Aftershock
Chapter 9: 3S1
I discovered this particular gem of an anomaly glittering horribly off the pages of a contemporary wrong encyclopedia. It was a most obvious and simple jerk of the rules, such that I was most surprised no other Righter had already tackled it; but – as I thought – all the better to myself. (In fact, the anomaly was much too difficult for a first-timer, and much too easy for an experienced hunter, and so it was largely overlooked.).
Within all living organisms, the capacity for extremes of emotion was somewhat of an inch greater than the least amount of life required to term the being alive. While this asymmetry meant nothing alone, it could be used to a wrong's advantage under certain circumstances: a certain universal construct, a near law of the world, ensured that a spike of emotion (or life, to be more general) was inevitably countered by an equal depression of such feeling. Thus, if the creature attained the maximum possible height of life at any point, a countering lack of feeling would ensue, dipping the creature well below the 'official' maximum for life. While most living functions (including consciousness) would still continue for a time, nearby laws of the universe would be misinformed as to the creature's death, and a variety of abominations would ensue, the main being an accelerated decomposition of the body while the soul was still trapped inside (and the flesh was still alive), and therefore an agonizingly painful death.
The lucky subject of the anomaly's affection was a young runt of a Rattata I procured from the wild, one seeming most suitable to my experiment. I sat there, then, in an old cavern of an abandoned building, secluded in my corner of the world with Ytarrik at my side and the protesting rodent in a cage before me. All telepathic connection had been severed with the unfortunate individual, but I could still sense a vague hint of pity radiating from my Kadabra. Of course; no one, not my Pokèmon, could ever hope to outdo my grimness and apathy.
Lepena had grown old and fat along with Ytarrik, waiting for me to finish my studies, and had finally determined to leave my side for increasing periods of time, going into unmentionable tangents of training to keep up his old skill. As for Ytarrik, he had never left my side through all the boredom and trial, though his patience would soon run dry.
I recall that by this period I had also captured a Noctowl. However, exposed to the horror that (even then) was my mind, she lost all sanity and became somewhat of a robot to my whims. She was currently in her storage device, far away. Ruki's Pokèmon had long parted ways, shortly after her death.
Back to the present (or the past, from my point of view). I began with a one-way telepathic connection, drawing the Rattata's mind closer to mine and Ytarrik's without allowing its influence to affect us; and the Kadabra joined his mind with mine, bolstering the link infinitely to the required magnitude.
I picked gingerly up a hypodermic needle, roiling with the black isolation of Mightyena blood, phantomlike in its wispy fluid, and injected it into my bared arm. For a moment, pain coursed through my veins as they stiffened, black disease spreading through them – but then they reached the heart, and a dizzying sense of power spread to my every extremity. This was true assimilation heightening, and I had never felt anything to its like before.
With a telepathic nod of the head, we simultaneously collected our emotions, and the quick-to-kindle fire of anger raged down the link into the helpless Rattata. For a second it paused, fighting off the overpowering waves, but soon it was thrashing wildly with unnatural hatred, banging with all its strength hard into the unyielding bars of its cage until lines of bruised, broken skin collected on its fur. Our thoughts stretched, tensing before the unaccustomed feeling, but it was only a while longer, no more than a minute more, before it would be physically impossible for the Pokèmon to feel any greater hatred…
At last, with a faint perceived click, its body was entirely saturated. A moment of tense wait – and a wave of cold unfeeling spread abruptly across the Rattata, seeming as though the cage was drowned in liquid nitrogen, as though a frozen block of steel looked numbly up at its anticipative perpetrators –
Several decomposition processes jarred into motion, oblivious to the laboured heart still pounding within the rodent's living body.
There was protest, of course, in the beginning. The young muscles exploded for release, the creature shoving itself at the walls of its prison as though freedom would take it from the shadow of its doom. The throat burst out in symphonies of discordant sound, but the lungs were already beginning autolysis: unnecessary cells self-destructing, filling the creature with a jerk of nauseating helplessness. Ah, it was time for me to dive into the rip this anomaly inevitably created, into the very laws which (mis)governed it.
The warehouse was a container, it was but a reservoir for liquid, substance, concept,
[Emotion doesn't really rule you, does it.
but no container is infinite, the bottom of this particular ends all too Soon,
the adrenaline-flooded muscles were shutting down, the legs giving out under the lump of agony
couldn't it end a second sooner
[Impatient as always. Ah, but you have a long life of twisted wandering before you, this is no time for
DEATH
so much greater than life, its web tighter than the wings of the struggling fly, awaiting slowly the spider's scythe in the corner of the warehouse
So quickly, the work of a thousand moments, the entrails of the creature dissolving into digested mulch, its form slipping into formlessness as its eyes still gazed on helplessly in all its glutinous agony
struggle, right the imbalance, shorten the capacities of the living as with the dead, and I was nearly done
gases building beneath its paper skin, bloating it beyond all questions of capacity, stirring the internal mush with pressure, and how long would the decomposing skin hold its expanding contents
[Done? Have you been listening to me?
but the effort was so much, my energy much too little, and wasn't it so much easier, so much soothing, to simply close my –
eyes [light up with a single shard of silver terror. Of course, now you see the fullness of your position
I didn't want to die! I didn't care why, I didn't care how thoughtless, how rebellious I was being, but I DID NOT WANT TO DIE
death still lingered outside the cage of the Rattata, laughing at its agony, as a single rip appeared on its bruised skin, and the insides gushed out, creamy-red with blood and flesh
The door of the warehouse, at the end of the dark tunnel, opened, and out streamed a glimpse of the sweet light of the outside sun [death, I felt my soul dissolving, unforming, assimilating into this azure light
dissolved in my blood, the dark blood recoiled in disgust
SHATTERED, HALF-DECOMPOSED, MY SOUL JERKED BACK INTO THE REALM OF THE LIVING
LIFE
[Don't live in your pathetic illusions. This is no life, and no death.
De c a y th
I stood there, in the darkness of the abandoned warehouse, heart pounding with not terror, not revulsion, not hatred, but adrenaline.
The Rattata was finally dead, nothing more than a pile of ash, though streaks of its insides still stained portions of the floor and walls (and me). I wiped my still-bare arm with my black velvet jacket, to see that the flesh had wasted away marginally, and replaced with a faint black, vaporous substance which clung to the skin with remarkable ferocity. It seemed to bolster its strength, simultaneously warding off the last remnants of light which still attempted to fall on the flesh beneath. I was most weakly revolted to find this was me, this dark illness but another part of my form, but I would do nothing about it.
The door had been opened to my warehouse by a curious passerby, it seemed. However, he had instantly pulled it shut, and forced himself to forget this incident forever.
I looked to my left to see the still-amber eyes of Ytarrik, gazing at me with repugnance in their streaks. With but another flash, he was gone, leaving the shattered pieces of my soul to myself in this dark tale of my life. They were held together by only the weakest of force, but it would not let me forsake them for a long time yet.
In its dark corner, the fly had ripped out of its chains of spider-silk after all. However, its wings and limbs were fractured irreparably, and it lay there in its death-throes, writhing on the floor.
Two hundred years, it seemed, passed by before its final breath.