Tri rumba boomdiay, my teacher passed away
The storm had finally broke. Torrents of rain were hitting the car at a faster rate than the windshield wipers could remove them. She was practically driving blind, and her tired state didn't make it any better.
Her palms were a bit clammy, but not so bad. It had only been about ten minutes since she had left the diner and she was hoping to be home soon. She would take another sleeping pill before she slept so at least she may be too tired to dream.
She wanted to forget the Dream. Seeing Him torn in half before her very eyes was too much. It wasn't like most dreams where you woke up before something terrible happened, it was a dream where it made sure you were going to be afraid to open your eyes, a dream that milked out every gory fear you had and played it out before your very eyes. She would become so wired that sleeping was impossible. The Dream made all of her worst fears come to life and stopped just before finishing her off, but Videl knew the Dream never would kill her. Videl was not afraid to die, so the Dream kept her alive allowing her to remember every horrible moment. That in itself is far worse than dying, because if she died her hell of a life would be over. She would be free of this heart wrenching fear that took control of her mind each and every night. She would be away from this place, this living nightmare. Sleep should be a refuge. A place your dreams take you off to the future where you are being loved by the one you love most, where you are protected in those arms that make you feel warm and happy giving you that weird butterfly stomach, not a place of trepidation and death. Not a place where you still fear for your life when your awake. What insanity causes you to fear dying from a measly illusion created by your mind?
As Videl reached a red light, she removed her hands from the steering wheel, closed her eyes tight, and rubbed her face trying to wake herself up enough to make it home. It wasn't going to be easy.
When Videl was young she always had a vivid imagination known to take off and create new worlds of fantasy and wonder. She dreamt like every little girl would. She wanted to find her prince, that one person who could make her happy no matter what. She soon discovered, though, that you don't always get what you wish for, and it seemed that her mind with its own personality became depressed. From that moment on, from that little revolution, everything went downhill. She started off believing that a monster would demolish her valiant prince in battle, but soon the nightmare became more than that. As she grew older, she was introduced into the world like every child was, but when she saw all of the death and distruction, she couldn't take it. She wanted so much to help others, but being only eight, there was very little she could do. She began to think that one day, someone's life is going to be in her hands, and she won't be able to do anything. Not a thing.
Her powerful mind sped her easily through school without trouble from the lack of sleep. It was easy as pie. Or cake, whichever you prefer. She had plenty of free time on her hands, which never was a good thing.
The nightmare progressed for three years getting worse and worse with each failure and bad decision she made. Then her mother went away, and that was the Big Bang. The creation of an entirely new nightmare. The creation of what she dreams today. A new world of realism in its entirety. Her mind became more developed, thus her fears became more plausible. It was a never ending cycle that led her to believe that her dreams as a child were foolish apparitions. She now knew that she had wasted her childhood because none of those dreams would come true no matter how hard you tried. No matter what you do, some monster takes them away from you, and the only difference from Videl's dream to others is that, her monster took a true form.
The light turned green. Green. The one thing that was always consistent in her dream was the oncoming threat of Green. The color was what terrified her most. Anything green was bad, evil, awful. Green eyes. Green eyes followed her with painful moans of women and little children. The sound of death, the death of innocents. Innocents she do nothing to help.
Why green, she didn't know, but she was happy she didn't know, because she feared that the answer was more than she bargained for. So, letting Green be Green she would go on her way until the morning came to arouse her from sleep. The morning was now her last hope, and only God knew what could take away the morning.
Him. Here he comes, there he went. She felt empty, as if he was truly a real person. She hoped so many things for the likes of Him. She wanted him to be real, to find someone, but she wanted Him to just be in her imagination, so such a nice soul wouldn't have to suffer such a miserable death. A death she could do nothing about.
Helplessness. Damn being helpless. The feeling of not having the ability to help yourself and not knowing anyone to help you. Damn helplessness.
The light still shown green. Green. The one thing she remembered that overtook the green was Him, accept he was yellow. No. Golden, shining brilliantly. No color, not red, blue, black, no color other than that Golden Essance given off by Him could melt Green like ice-cream on a hot summer day. Not even her mother could do that.
A horn sounded behind her. She was jostled from her pondering. Looking through her rear view mirror she notice a ticked off trucker yelling at her to go. Tsch... as if. She sat there a little while and Videl decided to get a coffee at a nearby gas station to ease her sorrows, to get her mind off the situation, and plus it would be enough to keep her awake until she reached home, and then she could chug a few sleeping pills and enjoy the thoughts of the upcoming weekend. Yup...mhm...that sure sounded like a great idea.
The horn continued to blare. Yeah...like she was moving.
"Not a chance buddy...remember, patience is a virtue." Videl grinned. The one thing that Videl was a stickler for was patience and manners, and this dude had none.
The light turned red. No one else was at or ever was at the intersection in Videl's presence. It was absolutely deserted.
She checked in her rear view mirror once more to see how Mr. Anger Management Problem was doing. He appeared to be turning red and spouting saliva with every curse word he threw at her. Now that's not nice.
His constant horn honking eventually subsided. The light was still red.
The intersection still deserted, Videl flicked off Mr. Anger Management and turned right to head to the closest gas station.
A grin crept up on her lips. That was fun. Teaching manners is always fun to those who could care less. Much more fun.
The night seemed eerie. The constant beat of the windshield wipers, and not to mention the glowing lights of illuminated signs made the back road seem freakishly dreamy. Not like a hot guy, but like you were in a different world. Like the world in her dreams. God how she hoped she hadn't fallen asleep again, but technically, when you dream, you don't know you're dreaming, right? So she was okay. In her dreams she didn't know about the Dream itself, she was only able to make connections when she was fully awake. So she was good, in the clear.
She pulled into the gas station, unbuckled her seatbelt, and reached into the back of her truck for her black jacket. She didn't want to find out if the uniform was see threw when wet. It exposed enough when dry.
Craftily maneuvering on her jacket, she cautiously opened her car door and ventured out into the cascading storm. The wind blew her hair in whatever directions it wished while allowing the rain to soak her feet and all exposed skin. She walked past a big man with a John Deer cap shielding his eyes from the torrents of rain , standing outside waiting for the tank to be filled to capacity. Green. He was wearing Green. The truck man was evil. Green.
He nodded, she timidly nodded back, but soon realized that he was rudly staring at her butt. She wanted to cave in his face, but kept her temper to a minimum and continued into the shelter of the wonderful mini-market. He was Green. She couldn't stand up to Green. No way no how.
"But...How dare he look there!"
It was her butt, Videl believed, and no man, no matter how big and strong and Green abiding, had the right to stare at it like he was. A glance is okay, but openly staring? It gave her a new strong rush of anger and fear that woke her up. Good adrenaline that you laughed about later when you thought about the reason why you were angry, and most of the time you can't even remember why exactly. It wasn't the kind she got when stopping thieves or a bank robbery, but the nice kind that gave you the sensation of a sugar rush, accept without the crash.
Reaching the mini-mart, she happily went inside to escape from the deluge of rain and Green Truck Man. The lights were bright, but her eyes quickly adjusted and she want on her way to the glorious coffee machine with a squeaking sound resonated throughout the little store as her wet shoes ran against the plastic floor.
She grabbed a large styrofoam cup and prepared to get a nice hot brew, but was stopped when she saw the many selections.
"Mocha, French vanilla, cocoa bean, vanilla bean,....bean, chocolate Java, coffee house style ...okay....but where's the regular coffee?"
She stood there tapping her foot -squeak squeak-, wondering what coffee would appease her taste-buds.
Eventually giving in to a good French vanilla, though still a diehard black Folgers fan, she made her way to the front and paid.
"That's one hell of a storm we got there, eh," the mini-mart clirck stated. He was small and seemed to be a Vietnamese man with his dark black hair and tan skin. No Green. He was a good man.
"Huh, oh, yeah. It's pretty bad," Videl replied trying to find a nickel in her soaking pocket so she wouldn't have a take change. "Ah, there we go," she said triumphantly finding a dime and placing it on the counter. Okay, so she got a nickel back, but it's better than getting a penny. What can you do with pennies these days anyway?
Looking at the front counter Videl noticed a display of multi-colored lighters. One in particular was calling her name. It was blue, with a boat tied to a dock painted around it. She picked it up and placed it on the counter. Videl didn't smoke, and never will, but she bought it anyway, slapping another dollar bill on the counter.
Giving Videl her a nickel in change Vietnamese man said, "Have a nice weekend," and gave her a cheerful wave.
"You too." Videl waved and stepped out into the storm once again. She sipped her coffee and took the long path underneath the refilling station to her car. The perverted Green Truck Man had already left so she was out there by herself.
It was a cold night, black and rainy. She felt alone and, though it was no new-sprung feeling, she wished she had someone, something. Him. Videl stepped into her car and slammed the door. She didn't want to go home anymore. She didn't want to see her father. Their relationship had gone from her being able to ignore him to wanting to choke him to death. He was more thick-headed than any ass-staring swearing truck driver out there and could easily beat out Al Gore in her 'Most Hated Men of All Time' list. After sitting there for a few moments, the raindrops battering the roof of the car, Videl decided that going for a nice drive along the outskirts of the city would be nice. Who knows what her father was doing know.
"Wait...lemme refraise that. Who wants to know what my father is doing now." She put her truck into gear and slowly pulled out of the parking lot not having a clue as to where she was heading, but for some reason, part of her was eager to get to where ever she was going to end up. There was only one slight problem, though. To go right or left?
She took a sip of her coffee and sat there deciding her next choice in direction.
COFFIE!
Gohan breathed a small sigh of relief. The doll was still where he had left it.
He walked up to it and kneeled down over the mannequin. It seemed so harmless. He grinned and picked it up.
His smile faulted. The doll was heavier than before. There was no more stuffing on the inside. It seemed to be ...solid.
Panic sirens immediately sounded once more in Gohan's head. The thing on the inside had grown.
The long forgotten leg wound Gohan received moments earlier suddenly stung with great vengeance as his eyes widened in shock.
It grew.
Inside the dreadful little manlike figure, directly under Gohan's thumb, something twitched, throbbed, and throbbed again. Not as though it were a clock-like mechanism, but as though it were something alive.
He snatched his hand back dropping the doll.
At first, what he had felt made him think of a giant squirming insect: an obscenely fat spider or frenzied cockroach. Or perhaps a tiny rodent: some God-awful pale and hairless pink mouse like nothing has ever seen before. He turned his head away.
Over the soughing wind and pouring rain, he heard a new soft sound: a soft pop...and then again. Like threads breaking. Gohan turned his disbelieving eyes once more over to the doll only being able to see from the light being given off by the desk lamp. It was laying as before, but the pair of crossed stitches over the spot where a person's heart would be had snapped and now hung loose on it's white cotton breast.
His mouth was so dry that his tongue had stuck to his palate. He worked up some saliva, but his tongue nevertheless peeled loose as reluctantly as a Velcro fastener.
His frantic heart hammered so hard that his vision blurred at the edges with each beat, as blood surged through him in artery-stretching quantities. He felt as though he were on the verge of a stroke.
Abruptly the dangling black threads unraveled into the needle holes through which they had been sewn, disappearing into the doll's chest as if something had pulled them from the inside.
"Jesus!"
Gohan stumbled backward a step and nearly fell into his desk chair. He clutched the arm of it and kept his balance.
Pop-pop-pop.
The stitches over the thing's right eye broke as the cloth under them bulged with internal pressure. Then they, too, raveled into the doll like strands of spaghetti sucked into a child's mouth.
Gohan was shaking his head in denial. He had to be dreaming.
Where the broken sutures had disappeared into the face, the fabric split with a discrete tearing sound.
Dreaming.
The ret in the small black-white face opened to half an inch, like a gaping wound.
"Definatly dreaming. Big dinner, two large cheeseburgers, five large French fry baskets, three sides of onion rings, enough cholesterol to kill a horse. Dozed off at my desk, on the couch, in the kitchen. Dreaming."
From behind the split fabric came a flash of color. Green. A fierce radiant green.
The cotton cloth curled away from the hole, and a small eye appeared in the soft round head. It wasn't she shiny glass eye of a doll, not merely a painted plastic disc, either, but as real as Gohan's own eyes -although infinitely stranger-, full of soft eerie light, hateful and watchful, with an elliptical black pupil as in the eye of a snake. Green.
The doll twitched. It's head turned slightly more towards Gohan. Its green eye fixed on him.
He felt his gorge rising, tasted a bitter vileness in the back of his throat, swallowed hard, choked it down, and knew beyond doubt he was not dreaming. He had never before nearly puked in a dream. Dreams weren't this intense.
On the computer screen, the four words began to flash: THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
The stitches over the doll's second eye popped and raveled into its head. The fabric bulged and began to split again.
The creatures stubby arms twitched. Its small mitten hands flexed. It pushed against the wall and rose to stiffly to its feet, all of six inches tall but nonetheless terrifying for its diminutive stature.
Gohan spun away from the impossible thing that was emerging from the rag doll. Pushing aside the wheeled office chair, he crashed against the corner of his desk, stumbled over his own feet, maintained his balance, and staggered out of the room.
He slammed the door behind him so hard that the house reverberated with the impact. There was no lock on it. Frantically he considered fetching a suitable chair from the master bedroom and bracing it under the knob, but then he realized that the door opened into the study beyond and, therefore, could not be wedged shut from the hallway.
Now he desperately needed to protect himself. He never imagined he would ever have to use his powers against a burglar, but against a rag doll? Or from whatever was hidden inside the rag doll.
As he raced through his mind on ideas on how to rid himself of this thing, Gohan wondered if he might be losing his mind. Then again, he wondered why he was even wondering. Of course he was losing his mind. Rag dolls couldn't become animate.
Six inch tall humanoid creatures with freaky green eyes didn't exist.
Gohan heard no movement coming from inside the room. He tried to catch his breath as he wiped a small layer of sweat from his forehead. His instincts were on fire, telling him to do so many things at once.
Run. Kill it. Hide. Burn it to hell. Get away. Rip its head off. Get out NOW! Slaughter that damn doll!
Gohan clasped the knob and slowly turned it, hands shaking. It was cold. Another chill went down strait to his toes and then was absorbed by the floor.
He hesitated and took his hand off of the brass fixture.
Gohan stared at the knob, half expecting to see it turn by itself. The polished brass gleamed with the reflection of the hall light overhead. If he peered closely enough, he could discern a weirdly distorted reflection of his own sweat-damp face: He looked scarier than the thing inside the rag doll. Damn Windex.
After a while he put his ear to the door. No sound came from the room beyond- at least none that he could hear over the runaway thudding of his heart.
What was the creature doing in there? Was it still ripping out of the cotton fabric, like a walking mummy unwinding its burial wrappings?
He tried again to assure himself that this whole incident was a hallucination brought on by a stroke.
His mother had been right. The cheeseburgers, the french-fries, the onion rings, the chocolate milk shakes- those were the culprits that had done him in. Although he was only twenty-one, his circulatory system had collapsed under the massive freight if cholesterol that he was forced to carry.
Inside the study, something rattled softly.
Gohan pressed his ear tighter to the paper-thin crack between the door and the jamb. He heard nothing more, but he was certain that he hadn't imagined the first sound. The silence in that room now had a menacing quality.
On one level, he was frustrated and angry with himself for continuing to behave as though the snake-eyed minikin was actually inside his office, standing on his desk, shedding its white cotton chrysalis.
But at the same time, instinctively he knew that he was not truly insane, no matter how much he might wish that he were. And he knew that, in fact, he also was not suffering from a stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage, no matter how much more comforting such a condition might be compared with admitting the reality of the rag doll from Hell.
Or wherever it was from. Certainly not from Toys "R" Us. Not from one of those shops at Disneyland.
"No delusion. No figment of my imagination. It's in there."
His head was pressed so hard against the door that his ear began to ache, but still he heard no further noises.
Moving back one step, he put his left hand on the brass knob. It was cool against his palm.
Although he would have loved to walk out and never return, he couldn't do that. He was a homeowner. The house was an investment that he couldn't afford to abandon, and bankers seldom canceled mortgages as a result of devil-doll infestations.
Gohan was strong, really strong, a first-rate fighter, and his potential assailant was only six inches tall, but he could not open the damn door. Gohan's enemies were usually over six feet tall, and frequently they were virtual giants, usually looking like steroid-pumped bodybuilders with massive biceps that made Schwarzenegger look like a sissy. Most of the time they had the power in one tenth of their body to defeat the entire military with a snap of a finger.
.....they were real ugly too.
Gohan finally threw off the chains of paralysis and slowly turned the doorknob. The well-lubricated mechanism didn't squeak- but if the doll was watching, it would see the knob rotate, and it might leap at him the moment that he entered the room.
Just as Gohan had turned the doorknob as far as it would go, a thunderous crash shook the house, rattling windowpanes. He gasped and let go of the knob, backed across the hall, and assumed a defensive stance with both hands prepared to fire a deadly ki beam at the office door.
The storm had finally broke. Torrents of rain were hitting the car at a faster rate than the windshield wipers could remove them. She was practically driving blind, and her tired state didn't make it any better.
Her palms were a bit clammy, but not so bad. It had only been about ten minutes since she had left the diner and she was hoping to be home soon. She would take another sleeping pill before she slept so at least she may be too tired to dream.
She wanted to forget the Dream. Seeing Him torn in half before her very eyes was too much. It wasn't like most dreams where you woke up before something terrible happened, it was a dream where it made sure you were going to be afraid to open your eyes, a dream that milked out every gory fear you had and played it out before your very eyes. She would become so wired that sleeping was impossible. The Dream made all of her worst fears come to life and stopped just before finishing her off, but Videl knew the Dream never would kill her. Videl was not afraid to die, so the Dream kept her alive allowing her to remember every horrible moment. That in itself is far worse than dying, because if she died her hell of a life would be over. She would be free of this heart wrenching fear that took control of her mind each and every night. She would be away from this place, this living nightmare. Sleep should be a refuge. A place your dreams take you off to the future where you are being loved by the one you love most, where you are protected in those arms that make you feel warm and happy giving you that weird butterfly stomach, not a place of trepidation and death. Not a place where you still fear for your life when your awake. What insanity causes you to fear dying from a measly illusion created by your mind?
As Videl reached a red light, she removed her hands from the steering wheel, closed her eyes tight, and rubbed her face trying to wake herself up enough to make it home. It wasn't going to be easy.
When Videl was young she always had a vivid imagination known to take off and create new worlds of fantasy and wonder. She dreamt like every little girl would. She wanted to find her prince, that one person who could make her happy no matter what. She soon discovered, though, that you don't always get what you wish for, and it seemed that her mind with its own personality became depressed. From that moment on, from that little revolution, everything went downhill. She started off believing that a monster would demolish her valiant prince in battle, but soon the nightmare became more than that. As she grew older, she was introduced into the world like every child was, but when she saw all of the death and distruction, she couldn't take it. She wanted so much to help others, but being only eight, there was very little she could do. She began to think that one day, someone's life is going to be in her hands, and she won't be able to do anything. Not a thing.
Her powerful mind sped her easily through school without trouble from the lack of sleep. It was easy as pie. Or cake, whichever you prefer. She had plenty of free time on her hands, which never was a good thing.
The nightmare progressed for three years getting worse and worse with each failure and bad decision she made. Then her mother went away, and that was the Big Bang. The creation of an entirely new nightmare. The creation of what she dreams today. A new world of realism in its entirety. Her mind became more developed, thus her fears became more plausible. It was a never ending cycle that led her to believe that her dreams as a child were foolish apparitions. She now knew that she had wasted her childhood because none of those dreams would come true no matter how hard you tried. No matter what you do, some monster takes them away from you, and the only difference from Videl's dream to others is that, her monster took a true form.
The light turned green. Green. The one thing that was always consistent in her dream was the oncoming threat of Green. The color was what terrified her most. Anything green was bad, evil, awful. Green eyes. Green eyes followed her with painful moans of women and little children. The sound of death, the death of innocents. Innocents she do nothing to help.
Why green, she didn't know, but she was happy she didn't know, because she feared that the answer was more than she bargained for. So, letting Green be Green she would go on her way until the morning came to arouse her from sleep. The morning was now her last hope, and only God knew what could take away the morning.
Him. Here he comes, there he went. She felt empty, as if he was truly a real person. She hoped so many things for the likes of Him. She wanted him to be real, to find someone, but she wanted Him to just be in her imagination, so such a nice soul wouldn't have to suffer such a miserable death. A death she could do nothing about.
Helplessness. Damn being helpless. The feeling of not having the ability to help yourself and not knowing anyone to help you. Damn helplessness.
The light still shown green. Green. The one thing she remembered that overtook the green was Him, accept he was yellow. No. Golden, shining brilliantly. No color, not red, blue, black, no color other than that Golden Essance given off by Him could melt Green like ice-cream on a hot summer day. Not even her mother could do that.
A horn sounded behind her. She was jostled from her pondering. Looking through her rear view mirror she notice a ticked off trucker yelling at her to go. Tsch... as if. She sat there a little while and Videl decided to get a coffee at a nearby gas station to ease her sorrows, to get her mind off the situation, and plus it would be enough to keep her awake until she reached home, and then she could chug a few sleeping pills and enjoy the thoughts of the upcoming weekend. Yup...mhm...that sure sounded like a great idea.
The horn continued to blare. Yeah...like she was moving.
"Not a chance buddy...remember, patience is a virtue." Videl grinned. The one thing that Videl was a stickler for was patience and manners, and this dude had none.
The light turned red. No one else was at or ever was at the intersection in Videl's presence. It was absolutely deserted.
She checked in her rear view mirror once more to see how Mr. Anger Management Problem was doing. He appeared to be turning red and spouting saliva with every curse word he threw at her. Now that's not nice.
His constant horn honking eventually subsided. The light was still red.
The intersection still deserted, Videl flicked off Mr. Anger Management and turned right to head to the closest gas station.
A grin crept up on her lips. That was fun. Teaching manners is always fun to those who could care less. Much more fun.
The night seemed eerie. The constant beat of the windshield wipers, and not to mention the glowing lights of illuminated signs made the back road seem freakishly dreamy. Not like a hot guy, but like you were in a different world. Like the world in her dreams. God how she hoped she hadn't fallen asleep again, but technically, when you dream, you don't know you're dreaming, right? So she was okay. In her dreams she didn't know about the Dream itself, she was only able to make connections when she was fully awake. So she was good, in the clear.
She pulled into the gas station, unbuckled her seatbelt, and reached into the back of her truck for her black jacket. She didn't want to find out if the uniform was see threw when wet. It exposed enough when dry.
Craftily maneuvering on her jacket, she cautiously opened her car door and ventured out into the cascading storm. The wind blew her hair in whatever directions it wished while allowing the rain to soak her feet and all exposed skin. She walked past a big man with a John Deer cap shielding his eyes from the torrents of rain , standing outside waiting for the tank to be filled to capacity. Green. He was wearing Green. The truck man was evil. Green.
He nodded, she timidly nodded back, but soon realized that he was rudly staring at her butt. She wanted to cave in his face, but kept her temper to a minimum and continued into the shelter of the wonderful mini-market. He was Green. She couldn't stand up to Green. No way no how.
"But...How dare he look there!"
It was her butt, Videl believed, and no man, no matter how big and strong and Green abiding, had the right to stare at it like he was. A glance is okay, but openly staring? It gave her a new strong rush of anger and fear that woke her up. Good adrenaline that you laughed about later when you thought about the reason why you were angry, and most of the time you can't even remember why exactly. It wasn't the kind she got when stopping thieves or a bank robbery, but the nice kind that gave you the sensation of a sugar rush, accept without the crash.
Reaching the mini-mart, she happily went inside to escape from the deluge of rain and Green Truck Man. The lights were bright, but her eyes quickly adjusted and she want on her way to the glorious coffee machine with a squeaking sound resonated throughout the little store as her wet shoes ran against the plastic floor.
She grabbed a large styrofoam cup and prepared to get a nice hot brew, but was stopped when she saw the many selections.
"Mocha, French vanilla, cocoa bean, vanilla bean,....bean, chocolate Java, coffee house style ...okay....but where's the regular coffee?"
She stood there tapping her foot -squeak squeak-, wondering what coffee would appease her taste-buds.
Eventually giving in to a good French vanilla, though still a diehard black Folgers fan, she made her way to the front and paid.
"That's one hell of a storm we got there, eh," the mini-mart clirck stated. He was small and seemed to be a Vietnamese man with his dark black hair and tan skin. No Green. He was a good man.
"Huh, oh, yeah. It's pretty bad," Videl replied trying to find a nickel in her soaking pocket so she wouldn't have a take change. "Ah, there we go," she said triumphantly finding a dime and placing it on the counter. Okay, so she got a nickel back, but it's better than getting a penny. What can you do with pennies these days anyway?
Looking at the front counter Videl noticed a display of multi-colored lighters. One in particular was calling her name. It was blue, with a boat tied to a dock painted around it. She picked it up and placed it on the counter. Videl didn't smoke, and never will, but she bought it anyway, slapping another dollar bill on the counter.
Giving Videl her a nickel in change Vietnamese man said, "Have a nice weekend," and gave her a cheerful wave.
"You too." Videl waved and stepped out into the storm once again. She sipped her coffee and took the long path underneath the refilling station to her car. The perverted Green Truck Man had already left so she was out there by herself.
It was a cold night, black and rainy. She felt alone and, though it was no new-sprung feeling, she wished she had someone, something. Him. Videl stepped into her car and slammed the door. She didn't want to go home anymore. She didn't want to see her father. Their relationship had gone from her being able to ignore him to wanting to choke him to death. He was more thick-headed than any ass-staring swearing truck driver out there and could easily beat out Al Gore in her 'Most Hated Men of All Time' list. After sitting there for a few moments, the raindrops battering the roof of the car, Videl decided that going for a nice drive along the outskirts of the city would be nice. Who knows what her father was doing know.
"Wait...lemme refraise that. Who wants to know what my father is doing now." She put her truck into gear and slowly pulled out of the parking lot not having a clue as to where she was heading, but for some reason, part of her was eager to get to where ever she was going to end up. There was only one slight problem, though. To go right or left?
She took a sip of her coffee and sat there deciding her next choice in direction.
COFFIE!
Gohan breathed a small sigh of relief. The doll was still where he had left it.
He walked up to it and kneeled down over the mannequin. It seemed so harmless. He grinned and picked it up.
His smile faulted. The doll was heavier than before. There was no more stuffing on the inside. It seemed to be ...solid.
Panic sirens immediately sounded once more in Gohan's head. The thing on the inside had grown.
The long forgotten leg wound Gohan received moments earlier suddenly stung with great vengeance as his eyes widened in shock.
It grew.
Inside the dreadful little manlike figure, directly under Gohan's thumb, something twitched, throbbed, and throbbed again. Not as though it were a clock-like mechanism, but as though it were something alive.
He snatched his hand back dropping the doll.
At first, what he had felt made him think of a giant squirming insect: an obscenely fat spider or frenzied cockroach. Or perhaps a tiny rodent: some God-awful pale and hairless pink mouse like nothing has ever seen before. He turned his head away.
Over the soughing wind and pouring rain, he heard a new soft sound: a soft pop...and then again. Like threads breaking. Gohan turned his disbelieving eyes once more over to the doll only being able to see from the light being given off by the desk lamp. It was laying as before, but the pair of crossed stitches over the spot where a person's heart would be had snapped and now hung loose on it's white cotton breast.
His mouth was so dry that his tongue had stuck to his palate. He worked up some saliva, but his tongue nevertheless peeled loose as reluctantly as a Velcro fastener.
His frantic heart hammered so hard that his vision blurred at the edges with each beat, as blood surged through him in artery-stretching quantities. He felt as though he were on the verge of a stroke.
Abruptly the dangling black threads unraveled into the needle holes through which they had been sewn, disappearing into the doll's chest as if something had pulled them from the inside.
"Jesus!"
Gohan stumbled backward a step and nearly fell into his desk chair. He clutched the arm of it and kept his balance.
Pop-pop-pop.
The stitches over the thing's right eye broke as the cloth under them bulged with internal pressure. Then they, too, raveled into the doll like strands of spaghetti sucked into a child's mouth.
Gohan was shaking his head in denial. He had to be dreaming.
Where the broken sutures had disappeared into the face, the fabric split with a discrete tearing sound.
Dreaming.
The ret in the small black-white face opened to half an inch, like a gaping wound.
"Definatly dreaming. Big dinner, two large cheeseburgers, five large French fry baskets, three sides of onion rings, enough cholesterol to kill a horse. Dozed off at my desk, on the couch, in the kitchen. Dreaming."
From behind the split fabric came a flash of color. Green. A fierce radiant green.
The cotton cloth curled away from the hole, and a small eye appeared in the soft round head. It wasn't she shiny glass eye of a doll, not merely a painted plastic disc, either, but as real as Gohan's own eyes -although infinitely stranger-, full of soft eerie light, hateful and watchful, with an elliptical black pupil as in the eye of a snake. Green.
The doll twitched. It's head turned slightly more towards Gohan. Its green eye fixed on him.
He felt his gorge rising, tasted a bitter vileness in the back of his throat, swallowed hard, choked it down, and knew beyond doubt he was not dreaming. He had never before nearly puked in a dream. Dreams weren't this intense.
On the computer screen, the four words began to flash: THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
The stitches over the doll's second eye popped and raveled into its head. The fabric bulged and began to split again.
The creatures stubby arms twitched. Its small mitten hands flexed. It pushed against the wall and rose to stiffly to its feet, all of six inches tall but nonetheless terrifying for its diminutive stature.
Gohan spun away from the impossible thing that was emerging from the rag doll. Pushing aside the wheeled office chair, he crashed against the corner of his desk, stumbled over his own feet, maintained his balance, and staggered out of the room.
He slammed the door behind him so hard that the house reverberated with the impact. There was no lock on it. Frantically he considered fetching a suitable chair from the master bedroom and bracing it under the knob, but then he realized that the door opened into the study beyond and, therefore, could not be wedged shut from the hallway.
Now he desperately needed to protect himself. He never imagined he would ever have to use his powers against a burglar, but against a rag doll? Or from whatever was hidden inside the rag doll.
As he raced through his mind on ideas on how to rid himself of this thing, Gohan wondered if he might be losing his mind. Then again, he wondered why he was even wondering. Of course he was losing his mind. Rag dolls couldn't become animate.
Six inch tall humanoid creatures with freaky green eyes didn't exist.
Gohan heard no movement coming from inside the room. He tried to catch his breath as he wiped a small layer of sweat from his forehead. His instincts were on fire, telling him to do so many things at once.
Run. Kill it. Hide. Burn it to hell. Get away. Rip its head off. Get out NOW! Slaughter that damn doll!
Gohan clasped the knob and slowly turned it, hands shaking. It was cold. Another chill went down strait to his toes and then was absorbed by the floor.
He hesitated and took his hand off of the brass fixture.
Gohan stared at the knob, half expecting to see it turn by itself. The polished brass gleamed with the reflection of the hall light overhead. If he peered closely enough, he could discern a weirdly distorted reflection of his own sweat-damp face: He looked scarier than the thing inside the rag doll. Damn Windex.
After a while he put his ear to the door. No sound came from the room beyond- at least none that he could hear over the runaway thudding of his heart.
What was the creature doing in there? Was it still ripping out of the cotton fabric, like a walking mummy unwinding its burial wrappings?
He tried again to assure himself that this whole incident was a hallucination brought on by a stroke.
His mother had been right. The cheeseburgers, the french-fries, the onion rings, the chocolate milk shakes- those were the culprits that had done him in. Although he was only twenty-one, his circulatory system had collapsed under the massive freight if cholesterol that he was forced to carry.
Inside the study, something rattled softly.
Gohan pressed his ear tighter to the paper-thin crack between the door and the jamb. He heard nothing more, but he was certain that he hadn't imagined the first sound. The silence in that room now had a menacing quality.
On one level, he was frustrated and angry with himself for continuing to behave as though the snake-eyed minikin was actually inside his office, standing on his desk, shedding its white cotton chrysalis.
But at the same time, instinctively he knew that he was not truly insane, no matter how much he might wish that he were. And he knew that, in fact, he also was not suffering from a stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage, no matter how much more comforting such a condition might be compared with admitting the reality of the rag doll from Hell.
Or wherever it was from. Certainly not from Toys "R" Us. Not from one of those shops at Disneyland.
"No delusion. No figment of my imagination. It's in there."
His head was pressed so hard against the door that his ear began to ache, but still he heard no further noises.
Moving back one step, he put his left hand on the brass knob. It was cool against his palm.
Although he would have loved to walk out and never return, he couldn't do that. He was a homeowner. The house was an investment that he couldn't afford to abandon, and bankers seldom canceled mortgages as a result of devil-doll infestations.
Gohan was strong, really strong, a first-rate fighter, and his potential assailant was only six inches tall, but he could not open the damn door. Gohan's enemies were usually over six feet tall, and frequently they were virtual giants, usually looking like steroid-pumped bodybuilders with massive biceps that made Schwarzenegger look like a sissy. Most of the time they had the power in one tenth of their body to defeat the entire military with a snap of a finger.
.....they were real ugly too.
Gohan finally threw off the chains of paralysis and slowly turned the doorknob. The well-lubricated mechanism didn't squeak- but if the doll was watching, it would see the knob rotate, and it might leap at him the moment that he entered the room.
Just as Gohan had turned the doorknob as far as it would go, a thunderous crash shook the house, rattling windowpanes. He gasped and let go of the knob, backed across the hall, and assumed a defensive stance with both hands prepared to fire a deadly ki beam at the office door.