Lavender Town, Mister Fuji’s safehouse, now:

I’ve cried myself hoarse an hour ago and now I’m standing in a lobby, being served tea, dressed in a fine silk suit that makes my bloodied face look so much worse in comparison. Mister Giovanni is sitting across from me, not even sparing me a look, trying his best not to smash the delicate teacup in his hands on the table. Mister Fuji is standing beside me, smiling a fed-leopard smile.

You wouldn’t be able to tell right away, but we’re just animals, thinking ourselves men.

Mister Giovanni puts the teacup down hard and says:

“We need the pokeball, Mister Fuji. And our man, of course.”

“You can have him for free. But the pokeball? Now that’s out of the question.”

“You took the damn thing from one of my men, pried it from him after torture and now you have the audacity to-”

“I didn’t pry anything from your man under pain of anything, Mister Giovanni. Vincent plain old gave the thing to me, once I brought him over. Kept sobbing ‘thank you, thank you’ the entire time.”

The boss shoots me a glance that could stop a charging Onyx dead in its tracks.

“You can’t possibly think I’ll just give you what you want, do you Fuji? You know this is going to turn ugly fast unless you work with me.”

“I got the law on my side and I got the goods, too. What could you possibly threaten me with?”

“We could start with Lance, for once. He’s going to be having a very hard time next week, unless we reach a compromise.”

Mister Fuji’s teacup had been smashed into his hands the very next second. His expression remained unchanged, even as he began to bleed through his clenched fingers.

“You do not want to go there, Giovanni. It’s a dark, terrible path the one you’re looking to tread.”

“Then give me the pokeball and let’s try to reach an agreement. Money isn’t going to be a problem here.”

“Money?” snarled Mister Fuji, picking bits of china from his palm. “You think this is about money, you dog? You think I give a damn about your stinking cash or that I even give a damn about your muscle? You think there’s anything in the world that you can do to make up for what this piece of garbage did?” he said, pointing at me the way people must have used to point at lepers before a stoning.

“You can keep Vincent, Fuji. I’m only here for the pokeball.”

“No, you’re not. This conference is over.”

“Don’t you turn your back on me!”

“Escort the gentleman and his detail out.”

“I’m giving you one damn chance here, Fuji!”

“And make sure he gets his dog, as well. Won’t have him trailing blood all over my carpet.”

Someone reached to grab Mister Giovanni’s shoulder, but by that time his gun was out. Mister Fuji’s as well. I hit the floor and rolled under the table, listening to the sound of guns cocking all around me.

“You’re outgunned, outnumbered and out of your damn mind, Giovanni, thinking you can pull this off in my turf.”

“And you’re mad, if you think I’ll let you walk away with what’s mine.”

“Put your gun down and I swear this won’t turn ugly, Giovanni. Put it down and-”

Someone fires his gun. His finger pulls back the trigger perhaps a fraction of an inch more than it should, or he just can’t stand the pressure, or he just sees a shot and takes it. There’s a smell of cordite and a body drops to the floor. And then there’s thunder and brimstone that’s over in ten seconds, leaving behind it only a din that chokes out sound and numbs the skin.

I get up out of cover and see the writhing, bleeding mass. Outside, there’s thunder even though it’s a sunny Sunday afternoon. Something punches a series of holes on the floor and sends plaster dust down on the carpet. Everything’s gone to Hell in a handbasket and it’s time for me to go.

The black-topped pokeball is on the table, next to the yawning wound that was the left side of Mister Fuji’s face. I deflate it and stick it my pocket. Something grabs my ankle on my way out.

“Don’t you leave me here, you piece of garbage!” screams Mister Giovanni, his hand clamped over the wound that’s staining his hundred-dollar shit red. “Don’t you lave me here to die!”

“I can’t hear you!” I lie and run out of the doors. The minute the men in the black suits run upstairs, flecked in red and wreathed in cordite, I begin to limp and scream at them:

“They killed Mister Fuji! Oh God, oh God, oh God!”

I ran the hell out, stopping only to make sure that Mister Giovanni’s voice can’t be heard when the roar of machine-gun fire has ended. Outside, in the parking lot, shots are still fired and stray bullets smash the windows of parked cars. Finding Mister Giovanni’s limo, I slip on the driver’s seat the second I’ve cleared the driver off it. He mutters something, but I can’t quite hear it.

By the time they notice the limo’s sped out of the parking lot, I’m gunning for Vermillion City. Speeding through the Freeway, the tatters of my life flapping madly behind me, I realize that the only person I could stand to see before all this is over, to know the truth and see the real me, is Violet.

***

I pass by the exit for Saffron City and know where the column of smoke is coming from. The windows are up and the AC is on full-blast, but I can make out each smell.

There’s the smell like overcooked pork, char-broiled on oaken floorboards that my father put in himself. There’s the crackling, firework-smell of peeling wallpaper, the printed daisies wilting and blackening, their petals closing in on themselves in reverse bloom.

Even as I speed down the interstate, I know that now the entire conflagration smells like burning wool. I can almost see the curtains swallowed up the fire, make out its criss-cross climb up the stairs. Somewhere in the distance, the kitchen window is bursting open. Fire is lapping at the fridge door and eating away at the oven door, lapping up at the gas stove.

In the room I grew up in, the sports team posters are wrinkling up, curling up toward the ceiling. The smoke pouring through the floorboards makes it look like it’s coalescing into being from a child’s thoughts. My sheets billow up by the hot air. On their shelves, my books shudder, shiver, creak and then combust. The bathroom mirror grows foggy, dark, cracks. The flames are now flowing across the gas canister set under the stove. The CAUTION sign is popping, burning, growing dark. There’s a hiss, a whine and then…

And then my house is gone. Then my mom is gone and all I’m left with is my sorry old behind and this car. Thank god it’s a good car.

Stepping down on the gas, watching the speedometer’s needle go way past 70, the world around me deceptively slowing down into a crawl, it’s only then that I notice I’ve got the box with me. The severed ear’s still inside, stuck to the cardboard by the blood.

You’d think a man would never be able to look at his own mother’s severed ear and be able to hold his lunch down. You’d think a son’s heart would break into a million tiny pieces every time he looked at it and want to dig for himself a big old hole in the ground and stay there forever. At the very least, you’d thought he wouldn’t be able to even look at it twice.

You’d think that a man would have to some sort of monster, some animal that thinks itself a man, to be able to look at it and shrug. You’d have to be lower than a rat to just open the limo’s window and throw it out. You’d have to be some filthy piece of garbage to just keep going and never look back after that, hoping that when you told the woman you love what you did, what you’re really like, she’d even want you.

But for Violet, I know that I could never go without her knowing who I really am: without showing her the naked reality of Vincent behind all the bravado and the muscle and the coldness.

There’s a shadow above me on the asphalt that spreads in front of the limo. Something that looks like Death’s wings unfurl against the setting sun and for a moment it feels like I’m looking down an oracle’s mouth, about to peek at the manner of my death. There’s a little voice inside me that whispers:

I hope it hurts, you bastard. I hope you go screaming.

But unlike all the other million times I’ve heard it, I can’t seem to quite shrug it off.