"There's a recking a coming

It burns beyond the grave

There's lead inside my belly

Cause my soul has lost its way

Oh Lazarus, how did your debts get paid?

Oh Lazarus, were you so afraid?"

Blood on my Name _ The Brothers Bright

I wake in a cold sweat.

Chills race down my skin and I kick off my covers, gasping for air and way too damn hot in my own apartment. My blood prickles with thousands of needles and I stumble across creaking wood to the bathroom. Golem stirs with a low whine in my room. The darkness presses around me. I flick the light on, vaguely aware I've had a nightmare and focus on controlling my sprinting heartbeat. I turn the faucet lever and cold water runs out, brackish if you look too closely at it. I splash my face, rub the back of my neck and lean my palms against the porcelain edge of the sink.

I stay quiet even though Golem worries his mechanical heart out, standing just outside the door like a good pokemon. I trained him not to come into my bathroom. The bathroom is my spot only. I glance over at him with a tired smirk. Already, the nightmare is fading. "Quit that," I tell him. "You're worse than my mother."

He gives a low whir of discontentment and walks back into my room. He comes back with my day clothes, dropping the suspenders as he comes. He proffers them to me, and I glance at the clock. Seven thirty. I might as well stay awake at this point, but I refuse to put on clothes yet. "Thanks, but not yet," I say to him. I brush by him and into the kitchen. I make two eggs, a piece of toast, and four cups of coffee for breakfast, saying, "Hey, Golem? Had the weirdest nightmare. I don't really remember it now, but it was something about dragons. And space. Space dragons and lots of fire. Really hot. I blame the furnaces."

Golem nodded with attentive attention, laying my clothes out over one of the dining room chairs. He dropped the suspenders again and one of my socks, which he made two return trips for. After I make my breakfast, I sit my naked ass down on the other chair, eat my food and drink my coffee. God, sweet, sweet coffee. I am a machine that can't function without her coffee. The seat across from me remains unused. Golem doesn't sit. He's weird like that.

I'm cleaning the dishes when a knock sounds at my door. Scowling, I walk to the door—it has no peephole—and shout, "Who is it!" I don't get visitors.

"It's Hugh!"

Correction: I get one visitor. I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose. "Shit. You're leaving today, aren't you?"

"Yup. Can I come in?"

"One second!"

So I put on my clothes and let Hugh inside. I sit back down at my tiny kitchen table and Hugh pats Golem's shoulder suspenders, the only solid part of him when he chooses. "Hey Golem. Not letting this one push you around too much, right?" Golem whirs and lifts a hand, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. Hugh grins and sits across from me in a pair of loose trousers, a button up with the sleeves rolled up, and a sweater vest on. I cock a brow.

"It's too warm for sweater vests."

"Maybe, but I'll appreciate it when I'm camping at night." I couldn't refute him there. I think it bothered me so much because he always looked so good. Sweet, smooth chocolate skin and the biggest smile that shined with pearly whites. Surprising he's never found himself a girl. Then again, Hugh will go places in life, and I doubt he'd find a girl worth his time in Aspertia City. I always find it amazing that he goes out with his hair fully natural and picked out as big as it could get. I could never. I'd get too many stares. I get too many stares as it is with my short dreads done up Rosie the Riveter style, all wrapped up in a head scarf.

Hugh shakes his head with a smile. "Come now, Josey, can't even act a LITTLE bit excited for me?"

I kick back in my chair and cross my arms. I scowl, just to let him know even more. "No. You know how I feel. If you go off on this adventure thing of yours and get a pokemon killed at Cheren's gym, I'M the one that's gotta clean it up. Got it? If you go off on this fool's errand, you have to promise me not to muck it up with Cheren."

He lifts his hands in submission. "I get it, Josey." He pulls out a pokeball. It's not made of an apricorn, it's a shiny red and white technological thing from Silph Co. "I got my starter though. You wanna see him? He's cute."

Hugh doesn't wait for me to answer, and I wish he had. The pokemon forms before I can tell him that I DON'T want to see it, because the underlying fear that I'll have to burn the thing gets into my head and eats away at my thoughts. He's picked an oshawott, a little blue otter with a seashell on it's chest. It IS cute. I hate that. I haven't had to burn an honest to god starter pokemon in a while. Kids always try to protect their starters the most, whether the classic, endangered starters provided by Professor Juniper or not. It's the kids who wipe against Cheren that lose their starters.

The oshawott is far more enticed by Golem than me, and I'm thankful when it squeaks and dashes around Golem's legs. Golem warbles with excitement, bending over and cher-chunk-ing like a pair of gears winding too fast. They like each other, and my heart squeezes with unease. If Hugh loses that adorable abomination, I'm not letting Golem anywhere near its dead body.

"Name's Poseidon," Hugh said. He rubbed the back of his neck, saying, "I let Molly name him. She thought it'd be funny to name him Posey since he posed when she first saw him, but I managed to talk her up to Poseidon for the sake of his pride."

I immediately thought of the urn with the merman with a trident. Shit, my brain can't let me enjoy anything in life. "He'll grow into it," I finally say, thinking about samurott and hoping Hugh would get that far. I don't like how Posey rhymes with Josey, but I don't tell Hugh that. Molly likes me. It was probably a subconscious decision on her part. Or unhappy circumstance.

"Yeah," Hugh said with a grin. He leaned down, scratching the otter's chin. It purred a high-pitched trill. "I get a feeling we'll go far. Molly wants me to catch her a minccino. I'm gonna tear apart this region to find one for her. First time she's wanted a pokemon since Mittens."

My stomach turns. A lot of Plasma-stolen pokemon don't turn back up by virtue of probably dying in the conflict. I doubt after two years that Hugh would ever find Mittens, but I'm not about to say it. He gets touchy about it. Sometimes I wonder if he's more attached to the cat than Molly is.

Hugh shifts. I sit up straighter, sensing his change of pace. "I uh . . ." He fiddles with his fingers. He looks up at me with hesitant brown eyes. "I'll probably go pretty far on this journey. I've studied a lot, and you know I worked out at Alder's summer school for the past year. I got a few good tips on battling, so I think I've got good chances. If uh . . . Well, if I get out to Lacunosa Town, I could—"

My blood chills and my jaw sets. "Hugh. Don't."

"Josey, I'm just saying, you ain't never listened to what the woman had to say—"

"I heard enough."

"I could at least find out what happened for you—"

"Hugh!" He's tense too. I see it in his clenching jaw and hands. I glare at him, trying to incinerate him on the spot. "I know what happened. The boogieman got him, all right?" When Hugh didn't look convinced, and scoff and roll my eyes. I lean back and cross my arms, muttering, "Dad got cocky and went into the Giant Chasm and never came back out. That's how it works, Hugh. Supernatural monster or not, the statistics prove it. No one comes out of the Giant Chasm alive. Dad's no exception. It's almost been five years. I'm over it."

Hugh stares at me for a long moment. I know he doesn't really believe me, but that's because he and Molly have daddy issues. Their dad was a pokemon ranger. I know their dad went out looking for a lost trainer and lost his life bringing them back. Wild banette curse got him, but he saved some teenager in the end. Got a hero's funeral. And I know that's why Hugh can't let it go. It's why I want him to let it go. Cause if he goes looking for my lost dead dad, he'll just end up like his own dead dad. But can I get through his hard head? Of course not.

Finally, Hugh rubs his face and relents. He slouches down. "You don't even want me to make a pass out there to find out what that woman had to say? She seemed to have some sorta story about it all."

"I don't care." I shrug one shoulder. "At the end of the day, he's dead, and it doesn't matter how he went." I know how he went. A cocky bastard who left his wife and daughter for glory on the road of a pokemon trainer. And he died being a cocky bastard who thought he could cheat death in the Giant Chasm.

Poseidon purrs and trills at my feet, rubbing its head on my steel-toed boot and gnawing on it. I half think about kicking it since it's so tiny and it would go far, but even though I have the weird thought, I don't. I'm not a horrible person. Most of the time.

"Well," Hugh ventures, "how's everything with your ma? Need any help with—"

"I don't need help, Hugh," I cut him off before he can offer to give me any money. I'm not a sad charity case with a dead dad and half-dead mom. I don't want his, or anyone else's pity. He stops in uncomfortable silence, and I grind my jaw. I look down on his oshawott. God it's so cute. I really hope it doesn't die.

After a few moments, I finally venture a dark thought that's been on my mind. "I . . . I've been thinking about letting her go."

Hugh looks up quick. "Josey, no," he said, a warning in his voice. "She's your ma. You can't."

"But I could." The words sound so cold. Maybe they are. But . . . I don't care. I just can't care anymore, and I let him know. "She's been in a coma two years, Hugh. That's not normal. I've talked with the doctors. Comas aren't supposed to last more than a couple weeks. The swelling in her brain went down. She's recovered from the trauma. They reclassified her condition, you know? It's not a coma anymore. They call it," and I throw up air quotes, "a 'persistent vegetative state.' She's nothing but a vegetable anymore, Hugh. They said it themselves. If people are in a state like that for more than a few months, they usually don't wake up."

Hugh is silent. He doesn't offer anything to support me or contradict me, and I know it's because he holds on. He holds on so hard he still can't let go of dead daddy, and I know if his mother was ever in this condition, he would always keep her on the life support. He'd never give up on his mother. He's . . . stronger than me.

I glance at my bookshelf. It's chock full of history books and archeology texts from my college days, and there's a scrapbook of magazine articles on the latest finds and scientific breakthroughs regarding Relic Castle, the passages beneath it, and the Abyssal Ruins. My diploma sits on top. It's slipped flat, and I've never propped it back up. It's covered in dust.

I'm selfish. I fight it, but maybe one day I'll own it. For now, I mutter, "I don't know. It was just a thought."

Hugh holds his silence a moment longer. Eventually, he just asks, "Is there anything I can do, Josey?"

There's not. And I don't want him to. He's got a few personal tips from the former Champion. He's intelligent, got just enough money to make his life work, and I know he's going to go places. Whether he takes the gym challenge far, or if he just makes it to a new city and finds his place. He's not going to be like me, stuck forever in a dead-end job and struggling to pay the bills. He'll have a life. I'll merely exist.

Instead, I just give him a wry, tired grin, saying, "Not much, but if I die one day, promise me you'll cremate me. It's my last chance to get a smoking hot body."

Hugh groans. "By god Josey, can you stop with your shit sense of humor?"

I laugh then, seeing his reaction, and say, "Oh come on, Hugh, you know I'm funny!"

"Only to—"

The phone rings and cuts off his comeback, which is a good thing because I'm really bad at battling his wits. My smile falls though as I approach the obnoxious land line.

Please don't be the hospital, please don't be the hospital.

I pick up the phone. "Hello?"

"Josephine Ebele? Mortician of Fairhill Funeral Home?"

I shift on my heels. "I might be. Who are you and how'd you get this number?"

"This is the Virbank Gym. Your funeral director Mark Edwards said we could reach you at this number. There has been an accident at the gym, and we have requested your presence to help clean up."

I cock my brow. I glance back at Hugh before turning back to the wall, asking, "What happened to your own undertakers? You don't need me. You expect me to hop on a bus and spend three hours on a commute over there?"

"Mr. Edwards said he would be more than happy to send you over to assist with the clean up." I roll my eyes hard with disgust. Of course that fucking Edwards wanted to send me away. "Virbank's own morticians are currently understaffed and the League has requested the nearest pokemon mortician to come. That would be you."

Three hours. THREE HOURS of bus commute, three to and three back, and god knew paying for that bus fare was going to come straight out of my pocket because Edwards didn't give overtime or amenities. "Come on, you can't be serious," I hedge again. "Let someone else clean it up! What happened anyways?"

"I'm afraid that information cannot be disclosed, Ms. Ebele. We expect you at eleven sharp. Thank you for your cooperation."

"Hey, I never said, I'd—!" The dial tone rings in my ears. You had to be kidding me! I slam the phone down and check the clock. Just past eight. I was going to be late for their deadline because I'd have to catch the 8:30 bus and transfer to a different bus in Floccesy Town at 10 and hopefully make it there sometime after 11 or so.

"Shit." I yank my suspenders up and grab Golem's old apricorn ball and twist the top. "Return." It's not as fast as the zippy light of Silph's new pokeballs. The apricorn ball fades Golem and pulls him into the ball in about three seconds compared to the split second of Silph Co.'s shiny new balls. Hugh demonstrates this by returning Poseidon as I say, "I gotta run, Hugh. Gonna be late."

"Wait, what was that all about?" he asks while I dump the rest of my coffee in my portable mug. I snap the leaky cap on and wave a hand.

"Have no idea. Virbank Gym wants me out there to help clean up some mess of a battle. Corpses'll be cold by the time I get out there. The lady wouldn't tell me, so I guess it's bad."

I head out the door with my keys, and Hugh follows, shimmying out the door when I nearly shut it on his shoulders. "That bad, huh?" He grabs my shoulder when I make to move down the hall. "Hey! And where you making tracks to, hot mama? I didn't come all this way for you to skip out without a proper hug! You might not see me for months. I've got to get a proper goodbye. C'mere!"

Hugh smooshes me to his chest before I can react. My nose practically breaks it's so crushed to his sternum, but I roll my eyes and wrap my arms around him. Corny idiot. "You are straight off the cob, Hugh, you know that?"

He lets go and winks. "And I plan on keeping it that way, doll face. I'll be sending letters, so keep me up on the low down, all right, Josey? I known you for ten years now, just cause I'm going far away don't mean I'm letting you slip out of my life."

"Yeah, whatever," I say, but I'm grinning now despite the tight spot in my chest. God I'm going to miss him. I already feel that I'm going to feed on his letters like a ravenous dog. Without him? I ain't got no friends. "I gotta run, Hugh. Stay out of trouble. And keep your pokemon alive!"

I head down the hall, and he stays rooted, letting me go. He waves. "Sure thing, Josey! You stay out of trouble too, you hear?"

"I hear!" And with that, our goodbyes are kept short. Hugh steps out of my life, and I step even deeper into work.

The Virbank Gym is crawling with police when I get there. My stomach immediately drops.

I flash my I.D. and I'm allowed inside the gym, even with my shovel. But only into the lobby. I sit down with one other man wearing faded tweed slacks and a black button up, his sleeves rolled up for cleaning up the mess ahead. A throh sits on the ground next to him. He glances askew at me like he can't figure out whether to approach me like I'm a woman or a man.

"You're the Aspertia undertaker?"

I kick back and cross an ankle over my opposite knee. I take up more room than he does. "You're looking at her."

He looks me up and down again. I consider punching him. "They're warming up the big furnace back at our funeral home. Two blocks down," and he points, like I can see through the walls of this building. "Do you know what's going on here?"

I snort and slouch, annoyed that I have to wait and wait with an idiot like him. "Do it LOOK like I know what's going on?"

He mutters something snide about me, and I ignore him. The police mill about, doing police things. I don't see the gym leader. Someone in a black suit slips out of the main gym area and is on his phone even before he exists the gym.

This is . . . bad. Gym leader go rogue and slaughter some shit? Or the challenger? No, that can't be right. I was called before gyms open.

"All right you two." I look up when a squat officer approaches with a two clipboards. He hands them to us. "I need you two to read this and sign on the line before going inside. If you can't, we'll find someone else."

I give him the nastiest look of doubt that I can before I begin reading the very long disclaimer. A . . . My brows raise. A non-disclosure agreement? I read the papers. Don't speak of this, don't do that, dispose of all of the pokemon in the same furnace, hand over the ashes to the government . . . They're making it like nothing ever happened here.

Oh shit. This is the, sign here or you might mysteriously disappear agreement.

"What the hell happened here?"

The officer crosses his arms at me, and I remember what I'm holding the second I ask. "No questions."

I glance up at him. "Do I at least get overtime?"

No answer. I sigh. Whatever. I'm here now and clearly there's no way for me to weasel out of it. I sign a scribble for my name that vaguely looks like spinda markings and hand it back. The man's eyes comb slowly through the agreement. He sits hesitating for far longer than me. He probably has more sense. Or a better grasp of self-preservation.

But, he signs it too and the officer gestures. "Bring the truck around back." He points to me. "Load it all up. No questions. No comments. Quicker you get it done, quicker you get home. The sanitation crews will come after you, so don't worry about the blood. Just get all the bodies and get out."

My pulse picks up in my neck. I feel it hammering as I release Golem and tug on my work gloves. Both he and the throh follow me into main area.

I'm suddenly glad I didn't pack a lunch.

The stench of death and burned flesh hits my nose. Virbank City is a fire type gym. It's one of the reasons I refused to come out and work here despite a thirty cent pay raise. The hideous smell of burning flesh wasn't one I wanted in my nose all day.

But this?

No. This was far beyond any normal gym battle. This was a brawl. This was a slaughter.

There are more dead bodies than I've ever seen before. magby, koffing, pansear and slugma. It's like every single gym trainer and the leader was in on this battle. I see the gym leader's ace, a magmar with it's stomach slit open and organs sliding out. A shiver runs up my spine. It's not just gym pokemon in here. There are liepard, watchog, krokorok, and scrafty. The latter two pokemon don't belong on this part of the gym route. The League set a route that winds from Aspertia up to Opelucid City, gyms from one to eight. Something otherwise happened here.

Blood spatters up the walls. It oozes from the pokemon in pools. Several pokemon have been dismembered. The throh next to me shakes. Golem whines. I swallow, tell myself, It could be worse, and watch the truck back right in front of the rear door to the arena.

"Let's get to it you two." My voice is raspy. I jerk my shoulder and head into the room. "Could be worse." I tell myself that, but I think of Hugh next, fresh on his journey this morning. The Virbank gym was in limbo. Until they fixed this mess, his gym circuit could be put on hold. I'm relieved I signed the confidentiality agreement. I don't want to talk about this to anyone. I don't want to know what happened. I just want it gone.

I don't see any human bodies, but there are smeared pools of blood suspiciously lacking bodies.

We begin shoveling. Golem and the throh get the heavier pokemon, like the krokorok, liepards, scraftys, and the magmar. I shovel the lighter pokemon and begin with the koffing so the chances of our pokemon getting poisoned stayed to a minimum. The first one I pick up is shredded and deflated like a balloon, and it oozed some sort of black fluid. One. Two. Three. I shovel the baby magby pokemon. One is missing its hand. I don't find it. Four. Five. They hit the metal floor of the truck with low bangs. The guy that's supposed to be helping me drops his shovel. A pansear hits the floor, and its head rolls away. He throws up. I go over and pick up the head, put it back on his shovel, and take it to the truck. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. I scrape the slugma off the floor. Its eyes have sank to either side of its shapeless body. Ten. My shovel is covered in blood. The ever-present ache in my back is stabbing again. I force the shovel under a watchog that is mauled with its arms and legs twisted and ripped in different directions. Eleven. I count how many pokemon Golem and the throh have brought in. Eight.

Nineteen. The death toll in here is nineteen. Not counting what bodies they moved. More than nineteen. But I only have nineteen bodies.

The guy is sick. He's leaning against the wall, trembling with his face in his shirt. He's trying not to look at it. He's trying not to smell it. I look back at the officer who seems satisfied that we found all the little dismembered body parts like fingers and arms, and he tells us, "There's an officer waiting for you at the funeral home. Burn them all. Collect the ashes and we'll take it from there. Then you'll be free to go home."

I nod. I can't feel anything but the throbbing pain in my spine and the rush of blood in my ears, pulse of blood in my hands. I return Golem and haul the guy by the elbow to the truck. I put him in the passenger seat. His throh follows. I shut the back doors on the carnage, step into the driver's seat and drive us to the funeral home. We pull up to the rear of the building where the officer waits and help guide me when I back in. The guy has to go to the bathroom to throw up again. His throh looks an ugly shade of purple. When I release Golem, he looks drained, like all his energy has been used up. I pat his shoulder and refuse to crack like the other guy.

We shovel and haul every body into the big furnace. I shut the door and let them burn. My body is crying out for rest, so I sit and stretch for a while, sweating and stomach churning. I don't each lunch.

When it's been five hours and I'm sure there's nothing left but calcified bones, I put the fire proximity suit on again and take a long metal rod. I beat against all the bones until my arms are numb and I can't lift the rod. I can't let the throh and Golem near this kind of heat without protection. I close the door, sit, and rest. Golem comes close and massages my muscles. When the numbness has worn off and the pain kicks in, I shoo Golem away and open the doors again. I crack the rest of the bones into small pieces. My arms, shoulders, and back are numb with exhaustion. I close the doors and let the furnace cool. I don't eat dinner.

The man helps me collect the ash and bones. We don't speak. We grind the bones in silence while the bone blenders scream and whir. The throh and Golem tote the portions of bones to us, and they tote the finely ground remains away. I see them loading a police van with the boxes. I'm covered in bone dust and sweat and completely numb to it all now. I don't care. They can take their grisly deeds and hide it all away. I don't care. I don't want to deal with it anymore.

The sun set a long time ago. By the time we're finished, it's past ten at night. The police leave. I leave. I let the Virbank undertaker clean up his facility by himself. I return Golem and trudge to the bus stop. I catch z's on the way home. I don't visit my mother tonight.

I unlock the door to my apartment at half past one in the morning. I want to collapse in bed, but I shower first. I scrub my body until even my brown skin glows red like hot metal and cycle through my bed routine. It's past two in the morning. I have to be up in a little over five hours.

It's not until I lay down and am alone with my thoughts that it all crashes down. I lay and shake and sweat in my bed, fighting the urge to hurl whatever is left in me.

I don't want to know what happened. I'm glad they took it all away because I don't want to remember it.

I . . .

I've never seen anything like it.

I catch at most two hours of sleep, off and on all night. Golem wakes me up for the next day. I sit with my coffee, and Golem whines, batting at the fridge. He wants me to eat. He wants me to eat so badly he breaks our rule and reaches into the fridge and gets the eggs to make me breakfast. He cracks five eggs and gets shells in the egg with each break. He drops two. On my last egg, he chooses to pick out the shells as best he can and turns on the stove top. He makes me burned eggs. I pick at them. I drink my coffee.

I put my clothes back on and go back to work.