"A Mound Visit"

On Hallow's Eve, a professional baseball player seeks the comforts of the ballpark in which he is to perform the following night.

“A Mound Visit”

by Tommy Guerin

 

            On Hallow’s Eve I spent the eve alone at the ballpark. For the air there was fresh, and the lights gave peace to the dark. Anxiously I sat on the mound, where I feel free of fright, hoping the anxiety would fade into the night. I muttered, “I’m tomorrow night’s World Series starting pitcher. Shouldn’t the anticipation make tonight richer?” So I stood up, brushed the dirt off my jeans, and took a deep breath. Then I shouted, “I wear a pro uniform and I act like this is death.” But what followed was borrowed by what I now know was needed. For after I fainted, a gentle voice pleaded.

 

            It whispered, “Open your eyes and rise and remember the time when we saw the sign that read, Imagine When Fear Is Afraid? It was in the antique store, hanging above the stuffed boar, while we enjoyed the Patty’s parade.”

 

            I opened my eyes and sprung to my feet and begged the voice if now we could meet.  “Catalina, is it you? Catalina, is it true? Have you returned after all these years? Please tell me you’re here to calm my fears.” Eagerly I wished . . . but she never appeared. For her face I missed, and her mind I revered. Her voice was now unclear as it traveled to deep center, so I dashed from the mound into which witches often enter.

 

            When I passed the grass, lightening bolts powered the scoreboard screen. And then the sky turned crimson. And then the next voice was mean. It said, “You fret about a baseball game. You behave like your life is at stake. If indeed danger has flooded your brain, then your painful past I’ll remake.” A video played. It was a still shot of where Cat lay, under our oak tree, the field’s only one that was gray. As I watched, a ring of fire formed around me. And fantastic phantoms from the flames urged me to see.

 

            Cat’s burial was the same spot where we linked our hearts--the spot where we conceived our daughter Dancer. But sometimes a life ends before it truly starts; such was when my girl was struck with cancer.

 

            Dancer was 8-years-old when she died. And Cat’s despair was great when she first cried. The witty and wonderful woman I knew, who gave me a purpose when she said I do, descended into a sadness no husband wishes for. A mere month later I found her corpse on our bedroom floor. I screamed a child’s scream when they awake from a dream--one their sub-conscious makes seem terribly real for the first time like when children fall and startle themselves during a courageous climb. Since that horrific moment my responses to fear have been with a fiery fight, almost like my amygdala has numbed the execution of all my pitches flight.

 

Until Hallow’s eve ’16.

 

            I sweated profusely as the ring of fire forced itself closer to me. But the instant I froze, in an imaginative attempt to survive, Cat appeared within hugging distance as if she were alive. Upon wrapping my arms around her, all the terrors disappeared, and I awoke . . . back on the mound. Yet this time I longed for tomorrow’s ghouls and ghosts abound.