The Predators Hunters

Warning: this story contains physical violence, suicide, sexual content, and references to sexual violence. The author's intent was to imagine the lives and mindsets of actual people and stories from newspaper articles, not to encourage or excuse any reprehensible behavior.

He came home at five, like always. His heart pounded, and his cock was hard. The house where he lived alone was small, cheap because it sat by the highway. Didn't bother him much. Inside, paintings from his youth and antiques made it a little fancier.

He grabbed the ravioli he'd left to thaw that morning. His heart raced as he sat at his computer, plate in hand. He’d been thinking about her all day.

-           Hi, are you there?

But Amy_s42 wasn't online yet. Usually wasn't till six. Sometimes earlier, but not today. He put on a YouTube video, ate without watching. Kept checking his messages, hoping she'd reply.

He'd met her two weeks back. They'd both commented on a Twitch stream. She said she felt alone, misunderstood. No one noticed her out-of-context comment, but he did. He had seen himself in it. He replied and after a few exchanges, she left his Instagram as a comment. Pretty dangerous for a girl. But he was touched that she'd take that risk for him. They talked every night since, about games, music, even their troubles, or their past traumas. Sometimes till dawn. His boss had noticed his tiredness at work and definitely didn’t appreciate it.

His screen lit up with a message.

- Hey! How are you? You didn't let that little bastard get to you, did you?

His heart pounded. She was talking about today’s meeting with his boss.

- It was rough xD But to be honest Amy… I think we should stop talking so late. I need this job.

- You don't want to talk to me anymore? ☹

- Of course I do! I love talking to you! You're a great girl! We just don't have to talk so late ☹

He feared vexing her. She was the first girl who understood him. If she left, he'd be lost. She took her time replying.

-           Amy ?

Nothing yet. Then suddenly the three little dots meaning she was writing appeared, for an instant that seemed like an eternity.

- Do you love me? she wrote.

He couldn't believe it. He wrote and rewrote his reply.

- I like you a lot. I think I could love you. But I've never seen you…

- We should meet then!

- I would like to meet you.

She sent a Google Maps link. A large, wooded park on the outskirts.

- Why there? The new movie Dune just came out. We talked about maybe going to see it, remember?

- It's special to me. My mom used to take me there before she got cancer.

- Ah, I understand sorry… Shall we say Friday 6pm as usual then? I'll have a brown leather jacket and a chignon

- How about ten? I've got a doctor's appointment before.

He didn't have time to answer. She sent a photo. A blonde teenager in a purple crop-top and shorts.

- How do I look? she sent.

He felt embarrassed, excited.

- Beautiful. But how old are you?

- How old do you think?

- Twenty-one?

- I'm fifteen.

His stomach dropped.

- You knew I was thirty-seven, Amy. It’s not right

- You don't love me? You don't love me for who I am?

- I do, Amy!

She went offline. He felt angry, betrayed. Then despair. He was 37 and no woman had ever given him attention. He was obese and terribly afraid of the slightest social interaction. He had already been institutionalized several times, mainly for suicide attempts. His testicles were aching. He turned on a porn movie and shrugged off the pain. Then, after crying several times, he took sleeping pills, twice the recommended dose.

He woke up the next morning at 11am. It was Friday. He panicked at first - he was 3 hours late for work! He got dressed very quickly, did his business, then paused: “OH AND SHIT” He kicked a chest of drawers. It toppled over. He grabbed some of his paintings and threw them away. “FUCK YOUR MOTHER SHITTY BOSS!!! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU ALL!!!”

Knowing he was fired anyway, he put on his indoor clothes again. Still tense, he sat on his sofa and watched movies all afternoon. Movies kept him from thinking, it did him good. Then, at 9pm, without having eaten, he left the house. He took the subway to the park.

During the whole journey, he repeated his text to himself. He'd even written it in a memo on his phone.

“I'm sorry, Amy. You're the most wonderful girl I know. I love our late-night conversations so much. I don't want them to stop. I quit my job this morning, I did it for you, so we could be together. I know now that I love you. No matter what our age difference, if we love and respect each other, we can only be happy!”

By mid-afternoon, he had sent her a message:

- I'm sorry, Amy, about yesterday. I'm sorry, but I really want to see you tonight. Will you be there?

Almost directly, she had replied:

- Ok 😊

He was terribly stressed. “What if she didn't show? What if she was disgusted by his looks? She'd probably be disgusted by my oily skin and my 110 kg.” But he was also euphoric and filled with elation. Part of him was also convinced that she would love him for his personality, for it was his personality that had seduced her through messages. His loneliness would finally come to an end.

After 10 pm, the park was no longer lit. But why had she brought him here at this hour? He'd heard several stories of assaults and drug dealing in parks at night. In the distance, he spotted a group of young people gathering noisily. They frightened him into taking a different direction.

When he arrived at the precise rendezvous point, all the lights went out for good. It was an isolated clearing at the far end of the park, surrounded by trees. He waited in the dark, hearing only the sound of wind in the trees and a few voices in the distance. But there was no one there.

After 5 minutes, he sent her:

- I'm here 😊

- Sorry, I'm a bit late because of my medical appointment, I'll be there in 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, he was still alone. Is it really possible to have a medical appointment this late? he thought. The boisterous voices had drawn closer. In the distance, he spotted three silhouettes, presumably male, chatting away. Probably three young friends out for an evening stroll, nothing dangerous.

But the three men were getting closer and closer, one of them shining the light of his phone on him. They looked like young adults. Starting to panic, he turned back, deciding to walk away. But then he heard behind him:

- Hey, come back here, pedophile!

What? Before he could react, the three guys had started running. One of them kicked him in the back of the knee. He went down.

On the ground, they pummeled him. The light from the telephone blinded him. He understood nothing. He tried to move, but was petrified. Several times, he felt the cracking of some of his bones and teeth. And the pain. What pain! The three men shouted:

- Take what you deserve pedophile!

With difficulty, he managed to utter a weak, muffled cry:

- Stop it! What do you want from me!

- Come on, guys, stop it! There’s no need to kill him.

When they finally stopped, the pain became even more real. He tried to crawl away from them, but one of them grabbed him by the collar and turned him to face them.

- So, fat pig, you want to have sex with little girls?

- W-what?

He realized that one of the guys was filming him. The one talking to him showed him his phone. It was open to his conversation with Amy.

- You knew she was fifteen and you still arranged to meet her in a park to rape her! We got you good, you pedophile!

- H-how's that? No, I didn't mean to!

The young man clutched his face violently, covered in blood and tears, while the other man on the phone approached to film him clearly.

- Come on, show your dirty pedophile face to all our followers! I hope they include your boss so he can finally fire you! And even your own mother! So she'll be ashamed of being the mother of a filthy pedo! Now say it! Say: “I'm a filthy pedo”.

- Let me go !!!!

The guy broke his nose with a punch. The light from the phone in front of him burned his eyes.

- Admit it! Say “I'm a filthy pedo!”

- I'm a filthy pedo!!!

He slapped him across the face, deafening him.

- Stop it! So that I don't end up killing myself! he cried.

- Great idea! You can even do it live if you want!

They took his wallet “in payment for the labor”, they said, and left as quickly as they had come. He could hear them shouting in the distance: “That'll stop him from raping children again!" He lay in the grass all night, semi-conscious. The next morning, he was found by joggers, almost hypothermic. He was taken to hospital, where he remained for almost a week.

After a week of pain, he had recovered somewhat but was still unable to move around due to his broken limbs. It was then that one of his colleagues sent him an Instagram video. He appended to the video a message:

“You son of a bitch and to think I once introduced you to my daughter!”

The video: it was them and it was him. His attackers called themselves the Predators Hunters. They'd filmed the whole thing. His bloody, pitiful face was clearly visible on the screen. Scrolling through the channel, he found other similar videos of poor guys being beaten up in a park. On the channel, they also showed the whole process of baiting pedophiles on the Internet with fake teenage girl accounts. All his conversations with “Amy” had been filmed and broadcast. What terrified him most were the comments:

“These fat pigs should be put in slaughterhouses like the fat pigs they are!”

“My sister was a victim of one of them! Keep it up guys! They all deserve to die!”

And then:

“Yeah, good idea! Kill yourself!”

But the most painful thing wasn't his broken bones, or the insulting comments, or the dozens of death messages that appeared in his Instagram feed, it was the realization. Of what he had done and who he was.

Painfully, he managed to extricate himself from the bed when no nursing staff were in the room. He crawled to the window. He opened it, grabbed onto the sill and looked down the thirty meters to the ground with terrible apprehension. He then looked one last time at the sunset. Some birds were flying past. Then, he jumped.