Bulla had never seen trees like the ones that passed by the car window in West City. The air was sweet with the smell of summer. She kicked her legs but didn't get very far because of her car seat. The hills they streamed passed, the birds flying…it was all so wonderfully different. Cinnamon Town was going to be different for them. Maybe Mommy would cheer up a little.
It had been a very long few months. Mommy hadn't exactly been making much money on her comics anymore. She called it a creative rut. One that the joints Papa forced between her lips couldn't get her out of. Usually, magazines from all over wanted Mommy to draw for them. She'd only made one comic that month and she'd gotten a nicely printed rejection letter in the mail.
"We're sorry, but our magazine has been filled this month. Maybe next time?"
Papa said that was just a really nice way of asking "What the hell happened? You used to have talent!"
"Bulla, stop kicking my seat…" Bulma muttered. She looked into the rearview mirror. The pale skin around her eyes had grown lax with lack of sleep. There were bruise colored bags beneath her eyes. She took in a deep, shaky breath after talking, color making its way into her face.
She was starting to get angry. Papa's mouth made a quivering line.
"Bulma…woman…it's okay the child is just a little antsy…"
But it was too late. She was already shaking. Already mad. If there was a liquor store, she would've stopped at it. There wasn't, which made the situation all the worse. The corner of her painted mouth rippled.
Just then, the car began to violently shake. Black smoke billowed out of the car's hood. Bulma braked as hard as she could before stepping out of the car and slamming the door, making the entire frame rattle. She kicked the tire before heading off in the direction of the road. Trunks sucked in his lower lip as their father exited the car as well to follow their mother.
"Let's read some comics, Bra, want to?"
Bulla nodded absently, her eyes locked outside the window at the disappearing bodies. Papa was flailing his hands, his mother's face was in hers. Her shoulders were shaking. She was crying. While Trunks tried to distract her with Spiderman's latest adventure, Bulla saw her Mother's mental state scramble like an egg.
They came back from town with a curly haired teenage girl. Lilly, the red stitching on her uniform read. She slipped under the car with ease. She whistled as she reemerged.
"Sorry ma'am," She said coolly, "Looks like you're gonna need a major overhaul."
Papa's fingers gently pressed into Bulma's shoulder.
"How much will it be to repair?"
"So much is broken…and this car hasn't been in production in twenty years. I can get the parts cheap, but repairs might take a hot second. I can take you guys into town. There's a motel a few miles from here."
Lilly stopped suddenly, her eyes scanning Bulma's face.
"Hey, do I know you from somewhere?"
"Yes!" Bulla wanted to scream, "She's an artist! She's a famous comic artist! All the magazines wanted her to draw for them! She's famous! She's famous and she's my mommy too!" But instead she stayed put, staring at the tips of the girl's boots, her tongue pressing against her teeth.
"No. No way have we met before." Bulma answered icily before headed down the grassy knoll and into Ginger Town.
The unexpected detour made Bulla excited. When Grandma Bunny used to take her to church, they said that God had a plan for everyone and that he worked in mysterious ways. Maybe they weren't meant to live in Cinnamon Town? Maybe Ginger Town, with its tiny buildings, and river like the big, blue vein in her wrist, was where Mommy was meant to be. She'd stop staring at the blank sheet of paper in front of her. She'd stop crying herself to sleep at night.
They bought a nice airy farmhouse at the edge of town with the money they were supposed to buy an apartment in Cinnamon Town with. There were so many rooms and so many windows that Bulla could get lost for hours upon hours just exploring.
She got inspired. She wanted to draw like Mommy.
She fished one of the torn up sketchbooks from the trash bin and scratched off a bit of dried fish flesh. She sat at the kitchen table. Her mother said drawing was connecting all the nerves in your body to your brain, then to your heart, then to your arm. All your neurons would fire through that one string of nerves and tell your hand what to draw what was in your brain and heart.
Bulla started drawing. At first, it was just lines on yellowed paper. Then it began to take shape. She was drawing Ashlyn Columbine, the smooth talking, cocaine snorting bleach blonde, with a penchant for teasing every man she knew. The blue haired girl smiled at herself. It wasn't the best piece of work, but it was definitely recognizable as her mother's most iconic character. She heard her mother's footsteps enter the kitchen.
Bulma leaned over her daughter's shoulder. Bulla could smell the cheap wine on her lips.
"Wow, kiddo," She grinned into her daughter's soft blue tresses, "You draw a gorgeous whore."
She got more wine out of the cabinet, but it made Bulla happy all the same. Bulma was the best comic artist she knew. If she thought Bulla was worth something, she must've been.
Papa got a job at the shop Lilly worked at. Bulla didn't remember her face. Just the tip of her boots, and the feeling of her tongue feeling restrained against her teeth. Bulma didn't like it.
"It's just till we get back on our feet, then I'll quit. But we need money. The brats need to go to school. They'll need supplies, clothes…and so will you."
"It's because she's younger than me. She's younger and prettier than me…"
"She's gay."
"Oh is she?"
"I start Monday."
And he did. And he brought back a little baggie of bunched up green and red and brown leaves and stems.
"For you," he handed it to Bulma, along with a handful of rolling paper.
She growled and dropped them onto the table, "Do you honestly think…?"
She shook her head and began to walk up the steps, mumbling curses under her breath.
The family settled into sort of a routine. Trunks would spend most of his time in the town library. Bulma would be hulled up in her studio, pretended to be churning out comics or drinking where she wouldn't be judged, and Bulla would be drawing as many things as possible. At night, after everyone else had gone to bed, she listened to the crickets outside her window and poured over Robert McGee, Trevor Black, Jhonen Vasquez, and Junji Ito that her mother handed down to her. Her Marvel comics collected dust in the corner of the room. She studied her mother's drawings like a good Christian studies the Bible. Under all this, Bulla sought to bury one thing that would bother her years after the fact.
Her mother never leaned over Bulla's shoulder again.
One night, one could almost feel the change taking place. Papa was working a late shift at the car garage, Trunks was already in bed, and Bulla had stayed up to finish a particularly difficult piece. Bulma wandered into the kitchen. Her lipstick was smeared, her eye makeup had been cried off into black and gray divots in her yellowed skin.
"Bulla," Her voice was shaky, "You should be in bed."
Bulla sat straight up. She'd seen her mother enraged, she'd seen her mother break down into sobs of pain, but she'd never seen her look so…broken.
She tried to give her daughter a comforting smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. She was a liar. Liars went to Hell.
"I don't want to sleep."
Bulma went to the refrigerator. Bulla kept her eyes locked on the pad of paper. A garden. Green grass. Flowers of every color. In the middle, a decimated corpse in a puddle of its own blood. The greenery was happy to feast off the nutrients the human provided. Bulla hadn't realized she'd drawn it, but her hand still grasped the red crayon.
"Of course not," She sat a cup of orange juice beside Bulla's picture, "I almost forgot your juice."
Papa would always force them to down at least a cup of juice a night if they could afford it. But something felt off. Bulma glanced at her impatiently.
Bulla's pudgy fingers wrapped around the cup. Her blue eyes never left the identical ones of her mother. The juice tasted sour on her tongue. All the pulp had settled on the bottom.
"You should go to bed."
Bulla didn't want to. She wanted to stay rooted to her chair. She wanted to ask why her mother was acting so weird. She wanted to shake her mother and yell in her ears to make her snap out of it. She knew something bad was going to happen if she went to bed like a good little girl.
But she did anyway.
Bulla woke up that morning with a cold inclination. She walked to the end of the hall. Papa was sitting with her back to her, slouching against the wall.
"P…Papa…?"
She touched his shoulder. His body was cold and clammy. She moved around to face him.
His chest was merely a soup of muscle, bone, and flesh. His mouth was still open, teeth discolored with congealed blood. His dark eyes still bore holes into her own, but there was a glassy film over them now.
She didn't notice the warm trickle of urine going down her leg and into a puddle around her feet. She ran back down the hall and ran into Trunks' room.
"Please…please…no…"
Trunks had been stabbed so many times and with such force, that the blade of the knife had broken from the handle. Spurts of blood decorated the otherwise milk-white walls. Bulla saw, with great relief, that her older brother hadn't even opened his eyes during the attack.
Bulla sobbed as she lumbered downstairs. She didn't know what she was looking for. Her mother, maybe? To disprove the aching fear that her mother could've done this heinous act?
Her mother sat on the couch, head in her hands, covered in dried blood. She was sobbing too. It didn't matter anymore, that her mother was a murderer, Bulla needed comfort. She ran to the blue haired woman and hugged her legs as tightly as she could.
"Bulla…" Bulma struggled through her sobbing fit, "Look at what I've done!"
"I know Mommy, we can fix this."
"Bulla, get off me," more sobbing, "You can't love a monster."
"Yes I can!" She screamed, "And I will!"
Bulma shoved her into the coffee table's sharp corner. She got immediately afterward, "Oh my God, Oh my god…Bulla sweetie, look at me."
Tears pricked at Bulla's eyes. Her mother became a wet, hot, fuzzy vision of red and peach. She could feel that her skin had been split open somewhere near her temple. It felt sticky.
"You have to kill me," She whispered.
"No. No I can't-"
She took Bulla by the hand and led her to the kitchen. She opened up the pantry and picked out two knives.
"It's either you kill me or I kill you," Bulma said through tears.
This wasn't happening. This was something that happened in the action movies Trunks watched. It did not happen in real life with Bulla and the woman she called 'Mommy' for five years.
"I can't kill you! Are you crazy?" It seemed moot at this point to ask that question.
Bulma cried as she drove her weapon into her daughter's shoulder till the blade hit bone. Through the terrible, burning pain it became increasingly clear to Bulla that she had to do something or she was going to die.
Her mother was going to kill her.
She jabbed her knife into Bulma's stomach-once, twice, three times. She sank to her knees down to Bulla's level. She kissed her daughter tenderly on the forehead.
"Stab me in the heart."
And Bulla did, numbly, like a good little girl.
They found Bulla sitting between the couch and table, covered in her own vomit and piss. She was numb. She couldn't bring herself to feel anything, even as the social worker picked her up, out of her own mess.
As she crossed the threshold, out of Hell and into the sunlight, she remembered Grandma Bunny taking her to church.
If this truly was part of God's plan, it could only get worse from here.