“Coach?” The flock of birds rolled in a slow tide, each of them striding in unsettling silence. The first scattered few made their procession to Rip’s left. More followed close behind closer to center field.
Julia threw her best pitch, a curve ball. Darrell Matling took a long drink from the faded plastic of his Big Swig cup weaving on his feet behind the backstop fence. Half full with his very own concoction of cherry soda and vodka, the buzz felt pretty good about now. He liked to stand there and watch his daughter pitch knowing she could see his disappointment after every throw. Bat connected with ball. He traced the small white orb dart toward left-center. Instead of sighing in frustration and glaring at the pitiful attempts of his girl fighting to be tough as a boy, his eyes caught a reddish movement in the outfield that shouldn’t be there.
Darrell swiveled his head around and nearly everyone in the stands was looking that way too. Fingers outstretched, speaking in strained whispers. Darrell felt his stomach tighten in a way it hadn’t since he heard his own father’s belt snap outside the door to his room.
Coach Bill ran on to the field waving and shouting at all of the players. Rip turned around and watched his feet disappear in the swarm of bright red feathers. His arms wheeled in circles knocking the cap from his head. He stumbled backwards tripping over the mindless birds walking ahead. A soft squishing sound accompanied the cracking of bones as the boy landed hard crushing a handful of them. One bird climbed on top of his legs as he lay trying to catch wind back to his lungs. With no attempt to avoid the boy, it continued walking on his stomach and over the bright lettering printed across his jersey.
“Dad?” He smacked the bird with his glove sending it tumbling across the grass knocking into three others as it rolled over and over. “Dad.” Turning on to his front he shoved himself back up to his feet and ran, feet inadvertently kicking small red bodies out of the way. Feathers clung to the smear of moist red glistening on the back of his uniform distorting the number 9 into a nauseating double helix 8. “Daddy!”
Todd McKewan, hearing his son’s frightened voice, raised his eyes from the laptop screen in annoyance. “Now what?” Slowly absorbing what they were witnessing, the image of Rip kicking through the red swarm of flightless birds entered in through his eyes and exited through his mouth in a terrified scream. “Rippington!”
The glowing screen tilted and slid from his lap, bounced on the metal footrest and fell with a loud clang. Todd jumped down the bleachers with a speed he wasn’t aware he possessed not caring about keeping his balance. He tripped over a purse resting on the ground catching his foot in the shoulder strap. Using the side of the brick dugout for balance, Todd kicked the bag from his ankle feeling the bumps and jabs of other parent’s elbows and knees storming past vainly charging to protect their suddenly fragile young.
--
Collin Nancarlo edged his black and white past the eleven cars covered with dust in the lot. He stopped next to the unopened snack stand and opened the door. The gravel crunching beneath his boot reached his ears muffled and dampened like the world submerged itself in Styrofoam.
Still new to the Staties and wanting to beat back the constant hazing and jabs from the older guys, he decided to check things out on his own before calling Rita and the chief at the station. He put the wide brimmed hat on his head relieved to block out the glaring heat of the sun from his face. Turning to face the field, the odd silence disturbed him.
“I thought there was a game this morning.” Once again, the sound of his voice became suffocated and brittle in the space between mouth and ear. His eyes scanned the empty field from across the parking lot. “Where is everybody?”
He should have felt a sense of urgency. A rush of adrenaline pumping through veins muscles brain. There ought to have been some warning that this was no longer a place of happy family time and daydreams of someday making it to the big leagues. Instead, a soothing calm dripped down his skin relaxing thoughts and responses. Fingers entwined with the chain links next to the dugout marked Visitors in bold white letters over a background of dark green.
Wind danced in silent circles across the field. Red brick dust on the infield twisted devilishly in one large speckled sheet sliding across the overstuffed white bases. A freshly scraped ball hung in the air on its way to the space between third base and shortstop. A glare of sunlight beamed off the top of a small aluminum bat paused mid-flight discarded by the hitter just outside of the batter’s box.
One chewed up moist sunflower seed shell flipped end over end in the center of a chain linked fence square. Inside the dugout a dark blue helmet still in its drop from the bench. Spilled purple Gatorade splashed in the shape of a small shoe arcing outward from the center of a small puddle.
Flickering orange ashes from a discarded cigarette butt halted in mid-throw. Pink handles sparkled lifting the jump rope back up from the dirt at the beginning of one more revolution. Ringlets of steam curled thinly upward from hot brown coffee seized in pour over the lip of a white Styrofoam cup. One small Red Sox cap hung inches above the ground in deep left field. The brightly red lettered “B” signaling up to the crystalline blue sky.
Officer Nancarlo opened the gate, slowly walking on the grass next to first base. A high pitched rattling sound pulled his eyes toward the left field fence. Without thinking, his left hand moved closer to the gun holstered on his hip. Cautiously he walked across the infield moving closer to the area where the sound originated.
“Hello?” Air did in fact leave from his lungs into the surroundings. An oppressive thickness made its presence felt more potently by swallowing his words into nothingness before his ears noticed they weren’t arriving at their destination. He searched the dark spaces hidden between the trees made all the more impenetrable by the sun bearing down on his eyes. “Where are you guys?”
At this moment he noticed a flicker of motion. Low to the ground a smear of dark red crawled through the shadows emerging at the outfield fence. The young policeman watched as the cardinal bit a bar of wire with its beak climbing to the fence top claws grasping and pulling in tandem. Plopping uncoordinatedly to the grass, the bird strolled casually on the grass, on to the infield, stepping over second base and finally stopping three feet in front of his black leather boot.
“What the…”
The bird faced upward staring directly into his eyes. Perplexed by this odd little visitor Officer Nancarlo looked back into the deepness. The small black ovals showed him there were things about the world he could not understand. A comprehension dispensed by this place that must be avoided. An understanding of things that are not always the way we are brought up to believe.
Collin dropped to his knees. Watching from the road one might have seen a policeman frantically digging away at the infield dirt screaming silently with his face pressed against the ground. Red feathers catch your eye taking your gaze up to watch a thick bird lift to the sky flying away into the bright. Looking back down, the wide brimmed hat rests flat on the dirt with no head to call home anywhere in sight.
“Collin (static) you there?” The woman’s voice rough from a two pack a day three drink minimum habit. “Hey Collin (static) Chief wants to know the score of the game (static)” The window of the squad car remains rolled down. “Collin? (static) Hey Col… (static)”
Alex’s latest novel is: “The Key to Everything”
Find more information about Alex at: https://www.alexkimmel.weebly.com
Susan Wingate
Susan Wingate is an award-winning author and #1 Amazon best seller. Her latest achievement is the inclusion of one of her poems in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Wingate wrote the story, “Taking Care of Things,” when she and her husband, Bob, decided to mix up the concept of throwing a Halloween party. The Wingate’s asked each of their guests to write a short Halloween story to present after dinner. “Taking Care of Things” was Wingate’s contribution.
Taking Care of Things
by Susan
Wingate
That's what the note said, to "please take care of things." Then it added, "the best YOU can." Including the jibe contradicted my wife's normal complacent and boring nature.
When I awoke that Halloween morning, pain surged its path of misery across my back. In fact, that's what woke me—a dull throbbing sensation cutting through me at the middle of my spine. Plus, my feet tingled to the point my toes no longer felt like they were attached.
My body throbbed like a crushed thumb. I couldn't seem to move. That's how lethargic I was upon waking. But as I recall this day, I'm not really sure I wanted to move—not at that point, anyway.
The morning broke in shards as country mornings will, before daylight colors the walls or the endless tract of trees outside where nary a person strolls by—ever. Each turn of my head met with a blur of variant blacks, grays and grims in blocks, circles and triangles I figured were a chair or an end table or even the bulk of the mattress.
It was at this point I asked myself why I wasn't IN the bed. I was somewhere NEXT to the bed on the floor.
Within the hour, as the morning flowed into the room and after dozing off then waking again three or four times, I noticed my knees bent as if my body were sitting. Then I realized my feet, which had been stripped of outerwear, were propped up in the air with a board tied across my legs fashioned like a table across my shins.
I was sitting in a chair. Yes. The problem, however, was that the chair had been tipped backwards and I'd been tied to it with plastic cinches around my wrists and ankles, all locked as tightly as possible without cutting through each joint and depleting blood flow.
My hands took on a beet color which did not match the purple my feet had turned. For a good time tugging, lurching and screaming, my fight against the bonds turned out a futile chore.
When I gave up the first time, I noticed many things.
A rectangular shiny gray plastic shape had been strung up along some sort of pulley over my head. One window gaped fully open. My wife's nurse uniform hung inside the closed door by a hook with a note pinned to it. And, there were several open cans of cat food—some partially eaten, some empty and some not at all. Some were placed on the board across my legs and some strewn about the floor.
What made matters most troubling was that my abuser (whom, by now, I had to believe was my wife!) had gone to the effort of fastening me to the cold tile floor by several stretches of duct tape. Under which, I laid completely naked.
My dear wife had gone to great lengths to create a most uncomfortable situation for me.
The worst of which was pinching my pink genitalia between the silver strands of tape. My rescue would prove ever so embarrassing when found this way.
She'd even gone to the extent of tying a label onto my unit and scrawled on it, the name we'd once given him... a, one, Mr. Happy.
My attention, now on the label, was met with an overwhelming smell of a cat box somewhere in close quarters. As I looked around for the odor, my eyes connected on the letter pinned to her uniform. It read:
Bill,
Please take care of things—that is, the best YOU can. Like feeding the cats and the raccoons. You know, the ones you refer to as "hideous creatures."
And, oh. I found out about your little chippy on the side. Sorry about the powerful cocktail I gave you last night but it really was the only way to get you in the chair.
By the time you read this, I'll be in New York and, shortly after, off to my heritage land, Lebanon, which has no reciprocal extradition policy with the U.S.
After giving you everything—my heart and soul—to find out about your three-year affair with big-boobied Justine was a tad too much for me to bear as you must realize now or else you wouldn't be finding yourself in this position.
I'll think of you often, mostly when I eat kibbee—you know, that ground raw meat dish you never liked. The one I loved?
I'll think of you, especially when imagining what this morning will bring you.
Good luck, Stephanie
P.S. Cutting off a husband's genitals for adultery seemed amateurish to me when a wife can get ever so much MORE creative with her punishment.
After reading her note, a loud Bing! sounded making me wrench my head back, slightly behind me. My eyes landed on a timer attached to the wall near the pulley and, when it went off, the gray rectangular plastic object slung above me shifted, dropping one side loose and emptying its contents onto my head and chest—a full container of un-sifted dirty litter landed squarely on my face, in my eyes, my nose and my mouth.
As I blew, spitting litter off my lips, I shook my head so wildly I nearly pulled a neck muscle in the process.
Another Bing! sounded after another timer chimed off seconds later and Stephanie's voice clicked on, out of a machine. She'd recorded a series of cat calls in that tone of hers.
"Kitty, kitty, kitty! Kittens! Zum, Zum Zummy. Dinner!" She called.
And no sooner did the recorder click off, did five of her hideous creatures come syphoning through the open window, jumping up onto the plank between my legs and lapping at the open cans.
PNut Budda, the biggest cat and also the one who NEVER peed outside, promptly went for the sand.
She sniffed at the pile around my torso, scratched at a spot right next to my ear, got en pointe, curved her back into the correct position for the job coming and squeezed out three hefty globs of poo.
Making matters worse (if that were possible) PNut didn't cover her feces. Instead, she proceeded to dig at an additional spot next to the reeking crap, squatted again then urinated.
Unfortunately, the thin layer of sand on top of the slick tile was not enough to contain the river of piss that now spilled out from under the litter and, finally flowing to my shoulder, pooled just under my neck.
Another Bing! And her voice echoed out again. Not for the cats this time but for the hungry wild animals she'd been feeding since she arrived here fifteen years ago... TODAY!
She'd always made such a big deal about the date she arrived to the island. And now, upon leaving this place for good, she would make the biggest fuss of all on, this day—Halloween. Her anniversary.
"Raccoons!" Her voice beckoned from the recorder. "Raccoons!"
A brief pause between sets of calls and the cassette sounded again.
And again.
Until I heard the scampering of the fat and hungry beasts around the window.
It was then that one climbed up and peered in.
"No!" I screamed. But my voice only startled the animal.
Next, the sniveling varmint climbed up onto the window sill. The cats hissed and arched their backs, huddling together in a corner.
"Get back!" I yelled.
But, apparently "get back" in raccoon language means, "Come on in!" Because the animal scooted down the interior wall and began sniffing at the surroundings.
Thankfully, it found an open container of food. The beast picked up the can with its clawed fingers and licked it clean.
Then it peered at me.
It looked me up and down and seemed to understand my predicament. It came straight up to my face but instead of attacking, it smelled where PNut Budda had left her droppings. The raccoon defecated there as well and then sauntered toward the cats.
One by one, each feline scrambled to get away and raced out the window, growling and spitting upon their escape.
Then, I heard another sound. Another form of scratching came from outside. Hope bubbled within me, I thought, "Maybe the cats pow-wowed and decided to come back in and fight off the raccoon in an effort to save me!" Or, possibly (I didn't care why), to fight off the raccoons for their food.
When the scratching got louder and my hope for the cats' return got greater, another face appeared. It was a new raccoon.
My heart sank.
The snarling fiend pulled itself up and over the sill and began inspecting me much like the first one.
Then, another showed up t
hen another and another and soon there were forty raccoons in the small room—all with me!
Oh, the horror!
It didn't take them long to polish off the cans of catfood and begin what Stephanie had surely hoped for.
First, they started on my toes. The agony!
Even though my feet had long gone numb, a set of razor teeth ripping into your skin is never a pleasantry. As the blood spewed out, spattering the wall and floor, I screamed.
Then they went for my fingers—growling and clawing for the taste of fresh blood. Through my screams, they proceeded. And my plasma continued to ooze forth.
I moaned. I howled. I begged for death.
And at last, the thing that finally did me in... they focused their attention to my mid-section and began their vicious work on... Mr. Happy.
When the first raccoon grabbed my thingumabob a sudden and unexpected sense of delight mixed with terror flooded my brain. But the delight soon vanished when he clamped his gnarling jaw onto my excited flesh.
After that, with all those raccoons taking turns at my tasty sweetbreads, with all that blood coursing out of me, through all of my wild shrieking... finally and thankfully...
Dear, Dear, God. I lost consciousness.
Susan’s latest novel is “Spider Brains”
Read more of Susan’s writing, her blog, and her books at: https://www.SusanWingate.com
Steven Luna
I began my authorly adventures several years ago, with a middle-grade fantasy tale. Several more followed, though I never felt like I had gotten the total hang of it. And while it was fun to tell my stories in that genre, once I shifted to writing for an adult audience, I realized I preferred a more of a magical realism style, where elements of fantasy are scattered about realistic situations rather than full-blown fantasy stories. The springboard for my writing has become the notion of ordinary folk touched by the extraordinary in ways that they find ridiculous or inconceivable – and sometimes even in ways they find completely acceptable. For me, in that setting, everything is possible.