I know those of you waiting for an update of Requiem are probably frustrated...but I'm excited about this.

To those just reading this, updates will be slow, at least until I finish Requiem.

Anyway, Mandy could be considered a bit OC, but I disagree, just because she never tells us about herself, and she is very smart so god only knows what does go through her head.

Anyway, it is a Grim/Mandy piece so if that couple frustrates you, don't bother reading, you won't enjoy this.

I don't own Grim or Mandy or Billy or any of the characters in "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" though if you have him I wouldn't mind owning Jeff. He's cool, for a spider.

I make no profits...yada yada yada.

---

The literary theme of "Death and the Maiden" has in the course of time been used so many times I should think it a genre like Comedy or Drama at this juncture. All the same it isn't, but it is a large part of my life. They often refer to it as The Dance of Death in poetry because it is a verbal dance between Death and the chosen lady he is to reap the immortal soul of in that particular poem.

I mention this all as a precursor to bringing up my particular favorite, one in which a rich woman tries to bribe Death, begging him not to kill her. I realize of course that it is meant to show that in death we are all equal, kings and paupers. We will all die. But it is not in this that I find such love for the poem. You see, quite simply, it reminds me of me.

No I would never be dense enough to think that while I was able to enslave the Grim Reaper I may escape death. In the sense of my vital functions ceasing, it is more he who cannot escape me in the physical sense. I know where he is at all times, like now, he's at Billy's house, probably being beaten senseless by Billy's domineering mother.

What reminds me of myself, and what allows me to, on a level, connect with the Lady is this: I could offer Grim anything, not that at the moment I have any true riches, but nothing I could offer would take back the last ten years. Nothing will erase ten years of torture and humiliation and nothing I could offer him would bring him to give me the only thing I have found I crave.

Crave is the word, I need it like I need air and food and just as it is with air and food I will never admit I am so weak as to need this to continue living.

You see, I do not quite know when, but somewhere between winning him as a slave and best friend for all eternity and using his femur to reach the remote behind the couch, I fell in love with the Grim Reaper.

There is a difference though. While I do see Grim wanting to say something to the effect of "Take leave of all your carnal vain delight" in which this ballad he does, I could never call any approach, or really any action he has made since I enslaved him as a "Bold attempt". It is not before Grim that Kings will lay down their scepters, not any longer.

I now find myself at a wall. No matter what I offer Grim short of freedom he will not allow me to sponge out this last decade, and should I dare and offer him his freedom I am most certain he would escape before I could get the words out that I did care for him even a shred.

To release him would please him but in doing so I would never see him again, at least until it was my time. And by then I could be so old or so changed he would no longer see me. Which would be bad. Even if it meant him returning these damnable feelings I would not want his heart if it were not given freely to me; me, the girl who at ten enslaved him over the life of a sickly hamster. One who died later anyway without much thought given to his passing.

I do not want to be a twisted monarch on a bluff, keeping what makes me happy imprisoned just so it will always be close to me, always be near so I can peer at it from my tower room and then retreat to the shadows where I will smile in secret. At the same time though I do not want to be a liar and be yet another to reuse the trite adage of "If he is happy I will be happy". Nor do I wish to use the adage of "If you love it, set if free". Not one of those scenarios fits my life and my problems so I am left with this question gnawing at my insides while days pass to weeks. Days to weeks to months of me mocking, tormenting, belittling and torturing the Grim Reaper while internally I commit his "Pale visage" to memory, treasure every weak smile he manages for whatever reason and continue to act aggressively to both he and Billy, jealous of how easy they can resort to an odd, inexplicable friendship; despite Grim hating Billy and Billy being too much of a dunce to even know the difference between Grim and a coat on a coat rack. Or a little boy in a costume.

I am sure what respect I have fought my whole life to earn would be lost if they knew that in the secret of my room I pine, I sigh, and I dream.

Do not think that I am so different from the face I put on, I am not. It took me years to realize I cared for that bonehead and I still am me, there was just more to me than I saw. I did not dare look to that fragile part of my heart. A heart of glass to use a maudlin phrase, one often used by one of those singers my parents insist on listening to at great length.

I do not pretend to mean that inside the cruel girl is a little girl wishing for a prince charming to rescue her. What I mean is that, I know as a flaw human hearts are fragile things, often broken, so, should you own something precious and fragile, what reason have you to put it in danger. Someone once said, "Hearts will never be practical things until they are made unbreakable."

It is true, and I still think that I would have been happier in the end if Grim had just removed the infernal thing when I asked him to, though at the time his solution was just as well.

Now it is too late for me. I would rather die than let go of these feelings, pain and all they are most precious to me and just as I do not think I could live without the one so dreaded by all others in my life I do not think that without these precious feelings, pain and joy all wrapped together, I could continue living.

Though I do not think you came to read of my obsessing ranting about the Grim Reaper and the love I have grudgingly come to accept that I feel for him. It has been a long while since last we met.

Times have changed here in Endsville, though the large things never do really change. Billy still lives with his parents, his mother still coordinating everything in his life. Which though I do consider myself a higher power in his life, I appreciate her effort, I couldn't make do with Billy as a slave if not for her and her efforts in keeping him together.

It is rather difficult to have a slave without a functioning brain.

Mindy is off at college, as are most of us at this point. She went to New York to study fashion design last I heard, I do not know how this will work out for her but I am glad to be rid of her. Sperg learned the hard way that past eighteen it is no longer the trivial matter of Juvenile Hall. I heard that he is coming up for parole soon but do not know if the rumors are true.

Billy sometimes remembers to attend class but mostly stays home, where his mother wants him, and waits with Grim for me to return. Not willingly of course, but they had better wait than face my wrath.

Grim, of course, hasn't changed a bit, I could tell you ever curve and every valley in those bones of his even without the secret passion I hold for him, so similar is he to the day we met.

I attend a local school. I would admit it faster than my love for the Reaper but it is still unlikely to be voiced soon. I am at home here, I do not wish to leave and should I ever achieve World Domination I will rule from here.

I live alone, a small apartment still near enough to Billy's but closer to school than my parents'. I moved out as soon as I was eighteen. I was coming to grips with this hopeful, emotional side of me and I need a private place to accept it or I will go mad. More and more we congregate at Billy's and that is just as well.

It is not as though I write my innermost thoughts out nor have I constructed a shrine to Death in the coat closet. But it is my space, and I need it to remain my sanctuary, untouched by neither nerd, idiot, or even Grim.

Mention of nerd does bring Erwin to mind. He is well I think, still madly in love with me for reasons I have not come to understand in these long years. He moved though, left with the others when it was time for us to grow up and attend college. He's doing well, scholarships and friends as I am told. I suppose MIT is a good place for him, fellow nerds and things to do, he is smart, I do not deny it and I never did, just when it came to dealing with real people he had less intelligence than I hoped.

Nergal Jr. is happy. He finally has found a place for himself where he fits in, where no one teases him for his glasses or the fact that he's from the center of the earth. He's in Law School. Doing quiet well I hear.

It seems everyone is finding their shreds of happiness where they can, even Billy has. Only I remain cold day by day, waiting for that moment that will never come. The moment where Grim will look at me and all the hurt and pain will vanish like smoke and he will see me, a young woman, her whole life ahead of her-or not-and maybe that will be enough.

Even if it happens I am certain I am not enough for him, he is death, if he loves at all it is a fine lady like in the paintings from the Renaissance. Paintings of Death and his lover. He will find his Persephone one day, of that I am sure.

All the same I have taken a liking of eating pomegranates around Grim.

Things here never seem to change, not in the long run anyway, the people still remain the same at the end of the day. I doubt they ever really will change.

That's why they call it Endsville I suppose.