Pokémon 109 (2023 Contest Oneshot)

[canisaries]

Hello everyone! The results of the 2023 Oneshots Contest are finally out, so I can post my little entry, too. I wrote it in just two days (iirc) because I couldn't come up with anything for the Legendary POV prompt before that, and even now it's questionable since I wrote about Spiritomb and half the judges that read it remarked on how nothing about it was really "legendary" (and they were right). At 600 words, it is the shortest of the entries (I technically haven't checked all the entries to make sure of this but like come on surely it is), so I hope people can take a little time out of their day to read it. Comments are also greatly appreciated, even if I know there isn't much to comment on.

In any case, here is 109. Content warning for blood, violence, execution and death. Rated teen, but like, on the upper edge of it, I think. Enjoy!

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109

Synopsis:
Another soul is sealed in a spiritomb.

Genre:
Horror

Status:
Complete oneshot.
Submitted to contest privately on Jun 28 2023.
First uploaded publicly on 30 Sep 2023.

Length:
600~ words

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​

We hate her.

We hate how she laughed in our face.

We hate how she told her friends.

We hate how they shouted after us as we walked.

We hate how the whole village joined them.

We love how we strangled her.


We hate him.

We hate how he never thanked us for the food.

We hate how he came home drunk.

We hate how he lay with another.

We hate how he did not even deny it.

We love how we slit his throat.


We hate them.

We hate how they looked down on us.

We hate how they ate farfetch’d and we ate scraps.

We hate how they called us ‘slave’.

We hate how they kicked us for entertainment.

We love how we burned them all.


We hate this stone.

We hate how it binds us.

We hate the traveler.

We hate his magic.

We hate how he imprisoned the first.

We hate how he taught the village to imprison more.

We hate how many there are of us.

We hate how there will be more.


We see the light.

We hate the light.

They have come to bring another.

They lift away the stones.

We see a man in armor.

We recognize him.

We hate him.

He is the reason Hideki died.

He is the reason Kaito left.

He is the reason Arata limped.

He is the reason Yoshiro drank.

He is the reason the forest was burned.

He is the reason the fields were salted.

Why have they brought him here?

They speak.

They speak of his crimes.

There are more of them now than ever before.

They are quieting down.

A woman in a dark robe steps up.

She begins to say the words.

A man raises his sword.

It chops off the armored man’s head.

We can feel his spirit.

We can feel his anger.

The woman captures him in her vessel.

She is walking towards us.

She pours out the spirit.

He falls into us.

But we hate him.

We hate him more than the others.

We hate him more than Ayako and Kazuo and Hibiki and Makoto and Naoki and Ryota and Kuro and Hotaru.

We hate him so much we cannot contain it.

Too much hatred.

We burst.

We fly our separate ways.

I find a man, burly as a machoke.

I find a woman, frail as a beautifly.

I find a man, lean as a gallade.

I find a woman, angry as a vespiquen.

I find a man, short as a snover.

I find a woman, fussy as a lopunny.

I find a man, fiery as an infernape.

I find a woman, thorny as a roserade.

I find a luxray.

I find a houndoom.

I find a mister-mime.

I take his sword.

I take his dagger.

I take her hairpins.

I take her musket.

I charge its lightning.

I charge its flames.

I brandish an invisible spear.

I slash.

I shoot.

I strangle.

I incinerate.

I stab.

I gore.

I kill.

I scream.

I bleed.

I collapse.

I die.

I die.

I die. I die.

I die. I die. I die.

I die. I die.

I die.

---

The sun shines over a field of bodies.

The blue sky reflects off pools of blood.

The wind rustles the trees, and starly sing.

A traveler arrives. He walks over the corpses to the little tower of stones. He reaches in through the hole in its wall and lifts out a brown stone split by a fissure.

He looks around, shrugs and walks away.

---

 

[Mirage]

Nicely done! This is definitely one of the more creative fics I've read so far, and not just from this competition either. It's super neat how each individual spirit only expresses a quick thought, and their individual stories are extremely short, but the way they all fit together tells a larger and more cohesive story. Also love the coloring to highlight their separation and distinguish the spirits' from each other after they burst out.

You did a great job of weaving Spiritomb's themes of chaos, vengeance, and tragedy into the plot! It's very fitting that even though the spirits break free and are no longer tied to each other at the end, they each still chose to try to seek revenge through violence, and they all meet the same fate as a result - almost as though they'd never separated at all and were still one being. The villagers aren't the good guys here either, with their anger and violence driving more anger and violence in turn.

I will say, after reading, there's a lot of questions I'm hungry for answers to - for instance, why are so many of the villagers so mean in the first place? What did the armored man do to get himself sealed away if the other villagers were already abusing the spirits? What made the traveler seal the first spirit away, especially when his shrug at the end seems to imply that he suspected it would end poorly? There's so much cool backstory here that could be explored, I kinda wish the story were a bit longer and delved into it deeper.

Overall though, great job, especially considering you wrote it in only two days. Thanks for an excellent read!

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, dropping in for a review of a shorter piece tonight, and I figured that I’d try out your contest submission, which IIRC is about an aberrant Spiritomb with one too many spirits in it. Dunno what that’s going to look like, but I suppose there’s only one way to know for sure…

Spoiler

We hate her.

We hate how she laughed in our face.

We hate how she told her friends.

We hate how they shouted after us as we walked.

We hate how the whole village joined them.

We love how we strangled her.

Well, that narration went to places in short order there.

We hate him.

We hate how he never thanked us for the food.

We hate how he came home drunk.

We hate how he laid with another [ ].

We hate how he did not even deny it.

We love how we slit his throat.

I think that you’re missing something after the “another” plus have a verb tense error, which I assume was going to be “(wo)man”

We hate them.

We hate how they looked down on us.

We hate how they ate farfetch’d and we ate scraps.

We hate how they called us ‘slave’.

We hate how they kicked us for entertainment.

We love how we burned them all.

Oh, so the spirits in this Spiritomb are both human and Pokémon. Since the first two perspectives feel very human, but this one very much doesn’t.

We hate this stone.

We hate how it binds us.

We hate the traveler.

We hate his magic.

We hate how he imprisoned the first.

We hate how he taught the village to imprison more.

We hate how many there are of us.

We hate how there will be more.

Oh, so we’re starting with just 3 spirits and progressively working our way up? Since that’s the undertone that I’m getting right now, but I’m not sure whether or not that’s the intended takeaway.

We see the light.

We hate the light.

They have come to bring another.

They lift away the stones.

We see a man in armor.

We recognize him.

We hate him.

Wait, is that Kamado there, or…?

He is the reason Hideki died.

He is the reason Kaito left.

He is the reason Arata limped.

He is the reason Yoshiro drank.

He is the reason the forest was burned.

He is the reason the fields were salted.

Why have they brought him here?

I mean, if that is Kamado, that’s some very

backstory there that I assume is related to that one village that he and Beni mention in passing that got messed up by rampaging Pokémon… or the failed colony. That’s a possibility too.

They speak.

They speak of his crimes.

There are more of them now than ever before.

Oh, well that’s not worrisome at all there. .-.

They are quieting down.

A woman in a dark robe steps up.

She begins to say the words.

A man raises his sword.

It chops off the armored man’s head.

Oh, so the Keystone has moved on to being an execution site, huh? That’s definitely a way to get to 108 souls.

We can feel his spirit.

We can feel his anger.

The woman captures him in her vessel.

She is walking towards us.

She pours out the spirit.

He falls into us.

Ooooooh, boy. This is going to be quite the trip given that we know that multiple spirits in this Spiritomb hate this armored man.

But we hate him.

We hate him more than the others.

We hate him more than Ayako and Kazuo and Hibiki and Makoto and Naoki and Ryota and Kuro and Hotaru.

We hate him so much we cannot contain it.

Too much hatred.

Well, time to see where this winds up going from here.

We burst.

We fly our separate ways.

Oh, so that’s what happens when you try to cram in a 109th spirit in a Spiritomb, huh?

I find a man, burly as a machoke.

I find a woman, frail as a beautifly.

I find a man, lean as a gallade.

I find a woman, angry as a vespiquen.

I find a man, short as a snover.

I find a woman, fussy as a lopunny.

I find a man, fiery as an infernape.

I find a woman, thorny as a roserade.

I find a luxray.

I find a houndoom.

I find a mister-mime.

Oh, well that can’t possibly be good there. .-.

I take his sword.

I take his dagger.

I take her hairpins.

I take her musket.

I charge its lightning.

I charge its flames.

I brandish an invisible spear.

I slash.

I shoot.

I strangle.

I incinerate.

I stab.

I gore.

I kill.

Wait, so those spirits possessed other people/Pokémon? I can’t tell if that’s the idea or if they just tagged along with people and Pokémon who were about to go off on rampages anyways.

I scream.

I bleed.

I collapse.

I die.

I die.

I die. I die.

I die. I die. I die.

I die. I die.

I die.

Well then.

The sun shines over a field of bodies.

The blue sky reflects off pools of blood.

The wind rustles the trees, and starly sing.

A traveler arrives. He walks over the corpses to the little tower of stones. He reaches in through the hole in its wall and lifts out a brown stone split by a fissure.

He looks around, shrugs and walks away.

Well, I suppose that’s one way to make an Odd Keystone.

Well that was a trippy ride there. I see that you went with an experimental style for this story, but somehow, in spite of all of the details and descriptions being left in the readers’ heads, and shockingly well. It’s a bit morbid, but very creative, and it made the most of every word that you put in it. The colored text is definitely a simple but nice touch at communicating differences of perspective very compactly.

I’m… genuinely unsure of whether or not I have anything to criticize about this piece. Like yeah, it’d have been nice to get some more description of what was going on, but the fic was very deliberately written from the perspective of first person thoughts, and the fic would be and feel radically different if it wasn’t written in such a compact style.

Good work, @canisaries . I know that sometimes you’re a bit worried about how your stories turn out, but if this little piece was anything to go by, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

 

[K_S]

109 oneshot
Blitz review

Lovely personality here. We got sulky "hate everything" vibes that scale up marviously from low grade bully venting, to social bully venting, towards... Wow our point of view character might be a mite homocidal... In six lines.

The village makes me think this is an olde setting but we will see if that gets expanded on or not.

And misanthrope round two is here. We go from bullying to being used. An unhealthy relationship that starts with a lack of gratitude amd scales up to the most intimate of betrayls. But is done in steps until the person experiencing that betrayal gets a bit too happy with a knife and esophagus.

It looks like we are touring the bound souls of the mon. One at a time... Amd the cycle remains the same, hate, subject of hate, buildibg esculation, then act of murder to the next victum.

And the stone i supose is thw base of the spirittomb. How it gets more souls a few at a time. Each with its own attendent tragedy.

And the bound keep getting mushed togther, until theres a multitude and a ritual that seems to bind them to the person they hate that most of all.

And in that final death theyre freed. To enact thier vengence. To try to kill the one that wronged them. In that lasy haze of murder thier identties are restored , it comes amd goes. Act complete and utterly irrwlevent as the morning after someone picks pver the killing fields looming for something and finsing little more.then a broken stone and a pile of dead...

 

[canisaries]

I think that you’re missing something after the “another” plus have a verb tense error, which I assume was going to be “(wo)man”

"Lay" was correct, actually. "Lay" is the past tense of "lie", which is used in the phrase "lie with (somebody)", which means to have sexual relations. "Laid", in turn, is the past tense of "lay", the wrong verb to use here.

I don't exactly have a source I can link here, but I know that you can use "another" the way I have. Like, "there is another". The famous Yoda quote. I know Yoda isn't the best example to use for grammatical correctness, but it's at least an example of the phrase being used and accepted by audiences.

Oh, so the spirits in this Spiritomb are both human and Pokémon. Since the first two perspectives feel very human, but this one very much doesn’t.

I know vague fiction like this usually has death of the author, but my intent was for this to be a human as well. They simply are so disrespected that they are fed scraps and kicked for entertainment. I can see why the burning part would suggest a fire-type Pokémon, but my intent was that the slave had trapped their masters in the building and set fire to it.

Oh, so we’re starting with just 3 spirits and progressively working our way up? Since that’s the undertone that I’m getting right now, but I’m not sure whether or not that’s the intended takeaway.

No, not really. It's just that I can't really do 108 segments. The three here are just a sample of the population.

Don't take my "ermmm actually"-ing here as a sign of ingratitude, though! I was very glad to receive your review, and I am glad you found it to be of quality.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Hi canis! Was hoping to check out at least a few of the contest entries this week, and I've been curious about 109 in particular for a while—I love weird spiritomb stuff. This'll mostly just be me sharing my impressions and thoughts; hope it's enjoyable to read!

So to start off, it looks like we're seeing into the specific crimes (or "crimes") a handful of the constituent souls were punished and bound for, but all of them collectively are feeling the same anger and resentment the individuals felt. (That or the former individuals have just lost the ability to think in individual terms, perhaps.)

It seems like these spirits were all members of the same community, at least over time if not actually contemporaneously. The village has become pretty reliant on this ritual, seems like! At first I wondered if the 109th spirit might somehow end up being the one who taught the village the binding ritual, but it does seem to be an unrelated person—but one who has caused harm and trauma to multiple people in the village, both those who were executed and trapped in the keystone and, clearly, the living ones. But then that over-reliance on this one keystone comes back to bite them when they try to punt this guy they don't like off toward... other people who don't like him for exactly the same reasons, lol. Whoops! That's some pretty delicious irony.

And that seems to be the end of the village, I suppose. Do the bound spirits finally dissipate along with the vessels they possessed? If the keystone binding was the only thing keeping them around, maybe they've at least finally found peace somewhere. The traveler returning at the end is definitely mysterious... I guess he figures the village must not need it anymore (since it sounds like there might not be a village around to need anything anymore). Is he going to pass this secret on to another unsuspecting village? Will the same thing happen to them, and is that somehow his intention, or is he unaware of the chaos he's caused? He wasn't really the focus so I don't expect the answer matters too much, but imagining the ways it might play out is fun.

The one tiny thing I might've liked to see more of would be the spirits' thoughts about being stuck in a collective for so long vs. finally being free to pursue their own anger. I guess I might've been expecting a sense of... acknowledgement of the sudden individuality at last? I suppose I'm not exactly sure what that would've looked like in a way that actually benefits this, though, and given that you were under time constraints it's not a big deal.

This was excellent, even ignoring the fact that it was a two-day project. I particularly enjoy the picture it paints of the village at the center of all this: clearly troubled, or at least they believe they have enough problems (even though other villagers were causing these problems!) that they're all ears when this traveler's willing to teach them how to punish these "evil spirits". It's almost like the village is its own angry little spiritomb collective, in a way, all trapped together with themselves until it's no longer sustainable. Very creepy, very sad, and very enjoyable. Thanks for sharing!