A long, low groan escaped from a prone, masculine figure. He was draped across the floor like a murder victim. If there was a chalk outline around his barely-squirming body, it would really set the mood.

  The lights flickered erratically overhead, as if threatening to burn out at any moment, the audible hum of the long, tube-styled fluorescent lighting reverberating around the room. It mingled with the discordant hiss of television static, singing through the room in duet.

  The groaning redoubled in volume, and a hand clutched upward as if a drowning man trying to grasp the surface, latching onto the side of a nearby end table and laboriously prying upward into a sitting posture.

  "I really hit it too hard last night, didn't I...?" The voice was deep and bass-heavy, rumbling like truck tires down a gravel road. The man wobbled back and forth unsteadily, swaying in place. One hand held the end table for support, while the other reached up and swiped through wild, matted-down black locks of hair. It was slick, though with grease or sweat, it was hard to tell in the erratic light. Not that there was anyone else around to judge.

  A moment later, the hand swiped back down across their brow, grazing against the thick-lensed goggles they were wearing over their forehead.

  "When the hell did I get these? And... hang on, it wasn't a costume party or anything last night. Right? I'd definitely not forget that..."

  Hands patted down across their figure, checking empty pockets in both his pants and the stained, previously-white lab coat he was wearing, despite knowing well he had never bought such a thing. It looked like whoever had worn it before him hadn't washed it since the day they bought it, either.

  "Must have taken some poor bastard's coat along the way... Where's my phone? My wallet?" The man didn't sound particularly distressed. It was more a resigned annoyance, as if this was something he had to deal with often enough in the past. "Glad I did though... why is it so cold in here?"

  Grumbling to himself, he managed to haul upward and drop onto a couch that seemed as if it had been dragged in from someone's lawn after spending a couple weeks outside. In the rain, no less. It squished oddly, it was lumpy, the smell wasn't remotely pleasant... but it beat the sterile metal tile he had been sprawled out on.

  Metal tile? He didn't have metal tile in his house, but honestly, he wasn't that unused to waking up at a pal's house. The issue was, none of them had metal tile either. They were all always broke, if anyone had metal tile, they'd probably have ripped it up and sold it for scrap metal.

  Leaning backward into the couch, which creaked in alarming protest at the gesture, the man took in his surroundings. It was as if someone had tried to cram everything a house needed into an old classroom or something.

  There was the couch he was seated on, with a rickety end table alongside it. A short distance away, there was a TV set that seemed to be disconnected from cable, displaying only flickering static, resting on a short, waist-high bookshelf.

  It wasn't one of those nice, flat-screen TVs either. It was the heavy, call-a-friend-to-move massive box TV. A new one you put down gently because you were scared you would break it. This TV you would put down gently because you'd be terrified it would break your fingers or the table you put it down on.

  The man sniffed at the air, and perked up slightly at the scent of coffee in the air, though he could tell it was cold and old. You learned to recognize the difference after you've left coffee out too many times.

  There were a half-dozen paper cups strewn on a long countertop, made of the same silvery metal as the floor tiles. Most of that number were tipped on their side haphazardly, but one seemed about half-full of glorious caffeinated bean juice. Cold, tar-thick, cheap coffee... but coffee nonetheless.

  He staggered over and glared down at the cup, pondering its lethality if he tried to consume it as-is. "Yeah. I better heat this..." he mused, clearing his throat with a ragged cough, thumping a fist off his chest a few times for good measure.

  The 'kitchen' of this little mess of a home he woke up in appeared to be a microwave, a mini-fridge crammed underneath the metal counter, and... was that a Bunsen burner? "Haven't seen one of these since high school. Seems like an old science classroom turned... what, hobo-stop?"

  The whirr of the microwave joined the sonorous tunes of static and fluorescent lightbulbs for a few seconds, before being aggressively terminated with a sharp beeping. At least the coffee was lukewarm, now, and it seemed more liquid and less solid than it had been before microwaving it.

  A gulp. Then a grimace, a soft retching, a muffled swear, and finally another gulp. "Breakfast of champions!" He raised the paper cup in mock salute toward... well, no one. He was the only one here. Where was everyone else he had been partying with?

  "Hey! Where'd you all go? Tony? Ray? You better at least still be around! If you just dumped me somewhere random as a prank, I'm going to be really pissed off!" The loud voice reverberated around the room, but there was no response.

  The man crossed the room, heading toward the singular door in the opposing side. It was the room's sole exit, and the entryway was flanked by large cabinets that seemed to have glassware, tongs, tubes... all sorts of remnant materials one would expect in what he was increasingly certain was some kind of renovated science classroom.

  Tug. The door was locked. Fortunately, it wasn't locked from the outside, as that would just be the beginnings of a horror story. He clicked the deadbolt back with a sharp clack-click-clack, the old lift-slide-drop motion reminding him of working the bolt on a rifle.

  Creeeaaaak. Yeah, the door wasn't a big fan of being opened. The hinges announced their rustiness with a glee that bordered on sentience, and the lower hem of the door screeched across the tiles. At some point, the upper hinge must have come out from the wall slightly, making the door just barely operational.

  The hallway beyond was dark and unwelcoming, a long hallway that brought up all sorts of unpleasant memories of ghost stories and haunted asylums.

  "Nope. Nope! Fuck that. All that? All that out there? That can wait until I'm sober and I find something with the right heft that I can clobber anything that jumps out at me." The screeching repeated as he closed the door, and the click-clack-click resounded with more force behind it as he latched the deadbolt again.

  Staggering back toward the couch, his eyes blinking rapidly to work off the drowsiness still, he noticed there were a few objects laying out, as if someone had taken them out of their pockets while seated and just set them off to one side.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Oh, good. That looks like my wallet and my phone... and... that's... nah. No way." The tone shifted through a range of emotions, starting on relieved, then startled, and finally landing on amused.

  "Really guys? You're putting some Pokeball toy near my stuff? Is this your way of making fun of me for still playing games in my free time?"

  Dropping back on the couch, he grabbed the spherical object and rolled it around on his fingers with a surprisingly dexterous grace for someone who had been passed out on the floor minutes ago, making it dance across his knuckles and around his fingertips in a fashion similar to how card sharks would play with poker chips.

  "Pretty high quality, though. Honestly, however much those guys paid for this, it's way too much. Wonder how much I could get for it if I find the right collector. Eh. Alright, toys later, let's make a call and have them come pick me up..."

  The pokeball was set back on the end table, and they reached for the slim, flat device that was sitting next to his wallet. Confusion flickered over his features, the corners of his mouth turning down into a pronounced frown.

  "This isn't my phone. This is a piece of crap. What is this? It looks like someone cobbled this together with scrap electronics and superglue..."

  It really did. It had a bright green LCD screen display that was brightly back-lit. It had rough, dirty-grey plastic casing, with a few exposed wires coiling around the back of it from the top down the left hand side. It had a small camera dead in the middle of the back, and it had a keypad operation system that consisted of arrows in the four cardinal directions and a button in the middle of the four arrows.

  "Yeah. Okay guys, I get it, you blew all the money on the Pokeball, but you would have been better off not giving me this shitty Pokedex to go with it. It sort of spoils the image." The man muttered to himself, pondering how he was going to call to get a ride out of this freaky half-ruined building now.

  Fingers traced along the side of the machinery, and in stenciled letters that looked like they had been carefully drawn on with a black marker, it read 'Frankendex 1.0'.

  A snort of amused laughter escaped at that. "Alright, nice. It got a chuckle out of me, I take it back, your crappy Pokedex gag wasn't that bad..."

  He shook his head slowly, reaching for his wallet. If he had any cash, he'd at least be able to wave down a taxi and get home... if any taxi was driving through whatever weird part of town this building was in.

  "This isn't my wallet either. Huh. Well, come on, at least have some bills for me in here... or a card. A bus probably won't take plastic, but most taxi have got those... card-reader things now, right?"

  The wallet was pristine, black-hued leather. It looked sleek and shiny, so it was very much not his, but it was equally promising that it had cash inside if it was a nice wallet. It was a single-fold wallet, the sort that was meant to hold an ID, maybe a single credit card, and folded bills.

  As he flicked it open, a thin piece of plastic dropped out and clattered to the floor, but the man ignored it for the time being. Fingers dipped into the wallet and plucked out a few brightly-colored bills instead of the usual dull green he had been expecting.

  "What's this? Monopoly money? Ugh. Yeah, that sounds about right... wait, really? I know that weird P-symbol with the double dashes. That's the... Pokedollar, right? This is... this is getting a little far-fetched."

  Feeling uneasy, he rubbed his fingers along one of the red-colored bills, displaying '1000' on it. It felt like real money texture, not something that had been printed off a cheap, at-home printer for a prank.

  His eyes flicked down to the fallen card, and he belt down from the couch to reach for it with an expression somewhere between anticipation and dread. Tongue flicked free to wet his lips, breath drawing in slightly faster as he pried the card up off the metal tiles and lifted it to read.

  It was his picture, but not quite. It was his face in the picture, the wild, slicked-back black hair he had, his same build. But it was of him in this same dirty lab coat, with the goggles he currently wore on his forehead pulled down over his eyes, wearing a broad smirk of utter confidence that bordered on aggressively smug.

  "Trainer ID card. Frank N. Stein. Heh. Heh. A-heh." The laughter was stilted and forced. Every detail was right. Eye color? Brown, just like his. Approximate weight? The same he remembered, vaguely, the last time he had his driver's license renewed. Age? Twenty-six. Height? Six-foot-one. It was all just like he remembered.

  At least the parts that were there to be matched. He had slots for markings for badges earned, all of which were empty, and the card was labeled as being issued in the Kanto region.

  His breath- Frank's breath. It came in faster, hasty draws. Not quite bringing in enough air. Pushing it back out too quickly. He was panicking. Knowing it didn't help stop it. His eyes flicked aside, toward the end table.

  Toward the pokeball resting atop it. He stared at it, silently, feeling unsteady from his erratic breathing and the sensation of not getting enough air.

  "One real easy way to see if this is the single most elaborate prank played on me, or... well. If this is it. This is real."

  His tone was oozing disbelief even as he entertained the thought. How many times had he wished to be free of his dead end job? He works... perhaps worked? Either way, he had spent too many days in a run-down scrapyard, trying to shoo away vandals from smashing up the rusty cars on the lot or graffitiing the walls.

  Even with that said, even if this was a dream, it had been just that. A dream. Did he really want to be in a world where children could concealed carry the sentient equivalent of a flamethrower?

  A slightly-trembling hand reached toward the pokeball, curling digits around the cool, spherical surface. Palming it, thumb resting against the button on the front-center. It felt like it was borderline an instinct, a muscle-memory his brain has forgotten but his body knew just fine.

  Breathe in. Pause. Count to five. Let it out slow. Calm. Suddenly the fluorescent lights' gentle buzzing was deafening and irritating. The static of the television seemed to be mocking his indecision. Sweat trickled slowly down his brow, and he reached up to tug the goggles down over his eyes in a motion equally as reflexive and instinctive.

  "Ah... hah. Hah. Ahahah..." The tinge of manic energy leaked into his voice as he grasped the ball tighter, fingers digging into its surface... barring his thumb, which hovered fractions of an inch over the button, as if terrified to close that final gap.

  "Alright... well, whoever-you-are-in-there, I choose you!" He called out, pressing the button and tossing it forward, where it clattered in a few sharp, jolting bounces across the floor before coming to rest in front of the TV.

  Nothing. Silence. Buzzing lights and television static. "Right. Right. That would be crazy. Pokemon aren't re- ... re... real..." His eyes, having stared at the Pokeball, had noticed how it landed near the end of a plug. A plug whose cord slowly slipped back upward along the waist-high bookshelf, vanishing behind the back of the TV.

  The TV was unplugged. But the screen was displaying static. His eyes widened, and he stared at the horrific box with a desperate intent. The static seemed to be getting louder. Deafening. Overpowering the sound of the lighting, even the sound of his own heaving gasps for air.

  Then the static started to peel away from the TV screen. It lifted upward and off it, and an eerie flickering of frequency noises sounded out. It was like someone jerked the dial on a radio back and forth too fast, making it waver between stations, creating a ghostly cacophony of clashing noises. Still... it made him think of laughter.

  That static was... thick. That was the only way to describe it. Like the static was manifesting as something between a gaseous cloud and a liquid. It floated like a cloud, but it flowed like water as it oozed off- or out of- the TV set. It drifted down, and he desperately did the first thing that came to mind.

  If this was all real, if he wasn't going horrifically insane, then...!

  Fingers grasped at the Frankendex 1.0, and he aimed the camera at the fog. It flowed down from the TV set, and the Pokeball he had thrown popped open as if in welcome. With a sheen of red light, the static-flow shot into the ball rapidly, before it closed with a click and a beep.

  Frank glanced downward, trying to watch the Pokeball from his peripheral vision. The green LCD screen all but illuminated his face, the glare reflecting off his goggles as he couldn't help but bring it closer to his face, reading the displayed words again and again.

  It read as follows: 'Error accessing previously logged data. Data mismatch. Unable to display number. Unable to display abilities. Unable to assess. Unable to analyze. Creating new entry. Please assign a name to the missing number.'

  "I think... I think I just caught MissingNo as my first Pokemon..." he murmured in a dazed tone of utter disbelief.

  Frank wasn't sure if this was the best possible outcome, or the worst. But it was definitely going to be... interesting.