MOTHER
The day I played that game was the worst day of my life. I am Joey Bennet, and Pokemon used to be my favorite game. It had been a while since I had played that game, Pokemon Leaf Green was the very best of them all in my opinion. I picked the game up out of my closet and blew off the dust. I wondered if the game still worked propperly. I popped it in my Game boy advanced SP and it worked on the first try. At first, everything seemed fine with the game, the original animation played and the characters seemed fine. When I went into the game everything was a bit darker, but since I hadn’t played in awhile I just shrugged it off because I thought I had just forgotten the original brightness of the game. I had beaten the game before, so all I really had to do was battle random strangers. I went into my menu to see which pokemon I had equipped and I had Pikachu level 100, Blissey level 100, Gyarados level 100, Charizard level 100, Blastoise level 100 and Cleffa level 1. They all looked slightly... off. They all looked kind of, sad. All but Cleffa. Cleffa looked demonic. Not literally demon-like, but its facial expression was, scary, bordering on the murderous side. I studied my Pokemon, extremely confused with their condition, I was sure they didn’t look like that before. I went into the stats of my pokemon, and where it showed the attitude of each, it said gloomy. Again except for Cleffa, for whom it said mischievous, then something startling happened, Cleffa disappeared from my pokemon, and when I closed the menu I saw him staring at my character. He said, “Oh, you’re back.” My curiosity kept me going. “It’s been quite a bit of time, hasn’t it? I almost forgot that I wasn’t you.” My mind raced, baffled at this ridiculous statement. “You see funny thing, Joey, was it? Every time a trainer leaves for more than a month a Pokemon is randomly selected from his bag to take his or her place in the Pokemon world. Can you guess who it was this time?” He Grinned maniacally at my character. “I used my new power to control the world. I never levelled up because I was a human now, and there was no need. I destroyed the elite four, several times. That was when I realized pokemon don’t level up fast enough that way. I decided to test my new theory on a weak little Catter-” The Cleffa seemed to have jumped back into his Pokeball, startled by something nearby, my mom walked in the room. She asked me what I was doing and I answered,
“Nothing mom.” She left looking suspicious, she can tell when I’m lying. Cleffa came back and before it started talking I mumbled to myself, “God this is creepy.”
“Well don’t pretend that I’m not here!” I jumped back, startled that the game had responded to my comment. “Now, back to my story. I decided to test my new theory out on a Caterpie, after my charizard had knocked it out, I commanded him to continue to attack the unconscious body until he had killed the poor Caterpie. Even though Caterpie was extremely low level, Charizard had gained three times the experience of beating Mewtwo. I found joy and obsession with this style of training and I decided to go for the big shot. I challenged the elite four and I Brutally mutilated every single one of their Pokemon. By the end, every single one of my, or should I say your Pokemon was level 100, when I checked the stats though, all of their attitudes had changed to gloomy. I guess the mental trauma of mass murder had gotten to them... Whatever.” I finally noticed my mom’s shoe under the door.
“Hi mom.”
“Oh, you see me. Why were you talking to your self in a demonic voice Joey? Do you know how much that worries me?”
Cleffa looked up at me, not my character.
“Shall I dispose of this annoyance?”
“No, no that’s my mom!”
“No Joey, This is your Mom” He showed me the rotting corpse of a character I recognized as the default mother in the game. “She kept on calling me on this phone! I thought of destroying the phone to be polite, but I realized that the phone is necessary to call up prior trainers to have rematches. So I decided to command the Pokemon to kill your mother.” My real mom screamed. “That’s it, she has to go.” It took me a moment to realize what he meant.
“NO!” My mother began to pixelate and fade away. She disappeared and then I saw her on my Gameboy. Cleffa choked her to death as I watched. I smashed my Gameboy on my floor and ran away to my dad. I immediately hugged him and told him what happened. He didn’t believe me. He came to my room to see and my mom was right there, sitting on my bed, smiling. I cried and cried anyway, and I was so relieved, until an hour later, when I talked to her again and noticed something, different. I finally found out what the difference was. And now once in awhile, when I look at her, I see the face of Cleffa... her true face.