Grand Slam

Jeremy does not turn to greet me. I know without looking that his face holds the same blank expression it had when I stopped by for last month’s visit. He still slouches in that old office chair of his. It was a nice chair back before his business failed, but now it is stained with grease and ketchup and missing the two back wheels. Not that he notices. His hands are too busy moving with the joystick, too busy blurring across the keyboard, and too busy performing his collection of well rehearsed strokes across the touch screen to worry about fixing such menial things. For that matter, his ears are too full of the audio feed to even know that I’m there.

I want to walk right over to him and yank the cords from his head. I want to throw his helmet out the window and I want to watch as the VR visor smashes into the blacktop and shatters like the baseball did to that glass door on Jeremy’s twelfth birthday. Grand Slam! I want to drag him outside and make him play again. And that’s really all I want. Forget the green grass. Forget the blue sky. Forget the dust cloud sliding into home. I don’t ask for much; I just want one last game with my brother, that’s all.

Instead I flip a switch and then eye the uncooperative bulb. I sigh. The faint blue glow of the terminal provides little for me to see by and the scent of old cigarettes makes me want to gag. I could still leave, probably should leave, but I don’t. I wade through the lava flow of empty beer cans and yank on the hanging drawstring. Light fills the room and suddenly Jeremy is yelling at me about the glare. I smile and force the window open. The outside air is cold, but fresh.

--

When I wrote it half a year ago, this was a completely contained story. It was intended to be a brief glimpse into the relationship of the unnamed narrator and his brother. I set it slightly into a hypothetical future mostly on a whim. Recently I've been toying with the possibility of expanding the story into something more. Not sure how far I'd take it yet though.