I paced the dark office of his little room, wondering to myself why such a prestigious doctor would keep such humble surroundings, despite the impoverish aftermath of Sin. A plain desk, a plain chair, both made of plain wood and an ugly, dirty window. Fascinating. Really.
“Goku, please sit down,” spoke the doctor in his Swedish accent, gesturing for me to place myself on the long bed-like sofa. My eyes darted towards him, catching him off guard like they always did; the inferior creation instinctually acknowledging the presence of something higher on the food chain.
“No doctor,” I shook my head, holding the backs of my arms. “I’d rather stand, thank you.”
“Well than stand if you must but don’t wear a hole in my carpet while doing it!” he joked, his fading brown beard lifting. “Now, why don’t you try and tell me the problem.”
“I’m seeing him again,” I breathed without hesitation. “I’m seeing him everywhere.”
“Well,” the doctor scribbled something in his notebook, crossing his legs in his dull brown chair. “Those things are normal after a tragedy.”
“Normal after 5 years?” I whispered, staring through the blinds of his window. I could see him through the reflection on the glass, his eyes displaying many more years then they'd actually witnessed, deep and rich like tree sap. His eyes were on the notepad he feverishly attacked with his pencil, scratching over the surface and furiously dusting away eraser scraps.
“Mr. Goku,” he looked up. “These sort of things don’t just heal with time. You might be experiencing these dreams ten, twenty, fifty years from now.”
“No,” I shook my head. “They’re not ‘dreams’ doctor; they’re visions.”
“Goku, we’ve been through this,” he said in frustration. “Vegeta does not exist any longer. He’s gone, poof, out of the picture. Yet you hold onto him as if he still controls you and you LET him control you in that way. You must say to yourself ‘Vegeta is gone, Vegeta is gone’ and FREE yourself of him." He gestured wildly, something that had made me like him over the years. "The world is safe now because of you; take the rest that comes with that and realize that these are NOT visions but simply dreams.”
He was right. The world thanked me soully for the renewal of the earth, the news spreading quickly as the remaining humans on earth had awoken from their devil-induced trance to find me and Bulma, gliding down the massive tower after defeating "Sin." It was all the superiority proof the humans had ever needed and in their detachment from God, they replaced his image with a fleshly dealer of justice: me.
“Dreams that you have when you’re wide awake doctor?” I said in a hostile manner, turning to look at him. “Dreams that you have while talking to your friends? While walking the streets? While jerking off in front of your TV? Dreams that leave you completely terrified? No,” I turned away, noticing his fear. “They’re not dreams and they’re being fed to me.”
“What uhh….” He righted himself, perturbed by my crude wording. “what happens in these visions? Can you describe them to me?”
“Try to describe the effects of a drug to a non-user.” I sighed, soothing my hands over the backs of my arms. “There are no words. I could tell you what it looked like but how it felt? Indescribable.”
“Will you try? Try to tell me how he made you feel.”
I paused, watching the contours of his face adjust as he braced himself, well aware of what came next. I had been seeing him for over four years, off and on, orders from Bulma after my screams and sobs at night became too much. Perhaps she knew that I would never -could never- open up to her. Sexually, there was too much extra baggage, too many details a husband has no business sharing with his wife. So she sent me here, to this world renowned psychiatrist, to spill my secrets, all barriers unlocked.
It hadn’t been easy and by the twentieth session, the doctor had become frustrated with me, urging me to tell him the truth of what happened. And when I did, countless sessions later, he still cringes when preparing himself for the morally-deprived situations that lie ahead.
“You want to know how he made me feel, huh doctor?” I grit my teeth, walking again towards the window. “The same way he always made me feel. But than, you don’t want to hear that part, do you?”
He remained silent, watching my every move with the careful eyes of a doctor who has witnessed one too many psychopaths flip out in his presence.
“You can’t help me,” I whispered, leaning down to my knees at the window sill. “I know it horrifies you, what we did. I know the machinations of a human mind cannot comprehend my reasoning, if ever I really had such a thing. You wince when I tell you how I liked the feel of his warm cum on my back, but you must have heard such things from other patience before.
“Why is it that I scare you so much?" I raised my eyebrow. "Why is my idolized figure incapable of weakness, incapable of sexual desire for someone of the same sex? Were all super heroes always white, straight males you suppose? But I tell you my feelings and you fear me for them.
“I told you of how I made him cut me once, letting the guilt bleed onto the sharp blade of a knife. You secretly hated me for it, for not being the same invincible, flawless hero that the world wants me to be. I can’t be your stereotype, doctor. I’ve told you things that I cannot take back, and though I know my secrets would never leave your lips, unintentionally, I see your reaction as though you had written it in a journal.
“You fear and loathe me yet I fascinate you." I whispered. "The more you grow to despise the secrets I possess, the more you long to hear more. The human fascination with the grotesque. And so you ask me what I felt when seeing him in these visions and I say, search your memory for those of the past and that’s what you’ll find. Understand that I loved him as closely as I’ve ever loved anything though never completely. I don’t know if I’m even capable of that sort of emotion and if I am, perhaps it is fortunate for us all that I never realized it at the time, when I murdered that gorgeous body that I had so worshipped.
“I felt as I’ve always felt for him; the whirl-wind of emotion, the indescribable sexual euphoria. Like he was already inside me and the worst of the guilt had passed. When all reservations were thrown to the wayside and with his thrusting, he set me free. I thought by killing him I was saving myself, freeing my body and mind from his control. Little did I know, with each last beat of his heart, I was walking, step by step, into the cage; and as the last of his blood spilt, locking it tight.
“How do you describe the feeling of being torn between running into someone’s arms and sending a blast through their brain? I don’t think the line between love and hate has ever been this thin, this transparent and inconsistent in parts. But I miss him, as completely as you can ever miss anything. Or maybe, more probably, I miss myself. Feelings -good or bad- made me alive and now? I am as numb and cold as ever. Like a dead body I suppose. Ironic isn’t it? The cross that plunged itself out of his chest impaled us both.”
It was true though and as I left his office, I pondered on what I'd seen in the last few days. Images of horrors and gore, thrown on display like proud pieces of modern artwork, chunks of human flesh dangling before my eyes like someone had pasted them over my forehead. It was sick. Sometimes the dreams were more vivid as I slept yet during the day, more jolting. Like the worst of insomniacs, I'd trembled throughout my hours of wakefulness, begging for much needed sleep which would end up with me staring at the ceiling from my bed and pondering over a thousand questions that would never get answered.
"You know you're crazy," Vegeta had said to me two days before, as he lay next to me, rolling his eyes at my predicament. True, it was a digested image from far too much alcohol and way too little sleep yet I mourned it the same as if he'd died again. Was I so desperate that I was imagining these encounters? Was I so needful of his existence in my life that I saw disturbing images on the news as further proof that he'd come back to me?
The dreams both haunted and relieved me. I hated to wake up, cold sweat bursting from my every pore yet at the same time, the euphoria of someone greater being out there, of someone waiting, looking, missing me was enough to calm my rapid heartbeats. Bulma would hold me during the night, tracing the expanse of my drenched hair and whispering a thousand cliche's that it'd be ok, that it was over.
But I didn't want it to be and perhaps that was what had landed me here. I was wishfully hoping that everything fucked up in the world was further proof that he'd come back to finish what he'd started; to finally take me some place that I actually belonged. I gazed around me and saw a vast place where I was at odds with everything. I'd saved them, a hundred times, yet now I felt more isolated from the species than ever. Whatever fool dreamed of controlling the world had never known how alienating deification could be. I wasn't a human and I wasn't a person. I was a God and therein, unable to feel, unable to mourn, unable to be allowed even the most menial amount of privacies.
I was their walking idol that could fight off the big bad.
Immediately my mind roamed to the bible story of the copper snake, appointed by God in order that any of his servants who were inflicted by venom from other serpents could look and see his love and be cured of what ailed them. I was the copper snake that walked amongst them and within me, they put their every trust.
I looked over the walls of the ally, my hands tucked into the tight pockets of my expensive black pants, my vanity another little gift from Vegeta. I glanced along the bricks of buildings, watching as the roughness of wind cracked them and tiny specs of dust drifted downwards.
The sun broke that instant through the top of the buildings and cascaded into my eyesight, temporarily blinding me. The sounds of wet flesh slapping against brick made the slits of my eyes open and I gawked as human hands, bloodied and detached from their arms crawled like spiders over the sides of buildings and walls.
Ladies' fingernails clacked rapidly over concrete as they came towards me over the ground, bone and tissue gleaming behind the wrists' and leaving trails of gore behind. I hitched my breath, backing up and blinking hard like the doctor had told me.
"He doesn't exist, he doesn't exist," I repeated, my skin crawling as a hundred hands clambered up my pant-legs, coming over my black t-shirt and scurrying towards my face.
"He doesn't exist," I said more firmly, feeling them pause.
I opened my eyes again, the sounds of cars rushing near and horns awakening me. I glanced around in the sunlight, seeing people stare at me in acknowledgement of who I was, not what I'd just seen. Yes, dreams, he'd told me, not visions. And again, I was isolated because I was the only one that had witnessed them.
..........
“You needed a private investigator, here I am.” He threw his card on the mahogany desk, wild blonde hair flipping the finger to any sense of gravity and leering over his bright, piercing blue eyes. “Best of the best. What can I do for you Mr. Goku?”
I lifted the stiff card with trembling fingers, reading “Travis Steele. P.I.” written in big bold letters at the top.
I glanced up at him, watching him finger a cowboy hat over his crotch, his snake skin boots peering from beneath sand-colored khaki's. I felt weary, drugged and tired. Nostalgic in the worst sense, almost to the point where I didn’t know what outcome I was rooting for.
My suspicions proved to be just that; lingering fears in the heart of deranged, lonely man. Or did I hope for another outcome, the words “he’s alive” confirming my greatest fear and desire? I shook my head, swallowing before rubbing my eyes.
“Mr. Steele-..”
“Please, call me Travis.”
“Um,” I blinked, shrugging. “Sure. Travis, I feel it’s my duty to inform with you that all practices or discussions that go on between us from here on out are to be of the highest discretion. No one can know that I used your services, especially not-..”
“Wait wait wait,” he grinned, holding up his hands. “let me guess…. The wife? Now I gotta tell you, I’ve seen some beautiful women in my time cheat, but somehow, I just never pegged Briefs for a slip-n-slide you know what I mean?”
“Yes, er… I mean NO! No!” I growled in frustration. “It’s not Bulma I need you to investigate.”
“You sure?” he said, putting a toothpick in between his teeth. “because I’ll tell you what, ain't a man on this earth that wouldn’t LOVE to tame that shrew! You just never know Mr. Goku, you never know.”
I ran my hands through my short hair, quickly tiring of “Travis’s” impertinent assumptions and trashy boon-docks way of addressing important matters. My rolled eyes scanned the mass of my room, taking in the luxuries so vainly thrown out in the form of spacious, finely polished desks and classy paintings. Travis seemed the ultimate contradiction to everything in the room, the dirt mingling over the tops of his boots, no doubt scuffing up the imported Persian rugs Bulma had just installed. I would tire of him quickly, that was for sure. Still, from what I’d heard, the man could find the one grain of gold in a sand box and that was basically what I was asking him to do.
“So if it ain’t your wife,” he sat down without permission across from me. “Than who ya lookin’ to spy on?”
“I’m not asking for you to spy on anyone, Travis,” I said professionally, lifting myself out of the chair and pacing. “I need you to find someone for me.”
“Easily done!”
“Not quite,” I said, making my hand into the shape of a steeple as I paced behind him. “This person might not be quite so easily….. dug up, you could say. I need you to find someone I haven’t seen in five years.”
“Like I said,” he smirked, lacing his hands behind his head and casually stretching out his legs. “easily done.”
“Tell me, Travis,” I grinned wickedly, putting one hand on his chair and leaning down into his face. “Have you ever gone searching for a dead man? I’m assuming it’s not always quite the cinch looking for a living man might be.”
“Depends,” he shrugged not to be deterred from his arrogance. “About where would the vicinity of his burial ground be?”
“I wouldn’t have the faintest,” I sighed. “It was five years ago and I didn’t attend any funerals. For all I’m aware, he could have just as easily been cremated.”
“So let me get this straight,” He crossed his arms, putting his tongue in his cheek. “You want me to go looking for some guy that died five years ago that you didn’t even bother to go to his funeral? Any chance I can ask exactly WHY you want this done?”
I let the silence between us escalate into awkwardness, turning my back to him and gazing out a window. Why DID I want this done? What would I do when I found that the body had been buried within the ground never to resurface again? Would there be a contentment in that? Or an amount of grief?
“I want to see it,” I answered. “I want to put my hands on it….”
I saw myself touching that dried, decayed flesh, cold like a dead fish. I saw myself kissing crackled, rotted lips, brushing off beetles and worms from the body I crawled over. Ohhhh…. I could feel myself crushing through thin layers of flimsy material, fucking that hideous hunk of gangrene filth.
I shook my head.
“….. I have to be sure.”
“Are you nuts or somethin’?” He spat, making an ugly face as if he'd read my mind. “A body buried for five years!? Do you have any conception of how difficult that’s going to be? Of what condition that thing’s going to BE in?”
I saw the white, rotted flesh, laced with green particles of mold. I saw myself kissing every crackled inch of it.
“Money isn’t an obstacle,” I grit my teeth losing patience. “You’ve been made aware of that.”
“Of course I have,” he growled, taking off his hat. “but marital indiscretions and digging up dead remains are two different things! You want me to hunt down some filthy God damn corpse only to dig the damn thing up for your amusement?”
I saw threads of sticky seamen covering the stomach of the body and I closed my eyes.
“You some kinda sicko?" I could feel the movement of his eyebrow raising as he sat up in the chair. "I heard you rich types had your fetishes but I had no idea that-..”
My fists crashed against the thick mahogany wood, smashing it in half and sending splinters everywhere. He dodged, covering his head with his arms to protect himself from my temper.
“I don’t care HOW you do it, or WHY you do it, but I WANT IT DONE!” I hollered, leaning towards him. “I want that fucking thing dug up! I don’t care about the means, the way, the cost. I just want to see the fucking thing for myself! I want to put my hands on it, to settle my nerves and confirm what should already be obvious. But I want it done and I don’t care to be questioned about it. Understood?”
“U-understood Mr. Goku,” he stuttered, slapping his hat back onto his head. “but how abouts should I go finding em’? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“I have a small amount of information, but I trust it will be sufficient enough to locate the burial ground. I mean, it’s not as if he’s on the move or anything, right Travis?"
I sighed as I left the meeting room, figuring I'd just left a dead end to turn right into another one. My quarters, or more, my private home was set along the barrier of Capsule Corp, an entire section my own for whatever odd machinations Bulma suspected I partook in while she wasn't around. I ate my meals with the family, slept with Bulma but when I wasn't out "saving" the remains of the human race, I stayed by myself in my quarters.
Sometimes she would write speeches for me, publicly aired as I reassured the 'remains', as I dubbed them, that indeed, all was safe and sound on their planet and would stay such.
I rolled my eyes as I caught sight of another drolled out paper full of lies, explanations for the recent "church incident" scrawled out in woman's handwriting. Alter boys had gone insane inside of one of the last, free standing churches, only about 30 others remaining. Raping and disemboweling everyone inside, they'd burned along with anyone or anything that could give answers as to what had taken place. Except one person.
Me.
I closed my eyes, recalling the dream as I had seen so many others recently. Blood, guts, gore, your usual human televised depiction of desensitizing violence. Only it wasn't a movie and it wasn't just a dream. I hadn't had to watch the TV the next day to tell me that and as Bulma had barked out a thousand "can you believe!"s, I could only sigh, giving her a look that instantly shut any debate that might have started from my seeming nihilism towards the subject. In one way or another, she knew.
Other dreams had surfaced, individualized with sadism and horrors that I'd been unable to speak of to anyone. A man wearing the skin of four of his family members, walking around with his wife's legs loosely heat-duct taped around his own.
I dreamt of a man, once a dedicated and chaste gynecologist, now a maniac, gassing the woman in his trust, and spreading their legs as they left conscious state. I became him, as he explored the folds of his victim's vagina's, leaving kisses along their delicate thighs. I watched with fascination as he lodged scalpels and knives into their wombs, forcing open their uterus's and ripping out babies, aborted by unknown mothers.
"Doctor," They'd say a day later, voices hushed and pitiable over the static of the phone. "Doctor, she isn't kicking!"
We would wait behind the steering-wheel of a car, watching, shivering with anticipation as they would worriedly do anything to wedge away the panic; doing menial housework to dull their rushing flurry of thoughts, checking the mail before that crack in the silence, that push of air, that scream that symbolized terror and something else unseen before Sin's wake: absolute abandonment of hope.
Who knew sticking an unborn fetus in an envelope could cause such desperation? I shook my head, trying to will away the dreams and their aftermath like I always did. Had a time really existed when I let myself dwell over them, accuse myself of causing them? Times before were just echoes now, having lost any real purpose in the present.
I turned a corner, walking past a doorframe and then pausing as I caught sight of my son, Trunks, sitting on the floor within the room. Where was Ezabelle, the nanny?
I gazed forward, wondering why I instinctually hated being around the child myself. Was it his eccentrics, his varying quirks that made him virtually opposite of any child I'd ever been around? He was unpredictable and these days? I hated that quality quite passionately.
I recalled the sounds of screaming when he was born, the high-pitched shrieks that could have broken glass, the doctors' hands clamping protectively over their ears. And blood. I was sure we'd lose Bulma to it as it seemed Trunks had torn his way from her womb, the doctor frantically telling her to push when she had just stared, glossy eyed and in horror as the baby clawed its way through her uterus and into the outside world. No clamps, no pushing, no fundamental breathing; Trunks welcomed himself into the world...with screaming.
But the calm after the storm was what I remembered in those moments, as wearily a nurse held out the baby, wrapped in a blanket and kept at arm's reach to Bulma. I stared in both fascination and foreboding, almost expecting any moment that the tiny baby would lash out, just like in a horror movie, and wrench its slippery, bloody hands around her throat. Everyone in attendance watched as though expecting the same, the baby spider stretching out of its egg-sack before devouring its living mother.
Instead, it was as though the world stopped and time and place and Sin and everything else in the universe ceased to exist as they gazed at each other. Blue eyes widened and screams stopped and Bulma has never looked at me the way she looked at him.
"I love you." She said simply as though they'd been having a conversation all their own and no one else existed. His tiny fists opened and balled once more as he stared in awe of his mother, face clearing of redness and bruising.
I had glanced over to Dr. Fallon who had taken care of Bulma throughout the pregnancy, his face flushed of all color. It seemed he breathed a sigh he'd been holding in for 9 months, shaking his head as humans do when they've seen or felt something that by all logical accounts cannot exist.
My attention had drifted back to Bulma and Trunks, sharing their first moments together, oblivious to the remainder of the world.
Bulma caught her breath and pulled him to her, resting him over her chest as she suddenly began to cry. I hadn't seen her honestly cry in so long I'd forgotten how traumatizing the effect could be, her beautiful eyes watery and wide as she sobbed into the soft strands of hair on his head. The baby, displaying perhaps more strength than natural for a newborn, wrapped its tiny arms over her neck, holding her even tighter to itself.
Watching her cry, I felt instantly the initial response to comfort her, staying still when I caught sight of both sets of blue eyes, glaring at me. I wasn't needed anymore, they seemed to say. I'd fulfilled my purpose and had no place in this.
It was an eerie sensation not missed by the various doctors and nurses in attendance, quickly ushering all of us out of the room save for the two.
So maybe that was why I held such strange animosity towards the child; I wasn't needed by him.
I walked into the room, seeing him, small against the surroundings. A short coffee table was mauled with his work, tons of coal-covered papers sporadically tossed over it.
“What are these Trunks?” I asked, staring down at the array of gothic, (in fact horrific) display of pictures that he had sprawled out along the small surface.
“Drawrings.” He said sweetly in his childish voice. He glanced up, those cold, calculating eyes once more gleaming from beneath long lashes, almost pushing me away despite the sweetness in every other feature. I wondered if I was completely mad, seeing sourness in a 5 year old even when he was smiling up at me.
He left my gaze, ignoring me completely after that, swirling his pencil in harsh circles on his fresh piece of paper. Soon, it became what looked like an enormous hole, black and almost cruel in appearance.
“What is that?” I asked, bending down to crouch next to him on the floor. Still not looking up, he smiled.
“Sin.” He said simply. My blood ran cold in my veins and I struggled to swallow down the lump in my throat. It was impossible. I was crazy, in fact, stark-raving insane.
“Is that…” I stammered, proud that I could, indeed, form words. “Is that something you learned in Sunday school?”
“No.” he replied, still entranced by his picture and seemingly unaware of my post-hernia disposition. “I seen it in my head.”
He finally looked up at me, pointing to his temple and then swirling his chubby little hand around his eyes. “Right in here, I seen it.”
I looked away from him, horrified by his small gestures, his seeming innocence when in all other ways, he was monstrously distorted. Every movement seemed a façade, every sweet look, every child-like giggle. A lie. A fake.
'Please God,' I pleaded silently, my eyes darting over various other pictures, 'let me be crazy.'
He turned back to his drawing as I examined the others, one after another stacking them in a pile as I looked. They were simply too good, too detailed and perfected for a 5 year old boy. In fact, a man twelve times his age would struggle with such talent, the lines perfect and the faces in flawless symmetry.
One drawing in particular struck me, not as clear as the others. In fact, it seemed as though it had been faded for a reason, the face shadowed beyond expression or characteristics. Nothing was discernable on purpose and when I looked closely, I saw the very distinct shape of an open pizza box in the corner of the paper. Try as I might, I could not make-out what was inside the box, its shape blurred.
“Kiddo,” I swallowed. “what’s in the box?”
“A pizza cutter.” He said without looking up.
I shook my head, increasingly disturbed by these. We had insisted that he find a hobby; a healthier way to express himself then the horrific displays he had enacted on family pets. But this was sick. Not so much the content, for I could hardly scold him for drawing a pizza cutter in a pizza box, but the strange and almost fascinating coincidental figures. A woman that strangely resembled Satin, a young boy that had both traces of Trunk’s himself in him along with the monstrous little pyro, Charlie. An old man with small circular objects in his hand, perhaps a priest.
And the figure of a tall, dark man always in the darkest of the shadows. Always lurking in dark corners or directly behind the characters. You could just barely make out the very vague expressions on his face and he was always smirking.
“Trunks,” I breathed. He didn’t respond, still twirling his pencil violently around the paper. “Trunks, can you tell me who this man is?”
He looked over, staring hard and with some amount of confusion at the dark figure.
“Uh uh,” He shook his head innocently, and for once, I truly believed him. “Then why do you draw him?” I asked.
“I dunno,” He shrugged. He looked serious suddenly, his intricate little features twisting with concentration.
“I wish I knew him. I think I SHOULD know him.”
I was surprised at how mature he sounded suddenly, the hint of childish ignorance all but vanished from his voice. Was it Satan, (Vegeta), that he was drawing? All details pointed to it and yet, it was impossible. The height was nearly perfect, the stance was very characteristic of Vegeta, the hair line was flawless, but the face was shaded and unrecognizable.
“Why can’t you see his face?” I implored.
Trunks shrugged his narrow shoulders, turning back towards his current picture.
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “I wish I could. I jus’ know he’s pretty and that he loves me. So I draw him.”
“I…..I love you Trunks,” I almost pleaded, not knowing why I felt the necessity to make him believe me. “You know I love you.”
I was horrified when he turned to me, his face suddenly old and worn looking, like an aged man in a toddler’s body. I moved back away from him, almost feeling like I didn’t know this creature at all; a stranger suddenly, staring at me with cruel, unfeeling eyes and mouth upturned in disgust.
“I love you,” I whispered. “Please, believe me. I love you.”
“No.” He shook his head, voice harsh. “No, you don’t love me like he does.”
