Pokéumans: Re-lived chapter 1 "Waking up from a dream"
I am not happy.
I suppose you’ll want me to elaborate on why, well, first things first, introductions: I am Lex, that’s what everyone calls me (or at least what I try to get people to call me) Physically wise I have tan skin and dark very unkept hair, notable eye bags on my face, unusually long limbs and I’m slightly chubby. I’m 14 years old and I currently live in Mexico City.
It is the year 2022 and the month of September, Today is Monday of my first week of high school which I absolutely wasn’t looking forward to, I was barely able to graduate from middle school pretty much because of the pandemic and although i had high hopes to be able to recover myself in high school, the fact i basically chose my school at the last minute and i still have no idea what i want to study really doesn’t make me feel assured.
Anyhow, I was woken up by my little brother’s alarm at 6 o’something while my mum was making breakfast, dad was preparing for work and my brother was... Not waking up, I felt a little disoriented as I’m used to having to be ready by this point but since high school is at the afternoon instead of the morning I didn’t need to yet, anyway, i waited until everyone was gone and the sky changed from night to day to eat my breakfast my mother left me and shower, I put on regular clothes, an interesting deparute from the uniforms I’ve had to wear all my life, though my wardrobe isn’t exactly the most... Flattering, I only wear what makes me comfortable in my weird autistic sensibilities, and spent the morning trying to prepare myself mentally for 3 years of hell, and that’s if all goes well and I don’t end up repeating a year, anyway, nothing really interesting happens in this point so I’ll just talk about myself more.
I’m into a lot of things and not many things at the same time, it’s hard to explain but basically I don’t get into any kind of media beyond small hyper-fixations, however there are a few exceptions though, if I have to give an example of one then I’ll probably go with pokemon, I love Pokémon, although I’ve never been able to afford a single game, still I’ve enjoyed it since I was 8 right when pokemon go came out and just before sun and moon were announced, with my favourite Pokémon being toxtricity, a recent addition from a frankly mixed generation but still ended up quickly rising the ranks on my list of favourites and I honestly don’t even know what’s about him that appeals to me so much, maybe its design? Its ability? It’s connection with music (I always have a song stuck in my head after all) Or maybe it’s just the general vibe? Even though I’m not punk even in the slightest I still find myself connecting to him for some strange reason. Like he speaks to me somehow.
Anyway. Back to home, My mum came back in time to cook lunch so that afterwards I would head to school, my high school is a decent 30 minute walk away from my home, and I can go there by myself however I only walked the route once and it involves a lot of pedestrian bridges which absolutely terrify me as I have a fear of heights. Still there weren’t any major issues as I went there and I arrived in good time despite not knowing where a single thing was on this new building. Classes went about as well as I expected. It was the first day so it was only introductions but I still struggled having to join each teacher’s Google class, writing down the names of the books i had to buy and organising my notes since we didn’t have the time and money to buy notebooks for each subject yet so I had to use an old folder. Classes ended (at 9 pm I might add Jesus Christ) and right as I left I encountered with an old friend from my old school that also decided to be in this high school.
“Alex!”
“Lex, you know I hate having to remind people about it right?”
She corrected herself. “Oh right, Lex, so how are you doing?”
“Eh. Weird dreams I suppose.”
“Really? How so?”
“Hard to describe, nothing special anyway.”
“The usual huh?”
I nodded. “You shouldn’t come to expect more from me, Fer.”
From then onwards the conversation faded into simple noise as we left towards home, she with her parents, I by myself. Now I’ve been friends with this person since the beginning of middle school and even though she’s nice and energetic and really my only option for socializing I still don’t feel close to her like other people would wrongly (and overconfidently) assume. Especially now that we’re not in the same group and in general our friendship has gotten a bit distant since the pandemic, and I’m just not a fan of being social anyway, I keep to myself and generally dislike others, i did not learn a single name of my clasmates and teachers and i have a feeling i won’t learn any till I’m gonna guess next month, Anyway I came back from school, had dinner, went to bed and ignored my parents when they asked me how it went and the rest of the week went flying by both astonishingly quickly and irritatingly slowly, that is normal for me though as i’ve never really led an interesting life, I really just stay on my room on my computer and never leave the house unless I’m forced to or become desperate, and usually when I do it’s to the same places every time, if it ain’t school which I’m forced to go it’s either the nearby park/market or the centre of Mexico city and it’s usually because my parents want to eat outside and if I don’t go I don’t eat, otherwise I would just stay, I’m not the adventurous type and I usually don’t like to get out of my comfort zone because honestly? Why should I? It’s called a comfort zone for a reason, oh well, I’ll move on to the weekend that went as uneventfully as the week did and eventually it became night time of sunday, where I just jumped into my bed, sighed after a long 7 days that weren’t awful but I knew was just the beginning, i mean I didn’t even have homework but I knew things were going to chane as I doze off...
Unfortunately I never knew how much things would really change in the next few weeks.
The sound of the crowd screaming barely registers to me as I walked into the side of the battlefield, with a massive gyarados as my opponent. I don’t even need to hear my trainer shout a command for me to start attacking, not that I could with all the noise granted, although the details of the battle escape me since I was never really invested in that stuff, I was able to decimate my opponent and bask in the glory of my victory, granted it wasn’t the cleanest and quickest fight in the whole world but I was still the decisive winner none the less, I felt the people in the stadium cheer me on and I instinctually played a short bass riff using the protrusions while letting out a loud cry “TOOOOXXX!!!”.
After that small celebration solo, I was quickly recalled into my pokeball to rest as I grinned to myself in uncharacteristic confidence…
I woke up yet again to my alarm as my first conscious thoughts of the day were:
“Huh, that was a weird dream.”
Not weird in the sense that it was strange, far from it actually as my dreams often don’t have any cohesion and are meaningless bizarre images conjured up by my mess of a brain, honestly to have a simple and, quite frankly generic dream like that is unusual on my part but oh well, that’s irrelevant for now, I thought to myself as I washed my body with soap and other cleaning products while showering, expecting the dream to fade with time though it never happened.
As the second week went by not much actually changed yet aside from the homework and getting more used to the route and the layout of the school like i predicted and, I dunno, breathing differently, I guess? In any case I went through all my classes of every day and met up with Fer once or twice on recess where we didn’t really talk about much and it was very clear we didn’t have much to talk about.
“Hey Alex- sorry, lex!”
Sigh “Hey...”
“Just wanted to check up on you, homework is only just beginning and it’s already hell.”
“Tell me about it.”
From then on we just stood in silence, ate lunch and sometimes one of us would draw, I have to admit I don’t mind doing stuff in silence, but it’s clear I’m alone in that and I guess i would appreciate a deeper connection with someone but it’s just not gonna happen, I’ll difficultly find someome to be more friends rather than just barely not acquaintances.
As the week passed and I suffered through stuff I didn’t enjoy, aka school, I thought back to my dream, honestly the fact I remembered the dream for more than a day shows how special it is, I was showing off impressive battling skills for everyone to see, I remembered the confidence I had during that dream, like I was used to the battle, like it was my calling, what I was meant to do with my life, and i was good at it!
...
Of course, these feelings are not here in the present, I’m not a confident person in the slightest, nor am I talented or skilled in any way, even though most people i knew like my friend Fer or even my dad were not that much different from me I knew they have a lot of hobbies and pastimes and interest that they were fairly good at (enviously so sometimes) like for example, me and Fer liked to draw but she clearly has more talent and experience than me, she already has a developed style while mine only just graduated from stick figures, my mum and dad are grown adults who already have careers and jobs and stuff to do with their life, while I’m just here going through the motions. And I think it’s starting to get to me.
The week ended, in the weekend mum and I decided to buy some of the stuff I still needed, i had barely been able to finish my homework and i was only able to get a few books and notebooks but not all of them so that’s gonna screw me over, but in the meantime I’ll just learn to deal with it, I went to bed on Sunday night, not looking forward to the future.
Being a solo explorer was a though job, even for a medium-ranked one like me. Although I would often partner up with other teams I still preferred to go on adventures solo as I’m not the best at working with other people, especially at the guild, I won’t lie however that sometimes I would struggle with a mission and end up needing rescue myself, but I managed, I was keeping up and that’s what matters.
While I looking for a special artifact deep in the dungeon I found myself battling a rampant Aggron standing in front of the artifact, possibly protecting it? now even though the aggron was a lot larger physically and seemingly stronger I was still beating him rather easily, dodging most of his attacks and giving a good punch here and there, I did still struggled with a few of his attacks, including an earthquake that almost wiped me out (darn ground type moves), but apart from that the aggron was putting up way less of a fight than I expected, once the aggron fainted I smirked to myself and I grabbed the artifact, which was an orb of unknown effect. I was about to leave the dungeon to inspect when suddenly:
“Shock wave!!!”
A wave of thunder suddenly hit my entire body, luckily since I was an electric type it wasn’t very effective against me but I was unable to look at my attacker until it stopped, and when I did I found myself with another toxtricity, who immediately charged at me before I could react and I blacked out.
I woke up like last Monday, same hour, same way, but with yet another dream that wouldn’t escape my waking mind, however unlike the last one this had me a lot less intrigued, guess I was getting used to it, still, I found myself thinking back to it throughout the day, and the next, and the next, and most of the week until in the middle of it where i had a repeat of the previous dream... only I was a little less confident than I remembered, i ended up going back to the versions of myself from that dream, an explorer similar to the ones from the pokemon mystery dungeon games, and a pokemon more akin to the base games, I never found it weird that i was a pokemon in either dream, honestly I wouldn’t mind it if I was a pokemon in real life, it’s a weird fascination of mine that probably came thanks to the pmd games, like I said before I never got to buy them but i heard their premise and so I saw a lot of gameplays of them and I enjoyed their plot a lot, and I would often imagine myself as a protagonist of those games (though I would never be able to choose a pokemon form, probably because the toxtricity line didn’t exist yet), however I don’t actually have any aspirations of becoming an explorer in real life, with my allergies and my sedentary habits? Hell no.
It’s a little weird to me how I can know things I don’t want to be when I’m older but not things I do want to be, I sometimes feel like i don’t know anything about myself and not knowing what to do with your life feels like a problem since it seems everyone should have this figured out and everyone else around my age already has. Except for me.
Well, in any case, school started to get a lot more settled in and routinary, assignments started to become hell and the days faded into the same of always that I’ve experienced all my life, aside from the minor changes from this new school, I could not tell you how many times I’ve had the same breakfasts of cereal or eggs, or the same meals of badly cooked rice, or just the constant over and over mundanity of everything, I know I’m not adventurous, but I’m also tired of this repetition, it feels like i live in the background sometimes.
And as for how I’m doing, well? Unfortunately I’m starting to fail to keep up with the many assignments and constantly having to get new materials and things, I’ve already forgotten to do several homeworks and it’s awful, not only that but I’m already starting to hear about the coming exams, oh well, at least the month’s over.
Weekend passed and I was avoiding answering my parents about how I’m doing constantly, I’ve not talked about them much or my close family but while I love them and all I’ve slowly started to feel disconnected from them, on top of our current living spsces being so tight I’m just too used to having to tune them out constantly, I much preferred living back in Guadalajara in our own house, not in a single room of my grandmother’s house, having to share a two-floor bed with my little brother who i never got along with, luckily with my new schedule he and my parents are mostly not at home in the morning and I’m not at home at the evening, which helps in giving us space, but not in connection. Oh well, not much i can do about it.
Sunday night came and I fell asleep but not before pondering if I would have another one of those dreams, they’ve definitely taken my attention as i feel something different from them, something from deep within me rising, am i going insane? Eh, who cares right now, although apart from that intrigue, another feeling washed over me that I’ve been feeling a little bit throughout the week when i was outside my home, I don’t know where this came from, I have no reason to suspect it and yet...
Was I being watched?
This time my dreams strayed further from anything I recognized from any of the pokemon games, I was still a toxtricity however I appeared to be in a hollywood looking high school, filled to the brim with locker rooms, and like me the students seemed to be pokemon too. As I was heading to class, waking aimlessly across endless halls, I was harshly stopped in my tracks by a massive paw slammed in front of me crushing the locker it landed on into scrap.
“Well, well, well, look what we have here.”
I looked towards the person talking to me and I quickly recognized him as a VERY imposing pangoro, who looked at me with a cocky yet hateful smirk.
“Ughh, listen, can you just let me go to my class for once dude?” I responded annoyed, not wanting to deal with dumb artificial drama like this.
“Woah, woah, woah, don’t you dare dude me, you know you’re an embarrassment to all of your species? instead of a proud and tough rebel you’re a weak and wimpy loser that everyone laughs at, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Where is he even going with this? “I don’t care?”
The pangoro smirks “Well, since I couldn’t very well stand and watch your pathetic ass walk around freely, I decided it was about time to teach you a lesson.”
As soon as he says that I notice him charging an attack, I immediately jump to dodge it, turning this encounter into a full-blown battle, unlike the previous dreams I was struggling much more to dodge and resist his punches, beams and other attacks but eventually I was able to paralyze him and using one of my moves I eventually made him faint, I looked to the hallway assuming the other classmates had watched this but the whole area was strangely devoid of anyone, the hall’s lights suddenly deemed and I could no longer see anything beyond a certain point making it look infinite, save for one toxtricity, the same one from the other dream, he immediately tried to attack me only I was able to move away from it just in time, he kept charging at me and I wasn’t able to keep dodging and resisting his attacks like with the pangoro bully so I wasn’t able to stop myself from blacking out.
I had woken up slightly earlier than normally, sweating, this dream was FAR from enjoyable as the previous ones, and it got me worried, taking my attention the whole week.
And it was so weird too, I’m not an idiot, I could clearly tell my previous dreams had some unexplainable symbolism involving some of my struggles, yet this dream was different, because being a toxtricity was the center of it, and how despite toxtricity being a punk I’m far from it, I mean, I have a resting bitch face and eye bags similar to toxtricity and that clashes with my reserved personality but it’s not something that I focus on much, and yet that dream and those emotions still managed to get my attention for this week. Why?
And what a bad week to be distracted in. Schoolwork was absolutely infernal, with exams right around the corner suddenly every class was demanding homeworks, projects, guides, etc. And I completely failed to keep up I had nothing and I got nothing done. And to think that there was a time where I did average at school and never missed an assignment, heh, what happened to me? My parents got fairly angry with me but I really just ignored them and tuned them out extra hard.
On top of that the dreams repeated again and more often, and this time I wasn’t as succesfull in them, I struggled in the battle and failed the exploration, I didn’t see the other toxtricity however.
I was so stressed that I ended up doing something I very rarely do and directly looked for my friend to talk to, unfortunately she came with... Mixed news.
“Fer?”
“Oh! Hey Lex!” she ran over and hugged me, she’s touchy like that and I don’t mind, aside from the fact it makes people think we had a thing, frankly I’m not interested.
“How have you been?” she asks.
“Oh awful, this week has been so bloody stressful.”
“I can agree, I’m not doing too well either, I talked about it with my parents and, well, I actually was looking for yoy to tell you about something.”
“Hm?” This intrigued me somewhat.
“So... My parents found this new private high school that focuses on the career I’m interested in, remember those tourism classes in middle school? It specialises in that, well I ended up getting in which means I’m gonna leave this school next semester.”
“Oh...” I felt... Complicated, on one hand, it sucked that the only person I was somewhat comfortable with is no longer going to be in the same school and talking to them will get harder, on the other, we were already growing distant, plus this is a really good opportunity for her and I’m excited! Maybe this was simply meant to happen.
“I’m happy to hear that, it’s a bit of a shame that we won’t be in the same school anymore but it’s good for you, I’m probably gonna stay here, don’t plan on going anywhere since there doesn’t seem to be a better option for me.”
“Yeah... I’ll still miss you though.” She hugged me again and then the bell for next class rang so she started leaving.
“Well, see ya!”
“Bye.” I responded.
The week eventually ended, the weekend was even more stressful as a bunch of extended family was over and I don’t even want to get into the drama of it all, I fell asleep on Sunday tired and not looking forward to... Anything.
…Various gunshots could be heard throughout the night as various groups of pokemon could be seen attacking each other through the city, I was in one of those groups, an army that was currently on a battle against an enemy group where we used a brutal combination of firearms and moves, and when I say brutal I do mean it, whatever was left of the city we were in was quickly replaced with more and more rubble as everything was blown up by the crossfire, there were several casualties, I could notice each time a pokemon, whether from our side or the enemy’s, fell to the ground in defeat, I don’t even have to look at them to know that they didn’t just faint and would never recover.
We moved through the ruined city trying to avoid as many enemies as we could, the recent fights had left us worn out and tired, but we could not give up yet, the war between pokemon has been going on for many years, more and more is the world losing any sense of order now that the legendary pokemon have abandoned us and any kind of hierarchy or the like has fallen into anarchy, none of us knew what we were fighting for anymore and even though we’ve been here since the beginning of the war all of the other soldiers were little more than faceless people that I was each unfamiliar with.
We kept walking until we were able to set up camp for the night, tired and drained as I was it wasn’t easy to fall asleep and no matter how much I tried I was unable to get any rest, the outside of my tent got quieter and quieter until suddenly I heard a bunch of screams, I left my tent only to be blinded by a flash of light, the moment I was able to recover from the sudden burst I noticed that all of the soldiers were on the ground, in the same condition as the fallen soldiers from the previous battle. In a state of shock I unintentionally lowered my defences, which caused me to find myself attacked by the same toxtricity who’s been showing up in all of my dreams and who seemed to have been the one to attack and defeat my teammates, I was able to resist him a lot more this time and put up a fight however I was starting to lose stability due to exhaustion, I kept charging and kicking but I eventually fell to the ground like everyone else and as my vision blurred I was starting to black out, or rather, wake up…
I was panting and sweating, I had woken up way early in the morning, and no matter how hard I tried to go back to sleep I stayed wide awake, out of all the dreams this is the one that stuck with me the most, then again it seemed to be a pattern as each dream got more and more intense throughout the weeks, which is the worst thing I needed for this particular one during my morning routine and before the exam I kept thinking on said patterns, what did they mean? They’ve got to lead to something, my body was feeling a little weird that day, the whole day i felt like i was having a constant allergic reaction, ugh, I went back to the dreams to distract myself, how I was never really myself in any of them, even the ones that weren’t about Pokémon had me as a toxtricity which admittedly never felt wrong, sometimes it felt natural, just not like my current self, and how I was in situations that I just never see myself getting into, like the exploration, the battle, the fight, and in the last one I was part of some sort of military, something that I would just never do.
Even though I came from a noticeable military background with my dad and both my grandfathers from each side having worked in the army I always vowed to myself I would never join one, it’s just simply a life that even as a toddler i knew was too far removed from who I was and i always saw it as pointless, war was pointless, everything was stupid and I very much don’t look forward to military service and all of this I’ve made very clear to everyone since day one, luckily my dad, compared to most military types is very undestanding about as he’s really just there for the job, and he really can’t blame me for my beliefs (instead he blames having watched the ender’s game movie as a kid, could not tell you a single thing about the film though).
As much as I would’ve liked to spend the rest of the week trying to figure out these dreams, what they meant, why did they exist, Where they symptoms of stress, etc. And even though it bothered me throughout the whole 5 days, especially since they now happened every day to the point where my eye bags looked even worse, I simply couldn’t focus on it as I had to pretend to pay attention to the exams, which drove me insane and I don’t think I did good in any of them... except English, there’s a reason you’re able to read this after all.
I couldn’t even talk to Fer, and My parents definitely noticed my lack of paying attention, they chewed me out for it several times since they knew it was exam week, but i simply lied and told them I was doing well, I’m not proud of it but I’m simply not strong enough to deal with the consequences, I’m weak.
And on top of all of that my sick feelings from Monday stayed and intensified throughout, it was horrible, and like before I started feeling like i was being watched every time I walked outside and I really didn’t understand why. I returned home on Friday night, everyone else was already asleep, so I quickly ate what was on the table for me, sighed loudly and dropped into bed, this time looking forward to the two coming off days, I was going to need it.
I did not have a dream that night,
Not just a new dream, which was expected since those usually come in Sunday, but any dream in general, which was bizarre after this past week of nonstop pokemon related dreams.
And yet it still felt like I was dreaming, but it was all sensatiIons, sensations that I could not describe, it felt like I was changing somehow, like a part of me was escaping some kind of constraint, and it was oddly painful, like it wasn’t supposed to happen, like it should’ve been there from the beginning, the feeling kept getting worse throughout the night, it started as a tingle, but then it changed to an ache directed at my hands, i looked at them but I couldn’t see them, they were mere blurs of colours, and I saw another blur, was that... The toxtricity? Yet... it felt like something else...
Then the ache slowly grew into a burning sensation, rising in intensity, burning more and more without me being able to do anything about it until…
I woke up dizzy, Saturday morning, rather late, feeling unusually refreshed, maybe it’s now that I’m done with exams at school, at least for the moment, but still, it kinda feels like all of the feelings that have been building up since i came back to school are... gone, released, the stress, the feelings that came from those dreams.
Gone.
I noticed that my parents weren’t here, I panicked a little but then I remembered a tuned out memory from Thursday that they weren’t gonna be here for most of the day, my brother wasn’t there either, though I was able to notice a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the table near our tiny kitchen so it was safe to assume that he went downstairs with my grandma and whoever other family member was staying in our house at the moment. Although I’ve interacted with them fairly little and so this shouldn’t be much of a change I couldn’t help but feel calm in this peaceful solitude, I didn’t even have those allergic reactions anymore, I smiled against myself.
I was feeling oddly happy, I wasn’t even tuning out the day anymore and I was perfectly happy to do stuff like walk around a bit before serving myself cereal as breakfast now being able to forget all about those strange dreams and simply relax on this weekend which feels like it’s the first true weekend since I came back from school, excited, I moved the covers away from my body, hopped out of bed…
And then I saw my hands.
