Cigarettes in Kanto

Dream Eater of the Soul

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

The sun sets over Mt. Chimney as the first snowflakes of the season fall on my poncho. I brush them off with disgust. What is winter but the celebration of death? The Hoenn ground suffocates, burning hot in its last moments before dying a cold meaningless death, like an Electrode using Explosion against a Gastly. There is only one thing that is Gastly here, and it is God.  

I call forth Janice, my Vanilluxe, so that she can play in the weather. Her two heads titter like school girls, catching snowflakes on their enormous tongues. I don’t know why I began dating Janice. I find her physical appearance repulsive and her wit is befitting of two ice cream cones. Once one of her heads asked me, “Do you know which Pokémon is best for taking care of a bug problem?” Before I could answer, the other shouted “A Flygon!” And they laughed and laughed. 

“Janice, darling, please. It’s cold. We must press on.”

“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport, Remy,” says her left head.

“Yeah, come play with us!” says the right, its voice gravely after years of cigarettes. 

Janice throws a snowball at me, which was odd because she did not have arms. The snowball hits me in the mouth and I taste the sooty remnants of Mt. Chimney. The snowstorm picks up. 

“Janice, it’s getting worse out here. Please come back.”

“Play with us, Remy!”

Janice beckons me towards her. She floats through the snow, her heads cackling and cackling, crescendoing into a hysterical guffaw that echoes off the sides of Mt. Chimney. It grows shrill and unpleasant. The snow falls even harder, and I shiver in my poncho while Janice’s heads cry “Play with us, Remy! Come play!” I beg her to come back but to no avail. Soon she is out of sight, nothing but her terrible laughter echoing in my ears as the world becomes a pure sheet of white. I call until my voice gives away. I fall to a knee and rest. The storm will soon pass. I feel hot.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

As if the ceaseless gushing of the tacky waterfalls was not enough to make me take one fatal step forward onto Wallace’s ice-floor contraption and fall, gloriously, to my death, I now have to endure this. 

“Ay, where do ya think you’re goin’ fuck-face?” sneers Wallace through his six remaining teeth.

“It’s over, Wallace. You lost. Please fix the floor.”

“I ain’t fixin’ shit, numb nuts. It’s my Gym and I does what I wants with the joint, you get me? Now turn your cute little ass around and sit down.”

Without a sound alternative, I sit and look at Wallace’s bloodshot eyes. I remember how Wallace looked before the drinking and the Carbos binges. He was quite handsome once, his silver hair full and majestic, his eyes a rich cobalt blue. He had appeared in several commercials for Technical Machines. Nobody over 23 in Hoenn didn’t know his jingle, “What’s the best TM for land and sea? Why, it’s Water Pulse! TM03!” 

I sigh and open my hand, a universal gesture for, “Well?”

“Now, there’s a good boy,” says Wallace, preparing for one of his patented monologues. “You know, get a little famous, ye starts to learn a thing or two about assholes, you get me?”

I’ll say, I think, but I figure it best not to interrupt Wallace. 

“Now, me, I’m a classy asshole, you get me? I gots the finest furnishings in all Hoenn. See these waterfalls? Two grand a pop. This floor here? 20 goddamn Gs. I make my Gym all nice-like, y’know, for the broads.” He winks at me, wanting me to think he still can get it up, but I don’t acknowledge him. A little disappointed, he continues. 

“Now yous, you’re the worst kinda asshole. You got all this anger, right? All this rage at Arceus and whatnot, and whaddya do with it all? You just walk around and mope, gettin yer jewels kicked in by kids, hittin’ on dumb Pokémon bitches who won’t give you the time uh day, much less dome, am i right, fella? You wanna know what I think, Remy?”

“Not really,” I say, fruitlessly.

“I think you’d be better off dead in a fuckin’ ditch in the outskirts of Slateport. You should be suckin’ worms and feedin’ Caterpie till some highway patrolman finds yer carcass and grinds it to dust. That’d be better use for you than this shit existence you drag us all through.”

Wallace leans in and grins at me, having made his point. I punch him square in the mouth. Five teeth remaining. 

Bleeding, Wallace starts laughing. I stomp a hole in his ice floor and drag his cackling, stinking body to the hole and toss him in, hearing him laugh all the way down. I go to his chair and push the button under the armrest, making his ice floor solid again, and whistle the TM03 jingle as I skate out of Wallace’s gym before the police arrive. 

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

My eyes, crusted over, struggle to open and angel crumbs fall on my Pokeballs. What is this? Route 24? I don’t remember sleeping here. I don’t feel hungover either.

“Oh, you’re awake,” says a young boy in front of me, his eyes unmoving from the ground in front of him. To our left stands a girl, who like the boy stands still as a Metapod Hardened with the Butterfree unborn within.

“Are you dead?” he asks me.

“I don’t think so. Are you?”

“No. But she is.” Still, he stares at the ground, motionless. 

“Who is she?” 

“My sister. She’s buried here,” he says, gesturing towards the sacred patch of earth in front of him. 

I look towards his sister. I can only see the back of her head, but she looks young. Maybe nine? Some accident or illness no doubt, but considering the supernatural circumstances of the situation, I don’t ask. I sit and watch them both as the wind blows through the flowers, causing them to dance in small counterclockwise circles. 

After a short while, the boy goes on, “The dead come to visit us, you know. My grandmother told me so. But they’re kinda like Abra. You can’t talk to them. You can’t keep them with you. Otherwise they’ll get scared and disappear.” 

The boy’s sister slowly, gracefully turns her body, and with short, slow strides walks over to her brother. Still, the boy does not avert his eyes from the dirt, but I see him start to shake as the girl holds out her arms to embrace him.

“Please, no...” he whispers. At his words, the girl begins to evaporate from her feet up. She looks down and I can see her face contort in horror as she feels her body disappear. She wants to say something, but her mouth is gone before she can get out the words, and soon the boy and I are alone. 

Softly, he cries. After a minute, he turns to me, his eyes puffy but his expression stern. 

“It has to be fun, right? Being dead? Otherwise what do we have to look forward to?”

He begins walking towards me. I reach out my arms but he ignores the offer and walks past me towards Cerulean City, leaving me alone with a cold silence, like a nursery for an absent child, carefully preserved. 

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

It was about 2:45 AM Johto time when I stumbled upon two Clefairy doing poppers and giggling in a nearby meadow. I couldn’t tell their gender. They were androgynous perfections molded in Arceus’ image. I stood there watching them take bump after bump and it wasn’t long before I was hard.

Ambling up to them, I let out a hoarse “Howdy, folks.” They turned to each other, giggled, and skipped away, ethereally sexy as their pink tufts of hair bounced under the Johto moon.

“No, wait!” I cried, but it was too late. My hopes for a Clefairy threesome were dashed. Not that I deserved it. “Howdy, folks”? Who was I, Hapu? No, not even her. At least she could nail an orgy whenever she wanted, the sly dog.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

My eyebrows raised. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. She’s either really stupid, or... no, that must be it.

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, Cindy,” I told her. I practically begged. Please don’t.

“You’re right, you big idiot,” she said playfully, singing my mustache playfully with her mane, which would have filled my nostrils with the smell of burnt hair had I still had the ability to smell. 

“I don’t. But neither do you, you know.” 

“Cindy, I–”

“Shut up, asshole,” she said, and she kissed me. She kissed me with abandon, like she’d just jumped off a cliff into an ocean. But how deep was the water? Could she clear the rocks? What the fuck did I care anyway?

Oh shit, how long had we been kissing? The wind sweeping through Littleroot was cool but Cindy’s natural heat kept me warm. I wanted to pull away, but I was so warm, and... what the fuck?

Eventually she pulled away from me and stared at me with powerful, beautiful, naive eyes. I wanted her to turn away so badly but I couldn’t say anything and just stared back like an idiot.

“You’re smiling,” she said. I touched my mouth. I was. I began to laugh quietly, then louder, and soon it was uncontrollable, like I’d just snorted a Paralyze Heal and was all giggles. I grabbed her by the shoulders ready to apologize, but she simply looked on with a smile on her face. I pulled her to me and felt her ignite my body in a beautiful inferno, the two of us laughing as we began to melt away into the Littleroot earth.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

“Do you think this is a good idea?”

Wally hissed at me.

“Like you know shit about good ideas, Remy.” 

Fair. Wally, aka “Zapdos,” flew high above the Lake of Rage, appearing like a dazzling god to the peons below. They didn’t know he’d just done four bumps of Carbos and puked his guts out before coming out of the john, pupils jet black, raving about how they were all weak, didn’t know what it was like to taste greatness, would never brush shoulders with Lugia, etc. It’s a megalomania I’ve grown accustomed to hanging with legendaries over the years. They’re all spoiled dicks, each with a unique approach towards their inferiority complexes, but they really do have the best drug connections in the 7 regions.

Anyway, up Wally went, to the gasps of common folk. He showboated, as Wally is wont to do, with sparks and caws. He struck the lake with a Thunderbolt, creating a brilliant flash of light that made him look genuinely awe-inspiring. A little boy began to cry. I looked over and saw a trickle of piss run down his leg. I was genuinely impressed.

Naturally, Wally took the moment and milked it. He screamed various nothings about his own greatness. “I am Zapdos! I am the true god of Pokémon. All other legendaries you praise are false. Bow to my incredible power,” yadda yadda. It was working over the crowd but I found the whole thing far too braggadocios and began to yawn when I noticed Wally’s flight begin to grow more erratic and his speech slur into desperate ramblings. I knew he couldn’t handle that much Carbos.

“And I... I will know no other challengers to me, the gr-great W-wally, Kantos king, Drill Peck machine, bring me your wives so I c-can fuck their brains out, and-and...” 

And down he went, a lightning-covered meteor plummeting into the Lake of Rage. The folks around the lake exchanged nervous glances, waiting for some sort of grand finale to Wally’s performance, but none was to come. Eventually they left, unsure if they had witnessed a miracle or a tragedy. 

I hung around the lake for a few hours, sipping a beer. Early the next morning, Wally washed upon the shore. I threw my empty beer can at him, and the impact woke him up. He stirred, rolled over, puked, and stared at me with blurry eyes, reality dawning on him again.

“Oh, hey Remy,” he slurred. “Man, I was really something last night wasn’t I?”

“You sure were, Wally,” I said as Wally turned his head to puke again, getting it on his gorgeous wings, which sparked at the impact. I cracked open another beer.

“You sure fuckin’ were.”

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

And here I was, alone again, at the bottom of a cave in the Seafoam Islands, shivering in the dark. I could hear Joanna the Articuno singing somewhere in the distance, a song of icy sorrow, and I collapsed, weeping as the nearby waterfall sprayed mist on my face. 

How long had it been since I cried? Must have been several decades. Here I thought my heart had rotted away, yet the bastard still had life, still had the capacity to break me down to a sniveling shit. 

Scarlet died today. My beautiful Pikachu Scarlet whom I loved for many years. My partner in the search for death, gone forever. She had left me, oh, 25 some-odd years ago. She had known I was empty. With a brutally, terrifically cruel silence she had turned and left me and my young mouth agape. I’ve wandered this hard earth since, buying whores and cheap handjobs from Sinnoh Wigglytuff, convinced I could not love again, nor did I want to.

At 8:30 this morning I had received a phone call from Carmine, a trainer who Scarlet and I had mugged for Zinc and Carbos back in ‘87. Though we beat him to an inch of his life, he admired us, and asked that we take him under his wing. I of course resisted, but Scarlet, with her soft heart, insisted he follow us, which he did for several years before the Unova police nicked him for trading Eevee on the black market. We stayed in touch after his sentence.

“I don’t know how to say this, Remy,” he said, his voice audibly breaking. The rest of the conversation was a blur of details. It was old age that did her in, the lucky girl. She went peacefully in the Pokémon Center at Vermilion City. No one was there. Her burial will be Friday in Lavender Town, can you come? No, I can’t Carmine. It would mean a lot to her. No, I just...

And I hung up the phone. I began walking. I don’t know how I ended up here. I must have caught a ride on a Seaking or something. After sobbing for what seemed like hours, I looked up and it was as though I had awoken from a dream. The blue of the cave had turned into a glittering aquamarine. Pokémon had begun to surround me with soft eyes. I saw Tentacool bobbing in the basin. Seel had crawled onto the rocks and sat wide-eyed, patient. A nearby Psyduck walked into a wall. 

“I’m sorry,” I said on instinct, though I knew none of them cared. But then I said it again. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m... so sorry,” and I said it again and again. I couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I begged them for forgiveness. I begged the Tentacool, the Seel, Joanna, Scarlet, Arceus, anyone who could hear me to absolve me. There was so much time I needed to be forgiven for. So many years. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry...”

Eventually that moment ended too, as moments do. I looked around, embarrassed, and crawled out of the cave. Before I chartered a ride I walked to the water and sat on the Seafoam beach, listening to the waves lap the shore. I wonder if anyone heard me?

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

July 17th. My birthday.

I wandered to the bridge on Route 119 as I’ve done every birthday for the past 237 years, and there I sat quietly as clouds passed overhead.

I remember as a child I celebrated this day, for I knew it to mean cake and presents. I knew it to mean family and games and laughter. Then mother died and father slipped away, and then I was alone, perpetually alone for the unyielding march of time towards Pokemon’s bright future. There would always be another tomorrow but one day all men and Pokemon must die.

I looked towards the Hoenn river, begging it to rise and carry me with it towards my own bright future, where the laughter and games would resume anew. But I knew it wouldn’t come. Nothing ever has. 

I called forth my team, far too overpowered to be here, or anywhere. No one in Hoenn raised their Pokemon past level 63, yet mine were all at 100, and had been for centuries. 

On the bridge sat Bartok, a Blaziken I had traded from a sprightly young boy in exchange for cigarettes; Lucille (Lapras, similar circumstances); Genevieve (Dragonite); Horace (Golem); Armand (Hypno); and Scotch (Manectric). Each of my companions were bored, so bored, to the point that their faces, once bright and fiery, had grown ragged and cynical, like my own. I thanked them all for their service.

“My friends, on my 237th birthday, I release you. You must go now. Please go free, be alone, mate, make eggs, and have families. I am nothing.”

Genevieve and Horace hugged me graciously, their hard skin boring into my exposed ribs. Lucille and Scotch wept, while Armand sat pensively. Bartok, expressionless, walked up to me slowly. 

“Blaziken,” he said. “Remy, you bastard. You horrible fucking bastard. 237 years we’ve been together. 237! And you think I can have a normal life now?”

“You must, Bartok. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever known. Your valor through the years unmatched. Please. Please leave.” Bartok chuckled.

“Shall I try once more, then?”

“Please, my friend.”

Bartok inhaled and engulfed me in pluming flames. I felt my insides singe and my heart fill with black tar. My skin melted away and I felt my blood pool at the tendons cooking at what was once my feet.

But then he stopped, as he always had to in the end, and there I was, as I’d always been, miserably intact. 

“Thank you, Bartok.”

Bartok nodded and with acknowledgments to his comrades, dove into the sea, extinguishing his flame forever.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

To the oracle I wandered

In search of eternal rest

For years I have been suffering

At Arceus’ request

I asked her why he hated me

Her bosom glistened blue

She leaned over and kissed me

Before saying what she knew

“Why does Arceus hate you?”

She cackled with delight

“Why, Arceus thinks nought of you

And your pathetic trainer’s plight.”

“Then why does he still torture me?

Tell me, Whore of Sinnoh fair!

For I have murdered Gods before

And for a witch, I do not care.”

She pulled me close and whispered

“Oh Remy, you brutish fool.”

And together we made love submerged

In the fortune teller’s pool

And when I came, a silent prayer

I sent in search of death

To which she said,

“All dreams are but another reality.

Never forget...”

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

I kicked loose the dirt on the sign so that I could read it clearly. “PALLET TOWN,” it read. “Shades of your journey await!” 

I smirked and turned to look at this town I once called home. What had it been, 20 years? I had traveled to 7 different regions, each with more to offer me than the last. More drugs, Pokémon, and sex than one body could withstand, and indeed the gaping holes oozing puss on my fingers told anyone who had met me of late that I was destined for a shallow grave outside of Lavender Town, chewed to bits by Caterpie and Weedle. 

“Remy!” cried a voice, hardly louder than a whisper. “Is that you? Boy, bring me to Remy.”

It was Oak, my old professor from my schoolboy days, pushed in a wheelchair by his grandson Blue. Oak had shrunk down to a raisin-sized version of himself. Blue still looked as handsome as he had as a boy, though wrinkles had begun to form at the creases of his eyes. 

“Come, let me take a look at you,” said Oak. His gray eyes couldn’t see very well, but he was able to make out the truth. “You look like shit.”

“Grandpa!” Blue protested but I waved my green hand at him. 

“He’s right, Blue.” Blue shut up after that. “Oak, I’m afraid I’ve disappointed you.”

“I’ve disappointed myself,” he said. “Look at me. I once thought I had discovered all the Pokémon in the world. One hundred and fifty one! I thought I was a God. Now there are 722. I’ve been overrun by little faggots and pussies who think discovering Pokémon is some game, like I didn’t have to get laughed out of every University in Kanto before I was able to publish one academic paper.” He sighed. “It’s a young man’s game, Remy.”

“It’s no man’s game, Professor,” I said. “Nobody wins here.”

“Look at you two!” said Blue. Oak turned his head to look at him. “I understand you two have had some tough breaks, but life is what you put into it! You just have to believe in yourself, try hard, and things will work out for you! That’s what I believe anyway.”

Oak looked down, his heart too old to hate, only pray for death. I hated to see the old man like that. I punched Blue in the face and he dropped like he’d been horn-drilled. Oak looked at me and grinned. 

“Thank you, Remy.” 

“Thank you, Professor.” I gestured towards Blue. Oak nodded. I lifted him from his chair, unzipped his pants, and held him as he pissed on Blue’s twitching body. 

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

The Hoenn sea is well known for how it houses the resentment of the people it surrounds, and so it was a favorite spot of my pal Gregory. Gregory was given to me by a junk-riddled degenerate in exchange for a Butterfree whose drug addiction had stolen her best days. He was just a Poliwhirl then. Now, after evolving into a Poliwrath when he learned how his owner betrayed him, he harbors a fierce anger that can only be expressed while staring at the Hoenn sea, the prison bars of his existence.

“I’ll kill him one day,” he said to me through gritted teeth, his fist clenched in preparation for the punch he’s wanted to throw all his life.

“I know, Gregory,” I replied, for I hadn’t the heart to tell him I had long ago given information to the pushers who wanted his owner dead in exchange for my life. Why take away a man’s reason to live? Other than, you know, the obvious reasons.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

It’s 12:30 on another Tuesday afternoon spent slumming in a Johto titty bar, no money, no friends, nothing but the cheap tin sounds of yesterday’s pop hits and the awkward, lurching tease happening in front of me.

The women are beautiful, here under neon light, and then there’s me, unshaven, clothes in tatters. The television talks of a new champion in Kalos. I feel bad for the loser.

“Jynx?” comes a voice from my right.

“Vodka stinger. And don’t fuck me on the sauce, Darlene. I’m blacking out today.”

“What’s the matter, sweetie?” says a dancer with uneven breasts. I let out a pithy wheeze of a laugh.

“How much time do you have?”

“I get off in half an hour. Stay awake for me, okay?”

And off she goes, back to dancing to the pop trash on the grimy stage for the leering old woman to my left and me. I feel a peculiar mix of sadness and comfort, like I’ve gone back to the house I grew up in and all the furniture is different and all the carpeting removed. Darlene delivers my stinger, light on the vodka (the cheap bitch, always looking out for me). I down it in three gulps and in thirty minutes I’ll sob through a twenty dollar hand job.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

We are in darkness, the Night of Rock Tunnel surrounding us infinitely, such that our Selves, mercurial at best even on the best days, have Double and Quadruple Teamed, leaving us with no accurate idea of who we truly are. Tuesday.

I had begun fondling Scarlet in the usual manner when a blubbering deflated both of our erections. With my old Zippo I was able to make out a Youngster sobbing in a corner. 

“Pika,” said Scarlet. I bent over and touched the boy’s arm.

"Hey there, big guy," I said. The Youngster looked at me with distrust. "Easy now, tiger. What’s all the blubber about?”

“I came down here to show off to girls,” he said with a sniff. 

“You went to the bottom of a cave for girls.”

“Yes,” he said. “But there weren’t any here.”

“Incredible.”

“And now I’m lost! I don’t know where I am.”

“Pika...” said Scarlet with a wry smile.

“Haha, yes indeed, my love,” I responded in turn.

“What did she say?” The boy confused, sweating.

“She says, ‘Have you tried using Flash?’” 

“What’s Flash, man?” he asks. I turn to Scarlet.

“’What’s Flash, man?’” I say in a voice that makes him sound like a Slowbro, and Scarlet giggles. “Scarlet, why don’t you show him Flash?”

Scarlet hopped up to the Youngster and kissed him gently on the mouth. The boy was agog at first, in utter disbelief that he had been graced with the lips of such a fine woman, but soon his pleasant, horny shock gave way to terror as his hands began to seize and his lips began to turn blue. In a minute, he was on the floor of the cave, catatonic and hard.

“I thought you were going to shock him, my dear.” I said to Scarlet.

“Pika,” she said. “I did.”

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

During one of my bi-weekly afternoons staring at the Hoenn sun (a habit I picked up in the hope that one day the sun’s gentle, loving rays may sear my eyeballs such that I may be blind to the ceaseless filth of this region), I hear the shrill cry of a little girl from behind me.

“Hey, mister!--” the shriek like a wailing Zigzagoon-- “you’re standing on my dandelions!”

“Dandelions are weeds, and weeds are useless parasites put on this world to stifle the exceptionalism of others.” My eyes remain unblinking, fixed on the promise of the sun. “Besides,” I say as I dig my heels into the earth, “these are daffodils.” 

“That--that isn’t very nice!” she yelps as tears begin to fall from the sides of her eyes.

“No it isn’t.” Suddenly, an idea strikes me. Perhaps there is good to be done here. I turn around. “Come here, little girl. What is your name?”

“I’m telling my Mommy!”

“Well, ‘I’mtellingmymommy,’ before you go running off, come here for a moment. Come on, I won’t bite!”

Warily, the little girl approaches me. I kneel down to meet her gaze, and as I suspected, in it I see brightness, a spark of life only a few select youths have, and even fewer maintain through adulthood.

“Yes,” I nod. “You are like this daffodil here. Exceptional. A tall, bright flower among a sea of weeds. Here, turn with me. Gaze at the sun. Feel its energy course through you as you cease to see Hoenn, this cesspool of ingrates and nobodies. Ascend with me to the top of humanity!”

For a moment, she does. She looks at the sun, unblinking. Yes, she has the gift!

“There, you see! You have the--” but my speech is stopped short as I feel my testicles rescind into my body. She’s punched me in the groin.

“Take that, you weirdo!” She yells, and then off she runs to find her mommy or the police or the local executioner. While I writhe among the weeds, a Bellsprout pokes at my injured genitalia. 

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

A jolt. A sharp intake of breath and a creeping awareness of extremities screaming in pain. I’m alive.

“Godammit.” 

Where are my cigarettes? For a moment I consider that they too had been taken from me by Arceus. Was the cowardly bastard not content enough with my woman, my Pokemon, my life, and now it seems, my mortality, as I sit bleeding here at the bottom of a Johto well, the mercy of death denied me once again? Had he taken my precious Tauros Lights as well? 

No, there they are, spilled across the well floor to my right, dirty and leaking, but still alive. Like myself, I muse, before reaching over to grab one. The pain in moving is so intense I let out a mighty bellow, which attracts– 

“Oh my god, is someone down there?" 

–a PokeNerd. When it rains, as they say. 

"L…light…” I wheeze, my chest barely able to take in air from the fall. 

“Oh my god, of course! Magmar, Rock Climb down there, I’ll go get help!” And sure enough, the duck-faced buffoon Pokemon comes waddling down the well wall, and soon the two of us are down here in this purgatory together as mates. 

“Light this for me, will ya, buddy?” I say, and the Magmar kindly obliges, and I take a long, sweet drag of my Tauros Light. 

“Mag…” says my idiot companion, but I could care less. 

“Say, friend, would you do me a favor?” The Magmar’s ears perk up. “Would you light me on fire? I mean just really set me ablaze, engulf me in a fire spin or whatever it is you do. Pretend I’m an Oddish and you’ve just had a bad day at the office. I mean just go to town on me." 

”Mag!“ he protests. Great. A pansy.

"Ugh, you want something done right…” I say, and with all my remaining strength I grab his tail, and soon enough the two of us are engulfed in his panicked blaze, the fire warm like the embrace of my mother, the kiss of my old pikachu, that first hit of sweet carbos. For an ecstatic minute we are enveloped like this, until my incinerator breaks free of my grasp, vomits, and scurries up the well wall, no longer a child. 

I take another drag off my cigarette, it invincible like myself, and enjoy the erotic smell until the police arrive to pull me back into my nightmare.

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

“Put them here, Remy.” 

We stood motionless in a sterile lab-like room, silent save for the quiet hum of a healing machine. The room smelled faintly of urine, which I surmised to be my own, at which point I surmised...

“I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“In a sense, yes,” said my faceless companion. “But ‘dead’ is a misnomer. Think of it like you’ve fainted and that you’re useless until your trainer takes you to a Pokemon Center.”

“But I have no trainer.”

He chuckled. “Don’t you?”

At which point I understood. I climbed into the machine like the lowly Pidgey I was in the grand scheme of things, waiting for God to heal me of my sins and status effects. 

[cigarettes-in-kanto]

I was riding my bicycle through Kanto (as I do every Thursday in an effort to outrun the void that has crept into every blood vessel in my body, also cardio) when I heard the unmistakable sound of flesh beating into flesh, punctuated by agonized screams some jackass was surely misinterpreting as ecstasy. Someone was Horn Drilling the ol' Jigglypuff.

"Cornelius, stop!" shouted the victim, pushing a muscly, tanned sack of testosterone off her body. "Someone is looking at us!"

Cornelius looked up and for a brief, tense moment, our eyes met. Then, in a panic I'm used to my eroticism inspiring people, he ran off without grabbing his clothes. His pecker was such that even a Spearow would laugh at it. 

"You pervert!" yelled the girl, covering herself with Cornelius' clothes. "You like watching folks make love?"

"What you were doing was not making love," I replied, my tone cool, seductive. "It was base, animal."

"We are alive," said the girl, allowing Cornelius' do-rag to fall limply from her breast. She walked over to me, naked and unafraid. "Something you would know nothing about," she whispered. I looked at her willing body. She was right. 

"You have weird-shaped tits," I lied, and with a laugh I sped headlong into another night of masturbating to Classic Elite Four Battles on EPPN. This time, I would not cry.