ISSUE SIX: December, 2020

POTENTIAL ENERGY

by RALPH BENTON

Ball sat at the Gateway, poised. Dozens of other balls crowded overhead, pressing downward, but Ball didn’t care. Soon the time of stillness would be over. Soon a child’s hands would grab and fling…

“Balls, mom, look! A whole rack of ‘em!”

Seized, hurled to the arc lights of heaven, soaring to that breathless, timeless moment of suspension… and then accelerating down, back into the sweaty little starfish hands to be slammed against the floor, oh, the flight, the pinnacle, the breathless drop.

“Let’s go, we’ve got other shopping to do.”

“But the ball! What about the ball?”

“Put it back and come along, sweetie, and do mommy a favor and don’t throw a fit. You never know what Santa might bring you for Christmas.”

“Oh, fine.”

Ball would have been fine, tossed back into the black wire-framed bin. Sure, it took a while to make it down to the freedom slot. Sure, you had to watch as ball after ball passed into the wide nirvana of grassy fields, concrete walks, and asphalt jungles, there to roll and spin and soar and bounce as all balls are meant to do. But inevitably your time returned, as you made that slow, tumbly journey to the bottom.

But this. There were no words.

The child had stuck Ball onto a shelf! With other toys. With dolls! Ball risked being taken to the dumpster as defective. Ball was not defective, bouncing was life!

Steady. Tap into the inherent poise that is ball - taste the tension between inner and outer. Re-experience that apogeal moment of bliss. Yes.

When in doubt, roll with it. There are friends everywhere. Everyone loves a ball. How could they not?

“Hi, I’m Ball 6” Yellow Outdoor #873. I guess we’re neighbors for a while, eh?”

A Miley Cyrus song played over the store speakers.

“Barbie Dreamtopia Mermaid #38.”

Ball could tell that Barbie did not have Ball’s best interests at heart. The pleasantries over, that awkward inter-manufacturer silence fell heavily.

“What are you doing on our shelf?”

Ball had never known a pronoun to convey such dreary disgust.

“Just a shelving mishap,” Ball said with a hearty, desperate chuckle. “Be put right in no time, I’m sure.”

“I hope so, I really do,” said Barbie.

An employee trudged by, and Ball’s hopes soared. But the stocker’s gaze never left the floor.

“For your sake, of course.”

Ball’s air pressure was climbing fast, and Ball started to gabble.

“I’ve seen you, and the Kens, of course, across the aisle. You always look so human, so bright and happy.” An inner voice told Ball to shut up, but Ball was all downhill now. “It can be hard to be a ball, sometimes, without a face… or arms… you know, not like you.”

“Am I supposed to know what it’s like not to be me? That makes no sense.” Barbie’s voice was as hard as kiln-cured polyethylene.

“No, no, no!” Ball said, desperately putting reverse spin on his gaffe. “You’re perfect the way you are. Hair… those lips…”

“Dude,” said the Fashionista Ken from Ball’s opposite side. “You’re creeping the lady out. Why don’t you just chillax, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Right, right, you’re right,” said Ball, seeking inertia. “I’m round, I’m way round. I’m the roundest Ball you’ll meet.”

The tension on the shelf dropped a few millibars. But like a tama in God’s own pachinko machine, Ball rolled on.

“I mean, sure I’m a bit oblately spheroidal, even though I’m pumped. Gravity and all that, you know, but if you want round, check out those bowling balls over in Sporting Goods, those guys are ROUND, and I’m not spinning you-”

“Hiss off,” said Ken, in a growly voice that made Barbie squeal in plastismic delight. “Why not go back to your own kind, leave us faced folks alone.”

“I… I…”

“What good is a ball anyways?” continued the lantern-jawed, blue-eyed, irreversibly-coiffed action figure. “You get kicked around, left in the mud, dumped in a toy box, and trashed as soon as you pop. We are loved, the children love us. And that’s a feeling you will never know. Ball.”

He spat out the last word, as if to expel a foul taste.

Ball was as deflated as shipment day. Tensionless, skin caved in on itself, just a hollow hemisphere. But back then there was hope. Now there was nothing.

Ball tuned in to the infinite multiplicity of vibrations in the air and on the shelf. The rubber skin began to harvest those energies, collect them, the better to roll off the shelf, into a corner, thence to be compactored into oblivion. Ball sat at apogee, a gravity well of no return, unfit even for the brief yet glorious life of an animal shelter toy.

Tales told by the older balls at the factory returned to mind. The glory of the last rip, the final puncture. The ultimate deflation, and thence to Ballhala. But not for this ball.

The edge of the shelf beckoned.

“Hah, dolls, stupid dolls!”

Two boys ran down the aisle, arms outstretched, palms open, smacking the boxes of bright pinks and plums to the floor. Ball absorbed the slap with a brilliant spin to stay on the shelf. As stillness returned Ball watched and waited for the mermaids and party girls and hipster dudes to bounce back up onto the shelf. But nothing happened.

The boxes lay strewn across the floor. The dolls had the same insipid, flat smiles that they wore before. They didn’t bounce at all!

“Ken!” Barbie hissed. The dimples on Ball’s skin tightened at her tone. “Do something, Ken! If our boxes get dirty or broken, we are done for. No one will buy us!”

“What can I do, sweetie?” said Ken in a quavering, placating voice. “I’d like to do something, but-”

“But, but, but!” Her voice sounded like an old leaf blower. “To think I put my faith in a Fashionista Ken. I wish we’d been shelved next to the Legos, I bet they would do something!”

Ken’s response was drowned in the sound of a girl’s voice from the next aisle. Under the chatter Ball heard Barbie saying, “Now things are looking up,” but an odd clatter accompanied the voice.

“Ugh, what a mess, doesn’t anyone work here?” A girl wearing a softball jersey, scuffed softball pants, cleats, and a fat red braid coming out from under her baseball cap stopped and stared at the boxes scattered on the floor.

Ball heard Ken say, “Well she looks nice,” and Barbie’s acerbic, “Oh, shut up, Ken.”

“Hey, what a cool ball! Yellow, I love yellow.”

The girl grabbed Ball, and Ball’s form deformed under her fingertips.

Ready, so very ready.

She slammed Ball down, as hard as her pitcher’s arm could muster, into the vastly inelastic tile and concrete. Ball felt the dolls’ eyes at floor level, as the rubber flattened but not quite. Before the girl could blink Ball rocketed past her head, soaring towards the fluorescents, in parabolic perfection.

“This ball bounces good, Dad, can I have it, will you get it, please?”

Ball felt the larger, stronger hand examining, testing, a veteran of many unfit toys. Ball knew this test. Ball’s inflation, already boosted with the kinetic energy given by the girl, swelled ever so slightly.

“Yeah, I think this one should stand up pretty well. Do your worst!” He tossed Ball to the girl.

She SLAMMED Ball into the floor, and again Ball took everything she had and turned it into joy. Ball’s spirit rose through the ceiling and past the sky. Ball touched the Sphere, and knew, Ball knew, life.

To soar, to roll, to spin. To bounce.

RALPH BENTON finally came to his senses after decades of wearing the golden handcuffs of a corporate drone. He fled the frozen peaks of Colorado for the muggy swamps of Florida. Now there is weirdness and mystery all around him. He is much better for it.