The press has such a powerful command of image that it can make a criminal look like a victim and show the victim as a criminal.Malcolm X
POV Kevin's mother
Resurrection has always been impossible in human history, even today in a world where the awakened exist. They are capable of healing the worst wounds and illnesses, but resurrection goes far beyond the imaginable. The word resurrection means coming back to life, and apart from Jesus and Lazarus, no one is said to have come back after death. And yet I was holding my son in my arms, feeling once again the warmth of his body and the beating of his heart. My daughter was hugging her brother as tightly as she could, crying her heart out.
Today, after so much praying and hoping, it was as if my faith had finally been rewarded, as if all those sorrows and griefs had found their answer in this miracle. Around us, people were praying and crying out that it was a miracle, while my husband watched us from a distance. He hadn't bothered to come and join us, as if his son's resurrection meant nothing to him. My mother, on the other hand, came closer to me and touched her grandson's cheeks.
"It's a true miracle; the grace of God has no limits."
Collecting myself and hearing the noise grow louder and people becoming hysterical, I realized something.
Resurrection overturns the laws of nature and lies beyond our perception. It is a transcendent event, because it is beyond Man, and my son had just overturned all of that. I now dreaded what was to come.
***
"This is a new event that could turn our society upside down once again. Yesterday, a young boy named Kevin, who had been dead for thirteen days, miraculously came back to life. Let's go to our correspondent on the scene," said a TV presenter.
"Yes, indeed, it was on March 21, in Lyon, during a funeral ceremony, that a gigantic black bolt of lightning struck, leaving behind an immense crater and the resurrected body of the young child. We are currently in front of the family's home, where many other journalists are waiting, as the family has declined to make a statement. But according to the information we have, this child had been seriously ill since birth, and doctors and even the awakened proved unable to cure him. The family even went 100,000 euros into debt for their child's care; the father works in warehouses and the mother is a primary school teacher. This is an unprecedented event for humanity, and today many scientists say they are ready to study the young boy to understand the reason for this phenomenon."
"Why is our life being exposed like this? They have no right to do that! As if we didn't have enough problems already—it's truly shameful, the media have no morals whatsoever!" I said in a rage in front of the television.
All of a sudden, we became the center of attention for the entire planet, when just a few weeks earlier nobody knew us and nobody wanted to help us. And now they were exposing our entire life and our ordeals as if they belonged to them.
The worst thing about fame is the lack of respect for your privacy, and the progress of civilization tends essentially to limit people's private lives, especially through the media, which perfidiously blur the line between public and private life in order to sell and boost their numbers with tragedies or things that should remain private. But unfortunately, in this world:
"The power of the media blithely strides across every border." Roger Molinier
Three weeks later
The more the weeks passed, the more virulent the media became toward us, because we refused to speak out and expose our son. On countless TV sets, specialists whose names nobody knew spoke like great gurus, when most of them actually knew nothing about it. Smooth talkers and first-class scumbags spouting their cheap science and morality, which the average yokel, incapable of thinking, swallowed like the holy words of the gospel, to be followed without asking the slightest question.
"Whoever controls the media controls the minds."
And so we were called selfish, individualistic, greedy people who refused to share one of the greatest discoveries of humanity. The pope himself ordered us to stop imprisoning our child, because God's miracles had to be shared. Politicians even pressured us to have our child exposed and studied, and even to make him a French symbol on the international stage. "The child who came back from the dead," as they liked to call him.
But if they thought I was going to let my child, my own flesh and blood, become a circus freak, they were wrong! I gave up nothing despite the pressure, attacks, abuse, affronts and insults my family endured, which grew more and more virulent.
[What a bunch of bastards that family is, especially the mother. What's their name again?]
[It leaked, it's Aithḗr.]
[The father's name is Cristian and the mother is called Karla, that bitch!]
[She wants to keep God's miracle for herself, somebody should teach her a lesson.]
[It's not even about God's miracle, her son should be taken away from her, he belongs to us now, he's a treasure for the future of humanity.]
[I saw a scientist say that by studying him, we could find out how he came back to life. That it might be the next stage of the human race.]
[I read articles saying that maybe her son absorbed too much mana and that's what made him sick and killed him. And that afterward the excess mana in his body brought him back to life.]
[Whoa, imagine the progress for humanity!]
[I heard that the politician Emmanuel is looking for a way to take custody of her son away from her.]
[I hope it works, it's necessary for the common good.]
The common good: that notion so many specialists loved to bring up, putting others before yourself for a common cause. But nothing would come before my family, because I owe these people nothing. Especially not those who spat on us all day long. Those who have never known the suffering we endured.
Two months later
After a few more weeks, death threats and kidnapping threats began to rain down on us.
[You'll go to hell for your selfishness.]
[We'll come and tear your son away from you and burn your house down.]
[We'll make you pay, mother and daughter, for the crimes you're committing.]
We received many messages like these. The media, the politicians and the religious harassed us without the slightest respite, watching for my slightest mistake so they could take my boy away from me. Even work had become a place of harassment, from journalists, colleagues, parents and even my own students.
"My mom says you're selfish," said one child.
"You should be ashamed of keeping your child to yourself," a parent said indignantly.
"The world is waiting for answers," a colleague lectured.
In their eyes, this harassment of the wicked, selfish parents had become entirely legitimate, until the day they finally got their way, because some of the threats had been carried out.
One evening, while I was making dinner, an awakened broke into our home and kidnapped Kevin and Marie without my being able to do anything, and I was injured in the head trying to stop him. He was part of a group called Renaissance. Fortunately, Yan was with his grandmother that day, because he would probably have taken him too. Unfortunately for us, the media immediately seized on the case, calling us bad parents, reckless and irresponsible. And yet we were the victims.
"Mr. Emmanuel, what do you think of the kidnapping of the young miracle, Kevin?"
"Well, if his parents hadn't shown such irresponsibility and such selfishness, this would never have happened. They must now face up to their actions."
"Bastard! This would never have happened if you hadn't hounded us!" I said, throwing the remote at the TV from my hospital bed.
"Rest assured that we will do everything in our power to recover this young boy; it is our duty. I will offer money to anyone with information about him and put all our police forces on the case," Emmanuel declared.
All this media frenzy and searching lasted three days in total. I don't know how, but it was my husband who managed to get them back from the kidnappers. I saw him come into my hospital room with our daughter and our son, peacefully asleep, and he laid them on me. Honestly, I didn't want to know how he had done it; the most important thing was that Kevin and Marie were back with me and that I could hold them again.
That return lasted only a short time, because after the kidnapping, we were judged unfit to protect our child and his custody was taken away from us.
"Mom! I don't want to go, Mom! I don't want to go!" Kevin screamed as he was torn away from me once again.
I could only watch him leave, powerless, while Marie cried again, not understanding why fate was so relentless against us.
I began to wonder whether this miracle wasn't a poisoned gift after all, as I had sensed the day of his resurrection, since it made Kevin the center of every question and every covetous desire.
I saw his desperate look through the window of the vehicle taking him far away from his own family.
I believe the media headline that day was:
"He is finally safe."
Low blows, lies and half-truths are the media's stock in trade to manipulate, discredit and humiliate. And often, the common good is the excuse used to bend those who need neither others nor their opinions or problems.
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Would you be willing to sacrifice your child for the common good?
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