"Where are we?" Billy questioned.

They were in a long hallway that seemed to go on forever. On either side were many doors of equal size. It was a white hall with pillars reaching the vaulted ceiling, but open as it looked, it also gave a sort of empty, grim feeling to it. "We are in de passage of time." Grim answered after a while.

"Oooooh!" Billy said, as though he understood completely.

The bringer of death simply ignored him and kept walking. It seemed like the walk lasted forever. It may have, actually. They were in the passage of time, so anything's possible. Each door looked exactly like the last, so there seemed to be no way to tell them apart. Grim, however, saw what Billy did not... numbers on each door. What exactly they meant however, wasn't clear. What made the trek harder, was that for every 5 doors they passed, ahead of them, the hall seemed to lengthen with a dozen more.

After a while, Grim stopped and sat down on a marble bench that was sitting in the middle of the hall. There were other marble tables too, every few hundred feet. He gave a yawn and decided to lay back and relax. However, his stopping only made Billy suddenly grow aware that they didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Perhaps it's one thing to be walking and not getting anywhere but a whole different story sitting and not getting anywhere.

"Hey Grim?"

"Yes Billy?"

"Where are we?"

"We are in de 'Passage of Time', like I told you ..." Grim looked at an hourglass on his wrist. It had stopped. "...Some time ago."

"Oh. Why are we here and not with Mandy?"

"Well... we are here to help Mandy. I need to get back in time before dis event happened, so I can save Mandy and unfreeze time." And maybe I can even win dat contest too.

"Ohhh... So how do we do that?"

"By going through one of these doors." Grim waved his bony hand around at their surroundings. "But..."

Before he could say anything else, Billy opened one of the doors. "Oooh! Mandy! I'm coming!"

"Billy! NO!" A horrified Grim pulled Billy back just in time to avoid being snapped up by a hungry velociraptor. Billy clung to him, shivering, going "SAVE ME GRIM! SAVE ME!" never realizing he was safe. Idiot. Grim dropped him like a hot potato, closed the door, and moved back to the bench. "Serves you right."

"I didn't mean to be dino chow."

"As I was saying" Grim cleared his throat, "Each door represents a moment in time... or the passage of time if you will. That one there leads back to when dinosaurs walked the earth."

"Cool! Can I keep one for a pet?" the big nosed boy smiled.

"No." What was the use? The boy would never understand anything... He still couldn't tie his own shoes! "We are looking for the one and only door that connects to the right time and place."

"So how do we know where that is?"

There was a moment of silence. It was a big place... They could search for hundreds of years and never find the right door. "We must trust fate to guide us." he answered simply. He glanced at his stopped hour glass again, there was a dim glow about it, probably since the sands of time were out of the normal continuum.

"Oohh... But there's no one here besides us."

"Yes well, so I didn't t'ink of everyt'ing." He scratched the back of his skull and stood up. He yawned, and looked back at the way they came. Then he looked at the direction they were headed. "If it gets too hard, we could always quit." He smiled.

'Friends don't let friends die, Grim.' If he weren't already white as a sheet, he would have gone pale. Mandy's voice from his dream. 'Why shouldn't I?' he thought. 'Stupid conscience...'

"Let's go Billy." He stood up once more and began again down the hall.

It seemed like the pair had been walking for eternity. Even Grims' bones were feeling tired, a great trick for an immortal being like himself. Billy was being surprisingly quiet, which helped the trip along as far as Grim was concerned.

In the distance, a figure began to appear. Grim wasn't sure what exactly it was, but as they got closer it was clearly not one, but three figures. "PEOPLES!" Billy yelled and ran toward the figures. They seemed quite lovely, a blonde, a brunette, and a red head. Sounded like the setup for a joke. Their beauty was no joke however, and Grim's nonexistent heart leapt for a moment looking upon them.

"Well, well.. What have we here 'den?" He gave his best smile, for what it was worth. He tried to look debonair, bold, confident, but not interested... the old game of 'hard to get' as it were, but he was failing miserably.

"Three women to weave some tales for weary travelers." The first, tallest spoke.

"Do let us yarn on for you." The second, the brunette said with a smile.

"We would like to string you along if we could." Said the smallest sister, the blonde. Her yellow hair reminded Grim of something, but he couldn't quite remember.

'That is a lot of talk about fabric for such a short stretch...' Grim thought. "Ahh, excuse me, we just be looking for a certain door... Perhaps, you might know de way?" That was more to the point than he wanted to be, he would have loved to flirt with them a bit longer, but his spine was tingling. Something wasn't right about this.

"We might. Depends on what you're looking for." they said in unison.

"Ahh..." Grim just couldn't say, Mandy had completely escaped his hollow head.

"We're looking for Mandy so we can save her from uhhh..." Billy scratched his head, picked his nose, and tapped his foot while thinking about it. To be doing all three simultaneously was actually impressive, though grotesque in execution. "She's gonna' go BOOOOOOM if we don't do something, but I don't know what cause Grim isn't telling me anything. Also, I've had a stone in my shoe for the last billion doors but Grim wouldn't slow down so I could take my shoes off and fix it." After gold digging in his ear for a minute he added, "I like pizza."

Grim slapped his bony hand to his face, exasperated. "What he said, minus the pizza... well, minus the nose picking..."

"Mandy? What is she to you?" The first one almost laughed.

"Mandy is my bestest best friend in the whole world next to Grim." Billy smiled. Somehow he had managed to get a rock out of his shoe that was twice the size of the shoe to begin with. How all that, plus Billy's foot had fit in there was anybody's guess. But like so many things, it didn't matter.

"And what about you?" The blonde one said. Grim was infatuated with her beauty, and just stared at her blankly for a few minutes.

"Mandy, well she..." he paused. "She.."

"Yes?" The blonde came closer to Grim, and smiled at him slyly.

"She... well, she's my... responsi--" he couldn't string more than a few syllables together with her looking at him that way. He couldn't recall what was so familiar about her, but she was definitely drop dead gorgeous, and he of all people should know that.

Billy started getting angry at Grim, to him it was all very simple... He, Mandy, and Grim were Bestest best friends forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever to like, infinity. Not that he could say the word 'infinity', but he knew the concept, kind of.

"Well?" The blonde said in a gentle voice. Grim was definitely going soft in the head for this one..

"I..." he trailed off, "Excuse me, I don't believe I caught your name... Mine's Grim."