Snake Juice 4: Closing The Portal
The thrilling snake juice investigation concludes with the unbelievable Part 4! Click here for Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3.
Dr. Supplies spun the van down Addison and slammed on the breaks in front of Wrigley. Justin Smoak, Eliezer Alfonzo, and Billy Beane all jumped out of the side door, running with their rifles at the ready. I took a swig from Eliezer’s snake juice and then followed them, dashing through the rain to the main entrance, where Smoak was unlocking the gate with a hand held device that looked like alien technology.
The gate flung open as the snake juice began to make my head began spin like a kid in an office chair.
“You’re going to feel a little nauseous,” Eliezer said, cocking his M4, “but you should be able to see the portal now.”
We stepped into the main concourse with our eyes down the barrels of our guns. The stadium was empty and dripping. My eyes began losing focus and I shook my head. Suddenly, like some desert-warped mirage, I saw a black figure — a shadow — moving towards us.
“Here they come!” Billy yelled as she began firing.
Suddenly hundreds of the monsters were on us, each of them wearing the Bluetooth-like earpieces.
“Aim for the ears!” Smoak reminded me. Firing into the oncoming mass, we began to slowly ease around the concourse. Several of our shots connected with the on-comers’ ears, causing them to dissipate in a hazy black smoke.
“Where is the portal?” I asked, pressing a new clip into my pistol.
“We’re not sure,” Beane said, looking over her shoulder at me. “We need to look around.”
Gunfire echoed through the steal and concrete baseball tabernacle. Within a few moments, we realized the monsters were now coming from both sides.
“Up to the seats!” Smoak yelled, pointing to a nearby ramp.
Running out into the rain, we found ourselves in the lower seats, about aisle 26 — behind the visitors’ dugout. Eliezer and Smoak fired back down the ramp as Beane and I looked around the stadium.
“They’re everywhere!” Beane said, firing at shadows near first base.
“I see it!” I said. “Right over there! Near left field!”
I should have known. Section 4, Row 8, Seat 113. A seat awkwardly angled against the rough brick of the left field wall, a seat made famous on October 14, 2003. Game 6 of the NLCS.
“The Steve Bartman seat!” Beane said. “Of course! There is no seat more emotionally charged than that one!”
Like a fingerprint on a photograph, the seat appeared smudged, distorted, subtly spinning like a vortex.
“Get over there!” Smoak yelled over his shoulder. “We’ll cover you!”
“But I don’t know how to close the portal!” I said, shivering from the cold rain.
“Yes you do,” Beane said, taking my hand. “You have to give up.”
“Give up?”
“Give up. Put baseball away. You’re a Cubs fan; you’re charged with emotion. You need to cut that emotion off, or you will die.”
Eliezer screamed from behind me as a monster bit his arm. Smoak shot the thing and pulled Alfonzo back to us.
“Go! Go now!” Smoak said, shoving me with the gun in his hand.
I dashed through the aisles, firing wildly at nearby shadows. Suddenly, I was upon the portal. I reached out my hand.
“I doesn’t matter,” I said aloud. “It’s just a game.”
And then I said it to myself, inwardly. I told myself the ivy, the brick, the history, the streak, the goat, the scoreboard — all of it; all of it was a business. All of it was to make money. None of it was magical. None of it was worth interrupting real life. None of it was worth hating a fellow man.
Standing there, over the portal of a world of hatred, pain, suffering, and confusion — a universe bereft of value and depth — I released this silly game; I pushed it away from me like a rabid dog; I said it aloud again: “It doesn’t matter!”
Then, the emotional shadows of the past faded around me. The haunting monsters — wanting only my harm, incapable of offering me anything meaningful — dispersed like a fog burned away by the sunrise.
Baseball suddenly became a game again, and the vortex closed.
