Kandykorn
Lion Apologist
- Location
- The Goof Realm
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Themes of loss, grief, and suicide
Bounce.
Bounce.
Bounce.
Just keep bouncing. That’s all I know.
I should probably rewind. My name is Shirley Spoink. And all my life, I have been trapped in the eternal torment spoinks are forced to tolerate through exhaustion for all of their pitiful lives. I have, just like my brothers and sisters before me, been forced into a joke of biological engineering that science has to this day found no cure or reason for. An anatomical problem that arceus inflicted upon spoink-kind from the day we hatch from our eggs.
Keep bouncing or you die.
This tortuous existence affects me daily. I am constantly in agonizing pain in my tail. The only way I can consume enough energy to keep this up is by drinking goddamn charged lemonade. But Pokenera banned it a while ago. I worry my life is slipping away from me at a rapid uncontrollable pace that I nor my spoink brethren can avoid. I worry I’ll be gone before it is too late.
Some spoink take their own lives. They just… Stop bouncing. They stop enduring the infinite torment life has given us. For them it’s an end to the suffering. An end to it all. I wonder if they go somewhere when they die. I pray they do.
My wife stopped bouncing on September 15th, 2013. It has been an agonizing 10 years. Every bounce I make, I remember the look in her eyes as she stopped. My wife, Sal Spoink, was my everything. She had beautiful eyes, and the kindest soul a Spoink ever had. We used to go on date nights, and eat Oran berries until we couldn’t anymore. We dreamed of maybe one day evolving into grumpig. That would end our torment. We were married June 30th, 2009.
It was the happiest day of my life.
The day she stopped, I could tell something was off. The past week or so she’d been a little strange. She’d space out mid conversation. She’d try to come up with excuses of course. That she was tired. That she just needed a nap. But I knew something was off. That woman would never miss a Rhyhorn race on TV in her life. But on Thursday, September 14th, 2013, she did.
I confronted her. She paused for a second, and then smiled. She looked at me, and wordlessly handed me her pearl. The one on her head. She loved that pearl. It was the color of the clouds right before sunset. The color of cotton candy. The color of a pink rose. It was beautiful. She handed it to me, and I looked at her, confused.
“Honey, what are you?-”
“Goodbye Shirley.”
I dropped her pearl as she fell.
It shattered into a million pieces, the shards skidding away.
I cried.
I considered stopping jumping. Right then. Right there. I considered ending the twisted, horrific existence I’m forced into.
Bounce.
Bounce.
Bounce.
It was hard to sleep for a while. You might not have guessed, but normally spoink are great at sleeping. Our tails kind of autopilot, bouncing without us needing to think. It’s the only time we can rest. Kind of.
After a while you get used to the pain. The soreness. Sometimes you forget you’re bouncing at all. Your brain figures out how to focus on other things. You think about a future where you don’t have to bounce. One where you become a grumpig.
Spoink evolve into grumpig at level 32. For those of us with trainers, this task could be very simple. But for those of us like me. Those in the wild, this goal is practically impossible. I constantly wish I’ll get caught by some ten year old with a torchic and a dream to be the very best. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet.
I, like most spoink, wonder if this whole thing is worth it.
I wonder if, when I die, I’ll be reunited with Sal. Maybe not. It’s all very hard to tell. Sometimes I pause in between bounces. I let myself come close to death, feeling the icy chill creep slowly around the nubs I call arms. But I bounce again. Because at the end of the day, Life is about moving forward.
My life. My life is beautiful. I cannot let the unfortunate predicament of the body I was born in stop me from becoming something grand. I can’t stop fighting. I can’t stop bouncing.
Because I’m Shirley Spoink.
And surely, tomorrow will be okay.
Bounce.
Bounce.
Bounce.