"The Nightmare of Christmas"
a Pokemon story by Jos Gibbons

About three days before Christmas, panic had swept the Kanto and Johto nation, or at least it had swept a significant minority of its population. Some reasons for this were obvious. There are always those who procrastinate when it comes to participating in the commercialised expenses of Noel, and indeed they have a tendency to use its secular nature as an excuse. But it tended to fall flat on its face. Furthermore the year had been a significant letdown. The success of trainers against those of other areas had fallen sharply; their performance in the orange league consisted generally of unprecedented failure. These regions were also all the more susceptible to the year’s seemingly daily political crises. The prime minister had insisted that it would be impossible to overemphasise the importance of the situations that they were facing, and the chancellor of the exchequer did not make things any easier with his hallucinations that resulted in him almost eating members of the cabinet. Note a great similarity between their political system and that of the UK.

And so it was that people living in these regions required the more secular elements of traditional twenty-first century yuletide as escapism to deal with the past year. But the problem was that the industrial situations of the economy had caused a relative shortage- in comparison to the average Christmas of the nineties, in any case- of goods to buy loved ones. So woe went mainly to those whose stupidity is so great that they had postponed Christmas shopping to one of the last minutes (so to speak). Such a person has the intellectual capacity of a third-class stamp. Enter one particularly famous and berkish example…

The name’s Ketchum, Ash Ketchum. I’m not a cool spy, what a pity. I’ll have a dry tippex, stirred, not shaken. Yep, that’s right, the luckiest trainer one could imagine had once again demonstrated his failure to plan ahead. Although he had made such a large mistake, he was not particularly concerned. His plan was to find something that was still available in large quantity that his friends would like. Yes, his plans weren’t very- well, original. They were as tautological as All Black Ravens are Black, or All Intelligent People in America are Foreigners. Interestingly that wasn’t true inversely, as if Ash went there, the average IQ of America’s population would drop significantly. A little later in the day he was aware that there seemed to be few options if any that he could use. He eventually settled when he remembered something he’d been doing all year long.

He had been persuading Misty to consume larger amounts of food than she was used to. Being descended from the ancient monarchy of Cerulean City, she was genetically predisposed to not liking to eat a lot unless shown the great pleasure it led to. Her weight had skyrocketed, as has her self-esteem, and by her standards that was saying something. She now found it impossible to go through a day without consuming more food than for the average person would be even possible in merely twenty-four hours. She usually got through about as much as three people, trying really hard, would succeed in. Ash was of course responsible for this change in her, which in her hometown was considered inexcusable- both that which Misty did and that which he did. It was for this reason that he wished to compensate for his damages, which is I suppose more admirable than the work of companies that cause suffering, such as Microsoft, Airtours and Baines & Ernst. He soon realised how to deliver this compensation…

“The basic Christmas lunch is P1000 a head,” explained the restaurant owner (P is the symbol for Pokémon currency), “P2000 for an all-you-can-eat and P5000 for entrance to the eating contest.”

Even Ash wasn’t sure why one would want to more than double the price of getting the same amount of food, but he subsided when the man explained there was a prize for the winner. Before you guess, it’s not P3000. The prize actually turned out to be P50,000. That was good value for money!

You can buy a lot of candy for that. Five hundred basic Pokéballs, or as many as- let’s see, was it forty-one Ultra Balls? Don’t ask Ash, but I can tell you it left over P800. Anyway, you could get all sorts. The New Year would see the launch of what was bound to be an enormous market, and an investment of this magnitude init would be very beneficial. AS someone had put it to him a few days before, don’t be a plonker all your life.

But someone still had to explain to him that prize money depended upon the competitor’s victory.

Christmas Day arrived, and Misty woke up her companions surprisingly early. 6AM! Why would anyone want to get up in the holidays AT 6AM? It appeared Ash had forgotten one minor detail. Brock, being a more sensible chap (bar the romantic department) had purchased his gifts much earlier. He had gotten Misty perfume and Ash a video he had been interested in for some time. It was unfortunate that Misty had purchased the same gift, but fortunately she had retained the receipt, and Ash had also had interest for another film. Ash had managed to extract- quite skilfully- the last bottle of aftershave from the local store in Pallet Town. It was only a problem due to the fact that it coincided with a much better bottle of aftershave from Misty. They had both kept the receipt; however, this was unavoidable in Ash’s case, partly for the shortage of time to lose a receipt, and partly because it had adhered to some ancient chewing gum in his wallet. But Misty’s gift won hands down! He of course had no objections to this whatsoever, as even Ash could not have expected to stand a chance in that battle. Besides, his skills were elsewhere, and to be pedantic it was skill in the singular. Even his training ability had for a long time been debatable.

When Misty approached him on the subject of her present from him, he calmly presented the gift that all day long (save for Brock’s gift of perfume to Misty) encountered no rival. She was stunned at the presentation of this gift. It was after a great deal of discussion that she was eventually dissuaded from breakfast altogether. She had in fact been planning on a fry-up, although quite a meagre one, to compensate for the lunch of seemingly infinite variation between components that was inevitable on this most festive of days. But one should, of course, never eat prior to an eating contest. She couldn’t help but admit to this. If Ash was aware of the need to train prior to competition in the Pokémon league, she would have to present an understanding of the fact that, no matter how much faith one has in one’s eating capacities, one’s alimentary canal always had its limitations.

“Do you think I might win?” she asked.

“I’d love to see it!” was the audible reply that came, although secretly he hid “I hope so, for our financial future!” Ash’s eagerness to walk away with the prize money was born out of poverty, not greed. Such capital combined with a brilliant investment would result in the annihilation of this poverty, or at least its cryogenic freezing. It was certainly true that none of them could think about anything else all day. The way that Brock thought about it was not the usual scenario of envisaging huge floods of those creatures he called females (and a few nerds call homogametic members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens). Far from it. How many girls, with their low tolerance of the cold weather that invaded every corner of the land on this surprisingly white Christmas, would wish to enter a restaurant for a lunch they would get at home anyway, and more importantly what sort of girls would they be? A girl who cared not for the almost always cared-for property of slimness would not care for a masculine equivalent of a bimbo. But it seems that rarely is a significant fact in Brock’s eyes. Misty could not squash his chances with the ladies by yanking him out of their sight today, for they were otherwise occupied. That was his naïve vision in any case. It was a pity that he didn’t know how little girls thought of him. It was in a sort of a way because he “tried to hard”, and came across to many as a pervert.

They all deposited their pokémon at the Pokémon Centre, where a number of secular decorations and employees dressed up to the nines were concentrated. The medical business was one of the few to work on the big day, and Misty spent many minutes expressing her deepest sympathies.

“Hey, it’s not like someone died!” said Ash. Spoke to soon. Or rather late. It turned out that Joy’s father had recently died from a terminal condition. To this day, no one knows whether he was finished off by the cancer or by his fondness for Gilbert & Sullivan. Ash began to consider this deeply. No wonder Misty had offered her “most tragic condolences”. It appears no one had ever properly educated him in the art of using mortuary innuendos. It turned out that Joy’s daughter was in town, and was also in the contest. This girl was apparently famous as a champion of every eating contest in the land, and having recently lost the only grandparent who had ever shown her caring love and affection, she was certainly going to comfort eat; her capacities were also notoriously maximised by any celebrations that had a great reliance upon food. All these factors gave Ash a lot of sympathy for Misty, but also much fear for them all. He had hoped desperately that she could win. He was not much of an earner, and their budget had been more demanding than ever, thanks to his blunder that had made Misty eat more than she would have originally assumed impossible. She was an excellent eater, and always astounded people at buffets. In fact she had obtained a sort of Public Enemy Number One reputation in the eyes of local cooks. It was fortunate that on this occasion, either Misty would appear less of a threat after a defeat, or would not be such a menace in statistical terms because she would stop at a limit not much greater than that of the second biggest eater. Such is the nature of the necessary and unnecessary concepts in eating contests.

It was at that point that Joy’s daughter entered. When she had been described as a big eater, no one had been kidding; she couldn’t possibly have been less than five hundred pounds, and was in fact probably almost a thousand. She was also famous in her home for being someone of whom guessing the weight was a sport on annual occasions. This occurred in late August, when she had been 834 lbs, and this morning having weighed her self (with special equipment, of course) she knew she had gained in this autumn more weight than in any season of her life to date. She had tipped the scales at an astonishing 908 lbs. The estimation of 1, 000 was therefore not too far off- not as far as she would have been considered.

Joy did the honours. “Kate, meet Misty. She’s a friend of mine, and she’s gotten into the eating swing like yourself over the past few months. Misty, meet Kate. She’s that daughter of mine I was telling you about.” A very painful handshake for Misty soon followed. She could feel a crushing force. She knew it was not dissimilar from that she would feel if Kate had sat on her. She hoped she wouldn’t receive a crushing defeat. All her joy had turned to despair in moments. But she would not allow a lack of confidence to affect her performance. She had learnt, as a trainer: Do your best; if you win you win, and if not- well tough. But at least you did your best. It was a stupid proverb, but what the heck?

“So, you’re into eating to, then?” challenged Kate.

“Well, I-” began Misty, but she was quickly interrupted.

“I’m not so sure about that. My attitude is: you’re not interested in something if you won’t compete in it. All fishermen must be willing to compete against one another; all competitors of sports should compete in that.”

I think you know where this is going…

“Oh, I’m entering today’s eating contest,” countered Misty, but without much conviction, and without much enthusiasm. “Someone else paid the entrance fee for me- it was a Christmas present.”

“Who?”

“My boyfr-”

Kate couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this. The cause of this was soon discovered; upon questioning. Misty discovered that this pattern had been repeated in many other couples, but with the surprise entrance as a surprise from female to male. If fear hadn’t made Misty blush earlier, it would now. If shock hadn’t made Ash blush earlier, it would now. If love hadn’t made Brock blush earlier, he must have been under the weather. That would have been as low as a snake, but luckily the fog had finally cleared in the early hours of the morning.

“Well, I hope you try your hardest. You might come in second place then.” That comment froze Misty to the spot. She asked Kate what she had meant.

“You can’t seriously eJabedin to win an eating contest against me, can you? Look, I’m sure you’ll do great, but I’m invincible in this contest. In case you didn’t know, I’m eating champion, who finds my self even better at eating during times of celebration and bereavement- and they’ve both happened at the same time.” Misty nodded to indicate she knew. “Sorry if I’m coming off a bit cruel, but losing a relative can make you pretty grouchy.”

“N’est-ce pas?” added Misty. Kate was, to say the least, at a loss for words. Apparently French was not one of her fortes. Oh wait, that’s Français, isn’t it? I might as well just say:

‘Fortes’ est Français, n’est-ce pas?

Well, Misty at last had some angle at which to attack Kate and prove superiority, but she didn’t feel like it. That wasn’t her style. In fact she decided to educate Kate of the term, and explain that it was one of the most common French-phrases, both for speakers of English and speakers of French. Admittedly it was a complete waste of time. Ash really wished he were a man, so he could now escape this highly feminised situation by saying something to Brock like “fancy a pint?”

At the restaurant, Ash and Brock both had normal Christmas lunches; that was of course the cheapest option. Ash was reminded of the phrase “beggars can’t be choosers”. Misty was getting very hungry by now, but she knew it was best to wait. The eating contest was only an hour away, and she had a dangerous opponent. Ash wished his mother could have been here, if not to compete than to spectate, but she had decided to join relatives in Ecruteak City, and since Ash had already been there, he somehow steered his way out of going. It had previously been bothering his conscience, but he had dissuaded himself at a point earlier today, on the grounds that he wanted to see Misty in this contest. But that was beginning to lose its consistency with the fact that “guess who’s coming to dinner?” had a terrifying answer. His thoughts all seemed to go back to the concept of family and unity. And that sent him back to Joy’s father… He wasn’t his usual self today in the eating department, but Brock pulled together the effort to finish Ash’s lunch to protect Misty from herself.

When Brock finished (Ash finished quite quickly due to his lack of effort), thee was a mere half-hour remaining before the contest began, and by this time Misty’s stomach was rumbling louder than she had ever known it to. A missed breakfast and a delayed (as yet unserved) lunch were the most obvious causes. But those were certainly not enough alone to cause such loudness. It occurred to her that her stomach was signalling determination. Misty knew this was a good sign. Her confidence restored, she registered to indicate her presence. The clock ticked and tocked away in what seemed to Misty a very slow fashion. Her hunger continued to grow without limit. And the hungrier she got, the more confidence she had in her self. And that, due to her stomach’s awareness of the situation and of Misty’s emotions, caused the hunger to increase even further.

She was going to win…

All of the candidates assembled ten minutes before the contest was due to start. Neither Brock nor Kate had joked about a lack of female candidates. There seemed to be one girl for every twenty men. But the number of entries was surprising, considering the fact that Misty and Kate were both infamous for their powers, which were unique to them and to them alone. But no one was aware of their competing. Most people with any right mind had entered weeks in advance, and had not heard of Misty’s or of Kate’s entrance, and the manager was not going to allow those details slip, as it would discourage potential customers, who could pay the overpriced sum of P5000. Furthermore, the manager had destroyed the element in people’s minds that said “Of course she’ll enter” by advertising that she had not entered; when it came to doing this after December 22nd, he replied to the query “Is Misty entering?” with “Look, I’ve been telling people for ages that she ain’t entered!” knowing that technically it wasn’t a lie. People quickly recognised this technicality, but none of them would throw in the towel, as there were no refunds, and one might as well get as much of a meal as possible for such an expensive sum. Because people had assumed they might have had a chance, most people who turned down the basic lunch decided they might as well try as hard as they could to win a prize. This meant that there were, altogether, 150 applicants; only seven were female, namely Misty, Kate, and five other girls (three being local) who had remarkably avoided that curse that usually afflicts females- namely the obsession with weight and looks.

The manager was very happy in the knowledge of all the money he had made from his little con trick. He announced the rules: “This contest consists of five rounds. In each round, one element of the Christmas meal will be served to those competitors taking part in that round. Eat as much as you can till you can eat no more; the first round ends when seventy-five people have quit, the next when a further fifty have quit, the third continues until only three remain, and the last two rounds are used to determine who comes in first place, second and third. The prizes are P50000, P25000 and P15000 for the top three positions, and the rounds will last as long as they need to.” Misty was surprised about the prize. She looked out into the audience. Ash gave her a cheerful look that said, “I know you’ll win”. Actually, was it know or hope? Although intelligent, she was no expert lip-reader, and shouting was not permitted from the audience.

The first round kicked-off at 2pm. The first course was tomato soup, a traditional starter for Christmas lunch. Misty was particularly good with soup; it was very “soft”, and if she found it easy to eat so-soft ice cream (which is actually not that easy to eat because it puts the stomach into very poor digestion for half an hour with its intense cold), she would be excellent with soup. In fact, when round one ended, she was still absolutely starving, despite eating twenty bowls of soup. Even Kate could not eat s quickly as her. Misty had hunger as an advantage, but Kate was still sure she could show her who was boss.

Seventy-two of the initial dropouts were male. All three local girls were knocked out in the first round, leaving Misty, Kate, and two other girls who did not live in Pallet Town. The entrants now moved into a much smaller seating area, meaning that for the first time Misty could see the other girls. She saw Cassandra and Debbie, two local girls, leaving, and she knew they were upset at being in the worst half. And it was only soup! Misty felt sorry for them, and decided to do her best for their sake too. She felt her hunger grow even more. That must be what happens if you are “eating for three”. She felt like she hadn’t seen found in a week. She couldn’t believe it when she saw who the other two girls were. They were Sakora, who she had met in Ecruteak City, and Whitney, whom she had met in Goldenrod City. But they were not sitting near her. They were only just close enough for her to positively identify them. As before, she was in a crowd of boys and men.

The second round saw seasonal trimmings. They had to eat a plate of roast potatoes, then one of mashed, then one of sprouts, one of carrots and one of stuffing, then it was a case of starting all over again! And they weren’t small either. The second round finally began at 2.45pm. At last, thought Misty, I can tame my hunger, and get revenge for the sake of Cass and Debbie. But despite the fact that she ate plate after plate of food, she didn’t tame her hunger. She was so hungry at the start she was eating quicker than before. Kate had previously underestimated her speed, and had been planning on going slowly, since it was not about speed but quantity, and in any case the faster you eat, the more air you swallow. But now she knew she would have to eat more quickly, so the contest could be gotten over with. In this round, the effects of the previous load of soup had made most people shallow eaters, so few even managed the first cycle of five plates full of seasonal trimmings. Seeing all the gravy made many of them just think of the soup, which even for those who had survived it was painful. The time it took to reduce seventy-five people to twenty-five was, therefore, reduced. The second round ended not long after 3pm, and Kate had started to realise that, even if she was the champion of quantity, she was not a champion of speed.

When the second round ended, the last few competitors moved to a smaller space. Misty was glad to see that both Sakora and Whitney were still in the running. But she still had to avenge the defeat of two people, as well as protect her own entrance, so she was still hungry after twenty bowls of soup and twenty-five plates of trimmings. She was astounded that she was still hungry, but she had no doubt that this power was not beyond her usual achievement. She happened to see Gary leave. She usually would not think much when she saw him. But thinking of Gary made her think of his rival Ash, and that reminded her that she had an honour to uphold, She got even hungrier!

Hunger is an unusual ally in an eating contest, but heck, sometimes it happens. She knew now that the importance of fasting all day long was enormous. As the third round approached, she patted her stomach, and it responded with a quiet gurgle. But she knew that didn’t mean her hunger was going. It was a message. It seemed to whisper: “You’re eating for five now!” Misty figured Gary must be among those five people. She had no idea why, but she knew what it was her stomach said. The communication between her and her abdomen was without ambiguity.

At 3.15, the next round began: the course was turkey! She noticed a shock on many faces, at the bewildering site in front of each of them: a whole turkey. She was surprised that they would choose that format for the meat, but it had no effect on the nature or urgency of the messages her stomach was sending to her brain. She wasn’t one of those people for whom that took twenty minutes. She began drawing the turkey in, stripping chunk after chunk off the bone. Kate had now decided on the doctrine of No More Miss Nice Kate. She had accelerated to her maximum speed, which she could still achieve after consuming the large amounts she had put back in the previous two rounds. But Misty finished a leg in seconds, another leg in seconds, a turkey in five minutes. She was at equal speed with Kate, and quickly they both moved on to the next. Or at least they wanted to, but then-

“That’s it! We’ve had twenty-two quits; the third round is over!” Both Kate and Misty wore expressions indicative of disappointment, a fact that astonished Kate. She couldn’t believe Misty was still hungry. Even Kate hadn’t been hungry after the first round, but had continued simply to avoid losing the contest. The fourth round had only three entrants. Misty was happy to see Sakora was still sticking around.

“Good to see you, Sakora!” she said.

“Good to see you, Misty!” replied Sakora.

“What happened to Whitney?”

“She did well. She nearly got through to this round. Besides me, you and- um…” Sakora was surprised by the colossal size of this girl. She must have been almost a thousand pounds. Misty did the honours. “Sakora meet Kate; Kate meet Sakora.” They shook hands. Sakora found it difficult to avoid screaming with all the pain that had just been afflicted. “Charmed,” said Kate in a particularly portentous tone.

“So how did Whitney do?” asked Misty again, breaking the ice quite cleverly.

“Well, all the guys had quit, and just us and Whitney were left. But she couldn’t quite finish the turkey. I only just managed that myself. I don’t think I’ll stand much of a chance in this round.” There was some silence. There was a certain indifference between them; Sakora wished she could say that she had hardly recognised Misty due to how much she had ballooned, but that would have been impolite. For a similar reason, she had no idea what to say to Kate. Eventually, Misty was (as before) the one who broke the ice. Sakora, when asked why she was here, explained that her sisters had wanted to get away from the commercial Christmas, and Pallet Town was ideal for this. New Bark Town was the option they had previously considered, but when (on the Internet) Sakora had discovered Pallet Town was Ash’s home, she decided to check if her friends would be there. She had decided to enter the contest for fun, but had not suspected Misty would enter. Even if she had known, she would have expected Misty to go out sooner. Sakora was at last a trainer, and her Eevee had evolved into an Espeon.

Misty thought of Whitney. She was eating for six now! Just before the fourth round began at 3.30, it was announced that the penultimate course was mince pies.

“Oh good!” said Sakora. “Nice little things. I might just manage those…” But they weren’t small things. She was shocked to see a pie twelve inches in diameter. She almost passed out at the sight of it. She began drawing it in, noticing how slow she was in comparison to Misty and Kate. They had both finished three by the time she had gotten through half a pie. She was getting slower and slower. She finished the first pie, and then retired. She had won third place, but couldn’t help but be impressed by the ten pies each of the other two had put away.

Misty knew she had to take on further responsibility. She had Sakora’s failure to compensate for. She looked around, and saw Ash. She thought of his mother too. She should have persuaded Ash to go to Ecruteak, but she didn’t. She was eating for eight now. But there was only one round left, and eight appetites wasn’t nearly enough. An eating champion sat in her midst. Could she do it? She didn’t know. She just didn’t know.

The last round drew ever closer. The food for this round was Christmas pudding. They were gigantic, even larger than the pies of the previous round. They must have been at least a foot high each, and a foot wide as well. But that was not discouraging. She enjoyed puddings, and Christmas pudding was a particularly delicious example. But liking food wasn’t enough.

Eight people, it seems, could between them eat faster than Kate. Or at least, they could at first. But suddenly she felt something happen, and she began to slow down, which gave a chance to Kate to catch up. Of course speed was not of the essence, but Misty did get the feeling the end was nigh. But she couldn’t understand how it could happen so suddenly. Kate noticed her bewilderment. “That handshake from earlier- it’s a killer move, ain’t it? It’s based on the fact that you can test true hunger by the way it can still be felt beyond that. I’ve perfected that trick. It’s helped me win a few competitions.”

Misty was stunned. She wasn’t the world’s brainiest scientist, but she supposed that this was the only possible explanation, no matter how obscure it was. She hadn’t wanted to let down so many people, but it seemed inevitable. Even if (by some method that was without scientific explanation) her eating capacity could have been increased by guilt, Kate was eating for more-than-eight. She hadn’t wanted to let down her friends. But wait a minute- why was that? Their failure, of course. But 148 people had failed, and with herself, Ash and his mother, that made… a hundred and fifty one! For a Pokémon trainer, that number had once been significant, and it could be again. She resumed eating with renewed vigour.

A few more seconds, and she would have been disqualified. But she ate, and ate, and ate. Every moment, the same thought in her mind kept her going. She was just about to finish her fifth pudding, when-

“I give up!” She couldn’t believe it. It was all over.

Later, Misty joined her friends. They agreed to allow Kate, Sakora and Whitney to hang out with them. It was a wonderful evening. There was enjoyment all around. Television was an asset that Pallet Town did not have in short supply, so that was a valuable form of entertainment. They had just seen the Christmas special of The Vicar of Dibley. It showed just how much one woman will eat out of guilt.

“I still don’t understand how you won in the end!” said Kate. “How did you start again like that?” It took a considerable amount of reference to that episode of Dawn French’s weirdest comedy to answer that question, but basically it was down to guilt. It started Ash thinking about something.

A week later, Nurse Joy was in the hospital, feeling bereavement for her father. She had hoped to buy him a coffin large enough for him to be buried with the many badges and trophies he had won in his lifetime as a trainer, in such events as the Orange League. But this was beyond her wallet. She was quite surprised when this crisis was there no more. She opened an envelope that had arrived at the hospital, addressed personally to her. In it was an anonymous gift of P50000.