The intake cells of Mauville Municipal Jail always had a smell that thoroughly burned itself into your memory; a rancid marriage of bleach, epoxy painted steel, and the various body odors of substance abuse. It assailed your other senses in much subtler ways too… Such as the intense head-melting silence punctuated only by the agonized groans of the slowly dying twenty-year-old air conditioning unit. The retching of withdrawal-addled junkies in the cell across the hall. The coarse men and mon peering through the porthole of the cell door, Lucario or Machoke or steely faced humans with faded and torn police uniforms, whose gazes burned holes of ridicule so directly into your soul that you lost the will to defend your own honor. The single stainless steel toilet/sink combo in the corner, separated from Arceus and everyone only with a cheap Thriftymart shower curtain. The taste of coagulating blood in your gums as you wash out your mouth with the acrid tap water therein.
A disheveled, long haired human laid down on the stainless steel bench in that cell one broiling hot evening, curled up below the air conditioner in hopes of catching a moment of relief from the heat and the throbbing of the injuries to his face. One of his coffee colored eyes sagged down to the vomit-stained floor, the other was swollen shut like a fattened plum. The gentle, effeminate features of his face were coated in grime and red like a freshly beaten steak The tough fabric and poor fit of his navy-blue inmate uniform caused him to squirm in discomfort while he nursed the mottled red rings of bruises and scabs trying to heal around his wrists. Patches of hair were missing from his scalp, so the rotund inmate hat sat besides the worn out sandals a few feet away, and his mind finally found the courage to root around his mouth with his tongue to count the number of teeth he’d lost.
The worst feeling of all, of course, was the hollowness. Not unlike the kind of hollow numbness that comes after a horrific injury to your skin and you can no longer feel the subtle joys of life in those limbs, but you’re still able to experience the pain. The pain is always the last thing to go.
“Please be safe…” he squeaked to himself as a line of muddy tears streaked down his cheek, smattering along the floor, adding yet another pathetic layer to the filthy regolith crusted onto the checkered, yellowing, white and blue linoleum tile.
Hours passed until the lights outside the window and in his holding cell instantly flickered to a low light. On the wall, a metal plate over a speaker shook as the old microphone inside rattled the words, “Dinner. Keep it quiet, offenders. I wanna go home bored, y’hear?”
A steel flap at the bottom of the door flipped upwards with an echoing thunk, waking them up to an instant panic. Then a thick green food tray unceremoniously slid past the opening and scraped to a halt in the center of the room, spilling a little of the corn-slop in one corner down the side and on the floor as it came to rest. A bottle of water rolled in after, bouncing off the opposite wall. Then the bean slot closed. He waited for a few minutes, watching the door like an animal trapped in its den, before pushing himself up, wiping damp filth from his cheeks, and collecting his food.
No utensils, of course. Good thing for the grain cake though, stale enough to pick up anything… though their own edibility was definitely in question. “Never thought I’d be thanking Arceus for stale bread,” he said to himself as he clumsily slopped cornmeal into his mouth with a flap of leathery bread-skin and inspected the other food. He winced in pain as the hot cornmeal ran across one of his broken teeth, but he shouldered on and avoided that side of his mouth.
“Oh Petitils sake…” he retched as he realized almost everything on his tray had some kind of meat in it.
He consumed as much as he could, including the individually wrapped cubes of butter, and walked up to the door. As one of the older men lumbered by, a machoke behind him with a blue and gold collar and cadet’s cap, he knocked on the window to get his attention. The guard looked at the door in response and rolled his eyes. Once it was apparent he was being ignored another healthy rapping against the glass encouraged the guard to approach. “Heated towels are at the other place, all out here.”
The inmate brushed his matted hair out of his face as he looked up and spoke in turn. “I’m not a mon eater…” he said meekly.
The guard opened his eyes in mock surprise and made an exaggerated guffaw. “Not all that interested in what you do or don’t do with mon, you little grimer.”
His gaze shot down to the ground, an anger welling back up in him like it had before. He pushed on, trying so very hard to keep it inside. “Don’t want anything special,” he croaked, “just more cornmeal.”
The guard looked back to his Pokemon partner, and the two of them laughed out loud, holding their bellies like a repulsive jail Santa and his musclebound elf. “Cornmeals’ got Chikorita fats innit.”
The inmate’s eyes glared up at the guard as his stomach churned. After a minute of silence the guard waved his hand and started walking away. “That’s ‘Sir,’ to you, by the way. Got nothin’ else for ya. Y’aint gonna die.”
He carried it with him and weakly curled up in the corner. When he was brought in he missed the meal for the prior day. It had been over 24 hours since he had eaten anything besides that cornmeal, and his mind was beginning to lobby with his stomach on rebelling against that decision.
“Guess I won’t…” he said and kicked the tray away, using his hat and shoes as a pillow.
He wasn’t sure how he managed to sleep, perhaps everything weighing down on him finally came to a tipping point and his mind decided it had had enough. His heart jumped awake like a generator, sat cold for years and suddenly fired up to power the whole house all at once, as the guard’s Machoke partner slammed on the door to rouse him.
“Your attorney is here,” the guard said, rubbing a tired look off his face. “Turn around, forehead on the wall, hands behind your back.”
The long haired inmate did as he was told, but this was a difficult ask for anyone who was just woken up and in pain. And as he was against the wall the door clicked open as a prelude to the sounds of heaving bodies coming to detain him, resurfacing very recent and very uncomfortable memories. His foot slipped and he shifted around to get balanced
“Don’t move!” the guard shouted as Machoke’s elbow found itself between his shoulders. All the breath was squeezed out of his lungs and he was cuffed at the hands and legs in an instant afterwards.
He was led out into the hallway, beyond the thick plate doors that would lead to the cell tiers, and on to a secure office environment where he was quickly brought into an out of date faux wood environment. In the center of the room was a small square table, and thankfully the chair he was secured down to had some cushioning. As he sat and waited in the air conditioned room in the semi comfortable desk chair his head bobbed up and down in exhaustion.
His snores were abruptly interrupted by a soft knocking on the door, then a loud knock. He haphazardly whipped rogue strands of hair by flailing his head around as an unfamiliar blonde human in a stripped suit with smiling teeth like a mouthful of mint Chiclets and his Pokemon, a dapper little Abra with a black bow-tie and a briefcase, waltzed in and took their place at the opposite side of the table.
“Mornin’, Emilio!” he said, with a level of polymer enthusiasm that was truly unreal.
His one good eye glared at the man, and the other managed to pry open a little as the swelling was giving way to immense bruising and a weeping of fluid from his tear duct. The Abra reached up to his eye with a tissue and mopped up the fluid. “Hi…” he hissed back, nodding a thank you to the Abra.
“I’m Zachary Ortiz, I’ve been appointed to represent you at trial, courtesy of Mauville City.”
Emilio nodded, “Any chance you can press charges for me too?”
Zachary laughed and then stopped himself. “Sorry, didn’t meant to laugh that hard. Actually, it might not seem like it now but its a real blessing they roughed you up like this. We’re gonna get lots of pictures and the mental imprint from my partner here will tell your side of the story. Expecting I can cut some serious deals with this…” he started unbuckling a small old-school camera from a leather case, then snapping pictures of Emil’s face. “Open your mouth please… good good, thanks. Ahem, anyway. nothing I can do about the jail stay until then, of course, since your escapades got you marked as a flight risk…”
“So… my home… my job…” Emil croaked back, suddenly aware of his dehydrated throat. “My--”
Zachary smiled coolly and waved his hand in interruption. “don’t worry about all that. You’ve got much bigger frillish to fry. Hold up your palms…” he snapped another picture, then winced with a tsk tsk tsk. “You wouldn’t wanna pay bail on these charges anyway. Crooner law has the privilege of managing your property here foreward, rest assured.” He slapped Emil on the back with a thumbs-up and grinned ear to ear. “Might even get you outta here by Summerfest, if we play our cards right.”
Emil’s eyes opened in surprise. “That soon?” he gasped aloud.
“Definitely a possibility, my friend, but you gotta be one-hundred percent honest and tell me everything. No holding back, and more importantly,” he said as he slapped his Abra on the shoulder, “don’t fight him when the time comes.”
“I… do we need to imprint right now?” Emil said, already worried he was going to be tugged out of this comfy chair and thrown back into holding so soon after being plopped in there.
“Not at all. Actually, I find that letting my clients tell it the way they remember themselves helps ‘em loosen up for ol’ Shortie.”
Zachary Ortiz, Attorney at Law, scooted another bottle of water towards him and then leaned in closely to Emil’s face with his gangly fingers woven together into a fleshy little basket.
Emil is a quiet man with a well kept secret; he has little to look forward to but even less to complain about as he works his life away and puts up with his obnoxious wealthy neighbor.
That is until a once-in-a-lifetime sequence of events threatens to upend everything he has, should he go for the catch.
