The God of Toilet Paper Takes Sadie on a Date

This was not going according the plan.

Anubis had this all worked out in his head. They were going to have meaningful conversations over dinner and then go to the New Orleans Graveyard and watch Dirty Dancing while she rested her head on his shoulder. That was how it was supposed to go. But now... This.

Lord Osiris was standing behind Anubis's chair. He could feel Lord Osiris's fingertips on his shoulders, and while he was all smiles and passive jokes like, "How many scarabs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Anubis could feel the looming pressure that was being exuded all over him. How was he supposed to work around this?

Sadie at the least was enjoying this. He thought she more enjoyed him getting nervous than the actual date itself being good.

"So, Sadie," Anubis said, trying to get a conversation between the two of them started. "How has your training been going?" Seriously? This is the best he could come up with? Sadie laughed and it sounded like bells ringing in his mind. The kind they rung when there was a funeral procession. "Good. After that whole thing with that girl Annabeth and Setne I've been trying to get stronger. What about you? How has, ah, the... judgement thing been going?" Anubis smiled. "Same old, same old." he said. "We might make it to the 1950s soon." He didn't mean it as a joke but she took it as one.

"Ah, yes. The 1950s." Lord Osiris said. "What a time! The movies were wonderful, but the people were terrible. Then there was the whole business with Russia, but the Crucible was excellent. Say, Anubis, have you told Sadie about the time when your mummified the wrong body?"

Sadie snort-laughed. "What? How did you do that?" Gods, this was embarrassing. Anubis remembered this story and he could feel his face reddening. "Well, see," Lord Osiris began. "There is a room where the bodies are stored for mummification. It's a sort of over-flow room if you will. There are Shabti assistants who are supposed to keep track of who is who and where they go and all that, but they're not perfect. So a body is pulled from the room and Anubis prepares it for burial. Just before he's about to start wrapping the head when it turn out it still had life!" Anubis could feel his heart pounding. Why? Why was this happening? Was there any polite way to crawl in to a sarcophagus with out anyone noticing? No one in the Halls of the Dead let him live that one down. The various demons still laughed at him for it.

He wanted to beg Lord Osiris to stop but he didn't want to look weak or pathetic in front of Sadie. All he could do was sit there and wait for it to be over. She would never forget this one.
"...so it wakes up and starts screaming and runs up and down the Halls and Anubis stood there with a mortified expression... yes like this one now!" Lord Osiris pointed at Anubis who was trying to hide his face. Sadie had started laughing. This couldn't be happening. No no no no no no no no no no no! "...the demons still laugh at him for it! When everyone had found out what he had done they started throwing things at him. Eventually humans picked up on it." This was it. He couldn't take it. The fact that the God of Mummification didn't do his job right was mortifying. He was supposed to be the authority on mummification and able to tell when someone was still not prepped properly. He had learned after that experience not to have the shabti prep bodies for him so he had done it since then. With the weighing of the heart scales and the mummification he thought he could erase one job by having the shabti do some of it for him. He had hoped Sadie would never find out.

"Sadie? Can we go?" Anubis stood up with his head hung low. Sadie stopped laughing and looked at him. "Yeah, sure." The left the Feast Hall saying nothing.

As they walked back towards the Hall of Judgement, Sadie grabbed Anubis's hand. "Hey, about that back there," she said. "I wasn't laughing at you. I didn't know you still felt so badly about it. My dad shouldn't have said all that about you. It was way out of line." She gave his hand a squeeze. "Are you okay?" she asked. He looked up at her and sighed. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just didn't want you to know about that. It was so long ago and I was so overwhelmed. You have to imagine the amount of work we gods do. It's a lot."

"Yeah, I can't imagine. I probably wouldn't be able to handle that amount of information. Hey, let's try this again. Come on!"

They went in to the Hall of Judgement and found a portal to the New Orleans Graveyard. "Oh," said Anubis. "I forgot to ask you to bring your laptop. I was going to put in Dirty Dancing." She looked up at him and smiled. "Idiot. That's fine. We don't need a movie. " She put both of her hands on his upper arm and pulled him through the portal. "We'll do our own thing." she said as they stepped through.

Notes

"...they eventually started throwing things at him. Eventually humans picked up on it." This is referencing the part of the mummification process where the priest (who would be wearing a mask of Anubis) would have stones thrown at him while he fled. Humans did this for another reason, however.