I don’t really have a choice.
The plastic cover crinkles as Cassian pulls it back, revealing what’s underneath. A bucket. A paintbrush. A black leather wrapper—one he’s careful not to touch. Then something more concerning.
Industrial-strength cleaning supplies. Hydrogen peroxide mixed with bleach.
And a bone saw.
Garbage bags. Sawdust. More rubber gloves and aprons than I can count. Gas masks.
I exhale slowly.
Psychos. I’ve been trapped by complete psychos.
I watch as Cassian takes a new pair of gloves and grabs the bone saw. Then he kneels beside the body and cocks his head like he’s wondering where to cut first.
If I were human, I’d probably be on my knees and crying already.
“I hope you don’t mind a little dismemberment, Little Grim,” Foxface says. “It makes disposal so much easier.”
I do not react. I wouldn’t even know how. This place looks straight up from some gore horror movie anyway. What’s a little dirty clean-up on top of that?
Cassian doesn’t even look up from his work. He presses the saw to the corpse’s shoulder joint and begins to cut.
There’s... well, not much blood coming from the wound. It looks like most of it has been painted all over these walls and drained from his body long before his death.
The sound is the worst part, really.
I’m still holding my scythe, so it should be dampened a bit, but still, I can hear every single wet schlop and dull scrape of the saw biting into the flesh. And when the bone crunches? I outright recoil.
Me—A Grim Reaper.
Yeah, Irecoil.
“Don’t tell me you’re this squeamish,” Foxface says. He cannot seem to take his eyes off me, watching me every chance he gets. So when I can’t look at the body anymore, my gaze locks onto his instead. “Haven’t you seen plenty of this stuff by now?”
“No,” I answer honestly.”If I catch an active crime, I just take the soul and leave. No reason for me to stick around after, is there?”
“Hm,” he hums. “I suppose not. Though if I were you, I’d stay—just out of curiosity. Making sure a body disappears properly is no easy task, you know. Not everyone does it well.”
“Mm,” I murmur, just trying to drown out the next sickening crunch as Cassian moves on to another limb. “Believe me, I have better things to do.”
Another truth. Though I doubt either he or Cassian would ever understand what those things are or why I do them. And even though my tone makes it pretty clear I don’t want to elaborate, Foxface doesn’t let it go.
“Oh? Better things to do?” He leans against the bloodstained table, completely unfazed that Cassian is literally sawing through human remains right next to him. “Now that’s interesting. What does a Grim Reaper like you do for fun, then?”
I should just ignore him. I should turn around and focus on the bloody wall or something. I might be a bound Grim Reaper, but I’m still something untouchable anyway. I shouldn’t engage with humans.
But I do. I blame it on needing to drown out the sounds coming from the table and just answer him.
“I watch other things,” I say flatly.
Foxface raises a brow. “What kind of things?”
I roll my shoulders, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “People. Places. The world I used to belong to.” For some reason, I swallow hard. “Things that should still be mine.”
Cassian doesn’t pause in his work. If my words mean anything to him, he doesn’t show it. He just keeps cutting, methodically and efficiently, like a machine.
And somehow, I’m the one who’s supposed to be dead inside.
