The Long and Winding Road

The Long and Winding Road
By: BetterButterBuddha
Chapter 11: The Worst Kind of Person


July 7th, 2000 Magenta Island


Magenta Island didn’t have any special allure for me, but I needed a place to stay. Sleeping in a catamaran for three nights in a row can do things to a guy, so I was very much relieved when I got to Magenta Island’s pokemon center. Even the small cots they offer there seemed like heaven to me once I got there.

I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed, so I resolved to do some pokemon training. I hadn’t really grown accustomed to poliwhirl in his new form. Pokemon can become totally different when they evolve, so much so that although they retain their pre-evolution memories, they have totally different personalities. I needed to get a feel for poliwrath’s personal style. Mareep was adjusting well too, but I have had yet to see her in a battle.

I had every intention of spending the rest of the day in the woods, fighting against wild spearow and mankey. But as I continued past the buildings and tenant houses, something caught my eye. It was the kind of house that makes you feel sorry for the person who lives in it. It stood out even in that neighborhood, a place of graffiti and gang fights. A steel fence surrounded it, banged up by time’s relentless passage. The house only had one floor, probably only had two bedrooms in it. Green painted aluminum siding were the walls of the house. A red, rusty tow truck slouched in the front driveway, cracked with potholes from the seasons gone by. The backyard was cluttered with the toys of a childhood long forgotten; only a bright red plastic slide still stood. A small cardboard box stood in the corner, and a man with greasy brown hair, a beat-up old tea-shirt, and a can of Koor’s Light in his hand stood in the lawn, yelling at the box. He seemed just as decrepit as the old house itself.

“Shut up, you stupid thing! Ya keep on whinin an whinin, but you never shut up! I’m trying to watch my soaps, so just shu’ up!” he said. After his tirade directed at a seemingly harmless cardboard box, the box shuffled a little bit. A small creature was trying to come out of it. It struggled, and then finally made its way out of the entrance. It had brown and white fur, and bright blue eyes. However, it looked like it had seen better days. (Later I learned that, unfortunately, this was not the case.) Spots on its coat where shimmering brown fur once shone beautifully in the sun where missing, torn out by God knows what. Its left ear was ragged; it looked like this creature had seen some fights. Worst of all, the small creature limped on its lower left leg as it walked, and the leg had swollen up just enough that anyone not accustomed to pokemon like I was wouldn’t have noticed it. It dragged a water bowl in its mouth, and it set it down. The eevee let out a pitiful sigh at the feet of its master. I feel bad for people who neglect their pokemon like that.

The man in the sleazy t-shirt furrowed his brow. “I told you to SHUT UP!!” he screamed at the defenseless creature. He lifted his right leg, and before I had time to react, he had already done his deplorable deed. The eevee whimpered as the man’s imitation leather boot slammed into its chest. It flew through the air, and landed on the steel fence, where it lay still. “Heh,” the man said, “that’ll teach ya!”

I felt a feeling of dread at the sight. I was scared, that’s for sure, but I felt that I had to do something. Something stirred inside me, and before I knew it I was running as fast as I could to the decrepit house.

“Hey!” I said. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing? That eevee did nothing wrong, and even if it had, nobody has the right to kick such a small pokemon! You’re sick!” I screamed at the man in the tee shirt.

“Who the hell invited you into this situation? Mind you’ own freaking business, you dumbass kid! It’s my own pokemon, I can do what I want with it. Get out ‘a here, ‘fore I come out there an get ya myself!” he yelled at me. His voice strained under his heavy southern accent.

I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t let the man get away with that, but I wasn’t the law. My only solution was to find the law, and let them take care of this. My feet pounded heavily against the pavement as I searched for the local police station.

After four blocks of sprinting down an otherwise calm village street, I finally reached the police station. It wasn’t much of a station, just a small office and holding cell. I ran inside.

Officer Jenny sat at the front desk. Her blue hat was fastened primly into her hair with a hair pin, and she wore a little too much makeup. “Young man, can I help you?”

“Yes, my name’s Vincent Castaneda,” I cried; my voice was cracked from the long sprint here. “A man, this awful guy who lives down that street, Pine road, I think… He’s there, and he’s got this little eevee. It’s missing some of its fur, and it looks way too thin. I was walking down to the woods when I saw it. I wasn’t eavesdropping; I just couldn’t help but hear him yell. He… he kicked the eevee. It fell against the fence, and it just kind of stayed there. You’ve got to do something.”

The police officer looked to the floor; apparently this sort of thing had happened before. She withdrew a file from a bureau calmly, and looked at it. She took out a picture.

“Is this the man you saw kick the eevee?” she asked. The black and white picture depicted a man with greasy hair and a bruise on his face. In the picture he was obviously drunk. I couldn’t mistake that face, not ever.

“Yes, that’s the man. Please, do something,” I said. My voice sounded more pleading than I had meant it to.

“We’ve had complaints about this before. They weren’t anything to arrest him over, but once we brought him in for questioning. I’m going to investigate, and I’ll need you to follow me,” she replied. She then motioned for me to follow her. We moved through a door in the back of the station, which apparently led to a garage. We both got into the police car, and she drove off into the city streets.

Thankfully, Officer Jenny didn’t turn the siren on. She pulled up in front of the house with the green siding, and got out of the car. I got out to, but she said, “Stay by the car. I’ll call if I need to talk to you.” Jenny then went up onto the dead grass lawn, and knocked on the front door.

She was met a minute later by the man in the t-shirt. They exchanged a few words, and suddenly, the man ran inside. After five minutes, I considered going in, but then just as started walking, Jenny came out, and she was pulling the man in the t-shirt behind her. He was handcuffed. “Vincent,” she said to me, “I need you to find that eevee. Hurry!”

I ran inside the house, and made a beeline for the back door. As soon as I got to the backyard, a pit rose in my throat. The eevee was in exactly the same position as I had last seen it in. I picked it up, and headed back to the police car. I got in the front seat, the t-shirt guy was already in the back, behind the cage.

“I’m going to drop you and the eevee off at the pokemon center before I get him to the police station,” she said as she started up the car. We drove off into the streets, time ticking away swiftly. Eevee’s heart was beating softly, I could feel that, but I didn’t hear any breathing.

I got out as soon as we stopped outside the pokemon center. With eevee in my arms, I ran through the doors. A nurse came up to me. I quickly told her eevee’s situation, and handed the hapless pokemon to her. She ran into the ER, a chansey close behind.


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She returned from the ER five minutes later. A solemn look was on her normally cheery face.

“I… I’m sorry,” she began, tears starting to form into her face. “This doesn’t happen often here. Eevee went into cardiac arrest at 9:18 AM. We tried to revive it, but it was just too late. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Eevee was already too weak from the years of living in that hellhole; the kick was just the last straw.”

A feeling of remorse ascended my trachea. I thought of my own pokemon, and how lucky they were to have a halfway decent trainer. “Nurse,” I began, “I’ve got a question. What will happen to the body?”

“These cases are pretty rare, but when they do happen, the body usually goes in the hospital incinerator, for safety,” she said. Her voice gave the impression that she was ashamed of the usual procedure.

“Nurse, I understand if you say no, but I have a request. Could I have the body? I didn’t know the pokemon, but it looked like it had a hard life. I feel like it should have a final resting place, not just be burned like last week’s paper,” I said.

“The eevee was a she, you know. But about your question, I’m afraid the answer is no. I can’t let you do that for safety reasons. Plus, the pokemon isn’t legally yours. It’s just not possible. If you really want, you can watch the incineration,” she said. She had tried to sound stoic, but strong emotion could be heard plainly in her voice.

My sadness for the poor eevee waxed at this, but I could see why Joy had refused. “Yes, I suppose that’s the least I could do for a pokemon like this.” She made a motion for me to follow her. I did so, as did a chansey with a stretcher. On the stretcher was a small figure wrapped in surgical paper.


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The incinerator seemed larger that it really was to me. Larger than Life itself, they say. In this case, it was larger than Death.

Even the chansey, a species which was normally very happy and blissful, had a look of remorse on its face. The small pink pokemon took the package which had the eevee inside it and set it on a steel beam that extended from the incinerator. This was where things went to be cremated. The brown paper parcel was slowly wheeled into the incinerator with the steel platform. In about twenty seconds, I heard the fire suddenly rise in intensity, and die back down just as quickly. With that, eevee was gone; transmuted into a thousand little smoke particles coming out the hospital’s roof. “It’s done,” remarked Joy.

I walked out of the pokemon center, and began a steady trip. I could hear my heels softly pounding against the sidewalk. There was only one more thing to do. I was going to see this through, even if it meant staying here to testify.

I got back to the police station slowly; my walk was at a much less rushed pace than normal. I opened the door, and as I did so I observed the symbol painted on the glass of the door. It was a depiction of the blind justice holding her scale. Above it said “Justice for all living things.” Yeah, right.

Officer Jenny stood up from her seat as I came in the door. “Vincent, I’ve been trying to reach you at the pokemon center. Joy said that the eevee had passed away, is that true?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes, eevee was incinerated about fifteen minutes ago,” I said.

“That’s too bad. The only good thing to come out of this is that the man responsible will most likely be punished for pokemon abuse to the fullest extent of the law. You won’t even need to testify, the man was drunk when we arrested him. He confessed to kicking the pokemon with no pressure at all,” she said. I sighed.

“Vincent, you seem like a good person. Are you a pokemon trainer?” she asked. I nodded. “Good. Listen, I investigated the house once more while you were at the pokemon center. Apparently, the eevee had a reason to be ‘whinin’ like it was. Inside the cardboard box was this pokemon egg,” she said. In her glove was a small green egg with black lines running down the side of it. “This won’t hatch unless it is cared for by another pokemon of the same egg group. Do you happen to have anything like that?”

I thought back to my training with Blue. Ground group has Vulpix, Meowth, Diglett… Mareep! “Yes, I’ve got a mareep that should get the job done well!” I replied.

“Great,” she said, relieved, “Then you wouldn’t mind taking this egg? It’s a lot of responsibility, but if you don’t, then it will just become a ward of the Islands, and it would never hatch then.”

“It would be an honor to raise that egg. It seems only right. I’ll think of it as a way of putting the soul of the mother to rest. At least her daughter will get what she couldn’t. Thank you,” I said. Then Nurse Joy handed me the egg, and I put it inside a pokeball. I walked out the door, eager to resume my training.