It was just yesterday… but the gripping claws of internal agony rake the seconds along like hours and the minutes like years. I lie still, my plush body unable to move, upon a reeking pile of grimey dumpster trash… but my heart, my heart is back at home with my little girl. My best friend...Where is she?
So much has happened… It's all too difficult for me to remember. All I know is that the last day I saw Mia, whenever that was, started off like any other…
After waking up in the cozy arms of Mia and her polka-dot pajamas, she gently hid me away in the top drawer of her wooden dresser, underneath an array of tall and stripey socks. It was hard, knowing that Mia was ashamed of our friendship… but I tried to understand; After all, Mia was not a little girl anymore, but a teenager, though to me she had never grown up. We still played together every day… and she still loved me, even after all of our years together. Besides, sweet Mia was already bullied far too cruelly at school for being different… I watched, heart breaking, as she gazed down at me with her honey-brown eyes and smiled warmly while stroking my head a single time… then, as usual, she pulled the hood of the black jacket she now wore far over her bruised, beaten face. She hid herself just as she had hidden me…
She quietly closed the drawer and the morning sunlight was shut out, black shadows surrounding me instead as I was encased in the musty wooden dresser. But I patiently waited for her to return like always and jerk open the drawer, scooping me up and smashing her face against mine in a warm embrace. I always dried her tears with my fuzzy, velvety texture, and sometimes she just lied on the floor holding me tightly against her chest as we listened to loud music together.
But that day... that day was different…
I felt a rush of joy pulse through me when I heard the pounding footsteps of Mia stomping quickly up the house staircase, before she slammed her bedroom's wooden door closed with a loud bang. Finally, she was home from school. I had waited all day and finally we could spend time together, just the two of us.
But something was wrong. Very wrong. Because Mia did not open the drawer for me like she always did… instead, I heard angry voices coming from outside the bedroom, booming and screeching tones that made me glad I was safe inside the enclosure of the dresser. But Mia was outside without me… and I could hear the familiar, heart-wrenching sound of her soft crying as things were apparently being shuffled around the room.
Clothes, maybe…? Being placed into a… a suitcase…? Why?
The pace picked up and the voices grew louder, but the words being said all blur together in my memory. All I know is that Mia was in a hurry. She wasn't thinking straight. My eyes darted around in the dark drawer and the joy that once rushed through me turned into a deep fear, a panic unlike any other felt before. Where was she going…? Was she… was she going to forget me? She wouldn't, would she?
Mia? Mia, what's going on?
I'm still in the drawer… Mia?
But… I don't know what I expected. As always, my tiny knitted mouth never opened and my fuzzy plush body didn't move in the slightest. My thoughts, the thoughts that so desperately wanted to become screams, were forever trapped inside my inner being.
Don't forget me, Mia, I'm still in here!
Let me out! I'm… I'm scared…
But all I heard was the dull scrape of the bedroom window being jerked open. Then a thud of something being dropped… then a second thud… Mia… had she just left without me?
I don't know how long I waited for her to return. I waited until I stopped smelling the musty wooden scent of the drawer, until it merely became the scent of air for me. I waited until I could no longer hear sounds, because none of them were the sounds of Mia that I longed to have ring in my ears again. I waited until it hurt, I waited until I no longer wanted to wait but only wanted to… to just stop existing.
Then finally, I saw daylight… I had forgotten what it looked like. Mia's mother had opened the drawer; I knew it had to be her, because she looked just like Mia with kind brown eyes glittering with tears and a warm smile, though her smile caused quite a lot more lines to form on her face than Mia's had. She picked me up from the drawer, my plush body flopping lifelessly in her gentle grasp. For the first time in what felt like so long, I began to feel a joy rushing through me again… Certainly she was taking me to Mia, I thought…
But she wasn't. She didn't. Instead, she tossed me like trash into a large black bag with a sticky, clingy texture. I was enveloped in darkness once again, and once again I waited for someone to save me… and I waited… and I waited…
And then yesterday came. The bag began moving… someone was taking me somewhere, me and all the socks and other unidentified fabrics. Was I being taken to Mia? Would I at last see the face of my best friend once again?
No…Still tightly enveloped in this clingy, terrifying blackness, the entire bag and I were thrown violently onto what felt like countless other squishy black bags. And then I waited… and waited… and then more squishy black bags were thrown on top of mine, directly smashing against my side of the bag and causing it to bust open. I tumbled out of the bag and slid onto a pile of slimy, indescribably foul-smelling trash… it was then I realized…
...I've been thrown away.
I waited and waited for rescue, but I've now given up hope. I'm now forced to look up at the night sky as I lie on my back in a dumpster, hopelessly gazing at the softly-glowing stars and remembering all the times I looked at those same stars with Mia. My inner being burns with an unending pain that digs deeper and deeper into my chest, but somehow it isn't physical… is this… a new form of sadness? Is this… loneliness? I try to look away from the sky, I try so hard, but my body doesn't budge. Where was Mia? How could she have just left me like this? Did she know of this misery I would be in without her, this everlasting longing in my chest?
She knew. She just didn't care.
The raspy, deep voice I hear is not my own. Yet… it is an internal sound, one inside my head.
She didn't forget you... She left you…
But… who is that voice? Their words can't be true. Mia… she must've forgotten me. We may never see each other again, but… the separation was not intentional. It couldn't have been…
She grew up. She grew up like all the other kids that grow up and ditch their toys. She doesn't care about you. In fact, she's probably already forgotten you even existed…
No. No, that can't be true. Mia could never ditch me. But…-
Then why didn't she take you with her? She remembered to pack clothes but didn't remember to pack you? She didn't want to take you with her. She's a teenager now, she doesn't care about her stuffed animals anymore. Don't you hate her for it? Don't you hate her for what she's done to you?
A new feeling burns through my chest now, stronger than before yet not as painful… [i]anger.[/i] The mysterious voice has a point… Mia knows what sadness and loneliness feels like more than anyone… yet she just left me behind, she just left me to feel the pain of those emotions without her. I had always dried her tears and comforted her day after day after day, yet she's just left me to rot away here helplessly with the city's useless trash.
You should find her… confront her. Show her the pain she's caused you and make her sorry for it.
...What? I could never hurt Mia. I could never-
Funny, because she had no problem hurting you…
The burning anger in my chest digs deeper into my soul, just when I don't think it can be any more fiery. It's agony; I'm suffering with these cruel emotions running through me, yet I can't let them go. I… don't want to let them go.
"I do hate Mia…I will make her sorry…"
The words come out of my mouth. What…? The words actually, literally, come flowing out of me in a voice that is like my thoughts yet clearer...I suddenly realize that I can move. I can move my whole body.
I lift my head and move my hands in front of my face. My once soft, cream-colored fur is now a rough, lavender fabric that is both pale and dull in color at the same time. I now have three stubby little fingers at the ends of my hands, and I flex them up and down miraculously... I look down at my body and the fabric colors and textures are just like that of my hands, and it seems that my single tail is now made up of multiple pieces of straw. I carefully touch my face with my shaking hands… it feels like the rest of me too, except there is a stinging pain when I touch my blinkable eyes, and my mouth seems to be zipped up in a rough, metallic contraption. I find the end of the zipper and go to pull it, but…
Don't touch that!
I stop.
If you unzip that, I'll have to leave you… and you don't want that, do you? You don't want to be alone again, waiting around for that girl who doesn't love you. Do you?
...No. No, I certainly don't want that. I never want to be that sad, pathetic stuffed Meowth again… This new body of mine is symbolic. I am a new being now… I am independent, I am strong, and I will make Mia regret leaving me behind. I will make her sorry for causing me so much misery…
So I listen to the mysterious voice in my head. I listen to all that it tells me. Sometimes we have conversations about Mia and all the hurt she's caused; other times the voice tells me what to do now that I can move around, like how I'll grow stronger if I stick pins into this new body and invite other mysterious voices into my head. And I do… I grow much, much stronger, and so does my hatred for Mia. I search for her every day now. But it isn't out of loneliness. No, I wander about these filthy city alleyways seeking revenge, seeking to make Mia sorry for all she's caused me to lose and show her all that I've gained.
The anger and hatred continue to burn within my very core, causing me indescribable misery but making me feel more alive than ever. I keep sticking pins into my arms every chance that I get, and though it's almost more pain than I can bear, I know my suffering will all be worth it when I find Mia. But… I haven't found her yet. Day after day has passed, and I realize that yet again, I'm still waiting around for Mia… That makes me angry, too.
Sometimes I can't take it anymore. Sometimes the heavy weight of all these burdens is too much to carry around on my soul, so I just return to the dumpster where my new life began and cry alone inside it. The voices never comfort me… they just leave me in my time of need, too. Just like Mia.
Other times, I take everything out on passing Pokemon and Trainers. But most Trainers just run from me, scared off by my hideous appearance before I can even make a move. "Banette", they call me, and often even my very name causes people to shudder when talking to each other. Sometimes I miss being the cute and cuddly cat plushie that I once was… but then I think about where that got me, and the emotions sear through me once again.
But… wait. As I aimlessly wander about a wretched alleyway, hanging my head and dragging my oversized arms along the dusty concrete, a voice catches my attention.
"Oh! A Banette!"
It's young, feminine, and sweet. Just like Mia. I quickly turn my attention to the girl responsible, only to see that it is not Mia. It is a teenage girl with long, dark hair and an all-black dress that drags along the ground like my arms. A Hex Maniac, people probably call her… her dark clothing and kind smile remind me of Mia, and rage fills my plush body.
Kill her! She's nothing but a-
"Aww! You're a little cutie, aren't you?"
Her sweetly-spoken words cut through me like a Nightslash. Me...? cute…?
The girl reaches in her leather purse and gets out a Pokeball. She already has six strapped on a belt hanging around her waist, but… she can't possibly be trying to catch me. No, nobody would want a Banette like me. She must be some sort of special Trainer with seven Pokemon.
But…the red-and-white capsule comes flying at me before I can dodge it. I expect it to strike me hard between the eyes, but it stops just before it hits me and suddenly a heavenly white light flashes around me. I'm enveloped in the light now, and a peace comes over me, melting all of my hatred and all the physical agony caused by my pin needles… It's a stark contrast to the dark, depressing drawer Mia always stuffed me in...
No! She's just like Mia!
Suddenly the light disappears and I'm back on the cold concrete ground, a broken Pokeball rolling to a stop against my leg. The girl simply giggles…
"It's okay! Go on, go inside!"
She flings another ball at me and again I'm surrounded by the peaceful light. And it's now I begin to think… so what if she's just like Mia? Would it be so bad if I was loved again, even if only for a little while…? I think about the rush of sheer joy I felt as Mia ran around her house with me as a child, holding hands with me as I flopped around through the cool air. I think about lying on the floor with her in her teenage years as we listened to music, just being still in each others arms and being at peace. And I think about the pain… the pain of being locked in that dark drawer waiting for her, the pain of being junked into a dumpster unwanted and alone… but somehow… I don't care about the latter thoughts. Somehow… it doesn't sound so bad, going through the love and hate again. It sounds… worth it.
I ignore the frantic voices in my head telling me to fight this. They're all but background noise now as I hear a click! that is both loud and soft at the same time. Because I realize now… it isn't the hate and anger that's made me feel alive all this time. It's been the love. I realize now that love is not just a magical rush of joy, but a rush of pain and longing, one that is both miserable and beautiful. The hate and anger simply taught me this lesson, one slow step at a time. Pain has been my mentor, agony has been my tutor… and they have taught me that to love is to truly hurt, and to hurt is to truly live.