Disclaimer:  I don't own Dragonball Z.

Dedications:  There are two dedications for this one-shotter.  One to a guy named Justin B. at my school, as he wrote the piece that inspired me to write mine, and the other is to Stef-chan.  Stef gave me the title for my story, edited it, and… uh… commented on it.  ^__^  Thanks Steffy!  I couldn't have a better friend!

Author's Notes:  This is a pointedly short story, inspired by an entry in my school's Literary Magazine.  When you get to the end, think about it…

Knife in the Eye

The night that I came over to his house, he was already expecting me.  Standing outside on his and Bulma's balcony, dressed in the regular, he greeted me with a grunt and a middle finger; a bad habit he's picked up since he's been on Earth.  I glare and give him the middle finger right back.  I'm not in the mood to play games.

"So champ, do you want to play the boxer?" he asks me.  He always asks me that when I feel this way.  I've had an inkling for a long time that he can sense when I'm breaking.  Maybe he's been pushed to that point so often that he can easily identify it in other people.  I nod.  He then motions to the midnight-tinted grass below him, "All right then.  Let's take this below.  Don't want to wake up the woman."

We fly to the ground and my feet land with an inaudible sound.  We take off our shoes and don't even bother to stretch, engaging ourselves in backyard wrestling, the best and most unoriginal way to get the steam out of your blood.  Nothing fancy.  Nothing specific.  Just a hit-anywhere-you-can-for-as-long-as-you-can-till-you-give-out kind of thing.

"What's that knife doing in your eye, champ?" he asks me, pinning me down.  I don't even pretend to struggle.  I tell him there's no knife in my eye, but he assures me that there is; that I just can't see it, because no one can see his or her own eyes.  I tell him he's losing it.  He then asks me if I put the knife there, or if someone else did.  I shove him off of me and sit up, my arms starting to itch from contact with the soft grass.

He pushes me over, stands up himself, and says that I'm a damn good boxer.  I glare at him and he smirks.  "Does that knife in your eye hurt when you give me that look?"  I stand up and shove him backwards, telling him to cut it out.  I tell him all I wanted was the fight, not the ramblings of a psychopath.

"But there is a knife in your eye.  And there are pinpricks under your fingernails, in the area you can't see.  There's a dagger in your tongue and a shrapnel wound in the small of your back."

I can't bother to tell him to shut up again.  He seems so intent on screwing with me, with that twisted smirk and those corruptive eyes—corruptive, or corrupted.  I merely look at him.  He tilts his head back in an arrogant gesture, and the stars glisten white on his eyes; there's no light on the insides of them.

"There's a hole right through your soul, too, champ," he says.  "A hole deeper than you can imagine.  But don't think you're special and don't expect pity, because they're inside everyone.  It's only the ones that are brave enough to admit it to themselves that are enlightened.  The others just run.  But, then again, who alive can analyze himself and live, huh?  Who alive can know something is wrong with them and say they are okay with that?"  He pauses, and I look him up and down, my eyes narrowed.  "There are those who say that suicide is the coward's way out.  Will you now wonder if suiciders were the bravest ones of us all?"

His eyes are still tilted to the stars.  And still, there's no light in them.  I frown and look down at myself, wishing I could see my eyes and under my fingernails.

"Have you ever wondered if Kami analyzes himself?  Will you wonder, now, if he has the same hole in him that we all do?"

I tell him to shut up, that Kami's too respectable and much too grand for Vegeta to be talking about him like that.  Turning around so that my back's facing him, I thank him curtly for the brawl, and take off into the air.  I need to get back home.

Because I can't stay any longer.  If I do, Chi-Chi might begin to miss me…  Miss me and my cheerful smile.

~Pudgoose