Lope

I went to bed like I did every night this year. Iphone in hand, laptop open next to me, and the TV on my dresser overloading me with images, posts and news about the latest protest, a new twist in the political climate and corporate control of the impending COVID-19 vaccine. I was addicted and dessensitized at the same time. Nothing is surprising anymore. The anxiety and stress grinding in the background; it only seems like I’m at peace with the chaos.

I read an article on a new form of trauma humans recently developed. And its bad. Really bad. I probably have it. I would know it if I weren’t so numb and furious at the same time. Actually, that’s one of the symptoms. So is having three screens running at the same time for more than 6 hours a day. Four or more editions of Murphy’s Law on your person is another symptom. Good thing I just have two - bunny ears and labels sticking out the pages like an academic.

If anything can go wrong… well, lets just say it did, because it did. All of it. And more. At least its a shared experience, #together. One day I went out to check my mail after a few days in isolation. I looked over to my neighbor carrying groceries in from a Walmart delivery. A subtle curl of the lip to one side with glazed eyes and a slight dip of the nose - we understdood each other perfectly.

I wasn’t asleep for long. I must have dozed halfway through a periodical fantastically predicting the next civil war if the Nation continues on its course. I was hooked. I must have dreamt the rest of it in a vision of post-apocolytpic America. I wasn’t fit for a world like that, and found myself constantly escaping horror after horror. Luckily the awkward position of my fat belly protruding into my chest into my neck against the headboard grumbled me awake. That and the strange man in my room.

I don’t normally wake to strangers on top of the covers next to me, but if I learned anything this year was to expect anything and roll with it. I didn’t recognize the man at first. Just like you might struggle to recognize famous people you’ve seen in movies, in books or montages of old world war footage who are somehow unrecognizable in person.

“Where’s the toilet paper?” The man asked as he combed the small patch on his upper lip with a tiny comb. Tension in his cheeks, a glare in his eyes. “I’ve been holding a rick of logs the past hour waiting for you to wake, but I couldn’t find the damn toilet paper!”

It was the third wave of the ominous tissue shortage. How do you tell Hitler he’s just going to have to shit his pants or live with a little between the cracks?

I forgot myself then remembered my manners and retrieved my Dunder Mifflin mask and snapped the straps behind my ears.

“Who are you?” Stupid question, of course I knew who he was and he knew it too.

What is that…he studied the object on my face, or possibly he was confused by the image it displayed. Perhaps it reminded him of the scientists he worked with back in the day.

“Ben.”

Wha…?

“JK - just call me Dolf.”

I didn’t know Hitler was a comedian.

“Dolf… what are you doing here… in 2020… in my bed…?

Its not Christmas Eve, I thought.

Dolf threw his arms about and kicked his legs in a furious rage. He spouted non-sense that seemed to be nothing short of angry jibberish. I sat completely undistrubed from his eratic stirring in the bed.

Then it stopped. I quickly grabbed an object from the night stand and tucked it in my lap.

Swish… swish… swish with the tiny barbie comb. Wiggle, wiggle with the upper lip then he tucked the comb away into a tiny shirt pocket.

“This is the dream I had when I was a little boy, the nightmarish vision that encapsulated my every method of madness to usher humanity toward greatness and the preservation of our species!”

“It has come true!” He went on. “My failure to protect humanity has triggered our doom!”

He threw another tantrum, this time jamming his fists down into the bed.

“I don’t understand. How did you fail humanity? You tried to destroy it!”

He was surprisingly chill with what I said, after he went bolistic and kicking the phone out of my hand that happened to still be there.

“I was trying to rid the world of a virus! And create the perfect specimen, to embody all that is great about humanity while weeding out all that is vile and wicked, what makes us weak!”

“You tried to create robots?”

Again, another fit.

“I tried to create strength, greatness!”

“oh… that…”

The next episode was different, surprisingly unexpected.

He cried.

Then sobbed. Wailed. Beat his chest and tore his clothes and tore out what little hair he had left on his chest - one angry pluck at a time.

No wonder people struggled to understand him.

I wasn’t sure what to do while he sat next to me in an emotional state. I found the stone in my hand, gripping tightly to it. The one my nephew gave me. He started a rock business at the age of 5 so he could use the money to buy socks and a toy for the poor kid down the street. He drew these crazy drawings - scribbles - on one side, and on the other side a perfect attempt at a word. Holding it gives me a warm chill - a swirling combination that lulls you into calm. The memory of him took me to a place, a wonderfully forgotten place. Until another memory pulled me into a monstreously dark place.

Dolf’s calm, gruff stare - and finger jabbing into my shoulder - drew me back to the moment.

“Goodness…” he started.

What did Hitler know about goodness? The thought propelled me into a swirling thought of doubt. What did anyone know of goodness?

“The goodness of men is surreal. Fake. Like a mask we wear because the real thing is impossible to grasp.”

Dolf was either a poet or a philosopher, or both. Who knew?

“It is the emptiness of mankind, the fear of one’s own wickedness that inspires righteous action. One must seek out evil within the other in order to ignore the evil within. As long as man vaingloriously fights against the other out of fear - the deepest and truest of fears - he can hide his true nature, placated by hate disguised as goodness.”

Dolf took a pillow to his face and screamed into it. He relaxed his face into the pillow pinned to his chest. He breathed deeply - his chest swelling, lifting the pillow and erecting his neck. Then he beat his fist into the pillow as if to soften the blow to his face.

Then he was done.

Dolf tucked his hand into a side pocket and held on to something without drawing it out. Something came over him, spilled across his face and into his eyes - a sort of peace that is more agitating than comforting. Annoying even. As if you had something you didn’t want because you didn’t deserve it. Something you can’t accept.

“It is a poison the world infects upon us. It drives us to do what we think is right. It drives us to believe that our convictions are worth tearing down the lives of others… countless others.” He paused, then finished quietly, “one other.”

Dolf pulled his hand out of his side pocket holding a small, bloodied heart.

What a poetic and vunlerable thing to say and then pull out a human heart from your pocket. Nope, not phased at all.

“... Dolf... whose heart is that?”

“Love…” he said. “Whose stone is that you hold?”

Nice deflection Dolf, good one.

The stone was choking within my grip. I opened my hand and the color returned. As my tears painted the stone, I told Dolf about my nephew and his great, big, wonderful heart. I told him about the tragedy that wrought my heart with hate, poisoned it against the world - against any hope for humanity.

He told me of the heart in his hand as blood oozed between his fingers. It belonged to a sweet little girl. His face echoed the memory of her smile. “As my soldiers fought for the future of humanity, lining her people up against the walls, the little girl broke from her mother’s grip and past my guards. She stood at my feet and bore up at me with her dark eyes and dark hair. I never thought of her people as beautiful, if ever they were she was it. She grabbed my hand and tucked a little clay heart in my palm just before the soldier pulled her away and tossed her to the wall with her family. I watched her there. Baffled. The smile on her face before the bullets wiped it away. The lingering warmth of her touch as she grabbed my hand... I can still feel the tiny phantom fingers.”

He mumbled into silence, into private thought. He wrestled with it.

I turned the stone in my hand and read the word my nephew scribbled onto it. A word too late for Dolf, but not for me. The word struggled past my lips:

“Lope.”

Somehow Dolf knew what it meant, the two words tied into one. We sat in silence, a millenial traumatized by 2020 and the strangley, peculiar Hitler sharing his bed.

Sharing a moment.

A stupendous moment.

That moment when the catoclism of clashing realities, of bombastic thoughts and irrational fears fall away and yeilds to peace. Not the feeling, but the knowing. The seeing.

“What now…?” I wondered, fearing the power of this moment slipping away. “What do we do about it all; the decades and generations of lives and actions and words that got us here?”

“Well, I’m dead. I can’t do anything, probably for the better.” He paused, tucked the heart away into the side pocket. “But you are here. The stone in your hand can be a burden - a trauma. Or, it can be your way forward - love and hope.”

I recalled a story. One that faded behind the anger and hate in my heart. A story it is time to remember.

“There was this man ages ago who was persecuted for his beliefs about love and hope in a broken world, a mission to create a community of neighbors and samaritans.”

Dolf sighed as he listened, as if he breathed away a heavy chain. The patch on his lip fluttered and he pulled his tiny comb out to fix it.

“Imagine if we lived in a world of people that lived that way. As neighbors, washing each other’s feet - metaphorically... or not - and caring for the needs of others above their own.”

I reached out with the stone to give it to Dolf, but he was gone.

To the world:

If you found yourself at the end of this story, somewhat fond of Dolf, the characterization of a most hated monster. Do you think, perhaps, it is possible for you, and me to put off old and fresh hatreds, grudges, harmful biases and prejudices, discord with family - with strangers? And then - perhaps - take on the mantle of being a neighbor?