The Viterals

Chapter 16: Breakdown

The Eevee would be bigger tomorrow and bigger the day after that. Right before Zakana's eyes, the thing seemed to grow. Everything around him grew: the intensity of the wind outside, the echoes of things inside that vast warehouse, abandoned and looking worse for wear, and the biting-cold of the metal underneath, touching his skin and the droplets of water on him as if to freeze them forever.

Voices stirred Zakana to consciousness. He tried to ignore them, but he could not. These voices were different. Penetrating. One voice spoke and all the others feel silent.

"Why did you come here?" It was a child's voice.

Zakana looked for the speaker. He peeled himself off the ground. Shadows cast around him like streams of floodlights, though in black.

"You shouldn't have come here. No one should come here." The voice had power.

Slowly, Zakana rose. He noticed Eevee was gone.

"Who are you? Show yourself, coward!"

"I am no coward. I came here seeking the same thing as you. Does it make you a coward also?"

A silence fell upon them.

"I . . . I don't know! I don't care!"

"Tell me, then. What is it you care about?"

Suddenly, the scene changed. Walls crashed down silently, into the slick, cool earth. Wind did not bite, air did not howl. Now—only water.

"Where am I?"

A great waterway flowed underneath Zakana, but he did not fall. Immediately, his hands went to his belt, fumbled around for his Pokeball.

"You are in a place that has no beginning and no end."

"Life, then." And surprising to himself, Zakana said it calmly as though it was truth.

"Perhaps."

Water stretched outward and forward and on the other end of it, there was a waterfall. It made great tumultuous splashing noises. At the peak of this precipice stood a girl.

"Bambi?"

It surely was Bambi, but when the girl turned Zakana saw a different face. It was distorted. Changed.

"What did you do to her?" Zakana found the full power of his voice again.

"It's what you did to her." The voice said it just as harshly, and suddenly it was not the voice of a child anymore.

Energy drained out of Zakana, out of all his pores as he looked at his baby cousin, her eyes downcast, the fire inside her eyes extinguished. Not so much as a flame remained. It sapped him, the voice, even when it didn't speak. Zakana saw his color spill out, in oranges and blues, and dark red and purple lines.

"What . . . I did to her?"

There was a playfulness in the voice now and when Zakana looked up he saw it. Not only the voice but also the speaker of the voice. A boy. The boy wore a hat that covered his face. Tiny laughs escaped his mouth.

"You're just a child!" Zakana spun around, saw that he was no longer in the warehouse or near the waterfall anymore. Now, there was only darkness around them, tiny specks of yellow peppering the sky above.

"Age is not important. Would you say not, Zakana?"

He nearly fell backward hearing his name. "How—how do you know? My name!"

At this the boy looked up, sharply, in a deadened way, as though he were the worst of all predators and Zakana was easy prey.

"NO!" Zakana saw the face but it couldn't be true. He saw the Eevee in the boys' arms. "You're not real! You're just part of my hallucinations!"