Being Dead: 2 of 4

    So apparently mid-week updates effectively eliminate my ability to have anything interesting to talk about on my regular posting day. Lol :)  I can summarize my after-mid-week post happenings with:

     1. You can have a coughing fit that leaves you feeling like you strained your diaphragm and have breathing hurt for days. It involves a throat still struggling with phlegm, a mouthful of coffee, and a base instinct to not breathe fluids, all while not dropping your full coffee mug because your toddler is too close and burns are bad.
     2. Kids aged 3 and 6 can not only be well behaved in a grocery store, but they can be helpful, polite AND well behaved! (I'm not expecting a repeat of that quality for every outing going forward, I'm just happy / proud for that outing.)
     3. My hubby's "mom friends" from when he was the at-home parent are really great ladies, and I'm constantly feeling lucky that I now get to hang out with them before and after school.

    Have a great weekend!

2. Ugh, Great...

        I slowly relaxed my legs so that the body bag didn't crinkle suddenly. I just wanted to get some feeling back into my butt, okay? I was flexing. I hoped it would be the same idiot from the night before who jolted out the slabs. Then I would be able to slide my obligatory two or three inches and no one would notice the stiff’s feet and legs moving without external cause being applied.
        The slab didn't move. I waited, holding my semi-flexed pose and thanking my Pilates instructor for the great ab exercises that were keeping me from freaking out right about now. Still no removal from my fridge, though, and thankfully no pulling at the zipper to get at my toe tag.
        Suddenly there was music. Well, at least the merged sounds that currently pass for music. Actually the noise bouncing around the morgue seemed to be the match for the chorus playing in my head. My inner thoughts cringed away from the sound and I had to force myself not to follow up with a physical shudder. I don’t like pop music. I did allow myself an eye-roll. Get zipped up in a cheap body bag with your head at the far end of a fridge and you can get away with stuff like that when you're dead.
        Then wham! and I slid to a relaxed stop about four inches from where I had been lying. Good acceleration on that one. I bet the night shift jerk could market this as a carnival ride. Whatever happened to respect for the dead? Being as we vampires don't age, we have to be dead at five to ten year intervals so we don't cause suspicion. If you knew the treatment some dead people could get, you'd forgive those of us who decide to keep eating live food. I'm not saying that it's correct behavior to snatch and snack, but there is a certain satisfaction to it when the meal deserved it.
        I have this one friend who's the cause of most urban legends about corpses re-animating on the autopsy table. He likes to die whenever possible just to check up that people take care of their dead properly. His family was wrongly accused of some crime or other, and their bodies disemboweled, quartered, and refused proper burial rights in the eleventh century. He takes respect for the dead pretty seriously.
        As for me, I die when I have to. Being dead is an irritating hic-up in my life. If I have to be in a dark, cold place that smells odd, a morgue is my second choice. I'd rather be at a movie theater.
        "Ready? One, two, lift."
        Well, that was a gentle and caring hoist and drop. I hate it when they bounce my head off the gurney, the morgue ones don't have cushions. And I have at least one more to go when they pummel the autopsy table with me.
        Yup. That hurt.
        In all honesty, being undead does give you increased strength, speed, and pain tolerance. The body loses its caution about getting hurt when it just heals back up again, so in turn you forget to worry about what you can and can't lift or can and can't dodge. You just do it. Things that were impossible become easy. Take (for example) that I'm dead, but that the fingers of my left hand are against my body and not touching any part of the body bag. This means they can freely twitch with the desire to beat the snot out of the two pricks tossing me around like a sack of rotten potatoes. There is one thought that helps me get my fingers back being dead like they're supposed to: fifteen minutes and I'll have my Accidental Death papers signed and sealed. Then these idiots will shove me back in the fridge and I can get back to escaping and getting on with my life.
        And how does one escape from a morgue fridge you might wonder? Yoga. Yoga and twelve years working with a pair of magicians a few lifetimes back.
        "Did you lock the door?"
        Pardon?
        "Yeah."
        "Good. The camera is set to re-record last night, so we don't have to worry about a thing."
        Great. Just bloody well great.
        "You sure?"
        "Trust me."
        Two men, one was nervous and the other one was cocky. I would guess either perverts or overly zealous med students. Either was very dangerous to my rather precarious situation. I've only been in a truly bad situation once before in all the times I've had to be dead. The priest who interned bodies in that village so many years ago had decided that because I wasn't breathing, sex wasn't a sin. Too bad for him I was undead. Too bad for me hygiene and diet during that century wasn't what it is today. I would have killed for a breath mint or a single piece of minty gum after that experience.
        "Can we just hurry up?"
        "What, you scared or something? These kinds of things you have to move slow so you can experience them fully."
        Perverts. Great.