60 Second Interview With a One-Time Prisoner

    Village Advocate “You know you’ve only got yourself to blame for this.”
    The Prisoner “How do you make that out?”
    “Well you’re obviously your own worst enemy.”
    “That could be said of all of us!”
    “We’re not discussing everyone here, only you! All you had to do was answer one simple question, and it would have been all over and done with.”
    “Betcha it wouldn’t.”
    “No, probably not. You could have gone far in The Village, if only you had been with us!”
    “I don’t join clubs, or societies. I’m not the Masonic type.”
    “No, you are a man of steel. You have resisted, held fast, fought, maintained, destroyed coercion. You have, it seems, vindicated the right of the individual to be individual.”
    “Thanks very much.”
    “No you haven’t. You have been as stubborn as anyone can get. You have refused to accept. You’ve put yourself above others, and especially above the rules. You have refused to give any information.”
    “I gave the time of my birth.”
    “Yes, but we knew that anyway!”
    “Then why bother asking in the first place?”
    “Because it was a ploy!”
    “I knew that.”
    “You do, you know everything.”
    “I do?”
    “We have you to thank for this predicament. For The Village and our incarceration in it. You are many things, a man of principle, a moral man, yet you are so, so arrogant. And it is your arrogance that has brought us here to this moment in time.”
    “So what happens now?”
    “People will praise you. They will idolise you, worship you, and probably hate you even more.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you will have made prisoners of them by now.”
    “Prisoners?”
    “Prisoners, what think you of that?”
    “Everyone has a choice.”
    “I expect so. And yet you, through your creation, will be seen as some piped piper.”
    “Wasn’t he involved with rats?”
    “Children.”
    “No rats.”
    “And then it was children. Because children will become prisoners of your creation. What have you to say about that?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing?”
    “Nothing.”
    “There you are, another demonstration of this man’s arrogance.”
    “Well there are two sides to every coin. Now perhaps you are ready to meet Number One.”
    “Yes.”
    {A white robed figure steps forward holding something in his hands. He hands it to the Prisoner}
    “What’s this?”
    “A mirror. It has been a friend of yours on occasion. It has revealed on no less than two occasions the truth. So look deep into the mirror you now hold. Who do you see?”
    “Me, I see me.”
    “No, you see the man responsible for all that has taken place. The man responsible for all that has happened to you. You see yourself!”
    “That’s not possible.”
    “Who else could Number One have been? Your own arrogance made you Number One.”
    “Well I worked damned hard for it. No-one worked harder than me.”
    “But you resigned!”
    “Well there wasn’t anyone else who would fit the role. Who else could Number One have been?
   “In this particular instance……………………only you.”

Be seeing you