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Another long night in the lab. Nose buried in academic journals, eyes burning from staring at a screen. Pain in the wrists. Pain in the back. What else did Mable really have to do? She could walk home in the chill darkness, get takeout, eat it in silence while staring at the wall or staring at the TV or staring at another journal.
This was the afterlife, and the afterlife was boring.
She sighed and deleted the last sentence of her draft. Across the room, something scraped. She looked up, and her eyes landed on the door to the stairs, which she never used, because there was an elevator and she wasn't an idiot. Nobody ever took the stairs. Most visitors didn't even know they were there.
The door opened haltingly, like the person on the other side was struggling with the weight of it. Mable sat back. Maybe someone had come to kill her. Maybe her brilliant contributions to On Pokémon Biology had earned her an admirer.
At last, the door opened enough, and a thin figure slipped into the room.
Mable recoiled. "Malva?"
Malva, or the wraith of her, just stared at her. Mable stared back. Malva was just as beautiful as she had been, though her face had gone deathly thin. Gaunt— malnourished, even. Thin arms hung loose by her sides, framing an equally thin body clad in aggressively trendy reds and blacks. Still Malva. Just smaller. Even her hair had lost some of its volume.
Mable got to her feet. "What are you doing here?" No one was in the lab, but she dropped her voice to a whisper anyway. "You can't be here! Do you know what will happen to me if I get caught talking to you?"
Malva shrugged. "You'll go the same route as the others, I expect. They're all in prison, you know. Well, not Xerosic; he got out. But Bryony and Celosia and Aliana."
"Yes, I do know." Mable shut the blinds with a snap. "So what are you doing here?"
"If you think about it," Malva continued, "we're the last ones standing. I never even saw the inside of a jail cell." She laughed, high and loud.
Mable sighed loudly and leaned against the edge of her desk, rubbing her temples under her glasses. "Am I losing it? Or are you?"
"I'm real," Malva said, coming around to steal Mable's office chair. Her legs shook a little as she lowered herself into it, and her eyes glittered as though in fever.
Mable squinted at her. "Have you been sick?"
"'Have I been well' is a better question," Malva said, rolling her eyes.
"Well, what's the matter with you?"
"Oh, dying of lack of purpose, probably," Malva said. Humming under her breath, she tilted her head against the backrest and seemed content to stay there.
Mable took her glasses off and a ran a hand down her face. "What are you doing here, Malva? If you need help, I'm not the one."
"Oh, yes," Malva said acidically. "You've got your wonderful new life now. When was the last time you spoke to someone who doesn't have a vested interest in keeping you prisoner?"
Malva had always had a particular kind of cruelty, the kind of sociopathic mean girl you really only saw in teen girl lit and nursing departments. She probably thought it was funny to sit here and hold Mable over the flames, watch her writhe and sweat and dread.
Mable scoffed. "What, are you lonely or something?"
"Oh, yes. Let's say that I am." Malva touched her fingertips to her chest. "So lonely I sought out my least-favorite of the basement-dwellers, because you're the only one left. Keep me company, Mable dear. Tell me about your darling little life."
Lysandre's omnipresence had made this kind of antagonism rare back in the day, but it had still been there. Every emotion had hit like a drug, and even bickering had felt high and important and electric. Malva clearly felt it still, some vestige of that chemical thrill. But the magic was gone. Mable's heart was barely beating. Just plodding along in her chest. She couldn't even hate Malva. She looked sick.
Mable gestured at her monitor. "I'm working on a research paper on the behavioral changes in certain Pokémon based on proximity to urban development."
Malva looked at her with disgust. "Never mind."
"You might have a better time getting what you want if you'd just ask for it," Mable snapped. Maybe she should be recording this. If someone saw Malva, there would be no proof that they hadn't been conspiring. Just Mable's word, and that wasn't worth a lot these days.
"I got my answer," Malva said quietly, but no less poisonous for it. She braced herself on the chair's armrests and rose with obvious difficulty, her legs shaking even worse now.
She made it barely halfway across the room before stopping with a rush of breath and the characteristic sway of someone about to faint.
"Malva—"
"Shut up." She staggered to the wall and caught herself, head hanging and shoulders heaving.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Fevers." Malva had to pause and gasp for breath before continuing. "I dream... I dream of Lysandre and I get these fevers... I don't think true beauty even exists. Maybe as some mathematical concept." She laughed and sank to the floor, still gasping.
Mable stool over her and pressed her hands to her hips. "I take it therapy has never crossed your mind."
"You first," Malva said with a thin smile.
Mable took a breath. Research papers. Takeout. Silence. "I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life."
"Oh, I'm sure." Malva threw her head back and cackled. "I think I got what I came for. You don't feel anything anymore, do you?"
"I feel plenty of things," Mable said. "I feel soul-wrenching frustration every single day. Why, I even get the urge to murder every once in a while."
"What a treat that must be for you. Lucky Mable." Malva swept her hair out of her eyes. Her face, which had paled to a nearly-luminous green, was regaining some color. She still looked sickly, still as pale as a ghost, but it seemed that health was as relative to her as happiness was to Mable.
"Were you leaving?" Mable asked, pretending to study her nails.
Malva hauled herself to her feet again. "I just wanted to see." She slumped against the wall and extended a hand, reaching for something only she could see. "I wanted to see if it was different with you. But there's this barrier I just can't breach."
"Go to the hospital," Mable said, steering Malva toward the elevator. "You know where it is."
"Oh, I will," Malva said in a tone that indicated she absolutely would not. She stepped into the elevator, looking at Mable through her tinted lenses. "Your conscience is clear."
The doors rolled shut. Mable closed her eyes.