Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

Jim stood outside her door for a while unable to move, confused emotions tingling and his heart racing. Finally, he turned and made his way back to his own apartment.

The sun was liquid gold melting into the eastern horizon as Rebecca Lacey walked out onto the diamond—etched field. She headed towards the batter’s box, swinging the thirty-ounce Louisville Slugger in her right hand like a scythe.

The crowd—Mina Belkov waving a bright red pennant—went wild, while over on the pitcher’s mound, Mitchell Lorentz limbered up with some practice balls that curved and zigzagged impossibly, like sidewinder missiles to the catcher’s mitt of Horatio Mabry. The big man’s bulk cast an elongated shadow across the field, like a gigantic sundial.

In the outfield, Adrianna Drake jumped and cart wheeled excitedly, tripping and falling over a uniform that was several sizes too large for her. Catching sight of Becky, she stopped her cavorting and instead began waving excitedly at her; a smile of pure childish joy lighting up her angelic face and making the baseball cap perched jauntily on her head jiggle. Jim Baston, resplendent and dashing in a beautiful black tuxedo stood respectfully in centerfield exuding a demeanor of debonair sophistication that removed all sense of incongruity from his choice of clothing.

Kicking sand off the plate with her toes, Rebecca swung the bat once, twice, three times to stretch the muscles in her arms before very deliberately glancing both left and right.

“Batter up,” drawled Mabry.

Oddly, all the bases were empty as were both players’ benches in the home and away team dugouts. Looked like it was all up to her then!

The huge scoreboard, looming ominously in the distance was counting backwards, its home team score clacking down from ninety-nine in a painfully slow countdown to zero, like some giant timer.

None of that mattered now. It was all up to her. The fate of… something… something she could not quite put her finger on, but which she knew carried a great responsibility, hung squarely on her shoulders.

Becky fixed her steely gaze on a golden glowing Lorentz out on the pitcher’s mound as he wound up for the first pitch.

He let fly.

The horsehide covered ball sped towards her impossibly fast, curling and spiraling, a bleached white blur… and she hit it, high and steep.

Lorentz, Adrianna and Jim all began to run to the same spot in the center field, standing together in a huddle with their eyes turned skywards as they watched the ball reach its apogee before beginning its slow decent, their hands raised high in the air, ready to catch the ball as it plummeted towards the ground.

The counter on the scoreboard began speeding up as the ball fell, picking up speed as it raced toward Lorentz, Adrianna, and Jim’s outstretched hands. Numbers flew by in a blur; the whir of the scoreboard rolling by became a clatter like wind blowing through wooden wind chimes.

Their arm’s reaching high into the air, Lorentz, Adrianna and Jim waved confidently at Becky as they waited expectantly for the ball to arrive, to fall into their waiting mitts.

There was a dull thud.

Rebecca turned to see an identical ball to the one she had sent soaring into the sky roll to a stop near her feet. Another thud as another ball dropped to the ground from nowhere. Then more balls fell, seemingly from nowhere, until a path of white baseballs lay between her and the group of her colleagues who were still waiting patiently for the original ball to finish its decent. As Rebecca watched, more and more balls fell, carpeting the field. Finally, her original baseball fell straight into the waiting mitt of Mitchell Lorentz.

Jim leaped into the air, pumping his fist in victory. Lorentz grabbed Adrianna and swung her around and around as she giggled and snorted. Her baseball cap flew off, carried by a wind that swept it high into the air. The cap disappeared into a swiftly approaching darkness that had somehow crept up unseen, swallowing the horizon and now devouring the boundary of the outfield. The darkness brought with it a sense of impending disaster that began to chew and gnaw at Rebecca’s stomach.

Horatio Mabry let out an exultant whoop of joy, tossed his catcher’s mask carelessly into the air and ran past Rebecca to join his celebrating friends in the center field. But they had missed the ball. Couldn’t they see that? Why were they celebrating?

Rebecca dropped the bat, which floated toward the ground in slow motion. Turning, she began to follow Mabry toward her colleagues, but her legs felt as though the air had turned to molasses. Barely able to move through the gelatinous air she began waving her arms, desperately trying to attract their attention, but the group was caught up in its own celebrations and did not notice her. Panic coursed through her body and she felt her heart began to pound and pound and pound and— The numbers on the scoreboard finally reached zero just as the sun disappeared into the darkness. The single deafening clang of a bell reverberated through the ground like an earthquake, and the world went dark as the blackness that had encroached unseen, suddenly swallowed the remaining light.

Rebecca woke from her dream with a cry caught in her throat. Throwing back the sweat-dampened comforter, she swung her glistening legs over the side of the bed and glanced at her alarm clock: three-thirty-eight in the morning.

Grabbing her dressing gown from its hook on the back of the door, she quickly crossed to her computer and turned on the screen, which slowly cast its iridescent glow through the darkened room. Her fingers began to fly across the keyboard as she entered set after set of complicated mathematical equations into the system. Finally, after she tapped the last of the data into the computer, she set the program to calculate—mode and waited impatiently, her fingers drumming anxiously on the desktop as the machine worked toward its resolution.

A minute later, an electronic ping sounded from the computer’s integrated speaker system and the screen changed to display the results of its calculations. Rebecca’s eyes followed the scrolling data as the results marched across the screen. When she reached the final figure she double-tapped the screen with her finger. Without taking her eyes off the screen, Rebecca reached for the phone resting on the desk next to the computer display and quickly punched in the numbers that would connect her with Mitchell Lorentz’s room.

Jim’s phone chirruped insistently, dragging him to wakefulness. Bleary eyed he reached a hand blindly towards the phone, his fingers searching for the speakerphone button.

“Yeah? Hello,” he mumbled into his pillow.

“Jim, I’m sorry to wake you but it’s urgent.” Lorentz’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Can you meet us in the cafeteria in ten minutes, please?”

“Sure,” he slurred back, “What’s up?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.” The line went dead.

Nobody looks good at five-in-the-morning, but as Jim walked into the now brightly lit cafeteria, he decided he would have to amend that belief, because, as he stood in the doorway looking in at those already assembled, somehow Rebecca managed to look radiant.

Her hair was tousled and tangled, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup, yetshe was the most beautiful sight he had ever set eyes upon, Atlantean in her beauty and otherworldliness. She was talking animatedly to Lorentz, who in turn looked tired but his eyes seemed to reflect an excitement and spark Jim had not seen before.

“This had better be good,” said a sleep-gruff voice from behind Jim as Harry edged his bulk through the space between Jim and the doorjamb. “I need all the beauty sleep I can get.”