Migraines, Memories, and Motivation

When Bentley came to, he was facedown on the ochre carpet of his single bedroom apartment in a puddle of his own drool. His baseball bat lay on the floor beside him, as if it too were just now regaining consciousness. Bentley peeled his face from the ground and looked at the state of his living space. It was just as jumbled and messy as his mind felt. Empty wrappers from various lemon flavored snacks scattered the floor along with half-read baseball magazines. It looked no different than always.

“Did I dream all of that?” Bentley fuzzily remembered fighting a giant eel creature and meeting a beautiful girl, but for whatever reason none of it felt real. He got up, grabbed his bat, and walked into the bedroom. Bentley flicked the lightswitch up and down a few times with no result. His apartment remained bathed in darkness, illuminated only by faint moonlight streaming in through the thin curtains. He sat on the end of his bed, the old fashioned sheets adorning it looked more like they belonged to someone’s grandmother than a 19 year old boy.

Nothing comes from nothing.

Coward.

These words buzzed around Bentley’s mind like mosquitoes, eating away at him the more he tried to ignore them. He rolled the bat over in his hands and ran his fingers down the large, fresh crack in its side.

“So it wasn’t a dream after all,” he said, allowing all the memories to come flooding back into his head, producing a terrible migraine. Bentley left the bat on the bed and made his way into the cramped kitchen area of his cheap apartment. He opened a cabinet that was barely holding onto its hinges and pulled out a bottle of headache medication. He turned it upside down and shook its remaining contents out into his waiting hand. The single leftover pill fell silently onto his palm.

“I guess this will have to do,” he decided and grabbed a dirty glass from the sink, which was now crawling with ants due to the presence of moldy food remnants. He twisted the handle to the faucet, but no water came out.

“Oh right,” Bentley remembered, “Chrysanthemum said I had been out for three weeks, so that means all of my bills are overdue.” He returned the glass to the sink and popped the pill into his mouth anyways, swallowing it with a dry gulp.

Bentley rummaged around in a drawer by the sink, looking for a flashlight. He finally found it sitting atop a book of some sort. He turned on the flashlight and pointed it at the book he now held in his other hand. The small cover was adorned with a photo of Bentley tossing a wiffleball to his waiting sister.

“Mom’s scrapbook,” he whispered under his breath. He walked over to the single piece of furniture he kept in his apartment besides the bed, the well-worn leather chair situated in the center of the room. He swept the wrinkled magazines from the seat, slumped into the chair, and began to flip through the pages of the scrapbook with the flashlight in hand.

There was no mistaking that it was his mother’s handiwork. An unholy amount of stickers coated the pages, taking all the attention away from the photos of Bentley and his sister. No photos of his father remained in the scrapbook and his mother had always stayed behind the camera, leaving every single photo in the scrapbook featuring only one or both members of the Bentley-May duo. He stifled a laugh as he came across a photo of a two year old May running away from a team of hungry ducks with a loaf of bread in her hands. Bentley endured the sadness tinged with joy that they called nostalgia while scanning the scrapbook and remembering good times past. He swept through every single page, reliving the accompanying memories until he reached the end of the scrapbook. The end wasn’t at the back cover but rather it was right past the middle of the book. After a certain point, all the colors disappeared and the rest of the pages remained blank, his mother having filled it out until she could no longer.

Bentley sighed and prepared to close the book but before he did, a single photo came fluttering out. His flashlight went out at that very moment. Bentley grabbed the photo and walked over into a corner of his apartment particularly well-lit by the moon’s glow to examine it.

He recognized the photo as one he had taken himself many years ago. In it Bentley and May stood side by side laughing in front of the old house, Bentley’s arm extended offscreen to make the selfie possible. Just by looking at this photo, he was immediately transported to a different time and place. A time before his sister had been reduced to the pale bag of bones that she existed as now.

***

Bentley stood at the kitchen counter preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He spread a thin layer of peanut butter and lathered on the jelly before gently joining the two pieces of white bread together. He removed any hint of crust from the sandwich with a knife before cutting a smooth line diagonally across it, perfectly separating it into two halves. Bentley plated the sandwich and poured an accompanying glass of milk before taking it out with him to the steps of his front porch. There he waited for May to come home from school, as he did every single weekday, having already finished batting practice. He tapped a sweet melody on the small brick staircase with his finger.

After a few encores of this simple song, Bentley saw May appear over the hill in the distance. He waved her down and sat patiently, waiting to hear her talk about her day. She had a way of making even the mundane sound more exciting than any action movie. Today was different though. Today, when May finally came strolling up to the steps, Bentley realized that tears stained her glassy eyes.

“What happened?” Bentley stood up and began to wipe the tears from her face, as if allowing them to make it down to the ground would have caused some cataclysmic event.

“Today they asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up and I said that I wanted to be the world’s best mom,” May said between sobs. Her innocent voice being painted with such broken-heartedness would have been enough to drive even the most apathetic individuals into despair.

“What’s so bad about that?”

“When I went to recess, some of the kids started making fun of me saying that I couldn’t be a good mom since I didn’t even have a mom of my own. They called me ‘No-Mom May’,” she said. Bentley felt an intense anger burning within him. He didn’t care how young they were, he wanted to grab his baseball bat from inside and teach those kids a lesson. He knew that this would do nothing outside of landing himself a stay in prison though, so he elected to take a more mature route.

“May, you should sit down and start on your sandwich because I’m going to be talking for a bit,” he said before gesturing to the plate and cold glass of milk behind him. She nodded and wiped a glob of snot on the sleeve of her purple jacket before plopping down on the stairs. The small girl nibbling at a corner of the sandwich reminded Bentley of a hamster.

“You don’t remember mom do you?” May shook her head to Bentley’s question, a bit of peanut butter was smeared at the corner of her mouth.

“Well I do, and let me tell you, she was the greatest mom in the history of the world,” Bentley said.

“She was?” May’s eyes began to regain some of their usual twinkle.

“Without a doubt,” he said, “She was smarter than anyone I knew, she was nice to everyone no matter who they were, and her cooking was so good that she could’ve been head chef at whatever restaurant she wanted.” May’s peanut butter stained mouth had turned up into an incredulous smile as Bentley continued.

“She was so pretty that people couldn’t take their eyes off her when she walked by, she would always have a band-aid ready for me if I hurt myself, and she would always tell me to follow my dreams no matter what,” Bentley added. May was practically bouncing up and down at this point, the words of her classmates having faded away and been replaced with sweet images of a mom she barely knew.

“And guess what May?”

“What?” She played with her long black hair nervously.

“This may sound cheesy, but she’s still with you, living right here,” he said with a quick point to her heart, “And if you have the best mom in the world living in your heart—”

“Then I can be the best mom in the world too,” she said, jumping up with a victorious shout and sending her glass of milk spilling everywhere. Bentley pulled out a napkin he had stored in his back pocket and began to clean up the mess.

“I’m sorry big bro,” May said, trying to mask the obvious remnants of her excitement.

“It’s no big deal May, you know what they say about spilt milk,” he laughed. Now absolved of any guilt, May began happily rummaging in her backpack before producing a notebook and a few colored pencils.

“What did you want to be when you were my age?” She had started to sketch away and didn’t bother to look up as she asked the question. Bentley pondered this as he wiped away the last drops of milk from the steps.

“I guess before all this baseball stuff, I always wanted to be a superhero. I feel like most boys grow up wanting to become superheroes which is sad,” Bentley said.

“Why is that sad?”

“Because there are a lot of things you can be in this world. You can be a doctor, a scientist, a soldier, a firefighter, and even a mom, but you can’t be a superhero. So really all little boys that dream of being superheroes are just going to be let down later in life.”

“But big bro,” she said, her big hazel eyes now completely focused on Bentley, “You are a superhero to me.”

Bentley looked at his younger sister in awe. She wasn’t pitying him or trying to make him feel better, it was clearly a statement that for whatever reason she genuinely believed. He brought her in for a massive hug.

“Bentley,” she whined, “I was trying to draw.”

“I know, but you’re not too cool yet for a hug from your big brother,” Bentley said with a laugh. She pushed him away lightly, wearing a big goofy grin. With some people you could see their purity of heart written across their face… May was one of those people.

***

Bentley folded the photograph and tucked it into his pocket. As he did he felt his hands graze against something else. He pulled out the small strip of paper and was instantly reminded of his confrontation with Chrysanthemum earlier.

“I really was such a jerk,” he said aloud before smacking himself in the forehead.

“Why did I assume all those things about her when all she had ever done was show me kindness? She helped me fight that monster, she gave me lemon tea, she helped heal all of my injuries, and on top of all that she offered me a job. I repaid her by acting like she was somehow responsible for all my struggles. If that’s how I treat somebody I said I was in love with then I REALLY don’t deserve love at all.”

Bentley unfolded the scrap of paper and examined its contents. At the top of the paper was a phone number, below it was a number that he remembered Chrysanthemum had said would be his starting salary should he accept the position.

“I may have been wrong to react the way I did, but there is nothing that could make me traipse around risking my life fighting demon monsters for a living, not even an impending apocalypse,” Bentley thought as he read the starting salary.

He reread the number.

He reread it again.

He counted the number of zeroes.

And then reread it again.

His eyes felt ready to pop out of his skull. This salary was just a few notches below what that of a professional baseball player’s contract would’ve been. If he had a revenue stream like this, he might still be able to pay off the medical debt in this lifetime.

“And this is just the starting salary?”

Bentley’s neighbor knocked on the thin wall angrily, letting him know that his volume was getting away from him. Bentley did some calculations in his head. If he could survive for a few years with a salary like this, he could not only start to pay off the medical debt, but could eventually maybe even provide the type of comfortable life for his sister that he never dreamed would have been possible. They could go to an amusement park, eat eel and crab more than once a year, travel to Okinawa, move into a place with hot water… The possibilities were endless.

You are a superhero to me

Bentley picked up the outdated cord phone and punched in a phone number.