The Man Who Wasn’t There

This is the part they don’t teach you in history class.

Berlin, 1945. The bombs fall like fists on a drumbeat. The Russians are closing in. Everyone knows how the story ends: the madman in the bunker, alone, a pistol in one hand, a cyanide capsule in the other. History likes its villains dead and tidy, packaged up with neat little endings, like canned meat labeled Do Not Open.

Except here’s the thing: that’s not how it happened.

Imagine a dark room. A table. A single lamp buzzing overhead, casting hard shadows. A glass of water sits untouched. The air is stale, the walls covered in peeling maps of territories lost. And across from the Führer—eyes sunken, mustache trembling—there’s a man in a black suit, face hidden beneath the brim of a fedora.

The man leans forward. Grins.

“Are you ready to leave, Herr Hitler?”

The Führer’s hand twitches. Sweat trickles down his neck, his temples. His knees are weak, rubber bands about to snap. The whole Reich collapsing around him, turning to dust. All his power, everything he built, crumbling like a sandcastle swallowed by the tide.

“Leave?” His voice is a rasp. “There’s nowhere left.”

The man in the suit shakes his head slowly, almost pitying.

“Not in this world, perhaps.”

Hitler blinks, throat working. The air’s thick with the scent of smoke and gunpowder, a burning city overhead. “What… what do you mean?”

A pause. The man’s smile is a knife-edge, gleaming. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small, polished object—a silver sphere, no bigger than a marble. Sets it on the table between them. It hums softly, the metal skin rippling, like water.

“I’m offering you a way out. A new beginning. A chance to escape. But it comes with a price.”

The Führer’s gaze is locked on the sphere, hypnotized. It hums louder, the air around it shimmering, bending like a mirage. He licks his lips. His hands twitch.

“What price?”

The man’s grin widens.

“Anonymity.”

And here, the scene changes. There’s a flicker. Like a film reel skipping, images blurring. One second, the Führer is in that suffocating room, the walls shaking, the world coming apart at the seams.

The next, he’s standing in a place that feels like a dream that’s been gutted and stitched back together with wire. The air smells like burnt cinnamon, sharp and chemical, with an undercurrent of ozone. A sky that isn’t a sky stretches overhead—metallic, bruised, rippling like a sheet of molten lead.

Beneath his boots, the ground crunches. Glass, maybe. Or bones. He doesn’t look down. Doesn’t want to. Around him, shapes shift and skitter at the edges of vision, things that might be trees or towers or teeth. Nothing is solid here. Nothing makes sense.

The man in the black suit stands a few paces ahead, his silhouette cutting sharp against the warped horizon. The silver sphere is gone. His hands are empty.

The Führer’s knees almost give out. The rubber bands have snapped. He grabs at his throat, his chest heaving, his breath scraping in and out like sandpaper. “Where… what is this?”

“Call it a liminal space,” the man says, voice casual, almost amused. “The in-between. The pause between heartbeats. The breath before the fall.”

The Führer’s eyes dart around, wild, trying to piece together this shredded reality. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. His skin feels like it doesn’t fit. “You said escape. You said a new beginning.”

“And this is a beginning,” the man replies, turning to face him. The grin is still there, but now it’s a shadow with teeth. “But first, you have to leave behind everything you were. Strip yourself bare. Shed your skin.”

“I don’t understand.” The Führer’s voice cracks, small and hollow.

“You will.” The man gestures, a slow sweep of his arm. “Look around. Take it in. This is where the past dies. Where names dissolve like salt in water. Where you become nothing, so you can become anything.”

The Führer stares, his hands trembling. He feels the weight of his medals, his uniform, his history pressing down on him like lead chains. And suddenly, he understands. The cost. The price of the escape.

He clutches at his chest, the ribbons and iron crosses pinned there, and for the first time in his life, he feels small. Insignificant.

“I… I can’t,” he whispers.

“You can,” the man says, his voice steel wrapped in velvet. “You must. Or you can stay here, suspended forever, caught between the scream and the silence.”

The Führer’s fingers curl around the iron cross at his neck. It’s cold, heavy. A relic of a life that’s already crumbled into ash. His hand shakes as he pulls it free, the chain snapping. The medal drops to the ground, vanishing before it hits the surface.

And then another medal. And another. Each one ripped away, each one lighter than the last. Until he’s standing there, stripped of symbols, his uniform unraveling thread by thread, falling away like dead leaves.

When it’s over, he’s naked. Just a man. No banners, no Reich, no history. Just bare skin and bones, shivering in the not-quite-air.

The man in the suit steps closer. He holds out a hand, his grin gone now, replaced by something unreadable. “Good. Now, you’re ready.”

“For what?” The Führer’s voice is barely a breath.

The man doesn’t answer. Instead, he steps aside, and the horizon splits open like a wound, light spilling out, too bright, too sharp. It’s not white but every color all at once, kaleidoscopic, fracturing. The shapes at the edges of vision move closer now, circling, watching.

“For the next chapter,” the man says finally, and his words are a command, a verdict, a promise.

The Führer hesitates, his feet frozen, the abyss yawning in front of him. He feels the pull, the inevitability, the weightless vertigo of stepping off a ledge.

And then he moves forward, because there’s no going back.