Page 27 of Grim

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T he Hermle grandfather clock in the hall of Rue’s family home announces the evening hour in eight steady notes.

Each gong marks the passage of a second.

They seem so insignificant when taken in this way—seconds, one at a time.

The setting of the sun feels like a more tangible reminder that time is fleeting.

In this realm anyway. Perhaps seeing the change take place helps our comprehension.

Another sense to help us wrap our minds around the inexplicable.

At any rate, it’s now the evening of the day following our kiss, and Rue is laughing. Not just smiling. Not the sarcastic snorts she seems to enjoy tossing my way when I’m being intolerable . No, this is a real laugh—light, full-bodied, spilling out of her like sunlight through stained glass.

She’s sprawled across the rug in the living room, a halo of tangled hair fanned around her head, teasing Seek with a feathered cat toy that Esther keeps trying to murder. Seek shrieks with delight, flipping through the air like gravity is more of a suggestion than a rule.

It should be funny. They are amused. I can decipher from social cues that I, too, should be amused. But all I can do is watch her and see the shadows growing deeper under her eyes. The way her chest rises and falls just a little too heavily after a good laugh .

She’s fading.

Not all at once. Not in a way she’ll admit. Perhaps not even in a way she is wholly aware of. Toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, and it’ll jump right back out. However, place it in a warm bath and bring the water to a boil, and you’ll have frog legs for dinner.

We often fail to notice the significant changes that occur gradually over time. Humans miss the cues until the writing is painted on the walls in neon blood. People never seem to know until it’s too late.

But I know because I know what to look for. I can read the signs.

I’ve seen death up close for centuries. But watching it wear away at her day by day, like the tide carving out a shoreline, is unbearable.

It’s frustrating, baffling. I’ve seen the worst this world has to offer both in my living and nonliving professions.

I would suffer through the height of the plague a thousand times over if it meant not witnessing her drift any further.

And that thought? Fucking terrifying. Why? Why now? Why her? Why can’t I detach? Why must this infuriating creature continue to wiggle her way under my skin?

Rue does not notice me watching. Or if she does, she does not care. I turn and spy her coveted notebook abandoned on the coffee table, pages flipped open and carefully marked by a raven feather bookmark.

I glance down. Just a glance. But it’s enough. I see the title she’s written in thick letters across the top— I Know the When.

I look away briefly, but my curiosity consumes me. These are Rue’s private writings. If she wanted me to read them, she would share them. It’s not for me to pry. Even as I think this, I feel my eyes roaming back over the stanzas below the title, moving almost of their own volition.

My hand reaches out to grasp the book, and I take in the entirety of the page.

I K now the W hen

The steady pulsing of a beating heart

Reminds us of the finitude of time.

Each of us bound to a specific part .

Set number of days with only one rhyme.

My silver ticker beats out of rhythm.

Not the metaphor I hoped. Such a shame.

My disease creates a literal schism,

Though Fate and her rules apply just the same.

The difference, however: I know the when.

My story’s secrets revealed- a mistake.

Open my inkwell, pour forth from this pen.

What care I now for banal mortal’s ache?

What of my life will people remember?

Cold legacy will end this December.

My heart left me centuries ago, yet as I look over her words again, I feel the remnants of it cracking. Rue’s pain and resiliency mingle beautifully in her words, and I am overcome by a feeling I’ve worked tirelessly to suppress—shame.

I did this to her. I intervened in ways that I should not have, and the effects now fall squarely on Rue’s slender shoulders.

I meddled in someone else’s timeline. Again.

The results of my previous intervention cloud my mind and threaten to pull me under.

I shake off the haunting memories for a moment and return to the sad present.

It’s not fair.

It is as simple as that, yet as complicated as it gets. She’s trying so hard to live in the seconds between the countdown. To leave something behind that isn’t just an echo. And all I can do is watch her tick away like an hourglass I can’t flip.

I clouded the end of her story. I misspoke and revealed her end date.

I saddled her with impossible knowledge.

Every soul knows they are destined to die.

It’s the one certainty in life. But to be burdened with the exact date?

The when and the how. That’s unthinkable, unfaceable.

And I carelessly yoked her with that burdensome wisdom.

Amazingly, she continues to fight still. She continues to be brave and find ways to create meaning in the mundanity.

Despite her weakened physical state, Rue is so much stronger than—

My thought is cut off by her shriek.

“What the fuck, Kane? ”

I turn to see her standing in the archway, her stormy eyes burning holes through my hands that still firmly clutch her notebook.

I clock the anger and disappointment etched on her face—but it’s more than that.

Anger and disappointment I can handle—I might not like it, but I can get over it.

No, it’s the betrayal, the embarrassment written all over her pretty face, that guts me.

“Rue,” I say slowly but am immediately cut off.

“How dare you?” she says, her voice now low and sharp.

I flinch while muttering a curse. I do not speak, but my eyes stay locked with hers as they swirl with a cocktail of hurt.

“That belongs to me,” she growls.

“It’s beautiful—” I try, but she refuses to hear me.

“Your actions are anything but,” she spits.

“It should be shared with the world.”

“Yeah, well, that should be my decision to make. Not yours. You took my choice away and couldn’t respect my privacy, could you, Kane?” Her short laugh is cold. “Then again, you’ve already meddled in my life in unthinkable ways. Why stop now? Right?”

“Rue—”

She grabs the notebook and slams it shut, pressing it to her chest like a wound.

“It wasn’t intentional.” It’s a weak excuse, but I can’t find any other words. I should be able to shrug, say something dismissive or demure. And yet I can’t bring myself to feign disinterest.

“Oh, so you didn’t mean to sit down and read my naked soul scribbled out on paper?” Her voice cracks, and shame crawls back over me.

My throat tightens. “I just … it was open, and I saw the title—”

Her eyes gleam. “And what, Grim? Privacy means nothing to you? I’m dying, so the rules don’t apply to me?

In a few days, I’ll be rotting on the floor somewhere, and you’ll have your soul to shove into AfterLife Processing or whatever, so what does it matter about my silly little poems or my sad little dreams?

” She shoves past me, grabbing her coat off the hook by the door .

“I’m sorry.” I finally say what I should have said right away.

She pauses, but her resolve does not waver. “I’m leaving.”

I step in front of her. “No, you’re not, Rue. I’m responsible for you and—”

“Oh! Yet another thing I didn’t ask for. Now. Get. Out. Of. My. Way.”

“No.” There is no malice behind the word, no threat.

“You don’t own me, Kane.”

“I do actually,” I say quietly. “Your soul is mine until you cross over. And I’m not letting what’s mine walk out of this house overly emotional and under protected.

Now calm down and talk to me. Please.” I should’ve come up with a better line.

Something softer, something that doesn’t make her sound like a thing.

She turns to leave, taking all my thoughts with her.

All save for one: What if something were to happen to her?

Perhaps sensing the intensity of my thoughts, she turns back around.

Her jaw works as she glares at me. Her nails dig tightly into the cover of her leather notebook.

“UGH!” she shouts, her small body shaking with rage.

“You are not a good man, Kane. You’re not even a man.

I am starting to doubt that you ever were. ”

She hits my chest with her notebook and balled-up fist, then goes limp. I can see the last of her energy leaving her body.

I’m not sure which hurts worse—the sting of her words or the powerlessness of seeing her weak.

They both cut deeper than the sharpest scalpel.

My neck throbs, a phantom pain, as Rue storms out into the glowing moonlight.

I scratch at the scarred ridge on my neck, then follow her despite her protestations.

“Stop following me,” she says over her shoulder as she makes her way to her father’s plot.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“You managed to exert some free will when you went and rifled through my private writings,” she mumbles through her breaths as she comes to a stop.

“I wasn’t rifling through the pages. It was open to that page. I only read what was in front of me. And any amount of free will is reserved only for the living. Enjoy it while it lasts.” I mumble the last sentence, though perhaps I shouldn’t have.

“Oh, don’t split hairs with me, Kane. Those are my words, and you stole them. You took my broken heart and my shattered soul as your own, with no regard for how I would feel. And why? To satisfy your curiosity? You took everything else from the dying girl, so why not this too?”

“Enough.” I take a deep breath.

One of the reasons I didn’t have many friends in my mortal life or in the OtherWorld is that it’s easier to avoid disappointment. If no one relies on me, then I can’t let anyone down.