The Theme Park

History's greatest villain, reborn daily for your darkest desires.

A man of destiny. Purpose. He rose above the crowd in his uniform, surrounded by men with guns. They gave him a Roman salute, and he gave it back to them. The mustache, iconic. His iron cross, immaculate.

He’d been bred for this. Adolf Hitler was about to give the speech of his life. The crowd silenced as they saw him gaze out toward them. He had to be at least two stories above them, and he could see the hundreds gathered. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I imagine he felt the raw power of the masses.

He nodded in delight until two of the guards grabbed hold of him, putting him on his knees.

A small step stool was placed behind Hitler, and a middle-aged woman stepped onto the stool, and the crowd watched as she was handed a Luger, put it to the back of Hitler’s head, and pulled the trigger. The crowd cheered, and that day’s lucky winner, Mrs. Darlene Shaffer, waved her hand to her cheering masses while giving the pistol to the guards in their black Hugo Boss uniforms with the other.

The guards gave her a small handkerchief to wipe the blood off her face. The staff referred to the platform as “The Splash Zone,” and even below, some would get hit with blood. A small caliber bullet was used to make sure there was no chance of ricocheting down into the crowd, but big enough to ensure death. These people are here to see a show, and we are bound by the terms of a contract to give it to them.

They pay good money to walk around Little Bavaria and take pictures next to replica tanks or explore our WWI trenches. They pay for authentic German food. And beer. Lots and lots of beer. You can even participate in your own little Beer Hall Putsch. Mostly, they pay for a chance. A chance to rectify the world, to heal it.

We give them a villain, a target. All the worries and fears they have manifested in the body of a clone.

Then, we hand them a gun and watch as they cure themselves. Killing Hitler is better than any number of self-help seminars, maybe even religion. Jury is still out, but our scientists are running studies. We’ll get our answer to the God question soon enough.

The staff call this place ‘by Proxy.’ Never in front of me, but I hear them say it. I can’t stop them, but they know not to speak too loudly in front of the park guests. I’d never considered that theme parks were fascist utopias until I built one for Hitler. Well, not for him, but certainly not not for him.

This fascist utopia is for no one. It’s for itself, really. The people think it is for them, and in a way they are right, but if it were just for them, it would be free of charge. Everyone would get their own Hitler to kill. The park is not for me, per se, because I just want the park to exist. That’s all I really get out of it. All the money I make goes back into the park except for living expenses and a few creature comforts. No, this park is for itself. Or maybe for Hitler, after all, in some perverse way. He runs around with his half-formed clone brain, everyone saluting him, and he thinks he’s king of the world. We have to track him, of course. Too many far-right groups have tried to smuggle him out into the broader world.

The closest we ever got to losing one was when a group of teenagers were able to get him into the parking lot. Sharpshooters took him out, but we had a lawsuit on our hands because apparently seeing Hitler’s brains blown up all over you can be traumatizing. ‘It was just a prank,’ they claimed. We counter-sued for damages to our brand and our product. We settled. I didn’t want to settle. I wanted to take little Timmy and his friends and their families for all they were worth.

Had to hatch a new Hitler right from the tank that afternoon because we needed to kill one in front of the crowd. I had to rush the whole ceremony before anyone got wise. This Hitler was ‘alive’ for about 4 hours. Most of the clones live 3 weeks or so, going through crash courses on being Hitler. Plenty of our on-call staff to give people the ‘real deal,’ but they always know when the real Hitler is around them. We’ve stared at his photograph for so long that we can instantly recognize him.

That’s why people come to my park. They get up early in the morning, wait in lines to ride some rides, get a family picture, and stay there all day until 4:30 PM to see who will be the assassin that day. Then, it’s just another half hour until the execution, so they stay to watch. By 5:05, the park is half empty. We close at 7. And they come early. We never announced it, but they can tell that the earlier you arrive, the better your chances of killing Hitler get.

The worst thing that’s ever happened to my park was the cheating scandal. There had been, on occasion, a few wealthy park guests who wanted to ensure it was they who were selected to be the scion of retribution when they visited my park, and a few greased palms here and there got them on that stage. This broke the contract.

Everyone should have an equal shot to shoot Hitler if they pay for the ticket to get in. The marketing department came up with a higher-tier ticket that gave you more chances at being selected. I couldn’t pull the trigger on that. It was unfair. Soon, everyone would have to buy the executive pass, and then your average family from Wisconsin or Idaho or New Mexico or wherever would not have the opportunity my park purports to afford them.

People love this park, but not always in the ways I’d prefer them to. There are plenty of young women who have whisked the Hitler clone away and recorded themselves doing all manner of obscene acts with him. Some were doing it to say that they did. A deep psychological need to be, and what is more than making love to the avatar of pure hate and evil? Others did it for the attention. A few women would post a video to their Only Fans account or whatever website young whores are using these days to make a living.

That’s easy enough to scrub, but of course, much of what exists on the internet stays there, despite our efforts. There have been at least two attempts by young, radical women trying to be impregnated by the Hitler clone. No one told them our clones are sterilized. It was part of the deal I made with the government to get this thing off the ground in the first place for just this reason. We would threaten them with charges, saying they raped the clone, saying he could not possibly consent. They would cry and have a come to Jesus moment, and we’d let them off with a permanent ban from the park. Mercy is important.

I may run a theme park, but the real money is in pharmaceuticals. It all comes full circle, doesn’t it?

Everything does. My father started this experiment with hopes to strike it rich in big pharma, and here I am, building off of his foundation, doing exactly that. No more clinical trials with random people you have to pay or can’t control. No more variability. These companies buy a batch of Hitler clones and test whatever they want on them, note the side effects, and then dispose of them once the trials are complete and the kinks are worked out in the drugs. There isn’t an official number; no one would track such a statistic, but my rough estimate is that around one million Hitler clones have died since we started this endeavor. Not bad, a little retribution against humanity’s greatest threat. We will do more. And the best part is, we are doing it for the good of mankind.

I’m brought into the cloning lab underneath the park. The scientists have a real conundrum in their hands.

Somehow, one particular Hitler clone has developed blonde hair and blue eyes. Looks almost nothing like the real thing. Someone jokes that he’s the Hitler the real Hitler wishes he was. I have him fired. They’re all real Hitlers. That’s the point. There’s no place for him here if he can’t get that. An idea is floated to dye the clone’s hair and put in some color-corrective contact lenses. I had to squash that right away. My product is pure. My customers deserve the kind of purity they’re paying for. The clone is rejected. We’d set up the process for this long ago but never needed to use it until now. He never even wakes up; he’s just flushed from his tube and dropped into the park’s incinerator. Easy.

Years pass, and the flavor of the week changes with the seasons. The park’s popularity wanes as killing Hitler is no longer the great draw that it had once been. I consider branching out to other dictators and monsters, but really, that’s just R/C Cola, and I have original recipe Coke here. No, I know when I’ve been beaten. This old soldier will just go away. Some religious fanatics have taken control of the government, and apparently, cloning is one of their top concerns. Give me a break. If Hitler ever had a soul to begin with, I doubt that it was passed down to any of his clones. I shut it all down. I document some processes here and there, but much of my technology is being classified, maybe even destroyed.

The black market offers me some reprieve. Now that cloning is illegal, any remaining Hitler clones are top commodities. On the books, I have no more, but I have a handful that I can parlay to the highest bidder and live a comfortable life. I take a box truck and put a Hitler in the back. We drive for a while until we’re in the middle of nowhere, getting into some shitty warehouse, and a man with a briefcase full of money hands it to me and unloads the truck, and I am to drive back where I came from. I don’t ask what happens. I don’t even count the money. Better to just trust and never have to look back.

Then there is the fetus. They took away my great joy, you see. The money was nice, but there was something infinitely more appealing. I was healing the world, mind, body, and spirit. Legions of people came to me and forgot their troubles for a few hours. Maybe even excising their troubles with a bullet. But that dream is dead. Not dead, fulfilled. It’s not like I didn’t have fun and do what I’d set out to do. But I just wish I could have kept the thing going. They stopped me. But now I get to have a little fun myself. A young couple in Cedar Rapids, Iowa have been wanting a child, but circumstances have kept that reality from occurring.

Tomorrow they will find a perfectly healthy baby boy on their doorstep, in a basket with a note explaining their great fortune. No mention of who the child is, per say. No need to complicate their already difficult situation. He’ll grow up a normal, all-American boy. My father would have found this fascinating. I just think it’s kind of funny. One day he’ll grow up, and his parents may say, “Honey, doesn’t our son look...familiar?”

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This story was originally published as part of a short story collection by T.R. Hudson, “The Search For More Money.” Snag a copy on Amazon to read more of his work and earn your place on an FBI watchlist.