"If you think this is funny, wait until you see the assets he put on his 1003."

Grim woke up, and realized it was all a horrible dream.

Checking himself over in the mirror, Grim let out a sigh of relief. There was no magic scythe, no demons of the underworld, no bizarre adventures possibly inspired by illicit drugs, and most importantly, no Billy and Mandy demanding his continual friendship. Had it really all just been a bad, recurring dream, done in 2D animation? Grim resolved not to think about it any longer, as he had to get ready for work.

A cup of coffee with two sugars and a non-dairy vanilla flavored creamer, a poppyseed bagel with low-calorie strawberry flavored cream cheese, and a shower and change of clothing later, Grim was on his way to work. Oh, the morning commute. It could be irritating, he thought to himself, leaning on the horn as someone in front of him attempted to wedge their SUV into his lane. "Hey, knock it off, you slack-jawed imbecile!" he yelled, reaching over into the passenger's side seat. His magic scythe would slide right through that car like a third grader through candy, and let's see how many people he cut off then...!

Wait. Grim shook his head. That had been just a dream. He was a normal guy on his way to his normal job in a normal office.

Grim worked in a mortgage office, and as he entered the doors and rode the elevator up a few floors, he couldn't help but feel that the universe was playing some sort of cosmic joke on him at his choice of career. He hopped off the elevator, and someone that he hadn't noticed in the elevator moved past him, slipping into their cubicle quickly with a "Mornin'". Grim blinked. The coworker had been by so quickly, he hadn't been sure who it was, what they looked like, their age or gender, or even if they were human. He shook himself at that last part. Of course they were human; what else would his coworker's be?

"Bon matin!" his quirky cubicle partner greeted him as he entered. She sipped at the tea someone who is not appearing in this fanfic gave her and smiled, waiting for his greeting.

"...Good morning, Claudie," he replied, and she scowled, disappointed in his monolingualism. He removed a sticky note from his seat and read it before determining it belonged to her and returning it. "How have things been?"

"Eric the Inchworm sent me another email," she said with a shrug. "So, you know why their borrower is named Wang? Because their loan officer is a-"

"A Richard, yes, I know," Grim interrupted her, and she grinned, sticking a post-it to his briefcase before turning around in her spinny chair. She sipped at a box of juice the Heather from the last chapter had brought her, watching him. "Anyone else having a crisis that I should know about?"

"The geniuses in Florida need a reapproval," she said, handing him a file. "They changed their contract."

"Again?" he groaned, looking it over. "Do we have documentation of their money paid down?"

"Now why would we need something like that? You mean we don't just take people's word for it?" She rolled her eyes. "But remember, the mortgage crisis was all our fault."

"Do you want some coffee?" Grim asked as she put a sticky note on the forehead of someone who was attempting to hide behind a fake plastic plant.

"Milk, no sugar. Also, Lisa wants to know if you have that stuff you asked for in the file already."

Grim gave her a look as he handed her the coffee that the person behind the fake plastic plant handed to him. "Of course I have it. I was just testing them. They passed!"

"Get the sarcasm out of your system while you can, mon grand," she chuckled. "Kentie wants to know if his file can close since he sent you the last piece about a minute ago, and Tequila wants to know why all the Georgia files are at the back of your queue."

"Tell Kentie that he can go jump off a bridge, and tell Tequila it's because I hate Georgia, and that's why I live here. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that their files come with all of two documents."

She giggled. "You have such a charming, upbeat personality, Grim. Sometimes I wonder what you'd be doing if you weren't here."

He sat down, removed a sticky note from his power button, and turned his computer on, twiddling a pencil as he waited for his slow, outdated computer to boot up. As he did, Claudie reached over, attaching another sticky note to his tie and another to his phone receiver.

When his computer finally finished booting up, Grim opened up his email and stared in despair at the long list of them piling into his inbox. "You know, Claudie, I think if I ever told someone about this job and how stupid people are, they wouldn't believe me."

"I'm sure there's someone out there that understands you," Claudie reassured. "Like the author."

"Like the what?"

"Oh, never you mind, mon cher."

By the afternoon, Grim felt himself full enveloped in his despair as the work kept pouring in and helping hands became harder to find. Most of his other coworkers were off complaining how busy they were, before they left early. Claudie, whose job was similar to Grim's in that she ended up doing all the odd sorts of jobs that only took five minutes, but were so numerous that you could spend a day on them alone, apologized and offered him some sticky notes of encouragement. She couldn't stay too late either, because she was meeting a group of people and working on writing novels with them before the end of the month, and she was behind where she wanted to be. (Some people had strange hobbies, he thought.) He wasn't sure about the coworker that kept appearing in his cubicle but he couldn't seem to get a good look at; apparently he or she was the office ninja.

Five o'clock came and went, and he was still there, staring at files from loan officers who would probably never appreciate his efforts unless he wasn't doing it fast enough. Twenty more stood in a stack on his desk, and he had the fleeting thought that at least he had a fort for when the terrorists came and attacked. And that wasn't even going into the unexpected binder-clip crisis he was still working on solving. "It can't possibly get any worse," he groaned.

His email binged, a sound he was learning to hate almost as much as the phone ringing, a sound that he had started hearing in his head even when he wasn't getting emails or wasn't at his desk. Checking it, he could see it was from the national boss, and it had a report attached. "Oh, no," Grim groaned, reading the email, whose body consisted of 'I need this by 9AM tomorrow morning'. "I can't take it anymore. I'm going to shoot myself, I'm going to quit, I'll just throw myself out the window and leave a person-shaped splat on the sidewalk below. Is today going to be the day? The day I have an emotional breakdown, or just say something so vile to a loan officer that their grandchildren cringe?"

"Oh, come on, you wuss," came a voice from above. "I put up with this every day and you've barely been there one. You're the Grim Reaper, for crying out loud."

Grim looked up, and wondered when they had gotten an intercom system. "It's not an intercom, you moron," the voice said. "This is the voice of the author."

"The author?"

A sigh. "It's the voice of God. Understand?"

"Yes, God. I didn't think we were still on speaking terms after that conversation I had with one of your lambs."

"Uh...She's a sinner and she needed rebuking," the voice replied. "Look, you know what? The grass is always greener on the other side and all that BS. You have a great job. You get to do fun things. You're the goshdarned Grim Reaper, which is about as badass as you get for anything not named Batman. So get out there and enjoy your job."

"What exactly are you trying to do?" he asked after a moment of stunned confusion.

"This? This is me wrapping up your stupid mental angst over your general situation that you seem to whine about most episodes. Because this is a crack fic, as The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is meant to be, and I really don't want to be dealing with your emotional trauma right now."

"Um, okay, if you say so."

"I do say so. Now wake up," the voice commanded, "and by the way, you look much better in the robe. Ties do not suit you."

"Grim? Hey Grim! Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim Grim-" There was the sound of a whack. Grim woke up, and realized it was all a horrible dream.

"You're awake," Mandy observed as he sat up, picking up his scythe. "You missed the last two chapters."

"What happened?" he asked, getting to his feet.

"Well, first I ended up in a bad Twilight parody with a sparkling vampire cousin of Irwin's and his werewolf 'friend' that he was way too friendly with. Dracula tried to tear down the family house with a giant robot," here Mandy gestured over her shoulder at the giant robot who was making heart-shaped eyes at her, "because he didn't like how modern it was, but the giant robot fell in love with me. Billy got turned into a prettyboy by a Mary Sue who I squished with the giant robot, and we had to go to to find a dumber one to change him back, and he went through about two paragraphs of objects chosen by the audience who isn't reading this fic before we got him back to how he is now. Did I miss anything?" she directed at Billy, who shook his head and tooted his horn.

"Does any of this make sense in context?" Grim asked.

"No. It really doesn't."

"Well, off to the next chapter, then, I suppose," Grim said. The robot picked them all up, carrying them away on its shoulders. "Where is the robot taking us?"

"Wherever the plot dictates, Grim."

He nodded, staring off into the distance. "Hm. She was cute."

"Who was cute?"

"Claudie."

"Claudie?" Mandy echoed, raising an eyebrow.

"Never you mind, mon cher." Mandy hit him. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Because," Mandy said patiently, "that's the masculine version. Learn some French."