"All the Nights of Man" by Rob Imes


"All the Nights of Man"
by Rob Imes

(Written in 1988)



It was the dawn and they were all there, rising like a new sun over a weary day. The stuff of nightmares entering the twilight of gods. This was the ending of sorrows.

"My dream, my dream," Adolf Hitler mumbled in his dead German. "Such carnage..."

"...Is your own doing," Loki replied, smiling upon the wasteland. "You strove to be a God. Now God you are. Don't tell me you're disappointed?"


Can't live with 'em, the professor thought and shook his head like a frustrated dog.

"I'm not interested in any bloody pair of doxes, mate! I'm only interested in findin' me a good wench, okay? I say leave it for morn; there's spoils to be had."

Barely visible in the glowing red distance, Jack the Ripper and Professor Moriarty raided the crumbling remains of a porn shop but to their displeasure found not a whore in sight.

"Damn this!" Jack shouted. "What's the use of e'en being back if there aren't any bleedin' whores about? I'll not toss off!"

"Screw the whores, Jack," Moriarty chuckled. "My, my. This world's filled with puns, eh, friend? I wish you would see the beauty in it, rather than your awful complaining." The professor removed the black hat from his head and squinted at the young horizon. "You'd think you were mad."

"I'll not toss off!" Jack said.


Loki placed his hands on Hitler's lonely shoulder. "There, there," he said softly. "It's not the end of the world."

"Disappointed, indeed!" Adolf shrugged. "There are no crowds to applaud me, no men at my command..." He fingered the tin medals that decordated his chest like a man might caress the toys of his youth. "All my dreams gone up in sm-"

"Cigarette, mein Fuhrer?" Loki asked, producing a pack of Lucky Strikes from a pouch.

"No!" Adolf roared. "I was speaking! You musn't interrupt! How many times do you have to be told??"

Loki smiled. "You'll get used to it, Adolf. You can't give orders here."

Hitler rested upon a large ashen rock and stared upward at the disturbing New Sky with a twinge of discomfort. "This is true," he sighed. "I am a God without followers. Is a God still a God if he has no followers?"

Loki bit his cigarette and searched for a match. "In this respect we are very much alike," he mused.

"No! We are nothing alike!" Adolf shouted, as if he were testing his companion. Loki, immersed in his search for a match, seemed almost to forget Adolf existed. Disappointed, the German again turned to the sky.


Beneath the rotting clock-tower which had long ago ceased to tick, Jack grappled with a half-naked seven-year old girl, hoping to satisfy his aching sexual thirst, while Moriarty silently decided to continue his journey alone, now seriously questioning the Ripper's mental stability.


"It's all yours now, Adolf. All yours!" Loki said, finally tossing the cigarette into the dirt in frustration. He quietly seated himself beside Adolf on the stone, basking in the crimson sunlight. "You've waited for this day, my son. And dreams do come true."

"One man's dream," Hitler mumbled, "is another man's nightmare."

And Loki laughed under his breath at Adolf's melodrama as the new sun rose in the east over a dark and quiet London.


Copyright © 2002 by Rob Imes.



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