::::::::::::::: Under da see da da da da ::::::::::::::::
Minutes later, after the rhythmic drum of the windshield wipers half hypnotized him, he came out of his daze and saw that he was on McArther Boulevard, on the southern end of Newport Beach. He was traveling northwest in light traffic.
The time was 10:26 p.m.
He couldn't go on like this, driving aimlessly through the night until he ran out of fuel. Preoccupied as he was, he might become so inattentive that he'd skid on the rain-slick pavement and crash into another car.
As Gohan crossed San Juanquin Hills Road, less than a mile from the Pacific Coast Highway, he didn't immediately react to the peculiar noise that rose from the engine compartment. When he finally took note of it, he noticed a soft rattling, a whispery scraping as of metal abrading metal.
Something was loose... and working steadily looser.
Frowning, he leaned over the steering wheel, listening closely.
He felt a queer vibration through the floorboards. The noise grew no louder, but the vibrating increased.
Gohan glanced at the rearview mirror. No traffic was close behind him , so he eased his foot of the accelerator.
As the sports car slowed, the vibration did not deminish. The shoulder on the side of the road was narrow, with a slope and then a dark field beyond, and Gohan didn't want to pull over here in a severe downpour. He wasn't sure that he would be able to pull off the pavement far enough to eliminate the risk of being sideswiped.
Abruptly the noise stopped.
The vibration ceased as well.
The car purred along smoothly like the dream machine it was supposed to be.
Tentatively, he increased the speed.
The rattling and scraping didn't resume.
Gohan leaned back in his seat, letting out his pent-up breath, somewhat relieved but still concerned.
From under the hood came a twang as of metal snapping under tremendous stress.
The steering when in Gohan's hands shuddered. It pulled hard left.
"Oh, God."
The traffic was headed up slope in the eastbound lanes. Two cars and a van. They were not moving as fast in the rain-slashed night as they would have been in better weather, but they were coming too fast nonetheless.
With both hands, Gohan pulled the wheel to the right.
It responded, but sluggishly.
The catastrophic twang under the hood was immediately followed by a clattering that instantly escalated into cacophony.
Gohan resisted the urge to stomp the brake pedal flat to the floorboard, which might cast the car into a deadly spin. Instead, he eased down on it judiciously. He might as well have stood on the pedal with both feet, because he had no brakes. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. No stopping power whatsoever.
And the accelerator seemed to be stuck. The car was picking up speed.
"Oh, God, no."
He wrenched the steering wheel so forcefully the he felt as though he would dislocate his shoulders. At last the car angled sharply back into the westbound lanes it belonged.
Over in the eastbound lanes, the wildly sweeping glimmer of headlights on the wet pavement reflected the other drivers' panic.
Then the steering failed all together. The wheel spun aimlessly through his aching hands.
Gohan let go of the spinning wheel before the friction would burn his skin. He shielded his face with his hands.
The car flattened a small highway-department sign, tore through tall grass and low brush, and rocketed off the embankment. It was airborne.
He had been nearing the end of McArthur Boulevard when he ramped off the embankment, and the drop from the highway was not as drastic here as it would have been if he had lost control just a quarter mile back. Nevertheless, having been launched at an angle, the car was in the air long enough to tilt slightly to the right; therefore, it came down only on the passenger-side tires, one of which exploded.
The safety harness tightened painfully across Gohan's chest (::drools::), clinching the breath out of him. He wasn't aware the his mouth had been open - or that he had been screaming - until his teeth clacked together hard enough to crack a walnut.
Like Gohan, the engine stopped screaming on impact too, so as the car rolled, he was able to hear the fearsome and familiar shriek of the minikin. The beast's shrill cry was coming through the heating vents from the engine compartment. Gleeful shrieking.
The laminated glass of windshield webbed with a zillion fissures and imploded harmlessly, and the car tumbled through one revolution and started another, whereupon the side windows shattered. The hood buckled, started to tear loose, but then cracked and crunched and twisted and jammed into the engine compartment during the second roll. With one headlight aglow, the car come to a rest on the passenger side, after two and a quarter revolutions. Or maybe it was three. He wasn't too sure.
Only the web of the safety harness prevented him from falling into the passenger seat, which was now where the floor should have been.
In the comparative stillness of the aftermath, Gohan could hear his own panicky breathing, the hot tick of overheated engine parts, the tinkle-clink of falling bits of glass, and rain drumming against the wreckage.
The minikin, however, was silent.
Gohan didn't delude himself that the demon had been killed in the crash. It was alive, all right, and eagerly wriggling through the wreckage. At any moment it could pop out and gouge his eyes. He would not be able to get away fast enough to save himself.
Gasoline fumes.
The battery still held a charge. The possibility of shorting wires. A spark could cause fire, and explosion.
He had to move.
Though still dizzy, he found the release button for the safety harness and pressed it, falling to the ground hard down into the passenger side. Catching his breath, he stood using the door handle for balance. Securing his right foot on the stick-shift gear, he hoisted his head through the window, then his shoulders and arms, and levered himself out of the wreckage.
He rolled off the side of the tipped car into matted brown grass, into a cold puddle, into mud.
The stink of gasoline was stronger than ever.
Pushing himself onto his feet, he swayed unsteadily, stumbled back from the car, splashing through another puddle, and fell over.
Because the car was on its side, he was laying next the undercarriage. From out of the machine, the minikin issued a shriek of rage and need.
Slowly rising to his knees, he warily looked at the car and collapsed face first in the mud. He was too tired to move, to breathe, to live.
As the bone-piercing shriek trailed into a snarl, Gohan heard the demon pounding - straining -clawing. He couldn't see, but knew very well the monster was temporarily trapped.
Laying there, he knew he was fortunate to have gotten out unscathed. Of course, though, in the morning he will be crippled by whiplash and a thousand other pains because he was human now. But that is only if he lived through the night.
THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
TICKTOCK.
He wondered what the per hour cost of his car was, but didn't have the energy to lift his hand or calculate the hours, but then he realized it really didn't matter. It was only money.
What mattered was survival.
TICKTOCK.
Get moving.
Keep moving.
THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
Get going.
Keep going.
Don't look back.
Not until dawn.
The morning will save him. The dawn, the sun.
His life was spared. He had to make the most of it.
He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear, smell, or move. That didn't matter. He had to go now.
Now.
,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,By GOD! Is it DEAD?::poke poke:: ,..,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
Sometimes when we can't do anything, something comes along. Something precious, valuable. It doesn't necessarily have monitary value. No. Something much more than money. Something more than what money can give. Something that not only makes you happy, but becomes pure and true happiness in itself. Though you may not know it, this happiness my burn into love, a love that will stand forever in your heart. This something will burn in your heart forever, be there for you, for you alone, only for your purposes because that's the only reason why it was created, why it exists now. For you and you alone.
You may not know why. Why it is here for you. You are nothing, nothing at all. Not special. But to this thing, you are anything, everything. To this something, you become its cornerstone, as it is yours. It needs you as much as you need it. If your gone, it's gone. If it goes away, you will fail to accept life. This something is more important than anything in your heart because it was not only made for only you, but was given in your greatest time of need, when you were at your low, your weakest point. This something knows your strengths, weaknesses, hopes, dreams, and it will do any and everything to accomplish its mission - your happiness - because if it doesn't , than its existence is useless.
Never give up on who you are, what you wish for, or what you believe, because this something may be there for you throughout eternity. Until the end of time.
Forever and always.
Do not fear eternity, because then you are fearing time. Time is not to be feared, but charished. Accept your time, your life, no matter what causes you to doubt.
For Videl, that doubt was love. Love and they will get hurt.
Her something was gone, and yet she continued forward through time, trying, praying that maybe.
Just maybe.
Maybe it isn't all gone.
Not yet.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,., Look at meee!! I'm a peeeeeeea!.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
It was cold. Freezing. Bone-chilling.
It was raining. Pouring. Disgorging.
It was muddy. Oh, yes, it was muddy.
It smelled. Smelled like crap.
Smelled like crap, looked like crap, thus it was indeed crap.
He was laying in mud - which he verified was strikingly similar to pooh - face first, which was rather foul to the schnoz. It was raining. He was soaked, cold, dirty, smelly, bashed-smashed-and crashed, tired, sore, being chased by an incarnation of Satan, and lost his brand now car.
Oh, yeah, and it was raining.
He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.
This shouldn't be happening. He should be at home, watching TV. Or even better yet, sleeping in his nice warm bed. Warm. Clean.
...Dry.
If it wasn't for this thing he could be happy nestled in his home, snuggling with a pillow. But no. He was out here. Cold. Wet. Dirty.
Damn that thing. Damn it to hell.
He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, body soaking wet. Dripping. His entire front was smothered in brown, chunky, mud. The blood was washed from his scalp and face, but was replaced by dirt.
Damn that thing to the pits of hell.
"Y-you hear me?" He kneeled back, sitting on his heels. "Burn. Burn i-in hell, you-you scum."
He rose slowly to his feet, swaying, looking at the ground. Glaring.
"Die, damn you," Gohan demanded. He clenched his fists.
Gasoline, which was evidently pooled under the length of the car, ignited. Blue and orange flames geysered high into the night, vaporizing the falling rain.
In the distance, someone shouted.
The great hot hand of the fire slapped Gohan with such fury that his face stung, and he was staggered backward by the force of the blow. There had been no explosion, but the heat was so intense that he surly would have been set afire in that instant if his hair and his cloths had not been thoroughly soaked.
Shaking his head and blinking through the rain, Gohan noticed that two cars had stopped along the highway where the convertible ran off the roadway.
At he foot of the embankment stood bystanders startled by the fire.
An unearthly squealing rose from the trapped minikin.
With a boom and a splintery crack like bone breaking, the battered and burning hood exploded off the engine compartment and tumbled past Gohan, spewing sparks and smoke as it clattered toward a stand of Phoenix Palms.
Like a malevolent ginie freed from a lamp, the minikin flung itself from the inferno and landed upright in the mud, no more than ten feet from Gohan. It was ablaze, but the streaming cloaks of fire that had replaced its white fabric shroud did not seem to disturb it.
Indeed, the creature was no longer shrieking in mindless rage but appeared to be exhilarated be the blaze. Raising its arms over its head as if joyfully exclaiming hallelujah, swaying almost in a state of rapture, it fixed its attention not on Gohan but on its own hands, which like tallow tapers on some dark altar, streamed blue fire.
"Bigger," Gohan gasped in disbelief.
Incredibly the thing had grown. The doll on his doorstep had been about six inches long. This demon swaying rapturously before him was about eighteen inches tall. Furthermore, its legs and arms were thicker and its body heavier than they had been earlier.
"This is nuts," he muttered.
The falling rain captured the light of the wildly leaping fire, carrying it into the puddles on the ground, which glimered like pools of melting dabloons and flickered with the shadow of the capering minikin.
How could it possibly have grown so fast? And to add this much body weight, it would have required nourishment, fuel to feed the feverish growth.
What had it eaten?
Impossibly, the rhapsodic minikin appeared to swell even larger as the flames seethed from it.
What had it eaten?
Gohan began to back away slowly, overcome by the urgent need to flee but reluctant to turn and run. Any too sudden movement might remind the demon that its prey was nearby.
The rain washing parched panic through him, and his fear was like a fever burning in his brow, in his eyes, in his joints.
"Screw this."
He turned and ran for his life.
He didn't know where he was running to, but just away.
His feet reluctantly moved through the deep mud, releasing his legs unwillingly. Every step he took his feet buried deeper into the soaking ground.
He reached the steep incline of the embankment and went on his hands and knees, scrambling himself up the hill. His foot slipped, making him fall down a few feet, but he sunk his hands into the mud and continued to pull. Pull for his life.
The people who stopped at the top of the embankment were too far away to see him run trough the blinding sheets of rain. They could only witness the inferno, the menacing explosions.
Flat ground.
He pulled himself up over the ledge, hoisting with his arms and digging aimlessly with his legs. He was out of the embankment.
Get going.
Keep going.
He ran, ran for his life because now he had evidence. Evidence that the monster could indeed rip off his balls. He had to get as far away as possible.
THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
Tomorrow's sunrise hung out there just a few minutes this side of eternity.
Having crossed an empty lot on the diagonal, Gohan reached the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Avocado street, skidded across the last stretch of mud like an ice-skater in a frozen pond, and plunged off the curb into the calf-deep water the overflowed the gutters at the intersection.
A car horn blared. Brakes screeched.
A Ford truck appeared magically -poof!- as if from another dimension. The truck stopped an instant before Gohan, rocking on its springs, but he couldn't prevent running into it full tilt. He bounced off the fender, spun around to the front of the vehicle, and fell to the pavement.
Clutching the truck, he immediately pulled himself up from the blacktop.
As the driver's door opened, the night swung with Benny Goodman's big-band classic 'One O' clock Jump.'
As Gohan regained his feet, the driver appeared at his side. She was a young woman with white shoes, what might have been a nurse's pink uniform, and a black jacket. "Hey, are you all right?"
"Yeah, okay," Gohan wheezed.
"You're really okay?"
"Yeah, sure, leave me alone."
He squinted at the rain-swept vacant lot.
The minikin was out there. Coming closer. Fast. Too fast for comfort.
"Go," he told her, waving her away with one hand.
The woman insisted, "You must be-"
"Go, hurry."
"-hurt. I can't-"
"Get out of here!" he said frantically, not wanting to trap her between him and the demon.
He pushed away from her, intending on running somewhere. He didn't know where but he had to get away.
Get moving.
Keep moving.
The woman clutched tenaciously. "Was that your car back there?"
"Jesus, lady, it's coming!"
"What's coming?"
"It!"
"What?"
"It!" He tried to wrench loose of her.
She said, "Was that your new convertible?"
He realized , then, that he knew her. The waitress. That waitress.
Gohan had the queer sensation that he was riding the bobsled of fate, rocketing down the luge chute toward some destiny he couldn't begin to comprehend.
"You should see a doctor," she persisted.
He wasn't going to be able to shake her. She wouldn't let him and he knew that.
When the minikin arrived, eighteen inches and growing with a spiky crest along the length of its spine, bigger claws, bigger teeth, it would rip her throat out, tear her face off.
Her slender throat.
Her lovely face.
He didn't have time to argue with her. "Okay, a doctor, okay, get me out of here."
Holding his arm as if he were a doddling old man, she started to walk him around to the passenger side.
Damn how he hated being week. He should not need a human to help him make it do a door only feet away. How dare she think he was truly week. He could have stopped that car with a blink of an eye, and he should have. He was once and may possibly still be the strongest being in the universe, he is not some weakling who can't fend for himself. He should be considered a god with his strength.
Well, at least he should have been. Now, even though he knew he was strong for a human, still, he was weak, useless, and for Pete's sake, he was normal.
For how long had wished, hoped, dreamed that this day would come. Possibly everyday for months, years, his whole damn life. Yeah, it wasn't just a life, but a damned life. His life was destined for Hell. That bobsled was taking him for a ride strait to that fiery underworld of torment, suffering. He would not stand for it.
How many times had he given his life for others and not taken anything for it but a pat on the back and a dead father.
A long gone father whose death lay solely in his own shoulders.
He could not take the weight, even with the power to destroy a galaxy, he could not handle the fact that he couldn't do it. He was a failure, imperfect.
Perfection.
Saiyans were the perfect worriors, the strongest in the universe, and he was the most powerful of them all, nevertheless, he still failed.
He strived his entire life to become strong so he could make his father proud.
That's all he ever wanted to do. Make dad proud. But now all he had left from trying to gain his father's approval is a muddy face-plant and no life.
Now, dad was dead, he was weak. No. Pathetic. Useless. Ignorant. He was a failure. The God damn strongest failure in that niche in the wall we call space. He was nothing now. He was normal for Christ's sake.
Normal.
Pathetic.
Useless.
Nothing.
Nothing but a stupid man who can't freaking walk to a forsaken door.
Enraged, Gohan wrenched his arm from her annoying grasp. "Drive the damn thing!" he demanded.
Gohan hobbled to the passenger door and yanked it open, but the waitress was still standing in front of her truck, stupefied and outraged by his outburst.
"Move or we'll both die!" he shouted in frustration.
He glanced back into the vacant lot, expecting the minikin to spring at him out of the darkness and rain, but it wasn't here yet, so he clambered into the Ford.
The woman slid into the driver's seat and slammed her door an instant after Gohan slammed his.
Switching off the radio, she stared the steering wheel and asked, "What happened back there? I saw you come shooting off the road into the-"
"Are you stupid, deaf, or both?" he demanded, his voice shrill and cracking. "We gotta get out of here now!"
"You have no right to talk to me that way," she said quietly but with visible anger in her crystalline-blue eyes.
Speechless with frustration, Gohan could only sputter.
"Even if you're hurt and upset, you can't talk to me that way. It isn't nice."
He glanced fearfully out the window. Scanning the lot, he felt unsettled and aggravated. Why wasn't she listening?
She said, "I can't abide rudeness."
Forcing himself to speak calmly, Gohan said, "I'm sorry."
"You don't sound sorry."
Damn it, it's coming.
"Well, I am."
"Well, Mr., you don't sound it."
Gohan thought he would kill her rather than wait for the minikin to.
"I'm genuinely sorry," he said.
"Really?"
"I'm truly, truly sorry."
"That's better."
"Can you take me to the, uh, hospital," he asked merely to get moving.
"Sure."
"Thank you," he said making sure not to get her going on rudeness again.
"Put on your seatbelt."
"What!?"
"It's the law." She looked at him, as if to force her point into his brain and to say 'You mess with me, I'll kick your ass.' So he unreeled the shoulder harness and locked it across his chest.
Her hair was raven-dark and lank with rain, pasted to her face, and her uniform was saturated. He reminded himself that she had gone through some trouble for him.
"Please, miss, please, you don't understand what's happening here-"
"Then explain. I'm neither deaf nor stupid."
That hurt.
For an instant the improbability of the night left him without words again, but then suddenly they exploded in a long hysterical gush: "This thing, this doll, on my doorstep, and then the stitches pulled out and it had a real eye, green eye-"
The waitress's eyes widened, mouth opened slightly. She looked baffled, in shock.
"-rat's tail, dropped on my head from behind a drape, and it pretty much could eat bullets for breakfast, which is bad enough, but the thing is, well, it's also smart, and it's growing-"
Snapped out of the trance, she said, "What's growing?"
Frustration pushed him dangerously close to the edge of rudeness once more: "The doll snake rat-quick little monster thing! It's growing!"
"A-a doll rat-quick little monster thingy?" she repeated.
"No. This-this can't be."
"Yes! Monster thingy!" he said exasperatedly.
With a wet thunk, the shrieking minikin hit the window in the passenger door, inches from Gohan's head.
Gohan screamed.
The woman said, "Holy shit."
She quickly buckled her seatbelt.
"Shit. Not now." she said through her teeth, aggravation strewn across her face.
The minikin was growing, all right, but it was also changing into something less humanoid than it had been when it first began to emerge from the doll form. Its head was proportionately larger than before, and repulsively misshapen, and the radiant green eyes bulged from deep sockets under an irregular bony brow.
The waitress released the emergency brake. "Knock it off the window."
"I can't."
"Knock it off the window now!"
"How, for God's sake?"
Although the minikin still had hands, its five digits were half like fingers, half like the spatulate tentacles of a squid. It held fast to the glass with pale suckerpads on both its hands and feet.
Gohan wasn't going to roll down the window and try to knock the thing off. No way.
The waitress shifted the Ford into drive. She stomped on the accelerator hard enough to punch the truck into warp speed and put them on the far side of the galaxy in maybe eighteen seconds.
As the engine shrieked louder than the minikin, the tires spun furiously on the slick pavement, and the Ford didn't go across the galaxy or even the end of the block, but just hung there, kicking up sprays of dirty water from all wheels.
The minikin's mouth was open wide. Its glistening black tongue flickered. Black teeth snapped against the glass.
The tires found traction, an the truck shot forward.
"Don't let it in," she implored.
"Why in heaven's name would I let it in?"
"Don't let it in."
"You think I'm insane?"
"Yupp." She nodded.
"Wha-why?" His voice cracked.
"You ran into my car."
"You were driving it!"
"You disobey the law."
"It's a freaking seatbelt."
"You look scary."
"I'm being chased by Satan!"
She looked at him, "You have your hand on the window button."
Gohan pulled his hand away from the button.
The Ford truck was a rocket, screaming north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Gohan felt as if he was pulling enough g's to distort his face like an astronaut in a space-shuttle launch, and the rain was hitting the windshield with a clatter almost as loud as a submachine-gun fire, but the stubborn minikin was glued to the glass.
"It's trying to get in," she said.
"Yeah."
"Then get your hand of the freaking button!" Gohan once again realized his hand was tightly gripping the handle on which the button lay.
"God, what the hell does it want?" Gohan asked.
"You," she said.
"No really," Gohan said with a sarcastic tone.
"It wants you dead."
"How the hell would you know?"
"Well, for some obvious reason, you just piss it off."
The beast was still mostly mottled black with yellow, but it's belly was entirely a puss yellow, pressed against the glass. A slit opened the length of its underside, and obscenely wriggling tubes with suckerlike mouths slithered out of its guts and attached themselves to the window.
The light inside the truck wasn't good enough to reveal exactly what was happening, but Gohan saw the glass beginning to smoke.
He said, "Uh-oh."
"What?"
"Its burning through the glass."
"Burning?"
"Eating."
"What?"
"Acid."
Barely braking for the turn, she hung a hard left off the highway into the entrance drive of the Treesdale Country Club.
The truck canted drastically to the right, and centrifugal force through Gohan against the door, pressing his face to the window, beyond which the minikin's extruded guts wriggled on the smoking glass.
"Where are you going?"
"Country club," she said.
"Why?"
"Van," she said.
She turned sharply to the right, into the parking lot, a maneuver that pulled Gohan away from the door and the dissolving window.
Gohan grasped the door handle.
"Button," she implored.
"Sorry."
She smirked. "Now you're getting it. Next we have to work on 'Thank You'."
At that late hour the parking lot was mostly deserted. Only a few vehicles stood on the blacktop. One of them was a delivery van.
Aiming the truck at the back to the van, she accelerated.
"What are you doing!?" he demanded.
"Detachment."
At the last moment she swung to the left of the parked van, roaring past it so close that she stripped off the paint from the front fender and tore off the truck's right mirror. Showers of sparks streamed from tortured metal, and the minikin was jammed between the truck window and the flank of the big van. The rocker panel peeled off the side of the truck, but the minikin seemed tougher than the Ford - until its suckers abruptly popped loose with a sound Gohan could hear even above all the other noise. The window in the passenger door burst, and tempered glass showered across Gohan, and he thought the beast was falling onto his lap, Jesus, but then they were past the parked van, and he realized that the creature had been torn away from the truck.
"Want to circle back and run over the damn thing a few times?" she shouted over the howling wind at the broken-out window.
He leaned toward her, raising his voice. "Hell, no. That won't work. It'll grab the tire as you pass over it, and this time we'll never shake it loose. It'll crawl up and get us one way or another."
"Then let's haul ass out of here." She pulled out of the parking lot, and put the pedal the metal with less respect for the speed limit than she had shown earlier.
"Jesus, slow down," he demanded.
"Why?"
"It's the law," Gohan said jokingly.
She rolled her eyes. "Well, running through a red light is illegal too, ya know."
"Huh?"
She smirked, "You flew through that intersection, with a red light might I add, like Hell was on your ass."
"Well, it was."
"True," she nodded, "Very true. But you know that's still illegal."
"Ugh! You're impossible."
She shook her head, "No, just a woman."
Minutes later, after the rhythmic drum of the windshield wipers half hypnotized him, he came out of his daze and saw that he was on McArther Boulevard, on the southern end of Newport Beach. He was traveling northwest in light traffic.
The time was 10:26 p.m.
He couldn't go on like this, driving aimlessly through the night until he ran out of fuel. Preoccupied as he was, he might become so inattentive that he'd skid on the rain-slick pavement and crash into another car.
As Gohan crossed San Juanquin Hills Road, less than a mile from the Pacific Coast Highway, he didn't immediately react to the peculiar noise that rose from the engine compartment. When he finally took note of it, he noticed a soft rattling, a whispery scraping as of metal abrading metal.
Something was loose... and working steadily looser.
Frowning, he leaned over the steering wheel, listening closely.
He felt a queer vibration through the floorboards. The noise grew no louder, but the vibrating increased.
Gohan glanced at the rearview mirror. No traffic was close behind him , so he eased his foot of the accelerator.
As the sports car slowed, the vibration did not deminish. The shoulder on the side of the road was narrow, with a slope and then a dark field beyond, and Gohan didn't want to pull over here in a severe downpour. He wasn't sure that he would be able to pull off the pavement far enough to eliminate the risk of being sideswiped.
Abruptly the noise stopped.
The vibration ceased as well.
The car purred along smoothly like the dream machine it was supposed to be.
Tentatively, he increased the speed.
The rattling and scraping didn't resume.
Gohan leaned back in his seat, letting out his pent-up breath, somewhat relieved but still concerned.
From under the hood came a twang as of metal snapping under tremendous stress.
The steering when in Gohan's hands shuddered. It pulled hard left.
"Oh, God."
The traffic was headed up slope in the eastbound lanes. Two cars and a van. They were not moving as fast in the rain-slashed night as they would have been in better weather, but they were coming too fast nonetheless.
With both hands, Gohan pulled the wheel to the right.
It responded, but sluggishly.
The catastrophic twang under the hood was immediately followed by a clattering that instantly escalated into cacophony.
Gohan resisted the urge to stomp the brake pedal flat to the floorboard, which might cast the car into a deadly spin. Instead, he eased down on it judiciously. He might as well have stood on the pedal with both feet, because he had no brakes. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. No stopping power whatsoever.
And the accelerator seemed to be stuck. The car was picking up speed.
"Oh, God, no."
He wrenched the steering wheel so forcefully the he felt as though he would dislocate his shoulders. At last the car angled sharply back into the westbound lanes it belonged.
Over in the eastbound lanes, the wildly sweeping glimmer of headlights on the wet pavement reflected the other drivers' panic.
Then the steering failed all together. The wheel spun aimlessly through his aching hands.
Gohan let go of the spinning wheel before the friction would burn his skin. He shielded his face with his hands.
The car flattened a small highway-department sign, tore through tall grass and low brush, and rocketed off the embankment. It was airborne.
He had been nearing the end of McArthur Boulevard when he ramped off the embankment, and the drop from the highway was not as drastic here as it would have been if he had lost control just a quarter mile back. Nevertheless, having been launched at an angle, the car was in the air long enough to tilt slightly to the right; therefore, it came down only on the passenger-side tires, one of which exploded.
The safety harness tightened painfully across Gohan's chest (::drools::), clinching the breath out of him. He wasn't aware the his mouth had been open - or that he had been screaming - until his teeth clacked together hard enough to crack a walnut.
Like Gohan, the engine stopped screaming on impact too, so as the car rolled, he was able to hear the fearsome and familiar shriek of the minikin. The beast's shrill cry was coming through the heating vents from the engine compartment. Gleeful shrieking.
The laminated glass of windshield webbed with a zillion fissures and imploded harmlessly, and the car tumbled through one revolution and started another, whereupon the side windows shattered. The hood buckled, started to tear loose, but then cracked and crunched and twisted and jammed into the engine compartment during the second roll. With one headlight aglow, the car come to a rest on the passenger side, after two and a quarter revolutions. Or maybe it was three. He wasn't too sure.
Only the web of the safety harness prevented him from falling into the passenger seat, which was now where the floor should have been.
In the comparative stillness of the aftermath, Gohan could hear his own panicky breathing, the hot tick of overheated engine parts, the tinkle-clink of falling bits of glass, and rain drumming against the wreckage.
The minikin, however, was silent.
Gohan didn't delude himself that the demon had been killed in the crash. It was alive, all right, and eagerly wriggling through the wreckage. At any moment it could pop out and gouge his eyes. He would not be able to get away fast enough to save himself.
Gasoline fumes.
The battery still held a charge. The possibility of shorting wires. A spark could cause fire, and explosion.
He had to move.
Though still dizzy, he found the release button for the safety harness and pressed it, falling to the ground hard down into the passenger side. Catching his breath, he stood using the door handle for balance. Securing his right foot on the stick-shift gear, he hoisted his head through the window, then his shoulders and arms, and levered himself out of the wreckage.
He rolled off the side of the tipped car into matted brown grass, into a cold puddle, into mud.
The stink of gasoline was stronger than ever.
Pushing himself onto his feet, he swayed unsteadily, stumbled back from the car, splashing through another puddle, and fell over.
Because the car was on its side, he was laying next the undercarriage. From out of the machine, the minikin issued a shriek of rage and need.
Slowly rising to his knees, he warily looked at the car and collapsed face first in the mud. He was too tired to move, to breathe, to live.
As the bone-piercing shriek trailed into a snarl, Gohan heard the demon pounding - straining -clawing. He couldn't see, but knew very well the monster was temporarily trapped.
Laying there, he knew he was fortunate to have gotten out unscathed. Of course, though, in the morning he will be crippled by whiplash and a thousand other pains because he was human now. But that is only if he lived through the night.
THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
TICKTOCK.
He wondered what the per hour cost of his car was, but didn't have the energy to lift his hand or calculate the hours, but then he realized it really didn't matter. It was only money.
What mattered was survival.
TICKTOCK.
Get moving.
Keep moving.
THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
Get going.
Keep going.
Don't look back.
Not until dawn.
The morning will save him. The dawn, the sun.
His life was spared. He had to make the most of it.
He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear, smell, or move. That didn't matter. He had to go now.
Now.
,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,By GOD! Is it DEAD?::poke poke:: ,..,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
Sometimes when we can't do anything, something comes along. Something precious, valuable. It doesn't necessarily have monitary value. No. Something much more than money. Something more than what money can give. Something that not only makes you happy, but becomes pure and true happiness in itself. Though you may not know it, this happiness my burn into love, a love that will stand forever in your heart. This something will burn in your heart forever, be there for you, for you alone, only for your purposes because that's the only reason why it was created, why it exists now. For you and you alone.
You may not know why. Why it is here for you. You are nothing, nothing at all. Not special. But to this thing, you are anything, everything. To this something, you become its cornerstone, as it is yours. It needs you as much as you need it. If your gone, it's gone. If it goes away, you will fail to accept life. This something is more important than anything in your heart because it was not only made for only you, but was given in your greatest time of need, when you were at your low, your weakest point. This something knows your strengths, weaknesses, hopes, dreams, and it will do any and everything to accomplish its mission - your happiness - because if it doesn't , than its existence is useless.
Never give up on who you are, what you wish for, or what you believe, because this something may be there for you throughout eternity. Until the end of time.
Forever and always.
Do not fear eternity, because then you are fearing time. Time is not to be feared, but charished. Accept your time, your life, no matter what causes you to doubt.
For Videl, that doubt was love. Love and they will get hurt.
Her something was gone, and yet she continued forward through time, trying, praying that maybe.
Just maybe.
Maybe it isn't all gone.
Not yet.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,., Look at meee!! I'm a peeeeeeea!.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
It was cold. Freezing. Bone-chilling.
It was raining. Pouring. Disgorging.
It was muddy. Oh, yes, it was muddy.
It smelled. Smelled like crap.
Smelled like crap, looked like crap, thus it was indeed crap.
He was laying in mud - which he verified was strikingly similar to pooh - face first, which was rather foul to the schnoz. It was raining. He was soaked, cold, dirty, smelly, bashed-smashed-and crashed, tired, sore, being chased by an incarnation of Satan, and lost his brand now car.
Oh, yeah, and it was raining.
He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.
This shouldn't be happening. He should be at home, watching TV. Or even better yet, sleeping in his nice warm bed. Warm. Clean.
...Dry.
If it wasn't for this thing he could be happy nestled in his home, snuggling with a pillow. But no. He was out here. Cold. Wet. Dirty.
Damn that thing. Damn it to hell.
He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, body soaking wet. Dripping. His entire front was smothered in brown, chunky, mud. The blood was washed from his scalp and face, but was replaced by dirt.
Damn that thing to the pits of hell.
"Y-you hear me?" He kneeled back, sitting on his heels. "Burn. Burn i-in hell, you-you scum."
He rose slowly to his feet, swaying, looking at the ground. Glaring.
"Die, damn you," Gohan demanded. He clenched his fists.
Gasoline, which was evidently pooled under the length of the car, ignited. Blue and orange flames geysered high into the night, vaporizing the falling rain.
In the distance, someone shouted.
The great hot hand of the fire slapped Gohan with such fury that his face stung, and he was staggered backward by the force of the blow. There had been no explosion, but the heat was so intense that he surly would have been set afire in that instant if his hair and his cloths had not been thoroughly soaked.
Shaking his head and blinking through the rain, Gohan noticed that two cars had stopped along the highway where the convertible ran off the roadway.
At he foot of the embankment stood bystanders startled by the fire.
An unearthly squealing rose from the trapped minikin.
With a boom and a splintery crack like bone breaking, the battered and burning hood exploded off the engine compartment and tumbled past Gohan, spewing sparks and smoke as it clattered toward a stand of Phoenix Palms.
Like a malevolent ginie freed from a lamp, the minikin flung itself from the inferno and landed upright in the mud, no more than ten feet from Gohan. It was ablaze, but the streaming cloaks of fire that had replaced its white fabric shroud did not seem to disturb it.
Indeed, the creature was no longer shrieking in mindless rage but appeared to be exhilarated be the blaze. Raising its arms over its head as if joyfully exclaiming hallelujah, swaying almost in a state of rapture, it fixed its attention not on Gohan but on its own hands, which like tallow tapers on some dark altar, streamed blue fire.
"Bigger," Gohan gasped in disbelief.
Incredibly the thing had grown. The doll on his doorstep had been about six inches long. This demon swaying rapturously before him was about eighteen inches tall. Furthermore, its legs and arms were thicker and its body heavier than they had been earlier.
"This is nuts," he muttered.
The falling rain captured the light of the wildly leaping fire, carrying it into the puddles on the ground, which glimered like pools of melting dabloons and flickered with the shadow of the capering minikin.
How could it possibly have grown so fast? And to add this much body weight, it would have required nourishment, fuel to feed the feverish growth.
What had it eaten?
Impossibly, the rhapsodic minikin appeared to swell even larger as the flames seethed from it.
What had it eaten?
Gohan began to back away slowly, overcome by the urgent need to flee but reluctant to turn and run. Any too sudden movement might remind the demon that its prey was nearby.
The rain washing parched panic through him, and his fear was like a fever burning in his brow, in his eyes, in his joints.
"Screw this."
He turned and ran for his life.
He didn't know where he was running to, but just away.
His feet reluctantly moved through the deep mud, releasing his legs unwillingly. Every step he took his feet buried deeper into the soaking ground.
He reached the steep incline of the embankment and went on his hands and knees, scrambling himself up the hill. His foot slipped, making him fall down a few feet, but he sunk his hands into the mud and continued to pull. Pull for his life.
The people who stopped at the top of the embankment were too far away to see him run trough the blinding sheets of rain. They could only witness the inferno, the menacing explosions.
Flat ground.
He pulled himself up over the ledge, hoisting with his arms and digging aimlessly with his legs. He was out of the embankment.
Get going.
Keep going.
He ran, ran for his life because now he had evidence. Evidence that the monster could indeed rip off his balls. He had to get as far away as possible.
THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
Tomorrow's sunrise hung out there just a few minutes this side of eternity.
Having crossed an empty lot on the diagonal, Gohan reached the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Avocado street, skidded across the last stretch of mud like an ice-skater in a frozen pond, and plunged off the curb into the calf-deep water the overflowed the gutters at the intersection.
A car horn blared. Brakes screeched.
A Ford truck appeared magically -poof!- as if from another dimension. The truck stopped an instant before Gohan, rocking on its springs, but he couldn't prevent running into it full tilt. He bounced off the fender, spun around to the front of the vehicle, and fell to the pavement.
Clutching the truck, he immediately pulled himself up from the blacktop.
As the driver's door opened, the night swung with Benny Goodman's big-band classic 'One O' clock Jump.'
As Gohan regained his feet, the driver appeared at his side. She was a young woman with white shoes, what might have been a nurse's pink uniform, and a black jacket. "Hey, are you all right?"
"Yeah, okay," Gohan wheezed.
"You're really okay?"
"Yeah, sure, leave me alone."
He squinted at the rain-swept vacant lot.
The minikin was out there. Coming closer. Fast. Too fast for comfort.
"Go," he told her, waving her away with one hand.
The woman insisted, "You must be-"
"Go, hurry."
"-hurt. I can't-"
"Get out of here!" he said frantically, not wanting to trap her between him and the demon.
He pushed away from her, intending on running somewhere. He didn't know where but he had to get away.
Get moving.
Keep moving.
The woman clutched tenaciously. "Was that your car back there?"
"Jesus, lady, it's coming!"
"What's coming?"
"It!"
"What?"
"It!" He tried to wrench loose of her.
She said, "Was that your new convertible?"
He realized , then, that he knew her. The waitress. That waitress.
Gohan had the queer sensation that he was riding the bobsled of fate, rocketing down the luge chute toward some destiny he couldn't begin to comprehend.
"You should see a doctor," she persisted.
He wasn't going to be able to shake her. She wouldn't let him and he knew that.
When the minikin arrived, eighteen inches and growing with a spiky crest along the length of its spine, bigger claws, bigger teeth, it would rip her throat out, tear her face off.
Her slender throat.
Her lovely face.
He didn't have time to argue with her. "Okay, a doctor, okay, get me out of here."
Holding his arm as if he were a doddling old man, she started to walk him around to the passenger side.
Damn how he hated being week. He should not need a human to help him make it do a door only feet away. How dare she think he was truly week. He could have stopped that car with a blink of an eye, and he should have. He was once and may possibly still be the strongest being in the universe, he is not some weakling who can't fend for himself. He should be considered a god with his strength.
Well, at least he should have been. Now, even though he knew he was strong for a human, still, he was weak, useless, and for Pete's sake, he was normal.
For how long had wished, hoped, dreamed that this day would come. Possibly everyday for months, years, his whole damn life. Yeah, it wasn't just a life, but a damned life. His life was destined for Hell. That bobsled was taking him for a ride strait to that fiery underworld of torment, suffering. He would not stand for it.
How many times had he given his life for others and not taken anything for it but a pat on the back and a dead father.
A long gone father whose death lay solely in his own shoulders.
He could not take the weight, even with the power to destroy a galaxy, he could not handle the fact that he couldn't do it. He was a failure, imperfect.
Perfection.
Saiyans were the perfect worriors, the strongest in the universe, and he was the most powerful of them all, nevertheless, he still failed.
He strived his entire life to become strong so he could make his father proud.
That's all he ever wanted to do. Make dad proud. But now all he had left from trying to gain his father's approval is a muddy face-plant and no life.
Now, dad was dead, he was weak. No. Pathetic. Useless. Ignorant. He was a failure. The God damn strongest failure in that niche in the wall we call space. He was nothing now. He was normal for Christ's sake.
Normal.
Pathetic.
Useless.
Nothing.
Nothing but a stupid man who can't freaking walk to a forsaken door.
Enraged, Gohan wrenched his arm from her annoying grasp. "Drive the damn thing!" he demanded.
Gohan hobbled to the passenger door and yanked it open, but the waitress was still standing in front of her truck, stupefied and outraged by his outburst.
"Move or we'll both die!" he shouted in frustration.
He glanced back into the vacant lot, expecting the minikin to spring at him out of the darkness and rain, but it wasn't here yet, so he clambered into the Ford.
The woman slid into the driver's seat and slammed her door an instant after Gohan slammed his.
Switching off the radio, she stared the steering wheel and asked, "What happened back there? I saw you come shooting off the road into the-"
"Are you stupid, deaf, or both?" he demanded, his voice shrill and cracking. "We gotta get out of here now!"
"You have no right to talk to me that way," she said quietly but with visible anger in her crystalline-blue eyes.
Speechless with frustration, Gohan could only sputter.
"Even if you're hurt and upset, you can't talk to me that way. It isn't nice."
He glanced fearfully out the window. Scanning the lot, he felt unsettled and aggravated. Why wasn't she listening?
She said, "I can't abide rudeness."
Forcing himself to speak calmly, Gohan said, "I'm sorry."
"You don't sound sorry."
Damn it, it's coming.
"Well, I am."
"Well, Mr., you don't sound it."
Gohan thought he would kill her rather than wait for the minikin to.
"I'm genuinely sorry," he said.
"Really?"
"I'm truly, truly sorry."
"That's better."
"Can you take me to the, uh, hospital," he asked merely to get moving.
"Sure."
"Thank you," he said making sure not to get her going on rudeness again.
"Put on your seatbelt."
"What!?"
"It's the law." She looked at him, as if to force her point into his brain and to say 'You mess with me, I'll kick your ass.' So he unreeled the shoulder harness and locked it across his chest.
Her hair was raven-dark and lank with rain, pasted to her face, and her uniform was saturated. He reminded himself that she had gone through some trouble for him.
"Please, miss, please, you don't understand what's happening here-"
"Then explain. I'm neither deaf nor stupid."
That hurt.
For an instant the improbability of the night left him without words again, but then suddenly they exploded in a long hysterical gush: "This thing, this doll, on my doorstep, and then the stitches pulled out and it had a real eye, green eye-"
The waitress's eyes widened, mouth opened slightly. She looked baffled, in shock.
"-rat's tail, dropped on my head from behind a drape, and it pretty much could eat bullets for breakfast, which is bad enough, but the thing is, well, it's also smart, and it's growing-"
Snapped out of the trance, she said, "What's growing?"
Frustration pushed him dangerously close to the edge of rudeness once more: "The doll snake rat-quick little monster thing! It's growing!"
"A-a doll rat-quick little monster thingy?" she repeated.
"No. This-this can't be."
"Yes! Monster thingy!" he said exasperatedly.
With a wet thunk, the shrieking minikin hit the window in the passenger door, inches from Gohan's head.
Gohan screamed.
The woman said, "Holy shit."
She quickly buckled her seatbelt.
"Shit. Not now." she said through her teeth, aggravation strewn across her face.
The minikin was growing, all right, but it was also changing into something less humanoid than it had been when it first began to emerge from the doll form. Its head was proportionately larger than before, and repulsively misshapen, and the radiant green eyes bulged from deep sockets under an irregular bony brow.
The waitress released the emergency brake. "Knock it off the window."
"I can't."
"Knock it off the window now!"
"How, for God's sake?"
Although the minikin still had hands, its five digits were half like fingers, half like the spatulate tentacles of a squid. It held fast to the glass with pale suckerpads on both its hands and feet.
Gohan wasn't going to roll down the window and try to knock the thing off. No way.
The waitress shifted the Ford into drive. She stomped on the accelerator hard enough to punch the truck into warp speed and put them on the far side of the galaxy in maybe eighteen seconds.
As the engine shrieked louder than the minikin, the tires spun furiously on the slick pavement, and the Ford didn't go across the galaxy or even the end of the block, but just hung there, kicking up sprays of dirty water from all wheels.
The minikin's mouth was open wide. Its glistening black tongue flickered. Black teeth snapped against the glass.
The tires found traction, an the truck shot forward.
"Don't let it in," she implored.
"Why in heaven's name would I let it in?"
"Don't let it in."
"You think I'm insane?"
"Yupp." She nodded.
"Wha-why?" His voice cracked.
"You ran into my car."
"You were driving it!"
"You disobey the law."
"It's a freaking seatbelt."
"You look scary."
"I'm being chased by Satan!"
She looked at him, "You have your hand on the window button."
Gohan pulled his hand away from the button.
The Ford truck was a rocket, screaming north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Gohan felt as if he was pulling enough g's to distort his face like an astronaut in a space-shuttle launch, and the rain was hitting the windshield with a clatter almost as loud as a submachine-gun fire, but the stubborn minikin was glued to the glass.
"It's trying to get in," she said.
"Yeah."
"Then get your hand of the freaking button!" Gohan once again realized his hand was tightly gripping the handle on which the button lay.
"God, what the hell does it want?" Gohan asked.
"You," she said.
"No really," Gohan said with a sarcastic tone.
"It wants you dead."
"How the hell would you know?"
"Well, for some obvious reason, you just piss it off."
The beast was still mostly mottled black with yellow, but it's belly was entirely a puss yellow, pressed against the glass. A slit opened the length of its underside, and obscenely wriggling tubes with suckerlike mouths slithered out of its guts and attached themselves to the window.
The light inside the truck wasn't good enough to reveal exactly what was happening, but Gohan saw the glass beginning to smoke.
He said, "Uh-oh."
"What?"
"Its burning through the glass."
"Burning?"
"Eating."
"What?"
"Acid."
Barely braking for the turn, she hung a hard left off the highway into the entrance drive of the Treesdale Country Club.
The truck canted drastically to the right, and centrifugal force through Gohan against the door, pressing his face to the window, beyond which the minikin's extruded guts wriggled on the smoking glass.
"Where are you going?"
"Country club," she said.
"Why?"
"Van," she said.
She turned sharply to the right, into the parking lot, a maneuver that pulled Gohan away from the door and the dissolving window.
Gohan grasped the door handle.
"Button," she implored.
"Sorry."
She smirked. "Now you're getting it. Next we have to work on 'Thank You'."
At that late hour the parking lot was mostly deserted. Only a few vehicles stood on the blacktop. One of them was a delivery van.
Aiming the truck at the back to the van, she accelerated.
"What are you doing!?" he demanded.
"Detachment."
At the last moment she swung to the left of the parked van, roaring past it so close that she stripped off the paint from the front fender and tore off the truck's right mirror. Showers of sparks streamed from tortured metal, and the minikin was jammed between the truck window and the flank of the big van. The rocker panel peeled off the side of the truck, but the minikin seemed tougher than the Ford - until its suckers abruptly popped loose with a sound Gohan could hear even above all the other noise. The window in the passenger door burst, and tempered glass showered across Gohan, and he thought the beast was falling onto his lap, Jesus, but then they were past the parked van, and he realized that the creature had been torn away from the truck.
"Want to circle back and run over the damn thing a few times?" she shouted over the howling wind at the broken-out window.
He leaned toward her, raising his voice. "Hell, no. That won't work. It'll grab the tire as you pass over it, and this time we'll never shake it loose. It'll crawl up and get us one way or another."
"Then let's haul ass out of here." She pulled out of the parking lot, and put the pedal the metal with less respect for the speed limit than she had shown earlier.
"Jesus, slow down," he demanded.
"Why?"
"It's the law," Gohan said jokingly.
She rolled her eyes. "Well, running through a red light is illegal too, ya know."
"Huh?"
She smirked, "You flew through that intersection, with a red light might I add, like Hell was on your ass."
"Well, it was."
"True," she nodded, "Very true. But you know that's still illegal."
"Ugh! You're impossible."
She shook her head, "No, just a woman."