Pokémon Hunter, Haunted

[Goolix]

Been a minute, but I am here for Chapter 5!

But… I killed her. Shouldn't I be back? Looking around, everything is still muted, hazy… dreamlike. If killing her is not the way back, then what…

...is my face… drying?

It feels… crusty, ugh. And cool. Cold. A layer of something is forming onto it. Solidifying. Is it...

Oh Gods. I gotta open my mouth before --

“Mmphh!”

It's too late! My mouth, my nostrils - they're sealed shut!

When I read the end of the story, where Joanna had possessed him again, it felt out of nowhere. Like, didn't he exorcise her? But here, it seems that she did last at least a little beyond the exorcism.

Something gleams on the floor. Shards. Golden. Of the mask? Must be. It broke on my face. That was that impact I felt. What caused that? What caused this whole thing? Was this… was this just transition to reality? I… I guess. I mean, the shift to the spiritual plane or whatever it was also had me nearly suffocating, only fitting that...

A sizzle. The shards. They've caught fire. White fire, the same that took Joanna. Does that mean it's ending? Truly ending this time? Yes. Yes! Burn!

The mask, disappearing - the exorcism is finally reaching its end.

It really is over now.

That's what you think.

I catch my reflection in the mirror and study it further. I’m tall. My shoulders, wide, while my waist is narrow… a silhouette so masculine, yet so graceful. And look at that pretty face, pretty hair! By the Gods, I’m beautiful! No wonder HE chose me! I’m perfect!

A funny little moment of Red going full Narcissus on himself and thinking "yasss queen serving handsome snatched man goodness".

I turn to Michi. She’s so small. Afraid. And I'm so not that. The contrast is almost tangible.

Another instance of him insisting he's nothing like her even as he can't help but constantly compare himself to her.

After I've drugged her and carved the seal… this'll all be over. I'll just go home and - well, I will perform that exorcism just in case, but besides that… nothing more. I'll return to my boring life and be right where I started. Nothing gained from this adventure, only a danger patched up.

Red's life is currently

She nods, and for the first time in a while, a spark of hope ignites in her eyes. So she still has some of that in her. May it fuel her and guide her way in these dense woods.

And there again we have it. She's nothing like me, but she's admirable, and a little like me, but she's weak and we're not alike, but but but...

Little feet, little body, so frail. A sparkless pichu, its usually rosy cheeks pale with fear. Too light to even make audible noise as its tiny paws tap the ground, when the houndoom’s thumps can be felt to the bone.

A Pichu with no electrical power is truly about as pitiful as one can get.

But houndoom don’t have hands, do they?

They don’t. Then why are there hands? Wasn’t it supposed to be teeth around her neck, not hands? Wasn’t she supposed to be a fuzzy little pichu?

She’s not. She’s human. I’m human.

Wait --

Ah, being human forces Red to deal with the moment and reality.

But I will have to make one anyway - I can't let her live, not with those marks on her neck. I have to dispose of her body. I just… have to find some spot open enough for the circle to fit, first. And I better make sure she doesn't wake up in the meantime and needlessly complicate things…

What happened to your promise, Red? You promised you wouldn't hurt her and you just wanted to have some fun. And now you're going to send her to the shadow realm?

I pull back the sleeve of her left arm. Her wrist is so thin, her arm so dainty, her skin so pure… but force of habit makes me swipe it a few times anyway.

Swipe, like making sure nothing is dirty?

He really is flowing into me. He really is merging his body with mine. I’m going to… have HIM inside me, fully. HE will conquer every blood vessel, every cell’s cytoplasm. HE will… saturate me. I will become one with HIM. I will inherit HIS power. HIS control over everything. Anything material and anything immaterial. Existence. My existence. I can become what I want. I can think and feel how I want. I can banish any pain, any dread, any sorrow. I can feel euphoria unimaginable by any mortal. And… and I will never have to die.

It is interesting that he thinks he won't die, and yet he is fantasizing about his destruction at the hands of HIM. He wants his identity replaced.

The only thing I'll miss - no, I won't miss anything after I've ascended. What I hate to give up now, while corporeal sensations still matter, is this moment.

I wonder what it is he will miss.

Oh. No. I understand now. It wasn't real. None of it was.

Later in the story Red experiences a series of hallucinations. I think you said that this one was partially real? But I'm not sure. I thought it was fake the first time I read it.

I look at Michi over my shoulder. Yeah, I was like her. I sought adventure, experiences, mysteries… and every day I would learn something new. Each dawn had promise, and the world was full of possibilities.

But now I'm an adult and I know that what I am and what the world is don't mesh. I can't go to school, I can't get a job - I learned that years ago, and what happened at the supermarket today undeniably only highlights that. So all I can do is wait. Spend each day sitting at home, slowly drowning in the lack of things to do.

It is sad to think of Red as a child.

The psychiatrist. Could she possibly...

No, no, no! You can’t let anyone know. Are you honestly naive enough to believe them when they say what’s discussed is confidential? If you told that psychologist how much you want to cut people open and play with their organs, you’d be dragged over to the nuthouse before nightfall. In what world would a society of caterpie willingly keep a spearow around?

I mean, he's got a point. I don't think you can tell a mental health professional about your plans to cut people open without being reported as a safety concern.

Faced with another dead end, I open my eyes and let the features of the sky take over my mind for a change. The pleasant blue, the tufts of white, the invisible wind they drift around on…

It’s strange how calm they make me.

Nature remains an important thing for him - something that reminds him he is part of this world and this present moment.

. It stifles our progress in service of made up moralities, rules that no god truly enforces.

Thank goodness Nietzsche does not exist in his world. I can't imagine what he would be like if he were high not just on Helix but on weird interpretations of philosophy.

And if I have the freedom to choose how I think, why couldn’t I choose to drop the emotions that harm me and keep the emotions that give me strength? Peace, joy, relief… an existence knowing only these feelings can't be that bad to live.

Mind over matter! Except there's a limit to the power of the mind being it itself is made of matter. I suppose he could train himself for years to get to a point where he can truly control himself and all his sensations... but I don't think he can also engage in bloodlust while doing so.

I guess this corporeal form is one thing I can be happy about. Not only did I luck out on my genes, I’ve brought out their full potential with diligent training.

He works out a lot?

So this is an important chapter! Unexpectedly, Michi's stay in this has been cut short. I'm not sure Red really expected that to happen either. He has some conflicting urges in this chapter - he wants to be free and embody this predator concept, but he also wants to control his emotions. Freedom and control aren't necessarily at odds, but the way he wants it would require him to choose what he wants. He didn't plan to kill Michi - things got out of control and he became paranoid that someone would find her bruised and somehow lead it back to him. He's lucky that he has Helixian seals on his side. I am surprised he didn't do the memory seal on her, but I imagine that he must be very paranoid about being found for, you know, murder. As he himself says, he doesn't have much to look forward to without the fantasy of the kill! And he must know what he's doing is quite risky. Predators aren't known for being coy about the bodies they leave.

Still, it is sad to see. The one person he found who he could even begin to relate to, he zapped out of existence. He creates the conditions for his own ongoing isolation because of his, well, fill in the blanks - depression? Desire for self-annihilation? Wish to live forever? And his search for forever leads him to forsake the present moment, his adult life, the people he could try to connect to.

 

[canisaries]

When I read the end of the story, where Joanna had possessed him again, it felt out of nowhere. Like, didn't he exorcise her? But here, it seems that she did last at least a little beyond the exorcism.

It sounds like a stretch, but the idea is that, from the point of Red putting on the mask, Joanna gained the ability to give Red hallucinations (which ghosts have kind of semi-control over, being able to prompt them and then the host's mind coloring in the blanks save for the parts the ghost explicitly changes), and she managed to hide herself and create a fake illusory body for Red to kill instead of her, and the rest is theatrics to make Red think he was successful. She does do a weirdly good job for a first-timer, but well, story's gotta happen.

Later in the story Red experiences a series of hallucinations. I think you said that this one was partially real? But I'm not sure. I thought it was fake the first time I read it.

Oh, yeah, this one is actually fake. I forgot about this when I said HELIX was real - Red is correct in thinking HELIX's powers don't have enough range to reach him here, so it couldn't have been HIM. What actually causes this, though, could be Joanna, or it could be homebrew psychosis, or it could be a combination. When I first wrote this in 2017 these details weren't extremely important to me, so I've kinda had to manage them after-the-fact. Hell, there used to be a scene in the first version where Red creates his own illusion of torturing Joanna's brother to rile Joanna up, but I removed it because it was gratuitous, not even thinking about how it didn't make sense worldbuilding wise.

He works out a lot?

He does mention having a daily routine in Chapter 1 that involves exercise. The Helixians were kinda gymbros on top of everything else they were, obsessed with strength and survival of the fittest and all that. That, and I needed an in-universe excuse for why I always draw Red so muscular. :p

Thanks for the review! You are most definitely among the most analytical of my readers, and it's wonderful to read.