[Ximitationxgoth]

The Filtration
Mr. Rufus Aldro was a man of many faces. He was a man of much wealth and power. He was a man of great respect and wide publicity. He was a man worth of praise for he was a man of hard working habits and ideals. But the true subtleties of the man, the true wheels of his mind were hidden away by the handsome mask of his face. What ruled him was uncertainty to the world and one could doubt every moment the sincerity of that man. But, Mr. Aldro was a man of strong convictions and a subtle mind condoned to judge. Even as a child, playing in the yard of his family’s house, magnifying glass in hand, the peculiar nature of his inner machine never ceased to stir the world. He was fascinated by the notion of judgment, by its intricate web-work of lost hopes and lives, and as he tested its theory, burning away at the ants who strayed from the order, the questions of right and wrong engulfed him ever more. He watched with fascination the inevitability of punishment, the squirming legs of the suffering ants. And he found it rather strange, that life did not follow the conventional rules and didn’t reversed itself. He argued, as a child, that if man came from nothing, from the womb of the woman, then when they die, must they not live on? Must not the life continue for the creature that already seized it and held it in its hands? Would God, of whose kindness the church spoke, take away what is rightfully his children’s? Mr. Rufus Aldro did not know, but thought it a curious matter and much of his time as a growing child he spent in these deep musings. He reflected upon the role of God and his judgment of the people, his perception of the good and evil, and of course about irreversibility of death. He pondered upon the silliness of man and beast, of the society into which he was growing. He tested the boundaries of the convention with his theories, while the perfect mask of his handsome face hid the subtleties of his convicting mind.
But alas, even he could not turn the questions. He could not heave their weight without the aid of a book, a holy book. And so as a young prominent man from a well-known family, Mr. Rufus Aldro became a crier for the Holy Book, protector of its holy word and its holy teachings. He grew into the sense that one’s life was not fulfilled if one did not follow the syllables spoken by wise men. One cannot truly be alive if one went against the laws of God, but his convicting mind could not help but find faults in the text. Why shouldn’t the evil be punished? Why must it wait for God to judge? Some humble men were better suited for they were tested by the same seducing power of the devil and could truly punish the straying ants.
Oh the richness of his musings! Oh how the people listened and how they praised his wisdom! Oh how he turned their heads and made their hands rise to the lord to praise him for sending this saint to save them from the evils of men. Oh praise him! Praise him for he is near holy!
And the Turkish people praised the man, most influential in their country, the puppet master. They freely surrendered their strings for his hands to wield as he chose and he chose to clean the world of mortal evils.
For fifteen years, he was the grandest puppet master Turkey ever knew. His fingers skillfully turned truth into eternal truth and lies into limbo of subconscious. He was trusted. He was loved. He was neared to God. And yet. And yet it was not enough for the ambitious convicting spirit that beat within him. As years passed, and they passed quickly in whirlwind of fame and fortune, Mr. Rufus Aldro lost faith. Not to say that he no longer believed in God, but that he resolved to believe in himself, in his own abilities to shape the clay of others’ minds. Now then, his calm green eyes turned to look at the world around and with god-like conviction see the impurity of souls.
Lo then, beware the purges that followed, for they came in secret of the dark night. Hide the children, for even they were not safe from the grabby paws of the saint. Cry mothers and wives, cry fathers and husbands, for your beloved are sure to be doomed when they are not pure of heart.
In this great turmoil of the country, a foreign shadow of honorable Mr. Drake came on the scene. He was no more than enigmatic presence, somewhere beside Mr. Rufus Aldro and yet never materializing in full. He didn’t speak and didn’t act but simply stood there, biding his time for when to reap profits from the confusion of the masses. In his mute silent ways, he discovered the true nature of the purges and in this revelation, shackled its initiator with binds of secrecy.
“I won’t tell anyone that you are a cannibal, Mr. Aldro,” said once Mr. Drake, sitting in a chair with the fingertips bound together and a smile hiding behind them. “If only you will do a favor for me. Only one.” At a weak hearted inquiry of the nature of this very favor, Mr. Drake said nothing but only smiled in that well-mannered impersonal way of his. And Mr. Aldro knew that he was dealing with the devil. But what could he do? It was the only way to purify, to consume the putrid flesh and free the soul so it may pass through body of pure goodness and rise to be welcomed by the gentle hands of God. Alas, the world was ignorant in matters of kindness and judgment. It didn’t see the goodness of his actions, condemned the means without realizing the ultimate goal was of true gold. Shackled and beaten, Mr. Aldro didn’t fight this new menace but simply bowed his head to a power greater than himself. Be it as evil as he saw it, there was no fiery sword in his hands to cut down the foe nor an angel to aid him in his cause.
Yet, if he followed the contract, there would be souls to safe, eighteen souls really. For this was it, the favor, as Mr. Drake so casually spoke of. Eighteen marred souls would pass their hands for a right to build factories and sell bar-coded cold-hearted weapons on Turkey’s territory. Mr. Rufus Aldro bowed his head and the green eyes, dulled by age, ceased to reflect the fury within. My God, what was he doing? How could he trust a monster like Damien Drake to decide the holiness of spirit? And yet, when he received a call about a woman who was a mistress of a married man with a child, he counted number seventeen and numbed his aching heart, for soon he would be free of the Devil completely. And until then, there were arrangements to be made about a woman, Lisa Sherman.