But it wasn’t the towering shelves that caught Tim’s attention first. It was the line.

Stretching from the front desk to the back of the room—and possibly beyond—was a line of souls. Some were transparent, others flickering in and out of existence, and a few seemed to be stuck in an endless loop of waiting, disappearing and reappearing in the same spot over and over again. The souls stood in various states of impatience and misery, muttering to themselves or glaring at the demon clerks behind the desk.

Tim stared at the line, his jaw dropping. “Are you serious? We’re going to have to wait in that?”

Grim sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. There’s no getting around it. The Department of Lost Souls is one of the few places where even I can’t just barge in and demand answers. These guys take their jobs way too seriously.”

Morty whimpered. “I hate this place. It gives me the creeps.”

“Join the club,” Tim muttered. He looked at Grim with a pleading expression. “There’s got to be a faster way. Can’t you, I don’t know, pull some Grim Reaper rank or something?”

Grim shook his head. “Not here. The Lost Souls Department is technically under the jurisdiction of the Timekeepers, and they don’t answer to me. They answer to... higher powers.”

“Higher powers?” Tim echoed, feeling a cold chill run down his spine. “Like... you mean...”

Grim waved a hand dismissively. “Not that high. But high enough that it’s a bureaucratic nightmare. The Timekeepers control all the records of existence—past, present, future. They keep things balanced. If we mess with them, we risk throwing off the entire timeline.”

Tim sighed in defeat, glancing at the line again. “So, we wait.”

Grim gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Afraid so. But don’t worry. Time works a little differently here. You’ll barely notice the hours passing.”

Morty shook his head. “That’s not true! Last time I was here, it felt like I was waiting for a century!”

Grim ignored him and motioned for Tim to follow him to the back of the line. They took their place behind a tall, skeletal soul that was holding a very ancient-looking scroll and muttering angrily to himself.

The soul turned to them, his hollow eyes glowing faintly. “I’ve been here for 87 years, and they still haven’t called my number.”

Tim blinked. “Eighty-seven years?”

The soul nodded solemnly. “Yes. I died in the 1930s. They misplaced my file, and now I’m stuck in the queue. They keep telling me to come back tomorrow, but there is no tomorrow in here.”

Tim gulped, feeling a wave of dread wash over him. “Please tell me we’re not going to be here that long.”

Grim didn’t answer.

As they stood in line, Tim tried to distract himself by observing the other souls around him. Some looked resigned to their fate, others were actively arguing with the clerks, and a few were just floating listlessly in the air, seemingly giving up on the idea of ever getting out of the Lost Souls Department.

One soul in particular caught Tim’s eye—a woman in a business suit, pacing back and forth and muttering angrily into what appeared to be a non-functional cell phone.

“I demand to speak to your manager!” she was yelling at one of the demon clerks behind the desk. “This is completely unacceptable! I have an appointment with destiny, and you’re making me late!”

The demon clerk, a horned creature with small spectacles perched on his nose, didn’t even look up from his paperwork. “Ma’am, we’ve been over this. There is no manager. There is only the queue. Please return to your spot in line, and we’ll process your file in the order it was received.”

The woman fumed, her face turning red. “But I’m supposed to be reincarnated as a CEO! You’re delaying my cosmic promotion!”

The demon sighed, clearly not impressed. “We don’t handle reincarnation here, ma’am. This is Lost Souls. Reincarnation is down the hall.”

The woman blinked, her anger momentarily fading. “Reincarnation... down the hall?”

The demon pointed vaguely in the direction of another corridor, and the woman stormed off, still muttering about her “cosmic promotion.”

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Tim raised an eyebrow. “Is that normal?”

Grim shrugged. “It’s the afterlife, Tim. People are going to complain no matter what.”

Tim nodded slowly, still processing the bizarre interaction. He was beginning to understand that death wasn’t the smooth, organized process he had always imagined. If anything, it seemed like the afterlife was just as chaotic—if not more so—than the living world.

Hours seemed to pass as they slowly inched forward in the line, the constant murmur of souls growing louder and more irritating by the minute. Tim found himself growing more and more frustrated, his patience wearing thin.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath. “How can they be so inefficient? It’s like they don’t care at all.”

Grim glanced at him, his bony fingers drumming impatiently against the handle of his scythe. “They don’t. That’s the problem.”

Just as Tim was about to respond, there was a loud crash from somewhere nearby, followed by the unmistakable sound of Morty’s voice yelling in panic.

“Oh no...”

Grim’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do now?”

They turned to see Morty tangled in a mess of overturned filing cabinets, scrolls, and ledgers scattered everywhere. He was desperately trying to free himself, his cloak caught on a particularly sharp corner of a desk.

“I’m sorry!” Morty wailed, his scythe clattering to the ground as he struggled to escape. “I didn’t mean to knock it over! It was an accident!”

One of the demon clerks appeared from behind the desk, his face twisted in fury. “You incompetent fool! Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to reorganize all of that?!”

Grim sighed deeply, rubbing his skeletal forehead in frustration. “I can’t leave him alone for five minutes...”

Tim couldn’t help but laugh, despite the situation. “Well, at least things aren’t boring around here.”

Grim shot him a look. “This isn’t funny, Tim. If Morty causes any more trouble, we’re going to get kicked out of here, and then we’ll never find your soul.”

Tim’s smile faded. “Right. Sorry.”

They hurried over to where Morty was still flailing helplessly, the demon clerk furiously trying to gather up the scattered files.

Grim grabbed Morty by the cloak and yanked him to his feet. “What did I tell you about touching things?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Morty wailed. “It just... fell over!”

Grim glared at him. “Just... don’t touch anything else. I’m serious.”

Morty nodded rapidly, his face pale. “I promise! No more touching!”

The demon clerk glared at Grim, his eyes glowing red with fury. “This had better not happen again. If it does, I’m sending you all straight to the Complaints Department.”

Grim shuddered. “You don’t want to go to the Complaints Department,” he whispered to Tim. “Trust me.”

Tim swallowed hard. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Once they had helped the clerk reassemble the fallen filing cabinets, they returned to their place in line, and the long wait resumed.

As they inched closer to the front desk, Tim couldn’t help but notice the oppressive atmosphere of the place. It wasn’t just the inefficiency or the endless line that made it so unbearable—it was the sense of hopelessness that seemed to hang over everything. The souls around them had been waiting for years, even decades, with no end in sight. And for many of them, this was it. This was all they had left—an eternity of waiting.

Tim felt a pang of sympathy for them, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel a rising sense of panic. What if his soul was lost forever? What if they couldn’t find it, and he ended up stuck in this place for the rest of eternity, just another forgotten file in a sea of misplaced paperwork?

“Grim,” Tim said quietly, his voice tinged with fear. “What happens if we can’t find my soul?”

Grim didn’t answer right away. He stared ahead, his empty eye sockets fixed on the desk where the clerks were busy processing files. After a long pause, he finally spoke.

“We’ll find it, Tim. We have to.”

Tim frowned. “But what if we don’t?”

Grim sighed. “If we don’t... then you’ll be classified as a lost soul. And once that happens, you’ll be stuck in limbo indefinitely. You won’t be able to move on, you won’t be reincarnated, and you won’t be able to return to the living world. You’ll just... exist. Forever.”

Tim’s stomach dropped. “That’s... that’s horrible.”

Grim nodded. “Yeah. It is.”

They stood in silence for a moment, the weight of Grim’s words hanging heavily in the air.

Tim took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. “Well, then we’d better find it.”

Grim glanced at him, a hint of admiration in his bony face. “That’s the spirit.”

After what felt like an eternity, they finally reached the front of the line. The demon clerk sitting at the desk was a squat, horned creature with a permanent scowl etched into his face. He looked up at Grim and the others with a mixture of boredom and mild disdain.

“Name?” the clerk grunted, not bothering to look up from his paperwork.

“Henderson. Timothy,” Grim said.

The clerk flipped through a stack of files, his clawed fingers moving with surprising speed. After a moment, he frowned and glanced up at them.

“There’s no Henderson, Timothy in the active records,” the clerk said, his voice flat.

Grim sighed. “He’s a misplaced soul. We’re trying to locate him.”

The clerk raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. “Misplaced, huh? Well, that explains a lot.”

“Can you help us or not?” Tim asked, his patience wearing thin.

The clerk sniffed disdainfully and continued flipping through the files. “Maybe. But misplaced souls are tricky. If the paperwork wasn’t filed properly, it could take a while to track him down. And by ‘a while,’ I mean a few decades.”

Tim’s heart sank. “Decades?!”

The clerk shrugged. “That’s how it goes in Lost Souls. Things get... lost. It’s kind of our thing.”

Grim leaned forward, his bony fingers drumming on the desk. “Is there any way to expedite the process? Maybe pull a few strings?”

The clerk stared at him for a long moment, his eyes narrowing. “Expedite the process? You mean... bend the rules?”

Grim shrugged nonchalantly. “Call it what you want. We just need to find this soul as soon as possible. It’s a... special case.”

The clerk smirked, clearly enjoying the power dynamic. “Special case, huh? I don’t know... that might require some extra paperwork. And you know how I feel about extra paperwork.”

Grim groaned. “Look, I don’t have time for this. Just tell us where his soul is, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

The clerk tapped his fingers on the desk, pretending to think it over. “Hmm... well, I suppose I could check the Restricted Files... but that’s going to cost you.”