Member-only story
He’s in his living quarters. It’s past midnight and he cannot sleep.
He sits up at bedside.
He looks a little sad.
‘I feel diminished as a leader. I have lost something… and I expect more losses.
I have amassed a lot of power… convinced many people to follow me without questioning… but I know I have lost something.
The more killings I order… the more missiles I fire… the more brutality I order… the more I feel something shrinking in me.
I have crossed a line… and I keep walking beyond it… moving further into an area where only the depraved live… I suppose Hitler and Stalin went there too… where other people are just flesh… numbers… bodies to move here and there… dispose of… throw in the trash.’
There’s a night light in the wall adjacent to the bed. He stares at it.
‘I’m beginning to feel small… my light dimming… recognizing I’ll never regain the status I once had… and yet I keep ordering more killings.
Russians don’t question me… they just obey… stripped of their right to protest.
I did that to them. Dehumanized them. Blunted their senses.
I say fire your gun. Throw the grenade. Drop the bomb. Shoot the missile. And they do it.
I say fire the nuclear weapons… will they do it?’
