Snug
Announcement
This is the penultimate entry of Snug’s story! The last two entries are twice as long as the others, 500ish words.
For those of you who have enjoyed it, don’t worry there’s one more to go.
For those of you who haven’t, don’t worry it’s almost over.
(enter laughing emoji)
Snug
They all synchronistically hummed, “so”, then “no”.
I sat silent for a moment perplexed by their lack of interest in anything I found remarkable. Then finally I vibrated back to them, “I do believe this is the last time we’ll speak”, and that was all, we never interacted again.
At that moment I felt a strange sensation but I couldn’t tell from what, if I had a neck to turn I would have seen my human peering at me from the cracked clubhouse door. But I couldn’t see, so I never saw the anguished and panicked expression on their face as they slowly pulled the door shut.
I turned to stare at Snug as I stepped away from the closed door, rubbed my temples and squeezed my eyes shut. I walked toward my manager’s office in a haze of confusion about Snug and a bit of trepidation about why I’d been surreptitiously summoned, because it’s never a good sign.
As I approached their office I could see the door was ajar and when I was a few feet away from the opening I could hear the familiar wrapping of knuckles on a pine desk, accompanied by an awfully whistled original tune. I took a deep breath, knocked, and entered.
My manager looked up, and smiled, “thanks for coming in, please have a seat. I have some news you may find hard to hear. Though I don’t think it’s so bad.”
I waited.
My manager continued, “I mean your generation is so…” they paused looking for a way to tell me something potentially offensive while not wanting to offend me… “so delicate.”
“What’s wrong with…” I started.
“Oh never mind”, my manager interrupted. “I’m moving you to center field. You’ll be captain of the prairie fields, try to not die of boredom. We’ve got some aces coming up next season and if they pitch well, you all may be standing still quite a bit out there.”
“I’ll do my best”, I replied with the courteous civility of an inmate minutes away from early release.
I exhaled loudly, “whew, I thought I was getting cut.”
My manager’s smile slowly disintegrated into an expressionless poker face. The type of face they most likely used as they bluffed their opponents out of stacks of chips. “You aren’t cut…yet.” The ‘t’ snapped, the way a drumstick falls on the metal rim of a snare. “You’re still batting well, and we need your RBIs (runs brought in). Just don’t let that change in the off season. I’ll see you in February.”
I stood to leave saying, “thanks”, but meaning, “see-ya”, I wondered if they could tell.
“Oh one more thing”, they belted. “We’re doing a uniform check, would you like a new set for next season?”
I panicked, “no thanks, I’d like to keep Snu..”
My manager eyed me curiously, “keep what?”
“Oh nothing, no new uniform for me, please”, I confirmed as I hurried out of the office.
My human returned to the locker with a glint in their eye.
“Snug, we need to get to work”, they said, as they grabbed me and rushed to the car.