# Chapter 1: The Grape Calamity

Arthur Grimshaw wasn't the sort of man who particularly stood out in a crowd. He wasn't unusually tall or remarkably short. His hair was a nondescript brown that sometimes looked a bit grayish under the fluorescent lights of the office. His face was pleasant enough but forgettable – the kind you might struggle to describe to a police sketch artist if, for some reason, Arthur ever committed a crime. Which he wouldn't. Arthur Grimshaw was far too ordinary for crime.

What Arthur did excel at was accounting. Not in a brilliant, innovative way that might get him headhunted by a prestigious firm, mind you. More in the reliable, steady, "hasn't made a significant error in fifteen years" kind of way. It was a skill that kept him employed but rarely praised, much like his ability to make a perfect cup of tea or his knack for finding moderately good parking spaces.

And so it was that on an utterly unremarkable Monday morning, Arthur's alarm clock blared its usual tinny protest against the arrival of another workweek.

"Oh, bloody hell," Arthur muttered, his arm shooting out from beneath the warm cocoon of his duvet to slam the snooze button with practiced precision. The blessed silence that followed was short-lived – exactly nine minutes and thirty seconds, to be precise – before the alarm resumed its assault on his eardrums.

"Fine, fine," he grumbled, slapping at the clock with considerably less accuracy this time. On the third attempt, blessed silence finally reigned, and Arthur squinted at the red digital display. 7:24 AM. Late. Again.

He shuffled to the bathroom, avoiding his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. Monday mornings were grim enough without confronting the sleep-creased map of his face. The shower perked him up marginally, the hot water doing its best to wash away the residual fog of weekend lethargy.

By 7:42, Arthur was in his kitchen, spooning instant coffee into a chipped mug that read "World's Best Uncle," a gift from his sister's kids, even though they both knew he was their only uncle. The kettle whistled, and Arthur poured the boiling water with a flourish that sent a scalding droplet onto his thumb.

"Damn it all," he hissed, sticking the burned digit in his mouth while awkwardly stirring his coffee with his other hand. He added a splash of milk, grabbed a piece of toast, and attempted to multitask – eating, drinking, and collecting his briefcase all at once.

It was during this precarious juggling act that disaster struck. The toast, buttered to perfection and therefore slippery as an eel, escaped his grasp and landed butter-side down on his tie. Because of course it did. This was Monday, after all, and Mondays had a personal vendetta against Arthur Grimshaw.

"Perfect," Arthur sighed, dabbing ineffectually at the greasy stain with a paper towel. "Absolutely perfect."

The butter smear looked remarkably like Australia, he noticed, as he tried to mitigate the damage. By the time he gave up, it had spread to resemble the entire Oceanic region.

Arthur glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. The 8:07 train wouldn't wait for him, butter stain or no butter stain. He snatched his briefcase, locked his flat with fumbling fingers, and half-jogged to the station, arriving just as the train pulled in.

The carriage was packed, as always. Arthur squeezed himself into a corner, one hand clutching the overhead rail, the other holding his briefcase protectively against his chest. Around him, a sea of similarly dressed office workers swayed with the motion of the train, their faces uniformly blank, eyes fixed on phones or staring vacantly into the middle distance.

A woman in a red coat sneezed without covering her mouth. A teenager's music leaked tinny beats through his headphones. Someone's elbow dug persistently into Arthur's kidney. Just another Monday morning commute in the life of Arthur Grimshaw.

As the train lurched between stations, Arthur found himself staring at his own reflection in the window, superimposed over the gray London suburbs flashing by outside. Was this it? Was this all there was? Thirty-seven years of life culminating in this daily ritual of discomfort and tedium?

The existential crisis was mercifully cut short as the train pulled into his station. Arthur shuffled off with the herd, swept along in the tide of humanity flowing toward their respective office buildings. His was a squat, gray structure—not quite modern enough to be impressive, not quite old enough to be interesting—with the company name, Pemberton & Finch Accounting Services, displayed in sensible letters above the revolving door.

Inside, the fluorescent lights buzzed a clinical welcome. Arthur nodded at Geoff from IT, who was struggling with a printer in the lobby, and made his way to the elevator. The doors slid open to reveal Margaret from Payroll, who offered him a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Morning, Margaret."

"Arthur." She nodded, then returned her attention to her phone.

Scintillating conversation thus concluded, Arthur watched the floor numbers tick by in silence. When the doors opened on the fourth floor, he stepped out into the familiar landscape of cubicles and the distinctive smell of burnt coffee that had permeated the carpet over decades.

"Morning, Arthur!" chirped Brenda from HR, entirely too perky for this hour. Her desk sat near the elevator, positioned, Arthur suspected, to ambush employees with mandatory fun before they'd had a chance to flee to their workstations.

"Good morning, Brenda," he replied, trying to angle his tie so the butter stain wasn't visible.

"Ooh, what happened there?" she asked, her eyes zeroing in on the stain with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. "Breakfast casualty?"

"Something like that," Arthur mumbled.

"I've got just the thing!" Brenda reached into her desk drawer and produced a small package of wet wipes. "These are miraculous for stains. My sister-in-law swears by them for her twins. Not that your tie accident is anything like a baby's, of course, but the principle is the same!" She laughed as if this were the height of wit.

"Thanks, Brenda." Arthur accepted the wipe with resignation, knowing it would do nothing but make his tie wet on top of greasy.

"Oh, and don't forget about Finance Friday Fun Day!" Brenda called after him as he attempted escape. "We're planning a potluck with a twist!"

The "twist," Arthur knew from experience, would be some excruciating team-building exercise designed to foster camaraderie but actually resulting in awkward silence and resentful glances.

"Sounds great," he lied, and hurried to his cubicle, where he could at least pretend to be too busy for such nonsense.

His desk was exactly as he'd left it on Friday: a stack of expense reports to his left, a mug of pens to his right, and his computer monitor in the center, the screen saver bouncing the company logo from corner to corner like a deranged ping-pong ball. Arthur hung his coat on the back of his chair, set his briefcase down, and lowered himself into the seat that had, over the years, molded itself to the contours of his bottom.

He wiggled the mouse, and the screen flared to life, revealing his inbox. Forty-seven new emails since Friday evening. Eighteen marked "urgent." Three from his boss, Derek, all with exclamation points in the subject line.

Arthur sighed deeply, resigned himself to the inevitable, and began to type.

## Lunchtime Liberation (Attempted)

The morning crawled by at the pace of an arthritic snail. Arthur processed invoices, replied to emails, and attended a meeting where Derek spoke at length about "synergizing workflows" and "leveraging core competencies" while the rest of the team nodded sagely and pretended to take notes. Arthur had mastered the art of looking attentive while actually composing a mental shopping list. He needed bin bags. And maybe some of those chocolate digestives that were on special at Tesco.

By the time 1:00 PM rolled around, Arthur's stomach was growling audibly, and he had completed precisely two-thirds of his daily tasks, which was on par with his usual productivity. He shut down his spreadsheet, grabbed the sad Tupperware container holding his lunch from his desk drawer, and made his way to the break room.

The break room at Pemberton & Finch was a study in depressing functionality. Beige walls, beige countertops, and a beige linoleum floor that had seen better days, possibly during the Thatcher administration. A row of mismatched chairs lined a long table, and a refrigerator hummed aggressively in the corner, emanating a faint smell of something gone off. The microwave, which looked like it might have been state-of-the-art in 1992, bore a handwritten sign that read: "PLEASE COVER YOUR FOOD! We are not animals! – Management."

Arthur was relieved to find the room empty; perhaps he could eat in peace and maybe even scroll through his phone for a bit, fantasizing about holidays he'd never take to places with significantly less beige and significantly more sunshine.

But his solitude was short-lived.

"Arthur! Just the man I was looking for!" Brenda bustled in, clutching a stack of neon-colored flyers. "I'm finalizing the plans for Finance Friday Fun Day, and I need your input."

Arthur, who had just settled into a chair and was in the process of unwrapping his sad little salad, felt his heart sink. "Oh?"

"Yes!" Brenda plonked herself down opposite him, her enthusiasm undimmed by his obvious lack of interest. "I'm thinking we could do a 'Guess the Expense Report' game, where everyone tries to match the questionable expenses to the executive who submitted them! Hilarious, right?"

Arthur poked at a limp piece of lettuce with his fork. "Sounds like a potential HR nightmare, actually."

Brenda blinked, momentarily stymied. "Hmm, good point. I hadn't thought of that. What about a spreadsheet scavenger hunt?"

"A what now?"

"You know, everyone gets a list of specific cells they need to find in a massive Excel file. First one to complete the list wins a gift card to Costa!"

The fact that Brenda thought this sounded appealing was perhaps the most depressing thing Arthur had encountered all day, and he'd spent the morning recalculating depreciation on office furniture.

"Maybe," he said noncommittally, spearing a cherry tomato that exploded weakly, splattering his shirt with pale pink juice. Today was not being kind to his wardrobe.

Undeterred, Brenda launched into a detailed explanation of her other ideas, which ranged from the merely tedious to the actively painful. Arthur nodded at appropriate intervals, his attention increasingly focused on his sad excuse for a lunch.

The salad—if one could dignify it with that name—was a pre-packaged affair from the corner shop, purchased in a rush that morning. The lettuce had the wilted, dejected look of vegetation that had given up on life, and the dressing, contained in a tiny plastic fish, had leaked, leaving one corner of the container slick with an unappetizing oil slick.

Arthur picked through the menos, separating the few edible bits from those that had surrendered to entropy. A cucumber slice here, a bit of sweetcorn there. And at the bottom, nested among the most wilted leaves, a small cluster of red grapes.

Ah, dessert. The one bright spot in this culinary disappointment.

"...and that's why I think Corporate Karaoke could really boost team morale," Brenda was saying, her voice a distant buzz in Arthur's consciousness.

"Mm-hmm," Arthur replied, extracting a plump grape from the bunch and popping it into his mouth. It was surprisingly sweet, a small burst of flavor amid the bland monotony of his day. He closed his eyes briefly, savoring it.

His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out, grateful for the distraction. It was a notification from a travel app he'd downloaded months ago in a fit of optimism: "Flash Sale! Bali Beachfront Resorts 50% Off!"

Arthur scrolled through the images—crystalline waters, palm trees swaying in the breeze, happy couples walking hand-in-hand along pristine beaches. A world away from the beige break room and Brenda's Finance Friday Fun Day.

He popped another grape into his mouth, imagining himself on that beach. Would he get a tan, or just burn to a crisp? Would he try snorkeling? Would he meet someone interesting, someone who found his knowledge of depreciation tables charming rather than mind-numbing?

"Oh, those look wonderful!" Brenda had leaned across the table, peering at his phone. "My husband and I went to Phuket for our anniversary. The food was so spicy it gave him hives, but the beaches were divine!"

Arthur was spared the need to respond by popping a third grape into his mouth. This one was larger than the others, and he bit down, expecting the same sweet burst.

Instead, he got something else entirely.

## The Grape's Revenge

The grape was an agent of chaos, a tiny purple harbinger of doom. It lodged in Arthur's throat with the determination of a mountain climber scaling Everest, refusing to budge despite his immediate, panicked attempts to swallow.

For a moment, Arthur was merely confused. His brain hadn't quite caught up to the fact that his airway was blocked. He coughed reflexively, expecting the obstruction to clear.

It didn't.

The grape, if anything, seemed to wedge itself more firmly in place.

Arthur coughed again, harder this time, his eyes widening as the first flickers of real fear ignited in his chest. Or rather, didn't ignite, because no oxygen was reaching his lungs.

"And then we took this boat tour where they showed us how they farm the pearls, which was fascinating but also a bit—Arthur? Are you all right?"

Brenda's monologue cut off as she noticed Arthur's increasingly red face and the way his hands had flown to his throat in the universal sign for "I'm choking, you daft woman."

"Oh my goodness!" Brenda exclaimed, her hands fluttering uselessly. "Are you choking? Nod if you're choking!"

Arthur, who couldn't breathe, let alone nod, stared at her with bulging eyes, silently willing her to do something useful.

"Help!" Brenda called out, her voice rising to a pitch that probably shattered glassware in the next room. "Someone help! Arthur's choking on a—what was it? A tomato?"

Arthur shook his head frantically, still clutching at his throat. The grape, that innocuous little fruit, was winning this battle. His vision was starting to darken around the edges, tiny black spots dancing before his eyes.

The break room door banged open, and several colleagues rushed in, drawn by Brenda's shrieking.

"What's happening?" demanded Derek, Arthur's boss, looking more annoyed than concerned.

"He's choking!" Brenda wailed, pointing at Arthur as if there could be any confusion about who was turning an alarming shade of purple in the room.

"Does anyone know the Heimlich maneuver?" asked Margaret from Payroll, her usual bored expression replaced by mild interest in the unfolding drama.

Arthur, by this point, was beyond caring about the spectacle he was creating. His lungs burned, desperate for air. He tried to cough again, but only produced a weak, wheezing sound that did nothing to dislodge the assassin grape.

"I took a first aid course once," volunteered Geoff from IT, stepping forward hesitantly. "Though that was mainly about fixing computers safely..."

"The Heimlich isn't that hard," asserted Brenda, suddenly decisive. "I saw it on a medical drama last week. You just sort of bear-hug them from behind and squeeze."

Before anyone could stop her, Brenda positioned herself behind Arthur, wrapped her arms around his midsection (which was rapidly vibrating, in a manner he felt most undignified), and gave a half-hearted squeeze. The effect was less "life-saving maneuver" and more "awkward slow dance," achieving nothing except to further humiliate the dying man.

"No, no, you need to make a fist and put it under the ribcage," corrected Margaret, demonstrating with alarming enthusiasm. "Then pull up and in, like you're trying to lift them off the ground."

"That doesn't sound right," countered Geoff, his brow furrowed. "Isn't there some kind of chest compression involved?"

"That's CPR, you idiot," snapped Derek. "He's choking, not having a heart attack."

While his colleagues debated first aid techniques with all the expertise of a group of children discussing quantum physics, Arthur found himself increasingly detached from the scene. His vision was now more black than not, and an odd sort of calm was settling over him. Was this it? Was this how Arthur Grimshaw would exit the world? Choking on a grape in a beige break room while his coworkers bickered?

It seemed fitting, somehow. Unremarkable to the end.

Brenda, spurred by the debate and a misguided sense of heroism, decided on a new approach. Drawing back, she delivered what was clearly intended to be a life-saving thump to Arthur's back. What it actually delivered was a poorly aimed elbow to his ribcage, causing Arthur to double over in pain while still, impressively, managing to keep the grape lodged firmly in his throat.

"Oh dear," Brenda gasped, stepping back. "That didn't work, did it?"

Arthur, beyond speech or even the ability to glare accusingly, simply collapsed onto the floor, his knees giving out as the last of his oxygen-deprived strength failed him.

The last thing he heard was Derek saying, "Someone call an ambulance, I suppose. And HR will need to start the paperwork for this. What a hassle."

How utterly, perfectly mundane, thought Arthur as the blackness claimed him completely.

## A Glimpse Beyond

Arthur Grimshaw died on a Monday afternoon in a beige break room, killed by a piece of fruit that could fit on the tip of a finger. It wasn't dramatic or noble or even particularly interesting. It was just absurd, which, perhaps, was the most fitting end for a life as ordinary as Arthur's had been.

But here's the strange thing: as the last sparks of consciousness flickered in Arthur's oxygen-starved brain, something unexpected happened. The break room with its concerned (and useless) onlookers faded away, and in its place came... visions? Memories? Dreams?

Arthur couldn't tell. His mind, freed from the constraints of his dying body, seemed to float, catching glimpses of scenes that felt at once foreign and strangely familiar.

A snowy landscape stretched before him, pristine and beautiful. He was small—a child?—bundled in a snowsuit so thick he could barely move his arms. A red ball rolled across the snow, and he toddled after it, giggling. Above him, icicles hung from the eaves like crystal daggers. One was loosening, imperceptibly shifting with each second. He looked up, and—

The vision changed. Now he was on a stage, juggling flaming torches with the skill of a practiced performer. The audience watched, enraptured, as he tossed the blazing implements higher and higher. But one throw went awry, the trajectory just slightly off, and as the torch descended, he knew with terrible certainty that he wouldn't catch it, that it would—

Another shift. A padded room, white and clean and safe. He'd built it himself, checked every inch for hazards. Nothing could harm him here. He'd outsmarted fate. But the air smelled strange, sickly sweet, and the walls seemed to be... moving? No, not the walls. Something on them, growing, spreading, reaching for him with tendrils of—

The visions came faster now, fragmentary and chaotic. A shepherd's field, high on a hillside. A unicycle wobbling precariously over a vat of industrial glue. A squirrel with an unnervingly intelligent gaze, clutching what looked like a miniature explosive device.

And voices, too, whispers that seemed to echo from a great distance.

"...trying again, is he?"

"...particularly creative this time, the grape..."

"...wonder if he'll ever figure it out..."

"...should we tell him, or..."

"...more fun this way, don't you think?..."

The voices faded, the images dissolved, and Arthur was left with nothing but a profound sense of déjà vu and the certainty that he'd done this before. All of this. The dying part, specifically.

And then, even that certainty was gone, replaced by a vast, empty darkness that swallowed Arthur Grimshaw whole.

## The Newborn's Frustration

The darkness gave way suddenly to blinding, overwhelming light. Sounds assaulted him—voices, exclamations, a mechanical beeping. And the sensations! Everything was too much—the touch of fabric against his skin felt like sandpaper, the air cold and shocking in lungs that seemed unused to breathing.

Arthur tried to speak, to ask what was happening, but all that emerged was a wail. A high-pitched, infantile cry that startled even him with its volume and intensity.

"Look at those lungs!" someone exclaimed admiringly. "He's a strong one, isn't he?"

Strong? Arthur didn't feel strong. He felt helpless, confused, and increasingly frustrated. He tried to focus, to make sense of his surroundings, but his vision was blurry, the world a kaleidoscope of indistinct shapes and colors.

Hands lifted him, wrapped him in something soft, and then he was being held against a warm body. A face loomed close—a woman, smiling tiredly but with unmistakable joy.

"Hello, my little one," she murmured. "We've been waiting for you."

Arthur tried again to speak, to ask the multitude of questions crowding his bewildered mind, but again, only that infantile wail emerged.

He was a baby. Somehow, impossibly, ridiculously, he was a baby again.

Time passed in a blur of feedings, changings, and brief periods of sleep that did nothing to unravel the mystery of his situation. Arthur—though everyone now called him by a different name, one he couldn't quite grasp yet—tried to cling to his identity, to the memories of his past life. But they were slipping away like water through cupped hands, leaving only vague impressions behind.

One day (or was it night? The concepts had become fluid in his new existence), he found himself lying in a crib, staring up at a mobile of colorful animals that twisted and turned in the gentle breeze. It was calming, almost hypnotic, and Arthur felt his eyelids growing heavy...

Until he spotted it. There, on a small table just visible from his crib, sat a cup filled with pencils. Perfectly sharpened pencils, their points needle-sharp, ready to mark a ledger or balance a set of accounts.

And suddenly, Arthur was filled with an overwhelming, inexplicable urge to hold one of those pencils, to feel its familiar weight in his hand. It was a compulsion so powerful that he thrashed in his crib, tiny fists clenched in frustration.

He needed to write. He needed to calculate. He needed the comforting precision of numbers and the satisfying order of a perfectly maintained spreadsheet.

But his body—this new, useless, infant body—wouldn't cooperate. His arms flailed without direction, his hands unable to grasp, his legs kicking futilely against the confines of his blanket. The pencils remained tantalizingly out of reach, and the harder Arthur tried to get to them, the more exhausted and frustrated he became.

He let out a wail, a sound that expressed not the simple discomfort of a hungry or wet baby, but the existential anguish of a man trapped in an infant's body, plagued by compulsions he couldn't satisfy and haunted by memories he couldn't quite grasp.

Somewhere, in the small part of his mind that remained adult, Arthur Grimshaw understood the absurdity of his situation. He had died choking on a grape, and now he was a baby again, crying over pencils he couldn't reach. If this wasn't hell, it was certainly a close approximation.

The door to the nursery opened, and a figure stepped in, silhouetted against the hall light. "What's wrong, sweetheart? Are you hungry again?"

As the figure approached the crib, Arthur's cries subsided to hiccupping sobs. The face that bent over him was kind, concerned, and utterly unfamiliar. This woman was his mother now, he supposed, though he hadn't the faintest idea who she was.

She lifted him gently, cradling him against her chest, and began to sing softly. It was a lullaby, simple and sweet, and despite his frustration, Arthur felt himself calming. His eyelids grew heavy once more, and as he drifted toward sleep, one thought echoed in his diminishing consciousness:

This was going to be a very, very long life. Again.

Or perhaps not. Who could say? The universe, it seemed, had a strange sense of humor when it came to Arthur Grimshaw.

And somewhere, far beyond the nursery, beyond the reality Arthur now inhabited, someone—or something—was watching, waiting to see what would happen next in the ongoing tragedy (or was it comedy?) of Arthur's repeatedly truncated existence.

The pencils would have to wait. For now, at least, Arthur slept, blissfully unaware of the absurd fate that had befallen him—and would befall him again, and again, and again.