~30 min read

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.
—Carl Jung 

It had been an exceptionally long day.

The night in Zurich felt hollow and stretched thin, like it might tear if I moved too quickly. I stood alone at a tram stop, wrapped tight in a coat and hat, my wheeled bag tilted against a cold metal pole. Not a single person in sight. No footsteps. No voices. Just the faint electric hum of the city at rest.

I debated whether to keep waiting or start walking, cut through the silence with something deliberate, something human.

The day itself had been a logistical mess. A planning error forced me into a ridiculous loop: a train from Zurich to Bologna, then a return flight, Bologna back to Zurich—just to preserve the rest of a chained booking. Airlines honor their precious “no-show policy”: miss one leg, and the rest collapse like a row of dominos, even across different carriers. So I made the trip. A pointless circle on the map.

Still, it wasn’t a total loss. The skies had been impossibly clear. From the plane, the Alps rose like something carved out of light, sharp, endless, unreal. For a moment, it had felt worth it.

Now, back on the ground, I exhaled slowly and leaned against the pole. The metal bit through my coat. I was exhausted, but wired at the same time, my mind buzzing with that strange, fragile energy that sometimes follows a long day. The kind that makes you feel like anything could happen.

The street stretched out in both directions, empty. Streetlamps cast hard white light over closed shops with brightly painted facades, their colors dulled under the artificial glow.

A car approached, slow and deliberate. I narrowed my eyes.

A Mercedes G-Class. Black, blacker than the night around it. The streetlights fractured across its angular surfaces, scattering sharp, metallic reflections.

That kind of vehicle usually comes with a type. Russian oligarchs. Dubai millionaires with no past and too much present. Or the sort of people who believe history peaked sometime around 1939.

I’d always jokingly called it “Hitler’s Jeep.” Boxy. Aggressive. Completely out of place in a world obsessed with smooth curves and aerodynamics. If someone had offered Hitler a company car, I was certain this would’ve been it, no hesitation.

Maybe it was the fatigue, thick and intoxicating like a cheap drink. Maybe it was my habit of being overly friendly when I travel. Either way, I raised a hand and waved at the driver.

Not a real wave. Not even close. More like a half-gesture, uncertain, awkward. The kind you make when someone across the street lifts a hand and you’re not sure if it’s meant for you, but you respond anyway out of reflex.

And then, the jeep stopped.

Oh.

I blinked. Missed a beat.

Had that been a full wave? A salute? Sieg heil?

The brake lights flared red. The engine idled, low, animal, like an overpriced watchdog straining at a leash. Pale exhaust drifted from twin side pipes, like a double-barreled gun, jutting from beneath the left flank.

A pause.

The driver’s door opened.

Oh, no.

Instinct took over. My eyes swept the street, angles, exits, distance. Empty. Good. I could run. I shifted back a step, dragging the bag in front of me, gripping the handle tight. Or I could stand my ground. Years of martial arts flickered awake in my muscles, old habits rising to the surface.

The man stepped out.

Tall. Broad. Square shoulders, square head, like he’d been assembled from blocks. Severe. Unmistakably German.

I tracked him carefully. Shoulders first, always the shoulders. They telegraph the hands. Then the hips, the pelvis doesn’t lie; it signals a kick, a lunge, a charge. Every movement mattered.

I smiled. Wide. Harmless.

My right hand tightened around the suitcase handle, ready to swing. My left curled into the collar of my coat, high, guarded, positioned to deflect or strike if it came to that.

A single thought hammered through me: I may have just signaled something very, very wrong.

He closed the distance and stopped in front of me. His boots pressed into the pavement with a dull, deliberate weight. He studied me. His breath came out in steady bursts, steam curling in the cold air.

Then, without a word, he thrust a leaflet toward me. It fluttered in the wind between us.

I took it automatically.

He muttered something in German. I caught fragments, nothing more, “important”… “I look forward”… “you must come.”

And just like that, he turned. Sharp. Efficient. Almost military. Back into Hitler’s jeep. The door slammed, the engine rose, and he vanished into the night.

Silence rushed back in.

I stood there like a snapped branch, dry and useless. I exhaled, shaking out my hands, my head, trying to reset. In my grip, a leaflet I never asked for. Like I’d just been recruited for something at a bus stop.

Slowly, I turned it toward the light.

Cheap, off-white paper. An eagle stamped across the front, badly drawn, like it had been cut out of a middle-school history project. Beneath it, aggressive, clumsy German text in the kind of font favored by people who’ve just discovered Microsoft Word.

I didn’t understand all the words. But I understood enough. It looked like an invitation.

Together with what the man had muttered, and the structure of the document itself, I understood.

I had just been invited to a neo-Nazi meeting. 

• • •

That night, at my friend’s apartment in Zurich, sleep didn’t come easily. When it did, it came wrong.

I dreamed of skinheads, tattoos, heavy boots, thick hands closing in. I ran, slipping through alleys that led nowhere, their laughter always just behind me.

I woke with a jolt, heart hammering.

For a moment, I didn’t understand where I was. Then it settled. The quiet apartment. The dark ceiling.

I’d already fallen asleep.

And my brain had gone straight to work. 

• • •

Morning arrived without asking permission.

By the time I dragged myself out of bed, the house was half-empty. The kids had been sent off to school, and Valeria had already left for work. I found myself at the kitchen table, blurred and heavy, staring at the leaflet laid out in front of me like it might bite.

Cheap off-white paper. The same crooked eagle. A cursed amulet.

Daniel stood across from me, sipping tea with honey. The kitchen smelled faintly of reheated fish, his lunch, apparently, lingering in the air in a way that made it impossible to ignore.

He drank in silence, wearing that familiar expression of European indifference, the kind cultivated in countries with excellent healthcare and no immediate threats.

“So,” he said finally, setting his cup down on the round table, “let me get this straight. You waved at a random car in the middle of the night… and now you think you were recruited by actual Nazis?”

I rubbed my temples, inhaling fish and disbelief. “I don’t think. I know. Look.” I slid the leaflet toward him. “What does it say?”

Daniel picked it up, glancing between the page and me. Then his eyebrows climbed.

“‘A New Dawn for the True Order’?” he read aloud. “Huh.”

I waited.

He shrugged. “Could be a yoga class.”

I shot to my feet and snatched the paper from his hand.

“Daniel, there’s an eagle on the front.”

Another shrug. He turned away, calmly sliding slices of bread into the toaster. It clicked loudly as he pushed the lever down.

“So what? The Swiss Air Force has eagles. The city is full of them, statues, flags.” He gestured vaguely toward the leaflet. “Maybe they just like birds of prey.”

I exhaled sharply. “I’m telling you I was invited to a neo-Nazi meeting, and your working theory is… local ornithology?”

The jar of honey on the table caught the light, gleaming.

“Make me a tea.”

Daniel popped the toast and dropped it onto a flat plate decorated with cartoon children. He unscrewed a jar of peanut butter, grabbed a knife, and came back to the table.

“Listen,” he said, spreading a thick layer with surgical calm. “This is Switzerland. We have strange groups, yes, but everyone is free to believe whatever nonsense they like. Do you know what counts as an extreme political argument here?” He glanced up. “The proper way to classify cheese.”

He set the plate down and sat. “They’re not dangerous. At worst, a few rich idiots chasing their own tails. Cosplaying villains from the 1940s.”

I wasn’t convinced. But his tone, flat, certain, took the edge off the fear. Maybe I hadn’t brushed up against anything real at that tram stop. Maybe it was just a handful of amateurs playing dress-up with history.

I didn’t know. And Daniel, the local, wasn’t going to give me more than that.

Maybe, if I was honest, I didn’t want certainty.

I made the tea and sat down, drowning it with a generous spoonful of fine alpine honey.

No. Enough. I should throw the leaflet away. Eat. Do my morning routine. Enjoy my last days in Zurich.

Instead, I sat there, arguing with myself in circles.

Daniel finished breakfast and left for work. The apartment settled into a soft, domestic quiet. I stretched out on the living room sofa, a scatter of children’s toys at my feet, and stared at the ceiling.

My mind wouldn’t stop.

Do I go?

Yes. It matters. I want to see who these people are. Maybe I actually stumbled onto something real, something dangerous. Maybe I report it. Walk into a police station, lay it all out. Do something useful. Save someone.

Maybe they even give me a free coffee. A piece of chocolate.

Nothing serious will happen. This is Switzerland. The last national crisis was probably a defective batch of Toblerone.

What’s the worst that could happen?

I’m leaving in two days. If anything feels wrong, I vanish. I evaporate. Back to my life, clean and intact. No consequences.

No consequences.

An hour later, I pushed myself up from the sofa, still wrapped in the warm, stale smell of Daniel’s toast.

Maybe food would quiet my head.

It didn’t.

I opened the refrigerator. Inside: an impressive lineup of cheeses. Rows of sauces in glass bottles. Jars of spreads and dips, one of them pale and lumpy, like something that had once been alive and wasn’t entirely done with the idea.

I stood there, staring, the leaflet still waiting somewhere behind me.

I made oatmeal with cinnamon, sliced an apple into it, and ate without much appetite, my eyes drifting again and again to the leaflet on the table.

Now I felt it, leah, that dull, dragging heaviness. The kind only very good chocolate has any hope of fixing. I was tired, slightly paranoid, and trying to digest both the oatmeal and the situation.

At some point, the decision settled into place.

Maybe it had been there all along. It just took me time to admit it.

I was going.

Of course I was going.

I’m a writer. I build imaginary mysteries for a living, pull threads that don’t exist and make them feel real. And now, something real had appeared, uninvited, in the middle of the night.

There was no way I was turning that down.

I set rules for myself. Simple ones. Instinct first. If anything felt wrong, even a flicker, even the faintest hint of danger, I’d get up and leave. Fast.

My return flight was in two days.

And, as Daniel had said, this is Switzerland. What could really happen here?

I thought about the manuscript sitting on my e-reader, waiting for proofreading. I’d written stories set in places like this, quiet, orderly, untouched on the surface. And underneath, something else entirely.

Now I was stepping into my own version of it.

I washed the dishes. Picked up the leaflet. And went.

• • •

The public transportation system carried me with quiet, clinical efficiency to within walking distance of the address.

As I walked, my imagination did what it always does.

A basement. Low ceiling. Dust hanging in the air. Wooden crates packed with cheaply printed propaganda. Maps pinned to the walls, targets, routes, flanked by Reich symbols and swastikas. Fluorescent lights flickering overhead. In the center, a cluster of shaved heads, tattoos creeping up their necks, speaking in low, conspiratorial voices.

I checked my pockets again.

Passport, ID, anything traceable, I’d left it all at Daniel’s apartment. No Israeli currency. Nothing unnecessary. Just local cash. A notebook. A pen.

And my weapon: My phone.

Every phone I buy gets wrapped in the same thing: an aggressive, industrial-grade protective case. The kind designed for construction workers, quarry crews, miners. Shockproof. Crush-resistant. Supposedly fireproof, though I’ve never been curious enough to test that claim.

What I do know is this: the case costs almost as much as the phone, and it turns the device into something else entirely. A blunt instrument.

In my hand, it could pass for a compact hammer. That, combined with years of martial arts training, gave me a quiet, practical confidence. If things turned violent, I wouldn’t be the easy target.

I found myself standing in front of a café that looked closed. Chairs were flipped upside down on small round tables outside, legs in the air.

I checked the time on my phone. My grip tightened around it, around the weapon.

I half expected a giant guard to materialize at the entrance, to pat me down, ask questions I couldn’t answer.

Nothing. Just a door.

I opened it and stepped inside.

A café. Ordinary. Clean. Quiet. That, somehow, was the first real red flag.

I’d expected something darker. A basement. A hidden bunker. At the very least, a folding table near the entrance stacked with aggressive pamphlets.

Nothing.

I stepped down into the main space and paused.

The room looked less like a meeting point and more like the common lounge of a forgotten nursing home. In the center stood a wide wooden table, and around it sat several elderly men, hunched over bowls of soup, eating slowly, carefully, like each movement had to be negotiated in advance.

These were not the men I’d imagined leading an extremist underground.

Beside each of them, spaced slightly back from the table, sat younger men. Attendants, maybe. Sons. Grandsons.

And then I saw him. The square head. The driver of Hitler’s jeep.

I drew in a slow breath. The smell hit me first. No gunpowder. No sweat. No cigars. Menthol, sharp and clean, like muscle ointment. Stale coffee. And something faintly medicinal, hovering underneath it all.

No one looked at me. Not yet. I stepped closer.

With the immediate sense of danger fading, curiosity pushed forward, sharper now. I’d expected hardened, fanatical neo-Nazis, cold eyes, rigid posture, violence barely contained.

Instead, I found collapse.

One man sat at the end of the table wearing an immaculate SS officer’s cap. On his body: a pink bathrobe. His feet twisted outward in orthopedic slippers. He looked like a war criminal who had taken a wrong turn out of a retirement ward.

Another wore a sleeveless Luftwaffe jacket, the eagle on his chest half-unraveled. Beneath it, soft pajama fabric printed with small yellow ducks. An IV line trailed into his arm, the fluid dripping with patient indifference. I forced myself to look away before I caught sight of the diaper peeking over the tabletop.

A third was wrapped entirely in a thick plaid blanket, motionless in his chair, swollen into the shape of it, more furniture than man. A human pouf.

This wasn’t what I’d come prepared for. Not even close.

On the far side of the table sat what was clearly the elder of the tribe. His back was straight as an arrow, his head pitched forward until it nearly touched the tabletop. Medals, at least ten, were pinned across his suit in no apparent order, no logic tying them together. From where I stood, I could make out a few Swiss Army decorations, something that looked suspiciously like a Scouts badge… and, unless my eyes were failing me, a McDonald’s “Employee of the Month” pin.

For God’s sake, I thought, I’ve walked into a Nazi nursing home.

I took a careful step back. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I said in smooth, neutral English, my accent clean, unplaceable. “I believe I may have come here by mistake.”

Silence. No reaction. Not even a glance.

I nodded to myself, satisfied. That should have been my exit. In hindsight, it was the perfect moment to turn around and leave.

I didn’t.

Out of sheer, pointless politeness, I repeated the sentence, louder this time, and in Yiddish.

That’s when it came. A sharp, squeaking cry from the side.

“Ha! He’s here! Heil Hitler! He’s here!”

I turned toward the voice.

A man, if that’s what he still was, sat there like a bundle of nerves and bones. Freckled face, thin beard, fluttering movements like an overexcited moth. His glasses were enormous, thick-bottomed lenses that swallowed his eyes completely.

Apparently, none of the others heard him. Their hearing aids either weren’t working or weren’t turned on. The younger men, caretakers, I realized now, glanced at me briefly, then returned to whatever quiet routines occupied them.

I stood there, trying to make sense of it.

The shock wasn’t fear anymore. It was something stranger. I had come prepared for a den of predators, violent, ideological, sharp-edged. Instead, I’d walked into a bingo club for the nearly forgotten.

The dissonance pinned me in place, speechless.

My gaze drifted across the table and landed on a framed photograph. Hitler. Mid-salute. But something was off.

The photo had been folded at some point, creased and wrinkled from being stuffed into a pocket or drawer. The damage cut across the image in just the wrong place, erasing his raised arm.

At a glance, it looked like it had been amputated.

All that remained was the suggestion of a hand, floating awkwardly in space, like it was reaching out, mid-gesture, about to offer someone an enthusiastic, misplaced high-five. 

• • •

The longer I looked at the photograph, the worse it became.

What I’d first taken for shadows turned into boils, dark, swollen dots climbing up the Führer’s uniform and crawling toward his face. Behind him, what should have been an eagle had decayed into something else entirely: wings warped, head oversized, more bat than bird, as if time itself had chewed on it and lost interest halfway through.

Another crease split the image at an angle, slicing through his face. One eye had slipped downward, dragged out of place and fused with the line of buttons on his coat.

I couldn’t hold it in.

Something snapped.

A laugh tore out of me, loud, sharp, uncontrollable. It hit the room like a dropped plate, shattering whatever fragile order held it together.

Heads jerked. Chairs scraped.

The old men stirred, gasping, as if my laughter had reached into their lungs and shaken them awake. One of them struggled to his feet, made it halfway upright, then collapsed forward. A younger man rushed to help, but the old man shoved him away with surprising force.

He stayed on his knees, trembling, hands lifted. “Behold!” he cried. “Behold and see! The One reveals His power to us!”

“Oh, no…” I muttered. The laughter caught in my throat for a second.

Another man managed to stand. He raised his arm slowly, aiming for a full, formal salute, but his joints betrayed him. A series of dry clicks and cracks echoed from his elbow and wrist. Arthritis, severe and unignorable. The arm froze halfway, suspended at an awkward angle.

He stood there, rigid, staring into nothing, like a pantomime actor leaning on an invisible railing.

A strangled wheeze escaped me. I clenched my jaw, fighting it. My face burned.

The man with the thick, bottle-bottom glasses, the one who had shouted earlier, clutched his chest, eyes wide with reverence. “It is!” he rasped in German, his voice trembling. “That laughter… It’s him!”

The half-saluting relic, Heinrich, someone must have called him that, wiped a tear from his eye with his free hand.

“The lost one,” he said, voice breaking. “He has returned to us.”

I felt it rising again. I turned my head sharply, refusing to meet their eyes—but that only made it worse. My gaze landed back on the photograph. Now I saw something new.

Someone had trimmed it to fit the frame. Cut it down carelessly. The proportions were wrong. Hitler’s boots no longer connected to his legs, they jutted straight out of his torso, as if he’d grown them from his stomach.

That was it.

My whole body started shaking. The laughter came back, stronger this time, louder, wilder, completely out of control.

I doubled over, roaring.

And the room, this absurd, decaying, delusional room, seemed to grow stranger with every passing second.

#

“The laughing leader…” whispered the one still kneeling on the floor. He pointed at me with trembling fingers. “A true master. Such confidence.”

He tried to push himself up, his thin hands rattling like a broken clock mechanism. For a second I thought they might snap under the effort. He gave up, collapsing back onto his knees. His face, flushed a violent red, tilted upward.

“He’s not afraid of us,” he breathed. “He’s mocking us. That is real power.”

“Afraid?” I managed, my voice breaking as another wave of laughter hit. I bent forward and slapped the table with my palm. “You’re not serious… you... you... this is killing me… this can’t be real…”

I tried to stop. I stood up straight, clenched my jaw, but it kept coming, rolling through me in uncontrollable bursts.

They watched. All of them. Panting slightly, as if my laughter required oxygen from the room.

I bit my lip, forced shallow breaths, tried to wrestle myself back into control.

The man with the thick lenses, Bottle Bottoms, sat with his hands folded neatly in his lap, his entire body trembling with excitement.

“Jean told us everything,” he said, pointing toward the jeep driver. “About your nightly walks through Zurich. Whispering ‘Heil Hitler’ into the wind. Spreading the victory of the eternal Reich. Searching… for your lost community.”

“Excuse me, what?” I blinked at him. “What are you talking about? I never...”

Was I actually being recruited? Interrogated? Would arguing with them even matter?

“Jean told us,” Bottle Bottoms repeated, unwavering. “He said you saw him. In the dark. Inside a moving car. And then, your salute.” His voice rose with reverence. “Full. Magnificent. Precise. According to the highest traditions.”

I turned sharply toward the driver.

He sat beside his grandfather, shoulders slightly hunched. He gave me a helpless shrug, lips pursed, as if to say, This is out of my hands. Then, almost apologetically, he made a small circling motion with his palm, go with it, just go with it.

I’ll deal with him later.

Around me, the old men had started whispering, their voices overlapping, rising, none of them really hearing the others.

I raised a hand. “Gentlemen,” I said, gathering every ounce of politeness I had left, “there’s been a misunderstanding. As I said, I wish you all a long life. Truly. Have a wonderful day.”

Silence.

It fell hard and heavy.

They stared at me, long enough for the air to thicken, for the absurdity to curdle into something almost oppressive.

I took a step back.

For a brief, irrational moment, I felt like a condemned man standing before a panel of judges.

Then the one in the SS officer’s cap leaned forward, eyes wide. “Oh mein Gott,” he whispered. “He speaks the holy language.”

The man who had been on his knees was now back in his chair with the help of a caregiver. A second later, his head tipped forward and dropped straight into his soup.

Liquid splashed across the table.

No one seemed surprised.

The human pouf, the one wrapped in the plaid blanket, spoke without moving, his head tilted at an unnatural angle. His voice creaked out of him, thin and uncanny.

“That is the secret idiom,” he said, “spoken only within the Führer’s inner circle. I am privileged, privileged, to witness, in my lifetime, the return of the lost prophet.” A pause. “I am as excited as I have ever been.”

That did it.

I broke again.

The contrast, his motionless, bundled body and that declaration of ecstatic devotion, was too much.

“Excuse me...” I choked out. “Sorry... I can’t...”

And then it clicked.

To their failing ears, my Yiddish didn’t sound foreign. It sounded… sacred. A lost dialect. Some inner-circle German, reserved for myth and memory.

It made a terrible kind of sense. Yiddish is, after all, built on German bones—layered with Hebrew, stitched with Slavic edges. To them, it wasn’t unfamiliar. It was revelation.

I scanned them one by one.

The SS cap. The Luftwaffe jacket. The blanket-bound pouf. The mismatched medals. The kneeling worshipper. Heinrich-Arthritis with his frozen salute. Bottle-bottom glasses gleaming.

Who had they been, fifty years ago? What had they done?

And what were they now?

A cluster of worn-out relics, clinging to a version of themselves that probably never existed the way they remembered it.

I let out a sharp breath. “You’re a bunch of crazy people.”

That set them off.

Laughter, if you could call it that, rippled around the table. Not natural. Not joyful. It came in jagged bursts, out of sync, like each of them was trying to imitate me without understanding how. Forced, strained, almost painful.

The former kneeler shook so violently in his chair that his breathing hitched and stalled. His caregiver quickly pressed an inhaler, round and plastic, egg-shaped, into his hand.

I watched them.

Really watched them.

Did they fight? Did they kill? Did they take part in something unforgivable? Where had they come from before ending up here, half-faded, half-delusional?

They laughed like they were coughing.

And somewhere along the way, my own laughter died completely.

Then the man with the medals started choking, deep, rattling coughs that set the decorations clinking wildly against his chest. The noise built, metallic and frantic, and his dentures flew out.

They skidded across the table, struck the frame of the warped Hitler photograph, and sent it toppling over.

The teeth slid to a stop right in front of me.

An inch from the edge. 

• • •

I stared at the dentures, stunned. My stomach flipped.

And then it broke out of me again, a loud, uneven laugh that made my cheeks ache. It spilled into the room, and they followed, a chorus of wheezing imitators, laughing not with me but after me, as if they were trying to pass some invisible loyalty test.

Medals pushed himself to his feet.

He shuffled toward the table with slow, deliberate steps, leaning on a cane topped with a silver eagle. Every movement set him jangling, metal against metal, a strange orchestra of clinks and rattles.

He reached me. I stepped aside to give him space.

With a trembling hand, he picked up the dentures and brought them to his mouth. It took a long, painful minute of adjustments, tilting, pressing, aligning, before he forced them into place. For a second, he seemed to choke on them. He coughed, spat them out, turned them over like a puzzled mechanic, and tried again. This time, they held.

He straightened, then turned to me, and, with theatrical flair, shrugged off his jacket. He flipped it open. Inside was a forest.

Pins. Medals. Ribbons. Layers upon layers of them, stitched into the lining in no discernible order, gold, bronze, plastic, enamel, glinting under the harsh light.

Now the noise made sense. He wore the rattling.

Around us, the laughter had burned out. The old men sat flushed and trembling, like survivors of some invisible battle their lungs had barely endured.

Without the jacket, Medals looked skeletal. Narrow shoulders, thin arms, a body that seemed held together more by habit than strength.

He tapped a random pin. “This,” he said, voice creaking with importance, “is for the Battle of ’45.”

I went still. Here it comes, I thought. The confession. “What battle?” I asked quietly.

A long pause. His jaw worked, teeth clicking softly as if searching for the right answer. “Chess tournament,” he said at last.

Without missing a beat, he pointed to a small golden star. “And this, for infiltration into enemy ranks.”

“How was the infiltration carried out?” I asked, still playing along, still half-expecting something real to surface.

Bottle Bottoms leaned forward eagerly, cutting in. “He... he... married a Polish!”

Medals nodded, solemn as a judge.

I leaned in, studying the collection more carefully now, trying to decode the mythology of his past.

The illusion didn’t hold.

One medal clearly belonged to a regional ski competition. Another was a “25 Years of Service” pin from a German postal office. A cheap plastic badge from a McDonald’s employee training program, dated 1982. And the golden star, I squinted, World’s Best Grandfather.

Medals seemed to swell with quiet pride as he slipped his jacket back on, the metal forest settling into place with a soft, constant clink. I watched him, a flicker of pity cutting through the absurdity. One foot in the grave, and still clinging to medals that told stories no one else could hear.

Daniel’s voice echoed in my head from that morning: They’re not dangerous. At worst, a few rich idiots chasing their own tails like 1940s villains.

Medals sat. The room reset.

“Now that you’ve finally come to us,” Bottle Bottoms said, fixing me with that magnified, watery stare, “it is time to set our grand plan in motion. A new world order.”

Through his thick lenses, his eyes flickered strangely, distorted, like something alive moving beneath glass.

I sat down.

If they had a plan, I wanted to hear it. Document it. Hand it over neatly to the authorities. End whatever this was before it had a chance to become something else.

Though looking around, was there really anything here that could become dangerous?

“What’s the plan?” I asked, cutting straight through the ceremony.

“The big plan!” Heinrich-Arthritis declared, his hands stiff in front of him as if gripping an invisible steering wheel.

“Ready for what?” I pressed.

“For the big plan, of course,” he repeated, voice cracking. For a moment, something lit behind his faded eyes.

Bottle Bottoms rubbed at the freckles on his forehead, agitated. “We are ready for you to lead us. To guide us toward all our goals… on the path to the grand plan.”

“Goals,” I said. “Good. Let’s start there. Forget the grand plan for a second, what are the goals?”

The man in the Luftwaffe jacket slammed his fist onto the table, then immediately winced, clutching his hand. “We will establish a secret training camp,” he announced, “on an abandoned mini-golf course.”

I blinked.

“Mini-golf teaches strategy! Precision! Power! Fear! And...” A violent hiccup cut him off. His head dropped forward, chin to chest, and a low snore escaped him.

“Precision… and patience,” Heinrich-Arthritis added, his fingers twitching open and closed like stiff crab claws.

“Precision and patience,” I echoed, biting down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing again. The man could barely move his own hands, and he was preaching fine motor control like a general.

Still, somewhere beneath the absurdity, a darker thought tried to take shape. A “training camp.” Young recruits. Discipline. Indoctrination. It only took a second for that thought to collapse.

The man in the SS officer’s cap tugged his pink robe tighter around himself and leaned forward, eyes shining. “We will become great mini-golf players,” he said reverently. “Just as the Führer enjoyed.”

I had a vague memory of an article, two British artists, a miniature golf installation. A tiny Hitler statue that snapped into a salute every time the ball dropped, shouting, ‘Nein! Nein! Nein!’

“Let’s just say… he might have enjoyed it,” Bottle Bottoms said, flashing a grin of half-gold, half-ruin.

“And then,” the man in the Luftwaffe jacket barked, fully awake now, energized by his own momentum, “we break into the Swiss government!”

I nodded slowly, as if this were escalating in a reasonable direction. “Good,” I said. “How do you break into the Swiss government?”

The SS cap, pink robe, ducks peeking through, leaned forward eagerly.

“We call all the ministries,” he explained, “and we shout in German: ‘Surrender! Surrender!’”

I stared at him. “Surrender to what?”

He spread his hands wide, eyes narrowing with vague authority. “We are still working on that detail.”

“Impressive,” I said. “Truly. Worth at least one more medal.”

“Oh! And the big speech at the bakery!” the former kneeler added, shifting in his chair so violently it looked like gravity might reclaim him at any moment.

I glanced around, waiting for someone, anyone, to anchor this in something resembling reality.

Heinrich-Arthritis cleared his throat, his hands still frozen mid-gesture. “Listen carefully. This is about loyalty. True loyalty.” His voice trembled with significance. “In 1973, the owner of that bakery refused to serve a Jewish man. Do you understand?”

Bottle Bottoms raised a hand in something resembling a salute. “Historic loyalty.”

I blinked. “The bakery has changed ownership at least ten times since then,” I said. “It’s not even the same place.”

“Irrelevant!” snapped the Luftwaffe jacket. “He is already on our list of the faithful. And there, you will deliver your speech. In front of everyone.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you!” Bottle Bottoms leaned forward, trembling with excitement. “You are the lost prophet. You awaken the message. The purpose. We will gather the believers, the waiting, the chosen, even the poisoned.”

“And then,” Heinrich-Arthritis clenched his fists, eyes flaring with sudden intensity, “we break into the Swiss government!”

Medals coughed sharply, the sound echoing like a hammer striking metal. “Calm down, Heinrich. We already covered that.”

“We did?” Heinrich-Arthritis blinked, disoriented.

“Yes,” Medals said patiently. “We explained the entire process.”

“The entire process?” Heinrich’s gaze darted around the table, searching for confirmation. Then he froze.

“Including the clone of Hitler?”

My breath caught. There it was.

Finally, something that sounded like the center of all this madness. For a split second, my mind snapped into focus. A hidden lab. Funding. Medical access. A fringe operation on the edge of something real, something dangerous.

Maybe this wasn’t just delusion. Maybe beneath the decay, there was an actual plan taking shape.

“Do you even have the technology for that?” I asked.

Switzerland wasn’t exactly known for restraint when it came to experimentation. For a fleeting second, I was still entertaining the possibility, however slim, that something real lurked beneath the nonsense.

The man in the SS cap coughed into his sleeve. “No,” he said. “And that will not stop us.”

“Do you have the personnel?”

Medals lifted a hand, the pins chiming softly. “No. And that will not stop us.”

I nodded once. “So how, exactly, are you planning to clone Hitler?”

Bottle Bottoms leaned in, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial rasp.

“We already have.”

That was the moment whatever remained of my expectation collapsed completely.

This wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t even a fantasy with structure. It was a pile of disconnected delusions, stitched together by nostalgia and decay. Not a dangerous underground cell, just a circle of fading men trying to resurrect something they barely understood anymore.

“Baby Hitler is already alive!” the former kneeler wheezed, jamming the inhaler into his mouth mid-declaration.

The Luftwaffe jacket leaned across the table and slid a photograph toward me, face down. He placed his palm over it, then slowly lifted it away, fixing me with an intense, almost ceremonial stare.

“This,” he said, “is our future. The Führer of the Fourth Reich.”

I picked up the photo and turned it over. For a split second, my brain refused to process it. Then it hit.

A miniature Schnauzer stared back at me, tiny, rigid, radiating disproportionate fury. Its fur formed a dark patch beneath its nose. A mustache. Of course.

The laugh detonated out of me before I could stop it. This Schnauzi looked like a pocket-sized dictator, angry at the world, probably barking at vacuum cleaners and losing.

“His full name,” Bottle Bottoms said with pride, “is Adolf der Kleine.”

He said it like he was introducing royalty.

“He is territorial. Aggressive. Barks at everyone. Shows deep contempt for uniforms.”

“Of course he does,” I muttered, still shaking.

“He can salute on command!” Medals added eagerly, pointing at the photo.

I didn’t need clarification. I could already picture it, the dog lifting a leg, and them seeing destiny.

I slid the photograph back onto the table. “Whose dog is it?” 

• • •

“Adolf der Kleine belongs to a neighbor,” the human pouf said, his voice drifting out from somewhere inside the blanket. “A Swiss woman, Brigitte. She has no idea we worship her dog as the reincarnation of Hitler. She brings him here to ‘cheer up the elderly.’ Meanwhile, we advance the plan.”

I took a slow breath and stood.

Chairs scraped. The old men stirred, trying to rise with me. Some managed a crooked version of a salute; others were defeated halfway up by their own bodies. I returned the gesture automatically, biting down hard on my lip to keep my composure from cracking again.

“Excellent,” I said. Something shifted. A spark. A stage light flicking on somewhere deep in my head.

This, this was an audience.

A room full of fragile bodies and burning delusions, armed with walking sticks and ghosts of importance. And me, standing in front of them, holding their full attention.

I placed one hand behind my back, straightened, and began to pace, slow, deliberate, theatrical. A composite of every dictator, every late-night host, every stand-up comedian I’d ever absorbed.

“Brothers,” I began, my voice dropping into something dark and resonant. “Meine Menschen… Tatlan… Schleiemzel…”

The words meant nothing. That wasn’t the point. They sounded right.

“Today,” I continued, building rhythm, “we are no longer a broken machine! We rise! Do you hear me? We rise, and we will live by a decree that Palten… Gicher!”

My energy surged. The caricature of a tyrant I’d kept tucked away, half observation, half mockery, stepped fully into the light. Sharp consonants. Sudden barks. Meaningless phrases delivered with absolute conviction.

I scanned them. They were locked on me. Eyes wide. Heads nodding. Breath quickening. Fists clenching. Even the human pouf had somehow made it onto his feet, swaying like a rolled carpet propped upright.

“This world is blind!” I roared, weaving Yiddish, German, and English into something aggressive and unrecognizable. “This world is deaf! It trembles, it hides, it refuses to see us!”

I slammed my fist into the air.

“But we,” I leaned forward, voice cutting low and sharp, “we will march! We will fight! Through every hole of the mini-golf course! Through every plate of frozen soup!”

A beat.

I realized, dimly, how natural this felt.

All my writing, every book, every character, carried this undercurrent. Humor in pressure. Absurdity in danger. No one ever took themselves completely seriously.

Apparently, neither did I.

And now I had a captive audience that couldn’t tell the difference. I drew in a deep, trembling breath, as if the weight of history itself pressed against my chest.

“Are you ready?” I shouted. My voice shifted, part dictator, part deli owner hyping a fresh pastrami. “Are you ready?”

I leaned in, eyes blazing. “Are you ready for a new dawn?”

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then the room detonated.

The old men erupted. Cheers, fractured salutes, bodies folding and unfolding in uneven bows. Their voices collided, high and thin and ecstatic:

“A new dawn for the true order! A new dawn for the true order!”

It echoed through the café like something dragged out of another century.

The former kneeler tipped backward and froze mid-fall, limbs locked as if he were about to launch into a dive that would never happen. Heinrich-Arthritis shook so violently his cane hammered a steady rhythm into the floor. Medals began to cry, then sing, an old German folk tune that dissolved after a line and a half into humming, creaking, and the soft chime of metal against metal.

Bottle Bottoms approached me and bowed his head. “I am overwhelmed by your strength,” he said, voice trembling with reverence. “To lead us so completely, from the very first moment…”

For a brief, dangerous second, the absurdity tipped into something else.

Power.

Ridiculous, theatrical, completely unearned, and still, it flickered.

I imagined it. A country. Here. Now. Then sanity snapped back into place.

I turned sharply. “Take me to my hotel,” I ordered. “Now.”

• • •

In the passenger seat of Hitler’s jeep, a black Mercedes G-Class, I felt exactly how I’d expected to feel: Like I was riding inside a very expensive war crime.

Everything was black. Polished. Severe. The leather seats were stiff, almost disciplinary, as if comfort itself had been deemed suspicious during the design process.

Outside, Zurich slid past the windows like a catalog spread, clean, ordered, quietly alive. A perfect counterpoint to the chaos I’d just left behind.

I leaned back, drained. Wired. Still trying to process it.

Jean, the driver, hadn’t said a word the entire time in the café.

Now he exhaled sharply and shook his head.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, one hand loose on the wheel, his tone at odds with the grin breaking across his face. A second later, he laughed, real laughter this time. Unforced. Clean.

“What the hell just happened back there?” I asked. My breath still hadn’t fully settled.

Jean wiped at his eyes.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know. I really don’t.” He glanced at me, still smiling. “But I think… I think you saved them.”

I blinked, the words not quite landing.

My gaze drifted across the dashboard, buttons, switches, glossy surfaces that looked like they controlled things no civilian should be trusted with. A small command center on wheels.

“Saved them?” I repeated.

Jean’s expression settled into something serious as he rolled to a stop at a red light. The engine idled beneath us, low and restless.

“Listen,” he said, stretching his shoulders. “My grandfather, the one with the medals.”

“Oh,” I said quickly. “Very… impressive man.” The words came out too fast. A flicker of guilt followed. Had I crossed a line back there? Was this the part where I got thrown out of the car, or worse?

“He’s barely alive,” Jean continued, ignoring my tone. “Until recently, he just sat at home watching war documentaries. In pain. Waiting to die.” He kept his eyes on the light. “The doctors told us, if we didn’t keep his mind active, engaged… he had months. Maybe a year.”

I frowned. “So your solution was… what? Turn him into a Nazi again?”

Jean shook his head. “No. I didn’t turn him into anything. Those ideas were always there. Let’s call them… dormant.” He exhaled. “The only time he comes alive is when he feels part of something bigger. Something that matters. Something where he’s… useful.”

The light shifted. The jeep moved forward again, smooth and controlled, never breaking the city’s strict, almost ceremonial pace.

Jean hooked a thumb over his shoulder, back toward the café we’d left behind.

“It’s the same with all of them. The moment they’re ‘back in the campaign,’ something switches on. They move. They think. They remember.” He glanced at me. “Before you showed up, Heinrich hadn’t spoken in almost a week. We were already preparing ourselves. Now? He’s ready to storm a bakery.”

My stomach tightened. What exactly had I just fueled?

I turned toward him. “So you’re telling me the only thing keeping them from… fading out completely… is pretending they’re running some kind of Nazi underground?”

“Yes,” Jean said simply. Then, with a small, almost relieved smile: “Exactly.”

He tapped the steering wheel lightly.

“It keeps their brains firing. People need friction. Challenge. Without it, they shut down.” He shrugged. “Look at retirees. Full of life one day, then suddenly nothing, just a couch, a routine, and a slow collapse. Mental, physical, social. Everything.”

He paused. “This gives them structure. Purpose. Even if it’s… completely detached from reality.”

The city slid by outside, calm and indifferent.

“It’s ridiculous,” he added. “But it works.”

I sank deeper into the seat. It adjusted beneath me with a soft, mechanical hum, as if it had been waiting for my surrender.

He was right.

Neuroplasticity. I’d read enough, written enough, to recognize it when I saw it. The brain needs friction, challenge, even artificial, to stay alive. Just like the body needs strain to remain strong. Without resistance, everything softens. Slows. Shuts down.

This… absurd underground theater they’d built for themselves, it gave them structure. Meetings. Arguments. Petty conflicts over meaningless details. And inside all that nonsense, movement. Life. It made a disturbing kind of sense.

And I had just… stepped into it. Amplified it. Given it a voice.

I’d entertained hospital patients before, gladly, willingly. But this? These?

I swallowed. “Are you saying,” I murmured, “that by becoming their… fake Supreme Leader, I actually extended their lives?”

Jean nodded once. “Sounds like you understand.”

I drew in a slow breath. The jeep felt indestructible, like it could drive through concrete, through barbed wire, through history itself without slowing.

Too much. I had just helped a group of delusional, fascist old men stay alive longer. Worse, I had given them purpose.

Worse than that, they now had me.

The slow pace of the drive matched the way my thoughts were settling, reluctantly, into place.

At the next red light, Jean turned to me. No irony. No distance. Just sincerity. “Listen,” he said. “I know it’s strange. Maybe even insane. But… thank you. Really. They haven’t been this alive in years.”

I gave a small shrug. “I yelled nonsense at them.”

“And it worked,” he said. “Words aren’t always about meaning.”

He let out a short breath. “It started as a joke. I was just trying to keep my grandfather entertained. Something to hold onto. But now,” he glanced at me, a hint of something like relief in his eyes, “now they have a mission. Something that makes them feel alive.”

I looked out the window. Zurich passed by, calm and precise, as if none of this existed within it. And here I was, sitting inside a rolling monument to severity, caught in a joke so dark it felt historical.

Jean extended his hand toward me, bracing his elbow on the thick leather console between us.

I stared at it.

For a second, I seriously considered opening the door and rolling out onto the street.

Instead, I sighed, took his hand, and shook it.

“That,” I said quietly, “is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

The jeep pulled up in front of a hotel, the fake address I’d given him at the start. I stretched, pressing back into the seat one last time. It supported me too well, firm, exact, almost corrective. I didn’t like it. Not even a little.

I stepped out as soon as we stopped.

If I stayed in that vehicle any longer, I had a feeling I’d start developing strong opinions about infrastructure, discipline, and the moral necessity of punctuality.

I gave Jean a ridiculous little salute and stepped out of the jeep.

Just before I shut the door, he called after me. “When are you coming back to Switzerland?”

I paused, hand resting on the cold black metal. I could’ve brushed it off. Said never. Said this had been a one-time detour into madness. But the truth was already there, waiting.

I sighed. “A few months. Probably.”

Jean smiled, satisfied. “Good. The guys will want an update on your… secret mission.”

I exhaled, shut the door, and walked away.

• • •

A week later, a message lit up my phone. Unknown Swiss number.

I assumed it was a friend, someone who’d switched phones, forgotten to save contacts.

I opened it.

Mein Führer
The siege of the bakery has been postponed.
Heinrich has fallen down the stairs and is currently bedridden.
Awaiting further instructions.
New Dawn

I flipped the phone face down and pushed it across the desk, like it might infect something if I kept it too close.

Then I sat there. Exhaled. Shook my head slowly from side to side. A long, quiet moment passed. I reached out and picked it up again.

Because, of course, I was going back.