Above, Ghost glides on the air, fighting against the pull of the world, the box with the small home inside. It glides down but as it speeds up, Ghost has to beat its wings again, catch up to it. Reaching out a pseudopod, it grapples with the top, willing itself to grow tiny mouths, clamping on the metal with its teeth. Something screeches and Ghost is hoping that the box is alive, that it can tear at it and eat it because the wind has been shearing off bits of it for a long time now and its belly burns.

Ghost leans down on the box, opening its vicious mouth to bite into it, when suddenly it turns, as if it has realized the danger. Ghost is reeled away, dragged across the grey-hot-hard ground. One of its wings flies clean off, breaking into a million pieces as it leaves its body. Ghost tries to scream, but only blood comes out.

It clicks its teeth and rakes at the top. The box starts swerving suddenly, trying to throw it off, but Ghost knows better. It knows how to grapple and claw and hurt, raking at the black top and tearing at the hard-flexible skin.

Below, the small hard thing starts screaming.

***

The top of the limo flies off screaming, glass flying off its frame. I listen to its sound as it tumbles down the street, cracking and thrashing. Above and behind me, the air seems to shimmer and distort, the sky becoming a bloated little growth against the blubbery shape that whips its limbs madly.

I scream in turn, as I make out the outline of what looks like a full set of walrus-teeth, long and pointed. I see the flash of an eye, the color of something impossible, indescribable.

Death’s come fo you Vincent and it’s all teeth and claws and a big hungry belly, like you knew you deserved the tiny voice says and I’m too terrified to shrug it off.

Violet’s house is just around the corner, so turn, going almost 80, swerving so hard that I send a garbage can flying across the street. Behind me, something grasps as my shoulder and I hear the sound of fabric (no, not fabric, fabric doesn’t sound so much like popping buble wrap). I scream out as I try to get the car steady, but I only end up turning and smashing into a fence, stopping against the front of a house. The shimmering thing crashes through the porch window, but I’m held in place by my seatbelt. As I feel it bite into my shoulder, a million needles dig deep into me, against the bone. There’s a blotted patch of red where my shoulder used to be. My left hand feels numb, useless.

I crawl outside, as the shimmering blob wreaks havoc in the house. The screams join my own in disharmony:

“Viollleeett!”

I scream but I know she hasn’t heard me. Her house is just over the fence. I’m holding the black pokeball now, deflating it from my belt for God Knows what reason. Maybe I think I can use it to negotiate with the cops. Maybe I can sell it and live my days off in a private island.

Maybe I can just go to Hell like I deserve. Been a long time coming, this one I think and my voice sounds so much like the accusing thing that has been haunting me since forever.

I’m standing on Violet’s doorstep, kicking at her door as the shimmering things rolls out and tears up what’s left of the limo.

“Viollleeettt!”

I scream again, kicking at the door until the lock gives way. I keep screaming her name, my voice going hoarse. If she’s gone, if I don’t see her before I die, then this all might have been for-

“What the hell is going on?” Violet screams, her dress covered in red, same as me and I’m running to her on my busted leg and I try to catch her as I’m tripping on the carpet, but I only end up falling on my hurt shoulder. The synthetic fibers of the carpet feel like liquid fire against my arm.

“Violet, I’m sorry, you gotte know this, I’m sorry baby…”

“Vincent? What happened to you? What’s all this screaming?” she leans down to look through her door, when I grab her by the dress and pull her downto me, kissing her.

“Violet, I’m sorry baby, but the Boss is dead, Mister Fuji is dead and my mom, they killed my mom, Violet, I’m so sorry I think I’m dying Violet…

The way she’s acting now, she’s not trying to get out of my grip. It’s not that she doesn’t care what happened to me, she’s just frozen stiff with worry. The look on her face, that’s fear, not disgust.

Keep telling yourself that.

“Get off me!” Violet screams. Something flicks across my face and a finger falls clean off. Violet screams at the blood and at me until I finally let go, but the pain doesn’t register.

Behind me, there is a sound like a paper ship crumbling. I don’t need to look back to know that the shimmering thing is standing behind me. Violet lets out a howl at the sight of it. I think she can see it.

“Please baby close your eyes, please it just wants me, it’s Death and it’s come for me please…” I’m babbling now, as I feel the shimmering limbs wrap around my ankles and pull me across the carpet. I start babbling:

“Violet, don’t let me go, don’t let me go, don’t let me go, baby, catch me, catch me!”

I’m scooped up by what feels like great lumps of jello and then I sink against what feels like the world’s biggest water-matress. This wouldn’t have been a half-bad death, if theeeth were slightly sharper, though.

It takes a long time before it’s chewed me to death.

***

Violet is looking at Vincent as he’s crushed, then ground, then chewed for what seems like forever, his body and his clothes turning into a pulp, his eyeballs popping one at a time, his insides turning and tumbling into jelly. He’s screaming well past the point that a man should have kept screaming.

The blood and the meat get sucked into the shimmering thing and for a moment, Violet can see it clearer than before: a pathetic creature that looks so much like a blob, shedding tentacles and claws and mouths with every bite. It shivers, vomits and collapses, spilling some of Vincent and the black-topped pokeball on the floor.

Violet looks at it, as the thing tries to grab it pitifully. She kicks it out of its way, into the deepest recesses of the living room. The amorphous mass looks up at her with three pairs of eyes that seem to radiate misery and then, finally, with a great lurch and a greater heave, it dissolved into the murky protoplasm it had come from.

Except for a tiny claw, which crawled across the floor a little way and jumped up to the back of Violet’s head as she turned, clamping into her flesh and boring into her skull.

***

The cops came, the cops went, then Sylph came, then Sylph went and no-one pushed the woman with her pretty red-hair-turned white or checked her basement or her things. When Violet went to work, come Monday, there was commotion and there were stern, solemn faces that thought big thoughts and spoke big words but none were addressed to violet, poor old Violet, who had seen Vincent (that bastard Vincent) died so horribly right in front of her.

No-one questioned why she wouldn’t talk or the strange way she acted when she looked at someone or the way she was around mirrors, because they knew that she’d gone through so much, the poor thing.

And still no word was spoken of the black-topped pokeball, no sign of which was found and which was declared way more trouble than it was worth. After all, Team Rocket had a war with Mister Fuji’s syndicate in their hands and couldn’t waste their time looking for overpriced baubles.

And so Team Rocket fought on and fought hard and welcomed Violet back when she returned, even though she wouldn’t always recognize the sound of her own name and would blink in an odd manner or sometimes pronounce the words wrong.

The important part was that she was back, safe and sound and that this whole ugly business had been left behind them.

***

Despite the pull and the burning and the pain and the strain of thinking and forming words, Ghost knew that he would manage, until he could go back home.

This was a good place to live, for now