Enemies

Enemies

The knife swings just past my face, clanging loudly against the wall. Mr Mime slashes for me again, this time missing wilder as I fall back further into my prison.
He’s pushing me back. He’s got the advantage on me. He knows it. I know it.
He lunges for me again and I manage to duck aside.
We’re both in the cell now. I’m being slowly backed into a corner.
The look of furious victory on his face tells the story – he knows he’s won.
He keeps pushing me back until I’m in the corner.
He twirls the knife around and smiles.
‘Why?’ I shout.
He stops, tilts his head at me quizzically.
‘Why are you all doing this? Why me?’
He points the knife at my chest.
He shifts the weight on his feet.
Darts forward.
I step to one side and try to dodge.
The corner has me pinned.
I spin around and try and crash into him.
The knife catches me in the shoulder.
Glances off, tearing skin.
I scream.
He laughs.
But I’m in close and he can’t get me again.
I punch him in the face and claw at his eyes.
He staggers, tries to push back away from me
I dig my thumb in his eye socket.
He trips over and we fall down. The rattle of his knife echoes as falls to the floor and bounces away. His head cracks onto the solid stone floor and the momentum pushes my thumb deep into his eye.
I twist my thumb and pop his eye out. It hangs down his cheek loosely.
Black gunk washes over my hand as he screams. He thrashes wildly with his arms and tries to get at my face.
I club him with both of my hands.
In the chest.
Club. Club. Club.
Something cracks inside him.
He gurgles and spits black gunk at my face.
It hits my cheek.
It burns.
He writhes in agony on the floor.
I go for the knife.
As I take my weight off him, he pounces back onto his feet and rushes for me.
He tackles me down to the floor, hard. Tries to club me back.
I have my arms ready and block his attacks. I reach out to something and grab hold of the door frame.
He brings his hands up again for another blow. I punch him in the chin. He unbalances.
I pull myself towards the door. He grabs my foot, the two of us crawling pathetically around after each other. Him with his eye still drooling goo.
I get to the door and try and use it to stand. If I can lock him in..!
He knows what I’m going to do and grabs the knife, trying to stand.
He gets to his feet first and rushes towards me.
I manage to stand up and swing the door shut as hard as I can.
His hand gets in the way.
A sickening snap and his wrist is bent the wrong way.
The knife falls to the floor.
I open the door a little wider.
He tries to follow his arm through.
I shut it on him again, crushing him against the door frame.
He falls to the ground, half in and half out.
I slam the door.
Again.
And again.
And again and again.
He screams and screams and I hear things cracking and snapping inside him as he thrashes around and claws at the floor as the black mess flows freely from his body.
Eventually he stops moving, stops screaming, stops gushing that black gunk.
I slide down the wall.
Sweet darkness.

I wake.
It is dark again.
The body is long since cold on the floor.
Nurse Joy still lies upon the floor, frozen in beautiful desperation.
My head is thumping.
Footsteps outside.
I climb gently to my feet and look out the window.
There they are.
Pokémon.
A small army, walking quietly, orderly, in a row, heading away from the houses, out into the night.
I need to follow them… but how?
I won’t get close enough as I am, they’ll find me and kill me.
If only I was a Pokémon…
I look at Mr Mime’s broken body.
White gloves, pink foamy-looking body, big shoes. They sell those as costumes.
But the face? Where can I get one of those?
The knife on the floor glints in the moonlight, the tip pointing at my fallen enemy.
I pick it up, bend over the clown’s dead face, and begin cutting.

Fifteen later, and I’m pulling the skin away from the corpse’s face.
I hold it up and look at it in the moonlight.
It’s perfect. The light shines through the thin flesh, but it will fit me just fine.
Mr Mime’s skinned face is a mess of rotting muscles and broken tissue. The black gunk oozes through every available pore. He doesn’t have a skull; it seems to be more of a hardened shell.
A quick glance out the window–
The trail of Pokémon has slowed down, but they are still walking in a line into the night.
I step over the fallen Nurse Joy and root around in the boxes and boxes of various supplies.
I find my name written on one box. I open it up to find all my world possessions: the Pokédex and my lighter. I pocket them both and keep rooting.
I find one box labelled, ‘costumes’. Sure enough, it contains various Pokémon outfits, Happiny, Chansey, Pikachu and Mr Mime. I pull on the Mr Mime suit.
I stand by the door, looking like a ridiculous fucking clown with a broken hand hidden by a white glove with black, bloodshot eyes and bruises over most of my skin.
Luckily, my new face will hide all that away.
I stretch Mr Mime’s face over my own.
It fits.
The black gunk still inside the skin burns like hell but it seems to fix the dead face over my own just right. I check the mirror, wipe away the visible ooze and step outside.
The air is warm, the night deadly quiet.
The only sound is the Pokémon’s footsteps as they leave the village.
I don’t even know where we are.
In the distance, the silhouette of Mount Coronet fills the sky, blotting out stars and a chunk of the moon with its vastness.
I walk towards the Pokémon.
A Machoke sees me.
It stops.
Grunts.
Smells the air.
The other Pokémon behind it look curiously at me.
It grunts at me again.
It seems to be asking me something.
I nod and grunt.
It seems satisfied. It motions for me to get in front of it.
I hurry into the line and start walking after the others.
We march onwards.

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We Are All Prisoners

We Are All Prisoners

The wings of the angel flap and it lifts up into the air.
The sun shines in my eyes and I cover the glare with a hand.
I can see the angel and she is beautiful.
She looks down at me and she smiles.
She flies around over me and beckons me to join her.
I hold up my hand and she takes it in hers.
She smiles down at me and we start to lift up from the ground.
I look down and the ground is moving further and further away.
I look up at her and her face is changed.
She is not smiling and she is not beautiful.
She lets go of my hand and I fall.
The ground is getting closer and closer and I can’t look away.
She laughs and all I can hear is the screech of her voice.
I manage to look back up above me and she is not an angel anymore.
She is a Pokémon.

The white gloves slam my head down into the cold stone floor, once, twice.
I black out again.

I don’t know how long I’ve been locked in this small room.
Every now and then Nurse Joy returns to check on my hand.
It is healing.
She thinks the wounds on my head are some kind of suicide bid.
She has ordered twenty four hour guard by Pokémon.
They wake me up in the night by pissing on my face and beating me in the stomach.
It doesn’t matter how bad they hurt me, Chansey can heal the wounds they give me.

Night.
The door opens again.
The footsteps on the floor approach me.
I am not sleeping, not tonight.
The footsteps stop at my head.
I can hear Mr Mime getting ready to piss on me again.
I reach up and land a heavy punch right in his balls.
He gives a muffled cry and staggers back.
I’m up on my feet, rushing towards him, ready to fight.
Something heavy across my shoulders.
I’m brought to my knees by the force.
I forgot about Chansey.
I look up at the two of them.
Chansey gives Mr Mime an egg.
It heals his injured balls.
Mr Mime looks at me with a steely gaze.
They walk towards me.
They beat me to the floor.
Chansey kicks my legs.
Mr Mime punches me in the stomach.
I want to pass out.
Chansey heals me, just enough to keep me conscious.
Mr Mime moves around me to my injured hand.
Chansey holds me down, smiling serenely into my face the whole time.
Mr Mime lifts up one heavy clown boot.
Smiles at me.
Brings the boot down onto my hand.
Nothingness.

The crawling wakes me up
The scratching on my flesh.
Another poisonous bug crawls across me.
I open my eyes.
The dead eyes look back at me.
The Wurmple is sat on my face.
Its stinger poised behind it.
It cocks its head.
This is it, it’s telling me.
I open my mouth.
The creature’s midsection falls into my mouth.
I bite down, hard.
It shrieks and my mouth fills up with the hideous black goo. It’s thick like oil and tastes the same.
I spit its corpse onto the floor.
It wriggles still, the two halves moving pathetically.
I crawl away from it.
Where the hell are they coming from?
I look around me.
The window.
I crawl painfully towards it, stopping to spit out more black goo.
I use the wall to help me get to my feet.
I examine the little barred window.
There is dirt underneath the window frame.
I scratch away at it.
There’s a very small tunnel designed for bugs to come in and out of here.
It’s been dug underneath the window to get around the wire mesh that covers the outside.
I scratch away at it.
I can make the tunnel wider.
I stretch it along the width of the window.
I rip the small lining of dirt away.
I can get my fingers underneath the window.
I can touch the wire mesh.
I tear the wore, a strip coming off in my hand.
I pull the strip back inside to me.
A jagged weapon.
I wait in my cell for the chance to strike back.

Early morning light filters through the bars.
I hear footsteps.
Chansey will be coming in to heal me before Nurse Joy arrives.
I wait behind the door, the jagged wire a garrotte in my hands.
This is it.
The door scrapes open.
The pink creature waddles into the cell.
I slam the door shut as I rush towards it.
I wrap the wire about where I think its throat should be.
With all that remains of my strength, I pull.
The soft skin of the Chansey seems to be taking the wire with no problems.
It smiles at me, enjoying my efforts.
Rage flows through me.
I pull as tight as possible.
It keeps smiling.
It’s not working.
I pull tighter and tighter until the wire cuts into my hands and my blood starts to drip to the floor.
It’s not working.
I realise something–
Chansey is a healer.
Eggs are healing.
Chansey has an egg in the pouch on its stomach.
I spin the bitch around and before it can come to its senses, I punch as hard as I can, right in the egg.
It shatters.
Chansey screeches.
The egg bursts with the black goo. It runs own my hand, across the floor.
The Chansey puts a foot off balance. Black goo starts pouring from its eyes.
I step in behind it with the garrotte ready.
I wrap the wire around its neck.
I pull.
This time the wire slices through the pink foam and tears a rent through the soft skin. The black ooze flows freely all over the Chansey, all over me.
When it finally stops kicking, I drop it to the floor.
I spit on it.
Slowly I open the door a crack and look out into the corridor.
I can see a desk off to one side. Familiar shocking pink hair is visible. Nurse Joy! Finally!
I start to open the door but then I see it.
Mr Mime.
It approaches Nurse Joy from behind. Something glints in its hand.
I scream.
Nurse Joy looks at me for an instant, the look of shock frozen on her face.
Forever.
Mr Mime grabs her hair in one hand and pulls her head back.
The glinting in its hand becomes a knife as it slashes across her pretty throat.
Her hands go up to her throat and try to stop the pretty red blood from flowing out, across the floor, across her pretty white apron, across her pretty hands.
It lets go of her hair and she falls to the floor, face down in the deepening pools of violence, one eye fixed on me. Her mouth opens uselessly. Her hands grab and claw at the floor tiles.
Then she stops moving.
Mr Mime licks the blood off the knife and looks over at me. It smiles.
It points the knife at me and starts walking towards me.

Pokémon Platinum: Week 11

Week 11

I ran to the nearest police station but the sergeant wouldn’t listen to me. Officer Jenny kept saying that the humans of Sinnoh are in absolutely no danger from wild Pokémon of any kind and that no attacks on humans have ever been recorded in the history of the region.

The woman at the Pokémon Centre was no help either. She stressed that my injuries were similar to falling from a height and suggested that I could perhaps have concussion.

I asked her where the nearest hospital was.

She could not tell me.

There is no hospital. There are only places to treat Pokémon. What happens to injured humans? Nobody can tell me.

Nobody will believe me. The Pokémon are up to something! Why am I the only one who can see this? Why am I the only one they try to get to?

I tried to listen to a radio, but there doesn’t appear to be a signal. None of the computers I’ve tried seem to have access to the Internet.

As I ran through the undergrowth between the various scattered cities, I could hear the hisses, whispers and growls of all the beasts around me.

A Lickitung tried to get in my way while I made my way through the long grass. I dodged its wildly flailing tongue and managed to land a heavy punch square in the side of its head. Its body shook like jelly, wobbling and convulsing before a thick black goo leaked from its eyes.

It gave chase. I ran.

As we neared the limits of Canalave City, the Lickitung fell back, tongue flopping and dripping and dragging along the ground, paralysing liquid leaking, scorching the blades of grass at it dripped, blackened eyes still running with goo. It disappeared into the tall grass.

I went immediately to the Pokémon Centre and withdrew every single Pokémon I have captured. I placed every single Poké Ball in the Coin Case I was given by a deranged clown many months ago.

I boarded the ferry at the Canalave Port, heading to Iron Island. As the ferry reached halfway along the journey, I threw the case overboard.

I hope they all drown, or kill each other or starve or whatever it is that Pokémon die from.

I am going to climb up Mt Coronet and try to warn the people of Snowpoint City. We are all in terrible danger, I am sure of it.

Sunday Funday: Pokémon Platinum Diary – Week 6

Pokémon Platinum Diary: Week 6

Dear Sirs,

No thank you, paperclip, I am quite adept at constructing communiqués without help.

I am pleased to report progress in my investigation. I have obtained the fifth gym badge of eight and my quest is reaching its end. Most of the Pokémon available for capture in this region have been seen by my Pokédex and I am confident of success in my mission.

On the subject of my Pokédex, I must again voice a concern of mine that has begun to unsettle me. Just the previous day I managed to capture a wild Skorupi that wandered across my path. All was well and normal until I examined the creature with the Pokédex. It was then I noticed how quiet everything had become.

I was surrounded by woodlands that were teeming with life. Wild creatures were roaming the woods, jumping between the trees, calling to each other, hunting food. Once my Pokédex was revealed, however, all the noise around me seemed to stop. It was deeply unsettling. I cannot understand quite what happened.

Slowly I turned off the Pokédex and put it back into my pocket. My nerves were on edge. So soon after the incident with the Pachirisu…! The sound had just died… vanished. I felt the eyes of the many hundreds of creatures upon me. It seems like madness, I know, but I felt them all observing me in that moment. Only the hissing of the wind through the branches was left. All the natural sounds had left the landscape.

Quickly I packed up my belongings and rushed off. As I left the woods, the sounds began to return. It was as if, for that moment, the creatures were all paying close attention to me.

I do not understand what is happening. I must press on to Canalave City. The sixth badge awaits. I must complete my mission… the sooner the better.

Gentlemen.

Growing Up, Moving On #98: Obsessive Compulsive Gaming Disorder

I have nothing to say today.

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Sunday Funday: Pokémon Platinum Diary – Week 1

Pokémon Platinum Diary: Week 1

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to you now – no, paperclip, this is not actually a letter – to inform you of my travels thus far in Pokémon Platinum.

I have not played a Pokémon game in some twelve years, since the dawn of Red and Blue, as the first wave of hysteria gripped the hearts and minds of the young and warped them into collecting every single item, nick-knack and collectable that had the Pokémon branding emblazoned proudly across it.

Needless to say, the age group that was most afflicted in this frenzy of marketing was my own. I was there, on the front lines, Pokémon cards in hand, stored next to the Pokémon figurines, playing the Pokémon game in my lunch breaks at school, trading, swapping, battling…

By the time Gold and Silver were released, I had already freed myself of the grip of the one hundred and fifty strange-looking beasts. I had gone on to bigger, but not necessarily better, games. My time in that first region remained dear to my heart, my Pokédex compete of all one hundred and fifty (one!) monsters.

Precisely one week ago, I decided to ‘get back in the game’, as I suppose one’s children are wont to say, and purchased a copy of the newest Pokémon game, entitled Platinum. One wonders what other jewels and colours there are in the world left for Nintendo to name their games after!

The first thing I noticed was that very little had changed. You are still given the choice of three starting monsters, each with a different ‘type’ – grass, water and fire. You still have a rival – even though he is a friend this time, I still found him to be rather odious – and he still chooses the Pokémon type that is technically superior to yours. The Pokémon themselves still can only learn and use four moves, keeping the state of play incredibly simple and very complex – do you want your monster to specialise in one type of attack, or do you want it to be fair and balanced?

Naturally, the first Pokémon I chose was all three. Trading with a friend is still possible from the off, allowing you both to obtain all three Pokémon each. The downside is, it takes roughly six hours – quite the downside, I’m sure you will agree.

The things that have changed in the past twelve years and fifteen games are that you can now choose the sex of your character. This invariably changes the sex of your rival and of your love interest, who chooses the Pokémon that is weakest to yours. Also, there are now double battles, where you can team up with another trainer and take down two Pokémon at the same time.

Aside from that, the gameplay is largely unchanged. Aside from the obvious additions to the Pokémon roster – there now appear to be four hundred and ninety three Pokémon.

I have been investigating the Sinnoh region for twelve hours in the past week and have seen forty two, captured twenty seven Pokémon.

I am completely addicted to this game again.

Until next time, gentlemen.