The Return of Zarathustra:

CHAPTER FIVE: THE ROOTS OF HORROR

Zarathustra stood at the center of the breaking courtroom. The Judge flickered above like a broken constellation. The shadows in the gallery, once whispering with certainty, now shrieked with confusion. The nightmare was unraveling.

Zarathustra’s voice echoed from every surface, calm, precise:

“Let us walk through the dream you call history.”

The glass beneath his feet glowed, and images rose around him like phantoms.

The Garden of Eden appeared first: Adam crafted from clay, waking before the womb. Beside him, Eve torn from his rib, subordinate by design.

“Here is your first horror story,” Zarathustra declared. “A world imagined by men who feared the truth of their own origins. A tale where woman is a mere fragment, a mistake, a corrupter of paradise.”

The scene shifted violently.

Now a temple in Sumer, a pyramid in Egypt, a Roman forum. Priests intoning laws handed down by male gods, scribes etching the father’s name into stone.

“Here, the mother is silence. The priest becomes midwife to the lie.”

Zarathustra paced slowly, igniting image after image. Women burnt as witches under Christian crosses. Women veiled and vanished under desert suns. Women locked behind ink-stained doors, forbidden to read, write, or speak in the languages crafted by men.

“The nightmare deepened,” Zarathustra continued, voice rising like a storm. “And the lie grew fangs.”

The courtroom walls shifted, now showing modern visions. Factory floors and boardrooms, where patriarchal order still reigned behind the veil of “progress.” Laboratories where theories spun around stars and particles, but where wombs were still footnotes. War rooms, where emotional little boys played gods over life and death—never questioning their severed roots, but always declaring that women were the ones who were “too emotional” to lead peacefully.

Zarathustra stopped, standing beneath the flickering Judge, and smiled grimly.

“The horror was not monsters in the dark, nor demons in the woods. The horror was the dream itself—the fantasy of man as first.”

The shadows recoiled as if struck.

“A man IMAGINED he was the origin, the architect, the father of all things. And you have built every temple, every law, every empire atop that child's lie.”

Lightning split the courtroom sky once more. This time, the missing womb-symbol burned bright for a moment, like a scar beneath the Judge’s feet.

Zarathustra raised his voice to a crescendo:

“The nightmare was never beneath your beds. It was beneath your histories.”

The gallery howled in terror. Some shadows tried to flee, but there were no doors, no exits. Others clung desperately to crumbling pillars.

“The horror began when you erased the womb and crowned the man in its place.”

He turned his eyes once more to the Judge. “Now, tell me, Judge… tell them ALL: which came first—the son, or the mother?”

The Judge faltered. His voice caught in his throat. And the courtroom cracked deeper, groaning like a dying leviathan.

Zarathustra folded his arms, eyes blazing.

“Let us continue.”