50.04 Mice and Beetles

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50.04 Mice and Beetles

Post by shoeless.db » Fri Mar 18, 2022 2:33 pm

continued from here

The ballpark, its majestic encircling seats, the two matching spires bookending centerfield, the deep brown of the infield dirt and mound, like scars within the green grass, disappeared. And we stood in hip-high water, in shallow center. The five of us, or four.

I’d only witnessed this ritual once, this miracle, if miracles screamed and taunted and wept. It was several years back.

A young ballplayer, a kid really, but older, much older. He came to me. In a dream, or to me in real life, I cannot decide, or am unable to decide. He came to my office. He was calm and foreign. Barely spoke English. Rough and broken, broken on purpose, almost.

I don’t recall what was said in the dream, in that meeting. But I paid, we paid, a large sum of money for his rights, over $12 million, the most we’d ever spent on an unproven talent. Or was he a talent at all? An International Free Agent, who had never played baseball, was unfamiliar, I’m certain. The only thing I’m certain of, maybe. The way he had looked down from my office, through the unstained glass of the mosaic, onto the field and its odd dimensions. The way his eyes fed, the way they devoured it all. The way the stadium felt empty, despite the crowds, for weeks after. Like a carcass’ bones, after the vultures. And the mice.

And the beetles.

After the meeting, I awoke in the dead of night. On the field. And there were five of us then also, or four, the green-eyed woman, her two assistants, myself. And he was there, the young ballplayer. Nişancı. But he was not there at all, or was, but more, if that was possible. He was deeper. And heavier. Like blood.

And we stood in hip-high water, the five of us, or four. In a slough, surrounded by cattails, and dark rolling plains, horizons of black. And the cattails, like silent men, dead men, swayed. Swayed without a breeze, watching. Witnessing.

Reflected light from a waning gibbous moon caught the heads of the cattails, casting shadows into the still water. Swaying shadows with eyes, shadows with purpose.

Just as they witnessed the second time, with our Frankenstein. Mangrouthormone, there but not there, transparent, but full. Too full. With surgical scars, fresh, oozing blood and body, railroading over his stomach, his chest. His groin.

But, unlike Nişancı, Mangrouthormone was unwilling. And confused. Looking to me for an answer, an explanation, to a question he didn’t know, to a question I didn’t know. He glanced down to his scars, studying them with his fingers, feeling the wetness of the blood.

Then the green-eyed woman sang.

And, again, the muskrats came.

And the cattails were still.
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