In the Midsts of the Turmoil of the Apparent Alleviation

”Oh my!” Simon said. “I suppose they all feel the same way about him!”

“Oh, yes!” his second cousin answered. “Yes, indeed! It is by him we shall live forever and for always have it there will have to be moral!”

“I don't believe that fellow! How can you all be so infatuated by that he brags about eternity when he is simply a ridicule of actual moral!?”

“I should not take that stands! I will kind of forgive that you spoke evil of him, but hardly more than that you will be punished roughly by us if we don't know that you also believe soon enough!”

“Look, I don't believe in the prophets holy words! I can't believe that there's a Messiah to be had! Thirdly there's not any good reason for me to believe that exactly this person would have to be good to the extent that goodness tends on rely on him rather than upon each and every individual being!!”

“Hmm, Then you are a mistake to be having to deal with for that sake! I am not your cousin for the sake of blackmailing that man! He is our true and only saving spirit! And there is no other soul that compares to his! Moreover, you shall from here on wonder restlessly forever and find that your peace could have been found with this one man alone!”

With those cruel words, his second cousin left him standing in amazement and fear.

While pondering upon the spectacle of this - and of it all - he saw to it that he would be prepared with sharper arguments against his other followers, in case they happened to run into him. “I wonder,” he thought, “why all these people are to bewildered by that one fellow! The only reason I can find is that he lies so swiftly! Why in the world would all these people believe a liar like that, though?”

A woman came up to Simon and began asking him if he had any reason to believe he would “need to pretend the lunatic they all believed in is really anything but a fake?!”

Simon looked at her. “No, I can't say that he isn't!” he answered after a few seconds.

“Then what do they try to pretend he is?! I for one have been harassed by exactly that man for not wanting to mate with him! I cannot believe those people should believe in his lies bout me and also my two sisters.”

“I can see that I have reason to believe he's even worse than I imagined, then!”

“I think he is worse than almost anybody can imagine about him! I was almost executed, and those two sisters of mine have been, because that mob he has with him tries to pretend he's so holy that the only reason pointed to that kind of fact about him is that we did not believe in actual moral!”

She sobbed a little and continued: “The actual fact of the matter is that as soon as that guy shows himself to the people who fake that he is not selfish and,” now she sobbed again, before continuing: “thereby somehow also that he is the [she sobs again] greatest of saviours!”

Simon looked at her. “I agree with that he is the biggest fake that can be found in this world right now! I also find it in him to be awfuller than almost anyone even without considering that he also says that the is the person to be the solution to all problems there are to be found! If anything, he is skilled at being a short-term solution, somehow! ...”

She looked thoughtful and said: “Yeah. I agree. ... And to the extent that he really does save them from themselves or whatever, he also hurts others, who oftentimes are about equally skilled at that!”

“Do you know what?” Simon interrupted. “We both need to hide somewhere! I can say I know some places to hide, and that perhaps you could follow me along to one of them?”

She looked happy. “Yeas! Thank you! I hope to come along real soon! But there is another person involved in this!”

“Who is that?”

“It is a son of mine. So that it's almost ridiculous to say they should be able to be into being with him for me!”

“I see!”

“I could perhaps use a sofa at your home, or somewhere else that you can think is safe!”

“I can't think of my home as the safe place to be keeping the two of you! It's not really wise to see the home as a safe haven nowadays! You know, I was married, but my late wife was seduced by his pretend morals, and left me for it!”

“That's horrible!”

“Yeah! It's horrible!”

“I can find it in me to say that my name is Catharina. My son's name is August.”

"I can thereby tell you that my name is Simon!"

“I will then go and try to fetch my son! I will be back in a few minutes, I think!”

“Okay, I'll wait!”

Three minutes later she came back with a four-year-old boy. Simon watched them approach and saw to his relief that they were seemingly not followed by anyone. But he felt unsure about it just the same. “Possibly,” he figured, “some one (or more) of those people really is hiding somewhere in order to spy on her, and thereby from now on perhaps on me too, and probably in that case they can find the hiding place I chose to show her to!”

But he felt like not saying this. Instead he looked at them and then around them. She seemed to notice his worry as perhaps that he thought she hadn't been careful enough, and thereby assured: “We are always careful, August and I! It's unlikely that someone has been following us!”

“I will thereby be able to show you the shed that I have been into that you should be hiding in! I prefer to stay there myself, partly because the two of you can perhaps protect me if something does happen, and partly because I feel that I want to get to know you better!”

“Thanks!” she said, and the boy smiled and seemed to appreciate it.

“I wonder how they are going to think of this stuff as though they had the right to pretend we always were bad for each other!” she added.

“I wonder too,” he said.

“I will lead you to the shed when night falls, because it is difficult to get there without them possibly spotting us otherwise.”

“Oh, we have to wait, then! I can only hope, in that case, that those who look for me don't happen to come here!”

“Oh, I can lead you now to another place. It's a safe haven, I think, out in the woods!”

“I very much appreciate that!” she said.

After looking around again he said: “Follow me!” and started walking. They followed along, first down a stairway, and then along a fairly well-used path. After a few kilometers along that path, he looked around a few times and then said: “Let's turn to the right!” and the three of them did.

Walking through the woods, they first had to cross a river and then also climb a hill, upon which there was a glade. “Here,” he said, “I usually feel quite safe, because I know the nature around here!”

“Is it really unlikely, also, that they happen to come here, even?”

“I think it can be that! But not quite sure about them nowadays.”

“We should then probably just relax and hope for the best, I guess!”

He smiled. “Yeah! Let's do that!”

Her son was smiling, but tried to say that he wasn't sure he wanted to believe they couldn't happen to turn up in the glade just the same, somehow.

“We can, for safety's sake, simply all climb up a tree! Or perhaps one tree each for the sake of keeping more than one lookout for them. ... My guess is that at most two viewpoints can be needed, though!”

“Where?” Catharina asked.

“Most of all from either one of those three fir trees, I think!” he said pointing. “And then also, preferably, from the oak down there!”

She sighed. “I can't see how I can very easily be on a lookout position very long with him with me. Not at all that it's impossible, but ... [she sighed again] ... Do you really very much need my help - or could you perhaps do most of the lookout work yourself?”

“Yeah, I guess I can handle it, and the two of you stay here meanwhile! I have earlier fairly often kept the lookout from almost only the fir trees!”

“Great! Then I only might go to the oak and try to climb it with him!”

“I will then leave you two here for a while.”

She smiled at him and said: “I really hope you don't fall or anything!”

He sighed. “Thank you! I sure hope so too, although I think I do know these trees well enough!” With that he left for the main lookout place, where he stayed for two hours, upon which he returned and saw the the two of them on his way to the oak. When there he looked for a while to the south, and found to surprise that a house had been built not very far away from it. So he immediately unclimbed the oak and went back to say this to the two others, who were both startled by this.

“It seemed quite possible, even, that they eventually would be able to happen to spot me in the tree!” he said. “Thereby, I can't believe that we can easily be totally safe unless they're not with them - the brainwashed people!

“On the other hand,” he continued, “we might fairly easily pretend as if nothing about our views upon that brainwashing stuff, right?”

“I suppose you and I could go up there and ask them, even, for some shelter; hopefully we can avoid mentioning the crowd and what we fear them for, right?”

He swallowed. “I guess they might not very easily recognize me, since I don't really live here. But I feel unsafe about the notion that they could perhaps be into that we should be seen as intruders either way! But, if you want, I feel, then yes, let's go there and try it!”

The two of them did go there to ask for shelter. An old woman opened the door and then yelled at someone to come and help her. A man with an ax came and looked at the two of them. “What do you want, strangers?” he asked.

“We have come here only to seek shelter for a while. And we were going to ask, not intrude on you that bluntly!”

The woman at the door squinted at them. “I don't feel that you belong here! I think I have seen this man before! He was the one to pretend we don't have a potential saviour in the absolutely wise man whom we very much feel the power of to be helping our lives from the misery we have to suffer were it not for him!”

Simon, Catahrina and August all looked at each other. Then Simon said in a low voice to his two companions: “I don't feel I have to apologize for not saying to myself that the man is real about actual wisdom! Furthermore I feel that if they do not say to us that we are welcome, then we are not obliged to feel they are for real about the world! Thereby I will from now on feel that they are not serious about being emotional the way they display that they are. ... I don't feel you are feeling the things we can be into, since we are the good people and they are the bad ones! I feel they can betray us anyway, and it really doesn't matter it they show feelings they don't deserve!”

Now another man had arrived, from the other direction. “I can see these strangers are evil enough to be shot right now, aren't they?” he asked the lady at the doorstep.

“Hmm,” she muttered. “Yes, please do away with this evil!”

The man thereby shot all three of them.

“I will hereby tell the man that he is free from this filth forever!” he said afterwards.