Restless (The doesn't suck as much version)

Restless, we called it, when she got like this. Coming straight home from school and arriving a good fifteen minutes earlier than normal because she couldn’t help but walk faster, propelled by some itch inside her to move. She’d take two steps into the kitchen then out the other side and straight up to her bedroom. These were the nights we’d hear pacing and furniture moving across the halls, and her bedroom light would still be lit when one of us got up to pee at three-thirty in the morning. She’d take on projects behind that door, and every piece of her furniture would suddenly sit on opposite corners of the room by the time she made it to breakfast the next morning. By the next day they might be somewhere new again.

These were the nights we forgot the alternative was a near-dead daughter, drooping in melancholy at the dinner table and not moving from that table until she had to drag herself up the stairs to bed in the early evening.

“Manic depressive.” The doctors had told us as we sat on too cushy couch pillows and avoided his words by studying the inspirational messages in brushstroke on the walls, “She’s bipolar.”

The words seemed too harsh, much too crazy, for a girl who was not even old enough to drive a car. Bipolar. The words left a sour taste in his mouth that he wanted to spit onto the green carpet.

Well here she was again, scooting up the stairs almost as soon as we caught sight of her. Miles of to-do lists were draping down the hallway behind her, following her as she went and only growing longer. Her mother gave a sharp cry about dinner. She couldn’t fight her forward momentum, though, and continued up the stairs with some incomprehensible murmur that sounded something like “homework.” He wasn’t disappointed, nor even a bit surprised. Nothing scared her more than the prospect of a family dinner on nights like these. I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t be able to stand my mother’s eyes following every movement of my fork. Then again, I didn’t blame Carol from staring either. That utensil moved much too quickly between her mouth, eagerly waiting its dinnertime portion, and her full plate. Not once did she let it linger long enough to pick anything up. Though we heard her stomach give a grumble of protest, she would get straight up from the table and shoot right back to her room. Her dresser grated against the tile floor.

I glanced toward my wife for a moment, and she rolled her eyes and turned back to her mashed potatoes. She’d tried to fight it enough already. Enforcing bedtimes on school nights did nothing more than force her to hide alone in the darkness during those early morning hours, in hope that no one could see. She hadn’t fooled us though, as I caught her soft trod against the ceiling of my study down below. The beat of her toes from above formed the perfect rhythm to finish grading papers to before the sun found us. Her footfalls grew heavier as the night went on, and I noticed the nights she pretended to sleep, finally leaving the furniture in its places, that beat was ten times as quick. Ten times as restless.

I  imagined her up there, the darkness stifling her much too productive mind. While bedtimes tried to blanket her in silence, her mind buzzed to the sounds of due dates and appointments she probably didn’t have.

She used the little light she had to count the tiles as she paced from off-white wall to off-white wall, the dresser banished to the far right corner so she had a straight path between the two. Twelve blocks there, twelve blocks back. He’d counted once too, just by the sound of her feet against the floor, and snuck up to her bedroom when she was still at school one day to check if he was right. He was. After a few hours though, somewhere between the time of night when his coffee went cold and when he finished the cup and went to get another, that rhythm would tire her. She’d begin the little games with herself and count tiles by threes, then fours. Four steps there, three back. Then switched. But even that could not hold the monsters back forever. He knew because last month, right after final exams had finished up, he was kept up much later than he intended reading a particularly boring term paper. It was then, as he was scribbling a thought about a thesis shift into the margins, he heard her muffled screams. They were not the loudest, she couldn’t risk her mother finding out she’d broken bedtime rules again, but they were loud enough to unsettle him and force his pen back down on the desk.

The night had already unnerved him, and the unexpected cry had knocked all clear and rational thought from his mind for a few moments. The sound was off-putting, to say the least.

As a professor, he spent most of his days looking for the logical answer, tangible representation of an absurd world in which they lived, but what was tangible about this? A young girl pacing alone in her bedroom as the clock hand past two o’clock and the sun was still hours from being seen. But this seemed like even more than that. His logical mind begged the question again and again, what could possess a girl just barely fifteen to scream out to no one but the walls? 

He could see it now, though. The tiny ants, lacing pathways across her skin as they scurried through her veins through her blood vessels, painted long streaks up and down her arms in a sickening black color. He could so perfectly picture the sickening ripple of their movement beneath the skin. She knew the monsters had been coming all day. He had seen it in her eyes, that raw and powerful fear gripping her tightly beneath those soft hazel irises. Maybe he realized now why. He could feel the tidal wave of ants sweeping and spreading through her suddenly as she closed that thin door on the rest of her household.

They raced out of her pores, an army of black ocean waves pouring out from within. Their legs hit the ground, spreading over the walls with the sound of needles, and drawing patterns of pinpricks in the wallpaper. Such a sound might be silent if given off by one, but it poked holes in the very film of her eardrums when played by such a mass. They all chanted together her mother’s and my favorite word, though each at a separate beat so the sound became constant. As soon as one trumpeter broke free from his place, another immediately filled its silence. Restless. Restless. Restless.

She wants nothing more than to let a scream crash through her bones, rip the bugs from her lungs and spray them out with the sound. That might break through their methodic chant, she thought, and break its hypnotic spell, the one which propelled her ever forward. She wanted nothing more than for them to leave her.

Soon the walls swelled outward, the room flooded by their tidal waves. She tried to continue her strides, though her pace was slowed. Trekking through the bodies which latched themselves to her feet was much harder than her usual quickstep over the smooth floor. As her feet fell one after the other to the ground, she heard them crunch beneath her shoes and the sound echoed through my study down below. One thousand bodies crushed in a single step. But plenty more soon filled their posts on the tiled battlefield.

The insects gushed out of her from every inch of skin exposed, and even some tunneled through sweatshirt sleeves out into the world. The moving puddle at her feet grew deeper. Soon she was afraid she’d be breathing them in with her air. Then they’d coat the hollow of her lungs with restless legs. Soon they would crawl on every side of her, inside and out, darting in and out of her eye sockets and under her toenails. Soon she’d be nothing more than a floating object in that sea of restless legs.

With her next breath there they were. She sucked them in, and the only way she knew she might take her next breath was if she screamed. And so she did. It forced its way out of her. A final wave crawled up her esophagus and she spit them out with a long shriek. She felt choked, yet never once did her body reach that way. Breathing insects felt natural, less demanding than air. In the next instant the tides shifted with a beautiful inhalation. Time slowed finally to a painful pace, much closer to that of the world around her. Though she felt every tiny creature which crept in and out of her innards, their march seemed calculated now. It flowed softly, the trickle of stream more than the gush of a waterfall.

When I heard that sound tonight, imagining her lungs filling with air, I couldn’t allow myself to sit there, perplexed, forming theories rather than solutions. I pushed the chair away, trudged up the stairs, and search my mind for the right words to say to her, or even the questions he could possibly ask.

My footsteps clacked down the cherry floors must have alerted her, as her own sounds stopped quite suddenly. He could feel the waters fall back, blackness shrinking around her. Maybe my own sounds broke through the needle sound. His hand gripped the doorknob and in the short seconds before the door swung inward, he felt the room clear. The ants receded and suddenly ceased to exist when finally it opened.

“A-are you okay?” He managed. He grew even more concerned when he caught sight of her crouched there in the middle of the floor with her knees clutched to her chest as if she was hiding away or futilely attempting to protect herself.

“Just fine.”

It was unnatural the way she shot up from her position on the ground and scooted towards her desk, feigning interest in the papers laying scattered there. As she did, he imagined a single ant lingering beneath her sweatshirt sleeve, just out of his sight.

 “Are you sure? You seem a bit…” He studied her for a moment, mulling over his next word, tasting it for just a moment, “restless.”

“Really. I’m alright.”

I took a deep breath, then struggled for a few moments as no words came to me. Finally, I nodded “Don’t wake your mother,” and left the room.

I retreated to the safety of my study; my body slouched forward in my desk chair. It wasn’t thirty seconds after I left that room that I felt her pacing vibrate the floor again. Leaning forward in my seat, I propped my elbows against the mahogany and ran my hands through my hair, as black as the army filling her room again.

I looked up at the ceiling and swore I could practically see where her foot landed on the other side. Then, the slightest movement in the corner closest to the sound caught my attention. A single line of ants, looking harmless, escaped from a crack in the ceiling. I immediately turned my gaze back to the term papers, trying to convince myself I hadn’t seen a thing.  I couldn’t help but mutter the word, “restless.”

Perfectly Normal

            The fire enveloped my hand, tender and loving like a mother embracing her newborn. It was warm--not hot--warm. I withdrew my hand from the flame, noticing the hungry way the tongues of fire lick at my hand as the wisps sweep the length of my hand, creeping from my palm to my fingertips. Lifting my hand, I examined the damage. A bit of flaking and a few patches of angry red blotches along the back. Why? Why can't I feel what they feel? A black glove reclaimed its place on my right hand, chafing against my burnt skin. Disappointed, I suffocated the controlled flame with the lid of a pot and slid it underneath my bed. I crawled on the bed and creaked open the window. Waving my arms like an inhospitable host, I dismissed the fumes of the fire that I had so painstakingly created.

            When I was thirteen years old, my family moved from Vietnam to Colorado. I couldn't speak English well, so I was teased. The teacher, who held no sympathy for, as she called them, "yellow" people, turned a blind eye. My classmates were delighted. They took pleasure in poking me with sharp sticks, pulling on my braid and stepping on my sandal-covered feet. I never cried. I never complained. But they became more daring, more vicious. Sometimes, my backpack would disappear, found days later in a trash can. Tacks constantly covered my seat. I always made sure to check before sitting, but one time I forgot. As soon as I sat down, they started howling, but it gradually faded to horrified whispers. They expected me to jump up and yelp with pain, but I just sat there, a crimson pool forming underneath my skirt. Someone screamed.

         I left that school soon afterwards, not because of the teasing and the pranks, but because of the whispers and the glances that would follow me, an endless shadow. I couldn't stand the way they looked at me, like I was a freak. I'm not a freak, just your average seventeen year old Vietnamese girl. I shop at the mall, listen to One Direction and gossip about cute boys. I'm normal. I wear a bow in my hair, a butterfly so pale blue that it could flutter away at any moment and be a part of the sky. I'm normal. But I know that's not true, I'm not like everybody else. No matter what I do, I'll never be like my peers. I won't feel what they feel: the soft, smooth skin of a baby's bottom, the coarse fibers of a familiar carpet, the warmth of another human being. I can't stand it, I can't stand being different. I need to feel what others feel. I need to be normal.

           I stand over the well, staring down its open maw, hungry to consume me. It's too dark to see the bottom. The darkness dares me to jump; it beckons me to abandon my fear and lunge down its seemingly endless throat, to fall for what must be hours and fill its stomach. But I don't.

Restless

 (I really cannot decide whether I absolutely loath this piece or not.)

Restless, they would call it when she got like this. She scoffed at the word. Restless didn’t begin to cover it. That simple word spoke of the things tangible, explainable, and real. It brought images of over excitable children fidgeting at the table while the grownups finished their Christmas dinner and their presents called from the next room. It was something more real than that, yet somehow less concrete.

Restless couldn’t account for the ants scurrying through her veins. Their tiny little feet, if one could even call them that, traced criss-crossed paths through every inch of her being, hurrying just below the skin. She could feel each of their legs move independently through her. Every one was an explosion of nerve endings, a sensation like nothing she’d felt before. If she didn’t get up and move with the beings, allow each step of theirs to take her two of her own, she felt they might consume her. Fill up her insides and spill out her ears in impatient ocean waves. So she let them take control. The room was only so big, though.

Her mind buzzed with due dates and to do lists stretching for miles. In her saner moments she might have realized she needed to do none of those things, but for now they flew past one by one, each becoming for a second the most important thing in the world, and the most stressful. She played games to calm it, counting the blocks on the tile floor as she passed them. Twelve blocks there, twelve back. And again. And again. Restless. But this couldn’t keep hold of her attention for too long. She began to take the steps in twos, then threes and fours. Four blocks there, three blocks back. There she went, white-washing wall to white-washed wall. She had needed to move the dresser against her closet door to give her a straight path between each wall, though the test of her strength quieted her demons for a few moments.

Her mother called from the downstairs kitchen. Dinner was ready. Sure she felt her stomach give a soft growl, but she couldn’t fathom for a moment the idea of sitting down at a table. They might catch her, whatever chased her across those floor tiles. And even worse, the idea that she might have to face her parents’ eyes glancing sideways at her subtle rocking back and forth in her chair while she lifted the fork over and over, never once letting it linger long enough to pick up any food, sickened her. Restless, they might call her. Just the thought of hearing the word again shaped her hunger into overwhelming nausea.

She let the ants carry her to the top step, where she shouted down something incomprehensible that vaguely sounded like “homework” and hastened her step back toward her bedroom. She shut the door just in time, as the first tidal waves rolled in. She had been expecting them, though never was she fully prepared. Bugs raced from her pores, darting out across the carpet until it was stained black. Restless each one repeated at a slightly different beat, so the word overtook her senses. Restless. Restless. Restless.  The walls swell outward as the waves beat against them. She wants nothing more than to let a scream crash through her bones, rip the bugs from her lungs and spray them out with the sound. She wanted nothing more for them to leave her.

As her feet fell one after the other to the ground, she heard them crunch beneath her shoes. One thousand bodies crushed in a single step. But plenty more soon filled their posts on the carpeted battlefield. Soon the walls began to crawl with them. So many she could soon hear the legs move one by one, needles poking holes in the wallpaper as they pass. The sound, silent by itself, overtook her ear drums and pricking those pinholes in the thin film of her eardrum. When one tiny pin lifted, another immediately took its place. Over and over. The sound restless.

She felt the room grow smaller, as they gushed in and spilled outward from her. Soon she’d be breathing them in with the air. Soon they would crawl on every side of her, inside and out, darting in and out of her eye sockets and under her toenails. Soon she’d be nothing more than a floating object in that sea of restless legs.

Finally, it forced its way out of her. A final wave crawled up her esophagus and she spit them out with a long shriek. She felt choked, yet never once did her body reach that way. Breathing insects felt natural, more beautiful than air. In an instant tides shifted with a beautiful inhalation. Time slowed finally to a painful pace, much closer to that of the world around her. Though she felt every tiny creature which crept in and out of her innards, their march seemed calculated, flowed softly, the trickle of stream more than the gust of a waterfall.

As the waters fell, the blackness shrinking around her, she caught sight of a shadow beneath her door. The harsh clack of her father’s footfalls on the wood floor broke through the needle sounds and the doorknob turned. In the short seconds before the door swung inward, she watched the ants recede and then cease to exist, no longer running restless through her.

“Are you okay?” Her father seemed concerned, catching sight of her crouched there on the tile, clutching her knees to her chest as if protecting herself, or hiding away.

“Just fine” It was unnatural the way she shot up from her position on the ground and scooted towards her desk, feigning interest in the papers laying scattered there. As she did, she felt a single ant making its way up her arm beneath her sweatshirt sleeves. “Really. I’m alright.”

“Are you sure? You seem a bit…” He studied her for a moment, mulling over his next word, “restless.”

Sleeping Beauty Take Two

Sleeping Beauty Take 2

You would think that after all this work I would find it in myself to love her. But I just can’t.
 I slide my sword into its metal sheathe, it makes a sloshing noise as dragon blood oozes between the hilt and the blade. It is the color and consistency of green-apple jam, but it smells like sulphur. 

                “Well go on, give ’er a big one!”

                Ellie stands behind me, her plump body contained by the frame of the doorway, her wings shimmering as they flutter at her rear. She rubs her tiny, pearly hands together around a wooden baton, pointed downwards, and she gazes up at me with wide eyes, small pink lips tilted slightly upwards hospitably. She gives her chin a flick forward, urging me to proceed.

                My fiancé is curled up in fetal position on her long, rectangular bed. Apart from the bed, the room is empty. Her whole body, her comforters, the wood on her headrest, her foot-stand, the mattress—the floor, the windows, the walls—the lady’s face, for God’s sake—are swathed with a layer of dust high enough to reach the heel of my boot. Little beetles and tiny bed bugs crawl in and out of the holes and tunnels they’ve created for themselves in her mattress. A large black spider stands proudly in the middle of the huge web he’s built, starting at the tip of the headstand, and intertwining itself with the princess’s hair. Spider-webs, old and new, connect the corners of the room, hang from the ceiling, decorating the place like tattered white tinsel. After walking from the door to the bed, my chainmail has turned white, mummified by broken bits of spider-web.

                I can see traces of the beauty that had once captivated me; but she doesn’t look too pretty now. Her mouth hangs open, face tilted back, nostrils flaring and contracting as she inhales and exhales shallow breaths. Her hair, where it isn’t tangled with spider web, is snarled together into tight, brittle knots, the color and consistency of burned angel hair pasta. It has lost the smooth vivacity that once snapped in my face, stinging as it scratched along my forehead. I touch the hair gingerly, and disturb a couple of flies who have made the tangled tresses their nest. They buzz around the room, colliding against the once-red walls faded to a dank maroon; they land on my arms. I shake them off. 

Her eyes are closed in a way that allows me to see just a sliver of white hiding behind thick, dusty lashes. The whole ensemble reminds me of when I used to wake up to her face, hanging inches away from mine, her eyes rolled back into her head and her face pulled taught, mouth gaping—she did it all the time, just to hear me scream.

Her breath catches. For a moment, I can’t see the rise and fall of her chest. And then, her mouth closes, and I the bottom of her lip flutters and flaps as she lets out a noisy stream of air through the center of her mouth. I try to convince myself that she is endearing.

“Come on now, what are you even waiting for?!” Ellie calls out behind me. I glance backwards to see her diaphanous wings flicker impatiently. “Get on with it.”

                I blow at the girl’s face, gently at first, and then with all of my breath. Suddenly, I feel the inside of my nose igniting with a dry fire that smokes its way all the way into my lungs. I double over, coughing and wheezing. From now on, I’ll just use my fingers to wipe the dust away. It’s not enough to remove all of the debris that has caked into her face and sifted its way into the fine wrinkles on her forehead, hints of dimples in her cheeks, her chin, the corners of her mouth—but it’s enough to recognize the smooth straightness of her nose, the good-humored youth of her laughing lines. If I try, I can almost see the princess who is my fiancé.

                She stirs. Her feet pull the moth-eaten comforter off of her torso so that half of it falls onto the floor, upsetting a small cloud of dust that leaves my mouth dry. I imagine that it tastes like dry pond water, or frogs. I cover my nose and my mouth before I have to double over again.

                I hear Ellie’s little feet stomping at the doorway. “I’m waiting outside. Take your goddamn sweet time.” She patters away.  

                I cup her dirty face with my own dirty hands. I gaze into the slits of white formed by eyes almost closed, and then I decide that this might all run smoother if I keep my own eyes closed. Slowly, I stoop down, vertebrae by vertebrae, until I feel the pointy, encrusted skin of her nose bump against mine. Her face smells cloying and acerbic, like apple cider vinegar. I bring my nose down her face to locate her mouth, and I feel it moisten with her sticky saliva. A soft puhhhhh, a clammy spray, vibrations against my skin as she lets out a hearty snore. ­­­­­

                I purse my lips and lean in closer so that they glaze the skin of her cupid’s bow.

She is sixteen years old, her gray eyes reflecting the orange candle-light of the glass chandeliers, like a ring of smoke around a fire. Her eggplant colored taffeta dress puffs elegantly off her shoulders, catches her waist in a way that transforms her torso into the shape of a shallow heart. Her hair is as shiny as French-roasted coffee, locks falling in S waves down to the middle of her back. In the ostentatious ballroom thick with the heat of two hundred debutantes swirling over the golden floor with satin dancing slippers, she places a dimpled hand on my arm, and shoots me a coy smile.

I close my mouth around her open lips.

The hand slides out of my grasp. Her eyes squint at the sides, she widens the right part of her smile, the space between her eyebrows becomes narrow and crinkly. Her cheekbones rise and small spheres of skin bulge underneath her eyes. She looks like a vixen.

“Play’s over for the night,” she whispers, “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

She leaves me with a pinch to the waist, and disappears within the cloud of sweat that hangs over the dancing debutantes at the center of the crystal ballroom.

I let her mouth go abruptly as soon as her sour, putrid saliva touches the tip of my tongue.

I raise my head.

She stirs. Her arms slide up her body, she extends them beyond her head and stretches her arms. Her mouth falls open and she sucks in a deep breath. And then, she tosses around, and the room is ignited with the snarl in her snore.

Untitled

Far beyond adamantine city walls, barricades of mundane grey constructed haphazardly by drunken serfs and veined with capricious rivulets and awkward slants of a primitive mortar, beyond the barking butcher and his boasts of freshly hacked venison, the pleasant odors of the bakery on the corner as the furnace billows forth an unceasing stream of ashen cloud from the open door and the aroma of crisp, freshly-baked bread wafted gently by the breeze out into the market square where an unshaven man is reprimanded by his busybody wife due to his negligence in remembering to purchase fresh livestock from a passing caravan of traders before it absconds to the next village on the arduous path westward through the English highlands while a boy dressed in rags and covered with a layer of mud from a hog’s wallow and surrounded by the foul stench of manure plays gleefully by the well, yes far beyond the unchanging city and its callous walls of grey and far beyond the shepherd as he leads his flock of snowy-woolen sheep and the farmer as he harvests leafy cabbages to be passed along to the baron that he serves in order to consolidate the cost of living on owned land, far, far beyond the mundane life of the lowly serfs and foul-smelling peasants there lies a verdant hollow.

                The glen is blanketed with lush grass, each blade adorned with drops of morning dew that shimmer in the golden light of a rising sun. Scattered about the periphery of the emerald vale are tall elm trees, their leaves dancing in the gentle caress of a morning breeze that carries the sweet cadence of a nearby stream as lucid water flows atop smooth pebbles.

Unproductive Drabbles

Before I hit control-v, I just want anyone who happens to read this to know that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with this as of right now and this is VERY first draft-ish and almost entirely for my own amusement, which should be somewhat evident....

In a cave on a hill wholly covered in trees is where I am made to spend my nights, with jutting rocks that come down from the roof like teeth. I have a wide view of seemingly everything; all that I could wish to know about is within my sight if I sit in the mouth of my cave. There is the rabbit hole nestled in the bushes near a sunshine-colored house at the end of a stone-laid path. The path winds around hills and through tunnels, and at the other end of the path is a small village. Daily, from that village comes a little girl bearing a mysterious basket that wafts delicious smells over to me if the wind blows in the right direction. I know it’s the same girl each day because she always wears the same red cloak, which masks her face and flutters behind her as she walks. I once followed the girl to see what she carried in the basket, and when she reached the end of the path she skipped up to the sunshine-colored house, and barely had she arrived when the door opened a little old lady just a bit taller than the little girl welcomed her with a smile and a hug, as if she’d been waiting for her. She went inside before the basket was opened, and much though I strained myself to be able to look into the window, I was unable to see what perfection could lie inside.
Each day bears a different tantalizing odor to my cave. One made me think of a rabbit I once chased and when the silly rodent finally yielded to me and allowed me to rip into his organs, the flavor of his meat filled me with happiness. A different day’s treat reminded me of a dead deer I found near a highway. Her coat was a bronze at the top and faded down to a white at her belly, except, of course, for the wide gash in her side that was sticky with dried blood, and when I feasted upon her, I felt as though I wouldn’t need to eat for a week, though in reality I was hungry again the next day.
THEN A HUMMINGBIRD FLEW BY AND I STOPPED REMINISCING IN DELICIOUS SMELLS AND I SNAPPED BACK TO THE PRESENT! >XD
No srsly though, I stopped thinking about old memories and began focusing on the new. I’ve noticed a mysterious stranger walking by on numerous occasions, he follows her for a short distance and watches her walk away. I don’t like him, he smells of rotten fish and pig sty. Because of him, I’ve taken to following the little girl more often, making sure he doesn’t follow after that certain point. She was completely unaware of my protection, in fact I don’t think she even knew that it was necessary. The man followed her more and more closely with each passing day, and I followed her more instinctively. This man will know that this is my girl, I found her first. He confronted her once, and it was only for fear of knocking her over that I didn’t burst out of the woods and tear at his jugular. Instead I growled loudly at him, and she looked about for the source of the noise, and what was that bastard doing? He was filling her head with some kind of story that as a wolf I plan on eating her! My hatred for the man swelled, and he gave her a pat on the head and a smile, and she trotted along on her merry little way, and when she was gone I poked my head through the bushes and growled menacingly at him. He looked startled and backed away. When he left, I ran back to catch up with the girl. 

Strikes

        The ninth inning started ten minutes before ten o’clock and it was past the elderly umpire’s bedtime.  He stared at the spectators with his drooping eyes and his face was engraved by the language of time.  With his deep yet piercingly loud voice - due to his hard of hearing - he announced the status of the game: tied, bases loaded, two outs, no strikes, and three balls.

Strike one.  The coach shouted what seemed to be anything but encouraging from the dugout and as usual it was an incoherent jumble of words.  Even if the coach had regularly spoken with immaculate articulation, his players would still not know what he was saying because the crowd could not have been hushed, it was full of excitement.  A cloud of condensation from every utterance of the crowd appeared in front of the stands during the raw night.  Every bang, howl, and voice rumbled into one massive sound that seemed to unsettle just about every player on the field.  Their knees, where their tight grey pants bunched, shook as they froze in unseasonably cold weather and as they fell under the immense pressure.  The batter anxiously waited for the pitcher to choke and throw him a fast ball right in the center strike zone.  Then, with his biceps which he had incessantly worked out during the off season in order to “get big,” would swing the bat with enough momentum to rip that ball over the right field fence.

Strike two.  The pitcher stood on the mound.  The fans for his team chanted his name, “Come on, Anthony!  You got this!”  While the fans against his team shouted nasty comments that blurt out of frustrated parents mouths when they attend their children’s sporting events, “Kill it!  Kill that ball!  Show ‘em what your mama gave ya!”  In the middle of the frenzy, the obnoxious 50-50 ticket lady with the nasally voice squeezed through the crowd, deafening everyone around her - including the third baseman.  The announcer was explaining to the masses of people how vital the next pitch would be which made the left outfielder’s stomach squeamish.  And the relentless lights!  Those lights intensely beamed on the field.  The second baseman was looking up to the night sky to separate his thoughts from the game for a few seconds when he felt blinded by the lights and fainted - that was in the third inning.

Yet, the pitcher stood on the mound.  In the middle of all the madness, he heard nothing.  He saw nothing but the catcher’s mitt floating above home plate.  He felt nothing, but perhaps the “ice in his veins” that his dad claimed runs through his veins while he is pitching.  He did however, smell hot dogs being grilled, he could practically taste the meat sizzle in his mouth, but that only motivated him to end the game.  He was spared from the bitter tension that surrounded the mound.  All he knew was that he had a baseball in his hand and that he needed to trick the batter who was inevitably ready to hit that ball into tomorrow.

He was not anxious; pitching calmed his mind, it was his escape.  Nothing could phase him because his love for the game cancelled any feelings of tension.

Silence.  He knew what he had to do.  Under complete control, he wound up, stretched his aching arm, flicked his wrist, and released the baseball.  It headed straight for the center of the strike zone when at the last moment, just as the batter swung, the baseball dropped and fell into the dirt.

Strike three.