The Prophet

Orphalese was once a wonderful city.  A beautiful place of simple white houses, of crickets singing on warm summer evenings and warmer hellos from neighbours who were genuinely happy to see you. It was small and unhurried. It ambled rather than bustled. It hummed softly and happily to itself rather than shouted. People had time for each other and were happy to let their children laugh and play in the streets, secure in the knowledge that there was no harm to fear.

But then one day the Prophet came.

He walked into Orphalese and smiled, his one good eye glinting merrily in the sunshine as he accepted the peoples' hospitality, their genuine offers of food, shelter and friendship. He smiled as he told them that with his other eye - the one that was as dead and grey as a shark's, he could see the future and foretell what awaited them all if they didn't change their ways.

He smiled as he sat in the warm sunshine of the courtyard with the smell of jasmine and the soft music of the fountain, and he told them that everything they thought they knew was wrong. He told them that their simple pleasures were sinful, that their happiness was an affront to God and that their freedom was an illusion. He smiled as he stood in the square, his arms outspread and told them that their trust in each other was misplaced, that their neighbours spoke ill of them behind their backs and that their children were in danger. He told them this because he loved them, he said, and did not wish them to come to harm.

At first the people dismissed him, shaking their heads and muttering as they walked away. But he had planted the seed of fear within them, and soon more and more people would stop to listen to what he had to say as he stood and smiled and nodded and expounded on the evil that lay hidden within each of them and within the hearts of their friends, lovers and children. Before long the people gathered in their multitudes to hear him speak, and looked askance at each other as they made their way home.

Soon Summer faded and the nights became colder. Where once the streets had been full of happy couples and families making their way home, they were now all but deserted as the people huddled in their homes. The doors that had once stood wide open to invite friends and neighbours inside were now all barred, and the laughter within had soured into dark mutterings and hissing arguments.

The Prophet stayed and spoke on, and by the end of Autumn the people of Orphalese had stopped greeting each other as they passed in the streets, and they squabbled and spat as they fought in the marketplace and accused each other of cheating, or miserliness, or lying or worse.

Until one day in the depths of Winter the wind bit and snapped along the empty streets, scrabbling at the locked doors of the houses and howling at the windows. The Prophet stood alone in the deserted square and looked about him with his good eye and his dead one, happily observing what Orphalese had become. And, satisfied that his work was done, he smiled and walked out of the city towards the next town.