The Pearlescent Palm of a Dictator

Everything could happen in the night’s eyes. Whether or not you had a nightmare or a happy fantasy was on the flip of the night’s coin. Anything could happen under the endless black sky. Any crime, rude hand gesture, snide remark, and depraved act was at home in the shadowed wasteland that came about every time the sun left us without it’s sustaining rays. All this was a concept understood marginally well by sixteen year old me. At the time, I didn’t understand just how much this concept extended.

I can’t remember if it was as late as 3:00 AM or as early as 9:00 PM. But, what I do remember with sharpened quality, with absolutely no fog in my mind, was seeing the average sized man at the edge of my bed, pouting. He had the qualities typically associated with a revenant and those of a manchild. He was a mostly transparent white-blue, with a twinge of gray in there. He looked to be wearing a blazer with a t-shirt and jeans, in some half-commited attempt to look nicely dressed. Despite his comical outfit, something automatically put me off. Something in the face. The eyes had an unsettling motion to them, darting to one end of my bedroom wall to the other. His nose was rather large, those beady eyes five or so inches apart, and resting above the mouth lay an oddly thin moustache-

Oh. After I made a realization of who this mystery phantom was, i jumped out of bed and vigourously shaked the blanket off. In response. this ghost also jumped, startled, and raised his hands over his head in a protective gesture. I ran to the desktop, pushed the empty cans of soda out of the way, and picked up a pocket knife I had gotten last Christmas. The man fell over and crawled backwards to the recesses of my bedroom wall. I was- to say the least- thrown off.

“Wait! Wait! Young man, stop!” he cried out. “I mean you no harm I'm only here because I have to b- puhLEASE PuT THe kNIFE DoWN, sIR!" I did not.

"Who are you? Why are you here!" The apparition, still visibly frightened, spoke once more. "Because you heard me! In the street! Remember? I've been stuck in this miserable country for decades and no one, NO ONE has ever heard me."

"I did not! And even if I did, I wouldn't want to converse with- wait. You don't sound... foreign, why d-"

"Hey hey hey hey! Let's not be insesitive here."

"YOU'RE HITLER!"

"How did you- I thought the clothes wou- doesn't matter. You see, I've been stuck roaming the Americas for as long as I remember. I stopped counting after fifty four. I guess you could say I picked up some speaking patterns."

"So... are you Hitler? I mean, why travel to America after you died? Wouldn't you haunt, I don't know, a concentration camp or something in France?"

"FRANCE?!?!?! HOW D-" he breathed inward for a solid five seconds. "Okay... I am unable to return to my birthplace of Deutschland, DEUTSCHLAND, as a form of punishment. From who, I don't know." I smirked. I was an extensive history nerd, and it did give me a sort of satisfaction that Hitler had forgotten his actual home country, Austria. But I decided to go a little deeper to see how bad it was.

"I've never heard of a 'Deutschland.'" Wrong. It meant "Fatherland", or "land of the Germans."

"It means Germany, swine. I mean, look, it just means Germany. Have you heard of Germany?" So, it was true. He'd lost his understanding of the language after all these years. "Which Germany are you from?" I spat out.

"West." he answered pensively, while crossing his arms. He also hadn't heard the news that the Berlin Wall wasn't a thing anymore. Suddenly, he had broken into tears. "I just, after all these years, I just can't stand not being in or knowing anything about my home anymore. I know what I did was wrong. Please, if there is a God, let me repent! I've done my time..." His eyes, streaking with tears, grew wide. "But what if you-"

"Oh nonononono, I do not have access to get you to a whole 'nother country. You need to leave, now."

He slumped up, his head hanging low, and walked straight through the wall. I watched him dissapear into the night from a misty fog. No matter at what age, I always find comfort in the fact that Adolf Hitler was forced to march through a place he hated, unable to return to home, having forgotten everything he knew about the country he loved. I don't think a better punishment could have been thought of. Of course, I had learned, the night now was not only a time and place where everything could happen; it was now, I saw, cruel.