The Devils Baseball

What a crazy week he thought as he picked up the bin outside his house. He had been meaning to burn the papers for some time but with everything that had happened he didn’t have a chance. As he casually threw the papers into the flames he went over his plans for the next day in his head. He had met the girl a week ago but had just worked up the courage to ask her out that day. He couldn’t believe she said yes but now all he had to worry about was the date itself.

The man in black opened the gate and walked into the garden he didn’t know why but he knew that this was where he was supposed to be. He still had the Childs blood on him but had been too preoccupied to do anything about it. He saw the man burning his papers and walked up to him until he was right behind him. Looking over the mans shoulder, he watched for a moment as the paper disappeared into flame.

The children were playing on the green, about ten of them had gathered and were engaged in a game of tag. The old woman looked on still in awe at a Childs ability to recover from traumatic events. The ambulance had left just ten minutes ago but already the children had returned to the same state as they were before the accident. Without thinking she knelt down and picked up the baseball which was at her feet and walked back into her house to finish her dinner. As she walked into the kitchen she thought she smelt something but put it down to her imagination. Once she finished eating she put her left overs in the bin outside. It was then she discovered the baseball she had put in her pocket, she stared at it for a moment before she threw it over her fence into the neighbors bin. She lit her cigarette and walked back into her house. The resulting explosion caused by the gas leek being lit by her cigarette rocked the whole neighborhood.

Charlie was always alone. Being the smallest and youngest kid in the neighborhood he always felt the other kids picked on him. They would call him names and throw things at him, sometimes he wished he was dead. That would show them, they would be sorry they were so mean to him then. At this moment he was standing alone in the shade of a tree near the road. As he watched the other children play he began to cry, even the new kid in the neighborhood had been allowed to play there game. The new kid was the son of a local baseball hero and all of the kids wanted to play with him. They had started a game of baseball and had picked two teams but told Charlie he was too small to play. As he watched them play the baseball was hit out of the green and rolled out onto the road near Charlie. Seeing his chance Charlie rushed out to pickup the baseball. As his hand grasped the ball he looked up to see a man in black standing on the side of the road directly in front of him, where no one had stood seconds before. Charlie froze as he looked at this man and then something hit him from his left. Charlie’s body flew through the air and his last though was that perhaps now that he had gotten the ball the other kids would let him play. As the bus skidded to a halt one of it passengers began to scream.

Being new in town sucked but when you were the son of a sports star you had to learn to make friends fast. His father was always changing teams or moving into a new rented house. This was the latest in a long line of teams who had bought his fathers ability but this could be the last. His father had been playing bad for the past few months and this was the only pro team who were still interested in him. The kid walked into his father’s room, picked up the baseball from his father’s bed and went out to meet the local kids. He failed to notice through the half open bathroom door, his father’s lifeless body hanging from the light switch.

THUMP. The man who had been burning papers snapped back to reality as he heard the sound. Looking down he saw a baseball had fallen into the flames. He stared at it for a moment as it began to unravel in the heat and wondered at the events that had led to this ball being left in his bin. As the ball burned the man in black shrank back in to the shadows from where he had come.