Declan Ewald Wants to be Real: An Existential Tragicomedy

Neurotic teen and designated quiet one Declan Ewald attempts to outrun his existential dread. Afraid his hometown is slowly siphoning his will to live, he sets out into the world stumbling over crushing melancholy, wavering optimism, and everything in between. Everything is awful, but somethings are okay, and if they aren't then at least he and his friends will all be dead someday.

[T] for language

Chapter 1: Declan Ewald Wants to be Real

Declan Ewald’s greatest fear was that if he were to never get out of bed, nobody would miss him. Not a word would be spoken of him, not a blade of grass would take notice of his absence, and not a sound in the entire small town Stantlerfield would conjure, even by accident, any recognition of the existence of Declan Ewald. The thought alone was enough to make him pull the covers over his face to hide it from the daylight slipping through the cracks in the rafters.

He didn’t know what disembodied force pulled him out of the sheets. Perhaps something akin to hope; maybe it was the fear of doing anything other than what he had done the day before, and the day before that, and the day before the day before that. Getting out of bed and not starving we’re two of the three things he knew in this world.

He made no glance at his surroundings, their allure eroded by time and familiarity. It was the inside of a shed, spacious enough to make one feel lonely under the right conditions, but stood wall to wall with pages whose contents he would not dare let see the light of day. Each paper had its own black ink scrawlings on it, some indecipherable to the eyes of many. Fears, aches, and personal hells all put to paper in the form of poetry or the closest things to it.

He didn’t dream. Declan never dreamed. He did his best to not let it bother him. Maybe he just forgot them as soon as he woke up, or maybe some people just don’t dream. Late nights spent entertaining the latter pushed him to the edge of panic and robbed him of another chance to test his theory for better or worse.
After finding his feet he rubbed another dreamless night out of his eyes. His hand found the door to the shed and he gently pushed it open bracing his eyes for the brightness on the other side. His heart shriveled in the sunlight as the rays rested lazily on Stantlerfield, a town that knew barely of his name. In its best light, Stantlerfield was the sameness of suburbia mixed with the bleak nothingness of small townsville, but it was all Declan knew, and it was the only future he spent his lifetime trying to reconcile with.

He walked across the yard into the house opposite of the shed. The house was pin-drop silent and not a note in sight as per usual. He would not be hearing from either of them again. He only came for whatever he could find in the fridge and his backpack.

School had the uncanny ability to make Declan feel more lonely than he could ever possibly make himself feel on his own. With Stantlerfield High creeping into view Declan’s heart sank a little further each day, at this rate it would reach his feet by next week. Stantlerfield High was two story rectangular stack of once clay red bricks older than a dome fossil with a road paved long ago parallel to the front entrance along the length of the building until it hooked left into a parking lot. He observed the building with disillusionment from the other side of the road and prepared to cross. A low growling engine in the distance caught him in the middle of the street. The front grill of a Chople berry red Raichu GR11 sports car barreled down the stretch and blew past him missing him by a hair leaving the sound of some douchebag teenager yelling “Didn’t see ya, dickhead!” in its wake chuckling as though he had concocted the pinnacle of comedic original insults from the driver’s seat. Chad Stantlerfield, however, was not just some douchebag. He was the most important douchebag in town.

In the hallways, everyone had something to say to someone except Declan. To him, it was all noise. Overwhelming. Isolating. Empty. Terrifying.
His first class was Speech and Debate because of course it was. The poster outside the classroom was enough to fill him with sopping dread. It was a picture of a screaming Loudred captioned, “Speak your mind! Always make yourself heard!” A podium at the front of the room loomed over the rows of desks as Declan sat in one against the wall. He felt Butterfree in his stomach, their flutters drowned out by the intense pounding of his heart. The bell rang and the seats filled with twenty-some-odd students. Dr. Clark entered the room, scanning the desks on her way to the podium. Her sharp diction penetrated the class’s indifference.

“Okay, your assignment last night was to prepare a speech about something you want to experience before you die. Today each of you will present to the class and you will be graded on the quality of your writing and your ability to make yourself not only heard but understood.”
The butterfree in Declan’s stomach laid eggs. Dr. Clark’s eyes hovered over the seating chart.

“Eileen, you’ll go first,” she called.

On the other side of the room a short brunette sprung to life.

Eileen Andrews was, at least from a high school boy’s point of view, perfect. Always full of life and radiant with positive energy. Just the act of her stepping to the podium was enough to pry Declan’s attention off his own anxiety if only for a moment.

Like herself, her speech was perfect. She talked about wanting to see the Butterfree migration in Kanto just so she would know that there was such beauty to be seen in the world by taking it in with her own eyes. But Declan felt too far away to be moved. She spoke of a fulfillment that he didn’t quite understand. She sounded as though she knew what she wanted out of life, and was determined to get it. Declan Ewald was lost.

The rest of the presentations came and went in the shadow of Eileen’s. Wannabe poke professors, nurses, and Pokemon masters, but at the very least they all knew what they wanted out of life.

It wasn’t too long before the students in Declan’s row began presenting. Before he knew it the seat in front of him was empty. His heart thrashed around the inside of his chest desperate for a way out, his lungs expanded and contracted rapidly trying to keep up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some note cards flipping through them anxiously. The sweat of his palms rubbed off on them, causing the cards to wilt beneath their own weight.

The boy presenting finished and those who weren’t asleep gave a half ass applause. Dr. Clark scanned the seating chart seated at her desk in the corner of the room.

“Up next, Declan Ewald,” she called.

The room remained motionless. The teacher gave an indifferent shrug and searched the seating chart for the next student. There was no murmur of intrigue as to his whereabouts or a turn of any head, only stillborn silence and five notecards at an empty desk, worn and blank. Declan Ewald did not exist today.

The bathroom door hinges squealed as they closed behind him. Declan, hyperventilating, scrambled into the first stall locking it behind him. The sight of the checkered tiles made him nauseous as he staggered face first towards the toilet, caught himself on the seat, and stared into the bowl, eyes watering. He stood there for a moment arched over the toilet seat. His heartbeat throbbing in his ears, breathing heavily. A gag took his breath away and heaved the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. His legs were ramshackle stilts beneath him. He tried to straighten himself up. Lightheaded he fell back against the stall door, closed his eyes, and sank into the floor. He just sat there. Breathing. It was only Wednesday and Declan was 0 for 3 this week, and found himself here more often as each one passed. But tomorrow was another day. He raised his head. The fluorescent lights gave him a splitting headache. The buzzing rattling cages in his headspace. His forehead fell on his knees. Breathe in and breathe out. Forever just words he could never make heads or tails of. Every day got a little bit worse, the air thickening more into a heavy paste bloating his lungs over the course of several years, the town Stantlerfield slowly choking the life out of him.

Still a little lightheaded he leaned against the stall as he raised himself out of the floor. The door opened steadily, and he staggered out of the stall. Three more classes to go, but he was going to make it through today if it killed him.

Declan spent lunch the way any modern high school youth spends his time, alone in a corner eating stale potato chips doing homework while the well adjusted members of society make meaningful memories, or so he told himself as he labeled diagrams for his normal type physiology class. He looked up from his work and for a moment his eyes fell on Eileen across the room surrounded by laughing friends and pure positive energy and probably unaware of the fact that her hair was spilling into her tater tots. She was wearing with a t-shirt rowlet tucked in a ball captioned “On a rowl.” It was the kind of shirt that was funny when you were six but now could only be pulled off ironically. She pulled it off though. His thoughts were cut short however when for the briefest of moments, her eyes met his. They were both frozen for either an eternity or two seconds, Declan couldn’t tell which. His head jerked down to break contact, his chest thudding with another a flutter of butterfree in his stomach. His face burned like a charmander tail with embarrassment that she saw him…
She saw him.

He couldn’t focus for the rest of the day as he tried to recreate the moment in his head to the last detail to bring back the feeling. Even though it was probably by pure accident, it was something. He felt something. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it; it was unlike anything locked inside the four walls he slept between. He thought about talking to her. He thought about what he would say, wondered if he had anything to say, if anything would come out if he opened his mouth, or if he was even worth the ti- a delicate snap pulled him back into reality. He looked down and saw he had been transcribing his thoughts before the lead in his pencil broke instead of copying down the symbolic significance ice types used in postmodern Hoenn literature written on the board at the front of the classroom. He looked up. There she was, three rows up and to the right. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted her to see him again and say something that would blow these miserable years into the past.

The bell rang and the class stood up and erupted in conversation, and suddenly it was all too loud for Declan. He tried to tune it out. He didn’t want to lose it here, not now, not when he was this close. He focused on her from across the room. The more he did the more the noise seemed to fade. Her face was content, always smiling about nothing in particular. He had to say something to her. Something that would convey the way he felt being seen today. He took a step in her direction. Something that told her he existed. She was gathering her books into her bag. He took another step. Something that said he was someone to remember, someone she might want to see again. Something that would make this town feel like anything other than what he made it. He was a few feet from her now. His stomach was doing backflips. She hadn’t seen him yet, still preoccupied with her bag. He opened his mouth and… nothing. He just stood there mouth agape waiting for the words that seemed lodged in his throat. He tried to cough them up but he didn’t know what they were. She noticed him now for better or worse. She stood up and studied him from the opposite side of the desk.

“Who are you?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

He searched for an answer, but the words he was looking for did not exist. His name evaporated in headspace if he ever had one. Squeezing for a syllable he managed the following:

“I-...”

It was quite the introduction but not the one he was going for. He searched his head again looking through every nook and cranny in the vacuum for a name, turning over all the nothing in search of something, looking for some string of sounds between himself and all the empty space. Stumbling over another nonexistent obstacle he fell face first on his own. Declan! That was it! It almost surprised him. That was all he had to say. He could hear himself say it in his head, now for the real thing. He opened his mouth and:

“I’m-”

“Nobody,” said a voice from behind him.

Chad Stantlerfield waltzed over and clapped a hand on each of their shoulders with a smile like someone who enjoyed a good trainwreck when he saw one.

“What’s going on over here? Hm?” he prodded.

Neither of them answered. Declan was pralyzed and couldn’t move.

“Oh come on! I bet Scraggy over here was about to hike up his shorts and ask you out on a hot date and you two would ride off into the sunset.”

“Grow up, Chad,” Eileen sighed just under her breath looking away.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Chad said, putting his hand to his ear.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing? Oh! You mean this guy over here,” he said shaking Declan’s shoulder.

Declan felt sick. Chad’s head swiveled to face him turning his hand into vice grip on Declan’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you ask her? Go on, I know that’s what you’re here for. Do it. C’mon we don’t have all day!”

Declan stared at the floor.

“Going once,” Chad called

Eileen tried to shake faintly to shake him off.

“Chad don’t-”

“No, no, don’t worry about it. Any second now he’s gonna say something,” Chad jeered not breaking his stare making a wobbly paste of Declan’s thirty seconds of bravado.

“Going once! Going twice- really you’re just going to let this happen? Aaaaannd,” he leaned a little closer, lowering his ear to Declan’s mouth, like he was watching his favorite movie waiting for the lead to say his favorite line. Nothing.

“Gone,” he whispered.

Declan kept studying the ground.

“Don’t sweat it kid. If she said yes, it would only be because she felt sorry for you. Amaright?” he chuckled looking at Eileen.

Declan raised his eyes slightly. She said nothing, guiltily turned away, and left the room.

The room was now empty save the two of them.

Chad’s expression hardened.

“You see, when you’re nothing, there’s no reason for people to ever want to be around you. The best thing you could ever hope for is that you’re pathetic enough to lure in someone else and they’re stuck with you forever. I’m gonna run this town one day, and I’ll be the only thing that matters. I’ll be everything. Someday you’ll probably remember this as the day you met the most important man in town. But I’m going to forget about you before I even get home. So for what it’s worth, have a nice life; it won’t amount to much anyway.”

He left the room in a bitter storm. Declan stood alone. The motion detector killed the lights. He stayed anchored to the floor waiting to sink into the tiles and disappear… nothing.

Daylight was growing scarce by the time Declan got home, his eyes red and face still a bit damp. Everything felt heavy. His head ached. His eyes stung. His spirit in pieces. His mother’s car was in the driveway when he opened the front door. His mother’s voice was berating some poor soul on the other end of a business call. He didn’t bother shutting the door quietly. She wouldn’t notice anyway. His dad wouldn’t be back from Kanto for another two weeks, and if he came back tonight he would be wearing that same blank, tired expression he left with, heave himself upstairs and go to sleep.

He watched his mom leaning against the kitchen counter phone in her right hand and a pen in her left writing on a stack of papers.
Her being ambidextrous probably made it easier to burn both ends of the candle. He thought about saying something, but she just looked so tired. It was like watching a shadow without a person attached to it. It was hard to look at, but he saw some honesty in it. The kind of honesty that people sweep under some tired cliche that you respect people for once they give up the ghost and strip the covering away. Tired, honest, and holding out to the bitter end with one foot in the abyss and the other rooted in Stantlerfield. That was the Ewald spirit if there ever was such a thing.

Declan was tired. Tired enough to feel the dark circles hanging under his eyes. Tired enough to feel a physical emptiness where the weak light used to be. Tired enough to let Stantlerfield choke him to death without putting up a fight. The Ewalds were never a fighting people. They were the ones to settle in a storm to be weathered. Not wasting energy shaking their fists at the clouds or sparing the breath to scream at the sky. Only battening down the hatches and holding out for better in the pouring rain, but the rain never seemed to end in Stantlerfield.

He locked himself in his shed. His own words glared at him from the walls as he crashed into the sheets and rolled onto his side filling his withdrawn gaze with the picture of his writing desk littered with pens and half inked papers and the sheets on the floor that would forever stay unfinished. He felt a lump in his throat so tight he gagged. He thought about his mother, about Chad, about Eileen, and about the fact that none of them were thinking of him. His eyes eased closed. Tiredness welcomed the familiar darkness. He thought about the fact that his tongue couldn’t string together a single sentence, that he was probably going to fail his speech and debate class, that he couldn't breathe a word in front of twenty something teenagers who probably weren’t listening anyway, and now he could feel his words breathing on him. He rolled to his other side observing the writing on the walls on his way, crafting a picture in his mind of the nights they were written. Each word the product of some shitshow of a day compounded with the effect of the one before that and before that and so on. He was sick of feeling sick, tired of being tired. He wasn’t looking for a miracle. Just a break.

Then the walls started to breathing. Declan sat up and looked around. The papers uprooted from their tacks and rolled through the empty space of the shed with some vague sense of purpose. There seemed to be something deliberate in the chaos as they snaked through the air. Declan felt himself stand up. Every movement he made felt strange, as if he was watching himself. He couldn’t pick a point between terrified and hypnotized. The papers started gathering in a swirling sphere in the center of the room. Works finished and unfinished wrapped, coiled, and folded on each other into the shape of a person. It had a soft, but supernaturally familiar profile, its face accented by cursive ink lettering like shadows giving the impression of deep set eyes, shallow lips, and large protruding ears.

Declan walked towards it. He felt compelled to reach out to it. The sound of crinkling paper accompanied the turning of its head; it looked at him without expression. His hand drew closer to its face, but just before his hand made contact with its cheek the walls of the shed exploded in different directions, the ceiling launched upward, and the floor tumbled as it fell beneath him. He was floating in space. Emptiness as far as the eye could see. He wanted to panic, but he couldn't seem to flail his arms or legs. Everything felt loose and stiff at the same time, detached and weightless. All he could do was freefall through the void unable to tell the difference between flying and falling. He opened his mouth to scream but stopped when a hand touched his shoulder stopping his tumble. The paper human pulled him closer. He examined the lettering in its eyes. “I will never see stars” read from its left eye, across the bridge of his nose, to its right. Below that “I will never burn” ran the length of its cheekbones. “I will never run” tucked itself in the shadow under its nose. He began to read under its lower lip “I will never be-” but the words vanished like shadows in the immediate presence of light.

Declan gazed anxiously at its now blank eyes. There was a light in their papery center, a weak yellow pinprick. A blackened ring ate away at its edges and slowly crept outward. The fire spread with the wilting of the blackened paper until it consumed where its head used to be. It reached out and placed a hand against his forehead, it’s body turning to soot. As the flame crawled to the crease of its elbow, it pushed his head backwards launching him into a cosmic tumble, and as his head reeled back he saw it. The empty space was full of stars. Every direction held an eyeful of distant white sparks stippled on swirling cloudy nebulas passionate red and smokey emerald green tumbled in and out of view as he rolled through the cosmos. It was somehow calming. He released the tension in each of his muscles along with any desire to control his path and let himself coast through depths of nowhere. As he closed his eyes, couldn’t quite pin down the feeling between surrounded and isolated, easing up to the idea of nowhere.

And then he was somewhere. At the front of Dr. Clarks classroom to be exact. Babbling high schoolers filled the rows of seats that extended indefinitely into a distant mist, not a single one facing him. Convulsing, he looked at the notecards in his hand. They were blank. He flipped through all of them just to make sure. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. He peeked at his audience. In the front row was Eileen, eyes cast down on her desk disappointed. Declan could tell she was trying not to look at him. Something crumbled inside of him, a sinkhole opening in his stomach that just kept sinking, creating even more empty space. Her sweater said “Gyradon’t even try.” It wasn’t even funny, but someone was laughing. It was Chad reeling hysterically in the seat next to her, his greasy cackled overpowering the sound of a thousand voices partaking in a conversation he wasn’t a part of. The noise was overwhelming. Declan staggered backward bracing himself against the wall as he was assaulted by every word in the room. He looked to Eileen, to the crowd, and then to Chad who hadn’t stopped laughing. No one would hear to him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and surrendered to the noise. He began to sink into the floor tiles, the desks, the room, Chad, all of Stantlerfield dwarfing him, ignoring him out of existence and into impenetrable darkness.
…
…
…
No Declan thought.

He saw his mother’s tired figure desperate for a way out, his father’s lifeless walk through the door every time he came home. He wasn’t going to be like them. He couldn’t be like them.

He rose out of floor bracing himself again against the wall. The crowd still made no notice. He wanted them to look at him, to see him. He filled his lungs with a chestful of fresh air, tensed his shoulders, and opened his mouth.

“My name is Dec-,”

He was sitting up in his bed, his heart still pounding trying to make sense of what had just happened. Was that a dream he thought. He glanced at the walls. His papers still clung to the walls except for one hanging limp over his desk holding on by its bottom left corner. He rolled out of bed and reached out for it, holding it by the opposite corner.

I am surrounded
And yet I am Alone
I see people I don’t understand
I hear words I can’t spell
I can’t breathe
I am Nobody of Nowhere
And I can’t escape.

He ripped the page off the wall, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it onto the bed. Every broken little piece of him knew he couldn’t go on like this. He had to get out. He opened the shed door and looked outside. Stantlerfield was in darkness, and the isolated street lights were litwicks in an abyss. He slipped in the front door of his house and felt his way through the halls not even bothering with a light. He knew these empty spaces like he knew himself: only enough to know where he shouldn’t be. Closing his eyes made no difference in clarity as he glided past each threshold. He stopped halfway in front of one such gaping hole in the darkness. On the other side was his old bedroom. Hesitantly, he stepped in the doorway and felt for an object with his right hand. It was still there. After a few metallic clicks later a weak light just barely reached the corners of the room; its source was a battery powered cyndaquil night light resting in Declan’s hands. He took a long look at it. The light came from a bulb under the translucent fire quills, and a silver knob jutted out the side of its body.

So many nights were spent staring at it for hours when he was younger. Those sleepless nights it sat on his nightstand like a sad excuse for a beacon of hope. He would lay on his side and gaze longingly at the timid yellow glow from his bed as he waited for some comfort to wash over him. Maybe he could hold out hope that his mother or father would think to check on him, find him wide awake, and say something that would make the waking nightmares go away. Nothing. Holding the light out to the room he surveyed the bare beige walls, the oak night stand up to his hip, and the space between it and the right wall where the bed used to be, the fallout of a fight that never happened.

He followed the light outstretched before him across the room to a door in the corner. The knob gave a soft squeal and the hinges sighed as the door opened to a small closet with a rack half beset with t-shirts and a couple wadded up jackets on the floor. Dropping to his knees, he set down the light and threw a hoodie over his shoulder and sifted through the hanging shirts before knocking his head on a shelf. On it was a tan canvas backpack that may have been white at some point with the letters FDE stitched in red over the cover of the main pouch between two cyan straps that ran the length of it. Declan pulled it off the shelf and studied it in the light with the intrigue of something unfamiliar. Four patches of a pokeball, a leaf, a flame and a water droplet were nestled into the left strap. He lifted the cover to the main pouch and began stuffing it with anything he thought would be useful.

It was still dark out by the time Declan pulled the navy hood over his head, threw the stuffed canvas bag over his shoulder, and stepped back into the hallway. He took a final look at the bleak empty space that separated his room from his parents’ and there was a bright orange dot glowing through the window to the back porch. Against the starless sky he could make out a vague outline of his mother leaning against the back porch railing with a lit cigarette fixed in her left hand. He read the shadow of a deep sigh as her shoulders sank and the glowing end of her cigarette disappearing into her silhouette as she raised it to her lips and a white ghostly wisp took its place.

He thought of saying something, but he wouldn’t know where to begin. Neither of them would, but on some level they both would know why he was doing what he was. He just wished one of them had the courage to say it. He wished for some sign that they at least understood each other, some flash of eye contact that told him they saw the same darkness but it was going to be okay. No such comfort was found in those tired powder eyes in all fifteen years of being her son.

It was time to go.

He carried himself to the front porch and eased the front door closed behind him. Turning to face the yard an icy breeze caught him on the chin he felt the ambient coldness seize his bare hands.

He wasn’t going back for gloves, not for anything. He took a step into the yard. His heart was racing, but for once he was sure of himself. The first step was excruciating. The second step was anxious. The third step was intriguing, the fourth engaging, the fifth fascinating, the sixth a statement. He found himself in the middle of the street shivering with both a chill and a tingle in his spine that sent him flying into the night. Straight ahead he charged down the streets of Stantlerfield, the wind screaming in his ears the names of people and places that would forget him entirely, and he found it in himself for that fleeting moment the strength to not care. He could go for miles. Inside him was a combustion reaction of exploding euphoria powering every press of his foot against the asphalt. He wanted to feel Stantlerfield disappear behind him, to see his house, his shed, his school, and his memories turn into specs on the horizon before melting into the past. The dying glow of street lights lit his way to the edge of town where he felt the road beneath him turn to dirt.

He sped up.

He could feel Stantlerfield catching up to him. He could hear Chad’s violent cackle closing in. He could see his father's lifeless eyes creeping into his peripheral vision. He forced his eyes closed and kept pushing.

There had to be a way out.

There had to be a way out.

There had to be some way out of Stantlerfield!

A jutting rock wrenched his ankled back and stole his footing, and Declan was sent face first into what was now little more than a narrow beaten path flanked by tallgrass up to his knees. His momentum sent him tumbling a solid twenty feet over what had to be every stray stone and root in existence before cutting his ride short against a lone tree stump in the center of a small clearing with an audible thunk.

He could only lay there, shivering.

Everything hurt.

Inside and out.

Who was he kidding? He was a Ewald. Stantlerfield would haunt him no matter where he went. It was planted inside of him. Its roots were anchored in his lungs siphoning the oxygen from every breath. Their dark tendrils coiled around his heart as it pumped the curse of his kin through his veins. His own blood. A slow acting venom that poisoned every living cell that dared dream for something better. He knew better than to hold out hope.

Declan Ewald was alone in the dark, cold, unforgiving universe, and nobody would know any different if he wasn’t.

Then something moved in the brush. Something large enough to make Declan want to collapse into himself was skulking through the tallgrass. He stirred and winced trying to sit up feeling a sharp pain shoot through his arm. He was helpless, and it knew. As the heavy rustling came closer he held himself into a tighter and tighter ball as if he could fold in on himself enough to disappear. His pulsating heart threatened to crack his ribs if he crunched any tighter, beads of cold sweat perforated the skin around the back of his neck, his stomach imploded into a vacuum.

But he didn’t dare breathe.

A gurgling growl crawled into earshot and crescendoed into a grueling snarl that sent shockwaves through the tallgrass and forced Declan’s back against the tree stump. Closer lurked the sound of scores of brush being stamped into the earth by a devastating weight. Then out of the veil of the high thicket peered two beaming red eyes fixed on him, their piercing glare alone made him feel half the boy he was. A pair of hidden nostrils heaved two columns of smokey vapors as the creature exhaled.

He held himself tighter.

He never imagined it would end like this. He always pictured something horrifyingly mundane. A heart attack in a cubicle perhaps or a quiet slip into the other side in his sleep, but never like somebody who actually lived a life.

The creature slinked out of the brake and revealed the hulking frame of a fully grown mightyena that even on four legs towered over its diminutive prey like a great wall of matted ash and soot fur. Only a few feet now from him now, the mightyena flattened its body, its back legs compressed with mechanical precision, and it let out another deep growl like a revving engine. Declan hid his face behind his knees and waited for the creature’s gleaming jaws to bury themselves in his flesh.

With an almost audible click the mightyena’s hind legs exploded behind it and the body extended twice its length as it lunged at its prey. Declan drew a final terrified breath before a stray ball of fur shot out of the brush and plunged into the side of the beast knocking the predator missile just off course of its target. The mightyena careened towards the edge of the clearing. The creature rolled once and caught itself sinking its claws into the ground for grip. In its original place was its saboteur, an eevee that by most liberal of estimates couldn’t be considered a fraction of its opponent’s size. But all the same it stared back at its adversary with a futile determination.

Declan raised his head to find the two sizing each other up. The mightyena grumbled and crouched into another menacing tableau now fixed on its interloper. The eevee held its ground standing between it and Declan as if it were protecting him. He watched in disbelief and mute apprehension. With another silent click the beast launched itself across the clearing swallowing up the eevee in sheer mass and sending the two tumbling across the ground. The mightyena threw its head up from the scrap and righted itself raising the poor creature clasped between its jaws like a war prize. The sight of those gnashing teeth digging in its body and knowing they were meant for him made his heart drop to his stomach. As the eevee cried and squirmed its captor jerked its head to either side, gnarring and grunting as it tried to shake the fight out of what was left of his hero. He knew he had to do something, but fear kept his back pressed against the stump. Tossing its head once again, the mightyena flung the eevee from its mouth, sending it through the air like a discarded rag doll before it slammed into the earth and rolled several feet. The normal type laid in a pathetic heap in the dirt barely able to open its eyes to see Declan’s panicked stare. He looked at the mightyena. The monstrous dark type was preparing its final pounce. He looked back at the eevee.

It stared back at him as it lay on its side too weak to get up. In its wide hazel eyes he could make out a familiar dread and a sobering expression of guilt and shame. Declan could feel every ounce of it and then some as he looked down at the only creature he ever understood and felt his stomach churn at the idea that it followed by himself would be no more. The mightyena’s hind legs tightened underneath it.

He couldn’t let it happen like this, not with him watching and waiting for a way out like he always did. He swallowed his fright if just for a flash of a moment and dove on top of the eevee exposing his back as he did his best to tuck his head and arms around the creature in a tight ball of uncertainty. He felt the shock sent through the ground when the mightyena launched itself at them. He tightened his hold around the eevee, forced his eyes shut, and braced himself. The full weight of his assailant crashed into his back like a sentient freight train. Frustrated the mightyena began clawing and snapping at his back. He felt claws slashing clean through his hoodie and breaking skin. Serrated teeth and fangs buried themselves into his shoulders and neck accompanied by frustrated snarls. Frantic paws ending in sharp points tried to dig themselves into the bunker he created around his fellow victim. His only hope for survival was the animal giving up and losing interest before his body gave out. So Declan Ewald tightened himself up more, grit his teeth, and held out hope. The growling, snapping, and slashing continued getting more desperate. Declan could feel warm streams of blood seeping out of the gashes in his back. Another set of teeth sank into his arm trying to pry it out from underneath him. He held on tighter. A pair of two inch long fangs dug deeper beneath his skin scraping bone and tried to jerk his arm back with even greater force. Declan convulsed from the pain feeling himself on the verge of passing out. He could make out the distant sensation of a comforting numbness that would bring all this pain to pass if he just surrendered to the darkness encroaching on his vision. It was so simple. So clear. So… familiar. All he had to do was just let go.

Then he felt a heartbeat. Not his. It was buried underneath as though it could be inside him. He knew what it was now, and he couldn't bring himself to let it stop; he couldn’t let the darkness take him over, not without a fight. With every cumbling fiber of focus he could muster he held on. He held onto the only other soul that cared enough to protect him and let the sensation of its beating heart hold him in reality. He refused to let this life or his own slip away after coming this far. The tugging force grew weaker and the occasional swipes grew more haphazard and tired. After several minutes of declining ferocity the jaws uprooted themselves from Declan’ skin for the last time, and he heard the creature disappear into the brush. It was finally over.

He didn’t move for a while. He remained huddled in a shivering ball fearing the mightyena might come back. When he was close enough to certain that he was no longer being watched, his body deflated and he rolled onto his side and looked at the eevee still tucked in his arm, the other shocked with a violent throbbing that pained him too much to move. It’s eyes were closed, but it was still breathing. He ran a shaky hand through its matted coat feeling for its barely beating heart. Still there. He gathered the pokemon back into his arms and struggled to his feet staggering on his own two legs before finding his footing once more. He felt lighter than before. Perhaps it was just lightheadedness from the blood loss, or maybe the lingering effects of adrenaline working their way out of his system, or maybe it was his missing backpack.

It was the last one.

Declan panicked and jolted his head around. It must have come off when he tumbled into the clearing. He stumbled through every square inch of the clearing and then trekked back up the slope he fell down off the path. The canvas bag finally turned up again hanging on a thorn bush he must have rolled through. Holding the eevee in his good arm he reached out and yanked the bag out of the bush. The sudden movement combined with the unexpected weight sent a visceral pulse through his arm so painful his whole body jerked. Reaching down he nearly blacked out from the effort of lifting the one intact strap over his shoulder. It felt heavier than before. He hunched over to prevent himself from falling back. He glanced in the direction he came. Stantlerfield was nowhere in sight.

It was almost relieving.

He looked down the path. There had to be a pokemon center somewhere down the road. No going back, he thought to himself. A thunderous grumble rolled through the starless night sky.

Sure, why not.

He heaved a deep sigh and wrapped the eevee in both arms holding it close to his chest and began dragging himself down the beaten path.

Declan Ewald was finally going somewhere.

---

Chapter 2: Declan Ewald is Scared of the Dark(ness)

Declan Ewald was freezing, aching, exhausted, and a little less alone by the time his soaking wet body slapped against a set of glass doors. They belonged to a modest log building marked with a neon red pokeball sign flickering like a dying wishing star in the night. Slumped against the door in a daze he pressed his forehead against the glass and peered inside. In the synthetic glow of a TV on the right wall of the room he could make out vague outlines of furniture including a couch and futang facing the screen and a rounded counter that extended from the wall opposite of the entrance with a doorway into a shallow hall beside it.

Keeping his back turned to the pellets of rain that pelted him from every angle for the better part of two miles, Declan grunted and threw his shoulder against the door again. It didn’t budge. He sighed and lowered his head. One more time. He leaned back and lurched forward with all his weight. There was a respectable thwack that while didn’t do much in the way of forcing the door open, did seem to make the back of the couch facing the flickering screen jump. A dark haired boy no older than himself emerged from the furniture; his eyes widened in an alert and perplexed expression before settling on Declan, who even cloaked in the silhouette of a midnight thunderstorm looked about as threatening as a butterfree caught in a hairnet. The boy sprung over the edge of the couch and shuffled to the door. He studied Declan for a moment then mouthed something that got lost somewhere in the glass door between them and the pounding rain. Declan could only return a dazed stare. The boy pointed at him, clasped his hands together, and pulled them towards himself and looked back at Declan for some sort of confirmation who was too numb to make sense of whatever charade this was.

Chuckling to himself he pushed one of the doors open and poked his head out into the rain.

“Dude, they’re pull doors,” he said, holding it open.

Too tired to even be embarrassed he heaved himself through the threshold and his sopping wet back flopped onto the floor, his bag landing beside him with a squish. Hard polished oak never felt so soft as it merged with the back of his head. The air inside was a bit damp but rich and warm enough for Declan to finally regain feeling in his fingertips.

“Damn dude,” the boy said, lowering himself to inspect Declan’s torn ragdoll body.

“You look like you got run over by-” his eyes combed through the rips in his clothes and skin for a punchline.

“-life,” he mumbled, finding it less funny the longer he looked.

As Declan stared at the ceiling recollecting what cavalcade of misfortunes brought him here, reality dialed back into focus when he got to the events of a little less than an hour ago. He snapped upright and unfolded his arms just enough to expose the eevee’s now damp face, its eyes still closed and its ears flattened against its head. The boy read Declan’s concern and called in the direction of the counter.

“Hey Doc! Ya got a visitor.”

There was a sound of something being knocked over in the other room and perhaps the sound of someone tripping over their own feet before the door swung open. Outside stepped a short brunt out red head in her late twenties trying to pinch the migraine out of the bridge of her nose.

“Kid, I swear to Arceus if you’re not gone by tomorrow, I will throw you in the nearest arcanine pit and watch them tear you a new-” she stopped in the doorway when her eyes fell on the pitiful waterlogged pile of flesh that answered to the name Declan Ewald being helped onto his feet. She emptied a sympathetic sigh into the room and glanced at the eevee swaddled in his shredded sleeves. She clasped the bridge of her nose again.

“Do you know what time it is- I mean- do you trainers ever sleep? Just- you know what- it's fine. It’s- It’s whatever,” she said winding down and running a hand through her agitated red hair.

“Yeah, Doc can be a little crabby before she’s had her coffee but deep down she’s a real-”

“-Chase. Shut up,” she said.

“-blissey,” the boy finished with an unassuming smile. Lowering another impressive sigh, the nurse vaguely gestured to Declan.

“You come with me, and you,” she leveled an accusing finger at Chase.

“You go back to doing whatever it was that wasn’t making me want to put you in a human hospital,” she said, turning back down the hall.

“You got it Doc,” he said, raising a three fingered salute before throwing himself onto the couch.

Declan followed the nurse into a room with an operating table struck by blinding overhead fluorescent lights. Mirrored disks hung over the table from contorted white pipes that kinked in every direction like a set of mechanical legs. The room felt manufactured in every way, even the air had a stale refurbished quality. Declan approached the table as though the mechanical mounts might kick into motion if he moved too abruptly and lowered the eevee onto the padded table. Only now in the light could he see the extent of the damage. Tufts of fur were missing revealing teeth marks that penetrated the skin and a gash in the right side of its head that had been covered by its folded ear. He couldn’t stop staring at absent patches of hazel fur without tasting a bittersweet mix of responsibility and gratitude.

“Would you mind taking a step back?” came the nurse’s voice from beside him as she wrapped herself in a lab coat. He had forgotten she was even there. Declan backed away and took a seat in the folding chair beside the threshold not taking his eyes off the table. As he regained more feeling in his limbs he was only able to better recognize how much everything ached and how sore his arms were from carrying. His whole body throbbed like an out of sync tribal drumline.

“So what happened here?” said the nurse, feeling around for a pulse with a stethoscope.

Declan kept his eyes narrowed on the table unresponsive.

“Okay then, I’m just gonna assume whatever did that to you probably did this. Am I right?” she said over her shoulder now delicately turning the creature over and feeling for anything broken. Still no response.

“Man you’re killing me with these details,” she said, turning to Declan who continued staring in an anxious silence.

She took stock of the boy’s injuries, both physical and emotional. Her expression softened as she noted the tears in his hoodie that opened to even deeper gashes in his skin, the discolored splotches of fledgling bruises on the side of his face, the clear imprint of a set of jaws that sunk deep into his left arm exposed by a missing chunk of his sleeve, the way he held it with his other arm without noticing, and the emotionally distraught and beaten down look in his eyes that she could now tell was there long before whatever occurred that night. The cynical dark circles under her eyes unfolded the longer she took the boy in.

“Hey,” she said in a low compassionate voice. Declan’s tired lonely eyes finally met hers. “She’s gonna be okay.”

“She?” Declan finally spoke glancing back at the table.

“Yeah- here, have a look,” she motioned him over. Declan approached with cautious intrigue.

“Look. See that tail pattern? The light part on the tip in females creases like that in the shape of a heart,” she said, cracking a weak smile seeing Declan examine the creature with newfound curiosity.

“She’s not yours I take it?” she said.

A guilty silence.

“It’s fine. It’s just most trainers would have brought their fainted pokemon in a ball. Though it's not often people bring in wild pokemon to a center. Especially at this hour.”

She looked back at Declan who hadn’t taken his eyes off the eevee. The nurse sighed.

“Okay, I know you’re probably too tired to talk to me right now, but I just need you to answer one question for me,” she said, laying a hand on Declan’s shoulder and lowering herself into his line of sight. Declan’s head turned to her but his eyes never left the operating table.

“Is there anyone you want me to call for you? Mom? Dad? Older brother? Sister?”

Declan’s gaze climbed up to her chin before falling flat onto the floor. He shook his head. Another soft sigh from the nurse.

“Yeah, most don’t.”

She let him go and consulted a set of metal drawers retrieving roll bandages, some disinfecting cream, and a small flashlight. She shined the light into his eyes and shifted it from side to side.

“Well you don’t seem to be concussed so you must just be the quiet type,” she said patting him on the shoulder. The attempt at a joke evaporated under the fluorescent lights.

“Alright, there’s a bathroom out in the hall to your right. Clean yourself up and take a breather, and we’ll start patching you up. Okay?”

She looked to Declan for confirmation. He gave a weary nod and left the room. When he returned the nurse took to stitching him up in silence. She felt like she was fixing up a dead body. He sat on the table empty faced and limp under the weight of his own shoulders. The stitches were far from perfect but she was more concerned that he didn’t seem to react to the occasional needle sliding under his skin. She was never good with people. They were more complex than what she was equipped to deal with. So many delicate moving parts were wrapped in those layers of paper thin understandings, and their bodies were not much easier to navigate either. The latter she could handle with a few more years of med school, but it was the former that brought her to the edge of nowhere where she could avoid the very thing she was doing. By the time it was over the room felt darker, and just looking at Declan’s sewed up skin made her exhausted.

“Hey,” she said gently, shaking his shoulder.

Finally peeling his gaze off of the eevee beside him he faced her with a hollow stare. There was a void in those eyes. Something that stripped your sense of self when you looked into them and made you aware of the emptiness within. She tried to mask the uneasiness it evoked in her.

“We’re done. Go ahead and find yourself a place to sleep in the lobby. If Chase is on the couch, kick his ass off. Freeloader’s been crashing here all week. He can stand one night on the floor,” she said, doing her best impression of someone who knew how to handle this. She saw his eyes drift back to the unconscious pokemon beside him.

“Don’t worry about her. She just needs some rest. Now go get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

There was a moment of silent reasoning before he let himself slide onto his feet and walk towards the hall before stopping in the doorway and looking over his shoulder one last time. When he was ready to speak, he did so with heartbreaking honesty and a twist of gratitude.

“So do you.”

...

Chase’s eyes were fixed on the TV when Declan entered the open lobby again.

“Hey, question,” Chase said from the edge of the couch.

Declan’s eyes shot open upon being noticed.

“Do you think Raihan is overhyped?” he said, studying the screen with his chin propted in his palm.

“Because I look at his results, and I look at his team, and he’s actually not even that good. But then everyone shits themselves when he gets clapped in the semifinals at regionals. What do you expect from a team that runs three quad ice weaknesses. I mean sure, in his prime he could maybe- maybe contest for Galar champion, but he’s never made it out of top 16 at the world conference. Like- what even is that?” he said turning to Declan for an answer.

Declan could only offer a misty blank stare that caught him off guard.

“Oh sorry. It’s fine if you like him. I just think he could be so much better if he dropped the dragon gimmick, amiright?” he looked back at Declan who couldn’t follow the one side of the conversation.

His voice had an amiable quality to it. A kind of well traveled honesty that took the dryness out of the air along with the cadence of someone who spoke as though everyone he knew was of the same world. With an earnest interest that didn’t flinch when he crossed those vacant uncertain eyes, he took in Declan unaffected by his wilted torn down appearance. Nobody ever took him in so casually before if at all, but the gesture to enter into the conversation struck him with a curious ease. Validation maybe. A call from another human being that beckoned him outside of himself so naturally, but he hadn’t the slightest idea how to answer in kind or if the universe would let him this time.

“I-,” he froze for a moment afraid the cosmos would cut him off again. Nothing.

“I never really followed that stuff,” he said sorry to disappoint.

“Wait, so you’ve never watched a professional pokemon battle before?”

Declan reached into an aether of reluctant memories populated with the haunting shadows of broken people that were his family. Out of it a timid reimagining of another sleepless night some seven years ago in Stantlerfield crept into being with the clarity of a fogged lens. He was 8 years old and afraid of the dark. Not afraid of what was in the dark, but the darkness itself. The way it swallowed his treasured possessions whole and suffocated the room. The cyndaquil nightlight rattled in his trembling delicate hands as he followed its fragile glow into the halls that dwarfed him at that age. He followed the distant sound of a muffled voice accompanying a flickering light source that cast stuttering shadows on the living room wall. When he peeked around the corner he saw his father sitting upright and motionless facing the TV with his back to him. From what he could remember, it was a battle between a blaziken and an umbreon in a stadium. His quivering voice called for him, but the shadow of a parent took no notice of his existence. He inched closer to his father trying to read an expression by the flickering light. In the dry glare of the screen he could read an unspeakable dread in between the shadowy lines in his face. His father held the expression not of someone who had seen a ghost but was himself a ghost watching his body disappear as his spirit was dragged away by a force as real and unyielding as gravity. In his father’s eyes he only saw a deep painfully familiar void. The eyes of someone who saw tragedy everywhere he looked and had regret immortalized in his peripheral vision. Another precious thing swallowed whole by the dark.

He shook his head.

“Well, get your ass over here,” he said, slapping the couch cushion.

Declan approached and wedged himself in the corner of the couch against the armrest.

“I’m Chase by the way,” he said while scooching closer to the center in a sudden motion that nearly made Declan jump. Chase held out his fist expectantly. Declan studied it uncertain of how to interpret the gesture.

“You gonna keep me in suspense, man? What’s your name?” Chase said.

He wasn’t going to fail this time. He knew he had a name. It was written in thin faded letters with a shaking unpracticed hand in the far corner of his headspace but it was there now.

“D-Declan,” he said.

“Declannnnn?” Chase ventured.

“Ewald.”

“Declan Ewald?” Chase said, starting to chuckle to himself.

Declan started to crack a timid smile, finding it funny himself. All this time he had never heard it out loud, but now that he had it sounded like a complete trainwreck of syllables that got funnier every time it was spoken.

“You’re name is Declan fucking Ewald!” he said again, almost wheezing with laughter.
Declan started cracking up himself vigorously nodding back not bothering to correct him that the fucking part was silent.

“Declan Ewald! I can’t-” Chase called to every corner of the room, the word powerful enough to send both boys into a laughing-crying fit.

Chase’s laugh was rich like an old friend wise beyond his years while Declan’s was dry and near silent before it elevated into a tea kettle wheeze.

“Declan Ewald!” Chase cried once more falling onto the floor causing Declan to double over holding his stomach unable to breathe.

The name had an inexplicable absurdity to it. It was a name so tragically unfortunate yet so comically cacophonous that its sheer existence clocked reason square in its perfectly rowed teeth, and the metaphysical slapstick was priceless. When he finally caught his breath Declan knew just how to up the ante. He pointed to himself.

“I’m Declan Ewald!” he said, breaking into a cackling sob that sent him spilling onto the floor next to an already reeling Chase who was scarce for breath.
The two the lay gasping for air on the hardwood floor in a chaotic display of heartfelt absurdity. He was bawling eyes out, holding his sides in pain, and unable to breathe, but Declan Ewald never felt better in his life.

“Chase!” The nurse’s voice snapped from the hall.

“I swear I’m going to end you if you-,” she froze in the doorway seeing the two situp on the floor giggling to themselves like school children. Declan’s anemic smile as he
tried to sit up froze her in place. She looked back to Chase.

“Just go to bed,” she said.

“You got it Doc,” Chase said from the floor.

She hid her smile and left the room.

Declan sniffed and wiped tears from his eyes standing up as Chase tried to gather himself back onto the couch.

“Goddamn, man. That’s somethin’ else. So, Declan Ewlad, how does a trainer like yourself never watch a competitive match before?”

Coming down from the euphoria Declan’s grin slowly melted away.

“I’m not a trainer,” he said.

“No shit? So is getting the shit kicked out of you and dragging unconscious pokemon to a center some kind of hobby or just something you only find yourself doing on the weekends?” Chase said with a wry laugh and looked to draw one out of Declan with no such luck.

A commotion on the TV bailed them out of the silence.

“Shit, I missed it!” Chase said picking up the remote and rewinding.

Suddenly Chase’s eyes were alight as they reflected the shine of the TV screen.

“Alright check this out,” he said, landing on the still image of a dragonite and a flygon staring each other down from across the arena.

“So Lance sends in his dragonite to get the revenge knockout on flygon. He wants to get out of this without taking a hit so he can keep multiscale up for Raihan’s duraludon in the back, but he’s at a speed disadvantage,” Chase said, turning to see if Declan was following along.

While confused, Declan’s eyes were temporarily sharpened with piqued interest. When Chase hit play the figures didn’t move. They hovered over the turf locked in an ironclad stalemate steady enough to sink the audience into a perfect silence. The camera cut to the faces of the trainers, both stoic and calculating. Chase and Declan leaned over the edge of the couch fixated on the TV.

“Any second now,” Chase mumbled.

The flygon flicked it’s tail and there was a “NOW!” from the opposite side of the arena. The flygon zipped forward reeling back its claw as it pulsated with a vicious ultraviolet aura. But the dragonite shot sideways and whipped behind the flygon getting in a clean swipe that knocked the flygon into the turf where it lay motionless. It was all over before the crowd even had a chance to react but when they caught up the stadium exploded into raptures.

“And that’s how it’s done,” Chase said.

Declan stared mystified with his mouth a quarter agape. His fascination awakened the teacher in Chase.
“Extreme speed. He waits for a tell and reacts instead of trying to take it head on,” Chase said.

A new silence filled the room, a silence bubbling with the sublime as wonder and awe dripped from the rafters in isolated drops like the outside world slipping into the center at the edge of nowhere.

“Pretty cool, right?”

Declan managed a nod while still zeroed in on the screen.

“I’m gonna be up there someday,” Chase said.

There wasn't a single trace of wistfulness in his voice, as though he were stating an absolute truth as innate and inevitable as the passage of time. It was enough to pry

Declan’s eyes from the screen to read his expression for any traces of irony. But Chase stared straight ahead as if he had casually said out loud the color of his eyes or his own name.

Chase caught Declan’s disbelief in the corner of his eye causing the corner of his mouth pinched into a gentle smirk.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” Chase said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Not you. I mean like that’s what most people would say to someone like me who said that, y’know?”

Declan might have, but he wasn’t sure what question to ask that would give him the answer he was looking for and defaulted to silence.

“What about you, man? What gets you out of bed and makes you wanna look like you just lost a fight with a chainsaw,” Chase said.

The question hit Declan in a sore, empty place devoid of an answer.

“I- I don’t know,”he said.

“C’mon man I gave you my two cents, so you could at least give me yours!”

Chase’s interest put him on edge. Declan was as desperate for an answer as he was.

“I just- I don’t know,” he said with crushed sincerity.

Chase let off a little seeing sprouts of worry in Declan’s eyes and tried to reason to a conclusion out loud.

“You gotta have a good reason to drag your pokemon to the edge of bumfuck nowhere in the dead of night,” he began as though preparing a syllogism.

“A mightyena,” Declan said almost under his breath.

“What?” Chase snapped to attention once more.

“There was a mightyena in the woods,” Declan said, raising his head a little.

“Dude! You’ve been holding out on me this whole time? Spill it man! I wanna about how you fought mightyena!” Chase said grabbing him by the shoulders prepared to shake the rest of the story out of him.

Declan got a dry laugh out of Chase’s generous estimate in his ability to fight off anything.

“It wasn’t much of a fight,” he said embarrassed.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Chase said, settling in for what Declan feared was an inevitable disappointment.

Declan sighed but couldn’t help feeling allured by the idea that he had something to give to the conversation.

“I fell against a rock in a clearing,” he began, looking to Chase for validation who humored him with a lean in.

“I couldn’t get up. And then I heard something in the grass. Then I heard a howl,” he said as the events of a few hours ago rematerialized in his mind's eye.

“Out of the tall grass stepped a massive mightyena,” he said slowly finding his stride.

Out of the corner of his eye Declan saw Chase's eyes widening by the second as they seemed to kindle a glowing confidence in his voice.

“It was the size of this couch. It glared at me with its piercing crimson eyes and snarled like a-,” he froze blanking on a simile, but Chase remained on the edge of his seat.

“-like a sports car engine,” Declan said, finding his footing again.

“It stared me down as it prepared to pounce, and when it lunged at me-” he stopped shy of the payoff. This was the part he still couldn’t quite make sense of even from hindsight’s thousand foot view.

“Dude, you’re gonna kill me if you stop there,” Chase prodded.

“An eevee,” Declan said with retrospective disbelief.

“What?” Chase said as the bewilderment appeared to be contagious.

“You mean like the one that-,” he stopped, finding the answer written all over his face.

“She jumped in the way,” Declan said.

“She saved me.”

Why me. The question plagued the memories with a nebulous fog obscuring the finer details of the narrative. He never considered himself to be someone worth a heroic sacrifice. He was Declan Ewald, which was barely anything at all.

“So then what?” Chase nudged.

“It was too strong. She was thrown onto the ground in front of me, and when the mightyena got ready to pounce again I-”

“You squared up and gave him a right hook!” Chase blurted, unable to contain his excitement. Declan sighed knowing he would have to disappoint him.

“I dove on her and hid my face, and I-” he trailed off unable to look at his expecting audience.

“You didn’t!” Chase said, baffled.

Declan could only confirm with a shameful nod.

“All I could do was let it bite and claw at me until it got tired and left,” Declan said, reliving the sensation of pure helplessness now with a twist of disgrace.

There was an awful silence as he felt Chase playing out the events in greater detail in his head which was probably already trying to verbalize his disillusionment.

“That’s the most metal thing I’ve ever heard,” he heard from Chase’s direction.

The reaction blindsided him and brought his eyes out of the ground. He turned to see Chase in awe with his jaw hanging limp and his pupils dilated in glossy reflective lenses.

“Like that’s some hardcore trainer shit there,” he said.

“I-I guess. I didn’t know what else to do,” Declan said embarrassed.

Chase scoffed and clapped him on the shoulder unknowingly hitting a sore spot that made Declan jump.

“You are alright, Declan Ewald,” he said.

Declan had never heard a more foriegn string of words in his life. For so long he had tried and failed to make peace with the reality of being nothing only to arrive at alright seemingly overnight. It felt surreal but enlightening though that was probably the sleep deprivation kicking in, but if this is what it amounted to then he would never sleep again.

. . .

Irene Ewald might be cold to the touch, but nobody ever came close enough anymore to verify. Her face was locked into the perplexed expression of someone forever scrutinizing the horizon for some figure that was never coming back, though the shallow wrinkles of long expired laugh lines suggested this was learned behavior gleaned from some distant life lesson that ended in Stantlerfield. She seldom assumed a tone that wasn’t blunt and dry of enthusiasm, a relic of her past life. In her past life she was Irene Everly, life of the hometown and optimist extraordinar. She could see promise in anyone even as empty of a husk as Fredrick Ewald.

Frederick Ewald (Freddy as he was called by nobody but himself) was nothing impressive even by his own standards. Though he did believe that his awareness of the fact counted for something, that something was most likely a diminished self esteem which made it all the more astounding to him when Irene “The Apple of Stantlerfield’s Eye” Everly asked him if she could sit next to him at lunch in the 10th grade. She was even more beautiful up close was what he thought about saying before he realized how unsettling that might sound. After all was unsaid and done the following made it through the filtering process:

“You- I-.”

Luckily she took that as a yes. To say that Irene was adorably unaware of how beautiful she was would be misleading. She was completely aware of the effect she had on the boys of Stantlerfield, especially ones like Freddy, but she pretended not to notice hoping someone else would spell it out for her. Someone like Freddy Ewald, the local quiet one. She caught him starstruck in the corner of her eye from across the room in english earlier. When she knew he was looking again she looked back like a deerling caught being observed from afar. The sudden aversion of the eyes and glowing flush of embarrassment on Freddy’s face was fatally gratifying.

“Freddy, right?” she said, setting her tray next to his.

“Y-yeah, I-I,” he struggled.

“You’re in my english class,” she finished.

“Yeah- I-,” he continued to stammer.

The realization that this was happening was still making its way into his subconscious. These kinds of things only happened in dreams, and Freddy Ewald never dreamed.

She sat down just close enough to make him blush.

“I really liked your poetry by the way,” she said referring to a diminutive slip of paper buried under a spread of half assed poetry assignments tacked onto a corkboard in the English room. Just finding it was a feat in and of itself.

“Oh that. W-well it's not really my best. I think I could do a lot better- I just- t-time was of the essence, you know?” he said as his face got warmer.

“Well I thought it great! So what was it about?”

She was sure she knew the answer, but she needed to hear it out loud. His reaction however was not the face melting blush she was expecting. His face seemed to reset itself. A pensive anxiety replaced the fluttering butterfree in his stomach. His voice sank into solemn sincerity.

“It's about purpose. The harder we look for it the harder it can be to find. Purpose is a star. The more you think about it the more you realize it's impossibly far away.

Even when you can see it, it's not a destination; it's just a direction. There is no getting there,” he said, sighing and turning to Irene.

“Because if you do, then you don’t have anywhere to go,” he said.

For Irene, that was the first time Fredrick Ewald became the boy with the void in his eyes, and she wanted to be the one to fill it.

. . .

Declan Ewald couldn’t sleep. This was by no means an abnormal phenomenon but that which had brought it on was. Why me? A pair of foggy eyes begged the question to the indifferent wooden beams in the ceiling. From where he lay, on his back and head propped on an armrest, he could see no explanation for why any sentient soul, much less one entirely unaware of his existence (or lack thereof) as of a few hours ago, would risk its life for him.

A rumble of thunder punctuated every dead end he came to. Declan sat up and winced at the blunt soreness his every movement awakened, though not loud enough to wake Chase passed out on the other side of the couch. Hoisting himself to his feet, he knew he couldn’t rest without answers. Not just for why he deserved to be saved but for everything he had put himself through that night. Why dream now? Why leave Stantlerfield? He felt something sink in his chest. Does any of it matter? Plaguing questions of the like crept out of the twisted alleyways of his mind. He tried forcing his mind into the near past where he was still moving forward. He had to run. No. That wasn’t quite it. Running made him focus on what he was trying to escape. He had to walk. Somewhere on the way to the center of nowhere, assaulted by a flooding sky, cut and bruised and barely operational, Declan had felt something other than emptiness. Clear, but not empty.

He began to pace. Four steps forward. Turn around. Four steps forward. Something was missing. Four steps forward. Something that gave meaning to the motion. Turn around. Something alive. Four steps forward.

He sighed. Moving forward. Going nowhere.

A gentle creek emerged from the hall stealing his focus.

Turn around.

He gazed into the narrow dark corridor for an explanation finding the door to the room with the operating table ajar.

Four steps forward.

Declan watched with mute uneasiness. Not a looming sense of danger, more so a keen intuition to the winds of change. The eevee’s head peeked out from behind the door, and her curious hazel eyes fixed on him.

Perfect as mirror images, the two of them each took a step forward. As if compelled by gravitation the two drifted into each other’s orbit and growing closer they could make out a mutual recognition in each other’s eyes, and Declan dropped to his knees under the weight of what felt like a preternatural encounter.

Never one for eloquent introductions, Declan could only manage, yet again, a single word though this one had more purpose.

“Why?” he could have asked with the look on his face alone but used the word for his own sake.

Those careful eyes reflected the question back at him. They were twin spectors at a loss for words and together one two fold image finding an answer in the others question like two mirrors reflecting each other into an infinite regress. It was haunting. It was beautiful. It made them feel less alone.

As if he were staring into the eyes of the paper human again he felt supernaturally compelled to reach out to her. Before he could rest a hand on its head, a shoot of pain shirked his hand back forcing him to clutch his forearm. In response she scurried up onto his knee. When the pain subsided, he looked down to see her staring up at him worriedly.

“I’m alright,” he said resting his hand on her head causing her to flinch.

In a flush of anxiety he saw that he had touched where the gash on the side of her head was, but she looked back at him assuredly that she was alright.

Carefully this time, Declan wrapped his arms around the delicate creature. She boroughed herself into his arms like she could breathe him in as Declan held her like he did carrying her through the showering night. And by some accounts, for just that very moment, in the deadest black of night, in the deepest throttling of the storm, in the center at the edge of nowhere, and against all odds the universe had to throw at them, somehow, they were alright.

…

Ann Joyce was the nurse at the center of nowhere and she was perfectly fine with that, or so she had been told. It wasn't until she encountered a ghost from a distant, meticulously forgotten past that she began to think different.
The boy with the void in his eyes.

No amount of careful repression could purge his image out of her mind. She hadn’t seen a face like that since she left Stantlerfied and never looked back. She shuddered and sat up in bed. I’m Declan Ewald. There was no mistake that those were the words she had heard from the other room last night. The name conjured the spirit of another hollow eyed child from her past life. A lost soul who embodied the spirit of Stantlerfield. A place of dead ends and lost causes. A place of pure ego. A place of self without other.

Ewald.

She leaned over and rifled through the top of the nightstand for her phone.

The name struck another eerie cord as she read it in her mind’s eye, because despite her best efforts she could not forget the story of Fredrick Ewald.

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