19180311 09:03:40

19180311 09:03:40

CQ-N-8257

William woke from sleep in feeling dull pain cover the right side of his face. He had somehow managed to sleep on that side of his body despite the bandages pressing into his head throughout his rest. With a sigh, he rolled his body upright and kept his eyes closed as he limply reached a hand up to gingerly touch the bandages, and confirmed that the wounds were still sensitive enough to that limited amount of pressure. His response to this realization was seething and annoyance; after succumbing to that attack, he was all the more resolved to improve his physical training and response time. Lounging in idle recovery would also give his mind a platform to brood over his defeat. To be forced to spend the next few days doing little other than being awake and eating was a dreadful prospect, and his mind raced to form a plan of what to do instead.
Two goals were instantly manifest. The first was to get out of the room and preferably out of the house, and to not lie or sit down while out of school. The second was to immediately start to learn how to use a weapon. The injury was proof enough to him - he didn't have the reflexes to dodge something as simple as a broken bottle being swung at his face, so relying on his own fists for the purpose of offense was something he now regarded as an assured failure. This immediately led to the next question of what weapon to use. At the present moment, his options were limited. Guns were outlawed. He wouldn't have access to any kind of bow or knife. The only item which he possessed that was a reasonable choice was a baseball bat. It would have to do. William sat up and pivoted his body to get out of bed, and walked over to the dresser to get some kind of clothing on so that he could go outside to the backyard. Once he was ready to go out, though, he knew that he would have to interact with his mother.
Mary looked over from her seat at the kitchen table to the hall as she heard the footsteps approach, and the soft smile on her face which she had upon seeing her son in front of her, healthy and alive, quickly changed to confusion as she realized that he was already dressed. She didn't like the implication.
"Hi Ma." William glanced at his mother briefly as he entered the room and turned her back to her as he faced the stove to get some coffee from the pot.
"What are you doing? You're not going anywhere."
"No, just outside." He pulled a kitchen chair away and sat at the table to face his mother with a mug of lukewarm black coffee in a plain white mug. "I can't just sit still in my room, or even in here. I'll go nuts. I'll need to keep myself busy."
"Well, maybe if anything you can help with doing some laundry washing and hanging, and pick up some-"
"Yeah, but I want to do some practice too."
"Practice with what?"
"A baseball bat."
"A ba- what? A bat? How?"
"Well, maybe, like, you'll throw rocks to me and I'll try to hit them."
"No way." Mary was as galled by the suggestion with how dryly her son made it. "You'll break a window in two seconds once you do that, if not one of my legs or my own head, Jesus. No, boy, the doctor said-"
"Ma, I can't just sit here. I can't. Don't you see that? I'll just think about it and keep thinking about it and it'll make me angrier and angrier."
"You'll look like a fool out there with gauze wrapped around your head and swinging a baseball bat at rocks that I throw at you. That is just ... weird."
"Fine, OK, I'll try to think of some way you can help. Or I'll try to do something by myself. Either way. And I'm only going to the backyard so it's not like most anyone will see me."
"Fine, fine." Mary let a heavy sigh come out as a half hearted groan as she folded the newspaper up and went to her room to put on some appropriate clothes. William tilted his head back to take in the remainder of the coffee in his mug in one gulp, then went back to the stove to pour another half cup and take that all in with a single swallow as well. Now he felt ready. After sitting down to tie his shoes, he went out of the house through the rear doorway and removed the baseball bat from the outdoor shed. William held the bat with both hands and extended it out in front of him as if he held a diving rod, then made a point to loosen and tighten the grip on the bat as a way to become acclimated to its weight in his hands. Then he brought the bat up to the baseball batter stance, holding the bat tightly and hovering over his shoulder, before squinting his eyes shut and swinging the bat with all of the power that he could channel into his arms. During the third such swing, he saw his mother step out of the house and stand still at the opposite side of the doorway as she watched William swing the bat.
"Good. I had an idea, then. What if I stand in front of you, and you toss some of those rocks there over my head, and I try to swing at those. That way you're not in front of it."
"All right, but just don't swing for the fences or something. Just try to hit this into the ground. Only thing worse than you breaking something of ours is to break something that isn't ours."
"Yes Ma, yes."
Mary sighed with more resignation than anger at this point, and bent over to pick up some of the light lava rocks which lined the rear wall of the house at the ground.
"All right, ready?"
"Yeah Ma. Go ahead."
She dipped her hand down and tossed a rock upwards in an easy underhanded lob. The rock went up in a high arc and came down inches in front of William's body, and he couldn't back away in time to get proper clearance to swing the bat.
"Go farther out."
Mary wound her hand back and threw the same as before, but releasing earlier to propel it more forward than upward.  The arc was sufficiently large enough that William had enough time to take two steps forward and wind up before swinging. The attack connected, and the rock was drilled into the shed door with a loud strike.