Okay, bear with me on this, because it's way different from my usual fare. I'm attempting a fairly serious DBZ fic, so it's fair for me to warn readers of all the other stuff I've written in the past to sort of tender their expectations. Thanks.

The day I said goodbye to Matt Stoneman, I was standing behind my bar, watching the usual slow trickle of customers arrive one hour after I open at 6 PM. Most of the people I serve at my bar, I wouldn't have anything to do with outside of business. That's not because I don't find them to be interesting people, they are, but they're the kind of interesting you want to watch instead of get caught up in. Tired, middle-aged men working on railroad or construction in the unspeakable heat walk in with a gait like life is always right behind them, screwing them out of every last drop of fluid in their bodies, and mutter the name of their preferred drinks like incantations through faded, chapped lips. Many of these men are hopelessly addicted to my products, pickling their livers and going home after closing to make trouble for their families. It's only at night, when most of these people can barely see, that the more stable regulars come in and something resembling a crowd starts to form.

In a small town like this, when you're a bad man, everyone knows it. When you walk out your front door, and a woman and child are walking by, the woman picks up the pace and makes the child follow. When you pick up groceries, the person behind the counter swiping them doesn't even bother to try making polite conversation. And when you walk into a bar, by God, that's when minds get spoken, and spoken quick. When Matt Stoneman walked in, that's what happened.

At first, the place fell silent. It was already quiet, but as the door swung itself shut behind Matt, it became downright ghostly. Eyes swiveled to look at him as he hesitantly approached the bar and ordered a cheap shot of whiskey. I don't think he even felt like drinking, because he sipped it instead of shooting it. His face was shrouded in the emotions of a man attending a funeral, and I wondered at the time if it was his own.

It wasn't long after he got his drink that a tall, thin man in a cowboy hat named Cliff—one of my daytime regulars—walked over and took a seat next to Matt. He wasted no time. "I want you out of here."

Matt nodded. "I know. Let me finish this drink first."

Cliff paused and looked down at the drink partially enclosed in Matt's hand. "You got one minute."

"He has as long as he needs, Cliff." Yeah, that's what I wanted to say, but I didn't. If I have any nobility in me after all these years of slowly poisoning all these people, it doesn't matter as much as my reputation. Anyone around here finding out that I was sympathetic to Mr. Stoneman, the child murderer, would let that news spread like wildfire and all of my business would be gone. Well, besides a handful of people who're too busy being constantly drunk to give a damn about being upright citizens.

Instead, I watched wordlessly as Matt turned the shot glass upside down, letting the burning liquid cascade down his throat, then left his money on the counter and walked out. Like a switch had been flipped, conversation resumed, only all of it happened to be about the nerve of that damn shady character.

I still don't know why I did what came next, but I think if Matt had tried to keep a normal expression on his face instead of wearing his heart on his sleeve, it might not have happened. I went to the back, where my part-time assistant had just arrived and was putting his coat up in a box next to the backdoor.

"Nate, go ahead and get started," I told him, "I'm going to take my break early today."

"Sure, boss," he said, and nodded.

I walked down the street a couple of blocks and found Matt sitting by himself on the curb, where a near-deserted Mexican church loomed just over his back. I leaned against the nearby stop sign and tried to get a look at his face, but his head was resting on his kneecaps. "Look, I—uh… what happened back there, I just…" A sigh runs through my lips. "I apologize for that."

He looked up from his kneecaps to give me a smile that rattled my nerves. "Don't bother."

"Why not?" I asked because I had no idea what else to say.

"You and the rest of those fellas in there don't need to worry about seeing me around anymore. My stuff is already packed. By tomorrow, I'll be miles and miles away."

I felt a little relieved that he wasn't referring to suicide at first. "Do you have any place in mind?"

"No, not at all. All I feel like doing is driving."

"With what money? How far could you make it? You have to settle somewhere."

"Settle," Matt snapped with enough ferocity to startle me. When he resumed talking, his voice had calmed again, but the bitterness remained like storm damage. "Carl, I don't know how long you've been in this town, but I've been living here all my life. Hell, save for this one time a girlfriend and I took a road trip to West City, I've barely even left this place for a vacation. I've watched the same faces and seen the same scenery so much that, as twisted and against me as it's become now, I can't stand to stay. I can't stand it…"

I heard a warble in his voice, and my blood ran cold. That's one thing I can't deal with: crying. As much of it as I've had to see these last several years, I can't deal with it. It's an awful thing to watch, because it's such a hopeless thing to do. When I get sad, I like to take action. Whatever's bothering me, I either talk about it to someone or I go out for a walk until I think it all through. When a person is crying, it's as if they're saying whatever's bothering them is heavier than they can handle.

"Matt…" I sat down next to him on the curb, noting that I had about twenty minutes until Nate was going to start wondering where the hell I'd went. "What happened was not your fault. Most of the people here were so blinded by their grief and their anger, they couldn't see it, but it was obviously not your fault. The judge and jury agreed."

"She just jumped out right in front of me!" snapped Matt, and I instantly realized I'd fucked up, because if he was about to cry before he definitely was starting now. "I was just trying to get back to the house, I went down that road every time I got groceries for over ten years! She was always playing out in the front yard, just her and a little ball. Out in the middle of nowhere, I don't know why she didn't have any friends with her if she was so goddamn popular!"

"It's okay, Matt, I know the story—"

"I DIDN'T ACCELERATE!" he screamed. "I DIDN'T—"

"MATT!" I hollered as loud as I possibly could, thinking I was going to have to do a lot more of it to try and calm him down. But it was like I reset him or something when I yelled his name, because he looked at me as if he didn't even know I was there. But then he said, "I still remember her face against my windshield, Carl. I see it every time I close my fucking eyes, man. She… her teeth were sticking out between the cracks in the glass, I… I saw skin peeling—"

"Matt, you've got to stop thinking about that—"

"I know," he said shakily. "But it won't go away. Sometimes I'll be watching something on TV and I'll see a person's face, and look at their eyes… her cold, black eyes will come over theirs. I won't even be trying to think about what happened, but it just does."

Before thinking about the next words coming out of my mouth, I said them. "Have you thought about talking to a therapist?" There are no therapists in this town. Matt looked at me like I was out of my mind, and I was wondering if I was. "There ain't any here, that's why your place does so well."

I took a lot of offense to that, but didn't say anything because I figured it was probably true and the last thing I wanted to risk doing was to set Matt off again. "Is there anything I can say to convince you to try and stay here?"

Matt didn't respond. Instead he fished something out of his jacket pocket. It was some kind of green-faced compass with a yellow grid and a button on the top. He pushed the button, and a yellow orb lit up on the screen, with a triangle next to it displaying the number 1. "I found this thing while taking a walk on the outskirts of town the other day. You have any idea what it is?"

"Not a clue. Looks to me like a compass or radar. Maybe a kid's toy, I don't know."

He shrugged and stared at the face of the device. "I thought, for fun, I might follow this thing."

I laughed a little, in spite of myself. Matt's face cooled a bit. "That's your plan? Matt, you're going to be gone for a couple of days, tops, then you'll have to come back! You'll have no choice."

"You're wrong about that last part," he said. "I have a choice and I've already made it. I can't even walk into a bar and enjoy a drink without someone making me leave the place because they can't even stand to be in the same room with me, much less talk. All my friends have turned their backs, my family all lives out of town. There's nothing for me here, Carl."

"I don't believe that. But even if that's true, man, just move one town over. Maybe two. They aren't going to know much about what you did, and they probably won't care either. You can just start over. This idea you seem to have about turning into a homeless drifter is weird, and it's going to bring you nothing but pain."

"How do you know and why do you care?"

"I know because I've seen it. I get drifters every now and again. I know they're drifters because I'll ask them if they're from around here and they'll tell me they're from some place way the hell out of the way, sometimes places I've never even heard of. Obviously, since no one would come here for a vacation, they're always passing through. Most of the time, they'll be absolutely filthy, and their skin will be some kind of a dark color that they clearly weren't born with. They'll be… the most miserable sons-of-bitches you ever saw in your life. Sitting on a stool in some town they never heard of and don't plan to come back to, nursing a drink they can't have too many of because they don't want to get drunk and pass out so someone steals all their shit off their back… a drifter's life, by definition, is solitary. It's lonely. If you take it on, especially on a whim like this, you'll either die out there or your soul is going to wither away."

He didn't say anything for a good while, just rested his chin between his kneecaps. "You didn't answer the other half of my question."

It was my turn to be silent for a long time. I watched Matt's eyes gently close, like he got exactly the reaction he expected. So I tried to subvert it. "I care because no one should live like that."

"As opposed to living like I am now? I can't even walk over to the neighbor's house and ask to borrow a goddamn cup of flour without her refusing to answer the door. I hear whispers no matter where I go. I'm starting to hear them even when I'm by myself. There's worse kinds of loneliness than just being by yourself; the worst kind is being in a room full of people who wish you weren't there. That's loneliness, Carl."

That's when I noticed it was starting to get a little dark outside. It was about a month before Christmas, and I was just beginning to get acclimated to the whole nightfall being early business. I had gotten a little tired of arguing with Matt, especially when he was right—I shouldn't have cared as much as I did, but I did. I think it was because I knew how he was before the whole mess with Kathy, the girl he ran over. He was never the most sociable guy, he kept to himself a lot and didn't seem to be too close to people, but he was polite and pleasant. No one hated him at all, which is why it amazed me when people turned on him so viciously over what seemed to me like a simple accident.

"I have to head on back to the bar. Listen, if you decide not to go through with this—just driving off to the middle of nowhere because a toy said you should—come over to the bar after closing time. We'll play a game of darts or something. Just…"

"Don't let anyone see me come in, right?" Matt said.

"N—" I was about to deny it. I really wanted to. But I couldn't.

I never saw Matt again after I left. I didn't think I would, even as I waited a couple hours for him in the cold, dim bar, listening to the way my darts thudded against the board, the sound filling the emptiness the customers left. If Matt had shown up, he would have been the first person I ever let come into my place outside of closing time. If I had any close family that lived around here, I could see inviting them. I haven't even had a girlfriend for about two years, after my last relationship got ruined because of my line of work.

To this day, I'm not sure what makes me think so much about that man. I've seen a lot of strangers come and go in my life, and I could tell a person stories that would make the hairs on their toes curl up like weeds in a burning heat, but he sticks out to me. Matt Stoneman, the whisper-thin 30-something year old man with a high-pitched, lisping voice. I couldn't believe he could possibly make it out there. I still don't, but it makes me think.

What kind of guts, or desperation, or sense of adventure does a man need before they'll abandon all that they've ever known to walk naked into the world and let it sniff them until it either kills them or decides they aren't a threat? It's bizarre to imagine, but I think it could happen to anybody. There are other ways to kill yourself besides just using a bullet or a rope. Sometimes, killing yourself is about living the life you always wanted to live so you could die feeling like you didn't miss anything. Maybe that's what Matt's going for. But then again, I don't know. It's all just speculation, isn't it?

It's been about six months now and the town has since completely forgotten about Matt Stoneman. I shouldn't say that—they haven't forgotten, they've tried to, like a person brainwashing themselves. The death of Kathy Barnes and the ensuing trial where Matt was easily found not guilty of manslaughter was easily the most talked-about and most harrowing thing I think anyone here has ever had the chance to witness first-hand. I think it's a little different when you're in the same town with something like that, even if you had nothing to do with either the victim or the perpetrator. It's about the protection a person gets from being surrounded by their home soil, and when a substance as simultaneously foreign and familiar as the spilled blood of another member of town splatters and taints it, it's… violating. It's invasive.

When Matt left, he took his only house key with him, so as far as I can tell the place is still his. That hasn't stopped people from scribbling all kinds of terrible graffiti all over it. "Monster," "murderer," other imaginative stuff like that. I've got to wonder how many of my patrons are responsible for that shit. I always thought that graffiti was the territory of kids, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that we never grow out of the things we used to do when we were children. What really happens is, all of those childhood habits dissipate in our heads the way a pill will dissolve on your tongue or in your stomach, where it will proceed to permeate all of our experiences as adults. In other words, I think we are drugged by our own childhoods, or diseased by them, and when the going gets tough we allow those old habits to take up too much of our bloodstream.

One last thing: I feel like Matt would've come back if not for that device he found. When he was being cast out in the wake of the Kathy trial, he probably felt like his life had lost all purpose. But he got something back from God or luck or whatever, because when he found that device… what I saw in his eyes…