(Hey guys, thanks for reading up to this far! This chapter is a bit longer, because I wanted to tie up some loose ends before the big finish. Hope you enjoy!)
(Important: If you are reading on FFN, you are reading an edited version, with slightly different content but identical plot. You may go to AO3 for the unedited version.)
Sandra
"We're back!" I heard the door slam, signaling that Amis and my husband had returned, from after-school activities and work respectively.
"Hey Amis! How's everything?" I went to hug my son. "Hi dear," I said to my husband.
"It's nice to see you finally showing some affection to Amis," my husband replied, rather coldly. Refusing to look me in the eye, he hung up the blazer slung on his shoulder on the coat rack.
"What're you saying?"
"Come off it already, Sandy. You've been seeing him…whoever he is, I don't have a fucking clue. You're never been at home…until tonight."
"That…that's not true!" I usually snuck out around 10pm, returning at 2 or 3am.
"Well, something's going on, and if you a'int gonna tell me, you bet your damn life I'll find out myself," my husband said, pointing at me. "But…never mind now. Now I have you…"—he yanked me closer with his cold hands. "Why don't we have some fun tonight? Just the two of us?" he whispered so Amis couldn't hear. I tried not to look into his eyes as he stared at me…like a predator.
My husband was more of an animal than the sylveon ever was.
The animal loosened his grip on me. "Ah, c'mon Sandy, what's with that glazed look? It's him, isn't it? The mystery man. What is he, younger, more charming, richer?"
"He's not rich," I quickly replied, briefly glancing at the sylveon, who sat quietly watching our conversation. "But he has…other unique qualities."
My husband grabbed my wrist again and pulled my body towards him. "Oh, so you admit it! He does exist! And you have been seeing him!" He forced my head to face him, a film of sweat covering the ragged stubble on his face.
Meanwhile, the sylveon stood obediently, staring at my agony…his creamy white fur as soft and silky as ever.
"Yes, but…"—I tried to come up with a lie—"…but I swear, it won't happen again."
He glared deep into my eyes. "You promise?"
I nodded to his question.
My husband's stare had almost become unfamiliar to me after seeing the sylveon for so long—partly because I also hadn't looked my husband in the eye in the latter part of our marriage. My husband's eyes were a dull, soil-colored brown: an absolutely disgusting color. Its dark depths shocked me in contrast to the liquid blue pokémon eyes I had grown so used to.
I watched as my hand swept across his shoulder and down his arm. Unlike the sylveon, my husband's fur was ragged and coarse throughout. Although his body was warm from walking outside in the heat, his human touch made my heart…cold and icy. That was the flaw with humans…perhaps myself included.
I turned to look at the sylveon, still sitting there, obediently waiting for his turn. The sylveon I had never given a name to. I couldn't help it if I was flawed…I was a human, not a pokémon. I could never forgive myself for being the flawed version of a passionate lover. I was never good enough for him.
Our son's voice cut the moment short. "Mommy, who's this?" Amis walked up to me, dragging the sylveon along by his ribbons.
"MMMM…!" He screamed as he followed Amis. I made a terrible mistake. I shouldn't have let the sylveon out in front of unfamiliar people.
My husband slowly loosened his grip around me. "That…that's a pokémon," I said, nervously glancing at my husband. In retrospect…he didn't suspect a thing. "Mommy found him. Yeah. I found him."
"Why does he have ribbons?" Amis asked.
"I…I dunno, Amis." I grew more nervous as Amis squeezed a ribbon in his right hand very tightly. I didn't want the sylveon to become another cyndaquil…dead cyndaquil. I grabbed Amis' shoulders and gently moved him away from the pokémon.
"Now, Mommy's really busy, and you need to help Mommy, okay? But first, how 'bout you go with Daddy and take a nice bath, hmm?" I said. He nodded.
After both human males were safely out of sight, I picked up the sylveon and brought him outside the door—it was already night, and the moon was shining brightly in the evening sky. He seemed confused as I started to close the door.
"Mmmm…?" He asked curiously.
"Don't worry. It's okay. You can go if you want," I said regretfully. "You…you can't stay here." I began to close the door.
The sylveon tried to charge at the door, making it swing open. "EEEE!" It screamed, in its shrill, high-pitched anger that no one could ever really take that seriously.
"No, you can't come in here, no!"
"EEEE…!" Without warning he leapt into my arms. I didn't know he could jump that high. As my arms came in contact with his warm body, his energy flowed into me without effort—no doubt it was the celestial energy he had harnessed from the moonlight.
His flawless-white fur nuzzled deep into my own flawed human skin. Words could never describe such a love as ours. Nor could a name; a pointless little name like "Tommy" or "Felix". There is nothing like loving a pokémon.
And I hope with all my heart that you shall have to courage to join me and the heart of the Alolan spirit of human-pokémon companionship; as I sit here in jail…persecuted for my harmless beliefs.
After the sylveon had calmed down, I put him down gently at the doorstep. "You can stay outside here, and wait for me. When my husband and son are asleep, I'll meet you back here. You understand?"
He smiled and nodded. "Mmmm-mmm!"
I shut the door, condemning myself to my very own imprisonment.
When I peeked out of the window a minute after, he was still standing outside, waiting for me. If only he could have waited forever—but that would be too much of a cliché.
"Mommy, I have a question," Amis said when he finished washing up. "Can that pokémon's ribbons actually grab things like hands?"
"That pokémon?" I asked.
"Yeah, the one you had just now."
"Yeah, it can grab things with its ribbons. I've seen it done." The last time was when he picked up my clothes and started ripping them apart.
"That's cool. What else can that pokémon do?"
"Well…he can take the power of the moon," I reasoned to myself. "He uses it to blast this massive pink aura at any pokémon."
"I never saw pokémon like that in the jungle," he said.
"His kind live in the city, so they're pretty rare in Alola. The one I found wasn't from the jungle."
"Oh. I see. Wow. I didn't know there were powerful pokémon like that. The moon. Wow. That's awesome." His eyes turned to me. "Pokémon are so cool. Mommy, I wanna go back to the jungle again, maybe I'll find another cool friend," he said, a smile unlike any I had seen recently across his face.
"Of…of course you can go," I said. "You wanna go tomorrow morning?"
"Sure!"
My husband walked in at that precise moment. He saw Amis smiling with excitement. And I was smiling too.
"I'm sorry, Sandra," my husband conceded. "I'm sorry for everything. Let's…let's start again," he offered tearfully.
I smiled and nodded back to him—albeit trembling. Even his human smile was terrifying for me.
I must've smiled for too long. Because when I went back outside later that night to meet the sylveon, he was gone.
Christine
I did not have sex with Jan until we were married. We both had dated prior to meeting each other, and had significant sexual contact with those previous persons. I learned far more about my dear partner through long moonlit walks, quiet dinners, and little laughs than I ever did through sexual intercourse. It wasn't that we didn't enjoy it. Rather, it didn't take our relationship any further than it already was.
So it was no surprise to me that the session with the primarina only left me more confused about the state of the PokéPalace. He was the first to penetrate me—I did not compel him in any way. The primarina smiled during the entire session. He would sing songs for me, in his species' characteristic operatic voice. The tunes he sang were high-pitched, but dark and somber in tone, something which left my stomach uneasy while I felt an instinct of pleasure below.
"Ahh…ahh-ahh-ahhhh…" he would sing. I did not think he was singing for me, rather he was singing for himself. Such songs were his instincts, an impulse that could not be restrained. Unlike pokémon, however, I as a human felt uneasy with my instincts. What made love more than a subtle tingling feeling in one little part of your body?
I remember a time when Jan sang a lot—to herself, mostly. She was in great pain after a mountain biking accident near Mt. Silver, and she had to be airlifted by helicopter to the hospital. She suffered a powerful blow to the head, so strong that even the bike helmet did not save her.
For much of the time she was in the hospital, Jan could not recognize me or Edison, and she only knew a few details about herself. She was silent most of the time, and even as she regained her memory she talked to me in simple phrases.
The main thing Jan would always tell me about, when she did regain her speech, was the bad dream she kept having. It was more like a recollection of the accident as it happened: she was biking down the mountain at a high speed, when she overshot a curve in the trail and hit the face of the rocky cliff.
That day at Mt. Silver, Jan had gone ahead of me and Edison on the trail. After she fell, it was Edison's eevee, Solomon, that popped out of its pokeball and ran up to Jan, way before we even saw her. Solomon silently circled his master's mother, his eyes stricken with grief.
Jan remembered the eevee coming up to her. As her memory was damaged and she was barely conscious, she thought the feeling of itchy fur brushing against her body as a mere annoyance, its meek vocalizations a cackle of evil laughter.
But all this time, Solomon was worried for Jan. And Edison and I were even more worried. The thought of her negligence of her family's sympathy was what made it a nightmare for Jan.
Every time Jan would doze off unexpectedly on the hospital bed, she would suffer from the same bad dream. She would wake up, her body shuddering and flailing hysterically, her body covered in a cold sweat. I would hold her hand tightly, trying to give her a hint of warmth. After her body relaxed a little, she wouldn't even dare to blink, because she feared she would fall asleep. I tried to calm her down, but nothing seemed to calm her down more than when she just sang to herself.
That was what Jan did while she was in the hospital. She would sing. And sing. When her memory was fuzzier than usual and she took some time to remember who Christine and Edison were, she would sing to herself. When the doctor came to give her a painful injection, she would sing as they inserted the needle. She would sing so loud, sometimes the patients next to her would complain.
But she didn't care. Singing was as necessary to her sanity as food, water, and shelter. Without her song, I am convinced that Jan could never have made a full recovery.
My back pinned flat on the mattress, I stared into the primarina's eyes as my climax neared. The session lasted for 13 minutes, so I counted. For those 13 minutes, the primarina sang louder and louder in a gradual crescendo, the melodies more varied, the wailing more pronounced. He was straining his voice—over the last two minutes, I could hear the hints of a voice crack.
His movements became more and more haphazard near the end, his flippers flailing in all directions, onto the bedsheets, and sometimes within inches of my own flesh. Sometimes his flipper would barely brush past my arm, and it would sting like a beedrill—I could only imagine how much pain it would be full force.
I assumed it was all from the heat of the moment, but something didn't make sense to me. As his flippers moved haphazardly, his deep brown eyes remained fixed and motionless as the rest of his body was shuddering and flailing: a dispassionate, frigid gaze countered by impassioned, hot movements.
When we finished, he stopped singing and his body stopped flailing. But his cold brown eyes still never ceased to stare at me. For the entire 13 minutes, he did not blink. I looked at him curiously, but this long staring session did not answer my questions.
I sat up in the bed and took a deep breath. Thinking about Jan's bike accident, I wonder if the primarina was feeling the same thing too. Except his bad dream wasn't a dream; it was his entire life.
The end of the session left my soul raw. Bleary-eyed and confused, I was compelled to quickly dress and leave, without looking back. But somehow I kept looking back at the primarina. There was something about the pokémon where that I did not fully understand, and would not ever fully understand by being no more than a customer.
I had decided what to do. I did not inform International Police HQ of my decision, as Looker advised. After I was dressed, I walked up to the manager (Mr. Beverly), who was at his desk working on what appeared to be a spreadsheet. It piqued my interest most strongly, but I dared not stare at his screen for too long.
"Are you finished?" he asked, not looking up from his screen. "You've already paid, you can go."
I stayed, standing beside his desk. "That primarina…" I said. "The male one. I have some questions about him."
He ignored me.
"Why are his eyes brown?" I asked. "I've never seen one with brown eyes before."
Still he ignored me.
I continued asking after questions: how much did he weigh, how long have you had him, how old is he, where is he from, and so on.
After a few minutes of this, Mr. Beverly slammed his hands on the keyboard, and finally looked up at me. "All right. What d'ya want, lady?"
"I want a job," I said in a firmer voice.
"I…I can't," he said, trying to keep his anger under control. I was prepared to fight back. "Now would you please leave!?"
"Listen to me," I said, leaning towards him. "I didn't think I would find a place like this. You don't know what hell I've been through to find you." I pulled up a chair.
"Let me tell you the truth," I lied. "I'm from Johto, and up there they don't like their trainers fooling around with their pokémon. Two months ago, I got caught having sex with my pokémon. I jumped bail and left the region. I didn't know where to go so they wouldn't find me.
"That's when I heard about how your attitude towards pokémon is a lot more liberal here in Alola. Please, I've been roaming around the city, sleeping in the streets. Anything, any job's better than nothing."
Mr. Beverly sighed. I knew a forceful voice would work on him. He wasn't accustomed to a woman calling the shots. He snorted. "Fine. You got a job. I can give you P700 an hour, but that's all I can afford."
"I'll take P500," I suggested to him. "I really need this job."
He didn't argue, just chuckled at me like I was some fool. "Done. Come here tomorrow afternoon, 5pm. I'll fill you in on your tasks then. Your name?"
"Christine."
"Last name?"
"I prefer not to say. Johto might've sent the International Police to track me down."
"Fine. And…erm…Christine?"
"Yeah?" I turned back as I was walking out the door.
"Don't expect it to be a cakewalk," he said with a smug grin.
Sylveon
Can you recall any other humans that you may have seen at the brothel?
Erm…I'm not sure.
Anyone other than your clients, Master, and the two men?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there were some other people. But I didn't really remember them. I hate those humans. They are the ones that really hurt me.
By "those humans", what do you mean?
I don't know their faces, I haven't heard their voices either. They're the same people that looked at me when I was born.
You mean, when you were in the dark room and the light came on?
Yeah, exactly, when I was born. You know what I'm talking about. The time when the people touched me and took pictures of me. Don't you get it!?
Alright, alright, don't get mad.
I'm tired, I'm really tired. And I'm getting sick of candy. Can we take a break?
Just a little more, then we can rest. Now, try to tell me more about these people.
The people who messed with me when I was born, they're the same people I'm talking about now. Every morning, these people go up to my room and give me food. Bad food.
What kind of food?
I don't know. [pause] Something in a bowl…and something hard. It's disgusting. That's why I hate those people. Sometimes they also look at me and touch me, just like they did when I was born. Then they use this thing [points to interviewer's pencil] and make marks on this thing [points to interviewer's question sheet].
Oh, so they write stuff down.
Is that what it's called? "Write stuff down"? Oh, okay. Yeah. So sometimes they look at me and write stuff down me. They don't smile at me. They don't give me candy. And if I try to fight back, they hurt me with a really high sound. I told you before, I have sensitive ears so it hurts a lot.
I would imagine you would have remembered something like that.
No. Those are bad memories. Some of the bad memories I can't help but remember, but the really bad stuff I try to forget. Sometimes I wake up thinking that it didn't even happen. [weak giggle] You know, there was this other pokémon that was in the building. He was a male, but always got mistaken for a female, just like me.
Are you talking about the male primarina that we took in?
Yes, that's it. The problem with him is that he can't forget his bad memories. He tried to, but he can't. So he goes all crazy because the memories keep coming back and haunting him. That's why he sings, to calm himself down.
But he lost his voice a few days before your people came to our building to take us away. So he went crazy. He couldn't sing, so he just screamed and hit things a lot. Hit the bed. Hit the wall. Hit himself. I tried calming him down with my disarming voice, but that just made him feel worse because he couldn't sing anymore. And my baby doll eyes and draining kiss are only temporary. We weren't together very often, we had a lot of clients and Master always tries to keep us all apart.
But anyway, that's why sometimes it's really nice to forget things. To forget the past. To forget what words mean. You know, I already forgot those words you just taught me, what were they?
"Write stuff down"?
Yeah, what does that mean? Is it some type of candy or something? I don't know. I'm tired. I wanna sleep. Good night.
Christine
"If they're asleep when you go in, you wake their little pokémon asses up," Mr. Beverly said, briefing me on the particulars of my job the next morning. "It's bad for business."
We were inside a windowless basement room, only accessible to the staff of the PokéPalace. Judging from the bare concrete and examination table, this was no doubt the place the sylveon described "being born in".
Mr. Beverly reached for something on the counter. "You feed them this, once a day. 1 part flour to 2 parts water. Exact amounts depend on the weight of the pokémon. And one of the tablets per meal, also. Ya hear me?"
"Yeah, of course I can," I said, quite obstinately now that I look back.
"Okay. This is Monica," he said, introducing me to the plainly-dressed woman standing in the room. "If you have any questions, ask her." And with that, Mr. Beverly left the room.
"Take no notice of him, he's just cranky," Monica said. "I…I didn't quite catch your name."
"Christine." We shook hands. She looked much like a native Alolan; lightly tanned skin, dark wavy hair, and a bright, wide smile.
"Oh, erm…I see, Christine, that's a nice name." Monica interchanged between looking at me sheepishly and looking at the floor. "Erm…you, you from around here?"
"Nah, I came from Johto. Got caught having sex with my pokémon. An eevee. I…I called him Solomon. Oh, he was so sweet. Took care of me when I was sick. Held my hand when I had nightmares," I said, picking some stuff from Jan's biking accident. "So that's why I came here to Alola. But from what I hear, the police is still tracking me down, y'know."
Yes, very much so, I thought. In fact, they were listening to everything that was going on, thanks to the hidden microphone which I now concealed behind a belt loop in my jeans.
I had done away with the glasses camera; it was getting too heavy to wear, and Looker said it wasn't necessary. Actually, it was I who had insisted on wearing it, against Looker's advice. "No amount of equipment can shield you in undercover work," he advised. "In fact, it'll increase the risk of you getting your cover blown. If I were you, I wouldn't wear any wire."
"Oh, so that's why you're here," Monica said to me. "You're…you're very pretty, erm…Christine. Made me wonder why you even ended up working in a place like this.
"Me…I didn't get in trouble with the law, per se. But my partner threw me out. She doesn't understand pokémon like we do. She's from the mainland, Sinnoh, y'know."
"'She'?"
Monica stopped what she was doing. "Yeah, that's right, I was married to a she. You got a problem with that?"
"No, no, not at all," I quickly brushed it off. We were working on preparing food for the pokémon. I weighed out portions of wheat flour, amounts which varied depending on the weight of the pokémon. For example, the sylveon was fed about 140 grams of flour each day, mixed with about 500mL of water.
In response to my findings, our experts found that this calorie amount was adequate for the pokémon. Combined with the multivitamin, the pokémon would have received adequate nourishment to survive for an extended period of time. However, flour and water is not palatable for humans and pokémon alike, and from what I saw while undercover, many pokémon did not finish their food. Which makes the so-called experts' argument moot.
"What's that?" I asked Monica at some point.
Monica paused for a moment. "Oh…sometimes I sneak in some cut berries inside the flour mush for them. You can't see it if you submerge it in there. Don't tell Mr. Beverly about this, okay?"
"Of course not," I said as I began chopping up some pecha berries myself. Monica smiled back at me—a little longer than she should have, now I think about it.
"C'mon, follow me," Monica said eagerly as we picked up our flour bowls and multivitamin tablets and loaded them onto trays. "I'll show you how to send food."
In my mind, I doubted the difficulty of my job, in spite of Mr. Beverly's cautionary words. We were not expected to feed them, just drop the food off. What could be so difficult about it?
"Alright, let's start here," Monica said at the top floor of the building. "Behind this door is our male sylveon. Mind you, it's a bit jumpy today."
"Why's that?"
"It ran away from here a few nights ago. Went straight out of an open window. We have no idea how it could've happened. But eventually, Mr. Beverly found it and returned it here last night."
"Found it?" I probed, perhaps more than I should have. But I took advantage over Monica's slight crush on me to get more information.
"Well, I'm not too sure on the details…"—she said, with intermittent eye contact—"…but from what I heard, it was standing somewhere near the beach at Hau'oli. The pokémon protested Mr. Beverly taking it away, it shouted at him and tried to attack him. Idiot. So Mr. Beverly used the high-pitched whistle and a pokeball and it was brought back.
"Anyway, time to give the sylveon his food. Just watch me, for when they get jumpy like this: open the door, drop the bowl, close the door, and go."
The time from when Monica opened the door, dropped the bowl and the multivitamin, and shut the door was about 3 seconds. I admired her deft skill and her calmness doing this. For the three seconds the door was open, I saw the sylveon poking his head out, his ribbons in an offensive position. And for three seconds, he screamed at the top of his lungs: "AAARRGHH! AAAARRRGGGHHH!", as if prepared to maul us to death. His eyes were the typical bright blue that is seen in the literature, but I could swear in the three seconds that I saw him, there was a tinge of dark brown in that beautiful blue.
"Christine?"
"Christine? Hello…?"
I was deep in thought. "Oh, I'm sorry…Monica. Let's go."
"Let's head to the next door, downstairs. Here, try this serperior over here."
I opened the door cautiously, before calming down a little. "It's…it's asleep, see. All curled up."
"Y'know what Mr. Beverly said, wake them up!" Monica pleaded, dropping down the bowl of gruel and standing behind the safety of the doorstep. "Here, catch…"—she threw something to me—"…blow this in its ear. The whistle makes a very high pitch sound that only the pokémon can hear, and it'll wake up."
"No, no, hold on. I wanna take a look." I noticed reddish stripes on the middle belly of the serperior, arranged in an orderly chevron pattern. I figured it was just like the primarina's brown eyes; a mere idiosyncracy of appearance.
But looking closely, I noticed they were scars: places where cuts had healed. It was like someone pressed something similar to a cookie cutter on the pokémon to injure him…but an orderly pattern was used so that it looked more like a body decoration than just abuse.
"Where did these cuts come from?" I asked Monica, gently touching them with my fingers.
"I dunno. That pokémon is popular, but its attacks are really powerful. If it's mad, it'll lash out on you pretty bad. Mr. Beverly sometimes has to put it in its place."
"So he uses like a…cookie cutter thing to make these cuts…!?"
I felt a slight movement.
Monica panicked. "Oh shit, it's gonna wake up! It hates to see us! Get out! Now!"
"SSSS…!" I heard, the high-pitched hiss making by body cringe in fear. His furious eyes were set on me. I ran.
By the time I ran to the door, which took about 2 seconds, it was too late. I had several cuts from vine whip on my arms for the rest of the day.
"That's what happens when you get too friendly with them," Monica said. "You're gonna get yourself in trouble, now. Now try this primarina on the ground floor. And don't do anything stupid this time." I would say she had gotten over her little crush on me. Any hint of a suggestive smile had been wiped clean from her face. But then again, in a job like this I guess it took a lot of effort to get her to crack a smile. And that I had myself (and my looks?) to congratulate for.
The primarina's voice was very hoarse today. Unlike the night I was with him as a customer, he could barely sing out a grieving tune to assuage his fears. I managed to drop the food before the hysterical movements of his flippers threatened to hit me with full force.
I was quite shaken by experience; not so much by the injuries, but by the pokémon's demeanor. "The serperior, the primarina, the sylveon. Why're they so mad at us? Do they get this mad at clients?"
"No, they don't lash out at clients because they don't bring them disgusting food. They hate us," Monica admitted. "We bring them disgusting food, so they associate us with punishment. It's the same thing with Mr. Beverly. You think you have it rough, the pokémon hate Mr. Beverly even more."
"It just confuses me," I admitted to Monica. "Why don't we feed the pokémon a more comprehensive diet? Fresh fruit and vegetables can't be that expensive."
Monica sighed. "I know I have a soft spot for them, sneaking some cut berries in their food. But the real reason we're not supposed to feed them well is for their own good. You can't get them too comfortable. They'll rave about the free food—pokémon always love it when they can get their paws on a good meal.
"Then they'll find a way to communicate this with their pokémon friends—they always do, no matter how hard you try to isolate them—and tell them how nice it is here inside the brothel. Can you imagine that? It would be chaos. Wild pokémon, trainer-owned pokémon, would all come rushing through here. Pokémon of substandard beauty."
Pokémon of "substandard beauty". What could ever be more monstrous of a proposition?
(To be continued. As always, thanks for reading, and your comments and other feedback are always appreciated.)