OS Fiction Club/ "Peter"

[Zanelle]

     Unfortunately, Peter has few friends in Tacoma.  He had burned all the bridges he built there.  His three ex wives in Washington state did not ever want to see him again.  Now he was hurt, injured by a falling brick and in the hospital on his business trip through Tacoma.  A one in a million chance and he wondered if this was the blade wheel of Karma coming at him.

       The truth was Peter didn't have many friends anywhere.  He was handsome and charming so the women had flocked to him but a true friend or a guy friend was something he never really had.  Now with a bad concussion and broken shoulder he was in trouble and didn't know who to call.

       There was a lady he had been talking to on the internet.  She thought he was younger than he was and lived in California.  They had been getting to know each other through emails for months now but Peter had been too busy and far away to ever meet her.  Yet she was the first person he thought of when the hospital asked for next of kin. 

       Even his children were estranged from Peter.  His daughter refused to acknowledge his communications and his son didn't even know where he lived.  Actually Peter didn't really even live anywhere.  He had a box number for mail in Portland but his life was a series of hotel rooms.  He was a salesman.   A good one but just a traveling salesman.

       A pretty nurse was helping him with his bandages and the paperwork.  There had been a series of staff in to see him after the accident but Peter liked this little nurse the best.  He confided to her that there really wasn't anyone to notify in case of an emergency and she just smiled. 

      "They say the paperwork is important, Sir, but really I don't care about it.  I just want you to heal and feel better."  She washed the fifty stitches in his head and rewrapped the white gauze.  His shoulder wound took more time and she worked in silence.

        "What if I die?" Peter asked.  "With no one to notify what would the hospital do?" 

         The nurse stopped her work and looked into his steely blue eyes.   "We would try to find the next of kin but if that was impossible we would have the State cremate you and a boat would take your ashes out to sea and dump them."

        "I see," mused Peter.  The next day he called his internet girlfriend and told her the truth about everything.  She told him that whatever he needed to let her know.  He paid for her to fly to Tacoma and they were married by a Justice of the Peace in his hospital room.  She stuck by him until she died in a freak car accident and then he was alone again.  Karma.

     

     

    

   

[James Mark Emmerling]

it's a cautionary tale, I think.

about how when you have burned every possible bridge in your personal life, you still got the last best resource: the internet.

Doesn't even matter if you tell the truth: the power of computer love is beyond truth (such a bourgeois concept) and able to provide solace and hope and a last chance if a brick falls on your head out of nowhere...and then Karma will come around and self-correct the situation and you don't gotta be, like, faithful to anything you said or did on the internet cuz Karma will erase your responsibilities and leave you free and clear again!

Am I reading this right?

[Zanelle]

lol  So funny.  That is not quite the twist I had envisioned.  I was think more on the lines of the internet connection being just as fragile as any other relationship.  People come and go in your life.  The ones who have your back are the ones you stood by when the going got rough.  Peter was a hollow man.  He had no one and that Karma brought him nothing.  Seems right to me.

[Seth James]

Surprise ending: bang!  If that isn't a cautionary tale about meeting people from the internet, I don't know what is.

[Zanelle]

I think it is about meeting people anywhere.  If you depend on others for happiness they are all going to leave somehow.  Get your energy from the universe and be kind to everyone.  That was my message.