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Jurassic Yard

Bambi Meets Adolf—Eden vs. Babylon

A new date rape drug is the ultimate halucinogen – dropped into Alina's drink at a posh bar at a famous resort. In seconds, her life is transformed as dark visions rise from her subconscious. Luckily, her three girfriends rescue her and take her home before the guy who did it can do any more harm… but the nightmare only begins there.

Alina is a professional woman in her twenties, a highly educated, dedicated, and capable Nurse Practicioner. She and her friend Dori, an RN, are vacationing in a time share at a fabulous (unnamed) resort with balmy winds, bright sunshine, white-washed cottages, and a sparkling lake full of sailboats under a blue sky. They are joined by two other woman friends, Laura and Sheri, school teachers.

Their plan is to relax, enjoy the flowers and birds, inhale the pungent blossoms of spring, and go dancing in the fancy nightclubs around the great resort. Then everything changes. Nobody saw a shadowy young man with a Swastika tattoo drop pills in her drink. It's a Jurassic moment, during which all of Alina's subconscious knowledge rises from the evolutionary swamp to take over her civilized life. She's a history buff, besides, who has been enjoying a series about the Belle Epoque (Beautiful Era) just before World War One.

In the fabulous cultural center of Vienna during the years 1907 to 1913, two men walked among the masses and breathed the same air. Who knows if they even rubbed shoulders or spoke with each other?

One was a thirty-something young author named Felix Salten (Siegmund Saltzmann) of Jewish family, who would one day soon write a famous children's story titled Bambi, A Life In The Woods. His family had brought him to Vienna as a small child, because the city (capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire) was especially hospitable to Jews.

The other man, who arrived in 1907 at age 18, was a dark, glowering young figure named Adolf Hitler. Hitler came after failing to finish high school in his native Linz area, and had illusions of becoming a great artist. He was rejected by the art schools because he lacked the necessary education and – although he had a cold, mediocre talent to render buildings and streets, his pictures noticeably lacked any sort of humanity or soul. A bitter, hateful Hitler spent several years in Vienna as a vagrant, taking odd jobs as he could find them, and selling watercolors for the tourist trade to (often Jewish) shopkeepers who took pity on him. Just before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Hitler left for Bavaria, where he enlisted to fight on the German side. He left a bloody claw mark on history that will rake souls with its diabolical message forever.

In 1923, Felix Salten gave to the world his immortal (darkly beautiful, tragic in many ways) children's parable. It has become more than that – a call for conservationists to save the world. Hitler banned his books in 1936, and soon Salten moved his family to Switzerland to escape the Nazi evil. He lived a full, happy life, and died on October 8, 1945 at age 76. Ironically, that was just a few months after Hitler committed suicide in Berlin after a reign of terror the world will long not forget.

In our current day, Alina's attacker in a pleasant and peaceful resort is a young man with frigid eyes and a hateful smirk. He has a swastika tattooed on his head, and his gaze follows Alina as she struggles with the narcotic of his evil. But the story takes some dramatic turns that serve up one violent and shocking surprise after another. DarkSF is what John Argo calls The Dark Chocolate of Speculative Fiction (eighth in a series of novels and shorter works from all across time and the cosmos).

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