Page 10 of Grim

It’sAboutTime

W elcome to the OtherWorld, where corporate policy and cosmic consequence come to shake hands and stab each other in the back.

The city rises around me like a fever dream etched in stone.

Gothic spires claw at the sky like they’re trying to drag the stars down to answer for a crime.

Streets twist in labyrinthine spirals and coil between monolithic office towers stacked like mausoleums—cathedrals of tedium, humming with fluorescent lights and bad attitudes.

The whole aesthetic screams Transylvania chic, swallowed up by Wall Street.

I stand just outside the pulsating heart of this sprawling metropolis, the main corporate headquarters of Death’s Door, LLC.

Everywhere you look, buildings and roadways mingle with clouds, mist, and fog in varying shades of greys and purples.

Distance and shapes here toy with the eye; the physical laws of Earth stretch just enough to disorient newcomers, like the first draft of a Dali painting.

If you’ve ever dosed hallucinogenic mushrooms in the center of the Old Town in Prague, then you have a good idea of what the OtherWorld looks like.

The massive obsidian double doors ripple like oil at my approach, melting open with a theatrical flourish. Subtle is not in Big D’s vocabulary .

I don’t hesitate; there’s no waiting, no chitchat. I head straight for his office.

The moment I step across the threshold, D’s new assistant nearly launches herself over her desk in an attempt to stop me from entering Death’s Domain. Yes, he’s also labeled the door within the building. He’s big on alliteration.

“Oh!” she squeaks, her wide eyes darting between me and the massive set of obsidian doors. “Kane, he’s extremely busy right now.”

“I’m sure,” I grunt, barely acknowledging her as I push past her and shove open the heavy doors.

The office is as ostentatious as ever—massive to the point of silliness, with walls made of black marble and floor-to-ceiling windows that stretch out over the OtherWorld like some kind of dramatic villain’s lair.

The empty space between the doors and his actual desk feels like a trick of the eye, but it really is just obnoxiously far for no reason.

And at the end of the long red carpet—yes, it really does tie the room together—perched behind an absurdly large onyx desk, is the man himself.

Big D.

The nameplate glints gold in the low light, like a joke only he finds funny.

Like a man on a mission, I stalk down the absurdly long runway carpet as Big D spins around in his oversize leather chair like some bored supervillain. He’s wearing a look of exaggerated amusement. In his left hand, he confidently wields …

Is that a paddleball?

“Sir?” I ask, arching a brow as he bounces the little red ball against the wooden paddle with expert precision and dexterity.

“You play?” he asks, tilting his head.

I remain standing behind the chair opposite his desk, baffled. “Can’t say I’ve kept up with the … sport, no.”

He lets out a dramatic sigh, his disappointment evident. “Shame. It’s harder than you may think. It takes a fair amount of concentration, rhythm, and patience. You have to almost become one with the ball and predict its movements. And if there’s even the slightest—”

The ball rebounds just a hair wide and smacks him square in his wrist, causing him to fumble it for the first time since I entered the room. It falls to the floor with a sharp clatter against the stone.

His eyes narrow as he glares down at the toy before slowly lifting his gaze back to me.

“Misstep,” he finishes, “it’s game over.” His voice drops to a sinister pitch.

I think I’m supposed to feel intimidated by this, but I’m too confused by the duel I just witnessed him lose to a child’s toy to feel much of anything right now.

“Sir, respectfully, what are you doing with that thing? You’re the overlord of the AfterLife, not a six-year-old at a state fair.”

“Kane, do you have any idea how long eternity is? It’s long, Kane. Really long. I have to find a way to pass the time somehow. You try spending a few millennia doing paperwork and see if you don’t start talking to inanimate objects or collecting hobbies.”

“Collecting is a hobby, sir. You don’t collect the hobbies themselves though.”

“Potato. Root vegetable. When I took over the head honcho position, I expected excitement, action, maybe even a little danger,” he says with a childlike glint in his eye which fades as he finishes his thought. “But instead, it’s mostly boooooring.”

“Well, as it turns out, I do not have time for this. I have a problem.”

“I know,” he says with a dramatic yawn.

“You know?” I question, irritation hemorrhaging from my voice.

He shrugs one broad shoulder lazily while leaning back in his seat with a smirk. “Can’t call yourself the Big D and not know all the happenings.”

“You could actually not call yourself that,” I point out dryly.

He snorts, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his desk. “Okay, I’ll play along. I do love a good role-play.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again,” I scoff, crossing my arms over my chest.

“What’s going on, Kane? What happened?” He smirks, folding to rest his elbows on the desk like we’re two colleagues catching up over espresso .

“My most recent case—”

“Rue Chamberlain,” he cuts in, the name rolling off his tongue like he’s reading it from a grocery list.

The casual dismissal hits harder than I expected, but I press on.

“Yes, the premature heart condition. Well, I …” I hesitate briefly, not entirely sure how to share this part. “I intervened.”

“You did?” He feigns surprise in a grossly exaggerated way.

“Please stop that,” I growl.

“You’re no fun.” He pouts.

“So, she’s alive,” I say through gritted teeth. “Again. But—and here’s the part that brought me here so quickly, Big D .” I make sure I have his complete attention before continuing. “She can still touch me.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I know.”

“How is that possible, D? I have assisted in the crossover for so many souls. And never—not once in all this time—has a living human been able to touch me.”

Big D leans back, his fingers steepled like he’s about to impart some great wisdom upon me. I resist the urge to slap him upside the head with the forgotten paddleball.

I steel myself for the ingratiating tone his voice is inevitably about to take on.

“You see, Kane …” And there he goes, prattling on with a voice that manages to mix boredom with condescension into an aural cocktail that makes me want to kick him square in his thick, veiny neck. “When the order of events is thrown off, Time becomes very mad. And when she’s mad—”

There’s a shimmer in the air beside him, and the temperature seems to drop. Just like that, they appear. The Weaver Sisters. Time and Fate stare daggers at me, making no indication whatsoever that they just materialized out of thin air. Just another moment of omnipotence.

Neither of them says hello. They don’t have to. They’re not really here for a casual chat. They’re here to find out why I took my leash off and ran in the street. They want to know why I’ve been a disobedient dog .

In my centuries of service, through plagues and battlefields, I’ve never been in the presence of these three immortals at once. The potential severity of playing doctor begins to dawn on me as I stare at the trio.

Big D, Time, and her twin sister, Fate.

The air itself goes still, thick as molasses, humming with the weight of power that hasn’t had to announce itself in eons. Their presence doesn’t just fill the room; it becomes the room.

Time speaks first, her voice curling in the air like cigar smoke in a dimly lit bar—velvet slick, languid, and low.

The kind of voice that winds around your spine before you know it’s there.

“And when she’s mad,” she says, dragging the words out like the final note of a requiem, “she gets very, very mad.”

She slinks behind me, a whisper of silk and shadow, her breath grazing the back of my neck. “And that … is when Time stands still”—a pause—“for others,” she finishes, her smoky murmur descending into a wicked purr, followed by a laugh that uncoils like a serpent. It’s not loud, nor is it shrill.

No, it’s far worse. It’s patient.

“I didn’t realize it would cause any harm,” I offer in a weak protest. “My old medical instincts kicked in.”

“And those instincts,” Time hums, swaying like smoke in a storm, “have spoiled my fun.” She tilts her head, one long finger trailing lazily along the line of my shoulder.

“Now I need to find new fun. Can I have fun with you, Kane?” Her voice twists the word fun into something more dangerous than flirty.

“I’m not much fun,” I mutter. “Ask anyone.”

“Ripping you limb from limb and using your extremities as a stopwatch sounds … delicious.” She inches closer, her pupils ticking like clock gears as she scans me top to toe.

“I think I could use your body to keep time down to the”—she pauses and rakes her eyes down my body, then darts her gaze sharply back to mine—“microsecond.”

I shudder, my stomach turning involuntarily at the mere thought of that particular pain.

I clear my throat, angling toward the only thing that might change the subject. “Why did you jump her crossover date anyway, Time? Her chart was clear. ARVD. Slow decline. Nine days from now. Why accelerate what is almost done already?”

Fate—draped in her ink-drenched robes and pinched fury—speaks up before her sister can. Her voice is like fire through silk. “Because my insufferable sister enjoys meddling in the storylines she is not supposed to read and most certainly not supposed to write.”

“Oh, shut up, little one.” Time emphasizes the word little with extreme derision.

The bickering commences immediately.

“You’re older than me by one minute,” Fate snaps, her eyes flashing silver. “One. That’s nothing.”