Thanks Peter God – Chapter Two

Chapter Two

- in which we meet our second protagonist, a belligerent and reprehensible fellow taken to physical violence and a disregard for the feelings of the fairer sex.

Phobos

Peter Stone, thirty-eight years old, lean and mercenary, single and predatory, numb as a dead limb, lonely and happy. Peter had spent the morning enjoying various activities; playing his guitar, dancing around the living room to the Queens Of The Stone Age, masturbating to on-line porn, watching Jeremy Kyle and re-reading Andy McNab’s Bravo Two-Zero. He had been interrupted once when his doorbell rang. When he opened his front door to two middle aged women who asked if he had given thought to his spiritual future he had told them to fuck off and gone back upstairs.

Peter was currently not in work. This was a matter of choice; he had developed a pattern whereby he worked for eight or nine months whilst he saved money and then he ‘rested’ for the remainder of the year. ‘Rested’ was not an entirely accurate term; what he did was socialise for two or three months constantly, fitting in as much drink, drugs, sex and sometimes fighting, as he could. These were his pleasures and he loved them well.

Peter had always had a knack for saving. He lived frugally and quietly whilst he was working and did not have any real hobbies to drain his resources. He owned a television, a computer, a guitar and less than ten paperback books, many of which he had read multiple times. He took sales jobs for the most part, jobs where he was able to apply himself and earn bonuses and commission. This last week he had finished at his latest job, one working in debt collection that had helped him save even more than usual. Being a person whose confidence in himself was unshakeable he found it very easy to make people do what he told them to do. He displayed no doubt in himself and this certainty translated well into his dealings with others. People responded to him without question – he was a natural figure of authority and this frightened those people that were not like him. He did not relish this talent or glory in it. He was ignorant of it because to realise it would have taken a degree of self awareness and thought that was absent from his make up.

 

The start of the week had found him stocking up on new clothing. This was another part of his pattern; he would discard his current wardrobe save for what he was wearing and then begin again. His tastes were simple and economical. One trip to a large, city centre discount clothing store took care of his basic needs, a uniform of blank t-shirts and black trousers and jeans. He never varied this, he was comfortable and had no need to. He also stocked up on skin creams and a small variety of aftershaves and scents.

Peter had no family and only a few friends. He found it easy to talk to new people but felt no great desire to create and maintain new friendships. His few friends were male and not that close. He knew some women but regarded them and women as a whole as things to be used for sexual pleasure and little else. His disregard for their feelings only made it easier to get them to want him and his good looks did no harm. He kept himself in good shape though did not obsess about it the way some of his friends and former work colleagues did. He didn’t like to build muscle for the same reason he was careful not to let himself retain fat – he felt burdened by it and this did not find him at ease.

This was one of his only real concerns in life; feeling at ease with himself was important. He maintained a balance in his life that required him to carefully keep physical and mental clutter at bay. This was important but it was not of great concern to him as his general lack of imagination stopped his mind wandering that far. Peter Stone was not a great thinker but did not have to be as long as the precisely constructed barriers of his life remained in place. This left little room for change or variation and this is what kept him comfortable and happy. There was no great need for unnecessary thought.

A consequence of his nature and lifestyle was a singular lack of humour. Peter found things funny but he only found those things funny that were based in broad and acceptable terms. There was no sophistication to humour for him. Anything that required him to stop and think or to make a leap of logic was disregarded automatically. He felt no loss at this, no embarrassment that he may not understand as deeply as others, that he may not be getting something that others were. It just did not matter to him.

Despite this he still had a curiosity for the world. He was quite happy to accept that he would certainly never understand most of it but was content to know what he already knew and be happy with that. Discovering this in him other people often became jealous and displayed this as a snobbish contempt for him. What they were really feeling was an envy at his casual ease in the same way people envy a cat’s ability to contentedly sleep the day through with no thought for it. This meant that the kind of people that Peter instinctively disliked always wanted to be like him and could not admit this to themselves. This did not occur to Peter; he was happy enough to to dislike them on instinct.

Because the world is an unpredictable place created from billions of individual and distinct realities Peter would occasionally be faced by circumstances so strange to his narrow world view that he had no choice but to feel disturbed by them. These events or feelings were usually so distinct that he could not easily pare them away or ignore them. These were the only real times at which Peter Stone felt any real sense of fear and like so many people who shared his particular nature and frame of mind he found this difficult to deal with. Whilst not emotionally repressed his range of feelings were of a limited palette. Fear was a little used colour and not one he liked; he usually chose to try and ignore it or to just replace it with anger, an emotion he did not feel often but one which he nonetheless could understand and express. He unconsciously reasoned that the force and bluster of an aggressive response and display could overthrow his feelings of fear, though that was not what happened. Peter did not like to feel uncomfortable and he did not like to feel out of control of his own situation. Fear made him feel both these things quite acutely and he found this unacceptable.

This often led to physical assaults on complete strangers. Sometimes this was for no other reason than they had looked at him and he had sensed something in their eyes that he could not understand. Maybe he was afraid of not understanding or maybe he was jealous that there was a depth there that he somehow knew he was missing himself, but the end result was always the same, a sharp outburst of violence which he always came out of best. Of course he did, he was in good shape, quick and instinctively violent and his targets were usually people who had never had a fight in their lives but had often been the victims of unprovoked attacks like this one. They had learnt to take it occasionally, knowing very well why it was happening and not being able to change the causes.

Once Peter had been punching the face of a young man in the city centre because he was wearing a badge that was blank and Peter could understand no good reason for this and suspected the young man was being cleverer than he should be. He had had a lot to drink that night and the violence was sobering him up quickly. He’d had the man by the collar of his ripped jacket and had his fist raised again for another blow. The man’s nose was broken and bent and both his eyes puffed up so hard that he could probably no longer see who was beating him. His top and bottom lips had bust and there was a lot of blood.

Peter’s fist had been raised, his wrist curved like he’d been told to do it by that boxer, so that he could put more force into the blow and carry it through. He had felt like he could go on hitting this weedy, skinny, skanky fucking know-it-all forever. His teeth had been grinding together and he had not known why he was so angry and this had been gnawing at his mind from the edges inward and starting to frighten him. This just made him feel like hitting the man even more.

Through bloody, pulped lips like mashed fruit the man had said something to him. At first he could not hear it but even the fact of him trying to say something was cause enough to make Peter stop. He had stood there, fist still tensed back, but now paused and looking a little confused. He had leant forward and tilted his head to one side and listened. The man had spoken again and said:

“Phobos.”

Peter had dropped him to the floor and stood back. The man had just lain there, possibly passed out now. There had been a spatter of blood spray on the left side of his head and Peter looked at his own right fist to examine the blood left there. He had cut his own hand and he suddenly became paranoid about infection. This was the excuse he had used to leave the scene in a rush and he had found himself five minutes later in a McDonald’s toilet with his hand under a scalding hot tap, brushing away at his knuckles with a paper towel. He had scrubbed and scrubbed and then looked up at himself, looked into his own dull eyes and then down at the blood stains on the front of his white shirt. He had torn the shirt off and stood there in his white vest. It didn’t matter that it was October, he was not afraid of the cold.

He had been breathing hard but took out a cigarette anyway and started to light it up. What had that kid said? Foe boss? What did that mean? Foe Boss. It had no meaning to him. Fucking students. Probably a student anyway. Wasting his tax money by learning to be too fucking clever for their own goods and getting easy fucking jobs that their parents probably arranged for them anyway. Well he wasn’t so fucking smart now.

The fire alarm had gone off then. He had stood there with his cigarette in hand whilst the sprinklers went off in the bathroom. Walking slowly out whilst managing to keep his cigarette intact and lit he had pushed through the screaming, panicking crowd and strode out the front door and into the chill night. Soaked, confused, pent up, frightened; no one had dared go near him as he walked home, such was the furious look on his face. That night he had slept fitfully, waking up shivering and soaked in sweat, the image of a red disc against a black background fresh in his mind.

 

Peter did not think about this incident much. He did not enjoy going over details and he felt no pride in describing his violent behaviour to others. He was no storyteller; he did not re-tell and re-invent his past like others with more imagination might tend to. He also never bragged about his violence; he rarely mentioned it to anyone else at all. It did not seem to be anyone else’s business or concern. He was the same way about sex.

There was another incident that had stayed with him, despite his nature and despite him not wanting it to. Again he had been out drinking, maybe a year ago now. It had been after a charity event at work – they’d put the phones over to collecting money for a good cause instead of just pure greed. The company did it because it looked good to corporate clients. Most of the staff did it because they believed it made them better people; they felt good about doing it but they also felt good about being seen to do it.

The staff had been encouraged to wear fancy dress for the occasion. Peter wasn’t keen on this as it reminded him of the countless students he’d seen out dressed up for those stupid theme nights they had; superheroes, gladiators, togas, whatever. Peter needed no excuse to go out and drink so he never felt the need to dress in anything but his basic uniform. Neat and tidy, presentable and acceptable. The atmosphere had been jokey and jolly at work though and someone had handed him a wig to put on. Despite initial reluctance he had put it on because a few of the girls had been fawning over him about it and he really wanted to fuck one of them. So he had put it on, this sub-Austin Powers wig, fresh from a charity shop novelty bin and a little smelly. He had worn it most of the day; he’d done a double take when faced with himself in the bathroom mirror but then he had quite liked it after a while and decided to keep it on when they went out. Unlike the comedy afros that other people sported this wig looked like it could almost have been his own hair – it matched his eyebrows and it was plausible in a weird way. Peter didn’t realise it made him look exactly like the sort of person he would normally kick the shit out of just for existing near to him.

Two strange things happened to him on that day. On the way out from work, walking down the off ramp, Peter had seen a man standing slightly out into the grass verge that framed the little island his work’s building was on. He had heard rumours that a man had lived out on the down slope of that verge, pitching a tent there and living off foraged food from the local Tesco Express. But this wasn’t that man. This man had been wearing a long black coat, a trilby hat and dark sunglasses. He had stood perfectly still until Peter was walking past him, no more than about 20 feet away from him. The man had then looked at Peter; just a slight incline of the head, nothing more, and then had raised his left wrist to his mouth. Whether he was speaking Peter could not tell as the coat sleeve hid his lips. When that arm went back down his other arm had moved and his hand dipped into a pocket and brought out a notepad with a pen clipped on the front. It was a moleskin pad as Peter had watched him pull loose the elastic strip holding it closed. The man had then written for about 5 or 6 seconds and then calmly put the pad away and became motionless again.

Peter had felt the urge to go over there and demand to know what he was doing but he was with company and that company included the girl he had his eye on, the one with the juicy ass and the small tits that he liked. She was talking to him now and was doing that thing some girls do, dithering about in the way they walk as an excuse to bump into a man so that she can make contact and telegraph her intentions. So Peter had turned away from the man on the verge and concentrated on getting into her pants instead.

The second strange thing had happened much later that night. They had been out quite some time. He had been very drunk and had had time to sober up and was now back on the road to being very drunk again. He’d fucked the girl he liked in the toilets of one pub and been disappointed when she was a bit whimpery and clingy. Reluctantly he had come along to this next bar which was a bit “indie” for his liking – there were lots of students and those post-goth, post-grunge types in their thirties still trying to live as if they were twenty something and looking quite sad and desperate. He didn’t like them; he smelled their disappointment with life, their disappointment with themselves.

He’d gotten a couple of bottles of beer and positioned himself by a pinball machine – this corner was crammed with them and with video game machines. From here he’d had a good view of the dance floor so he could watch the girls there. The girl he had fucked earlier was now stood with her boyfriend who had come out an hour earlier. Peter had felt no concern, guilt or remorse. It was just how it was, a disappointing fuck but a fuck nonetheless. He was done with it now and anyhow, another girl from work had started flirting heavily with him, uninhibited by the alcohol, apparently unconcerned that it was obvious that he’d already fucked her friend earlier in the evening.

Peter had still had the wig on. He had forgotten about it by now, he’d even had sex with it on with no thought for it. It was warm and comfortable; it looked natural and his nonchalance in it made it more so. Someone had given him a pair of Austin Powers style spectacle frames too, so he had those on at the moment and was equally unconscious of them. So he had stood there, lazily dragging down beer, hand in pocket, gazing out over the club, staring at girls and taking things in. That’s when he’d seen the guy looking at him from across the club and that’s when he’d started to feel strange.

The guy was bald, had on glasses and similarly plain clothes to himself. He was a bit podgy, just edging into fat without really getting there. He’d been staring directly at Peter with a look of fear on his face. At first Peter had figured it must have been someone he had hit at one time or another, maybe more than once. He wouldn’t necessarily remember the guy’s face if that was the case. There had been many and they all looked similar to him. Men’s faces were quite indistinguishable to him for the most part. But looking again he thought he would have remembered this one. He would have remembered, he had thought, because this guy sort of looked like him. He was older and weightier – probably not as much older as he seemed; Peter himself looked several years below his true age – but this guy could have been Peter from the future. There was something in his eyes, some semblance of his control below the surface. He had studied the guy’s face; the nose, the lips and especially those eyes. They at the very least could have been related.

Then it had had happened. As they looked at each other Peter had smiled a little and then felt odd. The sensation was difficult to even pinpoint at first but then it had become stronger. He had felt a pulling sensation, right from the small of his back, through his body and out of his navel, as if he was being tugged forward. It had caught him off-guard and he’d had to steady himself. His hand had instinctively gone to his middle. He had looked down at it and then back up again to see the guy across the room looking frightened and turning, walking away in a rush. Peter had felt himself vibrating softly, though he could not feel it as a physical force. He had looked down at his hands and spread them palms open, then gripped his left wrist with his right hand in order to feel the pulse in his arm.

He had felt a coldness spread through him, feet upwards. Something had drained out of him, he wasn’t sure what and he had felt like he had never done before in his life. Peter Stone had suddenly felt a mortal fear and realised that one day he would be dead, that one day he would case to be Peter Stone and be nothing at all and that there was nothing to be done about it. He’d turned and vomited down the back of the pinball machine and when he turned back the girl that had been flirting with him had a sour look on her face. Peter hadn’t care. He just wanted to get out of there as quickly as he could.

He’d pushed his way across the dance floor, knocking a bouncer to one side as he’d struggle to get to the fire door. The bouncer had instinctively grabbed Peter’s arm and raised his own fist but as Peter looked at him the bouncer’s face had paled and he had let his grip loosen and stepped away. This had made Peter feel even worse and there was another bout of vomiting when he had made it outside.

This hadn’t been right at all; he’d never given a second thought to his own death – it had been a throwaway comment in conversations, a “happens to all of us and there’s nowt you can do” with no real substance to it. Now the imminence of his own demise was slamming down on him and his head felt full of dread and the unknown. He had shakily lighted a cigarette and inhaled. He sat on a stony ledge next to a big, disfigured statue of something unnatural and he had let himself calm down. Without another word to his work friends he had taken a taxi home.

That night was still with him, despite all his efforts to shake it. It was the strangest single day that had ever happened to Peter Stone and he did not like it. It did not prey on his mind every day but he knew that the experience was lurking there somewhere inside and was never going to go away; he knew this now all the time. He had been told something he had never been told before and he could not forget it. He had been shaken in a way he did not imagine possible.

And that was the worst thing that had happened to him. Until the emails started.

Chapter Three