Flashfiction - Two Outs, Seventh Inning

     Another Creative Writing flashfiction(500 words or less) assignment I hope to expand on later. It's not very good, but written as kind of a response to the tenth anniversary of my grandma's death.

      "The neighborhood kids were playing ball again, they weren’t using a tennis ball today. Instead they were using an enormous and heavy softball cousin called a cabbage ball. She smiled and listened to the game. Last summer she used to sit on the porch and cheer them on. The Alley Cats were leading 2-0 over the Bulldogs. She liked to imagine that her grandson in Wichita played with other kids that he knew; and he enjoyed hearing about the neighborhood games, so she tried to remember everything she could about them. Carol just really lacked the energy right now to write out a letter. So she just sat and watched the window instead.

     Jocelyn slapped out a ground-rule double; planting herself firmly on the pizza box that was second base. Now Aaron was up at bat; Amanda threw one of her fastballs following two elevator balls – Strikeout.

     To the players, Carol was just some older lady who liked baseball. She used to have a dog named Sassy, but not anymore, and she let them use her yard as a field, so that was cool. She was sick more often now, from something that had to do with eating too much crab dip.

     Bulldogs at bat, David facing Rich’s pitch. The bat swung around and met the ball for a pretty solid line drive. He reached the first-base Frisbee easily. Sarah Kate scooped up the ball on two hops and threw it to Danny.

     Carol had given Sassy to Amanda’s family since she was too sick to keep a dog. She’d always liked kids; maybe that was part of why she became a librarian. Of course, once the cancer came she had had to give that up, but… So now she didn’t get out much. Folks in town thought of her often; Carol was pretty well-known and liked decently. There was this C.S. Lewis quote from the foreword to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Sometimes she fixed them some cookies if she felt well enough. They were just store cookies from Dollar General, but they didn’t seem to mind. Hmm, cookies sounded good. She walked into the kitchen and took two out of the package, pulled a glass off the shelf and set about enjoying some milk and cookies. Except she didn’t; because the half-gallon was too heavy to pick up. So she ate one of the cookies dry and left the other for later.

     The kids were engrossed in their game; which was how things ought to be. There were a lot of educational things they were learning without realizing it. And they reminded her to treasure the mundane; cookies unexpectedly, a base hit, a caught fly ball. She was going to die soon, but the kids had their lives ahead: High school, dating, divorces, college, kids, marriage. She wasn’t important to them; they’d forget about her. But maybe someday they’d remember."