Chapter Nine
Seething with disdain and armed with a plethora of recently acquired and stingingly hurtful terms of damnation, Peter typed so quickly he was rapidly losing weight. People he knew had asked him if the divorce diet had finally taken hold. He told them all where they could go and I assure you it was not heaven.
He rarely shaved anymore. His only life’s desire was to spot an online quiz taker, perhaps a newbie or someone unfamiliar with his ploy and take them down using as few key strokes as possible.
Like shooting tin ducks at a fair, he was increasing his score by tenfold daily and actively seeking new victims by the week.
“This is how you spend the precious gift of time the universe has allotted you? By discovering what 1940’s hair style you wore in a past life? You premenopausal pusstard!”
Peter had become both ruthless and relentless in his nearly endless pursuit of slaying cyber souls.
Yet, he thought that he was, in some way, saving them. But like most zealots, the finger he had taken up for judgment was better suited to be pointed within, as you will see.
On one particular Saturday, while the rain came down in torrents outside his cobwebbed windows, Peter Durant upset the wife of a man he should not have messed with. The man hunted him down online, eventually finding his address by starting with an old Myspace profile Peter hadn’t used since the ninth grade. That defunct profile led the unlicensed detective to an adult dating website where a picture-less, unfinished profile Peter had once started then led the man to a coupon site his ex-wife Cheryl had once visited, where she listed their names and address.
With scribbled notations of his own held tightly in hand, the man then drove to Peter’s home under cover of darkness.
The scene, although protracting slowly as it unfolded, was not pretty.
What transpired in front of Peter’s humble home between him and the woman’s husband eventually made its way through the rumor mill via his over-observant neighbor and had caused some folks to turn their heads away when in site of the forsaken painter, but only for about a week and then it blew over.
However, that does not change the fact that the man Peter encountered had some pretty harsh words to say that afternoon.
From safe within the confines of his car, the man sat watch, curbside, all alone in his vigil, waiting for Peter to rouse.
When at last our partially bearded Peter finally exited his home that day, the man, in a quasi-desperate attempt to defend the honor of his aging wife, approached Peter and called him an asshole, really loudly, and then told him to go fuck himself, and then added, “Is this what you do with your time? You lousy prick! What kind of yellow belly picks on old women? You are a pathetic excuse for a man.”
The gentleman must have been seventy-five years old if he was a day, and his words were harsh and meant to be caustic, but the only word that Peter heard was Time.