THIS IS A PARANORMAL STORY - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

THE HEADLESS SOLDIER

Everyone knew that the ship was haunted. With the amount of people that would die (be killed) every day on that metal hell, it would have been scary if some unfortunate soul wasn't trapped within the walls of Frieza's massive flagship. Did he believe in ghosts? Not entirely – the first general and right hand man of the emperor of the universe, the beautiful and vain Zarbon, had much better things to do than to waste precious time telling ghost stories. He'd been here for years and nothing ever surprised him; he'd seen it all, or so he thought. Word soon began spreading amongst the lower ranking foot soldiers of the ship, of an apparition that roamed the ship's halls long after everyone was asleep.

He heard about it one day after Cui babbled about it; not to him, but he had just happened to be there when he was conversing with a returning party from a mission. From what he heard, the soldiers who stayed in the barracks of the ship had been complaining of hearing weird noises and knocking on doors long past everyone was supposed to be in bed. One night, one of the men had enough of it, thinking it was somebody trying to be funny, and stayed up in hopes of catching the culprit. What he saw was nothing short of petrifying; he claimed he saw a soldier, dressed in the standard uniform, walk past his door. But the thing that made this scary was that, from what he said, the man didn't seem to have a head. Yes, he swore that what he saw was a headless soldier walking about, before the ghastly figure just seemed to disappear.

Zarbon had scoffed at the notion; how cliche was that? He wasn't privy to all the ghost stories that were shared amongst the lower men but he did have some idea of the horror tales they comprised of; he thought it was all foolishness. A man with no head; if it really was the spirit of some poor man who met his end at the hands of a presumably annoyed or even bored Frieza, why would he have the rest of his body but not his head? Lord Frieza didn't do decapitations; he'd just blast you into oblivion. He didn't believe a word of it; idle talk was a problem on the ship, one that he did not care to indulge in. This story would die down eventually, like all the others…. At least, that's what he thought.

Weeks went by and, to his chagrin, more people began claiming to have seen the headless soldier. Even some of the higher class men on board spoke of hearing weird noises or seeing strange things after curfew. By now, Zarbon's interest was piqued and he asked Dodoria one time if he heard about the alleged paranormal activities. "Yeah, but I don't really buy it. It's probably just someone with nothing to do." The name that had been assigned to this entity was 'Pearin'; no one really knew it's true name or who it even was, and the only reason why it was dubbed as such was because of the yellow-green glow that was said to surround the ghost as it roamed the halls.

Zarbon was vaguely intrigued, but not enough to seek out this so-called ghost. He did think it was odd that everyone on the flagship seemed to have spotted the spectral soldier at some point, everyone excluding himself, Dodoria and Frieza. Although, if it really is the spirit of a low-level that he killed, it makes sense that even in death he'd want to stay away, he thought, finding that fact both ironic and hilarious. His mockery and light-heartedness over the issue, unbeknownst to him, was going to come to a sudden and eerie stop.

It happened one night (well night time on the ship I mean, it's space lol). The night had gone on as usual; he spent most of his time at Frieza's side, ate, and later on he and Dodoria did their rounds to ensure no one was breaking the implemented curfew of the ship. Frieza had very strict rules about wandering the halls after a certain hour, and anyone who was caught breaking this rule would be punished. Well, his check of the second floor, where the soldiers would usually mingle, came up empty. On the first floor however, something strange happened, something that he would not forget. The first floor was the main floor for the low-levels; their cafeteria, training rooms and barracks were there. No one was loitering on the accommodation halls and he headed to the training rooms.

There were fifteen training rooms on this floor, marked from A1 to O1. When he got to training room J1, he noticed the door was slightly open. Thinking that someone was hiding in there he stepped in and looked around. There was no one there it turned out, and just as he was about to turn and leave, the lights I that corridor suddenly began to flicker. "Ugh, faulty wiring," he deduced, making a mental note to speak to maintenance about it. Then, he heard it; light footsteps heading the opposite direction, towards the first training room. Moving quickly as to catch the culprit, the teal warrior sprinted outside and looked up the hall, and what he saw scared all good sense out of him.

Walking up the long corridor, in a slow, wobbling manner as though he were drunk, was a soldier clad in brown and white armor. But what made his blood run cold was not his clothes, or that fact that someone dared to defy a rule of Frieza; no, he noticed that this man literally had no head. It was just an empty space where his head should've been. He couldn't even make out his skin color or what race he was from; this man seemed badly disfigured, with large lacerations and burn marks marring his entire body. A thick, disgusting green-looking glow shrouded his form, making him appear like some giant intoxicated animal.

Somehow, the headless corpse appeared to be in pain from his slow movements, and the way he used his hand to balance his steps against the cool metal wall. Zarbon, who usually was a quick thinker and strategist, could not even get his legs to move. Was he really seeing what he was seeing? The headless soldier had gotten past A1 when he suddenly stopped in his tracks as though to catch his breath, hunched over and shoulders moving up and down the way someone would when taking deep breaths. The lights were flickering at a disturbing speed, it was almost like a trigger for epilepsy. That went on for about ten seconds, and all through this Zarbon was not sure if he should alert Dodoria or hide or try and attack whatever the hell this was.

Then, something happened that made him forget about trying to fight; the man, who was previously struggling to even take a step, and seemed doubled over in excruciating pain, suddenly stood straight up, turned around, and began power walking towards him. The ghost wobbled from side to side like a penguin, arms at his side, but this time at incredible speed. Zarbon fled down the hall, not caring about his rounds anymore, and was caught off guard when he ran straight into his cohort. Dodoria fell flat on his back, peeved at being slammed into. "Hey, what's wrong with you?" he demanded in a wet, angry voice. "Dodoria get up! There's something in the ship!" The pure fear that was on the normally calm warrior's face, was enough to make the magenta fighter fly to his feet.

They both rushed back the way Zarbon had just come from… only to see nothing there. The lights weren't acting up, the training rooms were empty, and there was no disfigured phantom chasing him. He didn't know what to say to Dodoria without looking crazier than he already was. He was in shock and could barely get a word out anyway. He could not comprehend his encounter; was it due to all the talk about this 'Pearin' fellow? Did he just imagine the whole thing? Was it all just someone trying to play him for a fool? There were so many explanations for what happened that night, and now it was up to him to decide which one he wanted to believe… and which was true.

Ok so I know I did a ghost story already, but with space there's only so much you could do for paranormal creepies :/ And yeah, this one might not be as good but I liked the idea of the ship being haunted (it makes sense when you think of it lol). But yea thanks for reading - keep your eyes out for more of these.

IMPORTANT: I mentioned a few times that I'm working on another fanfic, and I decided that sometime this week I'm going to post the first two chapters of that one, so look out for it (it's an idea that's been used a lot of times but I think some of you would like it) And don't worry, Reddit Tales won't stop because of that; I actually plan to listen to more stories to get ideas ;) But for now this is it so, later!