A Lemur, a Lost Opportunity, and Lurking Danger.

 Bentley looked up from the small text of his flip phone to the stadium that towered above him.

“This has to be the place,” he thought as he tucked the device back into his pocket. Bentley was unsure as to how he could’ve possibly missed a stadium as prominent as this one. He had practically begged for a tryout from every minor league team in the vicinity and somehow must have bypassed this gargantuan arena that was only a 5-minute bus ride away from the hospital.

The stadium looked more like it belonged to a big market MLB team than a minor league team located in a city with a population of 20,000. The banners that streamed down the side of the stadium featured shots of the team’s players in uniform, their faces so stoic that they looked more like terracotta warriors than minor league baseball players. Above the entrance to the stadium was a massive cartoon lemur sneering at those below. It wore a baseball helmet that was slightly too big and thus sat crooked atop its head. The lemur also held a baseball bat in both hands, giving him the appearance of a mafia boss ready to collect what he was owed no matter how many kneecaps he had to obliterate in the process. Bentley entered the stadium right beneath the nose of this rather intimidating lemur, feeling its bloodshot eyes following him the whole time.

Bentley wore a faded gray shirt, the sleeves of which he had cut off himself, and some baggy black gym shorts that stopped right below his knees. A small tomato red drawstring bag hung from his back, the contents beginning to weigh heavy on his shoulders. He had with him a navy blue batting helmet, an old cream-colored baseball glove that had already started to come apart at the seams, and the same ash wood baseball bat that he’d used since high school.

Bentley walked down a set of smooth cement stairs and out into an open area brimming with sunlight. He had not been nervous the entire night before or morning prior to this tryout, but as he looked out at the field from the stands, he felt his chest begin to tighten. Judging by the sheer scope of the seating, Bentley guessed that this place must seat at least 10,000 people. The field was kept in pristine condition and the same lemur that sat above the entrance was spray painted beautifully and precisely behind home plate. Bentley had never seen real grass this green, it looked more like something out of a coloring book. He felt that if he stared for too long at the perfectly trimmed emerald ocean that lay before him, he might be swallowed up into it and never be seen again. A massive video board cast a far-reaching shadow across the entirety of the field like a sun dial, even Goliath himself would’ve likely considered this too big a screen. The lemon flavored gum that Bentley had been chewing quickly started to turn sour in his mouth.

“Calm down Bentley,” he said to himself while taking a deep breath, “This is for May.” He felt his muscles relax ever so slightly as he remembered his sister’s laugh, an adorable cackle that she was self-conscious about but was undeniably the most infectious laugh he’d ever heard.

“I’m going to ace this tryout, pay off our debt, and hear that laugh again someday,” he said confidently. His previously shaky hands now clenched into determined fists as he steeled himself for what lay ahead.

Suddenly Bentley heard someone clapping. He turned to his left and saw a large figure a few seats down from where he was standing. The glare of the sun made it hard for his vision to adjust but finally Bentley saw that the figure was a man in a large lemur costume. The lemur man’s googly eyes faced opposite directions but still somehow remained focused on Bentley. The lemur man was slapping his large fuzzy paws together repeatedly, producing a thunderous round of applause. Bentley quickly figured that this must be the team mascot, but he was almost certain that this strange character had not been there just moments earlier. The lemur man grabbed his frayed tail and used it to feign wiping tears from the corner of his eyes before returning to his echoing claps.

“Nice to meet you,” Bentley called out to the lemur, “I have a tryout with the team today.”

The lemur man simply raised a fat, fluffy finger to his lips and shushed Bentley. Then the large primate slowly moved the same finger until it pointed in the direction of the diamond. Bentley turned his attention back to the field and realized somebody was calling out to him.

“Hey son,” the man called from the field, “Why don’t you come down here so we can get this tryout started.”

Bentley turned back to thank the lemur, but he was already gone. Without much time to ponder this, Bentley hustled down the rest of the stairs. He hopped the fence onto the field and scurried over to the older man that had called him over.

“You must be Bentley,” he said, his voice gruff like a lifelong smoker.

“Yessir that’s me, I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity,” Bentley said as he shook the man’s hand vigorously. The man wore an unbuttoned baseball jersey, allowing his beer gut to peek out like a fish bobbing to the surface for bread crumbs. He had a salt and pepper beard that looked relatively unkempt and had a sunflower seed or two stuck in it. His hair was clearly receding but it looked like he had filled in some of the gaps with a marker that was noticeably darker than the shade of his natural hair. The man’s face was rather pudgy to match his stomach and his eyes sat an uncomfortable distance away from each other. His lips looked like they’d never so much as heard of chapstick and the faint smell of tobacco wafting from behind these crumbling lips made Bentley feel immediately nauseous. He released the man’s sweaty hand and took a step back.

“You can thank me if you make the team,” he said without a hint of humor before calling over a pitcher who had been warming up in the shadow of the jumbotron. Bentley recognized this player as the one whose banner was closest to the entrance, he must’ve been a pretty big deal for him to be the guy they wanted everyone’s eyes on. The man whispered a few things to the pitcher when he came over, none of which Bentley could make out.

“I’m the manager so I’ll be the only one here observing the tryout,” the man said while pulling out a clipboard, “Lester here will be throwing you some basic pitches so show us what you got.” The man hopped the fence and plopped down in one of the front row seats, pulling a pair of dark sunglasses out from his breast pocket and pushing them against the bridge of his nose. Bentley noticed that half of his eyes hung outside the borders of the sunglasses due to their awkward distancing on his face.

The pitcher stuck out a hand to Bentley. Bentley took it and gave it a firm shake.

“Nice to meet you,” Lester said warmly.

“It’s great to meet you too,” Bentley replied.

“Don’t worry about John,” Lester said and nodded in the direction of the manager, “He’s a rough character, and a total dunce when it comes to first impressions so I’m sorry he’s the first person you had to meet.”

“I actually sort of met the team mascot first, he was in the stands with me when I got here a couple of minutes ago,” Bentley said, “he wasn’t a big talker though.”

The pitcher narrowed his eyes at Bentley. He played with the snowy white baseball in his left hand like a nervous tick.

“We don’t have a mascot,” Lester said, now clearly weary of the man before him.

“But, I saw a large man in a lemur costume in the stands, I just figured he worked here,” said Bentley.

“Maybe it was a homeless guy,” Lester reasoned, but his tone had lost all of the warmth that it initially contained, “Anyways let’s just get this tryout going.”

***

Bentley wiped a few solemn beads of sweat from his forehead. His baseball helmet felt tight around his head, not in a bad way but more like the comfortable tightness of a baby swaddled snuggly in a blanket. Its familiar squeeze against his skull always helped him to feel at ease in even the most tense situations. He kicked some dirt away from the plate beneath him, like a bull ready to charge, and steadied the bat against his shoulder, testing its weight in his hands. Something about holding a baseball bat had always felt natural to Bentley. It was an inexplicable feeling that he still never stopped trying to explain to his younger sister. As he gripped the bat tightly in his hands, it felt more reassuring than the embrace of an old friend, not that he’d know what that was like.

“Let’s do this,” the bat seemed to whisper to him.

Bentley finally sunk into his batting stance and turned to face Lester who was proudly standing atop the pitching mound in front of him.

Lester wound up and tossed the small leather ball in his direction. Bentley couldn’t help but admire the pitching motion, he had never seen anything that looked quite as graceful, he had gone to bat against his fair share of high school pitchers but not one had ever looked quite this smooth. Lester looked more like an angel than a pitcher at that moment. The immaculate white baseball jersey and the sunlight shining gloriously like a halo from behind his head all added to his angelic appearance. This was how baseballs were intended to be thrown.

“It’s a shame I have to knock this out of the park,” he thought. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Bentley turned his shoulders and swung with all his might.

The ball went flying into the wall behind him, making the manager jump and causing a few of the sunflower seeds stuck in the spider web that was his beard to come loose in the process. Bentley’s eyes widened, he couldn’t fathom how he had possibly missed the ball. The pitch was straight down the middle, that kind of pitch should’ve been a feast for batters like him. He shook it off, shimmying a little bit to loosen up his shoulders. Bentley sunk back into his batting stance and awaited the next pitch.

Same pitch. Same result.

The manager clicked his tongue and began to take disappointed notes down on his clipboard.

Ten times this dance repeated itself, a pitch that normally would’ve been a breeze to hit for Bentley just leisurely strolled by his bat without making even a hint of contact. Bentley could feel his hands shaking now, his vision was going red. He had no idea what was going on, never in his life had he even missed two pitches like this in a row and now here he was missing ten in a row.

“Come on Bentley,” he urged himself, “This is the chance you’ve been waiting for.”

He tightened his grip on the handle of the bat and nodded to Lester.

***

Bentley sat at the bus stop across from the hospital with his head buried in his hands. No sobs came, they never did. Bentley was unsure if he even could physically cry anymore after all these years of having to act strong for his deteriorating family.

“I’ve seen enough,” the manager had said after 20 straight repetitions of Bentley hitting nothing but crisp afternoon air with his baseball bat.

“Could you at least thank Lee for me,” Bentley had asked the manager after gathering up all of his stuff dejectedly.

“I don’t know anybody named Lee,” he had scoffed before hurrying Bentley out of the stadium as the real players started arriving for practice.

The bus stop felt more like the edge of the Earth to Bentley. As he stared out into the void that beckoned him from where the border between reality and nothingness blurred, he debated whether or not to jump in. He looked up at the familiar light emanating from the hospital room window. His little sister was the only thing that kept Bentley tied to this world, the only reason that he went on living.

“I’m useless,” he thought.

The pages of his accounting notebook sat crumpled around his feet. He had been doing calculations to find out how many years it’d take him to pay off the medical debt on a factory worker’s salary and determined that if he lived as long as Dracula he’d be able to halve it.

“I’ll never be able to take a girl out on a date, never be able to get married, never be able to have and support kids, and I’ll never be able to talk with my little sister again,” Bentley thought to himself, his brain becoming more jumbled than a pair of wired headphones left in someone’s pockets for months on end. The pieces of paper prophesying the coming apocalypse that had given him such an odd sense of comfort the night before now seemed to be laughing at him.

“You thought the world would end for anyone but you,” they snorted, “As if you would be so lucky”.

Bentley sat there, concluding that his life was coming to an end.

In reality, his life was hurtling towards him at breakneck speed in the form of a girl named Chrysanthemum and the otherworldly creature hunting her.