Page 56 of Grim

LikeSandsThroughtheHourglass

Later …

T he overhead lights hum their endless tune.

A droning insectile buzz that chews at the back of your skull.

The incessant noise makes time ooze from moment to moment in a sea of sameness.

As though Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence of the same has been made manifest. What even is time?

The monotony of it all fogs the mind, like watching sand pour through a frosted hourglass.

Sometimes, the lights flicker. Brief, stuttering moments where the world goes dark, and I think that maybe it’s all ending. A literal glimmer of hope in an otherwise endless numb. A proper end would be better than this. Anything would be better than this.

But they always come back on. No one ever fixes them. No one fixes anything here.

My official title is Oversight Officer for Problematic Sortings, or OOPS.

I am not amused. I sit at desk thirteen of who knows how many in the back corner of some windowless, nondescript room.

The same grey metal surface, the same squeaking chair, the same stack of files that never seems to get smaller.

Cubicle thirteen—unlucky for some, meaningless to me.

I didn’t choose it. Choice is the prerogative of the living. Sort of.

After a lengthy stretch of silence, where I was just sitting, someone finally brought me a tabbed manila folder.

They handed it to me. Inside was a single sheet of white paper, which made the folder feel a bit redundant, but that was the least of my concerns.

The paper read simply, ‘Reclassify old records. Begin at the end. You’ll know when you’re finished. ’

What kind of cryptic bureaucratic nonsense was this? It read like a broken fortune cookie.

That was three months ago. Or three years. Or three centuries. Time doesn’t move in any one direction here. It just oozes outward all at once.

The work brings new meaning to the word meaningless .

Old paperwork from botched transitions, files that got lost in middle-management black holes, death certificates that were filed under the wrong dates.

I read them, verify the details, stamp them ‘Approved’ or ‘Requires Amendment’ and move to the next.

My fingers have developed permanent indentations from the stampers.

Nobody speaks unless protocol demands it. I prefer it that way. It is easier to get lost inside the silence.

But once, at the start of this purgatory, a clerk named Beth decided to be friendly.

She was new, still had that eager shine in her eyes that hadn’t been ground down by the weight of endless futility.

Turns out, nothingness is pretty heavy. She leaned over my cubicle wall during her break, chin propped on her hands.

“You know, you always look like you’re in mourning,” she said with the kind of casual observation that was meant to start a conversation.

I looked up. Let her see what was behind my eyes—or what wasn’t. The absence. The echo. The hollowness.

She stepped back from my cubicle wall like I’d slapped her. Since then, she takes the long way around my desk when she needs to file reports.

They call this echelon of labor “rehabilitation.” The supervisors say this is a stepping stone back to field work or full passage to the Final Beyond. I’m not holding my breath though.

This feels like permanent erasure. With one meaningless task at a time, they’re wearing away the edges of who I used to be until there’s nothing left but this—a shell that shows up, does the work, and goes home to an empty room.

The soul I was before commanded respect. My jobs in the mortal realm and the AfterLife demanded precision and perfection, and I delivered. I had a path and a purpose and was highly regarded by all who knew me.

But that man died the same day Rue did. As did my true purpose.

“Kane Deveraux?”

The voice cuts through my thoughts. I look up to find Marcus Holt, one of the junior leads, standing beside my desk. He’s holding another manila folder like it’s the Rosetta Stone. He lacks his usual supervisor swagger.

“You’re behind on your quarterly submissions,” he says, his voice pitched carefully neutral. “Pages twenty-two through thirty-seven weren’t included in yesterday’s batch.”

I stare at him. The words register, but don’t connect to anything that feels important. Pages. Numbers. Deadlines. All of it might as well be written in a dead language. Huh. Maybe it is the Rosetta Stone.

Marcus shifts his weight from foot to foot. “The forms need to be completed by the end of business today, or I’ll have to file a deficiency report.”

Still nothing from me. The silence stretches past uncomfortable and straight to excruciating. I watch him struggle with it, watch him try to figure out if I’m being deliberately difficult or if something’s genuinely wrong with me.

“Look,” he says finally, lowering his voice, “I can submit an override form if you’re having difficulty completing the work. Maybe you need a personal leave?”

I blink once. Slowly. That’s all the response he gets.

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Right. Well, I’ll give you some more time then. Two business days. That’s the best I can do.”

He walks away quickly, like his mother just used his full name to call him into the house for dinner.

I turn back to my screen. The cursor blinks at me, patient and impatient at the same time. A digital heartbeat in a body that’s forgotten how to live.

When break arrives, I avoid the gathering room with all the other clerks and head outside the beige intake wing for a walk.

The same route every day. Down corridor C, past the maze of identical cubicles, where other sad souls shuffle papers and pretend their work matters.

Past Reaper Dispatch, where the bulletin board still displays my old assignments like museum pieces.

Past Records and Filing, where the sound of stamping and sorting creates a rhythm that might be soothing if you don’t think too hard about what it represents.

I pause at the wall that’s been cracked for as long as anyone can remember. The fissure runs from floor to ceiling, a jagged lightning bolt frozen in concrete.

My eyes trick me into seeing a bolt of pure yellow filling the space, transporting me back to that rooftop with Rue.

The way her cheeks glistened in the rain and the moonlight danced over her skin.

A rush of exhilaration overtakes me momentarily before it’s replaced by a sharp pain, followed by the sting of nothingness.

I try to get her image back into my head, but it retreats as quickly as it arrived.

I stare at the crack in the concrete. Some say it happened during the Mercy Riots, when half the department staged protests over stricter clerical regulations. Others insist it was just the building settling, or maybe Big D had a fit.

Nobody knows, and even fewer care. That’s the theme here—apathy. Nothing gets fixed because fixing implies that something was worth preserving in the first place. When everything is broken, it almost makes it all feel functional.

When the workday ends—marked by a bell that sounds like a death knell—I make my way to my quarters. The walk takes seven minutes if I don’t stop to think about where I’m going. Twelve if I do.

My room is a study in institutional minimalism.

Concrete walls painted the color of old bones.

A cot with sheets that smell like industrial detergent.

A sink with a single cold-water tap. A shelf built into the wall for personal effects storage.

I use it to display the only two things of value in this place to me.

Rue’s belongings that Asher managed to smuggle back for me. Perhaps he’s not a total nob after all.

I begin and end each day staring at the necklace I gave her and her slippers.

I eye the oversize, rabbit-inspired indoor footwear when I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep often.

Recalling the ridiculous name Rue gave them gets me closer to cracking a smile than anything else nowadays. Hippity-hoppity flippity-floppities. The sound of her voice uttering the words fades slightly each time though, an echo running out of vibration.

I’m sitting on the edge of my cot, staring at the shelf, when I hear footsteps in the hallway. Heavy boots with a slight drag on the left foot. I know that walk.

The door opens without a knock. Asher fills the doorframe. Asher fills most doorframes. His coat is rumpled, his usually perfect hair mussed. He looks like he’s been running, or fighting, or both.

“You look like death,” he says.

I almost smile. Almost. “Fitting.”

He steps inside. Closes the door. “You haven’t checked in for eight days.”

“I don’t have a need to check in anymore.”

“And you’ve moved into this shithole.”

“When’s the last time you minded your own business?”

“Been a couple decades.” He crosses his arms. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” I snap.

“Her.”

The word cuts clean through my rib cage.

“Don’t.”

“Ru—”

“Don’t say her name again,” I grit out.

He doesn’t flinch. “Rue wouldn’t want this.”

I stand, grabbing him by his coat and slamming him against the wall. “You don’t get to tell me what she’d want. You didn’t know her.”

“I know what love looks like, mate. When it’s been carved into someone’s bones. You can’t spend another eternity mending a broken heart. You will be on the chain with the souls refusing to forget.”

“Then so be it!” I shove him back. “She’s crossed into oblivion,” I say.

“She said, ‘Mayday,’ and I wasn’t there.

I was locked in some office, forced to watch her cry for me.

And now she’s gone. I’ve been stripped of my blade, my abilities.

I can’t look for her. I’m trapped. I was supposed to be there with her. ”

“For what it’s worth,” he drops into my chair and suddenly looks tired enough to crumple, “I was as gentle as possible.”

“It should’ve been me.”

Silence fills the space between us. Not empty. Just full of things neither of us wants to touch.

“I can’t feel anything,” I say.

“Maybe that’s your mind trying to keep you going.”

“I don’t even dream about her anymore.”

Asher exhales slowly. “Maybe that’s your soul trying to remember how to carry on without her.”

“I don’t want to go on like this.”

“Then don’t.”

I look at him.

“Do something,” he says. “Go to your home. Go to D and demand your job back. Fuck, come with me to Casualties and get that anger out. But stop sitting here, waiting to disintegrate. You’re Kane Deveraux. Don’t vanish.”

“I’ve already started.”

“Bullshit.” He scoffs.

“I held her! I—I loved her.”

“And you think that’s where she ends?”

I don’t answer.

He stands, walks to the door. “Love never ends, Kane. It’s the only thing more enduring than death. That doesn’t vanish just because she did.”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “You do. And here’s something else to think on. How would she feel, knowing you’re using her memory this way?”

The door closes behind him with a soft click. I’m alone again, but the silence feels companionable somehow. Like Asher left the soft hum of hope when he left.

I lie back on my cot and stare at the ceiling, then my eyes are drawn to the shimmer of the gems on her necklace.

As the light dances off the facets, I catch glimpses of Rue in each pinpoint of light.

The stubborn set of her jaw when she was angry.

The fall of her hair over her shoulders.

The softness in her eyes after we kissed.

The visions are faded, but I can see them.

I smile as I look at her slippers. Unlike before, her voice returns in my head. I recall the way she named them.

Bunny and Cher. I can hear her. It’s faint, not much more than a whisper, but I can still hear her.