Chapter 2 - Second Sight
It was at this point, after a night of being elsewhere, that Helga remembered herself. Arnold, who had been himself for a while now and was feeling perfectly fine, regarded her quietly. If embarrassment came in dollars, Helga would have been a very rich girl indeed. It seemed as though she had to a) explain why she had thrown her arms around him in such a shameless gesture of lack of control and b) find a way to say it that wouldn't make her seem like a lovesick puppy.
If Helga was honest with herself, and she often was as she spent so much time lying to everyone else, she wasn't at all sure why she was so secretive about her love for Arnold. There was, in the back of her mind, the fact that most children her age were under the impression that love was icky-pants, but Helga knew that both she and Arnold were way too mature for that. There was also the fact that since she found out she had feelings for the boy, she had done nothing but terrorise him, and to get down on one knee and profess her love for him could seem a tad hypocritical. She chewed her bottom lip ruthlessly while Arnold stood waiting for an explanation with maddening patience.
'I could tell him I'm ill," she thought desperately, before metaphorically shaking her head. "No, he would never fall for that... Maybe I could tell him I thought he was someone else... yes, that has possibilities..."
"Don't be foolish girl, just tell him how you feel."
Helga's eyes snapped open in a gesture of out and out shock. Helga had never been interrupted during her own thought stream before because, as a rule, there was usually no one else in her head but her. To find that someone else was in there, probably messing the place up and leaving dirty clothes everywhere, well, it was quite a surprise indeed. It was also rather rude.
"Excuse me," Helga continued inside her head. "This is an inner monologue, meaning that the only persons who should hear it are me, myself and I. Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my head?"
"Don't you remember? Last night? At the graveyard? It's me, Henry!" The old wheezy voice let out a little chuckle, the kind that can only be perfected once you're dead.
"That's all well and good, but that doesn't explain why you are squatting in my skull and cluttering up my thought process," Helga replied, in the angriest tone she could think in.
"I'm sorry, I'll leave you to it then," said Henry in a voice that indicated he had just settled himself down in an imaginary armchair.
"I'd prefer if you didn't have the opportunity to interrupt at all!" she thought-screamed.
"Oh," said the old man. "I'll be going then, shall I?"
"Would you?" Helga replied. There was a moment's silence, which to Helga felt very much like the putting on of carpet slippers, and then Helga felt as though someone had stuck a tap in her brain and ran out half the essence. She did a quick check, just to make sure she really was alone, and then remembered what deep trouble she was in.
"So..." Arnold said gently, in a vain attempt to prod Helga into a response. She scowled at him, and then, curling her hands into vicious little fists, she remembered her social standing.
"So," she said firmly, before punching him sharply in the ribs and running away.
-
Four years after that fateful night, Helga saw hide nor hair of the Grim Reaper, (who, in fact, did not have hide nor hair), and she thought she was damn well lucky to be rid of him. As the years went by and Helga sped into that nasty little period called adolescence, she sensibly put the whole thing down to a very small but very real psychotic episode. Someone dies and your mind makes up stories for you just to make it that little bit easier, which seems fair. She probably would have done the same for it.
Lack of appearances from Death, however, did not mean that Helga's life was short on excitement or event. Far from it. When she was twelve, her parents came to the absolute conclusion that they were sick of looking at each other. One messy divorce later and Miriam was back in the southern states, burning to a crisp and drinking smoothies with a Ranch Boy named Randy. Her father, meanwhile, found that his Beeper Emporium was more than an adequate substitute for a wife and consequently he got so buried in his work that Helga was lucky to see him one month out of three. Olga, of course, blamed herself.
Arnold too grew and with him Helga's love grew. She would have marvelled at the fact that she stalked him around like, well, a stalker, but to her true love meant skulking in alleyways and stealing bits of hair. Arnold, in his own little bubble, continued not to notice. There had, however, been one minor relief for Helga when it came to loving Arnold. She had finally found the nerve to spill her guts to Phoebe. Phoebe had replied that she had known all along. Helga had muttered something under her breath. Life had gone on.
And so it was that the two teenage girls, one much more taller and lankier and western than the other, sat side by side in the lunchroom of HS118, observing a football headed boy contemplating his tapioca. Helga's hands were twisted into tangled snakes underneath the table as Phoebe had finally convinced her that this was The Day. And it wasn't going to be like all the other Days, where Helga strode confidently up to Arnold, before punching him on the arm and running away, no. This was The Day, The Day when she would finally confess everything to her beloved.
Secretly both girls knew it was going to be just another Day.
"I don't wanna," Helga said childishly.
"Of course you do," Phoebe replied motheringly.
Helga folded her arms and glared at the petite girl who had the audacity to call herself a friend. True friends didn't force you to march up to your crush and confess everything. No, a true friend told you to keep it all down, always writing little poems in shadowy corners and turning your love to hate for the sake of any witnesses, until one day you exploded in a shower of unrestrained passion that left many dead and a few injured. Helga gulped and, after a push from Phoebe, walked up to her spiky haired love.
"Hey Helga," he said, the quiver in his voice announcing to everyone in earshot that he was a late bloomer.
"Hello... Arnold," Helga replied, scrabbling to find a vocabulary that didn't contain the word 'dolt'.
"How's it going?" Arnold asked, finally deciding that tapioca wasn't for him. Out of the corner of her eye, Helga saw Phoebe giving her a jaunty thumb's up.
"It's going..." Good? Swell? Most excellente, por favor? Who was she kidding? It was going like a derailed train. She curled her fist up, and saw Phoebe bury her head in her hands.
"It was going great until I ran into you!" she yelled, thumping him on his barely-there bicep and skittering back to her table. Her face went the colour bricks. Arnold flexed his arm a little, wondering where the feeling had gone.
"Nice to see you too Helga," he muttered.
Helga pulled at her bunches. "I'm pathetic!" she roared, and Phoebe put a consoling hand on her back.
"No you're not," she said soothingly, wishing she could add 'just deranged'.
"I might as well just face facts," she said sadly, furrowing her brow. "I'm just going to lust after Arnold for the rest of my life, without ever having the chance of relief." She sniffed dejectedly.
"If it makes you feel any better," said a heart-freezing voice behind her. "The rest of your life is only going to be about forty seconds."
-
Being fairly young and inexperienced, Helga had never died before. But, being Helga, she wasn't going to take it lying down. All around her students were frozen with forks halfway into their mouths, and only she and the darkly cloaked figure of Death were animate.
"I'm too young to die!" she protested. Death shook his head at her.
"You're never to young to die," he said, in a voice that implied he had said it thousands of times before. Helga narrowed her eyes and balled her fists.
"Look mister," she said thinly. "If you try to wrench me from my body at any point in the next sixty or so years, I am going to kick you squarely where the sun doesn't shine." Death allowed himself a small chuckle.
"You can't threaten me with violence, you big silly," he said, grinning like a lunatic.
"Watch me," Helga replied bitterly. And then something in the back of her mind spoke up. It was ill timed and random and definitely as far from the point as she could get, but it was there. "Hang on, how comes you never came to see me?" Death gripped his scythe tightly and looked sheepish.
"I've been busy," he replied. Helga snorted.
"I thought you could stop time?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow. Death threw his scythe down in guilt.
"Ok, I got told off," he muttered. Helga couldn't help it. She was an inch away from death and yet she still burst out laughing.
"Told off?" she repeated incredulously.
"The Powers That Be thought it was rather unprofessional for me to be coming down here and making friends with mortals. They thought it would make them look bad in front of all the other deities," he said, producing a lipless pout from nowhere.
"Don't they care that you're lonely?" she said with the tiniest trace of sympathy. This being was here to kill her, and all small talk was simply for the purpose of stalling and nothing more.
"Probably not," Death said stiffly, as though he thought that the Higher Powers were the ones that should be getting a good telling off themselves. "Anyway," he said, shaking himself a little and picking up his scythe again. "Helga Geraldine Pataki... Your Time Has Come." She tittered nervously.
"Come on now," she said in a shaking voice. "We're old friends. There's no need to be capitalising things."
"But I always do it like this," Death said pointedly. "It just makes it seem more proper." Helga frowned.
"Oh yeah? So where's my hour glass dribbling down the last few minutes of my life?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
"Er..." Death managed, rolling up the sleeve of his robe. Acting as though he were more interested in the leaves outside of the cafeteria window, he flashed Helga something on his bony wrist before quickly hiding it away again. Helga let out muffled bursts of laughter between her pursed lips.
"A digital wristwatch?" she burst out, doubling up in her hysteria. Death sighed and tapped his foot.
"Look, they take up less space than hour glasses and they're much more accurate, alright? What is it with you mortals and everything looking the part?" Helga clamped her hand over her mouth and tried to get herself under control.
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry," she said, wondering where her death had left off and this debacle had begun. It certainly seemed to her as though she might not die after all.
"Can we just get this over with?" Death boomed. Perhaps the old dirt nap isn't entirely off the cards though, thought Helga.
"Um, do we have to?" she chanced. Death pulled back his hand, which had been travelling on it's cold and unyielding way to her forehead.
"Of course we bloody well do," he replied irritably.
"Oh," Helga replied sadly, looking at Arnold, who had frozen in the middle of massaging his arm.
"He'll be fine," Death said, trying to regain his composure.
"So, how do I die?" Helga asked.
"Um, heart failure or something," Death said, raising transparent eyebrows. Helga nodded.
"Funny," she said slowly. "It never failed me before."
"Yes, well, there's a first time for everything," Death said. "May I?" Helga shrugged, deciding that it was time to give up the good fight.
"Go nuts," she said, sighing. Death looked at her strangely. "It means go right ahead," she explained. Death nodded in an enlightened fashion, and extended his hand once more.
"Ok, deep breath in," he said. Helga closed her eyes and braced herself, feeling Death's cold yet warm finger rest in between her eyebrows. For a moment, nothing happened, and then Helga felt it. The sensation as though she were trying to hold on to a spider's web underwater. Slowly but surely her fingers ripped through the delicate material of life until she was forced to float to the surface, no longer in control. A sound like a giant breathing out could be heard, and then light and colour flooded into the cafeteria, leaving Helga's classmates to swarm over her lifeless body.
Some six feet above the scene, Helga and Death floated side by side. "It's really rather sad," Death commented wistfully.
"Yeah," Helga agreed. "It really really is." A chill hit Helga's, well, hit her where the back of her neck had once been. Death turned suddenly in the air, staring at Helga with all the shock there seemed to be in the world crammed into his eyeless sockets. Helga looked down at her now pearly white translucent representation, and wondered what was worrying him so. Death gulped. Loudly.
"Excuse me miss," he said evenly. "But what the Hell are you doing here?"
-
A/N: I know it's past Hallowe'en now but I, like Douglas Adams, feel the only good thing about deadlines is the whooshing sound that they make as they go by. -Sky.