Crack Attack: A Collection of One-Shots and Other Disturbing Shit

Gotta Catch 'Em All! (Lachlan)

           "Damn it." The Gastly had already despawned by the time I made it down the hill. "Damn it!" I zoom back out on my phone and try to find another one - today's been bollocks for Pokeluck. I see another one a little farther inland and I check the time before I head out and try to catch this one. Jay doesn't say anything as he follows me but I know he's getting pissed, too. We've been tromping around the lake and the golf course for over an hour now in the pitch fucking dark and I'm waiting for a security guy to come along any time now and drag our asses away with a taser.

This is shit.

The little flickering purple spot slowly morphs into a Gastly on the screen and I pick up the pace, wondering how my life has come to this. We're almost there - it's so close I could almost reach out and touch it. The light on the recording camera is moving around as he walks behind me, trying to figure out where I'm headed so he can get the shot. I abruptly stop in front of the grinning, gloating, floating Gastly when I see something actually god awful and ghastly on my phone screen.

"And what the hell are you?" There is something red glistening on the ground behind the ghost Pokemon and I cringe at my own stupidity when I find myself sidestepping to walk around the Pokemon that doesn't actually exist.

But this exists.

"You find a shiny?" he asks but I just blow him off and kneel down next to the crumpled body on the ground.

"Looks like a dog." He brings the camera over closer to light it up and I'd bet a bag of Jollys that he's recording this. Editing grind tomorrow, boyos. But when he brings the camera closer, it doesn't look anything like a dog. "Holy shitfuck." I look up around us to see if the sick motherfucker who did this is somewhere watching but it's just us out here. "You got it all on camera, right? So they know we didn't do this?"

"Yeah, uh... Yeah."

"I'm gonna call the coppers. Don't touch her." I open up the phone app and my eyes won't move away from the unclothed blonde girl on the ground, with her face down in the wet, muddy grass and the back of her head crushed open and half-covered in matted, bloody hair. I don't know what I said on the phone. All I know is that I need to do something. Now.

They told me not to hang up but I'll pretend I didn't hear them. They don't need to know what I found today. No one needs to know the truth.

The camera follows me as I walk back past the bloodied body and when I see the Gastly's still hovering right behind her, I know everything is right in the world.

Flick, miss. Flick, miss. Flick, miss. Damn I suck. Flick, miss. Flick, click! one, two, three, snap! I smile.

"We got her, boys." Mega fucking Gengar, here I come.