by DoraMouse
I wrote the poem in italics especially for this story. So please don't steal the poem because it is mine and besides, it prolly wouldn't make much sense if taken out of context.
Dragonball characters, settings and items are all registered trademarks of at least Bird Studios.
On the busy streets of a sprawling city, a woman walked amid the crowds carrying a bag of grocercies towards an aircar. She was a tall young lady attired in blue jeans, a green tank top and a pair of steel-toe combat boots that - if asked - she would firmly insist were actually hiking boots because she didn't like combat or anything associated with it. Her shoulder length hair was a luminous shade of dark blue but what made her a true rarity to the dismal city scene was her expression. She smiled.
It was the content, naive smile of a little child who honestly hadn't once paused to consider the potential dangers of the world. The woman walked with such tangible levels of confidence and optimism that the virtues practically walked beside her. She issued cheerful greetings to complete strangers and actually stopped to listen when someone answered her with more than the customary nod and roll of the eyes.
Her friends called her Ranchi when she got like this.
She was a marvelous cook, a tender nurse of battle scars and a polite maid. Ranchi was the type of well-meaning person that you could always feel safe confiding in because chances were that she wouldn't really understand your problems unless you drew her diagram. The word problem itself did not exist in Ranchis volcabulary and she didn't see any reason to add such a term. There were no such things. Everything in the world was good, everything was just as it was meant to be. There were no problems. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had ever been wrong...
On more than one occasion, her concerned friends had tried to discover what she was in denial of. What they had quickly learned was that although Ranchi was a chatty sort of person, she never did more than make small talk. She was an expert at changing subjects and loved to prattle on about all sorts of inconsequential things.
Despite efforts her friends had not been able to make her yell, swear or complain - not even once. Not Ranchi. The worst they could do to Ranchi was to make her sneeze. A frustrated comment about her spoken behind her back was all that it took and then, whether or not she'd heard the remark, Ranchi would sneeze because of it. And once she sneezed, she wasn't Ranchi anymore.
Gone would be the sweet contented woman of infinate patience, invincible optimism and dark blue hair. In her place would stand a woman that was identical to Ranchi in all but attitude and hair color: Kushami. The insecure blond. More than a hardened criminal, she was a short tempered bully - the sort of person who needed to carry a large gun and scare people just to feel good about herself.
That was another variance between them. Ranchi had trouble carrying heavy grocery bags but Kushami could easily throw a person double her own size. Kushami came with strength and speed - and a number of other assorted talents - that befitted a veteran fugitive. She could scale walls, pick locks and, if given the chance, could probably get past any computer-based security system on the planet. Kushami apparently felt as though she owed the world a vengeance but since she said very little that was not in the form of a threat, it was hard to be sure what exactly she sought to avenge and why.
Does the angel have an angle,is it out to strangle
The evil that haunts the edge of my face?
Could the demon grant us freedom from the sins of eden?
Where is my niche in all of this space?
Kushami didn't need the items that she stole but rather, she desperately needed the confidence which stealing required. She would seize upon the prize of self-esteem for a while and usually reverted to being Ranchi when she did.
There was a part of her brain that knew she wasn't staying Ranchi as much as she used to. This thought made Ranchi first frown and then sneeze. Her hair turned blond. She scowled at the people passing her on the sidewalk, tossed the groceries into the aircar a bit harder than necessary, jumped into the vehicle and leaned across the steering wheel. Resting her face in her arms.
It was a miracle in and of itself that Kushami had recognized the aircar which Ranchi had driven to the grocery store. It wouldn't have been much of a chore for Kushami to steal an alternative vehicle. Except that stealing didn't boost her self-esteem as much as it once had. Nothing seemed to help her self-esteem these days.
Her friends - even the dearest of them - had written her off as a hopeless case years ago. They'd been warriors after all, not doctors. She was out of their league, over their heads. They could save the entire world but they couldn't save her. They didn't even want to try. They didn't want to risk making it worse.
Not even the doctors could save her. Technically, there wasn't even a proper name for what the doctors thought she had.
Oh yes, the doctors had said at first, multiple personalities. Except that all they had seen - all they had found - was Kushami and Ranchi. So in theory that meant that one of them had to be the real person. Which meant that only one of them was a character invented to cope with stress and trauma. And of course, that was against the rules. Multiple personalities - there was a reason that the phrase was plural. Truly disturbed people might have sixteen different voices in their heads or they might have over a hundred - but they never had just one.
Ranchi and Kushami... If the woman was one of them then she only had one additional personality. In which case she didn't qualify for the same level of medical treatment that she might have otherwise. The puzzled doctors had checked for schizophrenia and countless other diseases as well but the expensive scans of her brain structure and tests of her blood had revealed no clear cut evidence of any disease.
In the end, the doctors had suggested rather blatantly that perhaps she wasn't really ill. That the best way to get better was simply to stop moping around and putting on an act. The doctors had been both rude and in their own skewed ways, sincere.
If only they had looked a little deeper first...
In the back of this head with a feeling of dread I hold the thread.
Am I not dead?
The faces of two obscure the view and no one sees through.
What can I do?
Does it seem so absurd that I am the third, hidden and blurred.
Will I ever be heard?
There was a third personality. Her name was Lunch. She was never as visible as the other two because all she did was hover in the background and watch the world pass her by. Lunch was hardly aware of herself on a conscious level, indeed she acted more as a subconscious by providing her two personalities with memories of each other. Lunch was the sole reason that Kushami and Ranchi knew of each others existances. Lunch was the fragile threads that connected the personalities and held the fragmented mind together.
Lunch was the real person. Ranchi and Kushami were her bandages, her shields against the world. Her way of coping with everything. Or at least they had been. She wasn't coping as much anymore.
Nobody believed her. Nobody could help her. There wasn't a cure for the pain that burned inside. Lunch felt so alone... She wanted someone to talk to - to really talk to - but Ranchi could only speak about things like the weather and Kushami wasn't happy if she wasn't shouting an insult and there was no one around who would listen to her anyway.
A shadow that is not shallow falls over my hallow
Body and mind and soul.
And the questions give impressions that sound like confessions
Yet all I confess is the need to be whole.
Kushami wiped her eyes on her arm and did her best not to sniffle as she slammed the key into the ignition and revved the aircar engine. She hated crying. It seemed like something that Ranchi ought to do but of course Ranchi was too optimistic to shed tears unless they were caused by excessive happiness. Kushami was the dark one, the insecure one. The one that could feel fear, doubt, lonliness and paranoia. But she preferred to feel angry.
How dare the world ignore her. How dare people go about their happy little lives when she was in such agony. It was simply intolerable. An insult added to an injury.
The old axiom was true, misery does indeed love company. Kushamis method for making herself feel better usually involved making others feel worse.
A smirk settled into Kushamis features as she gripped the steering wheel with one hand and floored the gas pedal, jolting the vehicle forward at an incredible rate. She drove like a maniac, speeding down the wrong lane and often zigzagging onto the sidewalks. Always refusing to blink - to turn away from the oncoming cars and people and buildings - until the last possible second. The aircar gained a number of dents in its frame and left considerably more damage than that in its wake.
With her free hand, Kushami hefted a gun and fired shots into the air. This was such a natural act for her that she never once paused to wonder about precisely where the weapon had been before it had materialized in her hand. And as she tore down the road, Kushami laughed the haunting laugh of a person who doesn't give a damn anymore. A person who has nothing left to lose but themselves, if that much.
Feel the shame, share my fame, play the game
Of who's to blame.
You cannot choose to win or lose if you earn the bruise.
Don't act confused.
Let the bullets fly across the sky within my eyes.
Inside my lies.
In the back of Kushamis mind, the threads began to snap and Lunch started screaming. The blond woman at the steering wheel abruptly shuddered and stood on the brake. The aircar skidded to a stop so violently that she was thrown from the vehicle onto the road. The gun vanished and the woman continued screaming, only now she was doing it out loud where other people could hear her.
Or at least other people might have been able to hear her if her voice hadn't been drown out by the noise of the oncoming traffic. Each vehicle swerving and colliding as it attempted to stop before it reached her.
After a few catastropic seconds the hushed whispers of the dazed people who had survived the incident and the hissing of cars that were now embedded into each other were the only sounds on the road. Off in the distance, a variety of sirens announced the tragedy to the world as they rushed towards the site. But the ambulances were already too late.
Truth comes in spurts and blurts and all of it hurts.
Lies were the security.
Who wants to be sane in a world full of pain if there's nothing to gain?
I, at least, am free.