written for pokeprompts for the month of August '10
an attempt at a semblance of horror, tell me what you think?
world - game
notes - In Chinese tradition, during the Seventh month of the Chinese calender every year, it is said to be the time the gate of the Underworld opens and ghosts are allowed to wander the earth. During this time, the Hungry Ghost Festival is held, where traditional performances are put up for the ghosts (at these performances, the front row of seats are always left empty for them to sit). It is also customary to burn paper money and other paper items (cars, houses, etc) because it is said that this is the way to send the items to those in the afterlife. Oranges and other food items like plain cakes are placed as offerings to the ghosts.
Orange Ashes
He knows that he adores the summer months the most out of the variety the year brandishes– it's the prime period where all the pokémon caper blindly and stumble accidentally into the lawn behind the manor one after the other. They are mostly unsuspecting upon the newly cut green and freshly planted flowers, the smarter, wary ones hardly approach the yard at all.
When he goes on his walks, he always sees rare pokémon that are not native to the region. He smiles and waves and he gestures animatedly to his resilient butler. The grey-haired servant does not bat an eyelid as he nods curtly and quickly coaxes him to go for morning tea – it is as if he cannot see that the rare pokémon is poised there behind the bushes or lying lazily in the grass.
Sometimes it is a buzzing porygon, at others a bumbling marill – it is never a pikachu.
It has long stopped coming, and he wonders why it is still called the Trophy Garden.
He is ten again, and he waits for the same pikachu in the shade of a kind tree, sheltering his eyes from the stinging beams that filter through the clouds draping the sky. It is the one that is identical to the one that eats a mashed orange from his palm and shocked him with a playful travel of energy on a rainy summer night that he never forgets. It will be the same one that climbs on his shoulders and paws apologetically at his clean sneakers – it will be his same, old, wild friend.
He is five and he finds a newly hatched pikachu sniffling and groaning at the lifeless body of its dead mother – they lie just outside the lawn, in the tall grass where an ekans or a staravia must have poisoned the poor female with fangs that were alien to the concept of compassion. He thinks that the pikachu must be sad and afraid, so he calls the maids to get milk and blankets and pillows and a bedtime story for the little pokémon.
It runs away after it drinks the milk, spilling the remnants of the white liquid over the immobile paws of its mother, whose body is already heating under the summer sun.
It returns to the garden within the next week – there is a notch in its ear this time.
But it must be the same one. He feeds it and pats its head and watches it scurry back to the forest.
The notch disappears after two years, but he doesn't really notice – he is far too concerned over the question of why the pikachu is suddenly so hostile to him. The problem is solved after a few weeks and constant showers of food and warmth, and it returns to normal.
He never really asks himself why he doesn't catch the pikachu, perhaps he's always been afraid that it would suffer under the constraint of society and human rituals.
When he is twelve, the pikachu stops coming to his house – he gives it a month, and when the time is up, he sends the staff of the house to scour the immediate area.
They find a lump of what is left behind, consisting mostly of burned skin framing exposed eyes and the stench of something that should be underneath the weight of summer soil. 'Old age', the butlers console half-heartedly as the maids weep vaguely and pretend to turn their heads away in pity, not repulsion. He swears silently in his twisted heart and places crushed kricketots under the folded blankets of their beds the next night, making sure to strip off their red shells first.
Because he stands under the rays of the summer sun for the whole day, casting his short shadow over his noncommittal friend, the skin upon his shoulder starts to peel. The pain stings and he tears at the skin because he wants to get the whole ordeal over and done with. When he bleeds, he uses his handkerchief to wipe the liquid away. He pauses, to examine the new skin – no different than the layer before apart from being a shade of bright pink. He proceeds to wipe the brow of the pikachu and close those wide open eyes, and cries into the handkerchief soon afterwards.
The pikachu never comes back, no matter how hard he thinks, or how much paper notes he burns. He scrawls his wishes on the paper and uses a lighter to watch his words crinkle and disappear in orange majesty. Perhaps the wishes will reach the pikachu in the form of ashes, wherever it is.
There are many of its kind that visit the garden soon after, but they are nothing like the original, except in the morbid truth that they pass away sooner or later.
He is a young man and shines the statue with his trusty handkerchief, the scent of yellow fur perfuming his nostrils and the thrilling hints of static jumping under his fingers.
He builds that modest monument in honour of all the dead and the gone, of faithful soldiers of summer. It is small and compact, able to squeeze next to the desk of his study room.
The manufacturers are at first skeptical to work with clean, polished bones, but they manage to pull it off and are awarded heartily for a job well done. He grins at the finished product and cups the head of the indiscernible figure, tilting his head to the side to admire the face of all his previous companions.
The guard on duty is secretly a coward, hiding away and sleeping in the comfort of the night. Whenever a curious trainer sneaks into his office to prod the statue, he sits back on his bed and allows them to touch his prize; perhaps they'll be able to talk to the garden's pokémon if they are lucky.
His lungs deflate rapidly, and the fear of being unable to taste oxygen chokes him for a moment.
In the next second, they inflate with grey fumes and spicy flames that burn and scar his throat, his voice screeches through the ire and his eyes roll upwards. But no one hears him crying throughout the empty mansion, his screams are high and deafening; he is a child again. The flames raze the room and the tears from his eyes mix with the sweat covering his body. He rams his head repeatedly and repeatedly against the sizzling floorboards because he knows his secret spot is here somewhere.
He doesn't bleed.
He pulls off the correct plank to see the remainders of the pikachu he played with before, disembodied ears, some with notches and some lacking, black pebble eyes of varying shades and strands of golden fur of different lengths. He doesn't know why there are so many to deceive him. He can't tell which is which, and the flames push him into the dark hole and he begins to drown – the mansion engulfs itself in flames for the time being.
He awakes to a nice morning and wipes the sleep from his eyes and disposes of whatever memory of the dream in trained habit. He slips into a familiar robe and toasty slippers, and he slowly makes his way to the hall. Along the way, one board creaks under his feet, but he neglects it.
After the morning walk in the garden, he sips coffee in his office and the day continues like the day before– it is identical to the last, and will be to the one tomorrow, and the one after that, like all the days of never-ending summer. He can't tell them apart any more – he doesn't try.
He watches summer burn and kill behind the translucent window in his office, a slice of fresh orange cradled between his fingers, and he sees the ghosts of pokémon he'd smiled and waved at on his morning walk.
rip