downplaying his own death, only saying that it hurt a little but the needles were scary.

"Poor thing, and I thought Barry died so young." he said in a pitying tone.

"Let's continue this conversation some other time." River hastily said as they were now in the mortuary.

"Oh, right. You need a dead body. Okay, do you have their name?" he asked, looking at documents left over at a table.

"Their name is Eugene. Pretty short kid, about 11-15 years old, has brown hair, small build." she described Eugene as Benson hummed in acknowledgement.

"Based on his name, I'm assuming he's a boy. Am I right?" asked Benson as he started phasing through mortuary chambers.

"Non-binary." River stated firmly.

"Pardon me for not knowing how the world functions today but I have absolutely no idea what that means. Mind educating me?" he asked as he peeked out of a chamber for a second.

"They're neither male nor female. They're somewhere in between." she answered.

"I am still extremely confused but I won't press the matter further for the sake of my sanity." Benson went back in the chambers.