Stranger

He was a stranger, an outsider from the start. He could pretend to be one of us, but he never really was.

He was born under suspicious circumstances to a whore of a woman who cheated on her fiance and somehow still convinced him to not only marry her, but raise her illegitimate child as his own. The husband never asked questions, at least not that I could tell. He was a good man, much too good for her.

But this story isn't really about them, it's about the boy.

He wasn't born in town exactly, but his mother and fake father were from here, so that was enough for him to claim to be one of us, or at least for those who admired him to claim he was one of us. But that's getting ahead of things a bit. You see, it all started quite early on. From a very young age, you could tell he was criminally ingenious. He could converse with scholars before he was even a teenager and make them think he really knew what he was talking about. It was a sham, it had to be, but he must have been smart if he managed to trick even the most learned of the scholars.

That was just one part of it though. He also had this perverse sense of who had value and who didn't. Even though his mother and her husband were generally well-liked and respected in town, despite of her whorish indiscretion, he chose to hang out with the wrong crowd. Okay, so I have to admit, his mother was not literally a whore, but some of the women he hung out with were. He hung out with the dregs of society, but he didn't act like them. I don't understand what they all loved about him. He didn't seem to really approve of what they were doing, but still they flocked to him, like somehow their lives could be okay if they could just be his friend. It was a bunch of bull is what it was.

And not only did he hang out with the rejects, but he rejected the truly noble and upright citizens. People like my family, who were always putting on fundraisers and starting scholarship funds and generally making this crappy world a better place, those are the people he called out and accused of being wrong. What right did he have anyway? He was out there hanging out with druggies and whores and thieves, the ones who were always busy ruining our plans and dragging the world down into the dumpster, and he defended them and condemned us. He said we were doing the things we do for all the wrong reasons. He said we just wanted to be seen, noticed, praised by others. Well, so what? Isn't that what we all want? A little recognition? He said we were wrong to cast aside his "friends" as lost causes. Well I don't know who he thought he was, but those people didn't want to change. They couldn't change. It was just in their blood to be what they were. Why did he think he could change them, and why did he think he needed to change us?

I hated him. I hated him with all his perverse niceness and misplaced blame. Who was he and what was he doing for the world? Well, actually, here's where we get into the part that drives me the most crazy. See, you might wonder why anyone bothered to listen to this lunatic at all, and I think this next bit has a large amount to do with it. You see, he didn't just talk at people, he did stuff, magic-level stuff that was clearly impossible. I honestly still can't figure out how he did most of it, but I know it wasn't real. It couldn't have been real. And yet, people gobbled it up. They watched in amazement as he produced things out of "thin air" and made them think their diseases were gone. People said he had "authority" but what I think is that he had some really slick slight of hand. I can't figure out how he did his stuff yet. I'd think he just had lots of accomplices, but there were just so many of them, many of whom were known well beforehand, that I think there must have been something more up his sleeve.

And yet, in spite of the outrageous impossibility of all he was doing and saying, people still believed in him. They still thought this sham of a man was for real. I think he gave them some sick sense of hope that they couldn't get anywhere else. They depended on him instead of on themselves. Those of us who strove for order and righteousness were going to be plain kicked out of town if he didn't stop, either by his "followers" or by the government.

Oh, that's the other thing I forgot to mention. People weren't all that happy in general with the state of our government at the time. And although this man wasn't openly hostile towards the regime (in fact, he even encouraged paying our dues to society), it was clearly implied that he was going to do something. That got people really fired up and excited, but it was clearly dangerous, too. You see, a delicate balance had been established in the government, one that a wise person was not all that willing to break. Sure, things could have been better, but they also could have been a lot worse, and if this charlatan kept gaining followers, they certainly were going to get a lot worse.

And that's when we finally decided something had to be done. The prestigious families all got together and had a little talk about this trouble-maker. He had to go. But if we just kicked him out, we knew he would come back and get the people more stirred up than ever. We had to take care of him for good.

Some might call it mob justice, but it was justice nonetheless. This man was truly up to no good. If we didn't get rid of him, he was going to destroy our town and perhaps our entire society. Even his own closest friends were turning on him by the end. I have to admit, I got some real satisfaction out of that.

And so he was gone, and soon to be forgotten, until the rumors started to spread. It was impossible, beyond impossible in fact, but people claimed that this man was still at work. Somehow from beyond the grave, his so called "teachings" were still spreading. Some crackpots even claimed to have seen him in town again. Some of these men were even respected once, but they've lost any shred of respect I once had for them, that's for sure.

It's madness, all of it. That those whose sins are the worst can be the most loved, that those of us who do the most good should be reprimanded, that there is more to this life than this life. None of it makes any sense and I refuse to believe a word of it, but still so many do. So many trust that this stranger knew what he was doing, even that he was more than a mere mortal. They're crazy, all of them. I know that this man was just a man, and was nothing more than a stranger.