“B-o-o-o-o! W-o-o-o-o!” something hooted in a distance.
“Who is crying over there?” the Man was disturbed.
“It's me – Fear!” answered the Fear. “And I am not crying at all, but frightening instead. Be afraid of me!”
“What for?” the Man was surprised.
“You are obliged to! Everyone is afraid, and so will you! It's simply a matter of time.”
“Somehow I cannot see you…” the Man doubted.
“For certain!” guffawed the Fear. “That's because most important things are invisible! B-o-o-o-o!”
“And how do you look like then, Fear?” the Man was curious.
“I have many forms!” proudly howled the Fear. “I happen to be truly wild and horrific, I can become stupefying as well, capable to remain reserved and careful so that people don't understand that it's still me. I am the F-e-a-r! Are you terrified?!”
“Don't know for certain,” the Man admitted honestly. “Still didn't taste it fully.”
“You must be truly stupid!” the Fear was annoyed. “That's always being the case with you, idiots. You are even incapable to fully understand and experience the essence of fear. Too little brains, perhaps? Didn't parents teach you to be afraid of something in childhood?”
“Parents told me that to be afraid of nonsenses is a nonsense!” the Man honestly admitted.
“You… coward!” hissed the Fear. “You are all cowards, one way or another! It's possible to find cracks in each house… I will get through it and take over… b-o-o-o-o! Tell me,” the Fear suddenly changed the tone, “do you desire… power?”
“What's the reason?” the Man was surprised. “Only the headache comes out of it.”
“Too bad!” spat the Fear. “I won't be able to control you through it then.”
“I am not afraid of getting power,” smiled the Man. “I simply don't need it.”
“Not to get, you clodhopper, but to lose! You all aren't afraid to get something, especially from what is coming in your hands by itself willingly, but to lose it all afterward…”
“To be afraid to lose something? What exactly?”
“O-o-o-o… some many things, so many illusions!” laughed the Fear. “Riches, authorities, prestige, comfort, faith, love!”
“One cannot be stripped of love and faith,” firmly told the Man, “for they are living inside of us!”
“Certainly, certainly!” the Fear calmed him down. “You are probably one of the clever ones which I have encountered today. But would you know how many people are afraid of losing what they call as ‘love’. Pure physiology!” the Fear continued guffawing. “If you would only know how many of them we together with my friend Offense have already sent straight to the Other World recently due to that very ‘non-mutual love’… you wouldn't smile with that silly smile of yours any longer. B-o-o-o! W-o-o-o! F-o-o-o!”
“You, bastard!” shouted the Man. “For long I have had a feeling that deeds of yours are dark!”
“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