The leer that floats in darkness belongs to a Gengar delighting in casting curses on people.

It's twelve at night. 

Another day, another unsuspecting victim, he thinks.

The street is still, and only pools of light illuminate the rough concrete. The only people who would think of being here were the homeless and the odd adult rushing home after a long day at work.

But it's good enough. It's all he needs—

—he thinks.

For a Pokemon, he has a surprising amount of thoughts. He thinks long and hard every day, and words and sentences and paragraphs knot themselves together in his mind. In this form, where days last far too long and there's nothing to occupy his time, he has a lot of time to think.

He thinks a lot. Questions his every action, laughs at every tiny thing, and sneers whenever someone falls for one of his dumb pranks.

It's pitiful—he can't speak human tongue, so humans will never know about the revelations he makes each day; the many thoughts that drift through his mind like trash through a river, but he supposes it's alright. Perhaps it's Arceus' own way of telling him that they aren't deserving enough to hear them.

He knows so many things. He knows nothing.

As much as he thinks, there are still so many things he will never get. He will never get how Pokéballs work, he will never get a chance to learn about so many other wonders of the world, and he'll never understand how so-called professors are able to stereotype an entire species and fit it in that awful-looking device they give to kids.

And he'll never get why it's a thing for Gengar to be monsters, how they came about; how they degrade into unfeeling clumps of semi-solid shadows that are only known for their unending mischief and constant headaches.

No matter how much he wonders, he'll never arrive at an answer—he will never know what they used to be before...whatever they are now.

So it's nights like these that help him to stop thinking.

He might love to think, and to second-guess himself over and over again just for fun, but every mind needs its rest, and he is no exception. There are nights where he has to give up on whatever train of thought he wants to chase and let his heart fall to the vices of natural instinct.

After all, it's easiest to follow what is expected of you. He would wonder just what kind of track record his ancestors had with people, considering all the horrible things he'd heard about his species, but tonight is not a time to think.

Tonight is a time to act.

It's fun to do uncouth things every once in a while. He can't say he hates it as he feels the people stiffen as they feel the temperature drop around them—it's entertaining as he slips through walls and sticks his tongue down people's necks. A bubbly feeling rises in the pits of his nonexistent heart when he can make grown adults scream the same way children do.

It's like a never-ending party. Fear is universal and so is fun; they both start with f, so shouldn't they go hand in hand with each other?

He laughs as he flees back to the nearest shadowy cover he can see, far away from the horrified screeches of the couple that turns their heads to see a laughing creature darting away before they can shout at him.

He is a Gengar. He is a monster.

He likes it.

—

It's a common thing, really, for Gengar not to remember anything about their past.

He remembers bits and pieces of it, sometimes. It comes and goes, and he doesn't really care. Whatever it is, it probably isn't enough for him to care about.

There's not much to it. A glimpse of pain here, a small flash of sadness there—it doesn't bother him, so he just move on with his day. As carefree and infinite as he is, worrying isn't the most productive use of one's time, and so he ignores everything that attempts to haunt him.

How funny, he thinks, because he is the ghost. He is the one that is supposed to be doing the haunting.

The first time he'd seen a piece of his past, he'd woken up shivering. It was supposed to be a nice nap in the shadiest part of a haunted house, but for some reason he'd felt chills—chills the same way humans felt when he was bothering them—and he didn't like it.

Ironic. He doesn't like it, but he still continues to do the very same things to people.

He'd consulted another Gengar about it. She'd told him that it was something that just happened sometimes—that it was inevitable, that they'd never get their full memories. None of them ever have.

So he continues to go about his life as usual, pretending that the whole episode never happens, and life seems fine. There's no time to live in the past, after all, and if it's something he has no control over, he supposes it's best not to dwell on it.

There are other better things that he could be doing. Like pulling pranks on people with his friends and roaming the wild without a single care in the world, just like he's always done.

He pretends that it's true.

He pretends that he doesn't know when always dates back to.

—

Appears to attack people who get lost in the mountains. Said to be the culprit behind shadows that laugh in the moonlight.

If they're not hanging out in some corner of the street, they're in the mountains, huddled between the small cracks of darkness that dapple the snow.

And they're there now, waiting for unsuspecting adventures to pass. It's a big, confusing place, after all, and more often than not, people get lost. It's just too bad that there's a food chain in such a world like theirs, and humans are below them.

Today's one of these days where they're hungry, and stealing bits and pieces of vitality from people won't cut it. Despite the popular myths that float around towns, they're not immortal—no one is except Legendaries—and like everyone else, they need to sustain themselves on something.

He hasn't attacked someone before, unlike his friends. He hasn't lived for that long, and he's usually content with stealing a little from his friends that enjoy pouncing on people more.

But tonight, he's hungry, and he's always wanted to know what it feels like to swallow one's life force whole.

He glances up. Steals a good look at the confused adventurer wandering around.

For some reason, it strikes a strange feeling into his chest. He doesn't know why—it's just a poor, lost person that's had the unfortunate luck of becoming someone else's snack. All he's doing is getting ready for lunchtime, just like the others.

It's not pity he feels. Something like him could never feel pity.

Another moment and it feels like his head has cleared a little. He still can't tell what he's feeling, though—but if he's to try and describe it, it's like a mixture of longing and rage.

Before he knows it, he moves across the ice and lunges for the poor traveller before anyone else can. It's a mess of limbs and a few screams that are soon cut off, but he soon stands above the body with little remorse.

Around him, his friends praise him; cheer for him, but it seems muffled.

He lets the energy from the dead human seep into his mouth, taking the form of a sticky, dark substance, but as much as it fills his belly, it doesn't take away the weightless feeling in his chest.

No, he doesn't have a heart, but if he had one, it would be burning right then.

Still, he forces himself to laugh.

—

It apparently wishes for a traveling companion. Since it was once human itself, it tries to create one by taking the lives of other humans.

Ever since he got his first taste of a full-course meal, he's been rather addicted to the feeling.

He goes up to the mountains many times after that, even when his friends don't want to. Snacking on passing mountaineers becomes more natural than he ever thought it'd be.

What are you doing this for? He asks himself sometimes.

He knows the truth, but he doesn't want to admit it to himself.

Maybe that's the reason why he's been thinking less and less lately.

Unlike humans, they're not alive. They're not dead either. They're just something, frozen in the purgatory between both worlds, and they'll never be able to find their own sort of peace. They're like hands of an old clock that have long lost both their meaning and the ability to move.

Maybe he's just doing this because he got bored of thinking. Maybe he realised some time ago that thinking would never get him anywhere; that there will always be answers that he will never get.

So he gorges. He feasts, and consumes soul after soul, and his teeth drip with the remnants of the last bits of someone's life more often that not, but he still isn't satisfied with what he has.

I like to travel, he once told a friend of his.

His friend laughed and went away after another few sentences of idle conversation, but he really meant it then.

Deep down, with every life he takes, he knows why he's doing this. He doesn't know why one soul isn't enough.

Human souls are not like art. One cannot just string them together until something else is formed, and he wonders why Arceus didn't make it that way. But he keeps eating, waiting for the day that he's able to create what he wants.

He wants—

He wants something that he cannot have—something he does not have the knowledge to create. He spends his time alone nowadays, holed up in the mountains and eating failed attempt after failed attempt as the days go on.

He wants to make a friend.

I like to travel isn't quite right anymore. It wasn't right all along.

It's because he used to be something else that he's feeling like this.

It's because he used to be human, a dusty corner of his mind registers.

He continues to eat.

—

Born from tortured souls that lived lives full of hate, Gengar can only be put to rest when it remembers and accepts the memories of the life it had when it was human.

It's snowing.

The air around him is stale, like the cold gale he'd experienced in a human's house a long time ago, and the blizzard is atrocious, but it won't kill him. It never will.

He's lost track of how long he's spent on the same stupid mountain. Had it been six months? A year? A decade?

The other Gengar used to come buy occasionally, and they'd delight in small talk before eating their fill and leaving. He used to find it fun; now, it's more of a chore, and he hides from them as often as he's able to, preferring to nap in one of the many caves he's found.

He'd planned to indulge himself in a nap that day, but the cold is something he will never get used to and the particular cave he's sleeping in does little to keep the snow out.

So he stares blankly into the distance. There's not much to see in the first place—only miles upon miles of white, and the occasionally Pokemon that stays for a while before disappearing.

He's in the middle of counting the number of Bergmite he's seen before something else interrupts his field of vision.

At first, the figure is blurry, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's a human.

A laugh leaves his mouth. He bursts into a fit of uncontrolled, silent giggles, and he forces himself to leave the comfort of his sheltered—temporary—home in search of food that he doesn't actually need in the first place.

But the man doesn't stop. He continues to observe his prey for a while longer, out of curiosity and sheer boredom more than anything, and blinks when the human turns and starts climbing to a part of the mountain that he's never to explore before.

He frowns, but continues to walk after him. He could wait a while longer.

He doesn't know why he's entertaining himself like this.

—

They've reached the peak of the mountain. He's never wanted to go there to search for food; most adventurers that were weak enough to get themselves lost didn't make it there in the first place, and it's about as dry as he expected.

A flash of something catches his eye, and he turns to look.

There's a small headstone built in the snow, barely visible from the dusting of white that coats it, and whatever flowers that have been brought before it have died long ago.

The man walks forward and kneels down before it, raising a gloved hand to wipe the coating of snow off the grave before clasping his hands together in what seems like a praying motion. He hovers behind, hiding in the human's shadow and not knowing what to do.

When the man moves to the side to bring a handful of fresh flowers out of his bag, he's able to get a closer look on whatever's written on the headstone.

He swears the world goes quiet when he starts to read.

—help—cry—

—died on April 4th—

A loving friend—

Tears form in his eyes. Was that even possible? Did Gengar even have tear ducts?

But he remembers everything now. Every bit of injustice and sadness and suffering that happened in his life. He didn't know that that was all he needed to do.

His life when he was still a human.

His head hurts just thinking about it.

He allows himself to cry, and maybe he's out of practice of thinking, because now too many things are going on in his head and they're not stopping. Everything feels wrong, but for everything that does, two more things seem to piece themselves together in his head.

The shadow he's hiding in feels warm for some reason. It also feels strange, as if he was being wrapped up in a blanket and sent for naptime in preschool.

He feels relieved, and frankly, he feels calm.

He forgets that the man was his prey in the first place.

—

The man blinks, confused, and he turns around.

There's nothing there but a landscape of snow that stretches on as far as his eyes can see.

Deciding not to think any further on the issue, he turned back, glancing at the headstone once again and pressing his lips into a thin line.

The air seems to have grown stiller, but there's something peaceful about the kind of atmosphere he's kneeling in.

"I hope you're doing better up there," he says. "Rest in peace."