Fletch I

The Starling City squat smelled like a mixture of sweat, urine and stale cigarettes. It was the sweat in that unpleasant concoction that stood out the most. Anyone who entered the door – and this included maybe six people – were immediately hit by the raw concentrated body odour, but since none of them really ever left, they were accustomed to it. To these few, old humid sweat was synonymous to their senses with home.

This is why when Fletch arose to squeeze out his dehydrated morning urination, he was struck by a change in the delicate microcosm of their carefully cultivated cesspit.

His apartment stank of rotting meat.

None of the squatters ate meat. It was a luxury that they couldn't afford; often misinterpreted by the rare outsider as a statement against cruelty to livestock pokemon. Their diet consisted of tobacco and stale bread. Fletch felt less than a day away from scurvy. He didn't know what that felt like, but he felt that he just knew it. The smell, alien and offensive, permeated through the malnourishment fug and burrowed through to pique curiosity in his semi-dormant brain.

One hand hovering still over his boxers and the other scraping something crusted out of his nostril, Fletch stumbled over the sleeping form of his perplexingly chubby Raichu, and towards an unfamiliar silhouette on his dirty, curb-rescued sofa.

Could it possibly be Davey? he wondered, back from his bender finally and stinking up his flat? But no, the figure was stunted and disproportionate for a human. A low, sporadic hum emitted from the stench's source, and Flech swatted away flies as he squinted.

The smell worsened as he got closer, but that was to be expected. He threw open the curtain with unsteady hand and the grey afternoon light spilled onto the dead body on his sofa.

A Typhlosion, mouth agape, one eye shut and the other open, wide and glassy. Dug beneath its collarbone was a yawning gap exposing shining bone and torn red meat. Fletch fancied for a moment that he caught a glimpse of flame sac, but his days of anatomical assuredness were long gone. The flesh opening was jagged; rough. It was definitely a tear and not a slice. No actual damage to innards so the creature had probably bled out. And not here as there was no fresh blood around the sofa.

All of this information came to him before the fear. He was suddenly very aware of his heart thudding a reminder of his own life as he stared at this dead strange pokemon in his home.

Why had this happened?

How had this happened?

Granted it didn't require any sort of infiltration experts to sneak past the doped up conked out current habitants of the flat, but to dump a dead body on his sofa in broad daylight?

He could actually feel the fog of months of intoxicants lifting as his mind whirred. Was it possible that somebody had intended to send him a message? This had been in that film, hadn't it? Where the guy found a Rapidash head in his bed. But who wanted him dead, and why? In the background the TV hummed to a different tune than the flies. RJ was rallying the masses once again. 'Pokemon training is CRUEL,' Fletch heard her roar, and the force in her convictions travelled even through the staticky set and made him quiver. 'Why are bloodbaths still considered okay in our modern society?' Fletch found himself reaching out to the dead Typhlosion and then flinching back.

This had to be a message. If it were a sign, the meaning was clear enough.

We're coming for you.

He made up for whatever time he had wasted in his shock in the next few minutes. He packed a meagre backpack, scooped up Cheddar, the fat Raichu, and after downing the dregs from an open can and wincing at the ashy taste, he squeezed through the front door and was out of the squat for the first time in several weeks.

Standing on a street corner in only boxers and a hideously tight band t-shirt, forearm hiding his eyes from the minimal sunlight and a dozing Raichu, he must have been quite a sight. Nobody in the city gave him so much as a second glance. Addison Fletcher stumbled over bin bags and a Trubbish and began his pilgrimage towards his new life for the second time in as many years.