The Man Without a Shadow

Sometimes I catch myself reminiscing about impossible and improbable things, as if they really happened. The more I think, the more tired I get, until I just go outside and smoke. Even smoking isn’t a pleasure anymore—it’s a habit, a need to pull that hot smoke into my lungs, deep, deeper, as far as I can. There’s a moment of relief, but it never lasts. This stupid brain of mine keeps racing, left, right, up, down, sideways, anywhere.

I wonder what would happen if it weren’t locked inside this cranial box we call a skull. My good friend from Dayton says I should start smoking pot more often. That ought to slow you down, he says. And if you can’t pass a drug test for some dead-end job, who cares? You’re too good for them anyway. Then he adds, Actually, when I think of you in regular terms—you’re not employable in this country.

No shit, I said.

Then there’s that woman. She used to haunt me in real life; now she inhabits my micro-space, tossing little poisoned darts. At first, I felt nothing. But I feel it now. I wish she didn’t exist—at least not in human form. She doesn’t deserve that. She’s like a virus with twelve DNA strands, all of them lethal.

Was she special? She was, once. But then everything slowly slipped into madness. She entered a maze unguarded by sobriety and common sense—and she lost her way.

One by one, the lights passed by, slowly, lazily, indifferent to us. If I knew what to do, I’d do it. But I don’t. I’m in the dark, or maybe I just prefer to pretend I am.

If I start a story with the line “Some people…” you might think I’m about to start bitching about them. You’d be partly right. But most of the time, I’m trying to make a comparison. What if I were in their shoes? What if they were in mine?

Comparisons become self-evaluations. I hate that. I’m always afraid of the conclusions I might draw from all these failures my nerves have endured. Having too many advantages can be debilitating—out of too many choices, you choose nothing. Instead, you sit there waiting for providence, even though moving your ass an inch or two could produce significant results.

Inertia.

So here I am, wandering the plains aimlessly. Occasionally, I see light, a distant flicker, but keeping track of all the flickers we see can be boring. We’d rather do nothing, and wait.

Yesterday, I lost my shadow. No, really. You think I’m joking. But wait, listen, there’s more.

I was standing in front of a huge brick wall. The sun was somewhere southwest, and I expected to see my shadow stretching long across the bricks. But nothing happened.

How did I find the wall? That’s not important. I guess while wandering the plains aimlessly, I stumbled upon it. Anyway, I stood there. It was bright, but no shadow. I moved left and right. I touched the wall. Still nothing. The sun was setting, southwest from where I stood.

Then the call finally came in. It was him; the biggest and baddest boss of them all. He sounded so official, as if his own greatness weighed him down.

Here’s how it goes: if the Government says “sit,” you actually lie down. But don’t play dead—being overly submissive can help your career. For some faces, though, it’s way too late, even if they got down on their knees.

Really—what’s all this talk about Government and the Culture of Fear? What can they do to me that others haven’t already done? Hold me accountable? Kill me? No, I don’t think so. They wouldn’t waste any more time on me than I would on them.

This is how it works: some totally unknown people, total strangers, are deciding your destiny, and you don’t even know it. Would it help if you did? I don’t think so.

Another cigarette. I’m restless. Maybe another beer. Or a joint. Or something stronger—whiskey, vodka. Yes, vodka. It doesn’t burn your throat when you swallow it, but it works fast. It numbs you. Sometimes it even takes the pain away. I’ve tried painkillers and beer, painkillers and whiskey—but I dare not mix them with vodka.

And so the days go by, waiting, anticipating, yet nothing on the horizon. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth the trouble. But now it’s too late to back out. Gotta go to the end. If the final destination is what I’m waiting for, then I have nothing to lose, but nothing to gain either.

The woman. The woman who attracts and delivers misfortune. She strikes again. Why do I have to deal with it all over again, even though I’m miles and centuries away?

It rained all night. This time, instead of being soothing, the sound of raindrops was utterly annoying. I couldn’t sleep. Occasional lights from passing cars cast eerie shadows on the wooden walls. Once again, I was slipping into despair.

I had no idea how to control it, let alone avoid it. The reasons escaped me, and after a few minutes, I’d feel okay again. The dreams escaped me too.

Drifting between the real world and the dream world, strange scenes would appear. Sometimes I could hang onto them, but sometimes they’d literally fade away, and no effort on my part could hold them in my head. They just faded away, like they never existed.

We’re standing on a huge plateau, it looks like a big parking lot. There’s a long, rectangular building on my right. The Man is next to me. He’s wearing glasses. He says nothing.

Shifting into the present tense, we walk toward the highway. More people come. One of them is my relative—a close one. The rain again. There’s a pattern to it. You take a wide street, and every two miles there’s a turn toward the highway.

The rain.

The Whisper in Munich

 An imagined meeting, Germany, 1922 — where the dying hand of revolution brushes against the face of something darker.

Scene:
A narrow apartment in Munich, November 1922. The city trembles under hunger and humiliation. Rain leaks through the cracks of a roof that once sheltered philosophy students. A dim lamp burns on a table littered with newspapers — Pravda, Völkischer Beobachter, and the residue of failed empires.

A knock. Then another.

Lenin, thinner now, wrapped in a black overcoat, sits with trembling hands. His translator — a quiet Russian émigré — ushers in a gaunt man in a threadbare brown uniform. His eyes are fierce, feverish. His boots are still muddy from the street.

Translator: (nervous) Herr Lenin… this is Herr—

Lenin: I know who he is. Leave us.

(The translator withdraws. Silence. Rain hisses on the window.)

Hitler: You are not easy to find. I expected you to be surrounded by guards, comrades, priests of your Revolution.

Lenin: Guards are for men who fear the world. I fear only time. Sit.

Hitler: I did not come to sit. I came to listen. And to speak, perhaps.

Lenin: Then speak.

(Hitler removes his cap, revealing slicked hair. His voice is rigid, rehearsed.)

Hitler: Germany is drowning. The old order has collapsed, and what came after is worse — weakness, shame, decay. You tore down the Tsar. I wish to tear down the parasites that bled us white in Versailles. But the people — they are soft. They still believe in pity.

Lenin: You mistake pity for exhaustion. When men are starved long enough, they will follow anyone who promises to make them strong again.

Hitler: Then we are alike.

Lenin: (smiles faintly) Are we? You want strength. I want structure. You shout of blood and soil. I speak of workers and class.

Hitler: Words. The crowd listens only to fire. Not theory.

Lenin: And yet theory commands the fire. Without an idea, flame devours itself.

Hitler: (steps closer) I saw the trenches burn for four years. There was no theory — only hunger, rats, and order through hatred. That is the only truth men obey.

Lenin: Hatred is a poor architect. It builds fast, collapses faster.

Hitler: Then what of you? Russia burned, millions dead. You called it necessary.

(Lenin studies him, unmoving.)

Lenin: It was. A surgeon does not apologize for cutting.

Hitler: And I — I will cut deeper.

(A pause. The air thickens. Lenin’s hands twitch as he lifts his teacup, the liquid trembling.)

Lenin: You think you’re a surgeon. You are a fever.

Hitler: Better a fever than decay.

Lenin: You will kill the patient.

Hitler: The patient is already dead. I will make something new from the bones.

(Thunder outside. The lamp flickers.)

Lenin: You speak of creation through destruction — but you have no blueprint. Only rage.

Hitler: Rage is the blueprint. Rage unites. Rage purifies.

Lenin: (softly) You are dangerous.

Hitler: So were you.

Lenin: I wanted to liberate men from superstition and servitude. You want to chain them to bloodlines and ghosts.

Hitler: Men crave ghosts. They kneel more easily before myth than before logic. You should have learned that.

(Lenin stares at him — the face of the future, raw and malignant.)

Lenin: Perhaps I did. Perhaps that is why I am dying.

Hitler: Then your Revolution dies with you.

Lenin: No. It has already outlived me. But yours— (he leans forward) —yours will devour itself.

Hitler: (smiles) Every beast eats, Comrade. Some must.

(Lenin’s coughing fit interrupts — dry, violent, wracking. Hitler does not move to help. When Lenin speaks again, his voice is almost a whisper.)

Lenin: You think you will command the storm. You will only feed it.

Hitler: History feeds on the weak.

Lenin: And yet it ends them both — the weak and the strong.

(A long silence. Only rain and the ticking of Lenin’s pocket watch.)

Lenin: You will not win.

Hitler: You already lost.

Lenin: Then we are brothers after all.

(Hitler flinches — offended, uncertain.)

Hitler: I am no one’s brother.

Lenin: Every tyrant thinks that, until the mirror cracks.

(Lenin stands, slowly. His face pale as chalk. He extends his hand — not in peace, but in judgment.)

Lenin: You will burn the world to find yourself. And you will still be empty.

Hitler: And you will rot in your ideals. The grave is the only equality you gave them.

(They stand inches apart. The light hums. For a moment, the rain outside sounds like distant marching boots.)

Lenin: History will remember me as a man who believed.

Hitler: And me as a man who made belief.

(Lenin’s hand drops. He turns away, murmuring something in Russian — too faint to catch. Hitler lingers, his eyes fixed on the trembling lamp flame, fascinated as it gutters and dies.)

Narrator (later voice, cold and omniscient):
No one recorded the meeting. No record exists. Only whispers in émigré cafés, an overheard phrase: “A German came to learn from the dying man.”
Months later, Lenin was struck mute by his final stroke. The German began shouting to crowds of the same silence.

History, indifferent, took notes.

The Meeting at Kuntsevo Dacha

 A Fictional Dialogue Between George Orwell and Joseph Stalin

Modesty is a luxury of the powerless, and paranoia is the refuge of tyrants.

 Moscow, 1944.

Outside, the snow falls like ash. Inside, the room smells of tobacco and power. A single lamp burns over the map of Europe. A knock on the door.

STALIN: Come in, Mr. Blair. Or should I say—Orwell?

ORWELL: (steps in, his coat dusted with snow) The name hardly matters. I came to see the man behind the myth.

STALIN: Myth? You Englishmen love that word. You dress politics in metaphors, as if tyranny were a style of writing.

ORWELL: And you, Marshal, make metaphors into prisons.

STALIN: (smiles faintly) You are bold. For a journalist.

ORWELL: For a writer, truth is oxygen. For a dictator, it’s poison. I suppose we both need it to live—one to breathe, the other to choke.

STALIN: Truth? You think you own it? The truth is what keeps armies marching. The truth is what I say it is—today one truth, tomorrow another.

ORWELL: You’ve turned truth into rations. Only those loyal to you get to eat.

STALIN: And yet, you came here. England needs me, comrade writer. Without Russia, Hitler’s boot would already be in London.

ORWELL: I came because I fought in Spain. I saw what your agents did there—the purges, the denunciations. You strangled a revolution in its crib, all to keep your myth intact.

STALIN: (coldly) Spain was a rehearsal. You saw actors die; I saw history written in advance.

ORWELL: History written with lies.

STALIN: (lights a pipe) Lies? Lies are simply the raw material of politics. You of all people should know that. Didn’t your own Ministry of Information censor news from the front? Didn’t your Churchill shake my hand?

ORWELL: Churchill didn’t starve his own peasants.

STALIN: No, he starved India instead.

A silence. Orwell stares at him. The snow beats harder against the window.

ORWELL: You justify everything, don’t you? Every corpse is a comma in your grand narrative.

STALIN: And you, Mr. Orwell, justify your despair. You turn hopelessness into literature. “Animal Farm”—that’s what you’re writing, isn’t it? A fairy tale for the disillusioned.

ORWELL: A mirror for men like you.

STALIN: Then polish it well. Make sure the pig looks convincing. (laughs) You think you’re exposing me, but your readers will forget. They always do. Give them bread, a parade, a villain to hate and they’ll cheer for anyone. Even you.

ORWELL: That’s the tragedy, isn’t it? That the masses want their own chains, as long as they glitter.

STALIN: They want order. Bread. Security. I give them that. You give them metaphors.

ORWELL: Bread without freedom is dust.

STALIN: Freedom without bread is chaos. You English intellectuals talk about liberty from your armchairs, sipping tea while your empire burns villages.

ORWELL: I’ve seen those villages. I’m not proud of empire. But you replaced the Tsar with a new one in uniform.

STALIN: The people wanted a father. I gave them one.

ORWELL: A father who devours his children.

STALIN: (shrugs) Better that than let them devour each other. You think democracy would have saved Russia? You would have another France—one endless argument.

ORWELL: Better arguments than executions.

STALIN: Words don’t rebuild factories. They don’t defeat Hitler.

ORWELL: But they outlive him.

(A pause. Stalin studies him closely.)

STALIN: Tell me, Mr. Orwell, why do you hate what you secretly admire?

ORWELL: Admire?

STALIN: My power. My certainty. You write about it with disgust, but your sentences are hungry for authority. Every writer wants to be God. You just lack the courage to admit it.

ORWELL: (quietly) The difference is that I know I’m not.

STALIN: Modesty is a luxury of the powerless.

ORWELL: And paranoia is the refuge of tyrants.

STALIN: (leans back, amused) You think I’m afraid?

ORWELL: You never stop being afraid. That’s why you listen to every whisper, why your guards vanish every year. Fear is the only thing that still believes in you.

STALIN: And yet, fear keeps order. Your England will learn that soon enough. When the bombs fall, they will beg for a leader who promises control.

ORWELL: Perhaps. But control is a drug—it dulls the pain of thinking. You’ve turned your people into patients.

STALIN: And you would rather see them die free in the gutters?

ORWELL: I’d rather see them live as men, not as instruments.

STALIN: Men are instruments. History plays them as it wishes. I am only the conductor.

ORWELL: No, you’re the noise drowning out the music.

The silence that follows is heavy, electric. The clock ticks. Somewhere in the dacha, a guard coughs.

STALIN: You think history will condemn me. But history is written by those who survive.

ORWELL: And rewritten by those who remember.

STALIN: Memory fades. Paper burns.

ORWELL: So does tyranny.

A long pause. Stalin exhales a thin stream of smoke, his expression unreadable

STALIN: You should be careful, Mr. Orwell. Writers disappear, too.

ORWELL: Only when the world stops reading.

STALIN: The world reads what it’s told.

ORWELL: Not forever. Every lie decays.

STALIN: Perhaps. But by then, there will be new lies, new rulers, new writers. You think you’re exposing me, but you’re only describing the cycle. Man worships power, always has.

ORWELL: Then my duty is to remind him.

STALIN: Remind him of what?

ORWELL: Of how language can rot, of how words can be made to mean their opposite, of how freedom dies to applause.

STALIN: (chuckles) Then you are my best propagandist. You keep the myth alive by fighting it.

ORWELL: If that’s true, then you’ve already lost. Because once a myth is named, it begins to crack.

STALIN: (rises, walking to the window) Look outside. The snow covers everything—the dead, the tracks, the blood. It makes the world pure again.

ORWELL: Until spring.

STALIN: Spring never comes here. Only thaw, then more frost. That is Russia.

ORWELL: Then I’ll write about that frost.

STALIN: And your readers will sip their tea and say, “How terrible,” and then forget.

ORWELL: Maybe. But one reader won’t forget. One will see what’s coming. That’s enough.

STALIN: (turns, smiling thinly) You think one man can change history?

ORWELL: No. But one sentence can.

(Stalin studies him for a moment, then gestures to the door.)

STALIN: You may go, comrade writer. Be grateful you leave walking.

ORWELL: (heading for the door) I am. That’s what separates us; you walk surrounded by ghosts. I walk among the living.

STALIN: For now.

ORWELL: For always.

He opens the door. The snow rushes in like a breath of silence. Orwell steps into it, leaving footprints that fade almost instantly

STALIN (to himself): Words, words. They melt faster than snow.

He returns to the map of Europe, moves a small red flag, and snuffs out the lamp