Not-Food

The sound of rain pattering against a tent. Memories? Mine? The taste of store brand birthday cake frosting. This isn’t my bed. The feel of Jake’s stubble against his cheek. Headlights on a dusty windshield. Where am I?

Von dared to crack his eyes open. Sunlight drifted through an overcast sky. Groggily, he allowed himself to feel. Sand against his cheek, his belly, his hands. He didn’t move as he took stock. He didn’t remember passing out naked on a beach. He allowed himself to lift his head, to take in his surroundings. Instinctively, he tried to do so by propping himself up on one elbow, but nothing moved right. His arms were too short. His spine wanted to stay horizontal. Confused, he rolled onto his side, and looked down at himself, and balked, frozen in place as he took in what he saw.

Somehow, Von had become a lizard. As he tested his new muscles, swaying his tail and flexing his claws, he tried to remain calm as he processed the sight of himself. Black and gray skin, a red-orange line scrawling from his lower back down his tail. He righted himself again, back onto his belly, against the warm sand. A dream, he told himself, as he began to walk, slowly at first, to get used to his new movements. It was the only explanation, after all.

As Devon Stafford awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, Von humored himself, he found himself transformed on the beach into a small reptile. He walked aimlessly letting his tail drag through the soft sand. It felt nice against his skin, different than he remembered beach sand feeling, but the last time he felt that was years and years ago, when he was still on good terms with his family in Oregon. It would feel different, wouldn’t it? He stopped walking and scraped his claws through sand. He focused on the feeling, on how material it felt. How vivid his surroundings were- the sound of the ebbing tide, the smell of seafoam and surf, the dulled irritation of grains of sand that clung to his claws when he pulled them from the dune.

This has to be a dream, Von insisted, despite his new reality. He squeezed his eyes shut, and pinched himself on his new tail. He felt the pain. He opened his eyes again, and looked skyward, to the sunlight, until the sting drove him to cast his gaze downward once more, to the material reality of the beach he stood on. What? He fell asleep in his car, in a parking lot in Whitefish, in the decidedly landlocked state of Montana. Where?

Lacking the tools to comprehend what had happened to him, and how he wound up by the ocean, what could he do but walk? He continued onward in the direction he had started. It was a coastline, sooner or later he would come across civilization, and he could puzzle out where he was. Though, I would scare people, looking like this, he thought, and after contemplating the impact of his new appearance, new factors played out in his head. He looked skyward again, scanning for wildlife, now half expecting a hawk to swoop down and snatch him up by his tail. Hawks eat lizards, right? The idea occurred to him that he should dart off of the beach, and into the treeline that followed the coast, but the thought of running into a coyote amid the trees dissuaded him further. He compromised by sticking to the driftwood- there was plenty of it, sun-bleached flotsam piled together in the sand, hollowed-out logs large enough for him to dart into should he spot the shadow of a bird circling overhead. Am I overreacting? He wondered, I’m on the larger side of the lizard spectrum. No Gila monster, but I’m no skink either. From snout to tailtip, he was about two and a half feet long. A newfound fear of predators helped take his mind of of his more existentialist dread. It let him focus, instead of mope his way down the beach, and it let his inner monologue quiet down. He funneled his energy into relearning how to walk, how to use his tail for balance, how to grip driftwood with his new claws.

After twenty minutes of walking, Von felt renewed. The coastal air felt clean in his lungs. His spirits had lifted, and were he still in his old body, he might not have minded the sudden change of location at all. The white sand, the clear blue ocean, it all felt so picturesque. This is far too gorgeous to still be in the States, he thought. Then, off to his right, in the shallows of the tide, he spotted the movement he had feared, of a bird swooping down to feed. It happened before he could do more than turn his head- a sudden thunderous splash in the water. He froze, mid step, as he witnessed a bird gulp down a fish. Some sort of waterfowl- he couldn’t place the species. It was large, covered in blue feathers, a vacant and distant look in its large green eyes. It must have sensed him staring. It turned to look back at him. He was paralyzed with fear, certain that if he moved, he’d provoke it.

“Fish?” it asked.

Von stared. It didn’t say ‘fish,’ but it’s what his brain registered. The sound that left its beak was unmistakably more of a ‘craw,’ a loud and clumsy noise befitting of a bird as gangling as the strange beast before him, but somehow, Von understood it as a word.

“Food?!” it squawked again, and began to paddle its way ashore.

“What.” Von couldn’t help himself from blurting it out. What left his mouth was a hiss, low and quiet.

“Food for Cramorant?” Not just words, but it could attempt sentences. There was hope in the waterfowl’s voice. Von didn’t pretend to understand how he picked up on the thing’s tone. Its webbed feet found purchase in the shallows, and it stood, wading ashore. Von backed up, slowly, until he pressed himself back against a log of driftwood.

“N-not food,” Von stammered, still uncertain what was happening. Cross-species communication shouldn’t be possible. Von couldn’t even understand how he was forming words with his alien throat. The bird- Cramorant, apparently- seemed to pout. It stepped onto the sand, and shook water from its feathers, flaps from its wings sending droplets into the white dunes. “Um… friend?” Von asked in the hopes that it would keep its beak away from him.

“Toxic,” it replied. “No good.”

It took a moment for Von to register that it was talking about him. The possibility that he might be a poisonous species of lizard hadn’t crossed his mind. “Do you know what I am?”

Cramorant took a good, hard look at Von, tilting its head one way, then the other. “Not food,” it admitted, and promptly lost interest in Von. It spread its wings to dry them in the scarce rays of sun that pierced the cloudy sky.

Von relaxed and pushed away from the log. No longer in fear of the bird, maybe he could get some of his questions answered. “Cramorant, what are you? How can I understand you? And what am I?“

“Pokemon,” Cramorant said simply.

Von’s head spun. Pokemon. The cultural zeitgeist he experienced as a kid. “What?”

“What?” Cramorant repeated. “What what?”

“Pokemon? Like the games? What about them?”

The Cramorant looked taken aback. “Pokemon!” it repeated, and flapped its wings in frustration. “Cramorant, Pokemon! Not-Food, Pokemon! Simple!”

Von was floored and struck speechless. He sat there, mouth agape, staring at the bird, trying to parse this new knowledge in his mind. He didn’t recognize Cramorant, nor himself, from the games he played as a kid. He stopped playing in high school, and never went back to the series. What knowledge he gleaned thereafter was through cultural osmosis of simply existing in a shared online space. His brain recoiled from their conversation, and he clasped his head in his claws. “No… no way…”

Cramorant squawked again, and Von looked up at it, dread all over his features. “Is Not-Food well? Does Not-Food need food?”

Thoughts pulled back to the material, Von swallowed. He was pretty hungry, but he imagined Cramorant regurgitating fish as birds often feed their young. “No… Not-Food not need food. Not-Food need… people?” The word ‘people’ felt off. “Humans?” he tried again.

“Never met,” Cramorant said. “Town downwind, look for fire.” It extended a wing, gesturing further down the shore.

“Thank you,” Von said wearily.

Cramorant lingered, but remained quiet. It wasn’t accustomed to being helpful.

Von began walking again, his head swimming with thoughts. He wanted to convince himself he was in a dream after all, no matter how concrete reality around him felt. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the philosophy course I took in community college. Maybe it’s a fever dream? Don’t think I’ve had one of those before. Oh, maybe I’m currently freezing to death in my car in a parking lot in Montana and hallucinating everything. That, or a coma. I wonder what it is about my subconscious that I see myself as a poisonous lizard.

To make matters worse, raindrops began to fall. They were small, unnoticeable to Von when the rain started, but the overcast sky gradually darkened, and the droplets grew heavier. He first noticed the rain when spots of gray began appearing on the white sand of the beach around him, before he felt it on his exposed back. Just couldn’t allow me to keep my clothes, could you, fate? He mourned his lack of protection from the elements, and glanced inland again. He relented on his decision to stay away from the forest, and skittered over the driftwood to the edge of the treeline. As long as he kept visual on the ocean, he couldn’t get lost, he decided, as the sound of rain grew louder. The trees he sheltered beneath resembled hemlocks, but he wasn’t sure. Whatever trees they were, they towered above his new smaller size.

He continued onward, over roots and through grass, keeping his eyes and ears alert for any more signs of life. The sound of rain grew heavier, but it never drowned out the ocean waves. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed- it was hard to track the sun through the rainclouds. When his brain grew restless and anxious from his constant state of high alert, it began to wander, and spiral.

This is all probably some sort of self-imposed guilty karmic punishment my psyche has inflicted upon itself. Cormorant said I’m toxic. How many people have I hurt? Faces from his past bubbled up in his memory. He was quick to push his family from the picture- that pain went both ways. It was his friends he missed, and his ex, despite the relationship that doomed them both, he still cared for Jake, or he thought he did. The more despondent he became, the deeper his past actions hurt, no matter how small or trivial, his most minor faults burned like hot coals. If only I was a better person…

And then, to free him from his despair, he saw hope up ahead. The shoreline curved inland, and following the shoreline, he found himself looking over a bay. He stood at what he first thought was a peninsula, but then saw as a barrier sheltering the stiller waters from the waves. A river fed into the bay, and at that river, a town. Buildings dotted the landscape, and Von’s heart soared.

On the coast opposite the mouth of the bay, Von recognized the shape of a lighthouse, a tall wooden structure where a large brazier would be lit during the sunset. He scanned the horizon inland again, and thought he recognized the shape of an old stone church built on a gentle hill. Most of the other buildings in town looked newer, and vastly different in architecture, as from a distance, they looked like small wooden domes only one story tall. As Von continued to trace his path down the shore, he was able to focus on the odd architecture more clearly- they were simple huts, it seemed to him, made of wood and clay, some made of shaped stone, and many were topped with wooden structures meant to resemble pointed ears. Von didn’t question the sight, enough strange things had happened to him upon waking for him to pause. He persevered onward, in the hope of simply finding a place he could feel safe.

Ocean life seemed to congregate in the bay. Von recognized Pokemon from his youth when he spotted a trio of Lapras as they swam from the waterfront of the town, though they weren’t alone. Smaller Pokemon with pink shells waded in the bay, as well. Distantly, Von picked up snippets of gull cries. He couldn’t see their source, but had to assume they were taking shelter from the rain. On his walk to the town, he kept his eyes peeled for more clues. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any paved roads, though dirt paths snaked between buildings and over hills. No vehicles, either. The waterfront lacked a dock, the sandy beach sprawled continuous and uninterrupted. No piers meant no boats. After he walked closer, he had to sit and stare and analyze. All of the buildings were too small for human habitation. Von’s gaze went from the simple huts to the church on the hill, and back again, perplexed. The church looked manmade, at least from the distance he was at now, sized appropriately for a grown adult to step comfortably through the doorway. The houses, meanwhile, would require stooping at the very least, if not outright crawling for the smaller doorways on some of them. The town had little foot traffic, and none of it was human. The rain that swept over the village likely kept its inhabitants inside, he thought. He glanced behind him, to the Lapras heading for the horizon, and corrected himself. Water types shouldn’t mind it though, right?

Von hesitated on the edge of town. There was shelter, here, but was there any for him? He couldn’t just knock on the closest door and ask whoever was inside for a roof over his head- that wasn’t how it worked. It was why he was living in his car, in Montana- The church! He interrupted his dour thoughts, to allow himself hope. The building on the hill, the only one sized for humans. If there was a building in town a human would be in, it would be the church.

He skittered excitedly through the empty streets, through puddles of rainwater forming on the packed dirt paths, then over soft wet grass that tickled against belly and tail, cutting a course uphill, until he came to the base of the stone building. It looked old, and towered above him. A crooked weather vane perched at the top of its steeple, and rattled stubbornly in the breeze, refusing to turn. The sole stained-glass window on the front of the building depicted a glistening silvery blue chalice, empty, and chipped along its brim. The windows were dark; but the door was propped open with stone. Von scampered up the wet steps, and lingered in the doorway, peering in. It was dark; the only light that would help him came in through the windows, and drifted over the pews, all of which sat empty, all facing the altar. There was no pulpit, a simple altar, dusty with disuse. Von’s heart sank. How long had this place been sitting vacant?

He wandered inside, just to get out of the rain. The purple carpet that stretched down the aisle between the pews was a nice change of texture, at least, from all of the sand he had crawled through, and the cold grass that wiped off the sand that had clung to him. He wandered down the aisle, in search of a soft place to curl up on, to wait out the rain. When he got to the altar, he turned to look back the way he came, and blinked in surprise at the small stubby candles that filled the pews. And here, I thought my family’s church was strange, he thought, before a chill ran down his spine, as one candle came alight in a cold blue flame, and then another; again and again, until the dozens of candles that filled the room all glowed a ghostly hue- and one by one, they opened their eyes.

“Stranger?” came a whisper, followed by another, “How odd. We don’t get visitors often,” a disembodied voice asked, breathless, yet felt against the back of his neck.

A gust of wind rattled the windows in their frames, and Von fell into a dreadful state of fear.