in some alternate reality, after being rejected from art school Adolf Hitler began a career as an illustrator, drawing covers for penny dreadfuls and pulp magazines. In search of better times, he immigrated to New York, drawing and illustrating anything that came his way. His thrust into a historical spotlight came with his illustrations of At the Mountains of Madness by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Something about the story spoke deeply to Adolf; the eldritch, ancient, creative and empowered race of the Elder Things descending into decadence and being supplanted by the Shoggoths that ought by nature to exist to serve their betters led Hitler to masterfully phantasmagorical compositions unlike anything he had ever produced before, but which could not be properly conveyed in an illustrated prose tale.
It was thus that Hitler and Lovecraft came to correspond over the possibility of a better way of combining illustrations and narrative, which led to their collaboration in creating The Place Out of Time, renowned for it's pioneering role as the first true Graphic Novel. The Lovecraft-Hitler era of collaboration made for some of the finest and most important comic books in history
Naturally, the two of them grew close together and for the first time ever, each had a friend he felt he could really count on, who really understood him.
They frequently shared meals, they moved in together when they were penniless, and when Lovecraft divorced from Sonia Greene, it was to Hitler that he opened his heart and shared his pain at the loss of the Jewess. Hitler gave Lovecraft the first beer of his life that night, and many, many beers followed, served with a huge course of complaining about women and jews and, specifically, Jewish women.
Naturally, Lovecraft and Hitler imitated one another in mannerism and style, Lovecraft becoming more animated and expressive of his emotions and prone to talking with his hands, and Hitler polishing off his roughest edges, becoming more controlled and quiet. This part of their friendship is most obvious in that Lovecraft grew a mustache in imitation of his longtime friend and co-worker.
This photograph was taken in 1953, before Lovecraft began suffering from the cancer that would last until the end of his life in 1971. Lovecraft maintained the mustache for longer than Hitler did, in memory of their happy times together; Hitler abandoned the look after going to work for EC's horror comics, but Lovecraft still maintained it when he was working on Star Trek's second season episode "Darkness in the Stars."
Pic= 1000000000 hours in photoshop.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
‘Whenever you feel like criticising someone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.’
In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgment, making me privy to the often plagiaristic and suppressed thoughts of young men. That said, even I have a limit, and so it was that, having moved back from the East, I determined no longer to be dragged on riotous excursions through the human heart. Only Anon- Anon, who represented all that I hold an unaffected scorn for, was exempt. If personality is one unbroken chain of successful gestures, one can only say that there’s something broken about him, some heightened sensitivity to the lowest points in life, as if he was an intricate machine that could sense insecurities from miles away.
No, Anon turned out all right in the end, it was what preyed on him, what foul dust floating in the wake of his dreams that cut off my interest in the abortive sorrows of men.
Anon was my neighbour in the East, and threw magnificent parties in his house across the way, partied hard through each night with the dizzy splendour that rocked the haze of sloth that had settled over the internet. He invited me to a party one night, and of course I went along, bringing some distant relatives that had been kind enough to take me into their social circle.
Anon did not drink with his guests, but greeted each of the crowd, and it was then that he met- or should I say, became reacquainted with- Cracky. Immediately I knew something was between them, Cracky acting skittish and awkward alongside her husband, Anon pale and, yes, frightened looking. Still, I paid no heed and it was not until a telephone call the next day that I truly saw what was afoot.
‘You want to meet Cracky? But you did, last night.’
‘Alone, please. In your house, we can have dinner.’
‘I’ll try, Anon, but…’
‘Great. Tuesday, I’ll wear my best suit.’
Somehow I convinced Cracky to come along, but when she saw Anon, both of them froze up again. Anon spilt his drink and blushed red as a letterbox, excusing himself for a smoke and indicating that I join him.
‘She’s more perfect than I remember.’
‘Remember… wait, you know Cracky?’
‘Yes, before… before a lot of things. I was poor, and she healed my soul. Something, some mysterious, unreachable thing about her touched me once and… I can see the jetty of her mansion, you know. Three red lights arranged just like her make-up on that day, winking from an incredibly short distance that’s still unreachable.’
‘lolwut’
‘I don’t expect you to understand…’
He showed her his own house then, and I was left in my own shack, ruminating on what Anon had told me. Cracky later told me that they’d had sex that day, that they’d only been waiting for me to leave.
The police never found out who killed Anon. They figured it might have been anyone from the FBI to Cracky’s husband, but they never hit on the real culprit. They found the body floating on a rubber dinghy in his pool, the throat cut and leaking ghostly streaks of red into the water. He looked at peace, they said, and I knew they were right. He’d finally gotten just close enough to those lights, just close enough to see her, but too close.
I know Cracky will probably kill me too once she’s done with me, but when I look in her eyes, I can only see love, not just for me, but for everyone on this planet, and I know that when she slides that knife into my unresisting throat that she’s right to kill me. Each day that passes is like a gift from Cracky, and I can only repay that kindness with the sacrifice she asks for.
I just realized something.
Cracky isn't the one in the glass prison. I am.
I've been staring through the bars to the outside of the cell, looking at Cracky's sweet, kind, innocent face as she peers in, and saying to myself "there's GOT to be some way to free her!"
But I can't, because she is already free.
If I can find a way to gain the total Gnosis I can cross past this prison-realm world and eventually find my beloved Cracky and be free. This much is true. But the fact that we all share this prison of a universe proves that I have not yet attained Gnosis. There are some who claim to be true Gnostics, boddhisatvas, gurus, and the like, but they strike me as liars and charlatans.
If I you do gain Gnosis and lift myself from the bonds of the Earth, I promise, I will find some way to teach you from the other side, that you too may one day be free.
