Beach Volleyball - Part 2
It was early afternoon and the summer sun was beating down on Cannon Beach at full strength. The temperature was in the high 80s, about as warm as the Pacific Northwest ever gets. Peter Mayhew had dragged Greg to the beach under false pretenses, ultimately conning him into partnering up for a beach volleyball tournament. To nobody’s surprise more than his own, Greg Van Helsing found beach volleyball to be a great deal of fun.
The first set had gone poorly for Team Monster Hunter. They lost 15 to 6 against their opponents, the ‘Straight Up Monsters’. Jokes were made concerning the team names, and Greg might have taken them a bit more personally than he really needed to. With a look in his eyes that would shake even the scariest of Rank 5 monsters, Gregorvich Van Helsing looked into Peter’s eyes.
“How do we beat these asshats?”
Breathing heavily and coated in a thin layer of sweat, but still sporting an enthusiastic smile, Peter waved Greg in closer.
“You’ve got the rhythm of the game now. When we hit it to their side, the blond guy bumps it up, the bald guy sets it, and the blond guy hammers it over to our side. Right?”
Greg nodded, wiping sweat from his brow.
“After the blond bumps it up, you mirror him, but on our side of the net. When he crouches to jump, you crouch to jump. Get it? Just get both of those big hairy mitts up at an angle, like I showed you before and I think we can turn this around.”
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“That’s it?” Greg asked.
Peter nodded. “That’s it. Don’t worry about the ball getting past you. I’ll be right behind you ready to mop up anything that gets by.”
Team Monster Hunter served first in the second set, and Peter insisted that Greg do the honors. In the first set, Greg’s serves had been inconsistent to say the least. He did manage a few aces, which Peter informed him points gained on a serve were called. But more often than not, he put way too much strength into the serve and sent it flying into the spectators and other ongoing matches.
With the same series of motions that Peter drilled into him during warmups, Greg tossed the ball into the air, stepped forward, jumped, and then pelted the ball with around 40% of his maximum power. He’d been aiming for the back left corner, but ended up hitting tall-n-blond right in the schnoz with it. The ball bounced off of his face and out of bounds. Greg cursed under his breath, but Peter cheered.
“If it touches them in any way before going out of bounds it’s still our point,” Peter explained. He laughed openly and pointed as tall-n-blond rolled around in the sand clutching his bleeding nose. “Just keep doing that and we’ll have this in the bag.”
Greg was caught off guard at seeing Peter Mayhew, perhaps one of the nicest human beings he had ever met, laughing at somebody else’s misfortune. It seemed to him that perhaps Peter, too, had taken their juvenile jokes after the first set a little personally. For some reason he couldn’t begin to understand, that fact made Greg smile.
After a quick medical time out, Greg once again held the ball in one hand facing down the Straight Up Monsters. He tossed the ball and attempted to perfectly replicate the same motions that led up to a half-tampon in each of the blond’s nostrils. He felt it the second the ball made contact with his hand, and knew he’d messed up somewhere between the toss and the spike. The ball did stay in bounds, but it was expertly fielded by tampon-face.
Like Peter had suggested, Greg locked his eyes on his opponent, mirroring his movements as he got into position. Blondy crouched, Greg crouched. Blondy jumped, Greg jumped. He angled his hands forward, not even looking for the ball. The look on Blondy’s face as the massive form of Greg Van Helsing towered over him like an iron wall of monster slaying defense was that of sheer panic. Still, he struck the ball with ferocity. It ricocheted off of Greg’s left hand and landed in the sand on the Straight Up Monster’s side of the net.
Peter whooped vigorously and slapped Greg’s hands. “That’s how we do it!”
Greg felt triumph and thirsted for more. He managed another service ace, and then another, though neither managed to hit his opponents in their faces. Which was too bad. Down 0-4, the Straight Up Monsters called a time out.