. : HELLACIOUS : .

The Game

Who the hell writes these episodes?

The Wednesday before the ANL baseball game was a quiet one.

Roz picked up extra shifts at Charlie's for more spending money and Billy was fucking out being Billy.

Forbidden to leave Redwater until he returned, Kash was left alone during the day, sweeping and gardening and tuning up the convertible for the millionth time. They groped around for the lamp, checking the attic and digging up suspicious piles of dirt just outside the gate only to come up empty handed. But it wasn't a new disappointment. 

Kash bided their time. Urgency was a hundred year game they would only lose.

Instead of wallowing, Kash juiced a gallon of tart lemonade and absorbed the life everyone else was living through the TV screen.

"We now return to our scheduled programming of: I Dream of Jeannie."

Oh boy, here we go.

On screen Captain Tony Nelson gently reprimanded a bashful Jeannie for setting fire to his superior officer only to forgive her not even two minutes later.

Kash scoffed, stirring in a pinch of sugar.

No one can honestly live this way.

The entire show revolved around a wholesome D'Jinn, or Genie they called her, making her owner suffer through the magical mishaps she caused trying to fix his problems.

Blindingly white, blonde, sparkling blue eyes - Jeannie was happy being trapped in her lamp. Hell, she was thriving, she lived in a constant state of dazed euphoria. She never once tried to break her binding and her worrywart master didn't seem like he would've of cared either way. Jeannie popped in and out of scenes in her skimpy, pink Arabian costume, making a slew of embarrassing mistakes without punishment.

Must be nice, Kash fingered their sleeve, tracing the bruise underneath.

They considered changing the channel but their hand always twitched away inches from the knob. They knew the harsh reality that bordered Jeannie and Master Tony's segment on either side. Somehow suffering through half an hour of a ditsy, powerful Genie kissing up to an ungrateful human was more palatable than watching endless streets of beautiful, black people be hosed down and tenderized like so much raw meat.

Kash might've rolled their coal eyes whenever the theme song came on, but they still religiously watched the astronaut and his doting D'Jinn solve hi-jinks in thirty short minutes at 2PM Central.

God, they're both awful.

"I'm only trying to help Master! You know I'm doing my best."

"I know, Jeannie... I know."

...Must be nice.

.:.:.:.

"Alright, everyone got their tickets? Don't come sobbing to me if you lose your stub, I'll be crying with you all the way to my seat, cause I'm watching this game no matter what."

"You'd miss your mother's funeral if it meant you could see this game."

"Damn right I would."

The Divine Nine plus Kash and Fleur were carried into the stadium by the throbbing crowd. Fans for either team were parted down the middle like the Red Sea, ruddy, white suds on one side and rich, dark charcoal on the other.

On any other day Black Avenue was alive. But that day? 

It was electric.

Fleur and Kash skipped ahead, taking in all the vendors hawking souvenirs and hotdogs and popcorn and a grand old time at the game of the century. The D'jinn forgot to act their age (at least 150 years) much to the Nine's amusement, pelting Malcolm with questions about the players and the food.