Out of Left Field

"Left field, left field!" he shouted. Richard then bolted upright from his dream, a feeling of terror splashing over him like a bath of icy Gatorade. He'd dreamed that he'd been playing baseball with Lola, just popping up some hits, so she could catch them. He kept on hitting them, but Lola failed to catch a single one. He realized now that in his dream, he'd been so intent on hitting flies that could be caught by Lola---a woman who hated baseball, and who said that she hated any game that required donning gloves--that he hadn't noticed that no one was in left field. In fact, Richard had been so intent on trying to get a game going with Lola, that he failed to notice she had abandoned the field entirely, while he remained struggling at home plate, futilely hitting hundreds of shiny white balls into a baseball-littered empty field.