Page 29 of Grim

But who isn’t these days?

I close my eyes and press harder into the granite, like if I push hard enough, I’ll fall through time and land in a moment where things still make sense. Or at least where the scariest thing I have to face is Mom trying her hand at social media or a tuna casserole.

“This is just a mental episode,” I murmur aloud to the resting soul beneath me. “Like that time I mixed two medications by accident and spent an entire afternoon convinced a spotted sloth was whispering secrets to me.”I exhale a humorless laugh, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “The sloth was so smug about it too.”

But that’s the thing about my brain: it’s never been particularly kind. It bends, breaks, and performs its little circus tricks. Some people daydream. I hallucinate men in black suits with sharp smiles and colder hands who tell me I’m on borrowed time.

I’ve had worse breakdowns.

I just can’t think of any off the top of my head.

It’s fine. I’m fine.

I sigh, rubbing my temples.

I focus on my breathing and take stock of what’s real to help ground myself.

Beating heart?Check.

Air in my lungs?Check.

Shaking my head, I run my fingers through my hair. Just another delightful episode of my brain pulling a David Blaine on me.

But if that’s the case, why does this one feel different?

My gaze drifts down to the name carved into the cold granite beneath me, and my carefully constructed sarcasm falters.

Dad.

I still feel it—that place, that lonely in-between. I still smell my dad. I feel that warmth. I know what I witnessed. It was no dream.

And then there washim.That voice, deep and silk-wrapped, curling around my bones like smoke.

I didn’t even catch his name. But his presence is tattooed behind my eyes now—each word he spoke, each touch, each unbearable moment where I should have panicked but didn’t, where I should have screamed but stayed silent. I still feel his lips against mine. Warm and certain. What bothers me isn’t that I died. It’s that when I did, someone was there—and he knew. He’d expected it. He’d caught me. Like it was routine.

Like I was on some schedule.

Nine days.

That’s what he said. I have nine days left. My expiration date is stamped on the inside of my chest like I’m nothing more than a carton of milk waiting to sour.

I close my eyes and grip the headstone tighter,fingers pressing into the carved edges of my father’s name. “It’s stupid, right?” I whisper. “That I’m sitting here, mourning a man who’s been gone for two years while obsessing over a hallucination of a man I met for maybe three minutes.”

But even as I say it, I know it’s a lie. Because it wasn’t three minutes. It was a lifetime. A thousand years in the dark with only the memory of his voice keeping me tethered to something that wasn’t madness.

I run a hand down my arm, skin rising with goose bumps that have nothing to do with the cold. My heart flutters, soft and fragile, the same way it always does before something inside me breaks.

I am not the same Rue I was before this. Something has changed—shifted. And no matter how hard I try to shove it into a corner of my mind and label itDelusion, it keeps crawling back.

This is real.

Heis real.

“Could really use some good fatherly advice right now, old man,” I say weakly. “You would’ve laughed at me, you know. Said I was being silly. Called me kiddo and told me to lay off overthinking before I gave myself an aneurysm.”

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. “I miss your voice. I miss the way you smelled—salt, motor oil, and stale coffee. I miss your ridiculous dad jokes—and, no, I don’t mean your clever dad jokes and the way you always ruffled my hair, no matter how many times I told you it was annoying because you somehow knew, deep down, I really liked the gesture anyway.” I smile at the memory.

“Hey, Dad, what did you think of my poem? I know we were rudely interrupted, but now that I’m stable, I’d love your feedback.”