Baked Scribe Flashback : Networked

 

All of this over a simple argument. Over George Romero of all things. One argument in a chat room that had brought this nightmare down on him. He couldn’t even guess how the guy had found him, but one thing was for sure, from now on he would have to be taking a lot more care in selecting his user names.

The guy was lumbering after him through the parking lot. He didn’t even know what his name was and it wasn’t like he could call him FoxBro79.

“Why are you walking away? Don’t you want to finish this?” the guy said. “Tell me some more about how pedestrian I am?”

The guy was not at all what Kaden had pictured, night after night, as the two of them had engaged in verbal warfare from thread to thread, sniping at each other, hi-jacking each other’s posts with no shame, in an all-out effort to humiliate the other. In his mind’s eye, he had always pictured someone about his age, pushing the limits of what was considered a healthy weight, screaming at his computer screen in the basement while his mother called down to find out if he wanted more jalapeno poppers.

“Come on, tell me about how I should just stick to cartoons!”

Finally, tired of the charade and ready to just face up to whatever it was that this guy wanted to say to him, Kaden turned around and looked the guy up and down, trying to guess all the places from which he could potentially produce a weapon.

“What is it that you want from me exactly?”

The guy stopped short and paused, as if unsure what to say next. No, that wasn’t it. The look was more incredulous, as if he was hurt that Kaden even had to ask the question.

“I just want you to apologize.”

An apology. The level of absurdity was beyond belief, but if it would get the guy to let go of whatever he thought had happened between the two of them, why not?

“All right fine, I’m—”

He stopped as FoxBro79 stepped up right next to him, close enough to steal a kiss. He winced at the pinch from the needle of the syringe plunging into his neck, behind his ear. His legs immediately went numb and he started to fall, dropping into FoxBro’s arms, who then eased him down to the ground, whispering to him in a voice that now sounded like it was coming from the other end of a large tunnel.

“No, I think I want a different kind of apology.”