I had to go out with him, no question—the same way I’d have gone out with an astronaut or a cowboy or a bank robber if their profiles had popped up on the dating app first. A real character.
Next to the miniature briefcase symbol below his name: Official Mascot for the Night Creek Nocturnals. Wouldn’t The Bats be more straightforward? Each of his profile pictures in full costume: pinkish membrane of wings stretched wide, tipped with single claws; wrinkly triangle nose below two triangle ears, alert for echolocation; matted brownish fur in need of brushing. Too realistic for a mascot—no jersey, no oversized shoes, no miniature cap. It’d be grotesque if I weren’t so into it. Twenty-five—younger than I normally go for, but not too young. The unincorporated town thirty-eight miles away.
I sent him my only virtual heartbeat for the day—more prized than a simple “like.” Immediately three dots bubbled into the chat—I imagined him tapping the words with his tiny claws.
Game tonight? he asked. 7:05, rain or shine. We can grab a drink after.
Given his commitment to the craft, I wasn’t surprised he wanted me to see him work.
I’ll be there.
More dots, then: It’s Occult Night. Dress accordingly.
Autocorrect? But there it was on the team website, smack between Star Trek Night and Take Your Dog to the Ballpark Night. Never heard of a small town going in for that Satanic Panic stuff.
“Ballpark” was a generous term. The Nocturnals played on a diamond in Sheridan Park, not far from the monkey bars—though the outfield was bounded by a low stone wall with dead vines winding through the grout. A small stand sold the requisite hot dogs, peanuts, Cracker Jacks— soft drinks kept in a dusty cooler dragged from someone’s garage. Three green port-a-potties behind the chain-link backstop. Standard aluminum bleachers, the kind that would burn your ass during a midday game. An enormous willow wept across the first baseline, which surely made trouble for the players. Why not cut it back?
The rinky-dink space was packed. I arrived ten minutes to first pitch, sweating beneath my Stevie Nicks cloak from last Halloween. I squeezed into the second-to-last row between two green-faced girls in pointy hats and an elderly man with his mouth gagged, his hands bound by rough rope, sacrifice-ready. From up there I could see the fake cobwebs stretched across the dugouts, the disembodied Frankenstein hands the kids in the stands waved instead of catcher’s mitts, the strange symbols painted in red on the bases.
No messages in the app. I thought we might get a chance to chat before the game—but soon a teenager was singing the national anthem off-key, and then the first inning was underway. The players seemed normal enough: standard caps, helmets, and jerseys, striped socks to their knees. The away team, the Bulldogs, played in green and gold. The Nocturnals played in gray and red, their logo the silhouette of a bat before a full moon.
And where was my special bat? Not posing for selfies with youngsters in the bleachers, not taunting the Bulldogs by their dugout, not turning cartwheels in the outfield between plays. No sign of a mascot anywhere—though I figured it might be hard to spot his costume among so many others, scythe-wielding grim reapers and toilet-paper mummies and towering baphomets. One man dressed as an undead Babe Ruth, complete with a rotting wood baseball bat. Someone else had so much bloody gore caked onto their face that it was hard to discern a face at all.
It wasn’t until the bottom of the third that I noticed rustling high in the crown of the willow, a broad wing parting the leafy strands, the lazy stretch someone might make after a nap. He was hanging upside-down from a limb. Had he been there the whole time? Knees squeezed tight, blood rushing to his head.
“Looking at Sucker?”
It was a middle-aged woman behind me, wearing some kind of celestial headdress.
“Sucker?” I asked.
“Sucker the Bat. Team mascot.” She pointed into the tree’s shadows.
No surprise that detail didn’t make it into his dating profile.
“Not much of an entertainer,” I observed.
“Like hell he isn’t!” She picked a spot of mold off her hot dog bun, cast it in my direction. “He’s a legend—been at this for forty years. Just you wait.”
I didn’t have to wait long. Crisp crack of a bat—the shortstop thwacked that ball all the way to the parking lot. And as the crowd joined the incessant cheering of the cicadas, rose to their feet and stomped and screamed their throats raw, my date flung himself into the summer dusk, soaring past shock-white floodlights, dipping low to meet outstretched hands, rising again to meet the rising moon, rounding the bases once, twice, a dozen times in celebratory aerial home runs before finally flapping back to his roost.
“How did he do that?” I asked. The woman either didn’t hear me, or she didn’t want to spoil the magic.
The rest of the game wasn’t as eventful. A few more runs—and one gruesome injury for the Bulldogs at the top of the seventh. The Nocturnals triumphed, two to one.
I waited for him near second base. After most of the hordes had shuffled back to their cars, he swooped from his perch to meet me. No wires—it had to be some kind of glider.
“Hell of a game,” I said.
I think he nodded, inasmuch as a bat can nod.
How about that drink? he said. Or at least, I heard.
His body began to change—hair recoiling into open pores, bones cracking and expanding into place. Ears shrinking, curling. Lungs heaving larger with each gasp. The membrane of his wings shredding and bleeding as arms emerged in their place. A smile slicing below his much less wrinkly nose. Two glistening fangs descending within that smile.
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Becky Robison is a karaoke enthusiast, trivia nerd, and fiction writer living in Louisville, Kentucky. A graduate of UNLV’s Creative Writing MFA program, her stories have appeared in [PANK], Paper Darts, Juked, and elsewhere. When she’s not working her corporate job or walking her dog, she serves as a contributing editor for Split Lip Magazine and on the Young Professionals Board of Sarabande Books.