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"SEB!!!"
At least, that's what Jessica Telephone wanted to hear herself scream, as she watched the tape of that penultimate game. But no.
The Crowd got to cry out in horror, lucky them.
His team? That sick dread everyone got when a rogue umpire turned it's gaze upon a friend? They got to have all that and more.
Him? He hadn't even cared, she thought, even in his last moments once again. All he did was shout at her, trying to get through the peanuts control of her. Even as his jersey smoked. Even as his hair caught aflame. Even as his steps towards her had taken the jerky gait of someone trying to control a body that was cooking from the inside, burning fat dripping from raw, red cracks on peeling, blackened skin, leaving a trail of greasy little fires from the pitchers mound. Even as his body fell but a few feet away from her, reaching out with a clawed black hand, lungs incapable of breathing and eyes incapable of seeing, his still looked at her, begging his sister to fight the Peanut.
And all she did was stand there and watch, a sick, mocking smile and dead, misshapen eyes the last Sebastian Telephone saw of his sister.
Jessica Telephone had withdrawn quickly from everyone once the Siesta had been announced, the constant pageantry of the leagues euphoria at winning against all the odds and then their suspicion of blaseball's new owner threatening to crush Jessica through everything that had happened. She had played the next season, hoping that it would distract her from everything that had happened. Unfortunately, all she could think was that Seb should be here.
Should be here annoying her with prank calls.
Should be here talking about his team and how excited he was to play with them next game.
Should be here talking about whoever he was sweet on at the moment.
Should just be here with her, instead of dead.
Jessica Telephone slammed the remote into her glass coffee table and shattered it, glass shards slicing deep.
Jessica Telephone wept.
~~~~~~~~~~
Mike Townsend held the address in one hand, a ball of gritty putty in the other getting squeezed, gathered and then squeezed again furiously as Mike's nerves threatened to fray. So many people were worried about Jessica, so many. It swelled Mike's heart to see so much of Blaseball worry for her, which only made it worse when a cool grip of fear coiled around it whenever people talked about what they should do. She was strong, they said. She's Jessica Telephone. She can get through this. If anyone can, she can. He'd wanted to scream at people when they said that, couldn't they see how she was hurting? The way she never talked about Seb? It had been bad enough the season after the death of the peanut, but during the Siesta Jessica had just. . . closed off. For weeks she hadn't talked to anyone. He'd asked a neighbor when he'd showed up and apparently he hadn't seen her outside for almost as long. Mike didn't want to be here, he was so afraid he would do or say the wrong thing and make it all worse. But he had to be here too. He'd learned a lot in his time with the Garages and number one was you didn't abandon friends.
You didn't abandon family.
He knocked on the door, slowly, loudly.
"Jess, it's Mike. I wanted to come by and see how you are Jess."
Nothing.
"Jessica please, it's just me. I've been worried a bit about you since. . . well, everything. Can we talk please?"
Still nothing.
"Ok then Jess, that's ok. If you want me though, you know my number. I'll be just outside on the porch." He sat down then, pressing his back up against the wall next to the door. Biting his lip and taking his gritty putty with both hands, working it slowly and steadily to help calm down as his heart hammered in his chest. He sat like that for a while, he didn't really keep track, but then the lock turned, and the door cracked open.
"Hey Mike." Jessica said dully, eyes red with tears cried over and over. "Come on in."
~~~~~~~~~~
The inside of Jessica's house was. . . .
It was a mess. That was about the only polite way to put it, if Mike wanted to say anything. Cockroaches scurried through half empty pizza and Chinese, and there was far too little of it for Jess to be eating enough.
"Why are you here Mike?" Jessica asked, a slurring in her question easily explained by cans of beer and premixed booze. "Nobody else showed up, why you then? Jaylen send you off to do something she didn't want to again?" The name seethed with loathing, with venom, so much so that Mike flinched at it, earning a wry, drunken chuckle from Jessica. "Don't worry Mike, I don't blame you. I know what it's like to have so much expected of you." She gave him a grin, sloppy and uncoordinated. There was a smell in the air, familiar to him, but before he could pinpoint it Jessica was slapping a can of barely cold beer in his hand. "I forgot! We're all supposed to be celebnrreating because that team of squid fuckers beat the peanut! Jaylen did something, maybe sent you back to the shadooowwwwsss again and then we beat the nut. Not before we could save Seb for a second time though, no sir, that wouldn't have been dramatic enough to not lose someone." Jessica's voice cracked as she said Sebastian's name, and she tried to hide it with a hastily drunk beer that spilled out the corners of her mouth. "Cheers!"
It stung Mike, not so much the thinly veiled taunts, but the fact that Jessica, his friend, would try to hurt him like this. "It's not a time to celebrate though, is it Jess?" He said, not opening the beer, eyes boring into her face, demanding that she look at him. "You're hurting Jessica, I can see it. We all can."
"Don't know whatcha talkin about Mike." Jess grumbled finishing her drink and grabbing another.
"You were podded, Jess, you weren't in control."
"Stop."
"We're here Jess, we're all here if you need us and right now I think you do."
"Please stop talking."
"You clam up like this, you don't get help and that thing gets to win over and over again. And he didn't want that for you. He wouldn't."
"Please stop Mike." Jessica was pleading now, tears running down her cheeks.
"It isn't you fault about what happened to Sebasti-" A can struck Mike hard enough in the face to cut a line in his cheek, a thin line of blood rolling down it as Jessica screamed at him now.
"DON'T YOU SAME HIS NAME!! NOBODY SHOULD GODDAMN SAY HIS NAME!!! I DIDN'T GET TO WHY DO YOU ALL GET TO?"
Jessica's face was red with fury, her breath heaving as she cried, her hands shaking. Mike shivered, his heart racing with anxiety so much that he barely felt the pain of the cut.
"EVERYONE else got to mourn him, got to cry out and bawl and sob when he died again. Do you know what I did Mike? I SMILED!! THAT PEANUT SON OF A BITCH MADE ME SMILE AT HIM WHILE HE BURNED!!"
Mike didn't say anything.
"That sick fuck of a God drew it out too. Incinerations are called that for a reason, they happen fast. But this one? No, the Peanut wanted me to watch, wanted us all to watch, but wanted me to watch in particular. He made. . . m-me . . . look."
Mike was quiet still, but his breathing was coming easier.
"I screamed. I screamed so hard but the sound wouldn't come out. He wouldn't let me. I couldn't scream his name. I couldn't cry. I couldn't move."
"I'm sorry Jess. I'm so sorry."
"Everyone else got to grieve Mike. Everyone else got their closure. Why not me Mike?" Jess breath was ragged, wracking for air as she started to cry. "Why didn't I get to do that?"
Jessica sobbed quietly, staring at a now broken TV as Mike finally noticed the badly wrapped bandages caked with blood and pus on her hands. He reached out quickly the, taking them as gently as he could. "Oh damn Jess, what happened?" He asked as he tenderly peeled the bandages back.
"Got into an argument with myself." Jess managed to say after a few deep breaths. "I kept asking what sort of godless bitch wouldn't cry for her brother. She didn't have an answer I wanted!" The last was said with a hysterical chuckle as Jessica hiccuped and hissed as Mike peeled back one bandage too far and the sickly sweet smell of pus filled the air, mingling with. . . .
Mike eye's went round then, and they flicked about the room searching for. . . . There!
A can of lawnmower petrol almost buried under drink cans. And a lighter sitting on top of it.
Jess noticed the look, following it and then giggling.
"I wanted to know." She whispered, leaning in close to Mike. "You got Jaylen back right? I wanted to know whether I could maybe find Seb."
Mike could only look on horrified.
"Does it have to be an Umpire doing the incinerating? Have we ever tried it any other way?" Jess looked brightly at Mike, a terrible hope lighting her addled eyes. "Maybe all I have to do is pour that can and flick that lighter and POOF!"
Tears filled Mikes eyes, and Jessica saw, her hope breaking as she saw the pity in them.
"Don't look at me like that Mike, don't you dare. He could be there!! Just waiting!"
Mike pulled her close hugging her tight.
"H-he could. . j-j-just be waiting M-Mike."
The Batter clung onto him hard as the tears came again.
~~~~~~~~~~
She didn't remember the car ride to the hospital, or the admission.
She did remember the nurses hands though. They had been so soft, so gentle.
They were keeping her here for observation, after she sobered up, and she couldn't find any reason to disagree, not after what she had almost done. The shame of it battered her, the way she had almost . . . it didn't bear thinking about, not now. The doctor had told her that she shouldn't be, that this sort of thing happened to everyone. What he didn't say was that it was easy enough to tell someone that, but pretty hard to accept. And what would Seb think of her?
There was a knock at the door to the room, and a nurse looked in. "Someone here to see you, Miss Telephone." Jessica nodded, too weak to really say anything, right up until she saw who it was and a growl started deep in her chest.
"Jessica." Said the one person Jessica could possibly loath more than herself right now.
"Jaylen." She replied, applying the barest level of civility, then promptly tossed that out the window. "If I wasn't so goddamn weak right now I'd throttle you." It was weak, but it was packed with so much hate that Jaylen blinked for a moment, then a haunted look fell about her.
"Jess. . I'm sorry." Jaylen started, only to rock back like she had been struck as Jessica spat at her. Jessica grinned at her then, a macabre sight framed by her own haunted look.
"Twice." She said as Jaylen wiped the spit away. "You took my brother away from me twice."
"It wasn't my fault."
"I don't care. Everything that happened, it happened because you couldn't just stay dead." Jessica fumed, seething with a need to get her fingers around that throat and just squeeze.
Jaylen just stood there, wooden, taking a breath and then pulling a card from her jacket. "I won't stay. The other podded players, they're . . . . they're starting a support group." She set the card on the table furthest from Jessica, using a potted plant to stop it flying away. "When they let you go home, you should drop in and say hi maybe."
Jessica didn't say a thing, her stare boring into Jaylen as she waited, then nodded, taking her jacket and leaving. She stopped at the door, however.
"I. . . I know I'm the last one you want to hear this from Jessica, but we're all worried about you. And we're all here for you. The league is a family Jess. It's big, and it's kinda fucked up at times, but it's a family. And it's here for you if you let it be."
And she left.
And Jessica was glad to see her go. She looked at the card, then dismissed it with a snort, falling into a restless nap.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The night nurse tried to be as quiet as possible around the bed of the patient, it was a quick checkup just to see how she was doing, nothing but routine.
She noticed a note then, on the furthest table. If this was something the patient had written, this was a good sign, her being able to be up and about so soon. She picked it up though, looking at it closely. Ugh, just some kids scribble it looked like. She really needed to get the other nurses to keep an eye on the visitors wandering about. Dissatisfied with that, she made to throw out the scrap.
"Nurse, wait."