by Ryan Schow
“He’ll make it to New York,” I say, remembering future Alice’s nightmare.
“I told you, that was the human bomb, and not directly related to what will be Hitler’s failed attempt at relevance.”
“How is that a failure?” I ask, aghast.
“Middle Eastern terror factions will take credit for the destruction Adolf Hitler created. This is not something they have ever done, but the Saudi’s relationship with America disintegrated in the 2020’s, leaving the world to wade through murky waters. Now the Saudi government is as much a terror organization as The Taliban, al-Qaeda or ISIS.”
“Did you say The Taliban?”
He laughs softly, more of a hissing sound in my mind. “The awe inspiring destruction, the catastrophic loss of life,” he continues, “will all prove to be too much for the openly extremist government to ignore. Hitler will not take credit for it just yet, because they believe Hitler is dead. But he is not dead. He will be enraged. Beyond salvation. Just as he is to step into the burning light of the world he’s transforming through terror, the corrupt Saudi’s step in and claim responsibility.”
“I can’t imagine how he’ll feel,” I say of Hitler.
“With no more bombs and the Saudi pretenders taking credit for his great comeback, he will dream of darker, more insidious ways to punish not only America, but their enemies. In the future, the future you went back to initially, you hunted him down in South America and found him at his factory. That factory location has changed though. I’m not sure why.”
“I’ve killed him once,” I say. “I can do it again.”
“Perhaps. Either way, his son survived. He will become our undoing if not taken care of now.”
“Hitler didn’t have a son.”
“His name is Aloysius,” Draco says.
“It could be Chucky Cheese for all I care and it won’t be his.”
“I already told you, this universe is organic. It responds to hundreds of trillions of small decisions per second, as do all universes containing biological species similar to yours and mine.”
“That seems a bit chaotic,” I say, settling into bed again.
“You have no idea.”
If a few months ago you would’ve told me I’d be talking to a nine foot lizard in my bedroom in the middle of the night and be completely chill about it, I’d tell you that you’ve absolutely lost your shit. I’d tell you to kick rocks. I’d tell you to double time it. But look at me now. Pushing out the borders of what is and what is possible. So now I’m sitting here in bed, sleep dragging at my face, listening to Draco from Dulce as he tells me how I completely screwed the pooch when it came to me not doing what I needed to do in Berlin. Right now we’re going from the big-picture look at my SNAFU to the more intimate details of why.
“The thing about time travel is, it’s banned in most universes because the travelers have a tendency to change things to their own liking,” Draco says. “After a long series of changes, some travelers find they cannot get back to their place of origin because they’ve changed everyone’s place of origin by tinkering with the past.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I hear myself saying.
“For some travelers, the second they change one thing, everything changes and they cease to exist, stamping out their future, erasing their birth itself. This can create the kind of nightmare paradox the likes of which you cannot imagine.”
“Try me,” I say propping a pillow up behind my back.
“Universes self-destruct all the time,” he says with the wave of one of his hands. “But with a family of billions of universes, it’s hard to keep track of which ones once existed but now don’t exist at all.”
“When you tell me these kinds of things, almost without pause, they have my brain hurting in the worst imaginable way. So maybe just tell me about this Aloysius guy.”
“Ah yes,” he says, changing directions. “Aloysius joins forces with Holland and his father in an attempt to use his rare condition and Holland’s science to create monsters.”
“Aloysius does this?”
“Yes.”
“What is his rare condition?”
“Have you ever heard of The Countess Bathory?”
“I don’t know the name.”
“Elizabeth Bathory was born in Holland in the mid 1500’s. Even though she is considered to be the first serial killer, she’s more notably considered the first vampire, a woman with the dark soul of a mass murderer and an unquenchable thirst for blood.”
A dark sense of foreboding falls over me, sending icy shivers up my back. “If I hadn’t seen what I saw in the future, I would tell you’re full of it.”
“You only say that because you have not seen what these other universes have produced.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I will give you what you want when you want it, but only when you ask me.”
“Another gift I assume?” I muse, but with zero humor in my voice.
“One day you will ask me for something big, and it will be sooner than later. When that time comes, I will give you what you want because you can handle it.”
“What exactly will I ask you for?” I challenge, even though I know he needs no challenge.
For some reason, Draco seems content to give me whatever I want. Is this because I was able to kill myself and live at the same time? Or am I safe because he knows I have no interest in dominating the world? I almost want to bump off his mind, but there’s no way in hell I’ll try that. Who knows the horrors I’d see?
“You will want the ability to see and communicate with people in other universes,” he informs me, “and then eventually travel there.”
Um, holy cow, Batman! There are other universes I can travel to?
For real?
“Why would I want to travel to another universe?” I ask, calm and coy despite him knowing exactly how thrilled I am about the possibilities of the future.
“This is for you to figure out, not me. But when you ask this of me, because of how you have handled the other gifts I’ve given you, I will trust you. I trust you implicitly, if you haven’t figured that out by now.”
“Okay, so tell me about this Bathory bitch,” I say, my mind starting to squirm and revolt against all this information. I scoot back against my pillow, the one smooshed between my back and the headboard, and then I wrap the sheets and blankets around my waist.
“Countess Bathory was all about sacrificial death. She fed off hundreds of her subjects long before bleeding them dry and disposing of their corpses. These were mostly terrified young girls. Girls whose clothes were torn from their bodies before being violated by The Countess in the most unspeakable ways. She drank from their cuts and gashes and torn open throats. She hung them from hooks above her bathtub, filling the tub with their blood so that she may bathe before them, while watching them. Second by second, they drained themselves empty and died. Seeing them transition into death was an incredible high for her.”
“She sounds lovely,” I say.
“Hardly.”
“What does she have to do with Shitler?” I ask.
He looks at me, understands I’ve used humor to express hatred, but he doesn’t know how to respond. He tries anyway.
“Adolf Hitler went back in time, raped her, then stole their child and brought him back to this timeline. Aloysius is that boy.”
“You’re telling me there is a vampire walking the earth now and that vampire is Hitler’s son?”
“He’s half vampire, half day walker, all psychotic. Even worse, he’s got Holland’s Fountain of Youth serum and…some other modifications. Like you, he is not restrained by time,” he whispers into my head telepathically.
I start to laugh, but he is not amused. This is the first real sound we’ve made since going telepathic and it’s a bit unsettling.
“Holland is obsessed with mutation,” he tells me. “First it was mass murder, then mind control, and now it’s genetics. Soon though, he will n
o longer desire the perfect race or healing. He will only want what he’s always wanted, and that’s more subjects to experiment on. First he had Alice, and then the boy you think of as the Cow Killer, and then Georgia and you and everyone else. When he gets to Aloysius, Hitler will allow Holland to take the proverbial gloves off.”
“So Holland does this? He’s got a hand in all this?”
“Holland, Hitler and Aloysius. After you destroy Hitler’s factories in a fit of rage, he and Aloysius return to Holland, present to him a sordid proposition. This is what I must show you.”
“I said no.”
“I don’t care what you said!” he roars telepathically, his voice shaking not just my brain but my very soul. My hands fly to my head as my body shrinks back in revulsion. The edges of my vision pulse and a sickness rolls through me with such force I damn near pass out.
Then it all stops. After a moment, I look up and say, “You miserable f*ck.”
“Our foremost elder is dead,” he reminds me, his telepathic tone gentle again, but sad. “I need your help, not your resistance.”
“Okay then,” I say after a minute. “I’m ready for you to show me.”
“Come here,” he says.
I push aside the blankets, crawl to the foot of the bed where he’s standing, sit up on my knees before him. He places two hands on my temples and two hands on my shoulders. I suddenly smell a robust earthy smell, and beneath that a musky odor that isn’t gross as much as it’s a bit coppery and unique.
In fractions of a second, my mind explodes into the picture of a future I honestly don’t want to see.
Adolf Hitler is traveling to the middle east with his son, Aloysius—a devastatingly handsome man with mesmerizing eyes and the kind of body most women would deem irresistible. The pair eventually arrives at the home of the top Saudi prince (a sadistic fiend) where Hitler and his son begin a polite and cordial conversation.
The security is heavy, but Aloysius is not fazed.
What begins as civility, however, soon devolves into a murderous frenzy of bullets and the kinds of beatings no mortal human is capable of delivering. Watching Aloysius work feels the way I imagine others would feel watching me work. Except for the feedings. Aloysius is a vampire, but not like any vampire I’ve ever seen. Some want to romance their food, capture it, mesmerize it, and then gently savor it. Aloysius looked like he wanted to enrage it, to maul and kick it and beat it to death before devouring it. But he did not kill then feed. He just killed with a morbid frenzy that left me feeling sick with fear.
Never have I ever heard of a vampire using bone spikes in his knuckles to punch holes into the necks of his victims. What happened to fangs? Yeah, so this is not your Twilight vampire story. This is Twilight on meth with some Saw level torture porn sprinkled in everywhere.
When Aloysius is done killing, he uses these same jagged bones to deftly slice open the corners of his mouth. This extremely wide opening allows him to almost detach his jaw and latch on to his victims like some nightmarish sucker fish.
What the balls?
The day walker runs through the bevy of guards the way you’d go through a slaughterhouse with an axe and a chainsaw, but then he found his feast, his meal, the dish he would delight in. Two young Saudi girls.
Apparently the Prince has two daughters, both startlingly beautiful. These are Aloysius’s twin enjoyments. As they stand before him paralyzed, he trails a bloody finger down the sides of their cheeks, a streak of red drifting from temple to chin. They gaze upon him with such adoration. One of the girls unfastens her top, letting her breasts hang free. He pays them no mind. His desire appears to be too much for even him to contain. He sets upon the girls with a ferocity like I’ve never seen before.
As he feeds, his entire body jolts and convulses, almost like he’s draining all the blood from each body in minutes rather than an hour. It’s grisly, ugly and revolting.
If I could turn away from all this, I would.
Aloysius fills his belly with the blood of these two young women, practically inhaling pint after pint. When he’s done with the second body, he tosses her aside, weary, falling to his hands and knees quivering and shuddering. Everything goes still for a moment, and then in one giant, heaving roar, he expels a splashing stream of red.
Exhausted, he sits back, leaning on the heels of his hand. With blood all over his face, he takes a big breath, lets it out slowly, the lower half of his face still coming back together. His sated eyes look murderous and rapt, so engorged with life his body appears prime for another slaughter in minutes rather than hours.
“Your eyes were always so much larger than your appetite,” Hitler says to his son. He’s got the Prince down on his knees, a pistol to the bawling, mewling man’s head.
Aloysius stands, his chin tucking down, his eyes narrowing. He walks to the Prince. Towering over him—this sniveling cretin—Aloysius stares at him long enough to make the Prince piss himself.
“Drag this weak ass piece of bitch meat to his feet,” he says, his voice deeper, more gravely, like the sound of sandpaper grinding together.
Hitler hauls the man to his feet, one hand hitching up his undergarments to keep him off balance, the other holding his head using a fistful of hair above his right ear.
Aloysius’s hands become fists. He’s turning almost animalistic, the way you’d think of a werewolf right before the turning. But he is no wolf. His skin begins taking on a different texture, almost like it’s becoming harder, and then—impossibly—his bones began to shift and pop.
I blink hard and fast.
WTF?
Right before our eyes, the beast that was Aloysius grows six inches in height in what looks like the most painful way ever. The Prince begins to sob. Aloysius is now nearly seven feet tall. He reaches down, grabs the man by his head, lifts him a good twelve inches off his feet. A dripping yellow puddle forms beneath him.
Aloysius looks at Hitler and growls the words, “Bitch meat.” And then he punches the man in the neck, feeding from him only slightly before saying to his father, “We stay here until he turns. And then we feed him and set him loose on these fools. He is our Trojan Horse.”
“Make sure we do this right,” Hitler tells him.
“Yes,” Aloysius hisses.
Aloysius violently rips the man’s garb down, shredding the garment and leaving the man’s chest bare. He draws in one of the six inch bone spurs, then uses the other to carve the words “Compliments of A. Hitler” into his chest. The man begins screaming to the point of nearly passing out.
Aloysius drops him, the mutated vampire already shrinking back to his original size. With the task before him done, Aloysius falls into a chair as Hitler kicks the Prince almost repeatedly, as if the man were a sack of garbage rather than human. One solid shot on the chin has the Prince passed out. After a few minutes, however, he stirs, then slowly starts to writhe and moan. Aloysius moves toward the downed coward, puts a hand to his face and says, “He’s close.”
A few moments later the man turns over, his gaze lost, distant, his hands clutching his throat, clawing at the skin first, and then clawing at the floors as his cries for help become garbled.
“Go,” Hitler says.
Pushing a bone through the knuckle of his middle finger, Aloysius slices open his wrist and begins to drain his blood into the Prince’s mouth. The Saudi gags and squirms, tries to push Aloysius away. The effort is weak. Aloysius grabs his head, holds it in place. He drains more blood into the man’s mouth, so much so that eventually he’s forced to swallow.
Over the next three days, as the traitorous Saudi suffers pain and near death and the thirst, he writhes and churns and screams. On the third day, as he’s frothing at the mouth and shrieking intermittently, they drive him thrashing and snapping at the mouth to his father’s house.
“If you don’t drink, you die,” Hitler says to him. The Prince’s eyes are loose in his sockets, his teeth gnashing together, his hands clawing at his own arms like some c
rystal meth burnout trying to scratch that impossible itch.
Hitler walks the Prince to the gate. Hesitant, alarmed, the guards let him through, taking a long second look at Adolf Hitler, almost like they were seeing a ghost.
“He’s sick,” Hitler says. “Needs his mommy.”
Before the Prince goes inside, Hitler grabs a handful of hair above the man’s ear, twists it tight so he doesn’t turn his face into Hitler and bite him, and then he says, “If you feed, you will become a God. But if you deny yourself this feast of flesh and blood, you will die a peasant’s death. It will be excruciatingly painful, and your body will eat itself from the inside out long after you beg God for a merciful, immediate death.”
With the guards safely behind him, Hitler knocks on the front door and waits. When one of the servants opens up, the infected Prince—driven mad with bloodlust—viciously attacks this innocent man. The guards sprint toward him, racing past Hitler, paying the Führer no attention at all.
Hitler strolls back to the vehicle where Aloysius is both smiling and waiting. Captivated by the scene, his eyes narrowing, a scorned Adolf Hitler mutters, “You didn’t bomb America you Saudi dog. I did.”
With the help of Draco, I’m seeing these future events unfolding, almost like this is a movie of the past rather than a version of the future.
“Within weeks, the royal family become monsters who take to each other with violence. They rip, tear and ravage their way through each other in no time at all,” Draco says telepathically, taking his four hands off me.
My bedroom and the Doctor suddenly appear where before all I saw were these future events in Draco’s head.
“By the time they turned,” Drago continued to say in my mind, “these creatures shrugged off bullets like they were nothing. They took the worst beatings while still managing to overwhelm and feed. If vampirism was a cancer, then Hitler and his son infected the Saudi regime. The results of Holland’s and Aloysius’s attack gave them some rather nefarious ideas.”
He puts his hands back on my head, back on my shoulders. A new vision fills my mind, the movie screen before me in full 4D sharpness and brilliance.
