Talking to Ghosts
[an Omori epilogue immediately following the good end/"true" end. 12.8k words, Sunny POV, literally rife with spoilers so like. watch urself]
Sunny’s new room is big and empty, like the rest of the house. It’s clean and white and so new he can still smell the sawdust, even though Mom hired cleaners to scrub away every last speck. The cleaners were very thorough. There aren’t any cobwebs in any of the corners, not even the little crannies that most people miss, like behind the sink or under the bed. They even folded the hand towels in the bathroom into little swans.
If only they could do something about all the ghosts.
Sunny didn’t know what to expect after everything that happened, with Headspace and Basil and Omori and—with Mari. It would be nice to think that everything would be better now. But Sunny is quiet, not stupid. He knows his Something isn’t really gone, it’s only gone inside him: behind his eyepatch, under his tongue. He knows that it was always only him. He cut Mewo open, till she was only mush. And he killed Mari.
So he's not surprised to find her waiting for him, swinging from one of the exposed beams in the vaulted ceiling of his clean new room.
She’s not all swollen and broken like she was after he killed her. It’s just Mari, dangling like a windchime and spinning very slowly in the draft. If the rope were tied around her waist, it might look like she was opening for a troupe of acrobats. But it isn’t. It’s around her neck.
Sunny looks at her gravely, waits for her to say something. Of the two of them, Mari was the one that spoke, filling the silence that swelled around him. But she doesn’t. She only smiles at him, sadly.
“Are you stupid?” a voice jeers from his bed. Omori. That is a surprise. Sunny hadn’t expected to see him again. “She’s dead, stupid. Dead girls can’t talk.”
Sunny is pretty sure they can, actually. But he doesn’t feel like arguing. The drive from Faraway to the Glittering Harbor wasn’t long, but sitting next to his mom made it feel a lot longer. And his eye aches horribly. He needs to sleep. In large mammals, the majority of tissue healing takes place when you’re asleep. He shakes his head at Omori and shuffles past him, into bed.
The bed is new, too. Most of the furniture is. Maybe Mom thinks that if she replaces all the tables and chairs and even the walls and the roof and the floor, it won’t be the house where Mari died anymore. But it doesn’t seem to have worked. After pulling into the driveway, Mom only carried his suitcase as far as the porch before she hugged him hard and smiled a bright, brittle smile.
“Well!” she said. “Isn’t this nice! A fresh start! I’ll have to give you the tour later, they need me at the office an hour ago but, well, I expect you can find your own way from here. Your room is the biggest one, at the top of the stairs. It’ll be nice for you to have a little more space.”
Sunny stared at her. He'd had plenty of space, miles and miles of it. Space is the only thing he never needed more of.
“Love you, sweetie!” she told the air above his head, and then she was off.
So the new house probably won’t be so different, even though Sunny is, and so is everything else. Mom will still be gone, and Mari will still be dead, and Sunny will still be alone, but with plenty of space.
And the ghosts. They’re the same, too. Except now he knows more about them, and he’s not as scared to look.
He looks at Mari now, curiously. She’s still spinning in place, three-quarters left, three-quarters right, like she’s caught in an eddy of some ectoplasmic stream. Maybe she is. Air is always moving, just like water. Maybe there’s a river running clear through his room, and if he caulks the right crack in the walls, it’ll fountain straight up in a geyser strong enough to lift his feet off the ground and flip Mari the other way around, so she’s falling up into the rafters. Would she like that? Probably not. Sunny wouldn’t.
He’s tired, so he lays down on his new bed, which is clean and white and a little softer than he likes. But he doesn’t sleep. Maybe he can’t. Maybe when he killed Omori, he killed the part of him that sleeps and dreams, and now he’ll never sleep again. How long can humans go without sleep until it kills you? Hero would probably know, but Hero is—
Sunny doesn’t want to think about Hero.
When Sunny told his friends the truth, Hero was so, so quiet. They all were, even Aubrey and Kel, which was much worse than if they’d shouted. But Hero was quiet with his whole body. He’d smiled in relief when he saw Sunny walk in, and the whole time Sunny talked, his smile didn’t fade, it just—hardened. His eyes were still creased but there was no light inside. He looked like he was carved from glass and the smallest flinch would shatter him. Sunny had wondered, only briefly, if Hero was going to kill him. It was a hopeful thought. Mari would be disappointed if he didn’t persist, but she couldn’t be upset with him for being murdered.
“You’re so silly, Sunny,” Mari tells him fondly, from the rafters. “My silly little brother. Of course I would.”
Yes. Of course. He was only being silly.
Sunny closes his eye, but he doesn’t sleep.
###
Then everything is different and the same.
The water comes out of the taps differently, in a fizzy white cylinder instead of a gloopy uneven stream. It pours out of the showerhead different, too, in thin little lines that prick too hard at his skin. Sunny imagines that it’s the first wave of an ongoing invasion, the stinging tendrils of a much larger hivemind. With enough time, water can wear stone away to nothing. The skin of a few flimsy humans would be easy pickings. And the Hive Mother is old, so old that she no longer sees the years flashing by. To her, the whole of the Glittering Harbor is just another little flicker of light. Her foot soldiers advance and the skin on Sunny’s back falls away cleanly, baring dripping meat and stark white bone. She yawns and the city stands empty, apartments stiff and silent like toy soldiers. She blinks a thousand onyx eyes and the harbor’s boiled dry, the skyline only dust. A city for ghosts.
Also, the ceilings are higher. And Sunny can see the ocean from his bedroom window. He likes to watch the fog crawl over the Glittering Harbor is just another little flicker of light. Her foot soldiers advance and the skin on Sunny’s back falls away cleanly, baring dripping meat and starkC before the sun banishes whit20one.ns and the city stands empty, apartments stiff and silent likeack to the sea.
Here’s what’s the same: The house is big and white and empty. Mom doesn’t come home. She doesn’t make him go to school, so he doesn’t. His sister is dead. Sunny is alone.
###
A package arrives. It’s the new eyepatch he ordered. Sunny has a dozen already but he doesn’t like the way they feel on his skin. The one he wore in Headspace was made of something even softer than silk, like the brush of a cobweb on your cheek. But he hasn’t found anyone who makes eyepatches out of cobwebs.
His depth perception is dead and gone, so Sunny has to face the bathroom mirror to find the clasp on the one he’s wearing now, smooth black leather painted with an enormous sea-green cat’s eye. He closes his good eye as soon as he’s got it, but he isn’t fast enough. He’s already seen Omori leering from the empty socket.
“You look ridiculous,” Omori informs him. “Like a little kid playing dress-up. What do you want to cover it up for, anyway? It's cool. It’s the only thing about you that’s cool. You should fill it with fake blood and scare people.”
Sunny frowns at him. Omori knows why he covers it. The empty socket is pink and raw and there’s always milky fluid seeping out of it. It makes people uncomfortable.
“Sounds like a them problem,” Omori sniffs. “It’s not like anyone ever sees you, anyway.”
Well. Yes. But still.
Sunny doesn’t like the new eyepatch. He likes how it looks, a soft heather gray embroidered with tiny bell-shaped flowers that remind him of— It doesn’t matter who they remind him of. But he doesn’t like how it feels. The strap bunches his hair so it tickles his ear, a constant prickling itch. He fantasizes idly about cutting it off.
“The hair, or the ear?” Omori snickers.
Does it matter?
He’s distracted by a sharp little chirp from his laptop, sitting open in his bedroom. That’s different, too. In his new house, his laptop is always chirping. Kel insisted on setting Sunny up with an AIM account before he left town. Then Kel insisted a few more times, at higher and higher volumes until Sunny went limp and let him do what he wanted.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to hear from his friends. He always wants to hear from his friends. He just doesn’t want to not-hear from his friends while knowing that he could, if they actually wanted him to. Which they don’t. Why would they? He killed someone they loved.
As usual, the exception is Kel, who never acts the way he should. Kel messages Sunny every week about little things, what he had for dinner or what he got in trouble for at school. Sunny never answers. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.
(If Mari were here, she could tell him what to say. She always knew when someone said something that meant something else. She could listen to the silence between each word and sift out every secret meaning, all the things the speaker didn’t want to say but still expected you to hear. But Sunny killed Mari, and now all her knowledge is locked away forever. So it’s safer just to say nothing.)
Sunny doesn’t want to look at all the messages he hasn’t answered, so he turns on the TV. In the new house, the TV doesn’t only play static. It plays weather alerts and local news and procedurals where angry men kill other angry men. Mostly, though, it plays commercials. Today it’s an ad for something to do with cooking, or possibly cleaning. One type of towel is clearly much more absorbent than the other. Mari holds out one in each hand and smiles at him, sadly.
“But aren’t you lonely?”
Sunny gives her a dirty look. Of course he’s lonely.
“You don’t have to be alone, you know,” she tells him kindly. “There are dozens of hot singles in your area, just waiting for you to—”
Sunny turns off the TV.
“God, you are such a loser,” Omori sneers. “You'd think a murderer would at least be interesting. Is this really what you were fighting for? If you were just going to sit in your room and stare at a wall like some loser shut-in freak, you should’ve let me win. At least I would have been interesting.”
Sunny’s mouth thins. He can’t pretend he hasn’t thought about it. But it doesn’t matter, and even if it does, it’s too late. Sunny is still here, and Omori is just another ghost.
He wanders reluctantly toward his laptop. Sixteen unread messages.
[kelkelkel]: sunny!!!!!! tell aubrey to stop bullying me!!!
[kelkelkel]: every time i go outside there's someone from her gang out there with their arms held out like a bunch of freaky scarecrows!!!!
[kelkelkel]: sometimes it’s ALL OF THEM
[kelkelkel]: and they don't even say anything!!!!
[kelkelkel]: and anytme i ask her abt it she just says their ESTABLISHING DOMINANCE
[kelkelkel]: jokes on her cuz tomorrow im leaving thru the window >:]
[kelkelkel]: i broke my ankle!!!!!!!!
[kelkelkel]: cast.jpg
[kelkelkel]: now were twins
[kelkelkel]: bandage bros 4 lyyyyfffeee 🤜🏽🤛🏻
[kelkelkel]: math test today🤢🤢🤢do u think basil would tutor me if i get him a new plant?
[kelkelkel]: TRICK QUESTION, t he answer is DEFINITLY and he’ll do it for free
[kelkelkel]: don’t wrry bro im no mooch ;) ill bring the flower boy a flower
[kelkelkel]: suunnnnnyyyyyyyyy
[kelkelkel]: i told aubrey my secret plan for acing trig nad she LAUGHED AT ME and she won’t even tell me why!!!!!!!
[kelkelkel]: ur the only one who appreciates my jenius >:(
###
Sunny’s hands squeeze to fists, twisted in the fabric of his shirt. Warmth builds in his belly till he burns with it, limbs jittering and sparking. It’s always been like this, with Kel, because Kel has always been like this: too big, too loud, too bright. Just thinking about him almost hurts.
It was the same at the hospital, when Sunny told his friends the worst thing they would ever hear. Kel’s face fell and his smile died, but his glow never dimmed. His hands danced like two fish but his eyes stayed fixed on Hero’s face, long legs coiled like springs, synapses readying to— To what? To fight his brother? To throw himself between them? Sunny doesn’t know, because Hero didn’t move. Statues never stood so still.
Sunny becomes aware that his hands are shaking. He forces himself to take a breath. He doesn’t want to think about Hero right now, or any of the others either. Sunny isn’t hiding anymore, but it’s not lying to need a break sometimes, surely. When the other option is to let it break you.
He closes his laptop.
“Told you,” Omori jeers, singsong and mocking. “Same as you always were. Can’t do anything without your big sister, and you took care of that, didn’t you? Now you’ll be useless forever.”
Sunny scowls. He already knows that. It doesn’t mean he wants to hear it.
[Read the rest here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43929270]