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2nd Edition, June 2008 Grim Fandango is copyrighted by LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC. Portions of this novelization are original to the author. More than likely the game’s copyright covers those as well although it’s unlikely anyone would ever care to debate the point. 1 Grim Fandango enter Dying Everything began when I died. Life doesn’t count. I fouled that up good but death gave me a second chance I never expected, so this is where I’m beginning: Judgment Day. I got one hell of a shock after I died. When the reaper handling my case brought me in, he told me that I had to remain in the Land of the Dead indefinitely. Since I hadn’t expected there to even be a Land of the Dead, I needed an explanation for what was happening and why. But I didn’t get one, not really. Not one that made much sense at first. He told me that I had a debt to work off, a moral debt. I asked him what that meant. “Mr. Calavera…” the reaper began. “Call me Manny,” I said. The reaper didn’t smile, of course, not with an inflexible bone face; but I sensed, somehow, that he would have been smiling if he could. “Manny,” he said. “With a record like yours, you won’t be allowed to continue on to the Ninth Underworld for some time. You’re debt will have to paid off.” I noticed he hadn’t really answered the question. “Suppose I walk or hitch a lift? Forget the train or bus or whatever.” “Manny, listen to me: do not try to leave town. Not ever. That would be the absolute worst thing you could ever hope do.” I fumbled with my fifth cigarette since I was brought it in, in a pointless attempt to cover up the shaking of my fleshless hands. “So, are you telling me there are worse things than being stuck in a world of the walking dead?” “Yes, Manny,” he assured me. “Much worse.” I took a deep drag on the cigarette. Then another. “So…about this debt, whatever it is…how do I pay it off?” “You will work for the DOD. As a reaper.” “¡Híjole!” I don’t have any trouble admitting that they scared the hell out of me: the reaper who handled my case, the trainers, everybody involved in the whole situation. I was shit-my-pants terrified. Once the reaper was finished with me I was taken to the DOD training facility and locked down. They put me in this tiny, windowless room (maybe even doorless, too, after it had been shut) and left me for I don’t know how long. It seemed like years but it was probably less than an hour. Then a trainer came in and outlined just what my fate was to be in the most brutal terms possible—for the state of mind I was in, anyway. Maybe she was just being factual, I don’t know. She told me stories about souls that remained in the Land of the Dead for centuries, even millennia. And about those who never left. I was already feeling restless, ready to move on; the thought of staying was torture all by itself, never mind the horror stories. By the time the practical part of the training began, I was most definitely ready to be a good boy. So I started training to be a reaper. They issued me a scythe, a hooded black robe and abject humiliation. A reaper is supposed to be imposing. Sometimes a soul has to be overawed, almost spiritually bullied, before it will follow you out of the Land of the Living; but with these stumpy legs of mine I don’t make much of an impression, so the DOD gave me these things to wear that added almost a foot to my height. It took about half an hour of falling on my coccyx before I could even cross 2 the room. I wouldn’t have minded so much except it was part of my official training and I did those thirty minutes of pratfalls in front of more than a dozen other trainees. But I put up with it, making out like they were laughing with me rather than at me. Having decided it was finally time to play by the rules, I found I could accept being humiliated. After the training was finished they assigned me an office in the Bureau of Acquisitions and a driver. “Why do I need a driver?” I had asked the trainer. “If the company let you guys drive,” he said, “you’d all be AWOL in ten minutes.” “Got me there,” one of the other trainees cracked. My driver turned out to be a large demon with fuzzy blue skin that was about five sizes too big for him. He looked like nothing so much as a six-foot-tall Shar-Pei. For some reason his name was Endive. And didn’t the demon part take some getting used to. “There are two basic kinds of demons,” our trainer told us. “Those who help souls and those who want to rip you apart.” “And how do you tell the difference?” one guy asked. “Before the chiropractic begins, I mean.” The trainer went ‘hmpf’ and said, “You won’t have to worry about that for a long time. All of the demons here in El Marrow are the friendly sort. But if any of you step even one inch beyond the city limits you will, I guarantee, shortly become a nest for an acid-spewing bat. Or maybe something unpleasant will happen to you.” Endive was definitely the friendly sort. Quiet, very respectful, and thoroughly unhelpful. “Hey, carnal, let’s go for a ride,” I’d say. “Sorry, sir,” Endive would reply, “but the car’s having it’s tires rotated.” And he kept on like that. If I didn’t want the car for official purposes it was getting a lube job or the timing belt was being adjusted, or something. Eventually, I caught on. “You’re just making excuses, aren’t you?” I accused him one day after he fed me another slice of bullshit. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir; but the company won’t let me drive you anywhere except to and from the Land of the Living. If I break the rules I could lose my job.” He said that like it was the worst thing in the world. “Why didn’t you just say so at the beginning?” “I don’t like to disobey, sir.” “But you can lie, apparently.” “Yes, sir, but please don’t tell anyone.” I hid my phantom smile by taking a puff on my cigarette. “Still, you can drive whenever you feel like it if I’m not in the car, right?” I’d seen Endive tearing around the streets of El Marrow and he knew it. “Oh, yes, sir. I have to drive.” “Have to?” “I’m an elemental, sir, a spirit of the land. It’s what I was made for.” “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re saying you were created just to drive cars? You have a purpose in being and you know what it is?” “Oh, yes, sir!” Endive answered enthusiastically. That piece of news didn’t exactly make my day. By the time this conversation took place I was past fear and into bitter. Finding out that demons knew what their purpose in life was…this was not something I wanted to know. ‘If only I could have known that kind of thing when I was alive,’ I kept thinking, ‘I wouldn’t be in this mess now.’ But, eventually, I got over it and I settled into the job of picking up souls in the Land of the Living and trying to sell them the best travel packages they qualified for. “Why do some clients qualify for better travel packages?” I had asked our trainer in the beginning. 3 “They led good lives,” he snapped back at me. “¡Que traes! How do you define a ‘good life’?” “Better than yours and mine.” But eventually I accepted the rules of the DOD and the restrictions the company placed on its agents. At first, I went along with the rules because I had been scared into line. Later on, because I became fatalistic. But, eventually, when things started to make some sense, I started following the rules because I became convinced they were right. I never understood completely why the DOD did things the way it did, but I got enough to see there must be a reason for it all. As I read the records of my clients’ lives I started to understand why the agent who handled my case wouldn’t tell me what was in my file. A soul’s life is very complex, not to mention delicate. The files reapers get contain not just a client’s actions but also their thoughts and motivations; whether they are remembered, repressed, or conveniently edited and justified after the fact. These things interact in interesting ways in affecting a person’s destiny and it’s not always healthy—for the reaper as well as for the client—to go into the details. A mass murderer is obviously not going to be issued a ticket on the Number Nine train, but a seemingly good person could be just as bad off. One of my early clients was a philanthropist. He was incredibly wealthy and put most of his money into good causes that helped thousands of people.

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