An incineration and what comes after. Written for Blasetober, day two: Incineration. Content warning for, uh...... incineration.
Enid doesn’t look away when Augusta burns.
Maybe it’s impolite; maybe it’s run of the mill for these things. She hasn’t actually seen one in person before. She doesn’t know that it’s coming, but there’s a crackle in the air, ash and ozone and something that smells like death that she can’t recognize. She wants to dig into that scent, to hold onto it with both hands.
It passes, as all things do. And then there’s a shift and a scream and a burn and light. Enid doesn’t look away, because why would she want to look away? This is new. This is fascinating. This is scientific.
(This is Augusta, who was not afraid to adjust Enid’s hands on her bat, who never shied away from touching her, who she will never see again. But that’s neither here nor there.)
The light fades and the ash settles and Enid does not cry, not yet. There may be a time for that later. Instead she watches and tries to catalog things. The scorch mark. The stadium more silent than she has ever heard. Augusta’s glove resting carefully, patiently on the ground.
And then: a foot next to the glove, a body bending down. A man with dark hair and a microphone looking at it curiously, and then — and then at her, on the pitcher’s mound. “Y’all need one more?” he calls, Louisiana accent dripping from his vowels like honey.
Enid is too stunned to respond, but she’s saved the trouble when the scoreboard flashes bright. ROGUE UMPIRE INCINERATED AUGUSTA CHADWELL, says the scoreboard. REPLACED BY LOUBERT JI-EUN, says the scoreboard.
“Got my names backwards,” Ji-Eun mumbles. He’s still looking at Enid. She’s still looking back. All that time thinking about incineration, about death, about that flash of light, and she never stopped to consider what came next. She never thought about what type of person would volunteer.
“Welcome aboard,” Enid says at last, and forces herself to turn away. She has questions for Ji-Eun and the umpires and the other team, and her teammates, and the stadium. But first she has a game to win.