Meanwhile, on Tinder...

All told, the date had been an unmitigated disaster. She’d been on bad Tinder dates before, but the evening had been above and beyond. He’d been rude, boorish, asked nothing about her life over the course of their dinner, keeping the conversation instead to his own weirdly racist views of how the world ought to be run, and when he walked her home afterward he jammed his tongue into her mouth without so much as a how-do-you-do.

The kiss had been deeply unpleasant, perfectly summing up her evening as a whole, and she breathed an internal sigh of relief that it was finally over.

And yet, in spite of this, when he asked if he could see her again she, inexplicably, said yes.

She’d always had a problem saying no to people, you see, and he’d mentioned that he was leaving the country on business for three months, so she figured she could put off any unpleasantness at least until such time as he got back, by which point he might have forgotten this whole horrible evening had ever happened.

“Absolutely,” she told him, with a nervous little laugh, “I mean, assuming I’m still single by then.”

He laughed, and so did she, relieved, and then she went into her building and up to her apartment, blessedly alone at last.

It wasn’t until the small hours of the morning that she admitted to herself that she’d made a small problem much, much worse. He knew where she lived and he knew her phone number, and she had said that she would “Absolutely” go out with him again. There was no way her situation would lead anything but suffering…

Assuming she was still single by then.

One woman, one smart-phone-based dating app and a mission to find true love on an extremely limited timeframe, this autumn Katherine Heigl will star in a new romantic comedy that critics are already calling “A delightful romp…”, “The feel good date-movie of the year!” and “About what you’d expect from a Katherine Heigl movie…”

“Three Months,” coming this fall, from Fox 2000 pictures and Spyglass Entertainment…

Weekly Prompt Story: Love

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=28410

Romance

By Christopher Munroe

I hate them.

I hate them all.

These fucking people with their fucking love, celebrating as though it made them special.

It does not make them special, they are not special. Nobody is special, and nothing means anything.

But you can’t tell them that, because they must celebrate love.

“Ooooooh!” they say, “Surely my perfect love will protect me from the icy hand of death!”

Nothing will protect you from the icy hand of death.

And as I sit here, in my turtleneck and beret, smoking long, black cigarettes, I hold them in nothing but the most abject of contempt…

Life

They spent years working, the programmers, and as they did they grew closer to one another than they ever thought they would. But however hard they tried they couldn’t quite develop the system of their dreams. They knew that artificial sentience, artificial life, was within humanity’s grasp, but however close they came it always seemed one step further away.

He lapsed into despair, on occasion. She did what she could to keep his spirits up. And, he realized as they worked side by side, month after month, he was growing over time to love her for that.

And she, not that he knew this, was growing to feel the same.

One night, in a bleak mood after one more failed test run, he commented that he was considering packing it in, giving up once and for all, that the project they’d undertaken was simply too much, too complex for them to accomplish. He told her they were wasting their time attempting such a major stride when they could simply settle down somewhere in the private sector, make themselves very wealthy indeed and allow artificial sentience to happen upon humanity as it would, in the fullness of time.

And, much though she hated to admit it, she found herself agreeing. Progress had been slow to nil, and she too had developed her doubts, much though she loved both the work and the man she was working with. But love, even true love, is not enough to justify a fundamentally failed endeavor and, embracing him, she agreed that yes, their quest to create artificial life was finally over.

“After all,” she added with a blush as she pulled back from the embrace, “we could always just create life the old fashioned way, if we wanted it that much…”

Seventeen years later, after the bodies had been buried, at the trial, they couldn’t help but regret the decision.

It turns out they were even worse parents than they were programmers…

Conversation over drinks...

Before we go any further into this evening, I want to say for the record: I do occasionally turn into a wolf.

It’s not often, every month or so, but it does happen and, in the interests of full disclosure I thought it might be best to bring it up now, at the start of the evening, so that I don’t have to bring it up later and cause you to think I might have in any way misled you.

Once every month or so I turn into a wolf and run, naked and free, through the woods out back of my house. By morning I’m myself again, though a version of myself that is frequently covered in blood and stuffed with raw meat, and the rest of the time I go about a completely ordinary life.

This has been happening since last summer, during which I was bitten by a wolf whilst on a camping trip with a few friends from work, and while initially it was a terrifying experience to be sure, once I realized what was happening provisions could be made to get the situation under control, and I think I approached my new circumstance with a clear-headedness that I rightly deserve to be proud of.

Every problem, after all, can be dealt with if you approach it clear-headedly. I’ve always believed this, and to this point in my life it’s always proved true.

Overall, the situation has been challenging, but ultimately very manageable, and after nearly a year of changing into a wolf with the cycles of the moon I’m confident enough that I have it under control that I decided the time had come to date again.

Hence the OKCupid account. Hence the two of us, here, now.

I know this is a little heavy to spring on you during a first date, but I honestly do believe that no relationship can be expected to work if there isn’t honesty between the people involved, and this IS an important part of my life, so I’m getting it all out in the open in the hopes that you’ll understand and find it in yourself to look past it. I do turn into a wolf once a month. It’s not ideal, but hopefully it’s not a deal-breaker for you. And even if it is something you don’t think you can handle, it’s better for me to tell you now rather than wasting both of our time on something that obviously won’t work out. I’m in my thirties now; I’m done apologizing for who I am. I like me and I want the person I’m with to like me too.

So yeah, I turn into a wolf during the full moon, and I probably always will. That’s just me. Deal with it.

After all, if I’m going to be a wolf, I can at least be a self-aware-wolf…

On Romance

I wouldn’t consider myself a hopeless romantic.

I could, considering my history. There’s a trail of women behind me, some who still care for me but know I’m not right for them, others who legitimately want me dead, some with good reason, and each in turn has taken pieces as they left, pieces I’ve struggled to either find again or re-grow.

But I do.

I pull myself together best I can, brush myself off, and move forward, to reclaim my optimism.

I have to. That’s who I am.

Like I said, not a hopeless romantic.

Rather, I’m very, very hopeful.

Dream Lover

“He’s the man of my dreams.” She told us, but none of us knew what the fuss was about.

Gaunt and pale, with a shock of wild, ink-black hair, his presence struck us as off-putting. Otherworldly, as though he was somehow apart from what was going on around him.

Still, he made her happy and that’s what’s important, so we tried to welcome him into our social circle as best we could.

And he was better than her ex. That guy was creepy. Funny, in a sarcastic way, but always with an undercurrent of menace.

The fedora/sweater/glove ensemble didn’t help…

Valentine's Day

When she saw the ring, there at the bottom of her drink, her eyes went wide. As you’d expect them to.

It had been the perfect romantic meal, topped by a grand romantic gesture, and for a moment she couldn’t believe it. couldn’t believe it was happening to her. Her mouth worked silently as she tried to put together what she was seeing, tried to force words out against their will, to respond to what was laying there, before her, at the bottom of the glass, but it was all too much to process.

I thought she was going to cry, maybe she thought that too, for a few seconds, but she blinked back the tears, shook her head, and looked up into the eyes of the man she loved.

“Yes.” She finally whispered, “Oh God yes. Of course I will!”

And that’s when his eyes went wide.

And as he started sputtering and stammering that none of this had anything to do with him, and the perfect romantic moment they’d shared began its descent into the fight that would surely threaten the very foundation of their relationship, I watched from the nearby side stand, doing my best not to giggle.

The fake engagement ring wasn’t even that expensive.

It was totally worth what I’d paid.

Being a waiter isn’t the most rewarding job a man can have, indeed there are days when I think it might break me, body and spirit.

Still, Valentine’s Day makes it all worthwhile…