---

Tindering

Swipe

Paul was busying himself with the ostensible search for a mate.

Swipe

He was a harsh judge with, he felt, exacting standards.

Swipe

His gut spilled out over the tight rim of his underwear.

Swipe

A speck of taco meat fell onto the hairy roundness of his pot belly. Paul pincered it between two over-long fingernails, like the world’s most awful claw game, and dropped it into his mouth.

Swipe

So many ugly people Paul thought. “The Raid:Redemption” was playing on the flat screen TV hanging on the wall across from the couch. It was Paul’s third viewing today.

Swipe

Paul paused. Not bad he says, scanning the candidate’s photos. Nice body, up to Paul’s exacting standards. Inoffensive bio. This was a potential winner, someone who might be worthy of everything Paul felt he had to offer. On the TV, Iko Uwais was busy stabbing a guy five times in the chest. Paul swiped right.

Swipe

Paul paused again, his eyes widening just a little. The stupid app gave him the same candidate. Probably some feeble mind misprogrammed the thing. Paul shook his head and considered entering the field of programming, certain he’d make a splash in silicon valley if he set his prodigious mind to the task. He got distracted when Iko body slammed a guys neck into a shard of wood with a wet crunch. Paul shrugged and swiped right again.

Swipe

Once again the same person’s profile popped up on the app. The same smiling face and flattering photos. Now Paul was beginning to get incensed. There was thing Paul could not abide and it was incompetence – and to his frustration, Paul seemed to find it everywhere he looked that wasn’t a mirror. He swiped right one last time.

Swipe

Paul was about to reset his phone because there was the same photo, the same name, yet again – when he stopped. Something had, in fact, changed. Paul was pretty sure the little number indicating distance had decreased, by about half a mile. It now read 2 miles where Paul thought it had read 2.5. Eyes thinning suspiciously, Paul swiped right again.

Swipe

1.5 miles. Odd. Paul thought to himself. Iko Uwais was busy pummeling a guy in the throat, but Paul paid him no heed. He swiped right again.

Swipe

1 mile. Impossible, Paul observed, eruditely, he thought. And yet, what was the harm in trying? A mere two more swipes and perhaps a beautiful new conquest would be delivered to Paul’s front door. Was it possible that technology had so advanced? There was only one way to find out.

Swipe

.5 miles. One more swipe to go. Paul looked around his living room while stuffing the final bit of taco into his greasy mouth. Sucking at his fingers he wiped them on his stomach and then ran them briskly through his hair. He gave a long moment’s thought to getting up from the couch, maybe cleaning up a bit, putting on a shirt. But in the end decided not to, ostensibly under the auspices that should his new partner magically arrive, they ought to appreciate Paul for who he was, or not at all. With a deep breath, Paul swiped right one last time.

Swipe

At first nothing happened. A few seconds later, from through the open window facing out to the street, there was a brief, truncated scream, high pitched and crescendoing in volume over the course of a couple of seconds. The scream reached its apex and went silent with a crunching, heavy, wet thud against the brick wall of the building, followed by another, more distant thud as something hit the street 6 stories below, and then the horrified screams of passerby.

Paul pursed his lips for a long moment, craning his neck to look toward the window from the couch. At last, sucking his teeth with a certain finality, Paul decided to give the Tindering a rest and turned his attention back toward his fourth taco. Iko Uwais was busy stomping on a dudes skull as Paul unwrapped the taco and took a heaping bite.

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