Page 6 of Grim

I drink in the look on her face like a sommelier savoring a rare vintage. Shock, disbelief, outrage—it’s all there, pouring from her wide eyes.

“How dare you speak so disgustingly about my life? My—my legacy!” she snaps, and the air itself seems to tremble with her indignation.

“Respectfully, Ms. Sinclair,” I sigh, ready to move this along, “get over yourself.”

She opens her mouth again, stunned.

“We all go in the end,” I continue smoothly. “Some with grace. Some kicking and screaming in fake heels that aren’t fooling anyone. You, so far, are doing neither with any real flair.”

Her shocked silence is gratifying, if only for a short time.

“But look on the bright side—crossing over doesn’t have to be your finale.

In fact, if you come with me, you’ll continue your existence in the OtherWorld.

And while I can’t tell you exactly what it will be for you, it’ll be better scenery than this beige purgatory of recycled air and motivational posters. ”

I gesture to the office around us, an echo of her once-treasured kingdom now slowly losing its definition as her presence fades.

“So, what do you say?” I ask, voice lilting with theatrical charm. “Ready to shuffle off this mortal coil and get out of this glorified filing cabinet?”

Her lips twitch, and for a moment, I think she might laugh.

But instead, she exhales a soft, crumbling breath.

“I can’t leave,” she murmurs. “I have shows in production. Teams that need me. I have stories left to tell. So much still inside me. It can’t end like this.

It’s too—” Her voice cracks. “It’s too sad. ”

Ah. Depression. Right on cue. They always hit this phase hard when the denial starts to lose its sheen.

I try to give her descent the courtesy of my full attention—weepy revelations do so love an audience—but the subtle buzz from my Tombstone Phone cuts through the moment like the blade in my pocket. I glance down, expecting a passive-aggressive reminder about paperwork from one of the interns.

But no. It’s Big D himself.

Big D: What is taking you so long? Check in immediately. —Big D

I straighten, my spine stiffening on instinct. Even in death, some names command obedience.

Katherine’s voice drifts in again, low and shuddering, somewhere between grief and self-pity. “I just … I wasn’t finished. I had more to give.”

“They always do,” I mutter under my breath.

Aloud, I say, “Ms. Sinclair, that was my boss—”

“Your boss from the underworld texts you?”

“It’s timeless technology,” I deadpan. “And it’s the OtherWorld, not the underworld. I mean, it is below us, but Corporate didn’t like the optics. Now, I really must attend to this urgent matter—”

“I just died ,” she snarls, voice rising. “I’d say that’s pretty fucking urgent too!”

“To you, yes,” I reply coolly. “It’s a personal crisis. But cosmically? It’s just another Tuesday. Now listen. Your window is closing. Your soul’s still soft enough to mold, but the clock is ticking, and I’m done begging. ”

With a flick of my wrist, a smooth ivory card appears between my fingers. I hold it out like an afterthought.

“This is your intake information. Present it to the clerk in the AfterLife Processing Department. They’ll assign your file and start your transition paperwork. With this card, you’ll avoid the lines and get preferred treatment. I know how important that is to you.”

She stares at it, back at me, and crosses her arms, which are already beginning to grey at the edges. “No.”

My phone buzzes again.

Big D: Now. —Big D

“Fuck,” I mutter, the word coated in venom as I lower the card. “Ms. Sinclair, this is not a negotiation. If you don’t accept this card right now , your essence will remain tethered to this floor for eternity, not in power, not in glory. You’ll be trapped. A pale echo. An office ghost.”

“I belong here,” she declares, smug and absolute. “This is my building.”

“Was,” I correct coldly. “It was your building.”

But the decision’s already been made. I watch as her figure begins to unravel, her arms fading into the air. Her feet lift an inch off the floor, and her final hues of living color fades to grey. She’s chosen the static. The slow fade. The purgatory of her own ego.

Another soul lost.

“Good luck with the rest of your afterlife, Ms. Sinclair,” I say, tucking the card back into my coat pocket. “Try not to knock too many staplers off the desks. Some people here still have real work to do.”

I shake my head in frustration. Big D won’t be pleased. Then again, neither am I.

Since my untimely and particularly theatrical exit from my waking life centuries ago, I’ve spent the afterlife punching the celestial clock for the grandest bureaucracy you’ve never heard of—Death’s Door, LLC.

Not sure why he would need to limit his liability.

Not like anyone can sue him. Big D’s idea.

“Branding,” he called it. It was supposed to make the business of dying sound modern, efficient, and palatable to recently crossed souls, who were choking on their own fragility. People get too many trophies nowadays .

I’m the Lead Reaper of the Natural Causes Division.

Fancy title. No pension, no benefits—just an eternity of peeling souls out of failing meat sacks and sending them through to AfterLife Processing with a nod and a folder full of postmortem paperwork.

Before this, I served in Atrocities, followed by Overkill.

Both were less than favorable departments.

No rules, no order. It was constant screams and chaos.

I clawed my way out of those trenches to a brief stint in Accidents to where I am now.

The deaths I handle are mostly quiet. Bedside exits. Sleep-softened farewells. Gentle handovers at the end of a long line of mortal days. I get the occasional resistant soul, but, hey, fear of the unknown and all that. I get it.

I work alone. That’s not a policy; it’s a preference. No rookie reapers bumbling into mortal bedrooms with their blades still sharp and their consciences intact. No bright-eyed interns asking me how to “ease the client’s transition.” I’m not a fucking doula. It’s death. It’s supposed to be hard.

A few associate reapers report directly to me. Or they try to anyway. I’m what you would call a hands-off boss. I also generally don’t bother learning their names because most of them don’t last long.

My tenure has paved a path to crushing boredom and ceaseless ennui. The only thing I’ve learned in my centuries of unliving? Nothing matters.

Bleak but true, to paraphrase Big D’s favorite band, Metallica.

Musical taste aside, I don’t actually despise Big D.

He’s always liked me. Took a shine to me the second he assisted in my crossing.

I still remember the pints of blood spilling into the cracks of the wood of my home’s floor.

He stood over me like a shadow wearing a crown.

Told me I had moxie as I choked on my own pride.

He gave me the job before my body cooled. Didn’t even send me to ALP. Said he could “sense something” in me.

Daryl. That’s his real name. Not Death, Doom, or Damien. No, no. Just Daryl. And if you ever call him that to his face, make sure you’ve already picked your replacement because your second death won’t be as pleasant as your first.

Since his promotion to the position of Death, D doesn’t work crossovers anymore. He’s too important, he claims. More like too busy trying to look busy, but, hey, he took over the top spot, so we play by his rules.

This conversation is probably going to require my undivided attention, and while the living can’t see me, I can still hear them, so I decide to head to the roof.

I step into the service elevator and take it up.

It’s not a gentle ride. This rickety box jerks me to the top like I’ve been hooked and reeled by a novice fisherman.

Transporting would have been much smoother, but that’s reserved for trips between worlds and case arrivals.

Once I’m here, it’s mortal means of conveyance for this guy.

After several shuddering seconds, I find myself on the rooftop of Ms. Sinclair’s high-rise building.

The moment I’m alone, I press the flame-red Call button on my phone’s display.

It doesn’t ring. It never rings.

He always answers instantaneously.

He’s always there, waiting.

“Kane.”

My name isn’t spoken; it’s summoned . Death’s voice isn’t loud; it doesn’t need to be. It pours through the line like chilled syrup, seeping beneath the surface of my skin.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

The profanity doesn’t dull the gravitas. If anything, it’s worse. Casual authority is the most dangerous kind.

“I called as quickly as I could,” I state. “And respectfully, sir, you don’t have to sign every message Big D . I know who you are.”

“I’ll do whatever I want, Kane. And you will do whatever I ask. Now, where are you?”

“Just finished with the Sinclair case. Or rather, she finished herself.” I sigh, jaw tight. “She didn’t cross. Your message cut into the last sliver of her window.”

“So, you lost another one?”

I wince. It isn’t a question.

“Married to the job, boss,” I answer coolly. “Now she gets to spend eternity wandering the carpeted halls of the Titan Media headquarters as a uniquely vengeful, spreadsheet-obsessed ghost.”

A coiled silence springs out between us .

“Unbelievable.” The word drops like a gavel. Not yelled or barked. Just delivered. “You would think after the mandatory seminar I just held about better reaper/reapee relations, you would’ve had this one in the bag.”

“No one was tearing this woman from this place.”

Big D exhales slowly, like the world’s about to end and he’s been through it before.

“Your ARVD case has gone into transition early. Unrelated to her condition, but still a heart issue. But that’s not the point.

The point is you need to get your ass over there and extract the soul before you lose two souls in one day.

Deliver her to AfterLife Processing yourself if you have to. That’s your job. Collection.”

I nod barely. “Understood.”

He keeps going. He always does. “I hate this atrocious era. Technology has turned into a curse. Ghost hunters, spirit videos, EMF readings posted to social media—it’s a circus.

The moment a soul lingers too long, someone snaps a video.

The footage gets filtered, slowed down, and then goes viral.

It was all fun and games when the cat was in the vase.

Now, the living are starting to ask questions they have no business asking.

That’s when the Weaver Sisters get twitchy.

And when they get twitchy, I get calls. I hate calls, Kane. ”

I say nothing. Not because I agree, but because I’ve learned it’s less work to let him wear himself out.

He continues with that smooth, suffocating timbre only Death can pull off. “Your job is containment. Not curiosity. It’s really not difficult, Kane.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose—harder than necessary.

“Yes, sir. I’ve got it. You can count on me,” I state before disconnecting the call.

It’s a lie—maybe. Or maybe not.

Depends on what I do when I get there.

Name: Rue Chamberlain

Age: 26

Diagnosis: Unknown heart disruption

Status: Premature crossover in progress

Last Words: Mayday.

I nearly drop my tombstone when I see her photo .

I know her.

The girl from that community center in New Orleans.

She was there while I was handling a reap.

Not my own case. It was actually a cleanup from my former junior reaper, who left half the soul flailing and screaming in the body.

It was a mess. I remember threatening to shove the whiny reaper wannabe into The Nothing for such a heinous mistake when I saw her.

She was talking to someone about a du Maurier novel, and it caught my attention.

Well, that, and her contrasting orange-and-black hair and that long black dress with green combat boots.

Her eyes stopped me. Not because they were beautiful—though they were—but because they held something I could not recall seeing before.

Her stormy-grey eyes were steady, unafraid, and as she looked right at me, I felt it rattle something loose in me.

A thread pulled taut across ages, finally giving way.

Okay, she didn’t actually see me, but seemed to feel my presence.

Most can’t. We are trained to slip in and out undetected.

Some say that very few can feel us, and when she looked right at me, mere inches from my face …

I don’t know … it was an unsettling moment that I’ve been trying to forget. And now she’s my next case.

Big D’s threatening directive plays in my mind. Failing to cross two souls in a single day would be unprecedented for me, and not without its consequences.

But something in me—something buried and rusted over from centuries of blind obedience—doesn’t seem to care about that right now.

Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s idiocy. I’m not sure I know, but the feeling hits me like a slap across the face and cannot be denied.

I’m tired of being a lackey for the bureaucrats of the OtherWorld, and there is something different about this soul, I could sense it even in that briefest of moments.

I grit my teeth and vanish in a pulse of light, knowing full well that this is going to come back to bite me.