intergalactic platypus
Only rescues maidens
~This is a decidedly offbeat oneshot I decided to write. My writing isn't bad, so please take the time to read it. Be warned though, its different~
The first thing I noticed was the color white. It was all around me. White sheets. Blinding white lights. White walls. I had always seen that color as sterile. Clean. Boring. Most people thought it was heaven, but I thought it might be Hell.
The sheets smelled like something that had once been clean but had long gone stale. The faint sourness that you can’t quite place. It smelled a little bit like fear to me.
I tried to move and felt my restraints. I narrowed my eyes. “Team Rocket” I snarled to myself. They must have gotten me. Me and Pikachu. Maybe even May and Max and Brock. With this thought, I started to grow panicky. They couldn’t take my friends.
“Is there anyone out there!” I tried to shout. However, my voice felt long unused and instead of coming out powerful and booming like I had wanted it came out weak. Like the squeak of a little girl. “What have you done with my friends?”
A tall man appeared over me. He was dark, with curly black hair and a beard. He had stony black eyes that I couldn’t read into. His dark appearance was a stark contrast to all the white in the room. He wore a white coat to balance it out. To blend into the rest of the room. Everything ultimately had to blend.
“Ashton. I see you’re awake” he said in a deep voice. His voice was quiet and steady, yet had a resonance. It reminded me of the sound that would be made in a dark and empty cave if someone tried to come in and break the silence punctuated by the water dripping from the ceiling.
“My name is Dr. Jackson. It’s a rarity that you wake up. This could be a big step in our recovery if you’re willing to work with me.”
His black eyes bored into me. I shuddered.
“Are you willing to do it for me Ashton?”
My usual defiance was melting fast. I wouldn’t cooperate with a man who so obviously worked for Team Rocket, the very organization who had plagued me since I started training, the group that represented everything I was against.
“I won’t work with Team Rocket even if my life depends on it” I snarled. I tried to make my voice intimidating, but it came out weak and wavering.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand Ashton. Team Rocket doesn’t exist” he said. His tone had seemed to soften a bit. Or maybe it was just my imagination.
“Yeah right” I laughed. “I know all of you guys excuses.”
Dr. Jackson raised his eyebrow quizzically.
“Ashton, Team Rocket can’t exist. They chase after an illusion.”
I was puzzled by this statement. Did he mean wealth? Power? Controlling all the worlds Pokemon?
“What’s this so called illusion” I asked, trying to keep my uncertainty out of my voice.
An unreadable emotion flashed across Dr. Jackson’s face.
“Ashton, most doctors don’t believe its good to be honest with you. They think it traumatizes patients to let them know the straight up truth. I disagree. I think the first step to recovery is reality. Therefore I find it to be my duty to present you with yours.”
I felt the sick feeling of dread. The powerlessness that an idea was going to present itself that you didn’t want, but it was beyond your control. It tasted like metal and went down into my stomach like ipecac. I tried to swallow.
“Pokemon aren’t real Ashton” Dr. Jackson said, his voice smooth and unwavering. “You made the whole thing up.”
Right then I knew the true meaning of the word overwhelmed. Every part of me was splitting apart at once with this information. The parts of me that wanted to think Dr. Jackson was working for Team Rocket, the part that wanted to believe he was perhaps deranged, the part that thought I had been transported to some strange place, or the worst part of all, the darkest corner of my mind: the part that actually believed it.
I felt like I was going to burst. I wondered vaguely what it would look like if I did. If my organs and blood and tissues would make a shape on the wall. If they would make the pattern of a man screaming.
I couldn’t swallow. My scream had welled up in my throat like a ball. It was trapped there, unable to be freed. My level of emotion was acting as a barricade.
Finally, I found my voice. It was choked, rusty.
“You can’t mean that. Promise me it’s not true. Please. Even if you are evil or trying to trick me, promise me right now.”
I gave him a look that tried to express the pure desperation I was feeling. all I needed to hear was him saying he made it all up. For him to give me a kiss goodnight and let me free in the morning.
Instead, I saw his expression change to a pitying sadness.
”I’m sorry Ashton. I wish I could say what you want to hear. I just can’t though. The fact is everything I just told you is the truth.”
His voice was rich. Satiny. And ultimately the most frightening thing I had ever heard in my life because I realized he couldn’t be lying.
My throat turned to sandpaper. Somewhere in my mind I realized this is what fear really was. Fear was a white hospital room. A room that turned around everything you had ever known.
I managed to choke out questions based on instinct alone, and that last lingering hope that perhaps Dr. Jackson was crazy, although I knew in my heart otherwise.
“Why doctor?”
He sighed. “Ashton, you were in a horrible situation as a child. Mercilessly abused in ways that would make your stomach turn if I described them now. You have the scars to show it.”
I looked around myself, and a detached part of me realized he was right. I had ropey white lines at various points on my body.
“Anyway, your only refuge was your friends and animals. You always were an animal lover. You had a pet mouse who became your closest and most trusted companion. You would keep a small but tight group of friends. They’ve been to the hospital fairly consistently to see you, except for the two who gave up.”
He looked at me hard for a moment.
”If your occasional talk in your delusional state is anything to go by, you had renamed these friends Misty and Tracey. They were never really gone to you though. Every once in a while during observation we would notice those names uttered again even though they hadn’t visited you in years.”
Misty and Tracey. Gone. I could see how Tracey would leave, but after all my years of friendship with Misty she had stopped visiting me?
“Why would Misty stop coming here Doctor” I cried out.
He gave me a stern look. “Don’t mix her up with her real life counterpart. Maya, the friend she was based off of, left rather reluctantly. However, Misty isn’t real.”
“Anyway, your love of animals and few friends, as well as your older brother Brick, were your only thing to turn to. Eventually, you retreated into your own mind. You were ten years old at the time. It was a very interesting case study to watch you continue to build your own reality.”
He thought for a long moment. Case study. I was a case study.
I had read somewhere that a blister was simply the result of the barrier between the upper and lower layers of the skin being broken. Really, this moment was the blister of my reality. My life had been split right from what I thought it was. My reality had been torn from the life I was really living. A blister of my life.
“So Ashton, you have continued to live in this alternate reality. Your mind wants to protect you from reality, so it makes up a fantasy world for you. A world where you can be great. A world where your never abused and you always fight evil, not become submissive to it. A world where at the end of the day there’s always someone to turn to.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Isn’t that what we all want? Every child would kill for the fantasy you live in Ashton. But you can’t continue with it. You can’t spend the rest of your life in a mental hospital bed.”
Its clear Dr. Jackson has nothing but the best of intentions to help me. But I didn’t want to live my life like this. I didn’t want to change or to get better. I wanted Pikachu and May and Max and Brock and Misty and my mom and Professor Oak and Tracey.
I wanted to go back and still have a shot at being the worlds best Pokemon trainer, not just another waste of a life trying to live again. I had a life where I was, so why waste it by throwing it all away?
“Ashton, are you ok? Ashton?” Dr. Jackson started to look worried. I let him drift out of focus. I was concentrating on something more important.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to go back. Tried to go back to my world. A place without the stale smell of the sheets or the sterile white of the room. A place where everything was perfect but nothing was real, because nothing real is perfect.
Sometimes we just have to lie to ourselves and have to accept that the truth isn’t the best way to go. Because if lying is the best way to protect ourselves and to keep everything intact, it’s what we had to do.
After all, our goal should be ultimately to protect ourselves and to make sure everything works out ok. So I focused on a place I would much rather be.
I felt myself slipping, spiraling. Felt warm hands on my back but paid no notice. I was falling. Falling.
I was standing with May, Max and Brock. May was nudging my back.
“Ash, where have you been? You just stopped in the middle of our walk and were staring into space. Its like you were totally out of it.”
I blushed a little bit at my own absentmindedness.
“Sorry, I space out sometimes” I said sheepishly, sweat dropping. Pikachu imitated me.
“Well Ash get your head out of the clouds because you have a quest to keep up with” said Brock encouragingly.
“Alright!” I shouted, and started running in down the path. The others, laughing, tried to keep up with me.
At that moment I had the strangest thought. It seemed like it came out of nowhere.
Hell is white.
--------------------
The first thing I noticed was the color white. It was all around me. White sheets. Blinding white lights. White walls. I had always seen that color as sterile. Clean. Boring. Most people thought it was heaven, but I thought it might be Hell.
The sheets smelled like something that had once been clean but had long gone stale. The faint sourness that you can’t quite place. It smelled a little bit like fear to me.
I tried to move and felt my restraints. I narrowed my eyes. “Team Rocket” I snarled to myself. They must have gotten me. Me and Pikachu. Maybe even May and Max and Brock. With this thought, I started to grow panicky. They couldn’t take my friends.
“Is there anyone out there!” I tried to shout. However, my voice felt long unused and instead of coming out powerful and booming like I had wanted it came out weak. Like the squeak of a little girl. “What have you done with my friends?”
A tall man appeared over me. He was dark, with curly black hair and a beard. He had stony black eyes that I couldn’t read into. His dark appearance was a stark contrast to all the white in the room. He wore a white coat to balance it out. To blend into the rest of the room. Everything ultimately had to blend.
“Ashton. I see you’re awake” he said in a deep voice. His voice was quiet and steady, yet had a resonance. It reminded me of the sound that would be made in a dark and empty cave if someone tried to come in and break the silence punctuated by the water dripping from the ceiling.
“My name is Dr. Jackson. It’s a rarity that you wake up. This could be a big step in our recovery if you’re willing to work with me.”
His black eyes bored into me. I shuddered.
“Are you willing to do it for me Ashton?”
My usual defiance was melting fast. I wouldn’t cooperate with a man who so obviously worked for Team Rocket, the very organization who had plagued me since I started training, the group that represented everything I was against.
“I won’t work with Team Rocket even if my life depends on it” I snarled. I tried to make my voice intimidating, but it came out weak and wavering.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand Ashton. Team Rocket doesn’t exist” he said. His tone had seemed to soften a bit. Or maybe it was just my imagination.
“Yeah right” I laughed. “I know all of you guys excuses.”
Dr. Jackson raised his eyebrow quizzically.
“Ashton, Team Rocket can’t exist. They chase after an illusion.”
I was puzzled by this statement. Did he mean wealth? Power? Controlling all the worlds Pokemon?
“What’s this so called illusion” I asked, trying to keep my uncertainty out of my voice.
An unreadable emotion flashed across Dr. Jackson’s face.
“Ashton, most doctors don’t believe its good to be honest with you. They think it traumatizes patients to let them know the straight up truth. I disagree. I think the first step to recovery is reality. Therefore I find it to be my duty to present you with yours.”
I felt the sick feeling of dread. The powerlessness that an idea was going to present itself that you didn’t want, but it was beyond your control. It tasted like metal and went down into my stomach like ipecac. I tried to swallow.
“Pokemon aren’t real Ashton” Dr. Jackson said, his voice smooth and unwavering. “You made the whole thing up.”
Right then I knew the true meaning of the word overwhelmed. Every part of me was splitting apart at once with this information. The parts of me that wanted to think Dr. Jackson was working for Team Rocket, the part that wanted to believe he was perhaps deranged, the part that thought I had been transported to some strange place, or the worst part of all, the darkest corner of my mind: the part that actually believed it.
I felt like I was going to burst. I wondered vaguely what it would look like if I did. If my organs and blood and tissues would make a shape on the wall. If they would make the pattern of a man screaming.
I couldn’t swallow. My scream had welled up in my throat like a ball. It was trapped there, unable to be freed. My level of emotion was acting as a barricade.
Finally, I found my voice. It was choked, rusty.
“You can’t mean that. Promise me it’s not true. Please. Even if you are evil or trying to trick me, promise me right now.”
I gave him a look that tried to express the pure desperation I was feeling. all I needed to hear was him saying he made it all up. For him to give me a kiss goodnight and let me free in the morning.
Instead, I saw his expression change to a pitying sadness.
”I’m sorry Ashton. I wish I could say what you want to hear. I just can’t though. The fact is everything I just told you is the truth.”
His voice was rich. Satiny. And ultimately the most frightening thing I had ever heard in my life because I realized he couldn’t be lying.
My throat turned to sandpaper. Somewhere in my mind I realized this is what fear really was. Fear was a white hospital room. A room that turned around everything you had ever known.
I managed to choke out questions based on instinct alone, and that last lingering hope that perhaps Dr. Jackson was crazy, although I knew in my heart otherwise.
“Why doctor?”
He sighed. “Ashton, you were in a horrible situation as a child. Mercilessly abused in ways that would make your stomach turn if I described them now. You have the scars to show it.”
I looked around myself, and a detached part of me realized he was right. I had ropey white lines at various points on my body.
“Anyway, your only refuge was your friends and animals. You always were an animal lover. You had a pet mouse who became your closest and most trusted companion. You would keep a small but tight group of friends. They’ve been to the hospital fairly consistently to see you, except for the two who gave up.”
He looked at me hard for a moment.
”If your occasional talk in your delusional state is anything to go by, you had renamed these friends Misty and Tracey. They were never really gone to you though. Every once in a while during observation we would notice those names uttered again even though they hadn’t visited you in years.”
Misty and Tracey. Gone. I could see how Tracey would leave, but after all my years of friendship with Misty she had stopped visiting me?
“Why would Misty stop coming here Doctor” I cried out.
He gave me a stern look. “Don’t mix her up with her real life counterpart. Maya, the friend she was based off of, left rather reluctantly. However, Misty isn’t real.”
“Anyway, your love of animals and few friends, as well as your older brother Brick, were your only thing to turn to. Eventually, you retreated into your own mind. You were ten years old at the time. It was a very interesting case study to watch you continue to build your own reality.”
He thought for a long moment. Case study. I was a case study.
I had read somewhere that a blister was simply the result of the barrier between the upper and lower layers of the skin being broken. Really, this moment was the blister of my reality. My life had been split right from what I thought it was. My reality had been torn from the life I was really living. A blister of my life.
“So Ashton, you have continued to live in this alternate reality. Your mind wants to protect you from reality, so it makes up a fantasy world for you. A world where you can be great. A world where your never abused and you always fight evil, not become submissive to it. A world where at the end of the day there’s always someone to turn to.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Isn’t that what we all want? Every child would kill for the fantasy you live in Ashton. But you can’t continue with it. You can’t spend the rest of your life in a mental hospital bed.”
Its clear Dr. Jackson has nothing but the best of intentions to help me. But I didn’t want to live my life like this. I didn’t want to change or to get better. I wanted Pikachu and May and Max and Brock and Misty and my mom and Professor Oak and Tracey.
I wanted to go back and still have a shot at being the worlds best Pokemon trainer, not just another waste of a life trying to live again. I had a life where I was, so why waste it by throwing it all away?
“Ashton, are you ok? Ashton?” Dr. Jackson started to look worried. I let him drift out of focus. I was concentrating on something more important.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to go back. Tried to go back to my world. A place without the stale smell of the sheets or the sterile white of the room. A place where everything was perfect but nothing was real, because nothing real is perfect.
Sometimes we just have to lie to ourselves and have to accept that the truth isn’t the best way to go. Because if lying is the best way to protect ourselves and to keep everything intact, it’s what we had to do.
After all, our goal should be ultimately to protect ourselves and to make sure everything works out ok. So I focused on a place I would much rather be.
I felt myself slipping, spiraling. Felt warm hands on my back but paid no notice. I was falling. Falling.
I was standing with May, Max and Brock. May was nudging my back.
“Ash, where have you been? You just stopped in the middle of our walk and were staring into space. Its like you were totally out of it.”
I blushed a little bit at my own absentmindedness.
“Sorry, I space out sometimes” I said sheepishly, sweat dropping. Pikachu imitated me.
“Well Ash get your head out of the clouds because you have a quest to keep up with” said Brock encouragingly.
“Alright!” I shouted, and started running in down the path. The others, laughing, tried to keep up with me.
At that moment I had the strangest thought. It seemed like it came out of nowhere.
Hell is white.
--------------------
