SR ε: Dry Veins (2021)

EPILOGUE | Ch.16: SAFE!

Possession
Friday

Baseball. A sport for everyone. Professionals, casuals. Old, and new. One ball. Four bases. None of those bases are indications of sexual progress. All of the players are one person, instead of two people. The sun is out, and the grass is a yellowish green. It's a good day to play ball.

My grandma got charged with drug possession, trafficking, growing without a permit, and child kidnapping – with some child endangerment for a little spice on top. I realized, with her help, that spiders and vampires really aren't all that different – they both have to entangle their prey, fill them with doubt (or corrosive acid), and suck their veins dry. But vampires hurt people, and spiders catch bugs that nobody likes anyway. So if I'm gonna be one of the two, I should probably be the latter. Not that I eat bugs – it's a metaphor, for... something.
Anyway, all that may have been traumatic, but today was going great. Ron sat on the bleachers, giving me and my team-mates hand signs like a coach normally would. Our real coach was smoking behind those bleachers, oh-so-conspicuously. Everyone was bummed they had to pay full price again, since Crystal had been giving them ten percent off. Buying in bulk from distributors had its advantages, and it's something only she could do, since her last husband had been a courier. It's all about who you know. The kids in my grade were all nursing migraines themselves, and pretty much everyone was wearing shades. They were cut off abruptly from their supply, and nobody else wanted to pick up the slack by selling nicotine to minors. What a bunch of heroes. I swung hard, and missed. That was a strike-out. I didn't care. We changed sides, and I put on the glove. I was wearing the glove, and the glove wasn't wearing me. Lian Mu was the reliable umpire, evidently free from chemical dependence. She and I were getting along better, but it was only as friends. That was probably better for me, right now... I could stand to learn how to be someone's friend before I try to slobber my way into a relationship. We did hug, though! So that was nice, made me smile. Quincy was in relatively fine form, unlike Beakley, since he'd been smoking weed instead of tobacco. Beakley's lungs seized each time he ran, and he was left hacking and coughing on whatever bases he managed to take. Even Jaijit was under-performing and out of breath, and the referee was starting to get tired of calling "Ball!". I got to see what Ron was talking about, where the crowd possesses a player; Quincy was killing it on bat. Twice, he took third base from home and once he hit the ball out of the park. In the same inning. People on both sides were cheering him on, and he was their star for that half hour. Then he swung the bat so hard it flew out of his hand and hit the other team's pitcher in the face, and he got a penalty while they patched the poor kid up. He couldn't remember doing it, and sat in the dugout feeling like shit, staring at his knees for the rest of the game.
Just kept muttering, "It's all blank, man, I don't see nothin'..."
I looked over to Ron, and he made a gesture, like, 'See? That's what happens.' It was an odd moment of mutual understanding.
And me? I was okay. I wasn't a light in the darkness, nor was I a god. I wasn't a pitiful creature of the shadows, either. I caught three out of five that came my way, and ten over the course of the game. We lost, and I had fun anyway. I was feeling alright, back on my vegan diet, knowing for sure that whether or not it was the right thing to do for the world, it was the right thing to do for myself. I bounced and ran in place waiting for the game to end, and I was first in line to cross bats and say "good game". We couldn't bump fists, due to the flu, but this was kind of cooler.

Even though we lost, the coach gave everyone a present: letter jackets, for the "Hawkins Skeleton Crew" - black with grey sleeves and a skull and crossbones emblem on the back (where the skull was a baseball, and the bones were a pair of bats). Needless to say, I strongly approved. (And was surprised to learn that up until that moment, I didn't know what our team's name was.) I slipped mine over my slate-colored baseball jersey, and I had to say it looked great with the black jogging pants and cleats. The left breast read my number: 71. Coach said it was to boost morale, and make us feel like a team. Everyone was pretty much in the same state of feeling like shit, so it was unanimous – a team was what we were.
Daisy found me after the game, and congratulated me on my playing. She said I've improved a lot, and that it's good to see me doing something physical. I had to agree. There's a point where too much thinking and reading and theorizing turns into recursion... the wheels are spinning, but that car isn't going nowhere. Sometimes you just gotta move.
Walking alone, I started back for my dorm. In the evening twilight, I looked down at my long shadow. It was mine, and nobody else's. And I was a good kid.