Staring Eyes

A boy sits at home, deciding to play through Pokemon FireRed again. He picks his starter and everything goes smoothly until after Celadon city. He'd just defeated the Rockets and obtained the Silph Scope and decided he would go and catch a Gastly. He searched the tower, trying to find one at a low enough level so it still had the moves he wanted, when he ran into a level 10 male gastly.

Its normal animation was gone, replaced with it's eyes growing bigger for a moment, the pupils shifting to look directly at the player. He brushed it off as perhaps his imagination, or some glitch he'd never seen before. He caught the Gastly without incident and left the tower. Training it on other pokemon outside, leveling it up. Every time he checked it's status that same eye animation occured.

As he went along through the game eventually his Gastly evolved into a Haunter. It too had it's normal animation replaced with the strange eye movement. Perhaps it was some odd thing unique to the Gastly line that happened with specific IV's or something. He thought little of it and wasn't about to abandon it now. After all, he put so much work into it, it would be such a waste.

Haunter grew and grew in power, proving himself a vital part of the player's team. Finally, he decides he wants to make it a Gengar. He takes his GBA over to his friend's house to trade. Another sign presented itself that something was off. After the trade, the Haunter on his friend's screen evolved into a Gengar. The player couldn't see, but as he heard the Gengar cry his friend froze with a look of terror. The player looked at the screen to just see Gengar sitting there, before the trade automatically initiated to put it back in his team.

The friend unplugged the transfer cord as soon as it was over and hurried the player out of his house. The player got home and looked at his Gengar's status, seeing nothing different except it too had the eye animation. He resumed the game, and everything progressed normally. Gengar was the star of his team, bringing him win after win. Even defeating the Elite Four again after the events at the Sevii Islands. With the game finally finished, he turned it off and went to sleep.

As he slept, he dreamed of eyes. Gengar's eyes. Staring at him, boring into him. Frequently he awoke with cold sweats, and every night it got worse. He visited doctors, tried various pills, but nothing worked. Nothing could fend off those dreams. The feeling of something watching him. He was at his wits end, sleep deprived feeling his sanity slip away. He reached for the bottle of pills, deciding he would sleep regardless of the cost. He poured the pills into his hand and swallowed them all.

As he lay down and closed his eyes, sleep finally took him. Silent sleep, before the dream started again. Those staring eyes returned, but this time there was a wide grinning mouth below them. It opened and spoke "You are mine now..." and the player never woke again...