Underground Baseball

"What if I meet someone, though? Like, what if a girl wants me to go home with her or something?"

"Kinda optimistic of you Harrison, don't ya' think?"

"It's happened to me before!" Harrison said defensively. "Well, you know, once."

"Right, well lightning doesn't often strike twice in the same place. But I mean it, Harrison, seriously. You stay with Wendy tonight."

"What about that Francis guy you mentioned?"

"What about him?"

"Can't he keep an eye on her?"

"He's gonna be keeping an eye on both of you, but the more you can both look out for your sister tonight, the better. Wendy's a beautiful girl, Harrison, and there are some real creeps out there just waiting to defile her."

"Defile me, hey?" Wendy said as she suddenly walked in the room. "That doesn't sound very pleasant."

"Agreed," Harrison said simply. He glanced sideways at her and saw that she had cleaned herself up really well for the night ahead. Her brown hair had been cutely put up into some sort of fancy ponytail. She wore a liberal amount of eye makeup and lipstick, more than he had ever seen her wear before. Her short black dress contrasted nicely with her smooth, tanned skin. As much as Harrison struggled to admit it, he couldn't help but acknowledge just how gorgeous Wendy looked in that moment.

"Glad you're here, Wendy," Marty began. "I was just telling Harrison that I want you two to stick together tonight."

"I thought this was supposed to be a nice place?" Wendy replied. "What are you so worried about?"

"Just because it's a nice place doesn't mean there won't be creeps around. The last thing I need is for something to happen to you. Either one of you. Your mother would quite literally disembowel me."

"There's an image," Harrison laughed.

"Alright, so here's the plan," Marty explained. "Francis will be here to pick you guys up in a little while. He'll drive you to the bar and drop you off. My friend Dave owns the place, and he's supposed to meet you out front and take you to a reserved table."

"I'm so glad you're rich and connected, Uncle Marty," Harrison said with a smile.

"Yeah, me too," Marty replied. "You guys go, watch the band, have a good time, and then call Francis when you're ready to go."

"He's not going in with us?" Harrison asked.

"He'll be around, but I've told him to stay out of your way. Francis is a great employee, but if I'm being completely honest, he's not great company. You'll have a better time if he's not around you so much. He'll be watching, but you won't really know he's there."

"That's kinda creepy," Wendy said.

"Yeah, well, that's Francis. But don't worry, he's harmless. I'd trust him with my life. Dave will be around to keep an eye on you guys, too, so you should be extra safe tonight."

"We're not children, Uncle Marty," Wendy whined.

"Yeah, but you're not far from it. I've been around long enough to know how much people suck, and I just don't want you guys taken advantage of, especially on my watch. Now, let's talk about drinks."

"I'm gonna get absolutely shit-faced tonight!" Harrison exclaimed.

"Ooh, swing and a miss, my friend," Marty replied. "You guys have a three drink minimum, and no more than one per hour. I've already talked to Dave about all this."

"Uh...what do you mean 'you guys'?" Harrison asked. "She's eighteen."

Marty shrugged. "Yeah, but she wants to have a good time, too. A few drinks won't hurt her. Dave's cool with it, and so am I. Unless you're opposed, Wendy?"

"Yay for alcoholic beverages!" Wendy chirped happily.

"Christ," Harrison moaned. "I feel like you're really sending us some mixed signals, Uncle Marty. All this talk of keeping us safe, but you're gonna let Wendy drink?"

"Again, she'll be in a safe environment with plenty of people watching over her, yourself included. I want you guys to be safe, but I'm reasonable. I know life's more fun when you can get just a little intoxicated."

"It's also more fun when you have a chance of getting laid," Harrison pouted. "Not when you're having to babysit your little sister the whole night."

"A chance of getting laid?" Wendy repeated. "Really? You think so, Harrison?"

"Like you would know anything about it, virgin!"

"Fuck you, Harrison!"

"Okay, shut up you two!" Marty ordered. "Harrison, if you meet a girl, just get her number and maybe you can try to meet up with her tomorrow or something. Now, Francis should be here any moment, so why don't you guys go on out and wait for him to pull up?"

"Yeah, alright," Harrison whined.

"Thanks again, Uncle Marty!" Wendy chirped as they all walked towards the front door.

"Yeah, sincerely, thank you," Harrison added. "Thanks for being super cool and rich and hooking us up with a V.I.P. table at an exclusive club."

"Aw, shucks guys, you're gonna make me blush," Marty said with a smile.

"How'd you go from being a taxi cab driver to filthy rich, Uncle Marty?" Wendy asked as they reached the door.

"Oh, you know, just made some lucky investments, I guess."

"Like what?" Harrison asked.

"Some other time," Marty replied, gesturing out the door. "Francis just pulled up. Be safe and call if you need anything." With that, Harrison and Wendy headed out the door.

"This should be fun!" Wendy said excitedly as they walked across the big yard towards the car.

"Yeah I suppose," Harrison said, sounding slightly dejected.

"Am I really that bad to be around?" Wendy asked, feeling slightly hurt.

Harrison sighed. "No, not at all. I'm just not used to going out and being told to watch over someone AND having my alcohol intake limited."

"I see."

Harrison looked sideways at his sister. "But tonight doesn't have to be about that, I suppose," he assured her. "We always have a good time hanging out, and it'll be fun to watch you get plastered after two sips of a cocktail."

Wendy smiled. "I'm not THAT much of a lightweight!"

"Sure you're not," Harrison said, nudging her playfully. "Hey."

"Hmm?"

"You look, uh...nice tonight."

"Um, thanks?" Wendy said, laughing awkwardly.

"Sorry. I've just never seen you dress up like this before. Didn't know you had it in you."

"Gee, thanks."

They reached the car and both climbed into the backseat. "Hello, Francis," Harrison said as he put on his seat belt. Francis grunted an inaudible reply as he started driving.

"Psst," Wendy hissed quietly. Harrison looked over at her to see that she was holding a bottle of what appeared to be some sort of dark liquor.

"What's that?" Harrison mouthed quietly to her.

Wendy shrugged. "Can't really see back here." She dug her phone out of her pocket and shined the light on the bottle. Very little of the writing was written in English, but one word stood out clearly to both of them: rum.

"Where was it?" Harrison whispered as he took the bottle. Wendy simply gestured to the seat in between them. Harrison looked up at Francis and saw that he was seemingly not at all focused on what they were doing. He carefully unscrewed the cap and smelled the liquid inside.

"Do it!" Wendy whispered with gusto.

"Shh!" Harrison put the bottle to his mouth and took a small sip. It burned a little, but mostly it wasn't too bad. He handed the bottle over to Wendy, looking meaningfully between her and the bottle. "Well?" he said quietly as he waited for her to take a drink. She took the hint and slowly put her lips on the bottle. She turned it up much quicker than she meant to, however, and a generous amount of the rum emptied into her mouth. She swallowed some of it, but proceeded to spray the majority of it out of her mouth and onto the back of Francis' head.

"What the hell!?" Francis yelped as he quickly pulled the car over to a stop.

"Shit, sorry!" Wendy managed to say in between coughs as she wiped off the liquid that had seeped out of her nostrils. As Harrison laughed, he saw Francis reach back and snatch the bottle of rum out of Wendy's hand.

"Where's the cap?" he demanded.

"Here ya' go!" Harrison said mirthfully as he handed the bottle cap to Francis.

"Do you guys have any idea how expensive this shit is?" Francis asked angrily.

"We honestly don't," Harrison replied, coming down from his fit of laughter. "Let me guess: $9.99?"

Francis rolled his eyes. "Where did you get this from anyway?"

"It was just sitting in the backseat!" Wendy explained, still feeling really bad about the situation.

"Yeah, well it shouldn't have been," Francis said. "Your uncle would be pissed if he knew how much of this you just wasted."

"Eh, he can afford it," Harrison said.

"Ain't that the truth," Francis agreed as he continued to drive.

Harrison looked at Wendy and smiled. "Dumbass," Harrison said playfully to her.

"Fuck you," she replied, unable to stop herself from smiling back.

When they arrived at the bar, Uncle Marty's friend Dave met them out front and escorted them inside to their reserved table. Two mixed drinks were already sitting on the table waiting for them.

"If there's anything you guys need tonight, just signal your hand in the air like this," Dave said, waving his hand high in the air. "Someone will see you and be right with you. I promised your uncle that I'd watch out for you guys tonight, and that's what I intend to do."

"How do you know our uncle, anyway?" Harrison asked.

Dave smiled. "Everyone knows your uncle, kid," he said before turning and walking away.

Wendy looked over at Harrison and shrugged. "Rich people."

They sipped their drinks and just talked for a while, each of them having a really good time. Without even having to ask, someone came by with new drinks for them as soon as their first ones were finished. By the time the music started, both of them were feeling decently buzzed. Several songs and a couple more drinks later, each of them had entered into a state of intense inebriation. Harrison had a very brief moment when he wondered just how he had gotten so drunk. He was pretty used to drinking at this point in his life, and he was sure what he had ingested compared to how he felt didn't seem to match up. But being as drunk as he was, he was unable to hold on to that thought for very long.

By the time that they were both being escorted out of a back exit of the bar, neither one of them could have told you where they were, who was guiding them, or exactly what car they were being forced into the back of.

><><><><><

Wendy and Harrison sat on opposite ends of the lone couch in the basement, Wendy still wrapped tightly in the bed sheet.

"None of this makes any sense," Harrison said for the third time in a span of minutes. "Who could have possibly put us down here?"

"Lots of people," Wendy replied. "I mean, what about Francis? Or the owner of the bar...what was his name?"

"Dave?"

"Yeah, him."

"But he's real tight with Uncle Marty. It doesn't seem logical that either one of them would do that to us since they were literally in charge of keeping us safe. Wouldn't they be the first suspects? It doesn't seem like a very smart crime to commit when you're obviously the most likely one to do it."

"I guess," Wendy sighed. "The truth is we aren't likely to figure any of this out until we get out of here. If we get out of here, that is."

"Don't think like that," Harrison said sternly. "We're gonna stay as positive as we can, okay?"

Wendy nodded unconvincingly. "Yeah okay," she said quietly, taking a deep breath. "There's one thing that just doesn't make sense about all this, you know."

"Just one thing?"

"Specifically the clothes thing."

"Clothes?"

"Yeah. The fact that we woke up with our original clothes just gone, and now we're wearing new clothes. Very revealing clothes, I might add. I mean, why? What's the point of giving me a little camisole and different underwear, or giving you just an over-sized pair of athletic shorts? And how did they do it? I mean, I know we were pretty drunk, but shouldn't we at least have some faint memory of having our clothes pulled off of our bodies?"

"You know, I've been thinking about that whole 'being drunk' thing," Harrison replied. "I've been drunk before, PLENTY of times. Now, I'm not saying I have the highest tolerance in the world, but I can hold my booze a lot better than I did last night. I've never been blackout drunk like that before, and I find it hard to believe that just a few little mixed drinks sent me to that place."

"So what are you saying, Harrison?"

"Somebody slipped us something in one, or maybe all of our drinks."

A shock of fear coursed suddenly through Wendy's body. "Oh fuck, you really think so?" she said with a trembling voice.

"I'm pretty confident about it. There's no other explanation that makes sense to me. I feel like I was hit with a semi-truck."

"Same."

"This is no normal hangover, Wendy. Certainly not a three drink hangover. Someone must've slipped us something, waited for the right moment when no one was looking, and just taken us out of the bar. If we were drugged, it probably would have been pretty easy to do."

Wendy thought for a moment. "What's the last thing you remember?" she asked.

"Let me think," Harrison said, taking a moment to try and remember. "I clearly remember being in the back of the car with you and taking shots of that expensive rum, and you spitting it out all over the back of Francis' head."

"Ugh, thanks for the reminder."

"I remember Dave meeting us at the bar, taking us to our table, and those drinks being there waiting for us. Then I remember just talking to you and having a good time, the band starting to play, and then..."

"Nothing?" Wendy finished.

"Yeah. Everything just kind of fades to black from there. Is it the same for you?"

"Yep."

Harrison suddenly started laughing.

"What could possibly be funny right now?" Wendy asked, feeling a little annoyed by her brother's random outburst of ill-timed joy.

"I really thought I had shacked up with some random hot girl when I woke up this morning and saw you beside me," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "It was a very happy couple of minutes for me. Pretty much downhill from there, though."

Wendy cocked her mouth into a half-smile. "Random hot girl, huh?"

Harrison squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, you know...I was only looking at you from behind."

"Does that really make it better?"

Harrison's face turned a little red. "No, I guess not," Harrison sighed.

Wendy made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Oh my god, Harrison, what the hell are we going to do!?" she exclaimed, shoving her face into her hands.

Harrison moved down the couch beside his sister and put his arm around her. Wendy's face fell into his chest as she began to cry, allowing herself several moments to release just a little bit of the tension and anxiety that had built up inside of her that morning.

"Let's go have a look in that refrigerator," Harrison suggested after her sobs slowed down a little bit.

"Are you serious right now?" Wendy asked, pulling back from him. "You can't possibly be thinking about food at a time like this."

"What else do I have to think about?" he asked. "We've already checked this whole room out multiple times, there's no escaping right now. And I don't know about you, but I'm hungry as hell. Thirsty too. We gotta eat to live, so let's go see what we've got."

Harrison took Wendy's hand and helped her off of the couch. When they got into the little kitchen area, the first thing they did was take turns at the sink drinking water straight from the tap. In all the excitement of the morning, neither one of them had realized just how miserably dehydrated they were.

"Fuck I feel a lot better!" Wendy exclaimed as she leaned against a counter after having gulped a generous amount of water. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still super depressed that we're imprisoned in a basement, but that water hit the fuckin' spot."

"There's the positivity we need!" Harrison replied as he, too, felt the cool liquid course through his body and ease a little bit of his troubles. "Come on, help me look around for some food."

They opened the few cabinets that were there, but there wasn't much in the way of food except for a container of raisins, which they promptly opened and started scarfing down.

"Oh look, cups!" Wendy exclaimed as she checked the last cabinet. She tossed Harrison a pink, plastic cup with a picture of Belle from Beauty and the Beast on it, keeping a blue one with the picture of the genie from Aladdin on it for herself. "We don't have to drink like animals next time."

"Noted," Harrison replied, looking at his cup. "Isn't this backwards?" he said, looking between his cup and hers.

"Don't be so sexist, Harrison," Wendy teased. "Anyway, what's the deal with this thing?" Wendy wondered aloud, running her hand up and down the long, plastic tube with the word "REWARDS" down the side of it.

Harrison shrugged dismissively and opened the fridge. "Oh shit, this fridge is packed!"

"Really!?"

"Yeah, but..." he said, trailing off as he inspected the refrigerator further.

"But what?"

"It's, like...just a bunch of healthy food." Wendy moved beside him, and together they started pulling out the food that was in there. "Peppers, broccoli, grapes, carrots, celery, blueberries...where's the good shit?"

"Hey, food is food, right?" Wendy said, not feeling too excited about the selection herself, but grateful nonetheless to have anything at all to eat.

"But I don't want fruits and vegetables!" Harrison whined as he checked over every square inch of the refrigerator.

"What happened to staying positive?"

"Fuck that!" Harrison complained. "I'm hungover, goddammit! You don't eat fucking bell peppers when you're hungover, you eat pancakes and bacon and eggs and cheesy potatoes and butter and..."

"You eat butter!?"

"You heard me, dammit! I...I can't eat this rabbit food bullshit!"

"Well, it kinda looks like you don't have a choice, buddy."

Harrison growled, then reluctantly grabbed a carrot and a handful of blueberries and went back to the sofa. Wendy grabbed a couple of pears and joined him.

"You gonna be okay?" Wendy asked softly as she sat down beside him.

"No," he replied as he violently bit off the end of a carrot.

"Would the pain of having been drugged, kidnapped, and locked away in a strange basement really be lessened if there was a cheeseburger in your hand right now?"

"Yes," Harrison grunted, shoving several blueberries into his mouth all at once and looking at his sister with a defiant, childish expression.

Wendy reached over and patted Harrison on the hand. "We'll get through this," she said soothingly, laughing inwardly as she watched her brother pout over something as simple as being fed fresh produce when they were locked away in a strange basement.

After having all the fruits, veggies, and water they could stand for the time being, the siblings found that they were kind of at a loss for how to pass the time. There was only so much sitting around and wondering what the hell was going on that they could do.

"Let's watch TV or something," Harrison suggested, grabbing a remote control off of the table that the television was sitting on.

"TV? Really Harrison?"

"The hell else we supposed to do?" Harrison replied as he turned it on. "Ah, fuck," he said as he realized that there was no cable or streaming services whatsoever available on the television. "What's the goddamn point of a TV if there's nothing you can watch on it?" He turned it off and angrily tossed the remote back onto the little table.

"Isn't that a DVD player?" Wendy asked, looking at a little shelf below the TV.

"Oh yeah, sure is," Harrison said as he got up to inspect it. "My god, what an ancient piece of machinery."

"Is there a disc in there?"

"Nah, nothin'."

"So much for your watching television idea, I guess."