Slugger

The high school baseball game ended with a strong win for the home team. The perfect game to wrap up the season, leaving spectators satisfied until next year. Any player should be proud right now, especially the team's star; a young girl by the name of Lily MacLellan. She was an average looking girl, a little on the short side. A good, healthy weight, with blue eyes and mousy brown hair that never quite fit into her ponytail. Lily was special not because of any exemplary talent on the field, but because she was the only girl who'd made it onto her school's baseball team. A real hometown sweetheart.Lily didn't care about any of that, though. She just wanted to play baseball.

That night there was something much more important than a win weighing on her chest during the car ride home. She leaned her cheek against the cool glass of the window, only half listening as her parents jabbered on about the game, the weather, and boring adult things. Lily's stomach churned as they pulled up to the driveway of their home. The MacLellan family lived with many other upstanding citizens in a small, idyllic gated community, where the whole street would gather to drink wine and laugh on a Saturday night while their kids played in the street, then cart themselves off to church on Sunday morning. The Maclellan's house had a little white picket fence surrounding a trim green lawn and a little flower garden. Every detail was identical to the homes surrounding it. The family exited their car and went inside. She knew that tonight would be the night that her life would change. She just didn't know exactly how yet.

Lily curled herself into a tight ball underneath her covers, crying soundlessly into her pillow. Never before had she been more terrified. The hushed voices of her furious mother echoed from the room below, accompanied by the pacing footsteps of her father. They had not taken her confession very as well as she had hoped.

"I did not raise my daughter to be a lesbian." Lily could hear her father say. "A sin! An atrosity! What is Father Daniel going to think?" Her mother wailed.

Rumors spread fast in a small town. The Maclellan's whispered to their friends. Friends whispered to their families. Children whispered to other children. Lily didn't leave her room the entire weekend. She was too afraid to meet the accusatory stares, to feel like some sort of human oddity. She hardly slept, she barely ate. On the rare occasion that she did leave her room, she sensed the pressure of her parents' silence bearing down on her. She felt her lungs were filling up with their disapproval. It had only been two days, and Lily wasn't sure how much longer it would take to drown.

That Monday, school was a living hell. Lily's classmates shot spitwads at the back of her neck, stuck gum in her hair, every juvenile prank you could think of. Her phone buzzed constantly, brimming with nasty words poised to leech at her sanity. 'Lily the lesbian' Her peers would whisper to one another. Over, and over and over; their rhythmic chanting gnawed at Lily constantly. As she sat alone and ate her lunch, she heard it in the back of her mind. Lily the lesbian. Lily attempted to read her favorite book for comfort, but the letters rearranged themselves on the page. Lily is a lesbian. When she rested her head on her pillow for a much needed night's escape, her dreams would mock her too.

Lily, Lily, They would whisper, Lily the lesbian. Lily, Lily....

Every day for a whole week, the same thing. Then a month, then two. It seemed like her peers would never grow tired of it. Even her closest friends had turned against her, spreading awful rumors and fictitious events pertaining to Lily's sexuality. Girls would screech and run to the other side of the room or hall when she approached, afraid her 'disease' would somehow spread. The lonely girl had made ways of avoiding as many people as she possibly could, but they still found her. Even the teachers couldn't meet Lily's eye anymore.

About three months of this misery had passed, and Lily was walking home after school. Her parents didn't drive her places anymore. They were afraid to be seen with their own daughter. Lily had taken the long way around today, avoiding some boys who had taken to waiting for her at her usual route to harass her further. Lily walked around the corner of a building and bumped into something tall. Trembling, she looked up into the face of one of the boys she'd been trying to avoid. Behind him stood his crew of gorilla shaped flunkies. She could tell that they had been waiting for her.

Lily stumbled back, but the large boy grabbed her by the backpack strap. "Look guys, " He sneered back towards his buddies, "We caught ourselves a Dyke."

The others chuckled, but Lily didn't find it funny at all. She squirmed and managed to free herself from her backpack. Sometimes being small held quite the advantage. She darted away, and heavy footsteps echoed behind her. Desperate for some way to escape, Lily ducked into an alley. She sprinted down its length, only to find it stopped in a dead end. Lily pressed her trembling hands to the rough brick as if hoping, by some saving grace, that it would topple. But not even the walls of this town were on her side. She turned and watched hopelessly as the bullies caught up to her. One thug grabbed her by the front of her shirt and threw her into the middle of the group. They filled the air with cruel laughter as they pushed her around between them until she fell to her hands and knees. They began to kick at her, their boots and sneakers leaving bruises all over her small frame.

Lily curled up on her side and wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to protect her vital organs. But that did little to deter her attackers. One foot swung and made harsh contact with her left eye. Lily screamed in pain. Blood gushed from her eye, which felt like it had been jammed too far back into its socket. Her vision began to grow hazy, and the pain felt farther and farther away until she could feel nothing. Distant sounding shouts and footsteps were the last thing Lily heard before sinking into deep, cold darkness.

Lily awoke in the hospital a few days later. After a few questions, the nurses called her parents and they came to collect her. When they arrived, the doctor finally told Lily of her condition. She was fortunate, he said. She hadn't gotten any brain damage, and her ribs were intact. However, her left eye had been irreparably damaged, and needed to be surgically removed. The drive home was silent as the grave.

Weeks went by, and Lily stayed home from school to recover. Her damaged eye was removed and fitted with a new 'glass eye'. The Ocularist didn't quite get the color right, leaving her left eye a lighter shade of blue than the right. It gave the girl a rather unsettling appearance, like a porcelain doll made of the pieces of several others. Lily's face no longer seemed to fit together quite right. Her gaze was blank and cold, making the doctors and nurses shudder a little when they met it. The many sleepless nights had caused dark bags under her eyes, which served to only to accent their peculiarity. Lily's parents avoided that stare like the plague. But the girl couldn't care less. In fact, she didn't care much about anything anymore. Now that she was blind in one eye, in that damned left eye, she couldn't play baseball anymore. Baseball had been her one passion since she was six years old. It was what drove her to get out of bed, eat well, keep her grades up, everything. All of her friends had come from baseball. The trophies on her shelf were all won in baseball. The scholarship she'd applied for? Baseball. Lily's entire life's dream violently ripped from her grasp by one boy's air jordans. The single thread of hope she had clung to had been snipped in two. For Lily, there was nothing left but unyielding darkness.

It was a Sunday evening and Lily's mother was away, helping at a Church bake sale. Her father sat in the living room, watching the five o'clock news. Lily stared down at the back of his head from her perch at the top of the stairs. The longer she watched him, the stronger the strange feelings inside her grew. Feelings of such magnitude that Lily had never known before. The silence screamed in her head so loudly she couldn't think; the silence of her parents, the silence of her friends. It was quiet. Everything was so quiet. Then it came. The chanting in her head.

Lily, Lily, Lily's a lesbian, Lily, Lily, Lily....

Frantically the girl fled into her room. She slammed the door behind her, but the chanting continued, on and on and on. Her knees shook violently, and Lily leaned against her door for support. The walls twisted and warped around her.

Lily, Lily, Lily......

Where? Where were those voices coming from?!!!! Lily ran to her window and threw open the curtains, as if the culprits might be hiding there. But there was no one, and the voices wouldn't stop. In a fit rage, Lily grabbed onto her curtain and yanked on them. The bar they hung from was ripped from the wall and crashed onto the floor. The furniture in the room mocked her. Stumbling and drunken with anger, Lily found her baseball bat in the corner. With weapon in hand, she set to work thoroughly destroying everything in sight. Her lamp, her headboard, her mirror, nothing was spared. She broke holes in her walls, but still the voices did not stop.

The noise attracted the attention of her father downstairs. Cautiously, he walked up the stairs to investigate. "Lily....?" he asked as he slowly opened her door. The sight before him could not have been more shocking. Lily stood in the middle of the carnage of her room, her back to him with her baseball bat hanging loosely from her hand. She was hunched forward like a ragdoll, her torso expanding and contracting with her breath. Slowly she turned to him. Lily's stare was empty and cold, freezing her father to the spot. Mr. Maclellan's hands trembled slightly in fear, unable to look away or utter a word. The trance was broken when she let out a blood curdling scream, and swung her bat at him. Her father didn't even have time to react before it hit his ribs with a sickening crack and he fell to the ground, crying out in pain. Lily struck him again and again, mercilessly bludgeoning her father with the bat. He begged her to stop, but Lily couldn't hear it. She heard nothing but the endless teasing in her mind.

Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily.....

"Lily! Lily stop!" The cries of her mother broke through the chanting. Lily looked up at the woman, who looked near to wretching from fear. Lily stood over the broken, bloodied body of her father. Blood oozed from his bashed in head, and his face was so battered it was hardly recognizable. The shattered ends of his ribs stuck out from bloodied sides of his body. His limp limbs were bent at unnatural angles and were sprawled out across the carpet. Thick red liquid dripped from Lily's dark metal bat. Gingerly she touched it and turned her hand over to look at her now blood coated palm. For the first time in months, Lily's blank face changed. She never knew she could feel so...free. The sight of her father's broken and mangled body sparked happiness in her veins. Finally, she had made him feel the pain she had felt. Her insides and his outsides were a perfect match.

When Lily looked back at her mother, her mouth had twisted into a terrible grin, and her good eye held a crazed look. Lily took the hand coated in her father's blood and pressed it against her right cheek, leaving a dark red handprint on her face. "What's wrong, mommy?" She asked, her voice bounced and erupted with giggles. She stepped forward, wobbly and off balance. "Don't I look pretty?"

Her mother screamed and fled down the stairs to grab the phone in the kitchen, but before she could reach it she was caught firmly by the hair. Lily's laughed and threw her mother onto the carpet. Tears leaked from the woman's eyes as she looked desperately up at her daughter. "Lily, please! Lily! Lily!" she cried as Lily brought the bat down again and again, each strike more vicious than the last. Mrs. Maclellan's knee shattered, then the other, causing the middle aged woman to scream and wail with pain. "Lily!"

Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily......

"Shut UP!" Lily screamed at the voices, swinging the bat again, more violently this time. The wild blow came down directly over her mother's mouth, shattering tooth and bone. Her mother's screams and wails drowned in the blood that began flowing out of her face. Lily continued to strike at her mother's chest until it was nothing more than a sunken cavity, just broken remnants of a torso. Breathless, sweatpants and T-shirt soaked in blood, Lily doubled over and vomited from exhaustion. On her hands and knees, Lily wiped bile from the corners of her mouth. She looked over at her mother's body, and let out another manic giggle. Standing, the girl walked over to the kitchen counter, grabbing her mother's purse from it. She dug around inside until she found her wallet, then dropped the bag on the ground. "Thanks mom." she grinned to herself as he stuck the wallet in her pocket. Dragging her bat behind her, Lily walked over to the closet and retrieved her pair of baseball cleats and cap from it. She laced her shoes and calmly left the house.

The sun's last, fleeting impressions graced the evening sky as Lily's silhouette ambled down the streets, a few blocks away from her former home. The smile had not left her face since she'd left and begun to aimlessly wander. Her bat made a rather unpleasant, grinding, grating noise as she dragged it against the sidewalk behind her.

"Hey, hey kid!" A man called, approaching her from behind, "You lost? It's gettin' awful late for a kid like you to be wanderin' about-" He stopped cold when he saw the bloody handprint on her cheek, the blood on her pants, and her shirt, "Oh, God! We gotta getcha to the hospital, kid, what happened to-"

Crack!

Lily's baseball bat shattered the man's cheek. He cried out in pain and surprise. "What the hell-!" Another hit, this time to his hip. He fell wobbled and was knocked onto his back with a loud smack across his chest. The man shouted for help, and Lily laughed. Raising her foot, she stomped down roughly on his neck. The spikes on her cleats dug into his flesh, puncturing his windpipe. The man gasped for air, his eyes searching for mercy in hers. But all he was met with was her cold, empty stare, atop a gleeful grin. There was nothing that Lily wanted anymore but the sensation of breaking bones into dust.

Just then, Lily heard a shout from somebody across the street. A man stood on the porch of his home, shouting at his wife to call 911. More and more lights flickered on in the houses around the scene. Lily took off down the street and sprinted away from the vigilante mob of homeowners. Some had grabbed their guns or a blunt instrument to defend themselves. The neighbors rounded the street corner, only to find that the girl was gone. Lily Maclellan had dissolved into the night, having committed three murders. If there was even anything left of Lily anymore. People returned to their homes to stand vigil for their families while others stayed by the man's body and waited for the cops. Later they found the brutalized corpses of Mr. and Mrs. MacLellan in their home.

Witnesses could only provide descriptions of her glass eye and bone-chilling stare. One cop later stated to the press, concerning the means of the murder, "I've never seen so many broken bones on a dead man in my life. You have to hand it to that girl, she had to have been one hell of a Slugger."