Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

“And you haven't seen deeds of mine!” the Fear interrupted him sharply. “So don't you judge, and won't be judged, as they say! Always do I act with your, human hands. So the responsibility lays down on you as well. I mean on these clever ones who have come under my influence, and not such simpletons as you who even cannot be frightened normally!”

“You put dread first and foremost into minds of clever people?” the Man was shocked.

“They are my most delicious prey!” confirmed the Fear. “Almost being afraid to lose their prestige and illusion of own pansophy. Such arrogant and pretty ones, huh-huh!” the Fear was laughing hysterically.

“And whom else do you usually attack?”

“Obedient masses, of course!”

“People?”

“No, masses! When a crowd is being overwhelmed by panic, wild, all-consuming Fear, it ceases to be people and becomes a mass instead! For these very crowds, we together with my sister Cruelty have specially created men similar to these ‘leaders of the people’ of yours.”

“To keep all people in awe through these masters?”

“And you turn out to be not as stupid as I suggested at first, mortal one!” the Fear added. “But one man is not a man. We demanded a system of constant reproduction of my emanations,” the Fear continued talking profusely. “It was required for people themselves to become sources of mine, so they constantly transfer me from souls of one to another, thus never allowing to wither and die… only that way I will truly become immortal! I need to be indoctrinated at schools, and it's even better if parents would give me to their children from their very birth as if I was some sort of treasure – that way I can accommodate myself in vulnerable children's soul, and under the influence of everything made by you, calling yourself as adults, I would never leave them!”

“So, you are controlling people through fear before unjust earth leaders?”

“Through that as well!” the Fear agreed. “But here I am greatly aided by my friend Laziness and born by us Indifference and Apathy.”

“Were earth tsars really that bad?”

“And have there been many from their kind who could be… loved?” the Fear grinned significantly, yet stopped short on the last word.

“The one who is afraid is the one who respects?”

“Oh, and now you are talking my language! I respect you, though not feel fear!” the Fear replied flatteringly. “By the way, I personally invented this sentence, and all sorts of morons further take it out for fucksiom… such pretties!”

“The fucksiom?”

“Yes, false knowledge! Almost all your knowledge is false! In many respects thanks to me, by the way. The truth is never born out of fear, it is the death for it that's very near!” groaned the Fear, yet stopped short for the second time.

“And how about faith?”

“Hope, love… stop spitting these nasty words into me, fleshy one!” hissed the Fear. “Love, based on fear is a physiology, hope based on fear is discontent, faith based on fear is a religion!”

“So it was you who have deformed the faith, bastard?!”

“No, it was still you, people! Your so-called ‘Holy Fathers’, churchmen, your bloody inquisitors of all the planet! How masterfully did I teach you through them to be afraid of God, and thus never start to… love Him,” and the Fear once again stopped short on the last word. “Do you believe that these faithful ones are being driven by true faith? No, it's I and I alone who is driving them, all these men are my wards, my slaves, my pawns! I have convinced them that without me their belief is worthless, and gave them a perfect way to escape torments of my enemy Conscience through all sorts of secret passages like atonement of sins for gold, created by my dark adherents… all of this is my creation, man! Do you understand now of who is secretly controlling the entire world?!” the Fear was hissing and spitting all over the place from own overexcitation.

“Your power won't last for long here, Fear!”

“Oh, we shall see about it!” it laughed loudly in reply. “We shall watch it, like these very horror movies, so perfectly filling souls of men with me! And how pleasant it is to behold how these scared ones start transferring me further on one to another as in on relay… masses, that's the word!”

“We shall see about it,” firmly said the Man. “We shall write about you!”

“N-n-n-n-o-o-o!” giggled the Fear. “It's we who will write about you… about all of you! We will distort everything, so that other people will be even afraid to look in your direction, and not only in yours. I didn't bring up so many journalistic geeks and bastards on television and in the press in vain, after all. This is my territory, zone of eternal lie and fear!”

“You cannot be immortal forever. You aren't eternal!”

“It's you who aren't eternal!” parried the Fear. “Fear of death is my most powerful trump! The man is mortal by his very nature… a checkmate!”

“We didn't die, but changed.”

“S-i-l-e-n-c-e!” screamed the Fear. “Don't even dare to repeat words of Holy Pavel the Apostol here! I cannot tolerate them – they don't allow me to inspire fear before death into the minds of men! And after all, that's what had to force them to plunge themselves into all sorts of earthly pleasures, without ever thinking of the upcoming consequences…”

“That's why Christian churchmen distorted the essence of things so greatly…”

“S-i-i-i-i-l-l-l-e-e-e-n-n-n-c-c-c-e-e!” the Fear couldn't stop shouting. “You are not the one to expose me!”

“It's you who should keep silence instead!” a mighty and strong voice came somewhere from above, forcing Fear to shrivel.

With edges of his numerous eyes Fear managed to notice how Love and Courage were descending from above to the human as if two heavenly Angels on their snow-white wings. The Light, radiated by them, war reaching Fear and melting it, precisely like drawn butter. Literally, in some instants of time, only a small pitiful puddle remained from it, and soon it evaporated as well.

“Checkmate!” smiled the Courage.

“And that will happen to each and every fear, if we are nearby!” shined the Love.

15.02.2013

The fate of the rabbit Aristarchus was not so hot. And now it was rushing like a pack of wild rabbits away from foxes in front of his very eyes with no desire to make another stop in order to revel in pity to itself.

Why Aristarchus, you ask me? Aristarchus himself did not know what sort of fox and in what sort of place once bitten these people who bought him from a local farmer only to put him into some traveling circus. To call him, Kosoy, as Aristarchus… that’s some silly clownery! But in this very circus, all five years of Aristarchus’s life flashed like those rabbits.

That was something to tell! There were hide and seek games in the magician's hat, there you could behold jumping above the rope, spectacular appearance out of the black boxes, not to mention the sprinting marathons inside the circus’s circle along with pigs, cats, and dogs. What kind of nonsense these silly laughing people forced Aristarchus to do! Circus, in a word.

“They bred and cheat you, gray one, for sure. I mean, to just eat you they just breed you. And they are doing the same with me, I feel it in my hooves,” pig Mary often lamented to him into his large rabbit’s ears after the regular circus performance.

“You are silly, fat one, to tell such fairy tales,” Aristarchus consoled her as often, while himself thinking in those moments: “Maybe, they truly cheat and breed?” And a knife-sharp sense of self-pity and hatred for his fate once again pierced his soft rabbit heart.