An Inconvenient Attachment

Prologue

Leland looked at his trembling hands. They looked so unfamiliar, they felt foreign like they weren't the hands he'd been carrying his entire life after all. Dissociation his therapist had told him. Just focus on grounding yourself.

A shaky breath escaped his chapped lips. Leland closed his eyes and focused on how the ground felt underneath his feet. It had been three days since his grandmother's passing. He always knew it was coming, she was never in the best health and Leland had even befriended the hospital nurses. But death was never easy, Leland had decided, no matter how anticipated.

Once he felt confident enough to open his eyes and not have a panic attack he continued organizing his clothes. He had been living with his grandmother for about three years now. His parents had decided that one of them should live with her and ensure that she took all her meds. Leland had volunteered, he was the closest to his grandmother and had felt a sense of duty to take care of her. Now he felt like he had failed. Late at night when he couldn't sleep his head often flooded with 'What if's and 'If only's'. What if he had been there? Would he have been able to save her? If only he had noticed something was wrong. The blame constantly shifted some days it was hers, others it was the universe's, more often than not Leland blamed himself. Maybe if he had let his dad take care of her she'd still be alive. It didn't matter now, Leland knew that but if only.

Grim hated his name. He was sitting on an airplane thinking about the funny look the lady checking his passport had given him. Grim Julius Snyder. His parents might as well have made his middle name Reaper and made it more strange. It was the equivalent of a farmer deciding to name his kid Farmer or an Attorney naming his child Lawyer. Who names their child after their profession? When he was younger his cousins would tease him and when he cried to his parents about it his dad laughed "It's like hiding in plain sight" he said winking at him like it would fix everything. His dad, like most of his family, was a Grim Reaper, a holy creature created by all the gods to lead souls to their holy destinations. As his only child, Grim inherited his dad's abilities only making his name worse. Grim the Grim Reaper it was like a sick joke his parents played on him. He suddenly felt a weight on his right shoulder pulling him from his thoughts. He looked over to see where it had come from. It was his dad's head, he had fallen asleep and in unconscious thought decided that Grim would make a suitable pillow.