2. 10 Things I Hate About Being Dead
It was the little things that Helena missed. The smell of freshly brewed tea, the new-found novelty of memory-foam mattresses, the ability to hold and coordinate a screwdriver. She'd so loved the art of taking things apart to find out what made them tick. These days, the only things she wished to see the insides of were those who were unfortunate enough to be out roaming the streets, doubtless in search of food or water or perhaps something more sinister. One did not need a screwdriver in order to reveal the inner workings of the human anatomy, only fingers and teeth. Not that she paid much attention to those inner workings. Those pistons and cogs made from tendons and flesh, the things that enabled them to at least try and escape her. No, she was rather more preoccupied with fitting as much of the screaming, mewling deceased-human-to-be into her mouth as possible.
She missed her ability to focus on more than just her stomach.
She hated the monotony that plagued her days now. What she wouldn't give for a change, something more than the idle walk, stalk, eat that her life had become. That her death had become, rather. She missed doing the crosswords in the Sunday paper, playfully fighting with Myka in order to get to them first. She missed dark nights spent in warm embraces and intimate touches, the memory of which was no longer enough to burn her frigid skin.
There were many things in her life that Helena regretted. Most of which had been put to bed a long time ago, but there were other, more recent ones that caused an ache to linger even into death.
She hated that she'd been afraid. To return to the Warehouse, to Myka, to the new family that waited for her despite the things she'd done. She hated that it had taken so long for her and Myka to take that final step, the one that had sent them tumbling over a line that had been pulled so taught for so very long, neither was sure how it hadn't snapped before then. She'd never taken a second for granted after that, but Helena hated that there hadn't been more time. To enjoy life, before death had come to claim them all.
But still, when you got right down to it, death wasn't all bad. Not this version of it anyway. They were still all together, the Warehouse team, though admittedly there were parts of them that had gone missing over the years, and while they no longer hunted for artifacts, they still hunted together. She and Myka still returned to one another, outmanoeuvring any obstacles in their way. It didn't matter that those obstacles were largely people with guns or machetes or that the outmanoeuvring consisted mainly of devouring those people, it only mattered that they found one another at the end of the day.
It was the little things that Helena missed, because the big ones were still with her.
