The Unexpected Occurrence of Thaddeus Hobble

by Gareth Wiles

  ‘He is alive,’ he said to me.

  ‘What now?’ I wondered.

  ‘We kill him,’ Hitler responded bluntly. ‘The process works, we have no further use for this man.’ Suddenly Hobble’s arm outstretched itself and slapped Hitler aside, knocking him to the floor. ‘There is no muscle wastage – remarkable.’

  The reanimated corpse sat himself upright and looked sideways at me. His eyes widened before narrowing. ‘I,’ he uttered, his attempt at speech turning into a cough. Once his throat was cleared he hauled himself up and got out of his once-icy casket. He was naked, and Hitler studied the body intently. ‘I saw you die,’ he said to me, ‘and yet you live.’

  ‘You died as well, Hobble,’ I responded without thinking, knowing somehow that some deep recess had provided these words. I looked behind the man to see that Hitler and Vadge were dancing together. Hobble turned to face them.

  ‘Men of fancy,’ Hobble laughed. They promptly stopped and both turned to face him. Hitler stepped up. ‘Who are you, you ridiculous little man?’ Hobble questioned, his attention drawn to his moustache. ‘There is muck above your lip.’

  Mirth had turned to fierce aggression on Hitler’s face. ‘I am the Führer himself, Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘The imbecile from Peter Smith’s fairy stories? What a turn of events,’ Hobble responded glibly, becoming somewhat aroused. ‘It appears my scheme to travel into the future has worked – what year is this?’

  ‘1945,’ I confirmed, trying to keep my eyes off his half-erection.

  ‘The year of Adolf Hitler’s suicide, the year he loses everything,’ Hobble gloated.

  ‘Incorrect,’ Hitler yelled, raising a finger at the men. ‘I may choose to fade from view for now, but I shall be back. If I cannot gain access to The Space through Peter’s mind, then I shall merely have myself frozen in the same manner that was so successful for you.’ Now Hitler smiled again. ‘As for you, Thaddeus Hobble – the remover of your own wife’s breasts – your purpose is complete.’ He turned and nodded to Vadge, who brandished a concealed pistol from a strap on his waist. ‘It has been proven the process of reanimation works, you can now be disposed of.’

  With this, and a horrified gasp from Hobble, Vadge pulled the trigger and shot him in the face. Blood splattered over my own face and I went to wipe it off, now realising that my hands were indeed bound. I was completely weighted down, unable to move whatsoever. Hobble’s unsheathed body dropped lifelessly to the floor as Vadge moved in and shot him another three times in the face at point blank range. After this, the pistol went back into its hiding place on Vadge’s person and he strolled over to the console unit by the upright box. He flicked some switches, picking up and returning with some kind of helmet with wires running from it. He placed it on my head; it was small, so Vadge forced it down – pushing and pushing. I growled at him, but he did not cease. Then, when it was suitably fixed, he began turning some sort of bolts on it. Four razor-sharp pins in all, each drilling right into my skull. I cried out in sheer agony as thin blood ran from under the helmet and down my face and neck. I could feel my hair soaking wet under there, through blood and sweat, as Vadge stepped back to eye up his work. Suitably pleased with the balance of the device, he seemed to lose interest and instead went back to Hobble’s body and dragged him away out of sight. My pain began to ease to a gentle numbness as my brain pulsed. Hitler, who had been standing still watching the whole time, again slipped his greasy side-parting back into place with crooked fingers welded onto a trembling hand.

  Vadge reappeared with a syringe as Hitler leant in and undid my belt. Undoing my trouser button and unzipping my flies, the dictator pulled at my trousers as I just sat there in an incoherent mess. I looked down to see my trousers and underpants around my fastened legs as Vadge moved in with the big shiny needle.

  ‘Advisor Vadge will now inject your scrotum with bull semen, Peter Smith,’ Hitler explained calmly as my buttocks clenched and I pulled back as far as I could. It wasn’t far enough, as I instantly felt the most agonising of stinging sensations. I opened my eyes for just enough time to see the last of the gloopy yellowy substance exit the syringe, and enter my own testicles. Finished, Vadge stepped away, and with a quick hand gesture was dismissed by his master. ‘It will be processed along with your own semen.’ Hitler slowly knelt down between my legs. ‘I will draw out this elixir of potions – suck out and consume it so that I may benefit.’

  I watched flabbergasted as he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, touching the tip of my flaccid penis with it. I couldn’t feel it, I didn’t want to feel it. Everything else that I’d heard this man was responsible for seemed distant to me, forgivable – it was this vile act against me that made him a monster now. My penis remained limp, lifeless, as he moved his head forward and it disappeared inside his mouth. Suck he did, with increasing ferocity as his right hand found its way inside his own trousers and he masturbated along. I became so overwhelmed that I gave way to the pure desire to cease existing and I shut myself down.

  * * *

  I woke up in a slump, the vague image of two Hitlers in front of me. One got down on his knees and began praying alongside a young woman with short brownish hair falling in curls atop and behind her head.

  ‘Meet my wife Eva,’ the standing Hitler called over to me as Vadge placed his pistol in the woman’s mouth. ‘We were married just yesterday.’ He fired, her head popping as she dropped to the floor. Next, the gun turned to the other Hitler and he too was shot. Hitler again dismissed Vadge and I slipped back into incoherence.

  * * *

  The next time I woke up I was lying flat out in complete darkness. I went to get up but could not move more than an inch or two. Struggling to bring my arms from my sides to my head, I felt around directly above me. I was sealed shut inside some kind of hard wooden coffin, my lungs suddenly reminding me that I had no oxygen in here. I gasped for air, suffocating. It felt as though I had no mouth whatsoever as I used up the last of my energy to pound on my tomb. Nobody came to let me out – there was no sound at all from the outside. I must have been buried deep underground, I could feel the crushing weight of earth on top of my chest. I relinquished all desire to struggle and just lay there as still as a corpse, waiting to become one. My death was surely not that far off; I would at first fall into unconsciousness and then pass away. But, it did not come. I went on in utter desperation for air as I suffocated and suffocated in my little box. I was starving too, from the cold and from lack of food. My mouth, dry and flaking, just sagged open as my lungs worked tirelessly in search of any morsel of oxygen. Maybe I was dead, and this was what non-existence was. It was certainly hell, something I could endure no longer. But no, it went on and on. Unable to do anything but feel the pain of suffocation and starvation, I knew not of how little or how long had passed in time – all I knew was that it seemed like an infinite passage. On and on, endless concealment.

  * * *

  Oxygen has a flavour, a taste, and it filled my scabbed mouth as it tried to work further down into my lungs. I cannot describe the sensation, or compare it to any other taste, yet I knew at once that I was breathing again. My eyelids, sealed shut with dryness, fought hard to fight off the pinkish glow they were now presented with after so long with only blackness to deal with. I felt something take hold of my hand.

  ‘Amazing,’ a withered old voice whispered. The first sound I had heard in forever. ‘You live.’ My hand was let go of and it dropped back to my side. ‘I apologise for wakening you from your rest, but I must guarantee my own immortality – my end nears.’ This was the last voice I’d heard and was now the first. Suddenly he sobbed uncontrollably. ‘I don’t want to be frozen like Hobble! I want to be reborn in a new body, just like you Peter.’ My eyes slowly opened of their own accord and I saw above me an emancipated old man. His hair, black but greying, and spiky stubble on his cheeks; he let a speck of dribble drop from his chapped lips onto my forehead. Moisture. I was desperate for moisture. I wanted to drow
n.

  ‘Hitler,’ was a word which found its way out of my mouth.

  ‘Open your mind to The Space,’ a voice encouraged – not Hitler’s, but my own. There I now stood, another me, next to the evil mass murderer above me. ‘Everything is nothing. No order, no lies. Deny your anchor, scape the goats.’ I couldn’t understand myself.

  ‘Now that the cat is out of the bag,’ a voice whispered in my mind. It was an altogether new voice, hitherto unheard by anyone ever. I knew this, and also knew who the voice belonged to. It was mine and it was everyone else’s too – the voice of the entire Great Collective rolled into one, the voice of all our hate, anger and resentment at what we had seen, done and had done to us. ‘You must reap what you have sown,’ the voice explained. I looked back at myself and Hitler above me.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Reaping is collecting, gathering – a collective of great vastness worthy of personal veneration. It is all you have left to gain, to achieve.’

  ‘Reaping what?’

  ‘Revenge, destruction. I am Reaping Icon and the crops are crying out for rain.’

  At once I realised the natural conclusion of The Space’s gift to humanity, of any gift to humanity – a reaping of ultimate evil. I knew exactly what The Space was – I’d always known. To block It was my only option.

  My strength renewed, I threw my being into myself above, leaving the drained shell in the coffin behind. I sealed my old self back in and thrashed Hitler to the floor.

  ‘I beg of you,’ he wept.

  ‘Oh boo hoo you bastard!’

  My hands found themselves around his neck and I squeezed as hard as I possibly could. His own hands were too weak, too feeble, to do anything but hang like a doll’s by his side and shake as my assault grew in ferocity. Soon his shaking stopped and his life left this awful place. I dropped him, straightening my back and looking down at what I had done. I felt rather worthless and cruel – and all the more human. Yet, it simply was not a true occurrence – he remained alive above me and I in my casket as a banging sounded in the distance. ‘They are rounding up my escaped subordinates.’ He paused, then laughed. ‘I died many years ago, just like you Peter Smith – that is the official story. They will never capture me.’ The banging intensified and yelling sounded in a foreign tongue. I could not make out their words, but anger and jubilance was definitely the tone. Hitler turned to look in the direction of the noise – laughing again, hysterically, cackling: ‘Mossad! I created Israel, gave the Jews a homeland. My legacy, eternal unrest!’

  ‘Lies!’ one of the voices shouted, this time in English. ‘Our journey home began long before you ever existed.’

  ‘I want to live again, forever, to witness with my own eyes what I have done,’ Hitler cried at me, ignoring their words.

  I smelt a gust of wind – delicious, stale wind – move across the room above me as shots fired all around and Hitler ducked out of view. A bullet passed through my own shoulder and my side as I summoned up the desire to feel it – it was not forthcoming. Almost at once I was slamming face-first onto the floor, tipped over and left like a beached jellyfish as more shots fired around and into me. Ahead of me I saw Hitler struggling as one end of a rope was tied around his neck whilst the other was thrown over a rafter above his head.

  ‘Ein reich,’ he yelled as the men around him jeered and drowned him out, ‘ein volk,’ he choked out as they hauled him into the air by his neck. His head swelled and his tongue shot out as his body hung there like a caught fish. He was dry, scaly and looked very sad to have had his end brought to him as his side-parting fell over his eyes. He could no longer comb it back.

  Now the men turned back to me, but before anything could occur another group burst in and bullets were exchanged. I was picked up and tossed around by the separate gangs as bullets and screams reigned supreme – a cacophony of wasp shrieks. Before I knew it I had a grey hessian sack thrust over my head and my hands bound tightly behind me as I was swiftly moved along and thrown into some kind of vehicle with the engine already running. Soon enough my captors and I were on the move.

  It was cold, icily so, and the thought of my senses returning at first gave rise to a euphoria within me before being replaced by utter terror. Where had I been, where was I being taken – and by whom? In a way I just didn’t care – I had spent an infinity suffocating in my own coffin only to be let loose and confined once more. Humans were the vilest of the lot, a trumped up beast bent on being an eternal tosser. My anger began to swell and I wriggled in contempt – this landed me an almighty blow to the head.

  * * *

  The sun woke me up. At least, it felt and looked like the sun. It had been such an age since I’d experienced it that I instantly doubted my self and my senses. I was lying in a huge bed with light brown sheets, almost cream, and could feel every single ache and pain brought down upon me. My head was splitting, my chest was crushing and my wrists were cut and sore. Nevertheless I could move, and move I did. I leapt out of the bed, only to come crashing down straight away. My legs were boney and weak, and I was completely naked. Looking around the room at the high yellow walls, I spotted a black chest of drawers near a door. Pulling myself up and struggling over to it, I opened the top drawer and found the underwear and shirt I needed to conceal my modesty. Once dressed I moved over to a wardrobe against another wall and found in it a single smart brown suit hanging up and a pair of brown shoes to match. I put them on and tried the handle of the door – open. I gently closed it again, staying in the room and walking over to the window. I could see nothing outside but a bright spotlight shining in. There seemed nothing beyond it, either nothing there or nothing worth looking at. I turned back to the door and approached it again, hesitant as to what further pains awaited me outside. At least in here I was alone and it was quiet and trouble-free. For now. Trouble was never far away.

  Opening the door wide, I looked out down a long yellow corridor with dozens of doors running along both walls. My options were seemingly limitless and I could not choose which to go through. I carried on walking, right to the end, and now faced the final door – the opposite one to that which I’d exited – turning to look down the long corridor I’d just come down. In a way it felt I’d come up it and not down, though I couldn’t decide either way and now chose to open the door I’d reached. It was locked. I waited a moment before knocking on it. Before long I heard a key turning and it opened. Facing me was a man wearing a mask of my face. He was identical in build to me, wearing the same suit.

  ‘Hello,’ he said in a foreign accent, outstretching his hand. Instinctively I shook it, and he pulled me into the room, locking the door behind us. The room was identical to the one I’d just come from and my host sat himself down on the bed. I stayed standing, restless, wondering where my life would lead me next. ‘You cannot know who I am, but I can help you get home.’

  ‘Home? I have no home,’ was my reply. I did not have a home, not one I could remember.

  ‘Back to your home country, to your family home. You have loved ones waiting for your return,’ he said encouragingly.

  ‘And why do you want to help me get back there?’ I questioned suspiciously, unable to fully engage with a mask of my face. The eyes were cut out so that he could see from behind it, but the holes were too small to allow me to actually see his eyes. I didn’t want to see them – suddenly I wanted what he offered me, a home and a family to return to. There was somebody, somewhere, waiting for me to come home. My cheeks felt moist, so I rubbed them. There were tears coming from my eyes. How strange. What a peculiar thing for me to do.

  ‘You have suffered enough at the hands of a monstrous man, you must retire to a life of home comforts and relaxation.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the human instinct be to keep me hidden here from the world? Hitler said the world thought he was dead long before he actually was; if that’s true, I know too much. I am better off dead.’

  ‘Trust me,’ the man laughed, ‘we have tried to kill you, but you simply
recover. You are the indestructible man. We fear you and your powers.’

  I narrowed my eyes, rubbing at my stiff neck. I could feel a scar just below my right ear and I followed its course across my neck with my fingers right up to my left ear. Nor had I died in my sealed tomb, where no oxygen could penetrate. I was surely immortal.

  ‘Who slit my throat?’ I growled at the man, suddenly feeling that anger was justified.

  ‘One of our men,’ he answered casually. ‘I put four bullets in the back of your head.’

  I charged at him, pulling him up off the bed. ‘By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll regret every single breath you’ve ever drawn into your sorry little lungs,’ I shouted as I threw him against the wardrobe. The force broke the doors and sent him inside it momentarily, before he came tumbling back out with a thud.

  ‘The fact you’ll finish is victory for me – an end, finitude,’ he said calmly back. The mask of my face had slipped off, revealing the very pale, haggard face of a man in his fifties who had obviously worked hard beyond his years. He looked resigned to whatever fate was forthcoming, and I now controlled that fate. I paused my assault, staring down as he looked back up and forced a smile. ‘They threatened to murder my wife and child, so I joined their cause. They murdered them anyway. I grew accustomed to the brutality, accepted the atrocities around me and became a part of them.’

  ‘You shot me.’

  ‘You were unconscious, an easy target. I didn’t know who you were, and I still don’t, but you survived. I have shot many people before, but you are the first to live. That has wakened me up to the crimes I have committed.’ His smile had vanished, and his face had turned ashen. ‘I was told it was in the name of my country, in the name of defeating our enemies. Here you are before me, a real person – you are a human being.’