I am Sitting on Top of a Hill

I am holding my baby but he is very sick. When I look down at him he is missing his head. A friend of mine is sitting with me on top of the hill and she says that maybe the baby will still be alright. We should check and see if he can walk up and down the hill. I let him go and he starts tumbling towards the bottom of the hill. I chase after him and pick him up again. We try again, but again the baby is unable to walk up or down the hill. A man comes by and says I must leave the baby with him. He says it as if I have no choice, so I give him the baby.

I start walking. Eventually I reach a camp with a baseball field surrounded by a few buildings. I go inside one of the buildings and meet perhaps 10 or 15 people from my high school graduating class. They are all living together in a commune of some kind. They seem to be getting along well with one another but they apparently don't appreciate my presence. There is a woman there who I had a crush on during high school; I try to talk to her but she ignores me. Eventually somebody comes by and says I should go outside and play baseball. They say that for today I can be Mickey Mantle. I grab a bat and walk up to the plate. The pitcher is left-handed and I also bat left-handed even though Mantle was a switch-hitter. The first pitch comes in; it is very low. The umpire, a fat, balding man, mumbles something and makes a lazy gesture with his hand. I ask him if it was a ball or a strike. He says strike. I say that's ridiculous; that pitch was near my ankles. He tells me to go to hell.

Another pitch comes in, also very low. Again the umpire says it is a strike. I feel myself getting angrier. The third pitch comes in, even lower than the first two. It bounces on the plate. The umpire announces strike three. I immediately throw my bat down and toss my helmet across the field. The umpire ejects me from the game. I demand to know why he called those pitches strikes. "Because you are a criminal," he says. When he says that I grab a bat and smash him over the head. He falls to the ground, groaning. I drag him away from the home plate area and dump his body in a ditch. When he lands in the ditch his neck breaks and he is dead.

I walk back to the compound where my high school classmates are staying. They all ignore me. Finally the woman I had a crush on in high school tells me I have to leave. "You are a murderer," she says. I grab a bag and walk out. The earth and sky are both a uniform gray, except for the setting sun which appears like a tiny red dot, smaller than the moon, on the distant horizon.