Summary: Inspired by The Lovely Bones. Nobody suspects pokemon journeys can be dangerous. I found out the hard way just how terrifying the world is. OC. Rated M for adult themes and disturbing imagery.
Daisy Lies Here
Nobody suspects pokemon journeys can be dangerous. They send their children out at ten years old to discover the trueness of the world, with only their pokemon to guide them. Nobody prepares them for the brutality that comes with it; the world may be beautiful, but it can be sour too, and that's the side of the story that's never told.
Nobody teaches them self-defence, nobody teaches them that sometimes, pokemon can't help you. Nobody gives you advice on what to do should your pokeballs be out of reach, should you be all alone on a route come nightfall with nobody to help you as a strange man approaches your campfire.
Some people, like my older brother Oliver, never had to worry about that, travelled with friends, enjoyed his time exploring and didn't run into any trouble at all.
I had to pay his price, and found out the hard way just how terrifying the world is.
I was eleven years old when this happened. And I'll never forget it.
I'd been on my pokemon journey for exactly a year and four months, but I was a timid, shy child and never really found close friends to travel with. I'd met a few kids here and there, but not one of them waited for me to say, "Hey, lets travel together!"
I'd be surprised if anybody remembered me.
Me and my Treeko, Molly, had set up camp for the night. Burning wood Molly collected from a campfire, I stuck a few pieces of Pokeblock on a narrow stick and held them over the campfire, warming them before feeding them to Molly. This was a game the two of us liked; despite her efforts to act uninterested, she loved it when I pampered her, more so when I didn't invite my other pokemon out. The rest of my team - Alice, my Meowth, Evan, my Poochyena and Growly my Wurmple - had eaten earlier, while Molly was out collecting firewood. They understood me and Molly were as close as two pokemon can be, so they accepted that I felt the need to spend more time with her than I did the rest of my pokemon.
I was just heating up some Pecha berry flavoured Poptarts that my mom packed for me the last time I'd left home, two weeks ago. I'd already stocked up on supplies when I reached Slateport City, but when I found the Poptarts stuffed in the side pocket of my bag, I couldn't help but smile; Mom always knew they were my favourite.
And then, I shivered, the air becoming icy and uncertain all of a sudden. Molly seemed to sense my discomfort, as she stood up on her hind legs, glancing around before focusing on a dark shape coming towards us.
As he neared us the campfire's light revealed it was a man, with sharp eyes and an easygoing, crinkly smile.
"Hello there," he said calmly, approaching the fire. I felt nervous, but I couldn't place why; the man seemed perfectly friendly.
"Hello," I replied back timidly, shivering in the warmth of the campfire. Upon doing this, he casually stepped around the fire and crouched down beside me.
"Oh, you're cold? Here, let me warm you up…" He placed his arms around me and began rubbing them slowly, making my skin crawl.
I tried to stand up then, to tell him that I needed some rest, but he pulled me back down again, sitting me in his lap instead. He ran his fingers down the sides of my arms, and the moment he placed his hands on my hips I freaked out.
"M-Molly, bullet seed!" I cried, pushing away from him. As I staggered to my feet, Molly began charging up an attack, and I chose that moment to grab my bag and make a run for it.
He let out a roar as the bullet seeds made contact with his skin and he reached out to grab Molly. But she was too fast for him, and sped off until she'd caught up with me. I was stumbling across route 103, but to my horror nobody was around to help me. I was alone.
I could hear the man's thundering footsteps and hid in some long grass, trying to quieten the sound of my hitched breath and racing heart. Molly was crouching beside me, eyes wide with fear. And then, I knew what I had to do, even if this meant the end for me. I couldn't let my pokemon get hurt too.
Feeling tears running down my apple-pie cheeks, I pulled out the rest of the pokeballs from my bag and hid them inside a hollowed out rock - somebody's secret base. I just hoped it wasn't his.
Then I turned to Molly, who shook her head defiantly, and I began to cry harder. Her loyalty was too strong, her yearning to protect me too much for me to take.
I reached for her hollow pokeball and she made a low whining sound, silently begging for me to let her fight him, until the end. Shaking my head, I returned her, but as I reached over to put her pokeball in the base too I heard a twig snap, and turned around.
The man was looming over me, face purple with rage. Noticing the pokeball in my hand, he kicked my hand with his sturdy boots so much I heard something crack, and pain exploded inside of me. Through widened eyes and a howl of pain, I watched in horror as the pokeball, Molly's pokeball, that shiny red pokeball covered in The Pokemon Adventures stickers I got from a pull-out page in a magazine Oliver bought for me, hit the floor with a loud crack, splintered down one side, and fell to pieces, and empty shell nursing a lifeless pokemon.
"NO!" I couldn't breathe, couldn't think; my tears were mingling with his sweat as he forcefully pushed me down on the ground, laying hot, slimy kisses all over my face and neck. I screamed, I cried, I pleaded for him to stop; nothing was working.
"I'll do anything if you let me go," I found myself sobbing at one point, "just not this, please, oh please, don't-"
Angered by my pitiful tears, he yanked the bandana off of my head and the scarf from around my neck, scrunching them up into a ball, stuffing his creation inside my mouth to keep me quiet.
"If you'll do anything, comply with this, little girl," he hissed, bringing his face closer to mine. His eyes were fierce, expression as unreadable as an empty page. I think I knew the end was going to come, but I tried not to register the feeling of him removing my clothing.
As he stroked my kneecap I thought I was going to be sick, coughing and hacking into the bandana-scarf-ball wedged in my mouth, panicking that I wasn't getting enough air, fearing I would suffocate.
What happened next was a blur of him growling, exposing my body, my muffled screams.
And all I could do was stare at Molly's pokeball and ask myself why I didn't free her while I had the chance, at least let her escape.
Of course, I'd heard that there were mean people in the world, people that could hurt your feelings. But nothing felt worse than the pain of this.
When he was done he stood up, pulling on his clothes again. I couldn't stand, was too weak to even tremble. I just lay there, already feeling like the life had been sucked right out of me.
I didn't know at the time that I'd been raped, that this kind of thing was happening more than people heard about; all I knew in my heart was that he had hurt me, and that what happened was so wrong, so shameful…
It felt like I was disgusting, that I was a sick person for being violated like that. And then he let out his pokemon; a Mightyena, a Mawile, a Swalot.
Once he did so, the man crouched down beside me and pulled the damp bandana-scarf-ball from my mouth and I coughed harshly, but knowing better than to scream.
He drew a finger to my quivering lips, a snake-like smile appearing on his own.
"Don't tell, sweetie. It's our little secret, okay?" He motioned to his pokemon. "Or they'll get too hungry, and… well, you can figure out the rest."
I nodded, tears stinging my eyes. He then took my hand and stroked each finger in turn, kissing the nails with his slimy, puckering lips.
"Tell me you love me, darling," he whispered, loud enough for me to hear. If it meant I wouldn't be eaten, I would do all I could to comply with his disgusting request… but as I tried to move my lips, to croak out a response, I found I couldn't. Panic settling in my body, I tried again, but still, no sound.
"Oh, are you tired, sweetie-pie?" His concern sounded genuine, spiking my hatred for him even more. "I'm so sorry to have wiped you out. Here, lets rest for now, hmm?" I wanted to scream no, I wanted to stagger to my feet and run, but I couldn't move. I couldn't protest as he bound the bandana around my mouth, gagging me once more, tore the scarf into two strips before tying my arms behind my back, binding my legs together.
That scarf, that my mother bought for me for my eleventh birthday, the beautiful black and white checked scarf that reminded me of racing car tracks. The scarf that my brother's Vulpix sniffs out two days later, stained with blood. My blood.
He scooped me up and rolled out a large mat with his foot, placing me down on it. What I didn't know at the time was that this was his way of covering up the evidence, making sure he'd never be caught. If there was no blood on the grass, there was no proof. Simple as that.
By now I could see him sitting down, rummaging through my bag and eating my leftover Poptarts, and I finally found my voice, screaming into my bandana-gag as my heart screwed up and unravelled again and again. How dare he go through my bag? How dare he tie me up? How dare he hurt me like this? How dare he kill Molly?
My whole body was aching, agonisingly painful, and when he waved his hand dismissively towards me and instructed to his pokemon, "Eat up, boys," it felt like my heart was sinking further and further into my chest. I think I passed out upon seeing the Mawile turn around and it's teeth-encrusted ponytail open wide towards my face. There was pain, that's all I know. A lot of pain, a lot of blood, and the sound of something tearing me in two.
When I next awoke I was in spirit, feeling sick to my stomach as I watched him empty my bag and put in the parts of my body that his pokemon could not bring themselves to eat. He flung my bag, blood already seeping through, into the river and watched as the riverbed seemed to swallow it up. He sifted through my things, pocketing valuable items of mine, before tying up the rest in my bloody bandana and dropping them into the water as well.
Just as well I'd left my pokeball in that secret base, which turned out to belong to a boy called Brendon, a sweet, quiet boy who loved and cared for my poor, traumatised pokemon, never knowing they belonged to me, never knowing why my pokemon were so terrified of learning how to trust again.
When the man had disposed of my body he simply shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, whistling into the night. I followed him, my anger boiling, waiting to see where he lived so I could haunt it.
What I wasn't expecting was for him to be living in such a friendly place - Oldale Town. Now that I think about it, I recall seeing that man earlier today. He tried to stop me from heading up to the river, claiming some nonsense about finding some mystery pokemon footprints, and did I want to bend down and take a look at them? I peered behind his shoulder and they didn't look anything special, so I walked away, waiting until I was sure he was gone before heading towards the river.
But he found me anyway.
When I remembered this, I realised he was following me from the start, and this made me shudder; I'd been in danger this whole time, and he was still alive, waiting to strike again, ready to pounce on another little girl travelling through with her pokemon.
I closed my eyes and wished to see my parents one last time, and when I opened my eyes there I was, back in our humble home in Mauville City, where they were chattering over dinner about how Dad's day had been in the bike shop, Rydel's Cycle. Oliver called them once in a while, but he called me every day, and since I had missed this call, he rang them straight away.
"Oh, I bet it's those people from the Rustboro City Trainer School," Dad grumbled, abandoning his Golduck steak and grabbing the phone. "Hello?"
Though I shouldn't have been able to, I heard Oliver's replies, too; it reminded me of that time me and Oliver were listening in on Mom and Auntie Enya's conversations using the wall phone in our house that connected to the main phone in the kitchen.
"I can't contact Daisy," he said, voice sounding a little higher than normal. "I'm worried, Dad. What if something bad has happened to her?"
"You're fretting far too much, son," Dad said cheerfully. "I'm sure Daisy's met a new friend, or training Molly, that's all."
"No, even so, she'd still answer her Pokenav," he said, urgency ringing in his voice. "I'm scared, Dad. I'm heading over to Oldale right now."
No, I wanted to cry out, don't go. Don't go and run into that scary man.
Even so, despite my lack of knowledge on the subject of rape, I was somehow sure that the man wouldn't have been as willing to run up and hurt Oliver. Especially as he is six-foot-five and has a Dragonite trained to wipe out any pokemon with one measly Dragon Rage attack.
"I'm sure you're worrying over nothing, Oliver," my father sighed, before hanging up the phone. Turning to Mom, he said simply, "Oliver's older brother instincts are going just a little too far, don't you think?"
He wasn't joking around two days later when Oliver called him up about the scarf.
I can't even begin to describe some of the things that happened after that. Both my parents were crying, Oliver was going crazy with grief, my pokemon were snivelling into Brendan's pokemon food, and my killer was nowhere to be found. It was like he'd disappeared without a trace.
One minute he was there, the next he was gone.
As I was watching all of this unfold, I still couldn't understand why it had happened. I couldn't figure out why I'd been the girl he'd targeted, why he'd felt the need to hurt me, why after all he did, he still couldn't have just let me go. I'd sworn secrecy, the moment he'd released his pokemon from their pokeballs.
And yet, when my backpack was fished out of the river and emptied of my remains, the question had come back to haunt me: Why did he do it?
I couldn't bear to see it anymore, couldn't watch them grieve over me, couldn't stand watching them attempt to piece my murder together. So I left.
I flew upwards, so they say. And above the clouds of Hoenn, it's nice. I've met the spirits of so many pokemon that didn't make it to Mt Pyre, such as a whole colony of deceased Numel who didn't survive a landslide, a distant ancestor of the legendary pokemon Rayquaza, Mom's old Skitty who passed away due to a lung infection when I was six.
But most importantly of all, as I was sitting upon a cloud and watching over the vast Hoenn seas, I heard feet shuffling towards me from behind. For a fleeting moment I thought that it was my murderer and turned around quickly, fists raised. Instead I saw Molly, my beautiful Treeko Molly, holding a daisy sheepishly behind her back. And I began to cry, feeling saved, forgiven.
I hugged her tightly, for the first time since my death not feeling alone.
So now our new home is the world of the clouds, far too high for any living person (or pokemon) to reach. This new cloud world suffices; at least, until the justice for my death is served, and I can truly fall asleep forever, and be at peace.
For now, Daisy lies here.
A/N: The Lovely Bones is a beautiful, yet really sad and emotional, book and film, and I highly reccomend both! (Although I haven't seen the film yet - but I want to so bad!) This fic was inspired by the book and a song from the movie soundtrack, Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil. If you want a better understanding of why this book inspired me so much, check it out, and the song too. You won't regret it.