Saffron City, Six Hours Ago:

Her name had been Amanda, though no-one had ever called her that in years. She found herself struggling to remember that, as she lay on the wall-to-wall carpet on her side, her left cheek slowly turning a very vivid shade of purple from where the masked man’s shotgun butt had struck her.

Amanda, she thought. Amanda Kunder. Not Mandy, or Mimi, or Mrs S she thought to herself, as one of the masked men grabbed her by the ankle and started dragging her across the carpet. Something inside her mouth felt loose and she tried moving her tongue, trying to push it out of the way. A trickle of spit and blood dribbled out of her lips.

Not Mom, or Mommy, or Ma. Amanda Kunder her name came to her again and again in waves, tearing at the great nothing wall that seemed to have blocked the highway of memory leading to her past. She saw her name written on great big billboards, stenciled in pink with faded-gold borders, the way you imagined your own name looked, when spoken by your parents on the day you were born, or by your husband as he lifted the veil from your eyes and leaned down for the kiss, or the way your baby boy spoke it for the very first time to the super-market cashier when he got lost.

It’s a pretty name, isn’t it? Spoke the voice of her husband-to-be from decades away, as they stood ankle-deep in sand on some far-away beach on Cinnabar Island. He wore khaki shorts, his tanned skin market by pale strips where he’d worn his flak-jacket. She wore a flower-print sundress, her skin a perfect toffee color. The thought of him smiling at her made the sight of her molars slipping out on her lips, resting on the carpet like ivory islands almost bearable.

Vincent’s not the name of my father, said the father of her children. It’s perfect, as they looked down at the little creature sleeping soundly in the crib. Amanda couldn’t help but think of the child looking up at her with eyes that oozed malevolence, great evil thought lurking in its tiny skull, mid-formation. She thought of the baby smiling that tired old smile that he gave her every time he saw her when he was all grown up and she became a shut-in, haunted by the EKG metronome beeping beside her comatose husband.

The thought of it hurt her more than the masked man hurt her, when he pressed something flat and cold on her head and sawed her ear off. Amanda cried, but the burning sensation of her flesh being sheared off her scalp had barely registered. She focused on another far more painful thing, instead: the boy’s voice, as he kissed her on the forehead, muttering his good old aphorism: Love you, Ma right before he shut the door behind him, forgetting about her for weeks at a time.

Amanda hurt, but being alive and forgotten hurt her so much more. When she looked up with her good eye at the lightless depths of the masked man’s shotgun barrels, she had known she was ready for the crash and the flash that would end it all. What she wasn’t ready for, was the wet sensation that splashed across her back and the side of her head and her limbs and the carpet around her. It smelled like the half-ignited discharge of her husband’s military-lighter.

At that moment, Amanda realized that this was what Hell must smell like.

“Please, no…” she managed to weep, before she heard the sound of a match being struck. She saw trhe tiny point of light descending at a nightmarish pace on the puddle around her, saw the masked man running away, his mercy-shotgun moving away from her. Amanda reached out to grab the match and watched as it sent flames licking up her hands, over her nightgown and her eyes. She screamed and the flames rode along her tongue and down her throat.

Amanda Kunder died and went to Hell. But she wasn’t alone on her way down that day.

Lavender Town, Mister Fuji’s safehouse, Four Hours Ago :

I’ve spilled my guts out fifteen minutes ago, the second I hear the sound of Mister Fuji’s pliers behind my back. I’ve handed him the black-topped pokeball by the time they’ve wheeled me over in this sub-basement. I’ve looked so hard and so desperately at the one-way glass panel on the wall that I’m no longer sick at the sight of my naked, beaten body.

Mister Fuji sighs, putting the pliers back in their gold-plated case and rubs his temples. It doesn’t sink in that he’s tired of the sound of my boive, until he says:

“Shut up, Vincent.”

My mouth clamps shut halfway through outlining the details on a black-market tournament pokemon exchange. It doesn’t hit me that he’s heard what he’s wanted to hear and that I probably sound like a beaten dog until about a minute later.

“Your boss is coming over to negotiate a trade for you, don’t you know? He’s probably hoping that you haven’t spilled your guts or handed the pokeball over to me yet. He’s probably thinking you’re a brave man, too, to risk coming over to my turf so he can haul your sorry behind out of the fire.”

I keep quiet, biting the inside of my cheek. The thought of Mister Giovanni pissed, of his eyes staring me down until I’m barely an inch tall is enough to make my heart sink all the way down to my legs, but I should deal with it when (and if) that comes up. Mister Fuji reaches back into his chest of wonders, ruffling through his tools. He says:

“There really is no reason for me to keep you alive any longer, Vincent. There’s nothing stopping me from, say, taking this here needle” Mister Fuji produces a long needle with a vicious tip, placing it level with my line of sight “And shoving it through your eye and into your brain.”

My mouth floods with the dull, metallic taste of absolute fear. The monkey in my head starts screaming, clawing at my hind-brain, trying to get my hands moving, my eyelids closing, my teeth snapping at the needle. It’s trying to ignite my instincts of self-preservation but I know better than that. I know people like Mister Fuji (hell, I am one): this is what they want, more than anything. This is what feeds those fear-junkies. The terror.

Should I shed a single tear right now, this will be all he needs to drive that thing into my brain. It won’t take much. Just a shudder or a single pleading word.

“But then again, that would be too good for you, wouldn’t it, Vincent?” Mister Fuji says, placing the needle back in his chest of wonders. “Maybe I should just beat you to an inch of your life and hand you over to your boss like a screaming, bubbling bundle. Maybe he’ll finish the job, then.” Mister Fuji produces a cigar from his breast pocket and lights it up, puffing the acrid smoke into my face in great puffs. “Or maybe he won’t and he’ll leave you on the curb, to die off on your own. Sounds like something he’d do to a lowly little snitch, doesn’t it?”

I don’t nod or utter a single word. My eyes seek out his as he comes into view and stay locked there. My addled little brain tells me that if I don’t speak, if I don’t show any fear, if I don’t make a single peep, then he’ll leave me alone and maybe the boss will put a bullet in my brain and that will be all, folks.

I’m all big and brave and stoic, until Mister Fuji puts the cigar out in a place just out of my line of sight and the pain comes up at me in waves and I’m screaming myself hoarse, with my nostrils filled with the scent of overcooked pork and burnt hairs. Mister Fuji grinds the cigar down hard and then pulls it back, flicking the ash and then lighting it up again. I look down at the burnt mess between my legs and vomit.

“Lance’s father is a very good friend of mine. You know Lance, right? Elite-Four Lance? Dragon-Breath Lance?” Mister Fuji says, pulling up a chair and sitting in front of me, blowing puffs of smoke into my face between words. “We used to do business with his father. Helped him get off the ground with pokemon import, some work with Sylph Corporation, funded the Master-Ball design. This pays for Lance’s tutoring and his studies and his career as a member of the Elite four. So when Lance is all grown up and he comes over to visit with a baby in his arms, he tells me:

“ ‘Uncle Fuji, this is my boy. Me and the wife, we know how much we owe you and we want you to be his grandfather. Will you, Uncle Fuji?’

“And I say yes, because I am a lonely bastard and I am tired of life and of hurting and taking and I just wanted to give, so I call the kid Joey and I’m there for him for 10 birthdays, taking him on my lap even when he’s too old for my knees to bear him. And then Joey decides to become a pokemon trainer, because children are brave and stupid that way and leaves home without coming to me. ‘I love you, Godfather Fuji, he says, but I need to do this on my own’.”

Mister Fuji stops talking, noticing how I have been faking unconsciousness. He tugs me back by the hair, looks at my pretend-vacant expression and whips something around my forehead, strapping it tight. He puts something in my mouth, clenching my teeth around it and then punches me hard in the chest, again and again and again. I open my eyes but I can’t scream, so I only struggle not to choke on my spit.

“You better pay attention, or I’ll be putting this right in your eye” he says, dangling the cigar in front of my face, the heat from its tip searing my eyelashes. “So Joey goes off on his big adventure without even so much as a by-your-leave and he finds himself a couple friends from all over the place and one of those friends, a kid named Azure, he gets chummed, wouldn’t you know. He gets chummy with Team Rocket. And Team Rocket wants something from Sylph. A black-topped pokeball. Joey never finds out what they wanted with it. He just goes and gets it, like a fool he is. He even locks horns with his dad for it, wouldn’t you know.”

Things begin clicking into place, inside my mind. The little scared monkey looks at the pieces of the puzzle falling into place and now it’s so terrified it can’t even muster the guts to scream and claw.

“Joey thinks he’s so smart, so tough, untouchable. He and his buddies beat Lance, who’s there for the testing. They come right after the pokeball’s caught the thing Sylph has been testing it on, so they don’t know how much it costs or what’s in it. So lance comes over and he tells me:

“ ’Uncle Fuji, your godson stole the black pokeball for Team Rocket, with the ting inside it. We need to find him.’

“And so we do, two days later, his face cut up and his kneecaps blown off, screaming and pissing himself on a hospital bed at the sight of you and your little sicko girlfriend. And he tells me ‘Uncle Fuji, I want this man to hurt, but I don’t want you getting your hands bloodied. I just want you to find this piece of garbage and I want you to give him something from me and then you can do what you like with him.’ And so I do, because I love Lance more than I’d love my own children.”

Mister Fuji reaches out and wheels a little tray beside him. He takes from it a carton box that’s soaked through and open it, without ceremony. He holds it up to my face and I see a bloodied little ear. There’s a pearl earring on it that I try my best not to recognize and I fail, so I start bawling like a baby.

“Her name was Amanda. That was a lovely name. Guess I’ll leave you to it.” Mister Fuji says, placing the box with my mother’s ear on my lap and walking out of the room, locking the door behind him.

The face that looks back at me from the one-way mirror is crying its eyes out, screaming for hours.

***

Lavender Town, moving up to the pokemon tower, three hours ago:

Ghost’s belly is on fire, but so are its limbs and its hide. The air around it is tearing clumps off its skin, making it shed down on the paved roads, across the alleys, making parts of it visible. The few that see them notice the things that beat inside Ghost, things that whirl and twirl and whirr madly and sometimes their hair turns white and other times they fall on the street where they stand. Ghost doesn’t care for them, even though it’s so awfully hungry and their terror makes its mouth water, because the hurt overcomes all other sensations.

Ghost just wants to go home, through the split on top of the Pokemon Tower, into the place of not-white, not-shape that drags him down and poisons him. Ghost hated this place, with its terrible pull and its heat and the cold and the staring faces. He hated the boxes and he heated the screaming, even though the food was nice and scared, just the way Ghost liked it.

Ghost stumbled once, as a piece of it tumbled down the road and splatted against a house. It crawled, trying to reach its mass, but the pull of the world held it down until it choked and died. Ghost pressed on, swimming through the thick not-water, desperately seeking the split, spiraling up the tower to the top, its claws splintering the brickwork into dust where they struck the surface. Ghost wanted to go home, because it was scared it might die.

Ghost had forgotten about death, inside the place that looked like the screaming sea of white-hot nothing he’d come from. It had been small but Ghost swam around it as if it were vast, waving its myriad pseudopods inside the milky-silky stuff. It had grown hungry and it had slept and it had waited and then it had been let out into the pulling place and it had feasted on the red-headed woman that wasn’t scared of it, but relieved.

It had been an unsatisfactory meal for Ghost, that one.

Ghost reached the top of the Tower and looked for the split, where it had fallen through, oh-so-long ago, before the silk-clad solid things with their rigid limbs had caged it and prodded it and tore it apart and then shoved it in the small space-like-home. It sniffed at the air and it howled at the skies, but did not find the split. It waved its limbs around, seeking purchase, but found none; above there was only endless blue-white, not-home.

Ghost screamed a mournful cry, that sounded to the solid, rigid things below like the sound of tiny things being crushed beneath a wheel and snarled: Ghost was going to die, unless it found compromise. It had to reach the little-space, to find refuge and feed and wait for the split to appear again. Straining its predatorial mind, it thought of a sphere with a black upper-half, the one that had somehow fit him and fixed on its presence.

Unfurling wings that it had created from its mass with a thought, Ghost followed the invisible trail toward it, shedding bits of it along the way. It would replenish them, of course. He’d make sure the rigid things would pay dearly for this, before he was gone.