Chapter 3:

A Breakdown, a Baseball Bat, and a Beautiful Girl.

I Failed As a Professional Baseball Player And Now Have To Fight Otherworldly Creatures With Nothing But a Baseball Bat


The sweet tang of artificial lemon flavoring had served as a cure-all for Bentley ever since he was a child.

Now was no different.

There he sat, nibbling on a lemon poppyseed muffin while huddled atop the rusted heap of metal that passed for a bus stop bench. He lamented the death of his professional baseball career, if one could even call it a career. Familiar feelings of letting down those he cared about most welled up in the pit of his stomach. He tried to countervail these emotions by taking bigger bites of the muffin but it was no use. Bentley knew that no tears would come but wished they would. His sister continued to tightrope walk the line between life and death in the hospital across the street and there was nothing he could do to help her.

What kind of person can’t even muster up a single tear at a time like this?

“I’m a failure,” he said out loud, shaking his head while slamming his fists on the legs of his jeans. He looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum but none of it mattered to him. The clapping of the lemur man rang throughout his head like the morning chimes of a belltower.

Was he making fun of me?” Bentley began to smack himself in the temple, marching to the beat of the lemur man’s applause.

How could he have known?” Bentley’s slaps progressed until he was hitting himself as hard as he could with both palms. The lemur man sat comfortably in the catacombs of Bentley’s decaying mind. No matter how loudly he struck himself, the lemur man inside his head seemed to take it as a challenge and clap even louder. With every thump against his head, dust began to shake free from more of Bentley’s memories, ones he’d desperately tried to keep shelved away.

Bentley froze and slowly lowered his hands. There were certain fragments of his psyche that couldn’t be allowed to see the light of day, otherwise he really would go insane. He inhaled deeply, held his breath for a brief moment, and then slowly released it. Bentley patiently and methodically went through every single breathing technique he’d ever been taught over his years in therapy. Finally, the rage induced film began to fade from his eyes. He wiped his cheeks for moisture despite knowing full well that nothing had managed to find its way out of his labyrinthian tear ducts. Bentley let out a heavy sigh. What little still remained of his pro baseball dreams escaped out from the deepest recesses of his soul like an exorcised demon.

That’s that,” thought Bentley, “The dream is dead”. It now felt less like some soul-crushing notion and more like stating a fact.

The bills will continue to pile up whether I like it or not,” Bentley affirmed, “I just don’t have what it takes. That pitcher made me look stupid without even trying.”

Spurred on by this conclusion, he grabbed his helmet in one hand and the unraveling leather scraps he called a baseball glove in the other. He then studied the bat that stood propped up on the bench beside him. It seemed to have its own separate aura, as if it were another person with its own set of hopes, dreams, and fears. Even after all that had happened in the tryout earlier that day, Bentley couldn’t bring himself to toss it. The helmet and glove were just things, but the bat was family. He had always felt a fierce loyalty to it and something told him that the ash wood baseball bat shared these feelings. The bat had been there for almost every individual moment in his life, no matter how insignificant, when nobody else was. Bentley knew the origin of all the many scratches and smudges that littered the surface of the bat. The bat too knew about every dark memory that Bentley kept tucked away, yet no judgement was passed, it merely lended a silent ear. This baseball bat was an extension of himself, regardless of if he ended up playing the sport for a living or not. As long as he took care of it, it in turn would take care of him.

With helmet and glove in hand, Bentley peeled himself from the bench, leaving the baseball bat untouched. He walked over to the avocado green trash can, the top of which was caked in cigarette ash and bird poop. Bentley gingerly pulled open the lid and tossed all the baseball gear besides his bat inside. He stood there for a moment in reverent silence, as if he was grieving the loss of a recently estranged loved one, not entirely sure how to feel. The lid slammed shut, taking with it any memories he may have had with the helmet and glove. He slumped back down after returning to the bus stop bench, the journey to the trash can a few feet away having left him surprisingly drained.

No sooner had he sat back down than the ground beneath him started to shake. The poorly assembled bench teetered on the brink of collapsing. His bat fell from its propped up position, making a loud clanging noise against the rusted metal. Screws began to come free from the bench in droves, as if it were crying tiny iron tears. Bentley grabbed the seat with both hands in an attempt to steady himself.

Earthquake,” was the conclusion Bentley’s mind immediately leapt to. His thoughts raced to his little sister, she’d have no means of protecting herself if the ceiling were to cave in. He figured the nurses had some sort of protocol in the event of a natural disaster but this did little to assuage his fears. After all, moving patients took time whereas natural disasters did their damage in an instant.

I have to get to her as soon as possible,” Bentley thought, trying his best not to panic. He knew that elevators were a no-go in earthquakes which meant that he’d have to climb up the seemingly endless flights of stairs by foot to get to the top floor. He had no time to waste trying to come up with a better plan, so he grabbed his baseball bat and took off sprinting across the street towards the hospital without even taking a half second to check for oncoming traffic.

Bentley felt something heavy come flying into his back, sending him tumbling across the pavement like a stone being skipped across the surface of a pond. His momentum came to a sickening halt as he crashed into a telephone pole on the opposite side of the road. Bentley felt a snapping sensation in his ribs and the air instantly vacated his chest. He sat there blindly choking, his sight having disappeared alongside the air in his lungs.

“You’ll be fine,” a voice said from within the darkness, “It’s just a couple of cracked ribs.”

“I can’t see,” Bentley wheezed.

“Oh.. well maybe a concussion then too,” the voice admitted, “On the bright side though, the fact that you can still feel pain means that you’re alive.”

“I guess so,” Bentley said, rubbing the bump starting to form on the back of his head. Bentley noticed that the earthquake had stopped at some point while he was being bounced along the cement like a rag doll. He tried to take a breath and clutched at his chest.

“My lungs feel like they’re about to explode,” said Bentley.

“Oh suck it up,” the voice said, “I’m working with a fractured skull, broken wrist, lacerated kidney, sprained ankle, and who the Hell knows what else.”

Bentley didn’t respond, still trying to recover from the oxygen deprivation.

“So forgive me if I’m not worried about you,” the voice continued, “You can deal with a concussion, a few cracked ribs, and a punctured lung or two.”

After finally regaining control over his breathing, Bentley blinked furiously until his vision too was as close to normal as it was going to get. He looked to the source of the voice and his breath left him yet again.

He found himself face to face with a pair of striking blue eyes, pulsating with life. It looked to Bentley as if lightning had somehow been bottled and released directly into her irises. A stream of crimson blood flowed down from her forehead making the radiant blue stand out that much more. Wavy caramel hair fell down past her shoulders, it was wild and tangled from the collision making her look like she had just rolled out of bed in the morning. Bentley couldn’t keep his cheeks from burning at the thought that maybe he was getting to see a side of this mystery woman that few got to see. Her lips had been elegantly coated in red lipstick. It was the type of rich red that would’ve left even the most aloof men hanging on her every word. She had a very delicate looking nose that appeared as if it might turn to dust after so much as a sneeze. Her skin was pale, but not weirdly so like an old Shakespearean actor, more like that of a runaway princess from some royal family. Bentley guessed, or maybe hoped, that the girl was the same age as him.

She dresses strangely for a 19 year old though,” Bentley thought. The girl sitting in front of him wore a charcoal gray pantsuit over a dirt-stained button-up shirt that had been white at some point in the distant past. A posh pearl necklace that Bentley surmised would’ve taken him years on a factory worker’s salary to afford draped down from her neck. Every piece of the outfit gave her the appearance of someone who had planned on attending a gala but got stuck in a well on the way there. The only part of her getup that didn’t seem to particularly match the theme were the shoes. Bentley had expected high heels of some sort but instead noticed that she was wearing a pair of multicolored women’s tennis sneakers. Both shoelaces were tied neatly and uniformly in perfect-looking loops.

Bentley realized that the girl was snapping her fingers right in front of his nose. She had only a single nail painted, the one on the index finger of her left hand. It was a glossy black with a white smiley face that had X’s for eyes in the center.

“You done looking me over guy?” The girl’s sharp eyebrows had furrowed into a look of disapproval. Bentley felt the color rush to his face again, unaware until then that he had zoned out.

I can’t help it,” Bentley thought, “She’s the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen.”

Bentley didn’t people-watch all too often but he had seen his fair share of women while reading magazines to his unconscious sister. None of them were even comparable to this girl. Even relatively banged up and covered in grime from the collision, she was absolutely stunning.

“You’re doing it again,” she yelled, clearly annoyed. Bentley just sat there beet-faced, his mouth hanging wide open.

I bet this girl and my sister would get along really well,” Bentley mused.

“Earth to pervert,” she said, giving him a light knock on the forehead, “I don’t have time to deal with this so could you do me a favor and evacuate the area?” With this, she gave a big sarcastic smile and tilted her head ever so slightly. A light gust of wind drifted gently through her hair. Bentley’s heart bounced around inside his chest like a chihuahua on cocaine.

A low growl rumbled from the alleyway behind the bus stop. The girl went stiff and her smile disappeared.

“You any good with that thing?” The girl quickly jabbed her thumb towards the baseball bat in Bentley’s hand. He hadn’t even realized that he was still hanging on to it. Bentley simply nodded, his words failing him due to this being his only extended interaction in years with a girl not named Nurse Hawthorne

“Good,” she said, “Because we’re gonna need it.” She pulled herself to her feet with a grimace, stumbling a bit on her swollen right ankle.

Bentley’s eyes were drawn to something moving in the alleyway where the growls had been coming from. His heart, which had been beating so rapidly just seconds earlier, now ceased beating altogether. Pure terror coursed through his every vein as the hideous creature made its way out of the shadows.

kazesenken
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Shady
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Gurg
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Makech
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Sujin 崇神
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