The softball rocketed off the bat with anger. It was a line shot back to Darcy, who had just released the pitch. For a moment, it felt like slow motion. She knew that she only had a split second to duck. Something was very wrong.
"Why can't I move?" Darcy thought, as panic rushed into her mind.
The ball was traveling towards her face at lightspeed. She was trapped in a suspended animation. Darcy dug deep into her core, gathering up all her strength, but it was not enough. She was completely motionless. All she could see was a white blur of impending doom. The ball whirred close. Then it hit her.
Darkness...
Suddenly, a noisy buzz erupted out of nowhere. Worse yet, it was repeating itself. It wouldn't stop.
"MAKE IT STOP!!" Darcy screamed from the inner depths of her mind.
Then she realized what was happening. It was the dreaded alarm sounding off.
"Goodness gracious, is it already time to wake up?" She quickly pondered.
Darcy opened her eyes and slung her arm over to the nightstand where her phone was buzzing. She danced her fingers around the clutter in an attempt to silence it, knocking off a bottle of nail polish remover in the process. Then after grabbing a few hairbands and nearly fumbling her phone to the floor, she shut it off. Finally, there was peace and quiet. She had been dreaming.
Today was the day. It had arrived at long last. It was the moment she and her fellow teammates had been waiting for. It was her first chance at glory. It was the Little League Softball Championship. After a whirlwind of a season, Coach Jenkins had named her the starting pitcher for the big game. First things first though, she rolled out of bed.
What a mess. It looked like a hurricane blasted through the whole bedroom. Clothes were strewn across the floor like the benthos clinging to the ocean floor. Several half used and empty bottles of Gatorade lined the dresser top like targets in a shooting gallery. All sorts of makeup and hair products were scattered across the vanity. Pictures of Darcy and her friends were wedged into the mirror, up and down both sides. Most of the pictures were taken during softball games and trips, but one photo stood out from the rest. It was a picture of Darcy and her best friend Carrissa wearing matching dresses at winter formal. The smiles on their faces were bright enough to light up a casino.
"Life was much simpler in those days," Darcy would proclaim to any soul who would listen. It was as if she was a forty something reminiscing about her college days bestie. In reality, the photo was three years old, coming before she discovered her innate ability to play softball at a high level. Now she was fourteen and she had traveled all over the USA and Canada playing premiere youth softball.
Darcy stretched out awkwardly in place, half leaning on her bed. Then she trudged through the textile quagmire beneath her feet and stopped in front of the mirror. She pulled back her wild jet black hair and stared almost intimately at her pale face. Absolute drowsiness manifested itself below her sharp blue eyes in the form of two unsightly bags. She let out a groan, wishing she could go back to sleep.
"Ugh, why can't I sleep peacefully like a normal person??" She complained to herself.
Then she snatched up her brush and went to work on her mad scientist hair. That's when she noticed it. Everything was deathly quiet. She checked the time on her phone: 8:06 AM. Usually she could hear the sizzle of the bacon as her mother slaved over another Saturday morning breakfast. Surely she would have heard her bratty little sister by now. Jolene always woke up at the crack of dawn, prancing around making all kinds of noise. She was a major league nuisance to Darcy. Their sibling fights were pretty much a daily constant.
If that wasn't enough, "Where was Freedom?" She pondered.
Freedom was the family dog. He was an offbeat chocolate Labrador Retriever who favored barking over biting. Sometimes he would bark too much in the morning as he peered out the window at the neighbors leaving for work. Today, however, he was mum. This seemed very peculiar to Darcy.
The sound of glass bottles crashing echoed down the hallway. Darcy threw her brush down and swung open the bedroom door. She marched down the hallway towards the kitchen.
"Mom? What are you doing?" She inquired.
There was no response, but there were more glass bottles clanging against each other. When Darcy entered the kitchen, she was bewildered by a situation of the weirdest order.
Darcy shrieked, "FREEDOM?!?"
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