GRAND ISLAND, NE—In a dark and poorly ventilated garage on Riverside Drive hangs a lifeless, disfigured tennis ball. The once-proud focus of the court has been pierced through one end with a drill bit, and is now strung up, hanging helplessly in the air for all the world to see.
Just a few months ago, this proud, regulation tennis ball was bright and new, with all of its yellow-green fuzz intact, and ready to be volleyed back and forth for the love of the game. How it fell from such a position of admiration and respect to its macabre state is shrouded in mystery, but whatever it did, it must have been horrible beyond imagination.
The other sports equipment in the garage try not to gaze toward the spectacle in the center of the area, even as the sadistic ruler of the home tauntingly nudges it each day with her vehicle, just to remind them of its presence. Although they do not know what brought the once-hopeful inanimate object to its demise, the message has been seared onto their metaphorical hearts: Do not displease the master.
Rumors have been floating among the balls for some time, which they heard from the rackets, that the master has been known to discard other balls that were not to her liking, and these balls are simply never heard from again. In an even more disturbing rumor, one of the baseball gloves tells the frightened little balls that it once saw a large, salivating dog gnawing on a tennis ball that was no longer performing at its full potential.
There has been very little sleep in the garage since that revelation.
As of press time, the master had placed a fresh set of balls next to the current garage residents, setting off new whisperings of an upcoming purge. Some of the balls intend to get hit out-of-bounds at their first chance, in hopes to escape a worse fate.