Death Becomes Her:
The Following Years
"Realization"
"Who'd have thought it would just be you and me", Madeline Ashton said, putting a can of mannequin paint into her shopping cart. "Of all the people, to dead with, it's you, you, that I'm stuck with." With a glare, Helen Sharp dropped a box of screws into the cart also. "You talk as if I'm the problem, Mad." "Of course not, Hel", Madeline answered quickly, eyes wide. "Let's just pay for this, and be on our way."
At the register, the cashier rang up the items, took a look at Madeline, and gushed, "Aren't you-" "Nope", Helen cut him off, paying for their 'makeup'.
"Ok, so the can says that it takes about three hours for this stuff to dry", Madeline read, removing the top. "Close your eyes." With a quick spray over her horribly gray and pasty face, she finished Helen off with a few staples beneath her chin, to hold up the clearly-falling skin. "Did that hurt?", she tensed, a look of genuine interest on her own gray face. "I can't feel pain, remember?", Helen snapped, sitting Madeline down in her old seat. "So, how old do you want to look?" "Hmm...I want to say, 40, but we both know it'll end up as 45, so 35."
Using a heavy wire brush to scrape of the multiple layers of caked on paint, once the semismooth, gray undercoat was exposed, Helen went to work reapplying the four coats of flesh colored paint, making sure to add in a touch of light pink inbetween layers. After etching in Madelines' eyebrows, the two corpses sat down, and did what they normally did while waiting for their paint to dry- nothing.
"I can't believe that we have been reduced to touch ups every three days", Helen muttered, trying not to let her paint chip. "I know", Madeline answered, adding another staple near her hairline, to give herself a quick eyebrow lift. "The worst part is, Ernest has only been gone a week, and you already look like hell." "I look like hell?", Helen turned sharply, casting an astonished eye at her comrade. "You just put a roll of industrial strength staples in your face, Madeline!" "They weren't industrial strength!", she defended, pushing her hair forward to hide them, "They were out of those, so I got the kind used for holding wood together. And you do look like hell, Helen; for God's sake, you don't have a stomach." "No thanks to you!", Helen yelled, jumping up.
"I was having an off day", Madeline reasoned. "I mean, it's not every day that my little boyfriend rejects me, and then I get thrown down a flight of steps, just to live, and find out my best friend was plotting to kill me!" Touching her hand to her heart, Helen cooed, "You really think of me as your best friend, Mad?" "Of course, Hel, forever and ever." As the two women embraced each other with a hug, Helen ushered them towards the stairs. "How about we go away someplace, to Florida or somewhere?", Madeline asked, starting down the stairs.
Kicking her legs from underneath her, and watching her fall, Helen remarked, "But Madeline, you just had a trip!" From the bottom of the stairs, with her neck once again broken, Madeline could be heard calling, "Oh, you are just a big ball of freakin' sunshine, aren't you, bitch?"