Description
One Mean Bean
Story Excerpt
“Put your shoulder into it,” Alex said as she swung her racket through the air and hit the bright green ball across to the other side of the court back to Charlie. It had been a few months since they last played tennis together and Alex had missed it. While winter was Alex’s favorite season with its cold weather and snow, sub-zero temperatures and black ice weren’t exactly friendly to a sport where you had to run around a lot. Maybe Alex really should have put a tennis court in her house down in Malibu instead of her house on the outskirts of the city that she grew up in, where the summers were as hot as (non-stinky) balls and the winters were as cold as the frosted tips of a Florida man locked in a walk-in freezer of a restaurant that he just tried to rob.
Charlie, on the other hand, did not miss playing tennis with Alex. He loved the tiger; he considered her his best friend, but tennis Alex was a different Alex altogether. The sport brought out a competitive side of her that not even her favorite, most toxic, best, and worst game of all time could. It was scary how competitive she got when it came to hitting a ball back and forth – had she picked the professional athlete card in the Game of Life, the tigress would have won gold at the Olympics, kept Wimbledon away from the Brits for another decade or two, and most likely would have beat the shit out of Serena and Venus with her eyes closed both on the court and in the locker room. She was mean whenever she had her one-of-a-kind Wilson in her grip, it was as if the racket had been crafted with graphite from an ancient burial ground, and whenever the tigress touched it, the anger from all the spirits that were violently slaughtered there transferred to her. Charlie could swear he saw her green eyes turn fully black once or twice when she cackled at him for not being good at a sport that he only started learning a few months ago.
“I am!” The mouse shouted back at Alex as he focused on the ball that flew through the air toward him. The ball was a straight shot from the tigress, which was a nice change of pace from her near-constant curveballs that she previously hit to the mouse in an attempt to tire him out. She was already ahead of him in points – 40-love, to be exact, and if the rodent fumbled just one more time, he’d have to deal with her gloating and the bet that they agreed to.
“Loser has to do anything the winner says for the rest of the day!”
Despite Charlie being well aware of his tennis skills, or lack thereof, the prospect of having Alex under his command for the entire day was too good for him to refuse. He’d love nothing more than to beat the tigress at her own sport, gloat to her about it for an hour, and then make her go and get him a large cherry Slurpee from the 7-11 with the creepy cashier who always tried to hit on her whenever she went to get her favorite nasty gas station snacks at 3 AM on her trips back home from concert rehearsals.
As the tennis ball got closer and closer to Charlie, Alex’s mean, but helpful advice echoed in his head and he tightened his grip around his racket. He took in slow and deep breaths through his nose, raised his arms up, pulled the racket back slightly, and swung it forward using his shoulders just like Alex suggested.
“Hyuhh!”
‘Thwack!’
Charlie’s racket hit the tennis ball hard and he let out a loud grunt similar to the ones that came out of professional tennis players’ mouths during their matches. The mouse swung his racket so hard that even after he hit the ball, his swing continued and caused him to stumble forward by a few feet. As his big rodent feet fumbled, he caught a glimpse of the tennis ball that he had just returned to Alex and went wide-eyed.
He hit a curveball – and it had Alex running to the other side of the court just like he wanted her to. The mouse’s lips morphed into a goofy smile and he cheered as he saw what he thought was the look of panic on the tigress’s face. His celebration came much too early, though, as the look on the tigress’s face was not one of panic, but a big grin that radiated nothing but pride. Lost in his premature celebration, the mouse tripped over his feet and stumbled onto his hands and knees. His racket skidded across the court and he let out a pained squeak as his knees, under his skirt, scraped against the ground.
“Aaaah!” Charlie winced and squinted his eyes shut. The pain he felt in his little knees was so sharp that he didn’t even feel the heat that came from the acrylic surface, and acrylic wasn’t even that great of a conductor of heat. That’s what a good and toasty 35 Celsius under the sun could do. He opened his eyes back up barely half a second later to his hands pressed firmly against the softened court. He tilted his chin up to see Alex taking her final steps into the tennis ball’s trajectory. When the tigress lifted her arms up and swung her racket forward, Charlie went wide-eyed and pushed himself off the ground. He scuttled his way over to his tennis racket, grabbed it clumsily, and stood up straight to watch just as the ball bounced off the tightly knit net in the center of Alex’s racket.
‘Thwack!’
The rodent, with his red knees, stood in the “tennis stance” with his legs apart, his knees slightly bent, and his racket held low but firmly in both hands in front of him. He watched as the ball zipped through the air so high that it had him tilting his chin up. He quickly ran backward to catch up with it, grunting and groaning as he took long strides with his tennis racket up and at the ready to hit the ball right back to Alex. There was no way he was losing, no fucking way.
The strawberry cream cheese mouse cackled as he ran faster and faster to catch up with the ball, and it looked like he was just about to, when suddenly, he noticed that the ball started slowing down. With squinted eyes as he looked up, he saw that the ball had shifted from moving horizontally across the sky to falling vertically. The shift was sudden, too, it was as if gravity decided to pull it down on a whim. “No, no, no, no!” Charlie came to a sudden stop and stood his ground as he watched the little green ball fall from the sky. “C’mon.” he gritted his teeth.
The little green ball got bigger and bigger as it fell, which wasn’t a problem at first, but when Charlie realized it was getting bigger and bigger because he was standing directly in the path of it, it was much too late. A single vulgar word escaped his lips and the little green ball hit him right in between the eyes.
“Fuck!”
‘Thwack!’
---
There was nothing worse than being woken up from a perfect. A shake here, a light slap on the face there, and Charlie’s eyes slowly opened up to see Alex hovering her face over him and fanning him with her visor cap.
“Good morning, Princess.” The tigress said with a smile as she finally saw the rodent’s pretty amber eyes open up. She had a big grin on her face that overshadowed the look of concern for her friend, probably because she had just won their game of tennis with a perfect 5-0.
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hip-porcupine
Memberbigcat girls have the best paws ok
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