We were walking through a freshly snow covered European forest. The group of us, about fifteen or so, were chatting together and having a merry time as we trudged through trees and underbrush. I didn’t know anyone in the group except for one man, Mr. H. Jon Benjamin.
Eventually we came to a clearing in the forest and the group stopped. This seemed the perfect place for the reenactment of the worlds most notorious war criminals. A few of us played the part of the United Nations but most played the parts of war criminals throughout history. I was Stalin.
At first it seemed like a normal reenactment. The UN folk were pacing and giving speeches to the war criminals about why they deserved to die. But that all changed when H. Jon Benjamin pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the head of Mussolini.
“You’ve had enough time to contemplate your crimes,” said Mr. Benjamin, dressed in slick US military garb. Then he pulled the trigger and Mussolini was no more.
Things didn’t erupt like you might expect. For everyone but myself, this seemed to be what was supposed to happen. I was under the impression that we were merely playing the parts of the war criminals. I certainly wasn’t really Stalin!
H. Jon Benjamin stared down Hitler and fired.
He looked at Howard W. Campbell Jr. and without even the slightest wince, he put a bullet deep into his skull.
I dared not move but I was panicking. He must have sensed it because, from across the group, he smuggly looked over at me and I felt him touch my soul.
“I’m going to make this painful for you,” he said to Stalin, to me.
H. Jon Benjamin calmly walked behind me. I could feel the gun against my head even though it was feet away.
“Please. Please just do it quickly. Please just kill me,” I pleaded as I dropped to my knees in the snow.
It seemed like an eternity. I knelt there praying to a god that I never believed to exist. Begging this supposed supreme being to take mercy on me and allow Mr. H. Jon Benjamin to find it in himself to murder me as painlessly as possible.
Finally, as I clenched my eyes closed tight, I felt something against the back of my head. Was it the bullet?
I prayed it was the bullet.
Very slowly I felt a tickle and a spreading sensation through my brain. YES! It was the bullet I had begged so earnestly for.
Time slowed to a crawl, allowing me to experience the last pleasure I would ever have… my death.
As the bullet split my brain in twain, I thanked everyone and everything for the ultimate experience of my . Then I lay, face first, in the snow. I was dead. I felt the death for beats upon beats, until my heart stopped beating altogether. But I could still feel by body laying on the warm snow as the blood rushed from the inside of my body to the outside.
Then… I awoke.
