My only crime is that I get angry. I get frustrated at myself – I can't even look at a mirror without feeling that I need to puke. There's something wrong with me, and it's slowly been killing me over these years. I can't find any sort of peace, and I just want to hurt something real bad. Now I know what it is. I see it – that darkness that follows me.

It's a ghost.

I've been battling for years – I know what a curse does. It eats away at you, until you're consumed by whatever dark energy that took hold. For a while, it was illegal in the Kanto circuits, but the rules change. People get more and more advanced in handling curses out of battle. Pokeballs get fitted with some mystical crap that wards off the hurt. Before then, if a ghost curses you, you were going to die. No amount of medicine or technology can turn back the force that drags you into hell.

Activists nowadays always say the evil in Pokemon are inspired by humans. It is by our vices that we corrupt them. Personally, I think it's all bullshit. We are the most adaptable species on earth. Anywhere that men can trod, he will place down the roots of civilization. It's because we have the drive to survive, and Pokemon are no different. Any kangaskhan would gut you on the slightest infraction if you so much as step within sight of her baby. Mightyena will tear you apart just for being in their territory, because they know humans are the biggest of threats.

And once you've outdone yourself in the category of survival, what is there to do? Amusement. Pokemon can get bored the same as we. Battling keeps me and my pokemon busy like thousands of others out there. Some do other sports or just find something they can enjoy. For a few of society's psychopaths, torturing is considered 'fun' for them. It's not unheard of for a zangoose to kill a seviper or anything else for the sheer hell of it.

So consider this. If you're already dead, what do you do? There's an eternity to burn and few things you can do without being a true physical force. You want to be amused – to remind yourself that you still have a brain and that, yeah, the old noggin is still working right. You've heard some of the greatest jokes and nothing is as funny afterwards. So tell me: what do you do? You mess with people. Mess with their perceptions – move a seat that way, open a cabinet here, leave the refrigerator door open, and whatever else you can pull out of your ass. Their shock at these minor movements is all too hilarious. It tides you over for a while – just playing poltergeist in the dark.

Then things change. It's not funny anymore. No challenge. You start really messing with them. Cutting the brakes. Untying lifelines. All sorts of small, deadly things, and when you watch – all you can think of is how stupid they looked floundering around when they're about to hit the dirt and snap their fragile little necks.

That gets boring too. A life of eternity is a life of boredom, didn't you know? Everyone's afraid to die because they think things will continue to be exciting. Let me tell you, the lifelong adrenalin we all run on for our kicks and motivations eventually burns out. We crash hard, like an office worker at two in the afternoon without their cup of joe. Face to the ground, shit flying everywhere. It's a long sleep on the ground.

To keep you busy for a lifetime, why not live follow a lifetime? Start with a baby – a small one so the game will last longer. Follow him or her – gender matters very little as in the end, they're all the same anyway – and tweak little things in life. Mold them into something else – far from what they're supposed to be. Who cares if they were going to become the person who came up with the cure for cancer? You're dead – it's not like you'll need it.

Take his ball from him when he's being a momma's boy. Give it back when he punches a kid. It's just basic psychology – a child is like clay. You can make whatever you want from them if you know what you're doing, and whatever if you mess up. There are plenty of fish in the sea.

So watch him grow up a little – paranoid, angry, and violent. He's not the sweet boy that everyone loves – no – he's the jerk that everyone loathes. And you're finding it absolutely sidesplitting when that little tyke flies into a rage. You've still got so many years left to go, and still you follow, planning to milk the fun for all its worth.

It gets worse. You plague his nightmares, appearing every so often to spook him awake. He loses sleep; he can't think; can't reason. It's inebriating, and soon, he's as antisocial as it gets. You've become his curse – disaster following his heels at every attempt to right himself. It's like a daruma doll, and you're all too eager to strike it down when it pops right back up. And then you sit on it or put something on it so that it can't. And then you get tired of having to constantly hold it down… so you break it. Smash it into pieces so small, you're not even sure what it used to look like. You have a good laugh about it as he becomes startlingly isolated.

And to think, he's just nine.

Then that special day arrives when he turns ten and he gets his first pokemon. And you're there with him. You finally show up – the manifestation of everything that's ever gone wrong in his life. He's livid with fury, stricken with grief, and so much more. He wants to destroy you – wipe you from existence. He wants to kill you, but he can't kill what's dead. He can't hurt you when you hold nothing at value. He can't even defile memories of you because you're an anonymous wraith. Who were you decades ago? No one remembers who you were, your face, or even your name – not even the kid who you've consumed has a clue.

There's nowhere for the kid to vent his frustrations. He can't find a means of solace, so he takes you with him to share the pain – to infect others so they know his agony and your joy. You're all too happy to comply. Living malice lets you touch what you normally cannot, and so in the first battle, what do you do?

You trounce the boy's rival so hard, his pokemon might've been hospitalized for days. Nothing amounts to the shock and horror of the other kid and the smug grin on your own. And then you smile to yourself as well – hey, I'm like the father the kid never had. It would have been better without you, a chronic abuser and shaper of pariahs.

Then starts the cycle of terror. Occasionally, the kid battles by himself, desperate to prove he doesn't need you to win, but with each defeat, he knows it as well as you do. You are his victory – a victory steeped with pain, guilt, fear, and a cocktail of other crippling emotions, but you are victory nonetheless. So you do what you do best. You kill them discreetly. Choking them. Possession. Whatever's at your disposal, because guess what? What cannot be touched before now can be. Shit just got real.

That's how you and the kid won everything. Just killed and kept killing and no one caught on… maybe it was something you did. Some otherworldly power found only in things like you – the power to wipe memories as you've been wiped from everyone's. No one ever remembers how anyone died, and rarely do they ever remember the kid.

Oh, you would have fun for quite a while, but all good things must come to an end, right?

Death is something we all have in common. You're a bitter victim of the scythe, and in time, so will the kid. That's how it's going to be isn't it? That's what you're terrified of. That's why when the kid woke up from his hazy stupor and tried to kill himself, you'd be there to cut the rope, empty the jars, or jam the gun at the last possible moment. Every time he thought he was going to be free – you dragged him back from death's shadow to live under your darker one.

He's stuck. There's no way out. Ever exit has been tried, and you unfailingly were at each one. Trapped, he's become nothing more than a puppet longing for the days he can stop dancing on worn wooden heels. He longs for you to cut the strings so he can crumple to the ground for an eternal retirement.

But you won't let him.

You won't let me.

I know you as well as I know myself, and I know what I have become under your cancerous hands. Twisted, and utterly bent out of shape… I will become like you in time. Worse even. How can I not after all the pain and terror you have wrought upon me? I suppose I will find my own kid once I lose the use of this mortal flesh. I can't exact retribution on you, so he or she – it doesn't matter, remember? – will have to suffice. I'll do everything on them that I longed to do to you. Perhaps they'll take up my mantle, too, and repeat everything with the word 'revenge' on formless lips.

It's a fun, little cycle you've started, and as the thorny wheel turns, each soul caught will be blacker than the last.

[A/N]: Been meaning to write something about the creepypasta Black version for a while. If you don't know what it is – just google it. I was freaked out by it for a few days – as with the Lost Silver story. If you've read my interpretation of it, then you know there's quite a bit of difference between that and this one. For a while, I entertained the idea of writing a longer, chaptered story, but I didn't get far because of a writer's block and the feeling that I'd get a lot more substance if I wrote something more of to the point. Then I started something new.

This took me a few months to write just because of how on-and-off I was about this piece. Blame school, blame my laziness, and blame Skyrim. They're all very good at eating time.

At any rate, thanks for sitting through the story and the author's note. Try not to be cursed by a ghost.