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One Regret

“I have but one regret” said the man in the shadows; I was startled so I clicked on the light, the voice so familiar, so chillingly familiar.

As the table lamp sputtered to life I was stunned, almost to a coronary, the man across from me was a ghost, a phantom, a dead man, and for all his impressive abilities, even he isn’t Christ.  I paused for a long moment just staring and he looked back at me those eyes so eerily unblinking. I wasn’t stupid enough to sputter out the cliché ‘but your dead’ crap
It wasn’t my style nor was it his to respond but what do you say to a dead icon who just appears in your office.

“Damnit Old man!” I finally uttered “What the hell are you doing walking around in my office at night, much less not even trying to imitate a spirit of Christmas or some-such”

“I have but one regret, that I only have one life to give” He spoke his voice so calm and soothing, but he had already died, someone had crossed him with a tomcat.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked

“It wasn’t me who was blasted to ash, and so I regret that it was not my life given in defense of innocents”

Maybe this story will be worth the old rag I had spent the last twenty years writing for.

“So who was it?”

“Baron Wulf.”

I didn’t have a coherent printable thought for about ten minutes after that, it just wasn’t possible, the old dog. It couldn’t be.

“This is too much at once, let’s get a beer at Spitz’s”

He merely shook his head with the calmness I had known and that same sad almost regretful look in his eyes. “You know I can’t drink.”

“Can’t?”

“No I can’t, what would children think if I projected the image that drinking was ok?”

“They repealed prohibition you know”

“I know, but it’s not in my nature to change so readily. I did drink once, only once”

“When was that?”

“Strike that never mind that’s not important, what is important…”

I poured myself a scotch from the bottle I kept for emergencies--I think this qualified.

“What is important is why the Baron gave his life for mine?”

“Yes, that’s what my readers…Hell that’s what I want to know”

“The Baron and I are men of similar cloth, cut when the world was still innocent, still untouched by the horrors.”

“But you two were always at each other’s throats”

“Yes we were, two men so similar born to different lands with different priorities.” He paused and took a long breath.

“Do you mind?” I said as I lifted a cigarette

He shook his head no but the condemnation in his eyes almost broke my heart. They just don’t make men better than him, nicer than him, and he’s so pure it’s frightening.

I lit up anyway, but those piercing blue-eyes, something about them set me on edge…

“Baron Wulf was German, before the war, afterwards he disowned his nation, it wasn’t a place he was proud of any longer, he had been fashioned as surely as I, of iron and steel, but that place tarnished us both.”

He paused for a long moment as if lost in a memory. I poured myself another drink.

“The Baron was an old descendant of the royalty that once ruled, a Baron in truth from an age of monarchies long left behind, his powers like mine were born of will, we became what we were because our belief in what we stood for was so strong.”

I didn’t contradict him, though the scientist types now believe that some sort of stimuli is evolving humans. He and the Baron weren’t the first but I kept silent. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

“…. The Baron served in Africa, and in other fronts. Fighting for his people, always his people.”

People, right the Baron was into reinstating monarchies and ruling over them as he saw fit, not exactly an ideal concept in this era.

“You aren’t listening.”

“No I am just lost in the moment, trying to remember all the Baron had done over the years for his people”

He tensed across from me, visibly. “He stormed Auschwitz.”

Oh aye he did that the Baron was from old school of villainry, kidnap, threaten to kill, build big huge machines with the intent to extort into submission the nations of the world. He had used everything from mind control satellites to Omni cannon 3. But of all the evils the Baron committed, it was the one thing that kept him from facing an international court for war crimes, he wasn’t exactly in touch with his people, he was always a bit above them and so he didn’t see the crimes perpetuated. Or at least he didn’t admit they occurred even if he saw them. Baron Wulf brought one of the most terrible death camps of the Nazi war machine down before the wars end. Hell! He handed Hitler over to be tried and executed for his crimes rather than letting that madman escape.

“He did storm Auschwitz.” I said inhaling a long drag from my cigarette I drifted off then thinking of all the evils the Baron was responsible for; he killed, yes, in war. He didn’t kill the helpless, or women or children, but a soldier with a gun was fair game to him.
A right honorable bastard he was about it too.

“But He and I were so alike. Both men of different times, when that villain kidnapped children and threatened to incinerate them even the Baron stepped up to the right side of the battle”

I nearly dropped my cigarette in my lap; I didn’t know that Baron Wulf had helped against the Nikodemus.

“Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Tell me what happened?”

He nodded “A soda if you have it?”

I turned and opened the mini frig I kept in my office and pulled out a can setting it on the edge of my desk, he leaned forward and swept it off the table with his right hand as swiftly as a snake. I heard the pop as he opened it. I waited a long moment hoping he’d speak without prodding.

“I had been searching for Nikodemus for months--since he slew those two co-eds in Virginia. He had holed up in a rundown warehouse in Philadelphia, but by the time I had arrived he’d gathered up some kindergartners and had them chained in a circle about him.”

I winced Nikodemus was a pyrokinetic; he wasn’t the same kind of villain Baron Wulf was. Probably hopped up on drugs, or maybe just so nuts he got a high from killing.

“And?” I questioned

“Both me and the Baron hit the warehouse at the same time. When I saw the Baron I was ready to lay him low, wondering what he was after. We traded a few punches before we realized neither one of us wanted to let the children get hurt.”

I lit another cigarette as he paused taking another drink from the soda can.
I twitched. I just couldn’t place what struck me as odd about the whole situation.

“It took only a few minutes to lay out a plan, Baron Wulf would distract him and I would hit him hard and try and knock him out before he could even blink.”

I nodded slowly.

“So the plan unfolded well until one of the kids saw me and cried out, kids aren’t as wide eyed and innocent as they used to be, they are jumpy and afraid more so than kids in the past. I guess that’s for the better.”

I was silent.

“I leapt for him anyway. He hit me with a fierce blast of flame that seared the air out of my lungs and threw me into the far wall. Baron Wulf had vanished and I could hear Nikodemus cursing up a storm searching for him. Occasionally seeing bright lances of flame incinerate a box, or just burn through the shadows. I couldn’t move, I was ready to die there knowing full well Nikodemus would tire of searching for a foe that had disappeared and come to make sure I was dead.”

I sipped my scotch, and winced I’d been burned once in a fire, I remembered the pain of that so completely I didn’t even want to imagine what being burned alive was like. I shuddered and he saw that

“Are you alright?” he asked

I merely nodded

“I lay there trying to move trying to draw breath for what seemed like hours then I felt someone come near, it was the Baron! His voice was calm, collected and he whispered to me. ‘The children will be safe mein freund, do not worry’ as he slowly peeled off my burned and tattered costume I tried to stop him to tell him no, but he had my clothes and was gone.”

I nodded incredulous. The rest of the story I knew at least as well as anyone it had been caught on tape by a news helicopter. It had captured from afar the final stand between Nikodemus and the red; white and blue costume which marked America’s premiere hero Major Liberty--on the body of Baron Wulf. It was almost funny; definitely bittersweet this would be the greatest story I had ever written in my life.

“I remember screaming at the television.”

He merely nodded across from me, and continued

“Nikodemus had lit the air about him into a white hot furnace, the children were thankfully out of reach, thanks to Baron Wulf, and he, in my costume, walked forward. I could see the costume burn away like cobwebs in a candle, and I could see his flesh bubble from the heat as he walked forward and laughed, I tried to cry out but my voice wouldn’t come, but the Baron walked forward through the flames and reached up quickly…his skin, gone, burnt away from the flame but still his body moved…. he reached up and broke Nikodemus neck, almost casually and then…and then the fire consumed them both in a bright flash as it went out of control.”

I gulped watching him, tears stinging my eyes.

“We were men of the same mold he and I, and though we stood for different things he shouldn’t be forgotten, I crawled away a wreck of a man, but I healed eventually and now I am back to do what I must.”

I adjusted my collar “It’s hot in here let me open a window”
I turned and opened the small window of my office to the night air and when I turned back around he was gone.  The empty soda can sitting on the corner of my desk, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I turned and typed for another hour on my cranky old typewriter.

   When I was done, I reached over and pulled out my file on the pair. I read them carefully, twice.  I smiled, I laughed a bit, and I cried, mostly I cried-- I had some of the most well documented reports on both ever written. When I was done I tossed them into my trash can along with the tape from my recorder which has spun its wheels and done its job, recording every sound either of us had uttered, and then I lit them on fire without another thought. I pulled the page from my typewriter and left it on my editor’s desk. It was titled “One regret” and it was my letter of resignation. I keep thinking about those words over and over again turning them about in my head. I also think on the others, the generation of heroes that have been born since, inspired by men like him—Major Liberty, and Baron Wulf, men of the same mold he said. He was right, I think of it whenever I look in a mirror.

      I couldn’t place it at first, why I cried so hard; I knew but didn’t want to admit it. I hear about him from time to time, you know, rescuing children, stopping criminals. His methods haven’t changed, his message, his words still the same he is an Icon. Beloved, ageless but I can’t get past the one little thing.

   It nags at the back of my mind. I quit because I didn’t want to see and sometimes not wanting to see is enough. I didn’t write the story, even if it was a good one, even if it would have been the perfect cap to my career. I don’t tell lies, I only write the truth.
It was my job. Even if the lie is for the better. I just couldn’t do that. Baron Wulf and Major Liberty, Mirror images of one another. So alike no one but me knows the difference in the end, no one but me remembers that Major Liberty was among other things blessed with brown eyes.

.

Description
One Regret

“I have but one regret” said the man in the shadows; I was startled so I clicked on the light, the voice so familiar, so chillingly familiar.

As the table lamp sputtered to life I was stunned, almost to a coronary, the man across from me was a ghost, a phantom, a dead man, and for all his impressive abilities, even he isn’t Christ.  I paused for a long moment just staring and he looked back at me those eyes so eerily unblinking. I wasn’t stupid enough to sputter out the cliché ‘but your dead’ crap
It wasn’t my style nor was it his to respond but what do you say to a dead icon who just appears in your office.

“Damnit Old man!” I finally uttered “What the hell are you doing walking around in my office at night, much less not even trying to imitate a spirit of Christmas or some-such”

“I have but one regret, that I only have one life to give” He spoke his voice so calm and soothing, but he had already died, someone had crossed him with a tomcat.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked

“It wasn’t me who was blasted to ash, and so I regret that it was not my life given in defense of innocents”

Maybe this story will be worth the old rag I had spent the last twenty years writing for.

“So who was it?”

“Baron Wulf.”

I didn’t have a coherent printable thought for about ten minutes after that, it just wasn’t possible, the old dog. It couldn’t be.

“This is too much at once, let’s get a beer at Spitz’s”

He merely shook his head with the calmness I had known and that same sad almost regretful look in his eyes. “You know I can’t drink.”

“Can’t?”

“No I can’t, what would children think if I projected the image that drinking was ok?”

“They repealed prohibition you know”

“I know, but it’s not in my nature to change so readily. I did drink once, only once”

“When was that?”

“Strike that never mind that’s not important, what is important…”

I poured myself a scotch from the bottle I kept for emergencies--I think this qualified.

“What is important is why the Baron gave his life for mine?”

“Yes, that’s what my readers…Hell that’s what I want to know”

“The Baron and I are men of similar cloth, cut when the world was still innocent, still untouched by the horrors.”

“But you two were always at each other’s throats”

“Yes we were, two men so similar born to different lands with different priorities.” He paused and took a long breath.

“Do you mind?” I said as I lifted a cigarette

He shook his head no but the condemnation in his eyes almost broke my heart. They just don’t make men better than him, nicer than him, and he’s so pure it’s frightening.

I lit up anyway, but those piercing blue-eyes, something about them set me on edge…

“Baron Wulf was German, before the war, afterwards he disowned his nation, it wasn’t a place he was proud of any longer, he had been fashioned as surely as I, of iron and steel, but that place tarnished us both.”

He paused for a long moment as if lost in a memory. I poured myself another drink.

“The Baron was an old descendant of the royalty that once ruled, a Baron in truth from an age of monarchies long left behind, his powers like mine were born of will, we became what we were because our belief in what we stood for was so strong.”

I didn’t contradict him, though the scientist types now believe that some sort of stimuli is evolving humans. He and the Baron weren’t the first but I kept silent. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

“…. The Baron served in Africa, and in other fronts. Fighting for his people, always his people.”

People, right the Baron was into reinstating monarchies and ruling over them as he saw fit, not exactly an ideal concept in this era.

“You aren’t listening.”

“No I am just lost in the moment, trying to remember all the Baron had done over the years for his people”

He tensed across from me, visibly. “He stormed Auschwitz.”

Oh aye he did that the Baron was from old school of villainry, kidnap, threaten to kill, build big huge machines with the intent to extort into submission the nations of the world. He had used everything from mind control satellites to Omni cannon 3. But of all the evils the Baron committed, it was the one thing that kept him from facing an international court for war crimes, he wasn’t exactly in touch with his people, he was always a bit above them and so he didn’t see the crimes perpetuated. Or at least he didn’t admit they occurred even if he saw them. Baron Wulf brought one of the most terrible death camps of the Nazi war machine down before the wars end. Hell! He handed Hitler over to be tried and executed for his crimes rather than letting that madman escape.

“He did storm Auschwitz.” I said inhaling a long drag from my cigarette I drifted off then thinking of all the evils the Baron was responsible for; he killed, yes, in war. He didn’t kill the helpless, or women or children, but a soldier with a gun was fair game to him.
A right honorable bastard he was about it too.

“But He and I were so alike. Both men of different times, when that villain kidnapped children and threatened to incinerate them even the Baron stepped up to the right side of the battle”

I nearly dropped my cigarette in my lap; I didn’t know that Baron Wulf had helped against the Nikodemus.

“Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Tell me what happened?”

He nodded “A soda if you have it?”

I turned and opened the mini frig I kept in my office and pulled out a can setting it on the edge of my desk, he leaned forward and swept it off the table with his right hand as swiftly as a snake. I heard the pop as he opened it. I waited a long moment hoping he’d speak without prodding.

“I had been searching for Nikodemus for months--since he slew those two co-eds in Virginia. He had holed up in a rundown warehouse in Philadelphia, but by the time I had arrived he’d gathered up some kindergartners and had them chained in a circle about him.”

I winced Nikodemus was a pyrokinetic; he wasn’t the same kind of villain Baron Wulf was. Probably hopped up on drugs, or maybe just so nuts he got a high from killing.

“And?” I questioned

“Both me and the Baron hit the warehouse at the same time. When I saw the Baron I was ready to lay him low, wondering what he was after. We traded a few punches before we realized neither one of us wanted to let the children get hurt.”

I lit another cigarette as he paused taking another drink from the soda can.
I twitched. I just couldn’t place what struck me as odd about the whole situation.

“It took only a few minutes to lay out a plan, Baron Wulf would distract him and I would hit him hard and try and knock him out before he could even blink.”

I nodded slowly.

“So the plan unfolded well until one of the kids saw me and cried out, kids aren’t as wide eyed and innocent as they used to be, they are jumpy and afraid more so than kids in the past. I guess that’s for the better.”

I was silent.

“I leapt for him anyway. He hit me with a fierce blast of flame that seared the air out of my lungs and threw me into the far wall. Baron Wulf had vanished and I could hear Nikodemus cursing up a storm searching for him. Occasionally seeing bright lances of flame incinerate a box, or just burn through the shadows. I couldn’t move, I was ready to die there knowing full well Nikodemus would tire of searching for a foe that had disappeared and come to make sure I was dead.”

I sipped my scotch, and winced I’d been burned once in a fire, I remembered the pain of that so completely I didn’t even want to imagine what being burned alive was like. I shuddered and he saw that

“Are you alright?” he asked

I merely nodded

“I lay there trying to move trying to draw breath for what seemed like hours then I felt someone come near, it was the Baron! His voice was calm, collected and he whispered to me. ‘The children will be safe mein freund, do not worry’ as he slowly peeled off my burned and tattered costume I tried to stop him to tell him no, but he had my clothes and was gone.”

I nodded incredulous. The rest of the story I knew at least as well as anyone it had been caught on tape by a news helicopter. It had captured from afar the final stand between Nikodemus and the red; white and blue costume which marked America’s premiere hero Major Liberty--on the body of Baron Wulf. It was almost funny; definitely bittersweet this would be the greatest story I had ever written in my life.

“I remember screaming at the television.”

He merely nodded across from me, and continued

“Nikodemus had lit the air about him into a white hot furnace, the children were thankfully out of reach, thanks to Baron Wulf, and he, in my costume, walked forward. I could see the costume burn away like cobwebs in a candle, and I could see his flesh bubble from the heat as he walked forward and laughed, I tried to cry out but my voice wouldn’t come, but the Baron walked forward through the flames and reached up quickly…his skin, gone, burnt away from the flame but still his body moved…. he reached up and broke Nikodemus neck, almost casually and then…and then the fire consumed them both in a bright flash as it went out of control.”

I gulped watching him, tears stinging my eyes.

“We were men of the same mold he and I, and though we stood for different things he shouldn’t be forgotten, I crawled away a wreck of a man, but I healed eventually and now I am back to do what I must.”

I adjusted my collar “It’s hot in here let me open a window”
I turned and opened the small window of my office to the night air and when I turned back around he was gone.  The empty soda can sitting on the corner of my desk, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I turned and typed for another hour on my cranky old typewriter.

   When I was done, I reached over and pulled out my file on the pair. I read them carefully, twice.  I smiled, I laughed a bit, and I cried, mostly I cried-- I had some of the most well documented reports on both ever written. When I was done I tossed them into my trash can along with the tape from my recorder which has spun its wheels and done its job, recording every sound either of us had uttered, and then I lit them on fire without another thought. I pulled the page from my typewriter and left it on my editor’s desk. It was titled “One regret” and it was my letter of resignation. I keep thinking about those words over and over again turning them about in my head. I also think on the others, the generation of heroes that have been born since, inspired by men like him—Major Liberty, and Baron Wulf, men of the same mold he said. He was right, I think of it whenever I look in a mirror.

      I couldn’t place it at first, why I cried so hard; I knew but didn’t want to admit it. I hear about him from time to time, you know, rescuing children, stopping criminals. His methods haven’t changed, his message, his words still the same he is an Icon. Beloved, ageless but I can’t get past the one little thing.

   It nags at the back of my mind. I quit because I didn’t want to see and sometimes not wanting to see is enough. I didn’t write the story, even if it was a good one, even if it would have been the perfect cap to my career. I don’t tell lies, I only write the truth.
It was my job. Even if the lie is for the better. I just couldn’t do that. Baron Wulf and Major Liberty, Mirror images of one another. So alike no one but me knows the difference in the end, no one but me remembers that Major Liberty was among other things blessed with brown eyes.

.