The Fortune Cookie Writer by Robert W. Williams - HTML preview

Chapter Twenty

During the months that followed, and eventually over the course of the many years that followed, Peter Durant took to painting like a pro, but this time around, he chose to paint an assortment of items within his still life imagery, never once painting a clock or anything with numbers on it ever again.

He was done with that shit.

Furthermore, he all but quit drinking and found that laughter and a focus on purpose provided him with much more from his daily existence and gave him so much more to look forward to each day that he could hardly stand to look back on his past.

In many ways, he could hardly believe that he was once the man he recalled himself to have been.

That old and dusty personality had become dead to him.

Agatha’s Facebook persona continued on, but eventually he pretended that she died and created his own Facebook page with his real name.

People he’d known throughout his past were at first quite leery of accepting his friend requests, but many eventually came around and forgave him his previous digressions into acting like a shit stain.

“Wow, you’re like a whole new man,” many  had written him.

“I don’t know, I sort of found my purpose in life  and it’s very fulfilling, so I am just trying to  spread it around.”

Then one day, he came up with his baby. He was dining out, enjoying a lunch of Chinese food when a fortune cookie, neatly wrapped in plastic before him, caught his eye. When inspiration struck him, as it had been doing daily and most generously as of late, he wrote the concept down:

 What does your fortune cookie say?

That very evening, Mr. Peter Durant, the very same man you met back at the beginning of this story, began a list of fortune cookie fortunes that would never be outdone. Penning lines that would one day bring tears of joy and elation to women both older and young; he reached into the depths of his being to find the perfect words in which to tell someone that they are more so beautiful, unique and unparalleled than even they could have ever imagined.

He showed the unloved that they were truly loved.

He brought smiles to the faces of people with really bad teeth.

Shooting for ten words or less, he managed to make even the most lonesome and broken of souls believe that there was hope.

He gave millions upon millions of people a brand new outlook on life.

And they shared those feelings with everyone.

Tickling the fancies of just about everyone who played his games online, he made them smile endlessly, proving to the world once and for all that we, as many people have believed and chanted about in the past, are all just one big conglomeration of energy.

And when the positive energy outdoes the negative? Well, wondrous things can happen, and do.

However, it wasn’t until Peter changed his ways completely that he became fit to show the world how easily the universe and all its occupants can change.

His goal was to set the world on fire with positivity, in the hopes that all evil might one day be destroyed.

Well, let’s just say, it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen rather quickly, well, in all actuality it took a few hundred years, and then there was finally peace on Earth for all humankind.

And it all began with one simple person taking that very first step.

But it didn’t happen overnight because not everyone got on board right away. You see, his only means of advertising his quizzes and the digital fortune cookies he was generating were by sharing his personal results online and by tweeting them. BUT, his quizzes were all so fucking funny that everyone within his circles, and then people within their circles, would take them and then share their results online.

In other words, he needed help to make it all happen.

Then, because his fortune cookies were so empowering, touching and inspiring, people began to share those.

Soon enough, he had thousands and then hundreds of thousands of people taking his quirky quizzes and reading his cookies, and the laugher that accompanied each of their experiences warmed their hearts, and his.

Some other examples of his works are:

What were you born to be?

What kind of jelly are you?

Who would you be if you weren’t you? (But this one he fixed so that everyone got the same answer, and that answer was always: “You’d still be you because no one else can be you. You’re so fucking amazing even a quiz does not have the power to tell you otherwise or differently. You are so very special in so many ways, but perhaps you just don’t see it? Or maybe it’s because people just don’t go around telling each other how special they truly are these days and that is quite a shame. So smile, because you are you and you are loved and you are awesome. Now, why don’t you go and make a point of telling someone else how special they are today, before it is too late, you beautiful son-of-a-bitch!”

After generating his fiftieth online quiz, Peter started his own website and this led directly to selling ads. The money barely trickled in at first, but eventually he was making enough to pay the bills and he could afford to do his artwork with all his free time.

Down the road a ways he asked a local hotspot if he could do an installation of his artwork on their walls, seeing that the walls were all well-lit but mostly barren. The owner agreed, and they settled on an 80/20 split from any sales that might arise, and soon enough he was making a name for himself in real life.

Peter met a lovely woman, and, because they were older and didn’t have time for that shit, they quickly settled down and got to fucking like they always wanted to because they sure as hell weren’t getting any younger, ya know?

Soon thereafter, they purchased a house together using Peter’s quiz money, but he didn’t care though. To him, all the money he earned was actually money bequeathed to him from a striking young woman he’d met on the street one Friday afternoon. During moments of quiet solitude, he’d often dare to think that she could have possibly been a traveler from the future… something that, once upon time he used to dabble in imagining. Perhaps she had been an adventurous young female stranger who could afford the eight millions dollars to travel back through time just to deliver him a very important massage, and not really his ex-wife’s friend from work who simply despised him after hearing all the dirt about him from Cheryl?

Perhaps she was someone so very special that all the stars around us in all the heavens above had selected her to play a part in changing the universe for the better for ever now, and forever after...

However, when he stopped to consider that eight million dollars might only be worth like fifteen dollars and thirty cents to the people in the far distant future, well, then none of it seemed all that risky or special to him any longer and he sort of forgot about time travel and the chick with the letter and all the crap he used to think about before he met the love of his life Casandra.

Casandra had once been a very annoying vegetarian who suffered from irritable bowel syndrome until she met Peter and said fuck it and ate a steak. Now she shits regularly and smiles a lot more often than she had prior to meeting her handsome painter, best friend and husband-to-be.

“Some things never change and everything else remains the same,” some old, wise man once told Peter back when times were different. Well, either that or some idiot at the bar said it, but either way, one very important issue has yet to be addressed, and that is: the well-kept secret to happiness.

Unfortunately, Peter and Casandra were far too busy enjoying what remained of their lives together to ever learn what that secret was.

The End.