Grim Business

Grim hated Mondays. This particular Monday, though, was worse than usual, and he didn’t even think that was possible. He stared at the swirling vortex of papers in front of him, hoping that, somehow, it would all just go away. It never did, of course. It had been thousands of years since he started this job, and in all that time, he’d never once seen the paperwork disappear.

“Maybe if I just don’t look at it,” Grim muttered to himself, turning his skeletal head away from the desk. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

Of course, ignoring it didn’t work. It never worked. The papers would still be there, waiting for him to sign off on each and every soul collected. He couldn’t let them pile up much longer. Last time he’d tried, the system had crashed, and it took three months of overtime to fix the backlog. There were only so many hours you could spend on bureaucratic nonsense before you started wondering why you didn’t just quit.

Oh, right. He couldn’t quit. That was the problem.

“You’re doing it again, Grim,” came a nasally voice from the door. “Talking to yourself. It’s creepy.”

Grim turned his bony head toward the door of his dim office, where the only thing worse than the paperwork stood: Karen. His supervisor. A demon in a pantsuit, clipboard in hand, tapping her foot impatiently. If Hell had a mascot, it would be Karen.

“Don’t you have a team meeting to terrorize?” Grim asked, pulling the hood of his cloak up a little more over his skull. It was better to pretend she wasn’t there. In theory, Karen’s job was to make sure everything in Soul Collection ran smoothly. In practice, her job was to make his life miserable. Not that he technically had a life, but still.

Karen snorted. “I don’t have time for your sass, Grim. You’ve missed your soul quotas for the third week in a row. Corporate’s starting to notice.”

Grim sighed, the sound echoing hollowly through the room. “Karen, I already told you, it’s not my fault. The system’s a mess. Half the souls aren’t even where they’re supposed to be. Last week, I went to collect a guy who was supposed to have a heart attack, and he was perfectly fine. Turns out his soul got delayed in transit.”

Karen’s eyes narrowed, her clipboard clutched tighter against her chest. “That’s not my problem. It’s yours. You’re the Reaper. You collect the souls. You know how this works. And if you can’t do it right, there are plenty of other entities ready to take your place.”

Grim slumped in his chair, feeling the weight of his scythe resting in the corner like a heavy reminder of his eternal servitude. “I’m so tired, Karen.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable.” Karen sniffed, checking something off on her clipboard with an unnecessary amount of aggression. “I need your latest collections in by Friday. No excuses. And no more lost souls, or I’ll have to escalate this.”

“Escalate it to where? There’s no one above you except the Big Guy, and you know He hasn’t taken an interest in millennia,” Grim retorted. He regretted it immediately as Karen’s eyes flashed with that demonic glint she got when she was about to make things worse.

“Oh, trust me,” Karen said with a wicked grin. “I’ll find someone. Maybe one of those overachievers in Soul Management. I’m sure they’d love to take a crack at your job.”

Grim groaned and waved her away. “Fine, fine. I’ll get it done. Just... go bother someone else.”

Karen left with a self-satisfied smirk, and Grim slumped even lower in his chair, staring up at the ceiling of his cramped office. His “office,” if you could call it that, was more like a storage closet with a desk shoved in. Cobwebs draped from the corners, and the dim flicker of a single, half-broken lightbulb illuminated the piles of unsorted soul reports around him.

This was his eternity. Collecting souls, filling out reports, and getting harassed by demons with clipboards. Thousands of years, and nothing had changed. He’d asked for a vacation. He’d begged for a vacation. But every time he thought he was getting one, another mess landed in his lap.

Grim reached for his scythe, still resting in the corner. The blade gleamed, wicked and sharp, but it wasn’t the thrill of the hunt anymore. It was just another tool of his eternal torment. Sometimes, he imagined how much easier it would be if he just... misfiled his own soul. Maybe he could get lost in the system, like some of those wayward souls Karen was always complaining about. But no, he wasn’t that lucky.

The door creaked open again, and Grim nearly threw his scythe at it, expecting Karen’s face to pop back in.

Instead, a much smaller, much more irritating voice piped up.

“Uh, Mr. Grim? Sir? I—I’m here for my first day.”

Grim groaned inwardly. Great. The new guy.

He looked up and saw the latest victim of Hell’s soul-collecting internship program. The kid couldn’t have been more than two or three centuries old, barely even out of training. His hood was way too big, hanging over his eyes like a bad costume, and he was clutching a tiny, flimsy scythe like it was a toy.

“Let me guess,” Grim said flatly. “You’re the new recruit.”

The kid nodded furiously. “Yes, sir! I’m—I’m Morty. I’m so excited to work with you, Mr. Grim! I’ve been looking up to you for eons. You’re a legend around here!”

Grim closed his eyes, mentally counting to ten. “Please don’t.”

“What?” Morty blinked, confused. “I thought—”

“Don’t call me a legend. And definitely don’t call me Mr. Grim.” He pointed to the pile of papers. “You see that? That’s what legends do around here. We push paper. We file reports. We get blamed for system errors and listen to Karen lecture us about efficiency. You still excited?”

Morty blinked again, clearly not understanding. “Well... yeah? I mean, I thought you’d take me out, show me the ropes, let me, you know... reap a soul or two?”

Grim stood up, taller than Morty by at least a head, though the kid was so hunched over under the weight of his over-excitement, he didn’t notice. “Reap a soul or two, huh? You think this is some kind of glamorous job?”

Morty looked nervous now, his scythe shaking in his grip. “Uh... n-no?”

Grim gave him a long, silent stare. The kind of stare that could wither flowers, or souls, depending on the day. “Right. Listen, kid. I’ll tell you what. You want to reap a soul? Fine. I’ve got a list right here. Take one day for me. Just one day. Go collect the souls on this list, and we’ll see how excited you are by the end.”

He tossed the list at Morty, who fumbled with it like it was a live grenade.

“Uh... I—are you sure, sir?” Morty stammered, looking at the list like it might bite him.

Grim leaned back in his chair and put his boots up on the desk. “Positive. Think of it as training. But, uh, fair warning: the system’s a little glitchy. You might run into a few... hiccups.”

Morty saluted clumsily, nearly whacking himself with his scythe in the process. “You got it, Mr. Grim! I’ll make you proud!”

As Morty dashed out the door, Grim couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. He probably should have warned the kid more seriously, but hey, everyone had to learn the hard way eventually. Besides, it wasn’t like Morty could screw up that badly in just one day, right?

Right?

He let the thought slip away as he leaned back in his chair, finally enjoying a moment of peace. Maybe, just maybe, he could take the rest of the day off. After all, how much damage could one rookie Reaper really do?

As he closed his eyes, the faint sound of a distant phone ringing cut through the silence. Grim ignored it. It wasn’t his problem. Not today.

But somewhere, deep in the bowels of the underworld’s bureaucratic maze, something had already gone very, very wrong.

And it was about to get much worse.

Grim had barely closed his eyes for what felt like two seconds when the phone on his desk rang again, this time with an urgent, obnoxious tone that was impossible to ignore. He stared at the blinking red light, contemplating how many years in eternal torment he would suffer if he just smashed the phone to bits and pretended it didn’t exist.

But no, the ringing continued. Relentless. Unforgiving. Much like Karen, who was probably behind this.

With a sigh so deep it felt like it came from the void of his very soul, Grim finally reached over and picked up the receiver.

“What,” he growled, not bothering to hide his irritation.

“GRIM! Thank Death I reached you!”

Grim flinched at the panicked voice on the other end of the line. It was Barry, one of the pencil pushers down in Processing. Barry was usually calm and annoyingly chipper, which made his current tone all the more alarming.

“What do you want, Barry?” Grim asked, rubbing the space where his temples would be if he had any flesh left. “I’m off duty.”

“Off duty? OFF DUTY?!” Barry shrieked, his voice cracking. “Grim, you need to get down here RIGHT NOW! It’s a DISASTER!”

Grim’s eyes snapped open. “What kind of disaster?”

“Remember that newbie Reaper you sent out with your list?” Barry’s voice trembled, and Grim’s stomach sank—if he still had a stomach, that is.

“Morty? Yeah, I remember. He’s handling my quota for the day. I figured it’d be good experience for him.” Grim tried to sound nonchalant, but something about Barry’s tone made him uneasy.

“Well, Morty’s definitely getting experience,” Barry said, his voice dropping to a nervous whisper. “Grim, he’s... he’s reaped the wrong soul.”

Grim froze, gripping the phone tightly. “He what?”

“The wrong soul, Grim! Some guy named Tim Henderson. He wasn’t supposed to die for another fifty years! The system flagged it as an unauthorized reap, and now the whole timeline is out of whack! We’ve got alarms going off all over the place! You need to fix this before Karen finds out!”

Grim groaned and slammed his head against the desk with a resounding thud. Of course, this would happen on his supposed day off. “How bad is it?”

Barry gulped audibly through the phone. “Well, uh... the good news is, Morty only reaped one wrong soul. The bad news is that Tim’s soul got lost in transit. We can’t find him in the system.”

Grim sat bolt upright. “Lost in transit? What do you mean, lost? How do you lose a soul?”

“I—I don’t know!” Barry’s voice cracked again. “It’s like he just... vanished! He’s not in the underworld, he’s not in limbo, and he’s definitely not up top! It’s like he slipped through the cracks of reality!”

Grim stood up so fast his chair toppled over. “Barry, I swear, if Karen finds out about this before I fix it, I’ll—”

“—You’ll be demoted to the Waiting Room of Eternal Bureaucracy?” came a voice from behind Grim.

Grim spun around, the phone still clutched in his hand, to see Karen standing in the doorway, arms crossed and a look of cold satisfaction on her face. She had clearly heard everything.

“K—Karen,” Grim stammered, “I can explain—”

“Oh, I’m sure you can,” Karen said with a sickly sweet smile. “But I’d rather you didn’t. I’m going to enjoy watching you clean up this mess.”

Grim felt the weight of impending doom settle over him like a leaden cloak. He could almost hear the chains of eternal bureaucracy rattling in the distance, ready to drag him into the depths of soul-management purgatory.

“I was just about to—”

“Go fix it?” Karen finished for him, tapping her clipboard with one long, manicured nail. “Good. Because if Tim Henderson isn’t back where he belongs by the end of the day, I’ll have no choice but to file a formal reprimand with the High Council.”

Grim’s eyes widened. A reprimand? From the High Council? That was the kind of thing that stuck to your record for eternity. He could kiss any hope of ever moving up—or out—of this job goodbye.

“I’m on it,” Grim said quickly, hanging up the phone. “I’ll get Tim’s soul back, no problem.”

Karen’s smile widened. “I’ll be watching.”

She turned and left, her heels clicking ominously against the stone floor as she disappeared down the hallway, leaving Grim alone with the crushing weight of his screw-up.

“Barry,” Grim said into the phone, still clutched in his skeletal hand. “Where was Tim last seen?”

Barry’s nervous breathing crackled over the line. “Uh... Earth. He was last spotted in, uh... Chicago, I think? But like I said, he’s slipped through the cracks, so we’re not entirely sure where he is now.”

“Great. Just great.” Grim hung up the phone and rubbed his empty eye sockets. A missing soul, a malfunctioning system, and Karen breathing down his nonexistent neck. This was shaping up to be the worst Monday in millennia.

Grim grabbed his scythe and stormed out of his office, mentally preparing for the worst. He had to find Tim Henderson, return him to the land of the living, and undo whatever damage Morty had caused.

If only he had taken that day off on Tuesday instead.