This story was originally born from me thinking about the potential problems a pokémon might encounter if they spent too much time in their poké ball without going outside. This led me to the anime episode 'Sandshrew's Locker', the titular character of which spends an unspecified amount of time confined to their poké ball at the bottom of a reservoir, and the story grew from there. A brief warning for potentially upsetting scenes. I have little experience with PTSD, so if anything is handled incorrectly or insensitively, please let me know. - I don’t remember the day I realised I’d been forgotten. For the first few days, I was calm. The young humans who had been taking care of me hadn’t been to see me for several days, but it was normal for them to not show up every day. Besides, I was comfortable and safe inside my poké ball. I could wait a little longer. No problem! The first time I heard the water, I was calm too. I was used to strange sounds from outside the darkness of the locker. I was more worried about the humans. I hadn’t seen them in… how long had it been again? It was hard to keep track of the passing days from inside the dark locker. I kept hearing the water, not truly grasping that the sounds were gradually getting closer each day until much later. I stopped worrying about the humans. The dry, soil-like skin on my back would suffer horribly if it got wet. As the lapping sound grew closer, I instinctively huddled deeper in the poké ball. How long had it been since I’d first heard the water? It felt like it had always been there. I remember waking in the darkness and realising that my poké ball was floating, bobbing atop the slowly rising water in the locker. I panicked. I scrambled around inside the ball, trying to escape. For a terrible moment, I risked accidentally releasing myself into a locker full of water. My ball was safe, secure, I told myself. It was better to stay inside and wait. I managed to calm myself down again. It didn’t take long before the whole locker was full to the top. As time wore on, the little light that filtered through gaps in the locker door grew steadily less. With nothing else to do and nothing to wait for, I tried my hardest to just sleep. Even that was a challenge. I often woke from nightmares expecting find my poké ball flooded. I drew deeper into the centre of the ball as it floated around the flooded locker. Occasionally, it would bump into other things in the locker, sending me flying towards the dark, foreboding sides of the ball that were both my salvation, and my prison. I tucked myself into a ball that I now rarely left. How many weeks? Months? How long had I been here? Floating near the centre of my poké ball, I clung to the safety it provided. The outside terrified me. How deep underwater was I now? Surely so far that I was completely cut off. This poké ball was my safe haven, the only place I could stay safe. It became my entire world. Had it been months? A year? Two years? I had lost all sense of time. I lived with the fear. I controlled the fear. I forgot the fear. For a long time, I felt nothing. / I awoke to sounds nearby outside the locker. There were always sounds in the distance, but never any close. I was intrigued. I opened my eyes and untucked myself. I looked around, trying to peer through the layer of algae that coated my poké ball. A sudden, quick grinding sound startled me, but I was soon distracted by the opening of the locker door. My heart started hammering as a shadow fell over my ball and I felt it being pulled away. After so long with only the walls of that locker to look at, suddenly my surroundings were changing so quickly I could barely keep up. The flooded corridor, the school building that still sat upright and whole on what the bottom of the sea must surely have looked like. It was hard to see through my algae-covered ball, but I could feel the warmth of human fingers clasped around it. My heart swelled as the outside grew steadily brighter. I remember the moment when my poké ball first broke the surface. The sun was dazzling and the sky was so blue. My heart leapt at the sight of the smiling face of the girl who held my poké ball. It was Mira, one of the humans who had taken care of me so long ago. Mira and her companions still needed to swim back to shore. My poké ball plunged back into the water again and again as Mira swam. Each time, my stomach lurched as I imagined the slimy poké ball slipping from her fingers and dropping back into the crushing darkness below. I screwed my eyes shut and tucked myself up as tightly as I could, listening to the splashes outside and hoping. When we finally reached shore, I found myself growing even more restless as I watched Mira and her companions through my newly-cleaned poké ball. It had been so long since I’d last been outside. Inside, it was still warm, comfortable, safe. The cry of ‘Come on out, Sandshrew!’ made me freeze, yet tumble out I did. The feeling of soft soil under my feet, of a cool breeze brushing against my skin, of lush green blades of grass gently tickling my legs. All feelings that I’d long since forgotten, curled up in my poké ball at the bottom of the reservoir. It was electrifying, like I’d been born again. I was overwhelmed. I jumped and danced among the grass, happily playing with the pikachu and piplup who travelled with Mira’s companions. I felt like I could take on anything, and that I would happily never return to my poké ball. When Mira’s new friend, Abra, was kidnapped just after that by those two bad humans and their strange meowth, I rose to the challenge and, together with the others, won the first battle I’d fought in such a long time. After parting ways with her companions, Mira turned and smiled at me. ‘I really am so happy to see you again,’ she said. And I smiled back at her. / Mira took me to see her old friends, the other girls who had taken care of me all that time ago. They were happy to see me too. They told me how sorry they were that they’d forgotten about me. I smiled back at them. It was over now. What did it matter anymore? That evening, I enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my skin. During the night, I found myself back down in the depths, inside my poké ball, inside the dark, familiar locker. Suddenly, my poké ball vanished from around me and I had just enough time to shout in shock before the water rushed in. I slammed against the locker door and reflexively gasped in pain. I watched my precious air slip away as my dry, soil-like skin started absorbing the water. I could feel it stretching, swelling, pulling. The more it absorbed, the tighter it got. My body screamed in pain as my skin threatened to tear itself apart. And then I was awake, thrashing about and looking around frantically for the reassuring walls of my poké ball. Yet there was nothing - I had fallen asleep outside of the ball. And it terrified me. My panicking woke Mira, who spent the next hour trying to calm me down. Eventually, both of us exhausted, I returned to my poké ball where, still plagued by nightmares and visions, I was unable to truly fall asleep again. Mira attempted to reassure me in the morning. She was upset - it was distressing for her when I was in pain. I remember the tears in her eyes clearly. I tried to return her weak smile, but, inside, I felt as though I’d changed once again. Or, maybe, I hadn’t changed at all since those days down in the flooded locker. There was a part of me that was still trapped down there, a part that dragged me back there as I tried to move on. It became all I could think of, the darkness clawing at me. How to escape it? How to return to who I was all that time ago, who I was before all of this started? ...But, who was I? So much had happened and so much had changed that I couldn’t be sure anymore. Wasn’t this who I was now? There was no escaping it. Over time, Mira congratulated me as I grew better at suppressing my reactions to the nightmares. Now, when I woke, I would writhe in silence while my panic subsided instead. Most nights, fortunately, I could remain in my poké ball. Once more, it was my lifeboat, the only safe place in my world. Yet, I couldn’t always stay there now. I had to come out when it was time to eat, every time Mira decided I needed grooming. I had to battle every now and again too, though the vigour I’d shown after being rescued had ebbed away quickly. The wide open sky that had seemed so beautiful on that first day of freedom now felt empty and desolate. The warmth of the sun seemed to burn me, while I was blinded by its brightness. The grass felt rough and unpleasant against my legs. Only the soil still felt good, in the rare moments when I wasn’t overwhelmed by everything else. For weeks, it felt as though I was trapped, unable to cope with the outside world, yet unable to remain forever in my poké ball. / Days and weeks passed. Did I eventually heal? At the very least, the outside world gradually became less scary. Battling? I still struggled. It was a real effort to fight through every instinct to run and hide in my poké ball. Little Abra evolved into a powerful kadabra, and the rest of Mira’s pokémon, my teammates, all grew up as well. Mira assured me that it didn’t matter how long it took - one day, I would evolve as well. Kadabra always led in every battle and was the one who most frequently took my place when I was unable to battle. Mira always showered him with praise and spoke excitedly about their time battling together. Stories about Kadabra replaced those about the sandshrew she’d rescued from the bottom of the reservoir all that time ago. I grew to resent Kadabra. He scoffed and looked down on me for my weakness, for the fact that it took all my energy to do things he could do without batting an eyelash. He was everything that Mira wanted: tough, dependable, not weighed down by fear and plagued by nightmares. He took the attention I so desperately sought. The others battled increasingly in my place and I found myself spending more and more time in my poké ball, still a sandshrew, still fearful of the outside. Until one day I realised: I’d been forgotten again.
