Capt J’s men found the German hiding in a chicken coop, snow on the roof and feathers around his feet. Hiding may not have been the right word, the men later said, exchanging nervous looks – nervous about what? He had simply stood there, they said, still, waiting.
Like all of the bastards before him he looked miserable, dirty and tired, but a little more rotten too. Something aristocratic about him. Dark hair slicked back and the widow’s peak of a man twice his age, skin like wet paper stretching over blue veins, hollows of sickly purple under his deep-set eyes and those eyes – predictably: blue, but a blue of a dull and foggy kind like the rattlesnake’s before the shed. Of all the gaunt, hungry, utterly consumed looking men they’d taken prisoner so far this one looked particularly cadaverous.
He was an SS officer and didn’t mean to hide it. He could have easily dropped that cap with the sinister little skull somewhere by the side of the road and torn off his collar tabs (funny ones those were, like rotten, grasping hands – not like anything J had ever seen before), but they were all too proud for that, weren’t they, those fucking fanatics. You could see it in their eyes, dull and cold like iron and stone, incapable of expressing any emotion but pure unfiltered hate. As far as J was concerned they were barely human.
The German’s lips (white, not a shot of blood in them) remained a condescending line as J ran down the usual questions: his unit, their strength, their position. Not even his name he would give, J had to take it by force, pulling the identification papers from the pockets of a heavy leather coat that was stained as if the man in it had been literally wading through blood.
“Wolf-Heinrich?” J read the name off the document, butchering it with American pronunciation. “Some proper Nazi name you got there, momma must be proud.” Chuckles around. Smell of sweat, bodies strained for release. They wanted to see the prisoner hurt.
The German smiled like a snarling dog. His gums were as white as his teeth and of his teeth he seemed to have a couple too many. For the first time he spoke, voice like smooth bourbon, tickling the hair on the back of J’s neck, but a haughty bastard still. “Wolf-Heinrich Siegfried Hermann Wilhelm von Kleist,” he said in a tone as if schooling a child.
Oh, that got to J.
Sudden memories of teachers and their arrogant little smiles. Sadistic, withered up hags with their powdered faces and their hair tied up so neat and their backs straight like they got something stuffed up their ass, always looking down on little J no matter how tall he grew. Continental accents – Oh, you don’t know that, you idiot, you inbred hick, you stupid dog? And the ruler across his fingers (howling like a dog indeed) and his pants at his ankles in the headmistress’ office.
J hit the German square in the face, closed fist, and he dropped to the ground unconscious. A glob of blood ran from his nose, dark and thick like machine oil, unnervingly slowly, like a fat leech squeezing out.
J could have the prisoner sent down the line, let someone else handle it, put him in some camp by the shore and let the intelligence squeeze his secrets out of him – and all the other dreck that would come floating up with it.
“He strikes me like the type who’d know important stuff,” he said into the silence of held breaths and swallowed coughs, “would be better if we keep him though. Intel down the line is too slow. Could crack him here.. I know I can. ” Hesitant nods all around. No one had asked and no one would object.
The German was still unconscious when he was thrown in the back of J’s truck, blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back and tied also to the seat on such a short leash that once he came back to it he could only wiggle like a worm. J would have gladly also stuffed his mouth had the prisoner raised his voice, but he was too proud to object and merely laid there, quiet and motionless, trying to look dignified when not thrown about by another bump in the road. In the rear-view mirror J could see how he opened his mouth then as if hissing, but through the noise of the engine the sound did not reach his ear. He did like taking the bumpy road.
They had picked up the German at dusk and a few hours later the night was black except for a gravid rising moon. Not a star pinned to the sky, not even the light of a plane or muzzle flash to be seen. They’d made good progress and for J and his men an abandoned farm house was a good as any to hole up in for the night. Not intending to make his prisoner’s life any more pleasant and as a way to soften him up for further questioning come morning J considered leaving the German out in the cold, but as frail and pale as the man looked J feared he might not survive the night. His men also were not always to be trusted with an item as controversial as a Jew-hating, kid-killing SS officer, so J at last decided his precious catch would have to stay with him for the night and he had him dragged to a room in the basement. The room he had chosen for himself because it wouldn’t be leveled by artillery in an instance and because it had a door that actually shut.
He left the prisoner blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, he didn’t trust the man not to try to murder him in his sleep and there was a certain psychological benefit to putting him in such an uncomfortable and helpless position to ponder over all night.
J was lying on his back with one hand on his pistol, staring at the ceiling and a slit of light cast by a narrow window up high, waiting for the embrace of sleep when from his subconscious it struck him that the prisoner was watching him. He turned to check. In the darkness of the cellar it was hard to make out any object clearly, shadows blending together to more unnerving shapes. He found the outline of the prisoner where he’d been dropped, but it seemed he had curled up now like a cat. Just a dark spot in the corner of the room, but yes, facing him, with his eyes covered, yet undoubtedly, the white piece of cloth making it much easier for J to see it, the German was looking right at him and like a droning noise that his mind had blocked out all the while suddenly breaking through into conscious awareness, he could hear it then, when he held his own breath, the other man’s heavy breathing, deep and labored like from great pain or great pleasure, and then it stopped and he heard the man sniffing like a dog taking scent and then it was quiet again.
Clutching his pistol J listened and waited for a long time. The cube of moonlight cast by the window wandered across the wall, but the noise did not return and eventually the blindfold seemed just a blindfold again, not those inhumane eyes, the German probably sleeping soundly for a while already and so J too fell into a restless sleep.
In his dream the man in the corner was no longer man but the monster that had haunted his childhood; a tall figure, all black, standing at the foot of his bed and J in his room again, a little boy too weak to move a man’s limbs. With the flicker of a cinema projector the shadow grew hair like a wolf and eyes glowing like snuffed out charcoal buried in ash and long teeth from rotting gums, many of them, dripping with thick, gooey spit. From the foot of his bed – so very far away it seemed now as he was boyishly small again – the creature came forward, not walking or crawling but slithering like a snake, the whole body like one strong muscle, gently, caressingly sliding up his leg, grinding sensual pleasures, and settling on his chest, so heavy it pressed the air out of his lungs, stifling a scream stuck halfway up his throat. Face to face now with the creature J could see it was man and owl and wolf all the same. The drool dripped out of its mouth and on J’s face and it was warm and smelled of hunger and sick. With its long prehensile tongue the creature licked his face, it forced his mouth open with its beak and drew him into a tender kiss.
When J woke up the German – still bound and blind – was on top of him, straddling him. His mouth was at J’s throat, biting and licking and sucking on it with a wet, sexual slurping sound. He heard himself whimper and it occurred to J that he was being assaulted and that he should be terrified, that he should struggle and fight for his life. There was still the gun in his hand. He might be able to tilt it just a little bit and muster enough strength to pull the trigger. The German rose and J felt a sudden jolting hot pain in his neck as spurts of blood shot out of it in the arcs of a fountain.
The German’s mouth was smeared with blood, it had soaked his blindfolds, it was dripping from his lips, it was running down his neck and pooling under his collar. He swallowed down a gulp of it. He seemed to look at J and joyful now, healthy and strong, he smiled bearing a row of awfully mundane, human looking teeth.
“Tu das nicht,” he said, soft buzz under J’s skull, and J obeyed and he let go off the gun entirely.
The German bent down again to commence his feast and with the succulent touch of his tongue the pain of the wound faded away into numbness and black and then J felt very light, very warm, relieved of a heavy burden. Falling asleep to the sound of water dripping in the distance. The leaky faucet at the back of the barn that daddy never did fix. The house creaking, breathing in the night. Time stretched and compressed. Doves cooing in the attic. The warmth of sunrise coming over corn fields and under him a cooling puddle of piss, and little J is lying in his wet bed so very helpless and yet also content in this place and moment in time wishing it would last forever.
Tag: fill
SS Vampire AU
I knew I should be afraid of him, that I should leave if I wanted to walk out of it intact but being his maid was necessary to my survival you see. Jobs are hard to find, especially in occupied territories. That’s what I told myself every night before I fell asleep. Frankly there was a true reason behind it and I knew it deep down, knew what his cold stare did to me. Danger was erotic.
He would stare at me often. When I was cleaning or every night while I was making dinner. Ever since he had come back from the east. I saw him with the corner of my eye. He was different now somehow. He always had something arrogant and cold about him but now he seemed more… hungry, in a way. I caught myself staring at him too. That was my first mistake.
I cut myself. Silly me, I was too busy watching him to pay attention to the meat I was preparing. I yelped as the blade tore my skin and drew blood. I heard him get up and walk towards me until he was right behind me. I turned around and looked at the flour in shame. “I’m sorry-”
He cut me off as he took my finger and brought it in his lips and licked the blood clear off. I was staring mesmerized, the feeling of his tongue aganst my skin making my heart beat faster. He looked at me right in the eyes then and smirked aganst my skin. He then moved closer, his body leaning into mine and kissed me! His lips were soft and I felt the taste of my blood on his mouth. He then buried his face at my neck, kissing and biting gently.
I was completely frozen on the spot. His hands surrounded my body as he held me, running up and down, exploring and I had forgotten how to speak, how to breathe. I only left a tiny sign as he bit my neck with a little more force. More and more until I felt sharp teeth deep into my flesh, my veins, and I gasped in pain but there was no point. By now he held me with an iron grip and it was too late, too late and I was a fool to think that I was anything more to him that what the poor cow had been to the butcher that sold it to us for dinner.
SS Vampire AU
The pervasive scent of blood hung in the frigid Ukrainian air like a metallic mist, tightening his throat with a parched desperation that the bottle of schnapps in his fist did nothing to quench. It had been weeks since Wünsche had last fed, just a harmless bite into a pale and more than willing neck, like teeth into an apple; the writhing body under his weight arousing both of his appetites as the bloodlust washed over him with a warmth that even the mere memory of functioned to block out the icy wind that brought his men to the brink of hypothermia while he remained an unfazed figure, standing among the tanks in the biting flurries of snow, a few droplets of faded scarlet mingling among the stains on his white coveralls.
The pangs of thirst haunted him as the siege wore on, the city of Kharkov reeking of blood and rot as the fighting inched through the carnage and slush streaked streets day after day. He had allowed himself just a minuscule tasting of the blood of a young grenadier shredded apart by shrapnel in the chaotic darkness of a nighttime barrage, a few frantic gulps of anemic warmth, enough to take the edge off, steady his hands, sate the clench in his throat that felt like razor wire. It kept his fangs tucked away from sight as he flashed his toothy grin for the camera, his fresh Ritterkreuz gleaming at his neck as Meyer watched on with fatherly pride, a knowing glint in his steely blue eyes. His little cub needed to feed, and he had just the reward in mind.
In a nearly decimated building off the newly dubbed Platz der Leibstandarte, where the sounds of revelry would drown out any sounds of struggle, Wünsche eyed his reward with a gleaming smirk, the sharpness of his fangs peeking from behind his tongue moistened lips. With a tenderness that seemed jarringly out of place, he tilted Peiper’s head to the side, eyeing the erratic pulsing of the slighter man’s jugular with curiosity, his thumb running over the vein like a lover’s caress. Wünsche suddenly nipped at the exposed skin, just barely breaking the outer layer, little droplets of blood speckling the white turtleneck pushed down by thumbs. The breathy gasp and sudden smell of arousal that filled the stale room upon the touch of teeth to skin spurred Wünsche onwards, pressing his fangs inwards through layers of skin and venous membrane. Thick blood that tasted of alcohol and amphetamines coursed down his throat like fine wine, while the hard cock pressing against his thigh grew softer as he greedily drank from the wound, his tongue probing at it sporadically just for the twitch and groan the action produced from Peiper’s dry mouth.
“That’s enough, Max…” Meyer cut in, pulling Wünsche away with a gush of blood and flash of teeth, his own fangs shining against his battle weary face, lured out by the overwhelming smell of blood and cum. The blond wiped his stained mouth with the back of his hand as he eyed his limp looking meal, red tinged fangs retracting into his gums as the white hot frenzy cooled to a simmering throb coursing through his body. He stepped closer, the shallow breaths deafening in his ears with his senses heightened, and gently turned Peiper’s head side to side, smirking at the faded fang marks on one side and the fresh wound on the other. His favorite forbidden fruit. He would turn him eventually, like Meyer had turned him all those months ago in Mariupol, but not before he was ready to mark Peiper one last time.
Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven…
He held his head high as the foreign voices chattered behind him, their spirited, Slavic-toned discussion no doubt centered around his soon-to-be-decided fate. This was not the time to crack or to stumble, but the moment when a man needed to retain every last scrap of his dignity. To show the coarse, cowardly Soviets who surrounded him what honor was.
The autumn breeze ruffled his hair, and he smoothed it, allowing the stocky Russian who had taken him captive to lead him into the forest, the man’s comrades following him like a pack of eager puppies who had been thrown a bone or a scrap of meat. The sun, the wind, the sound of the rustling grasses – these were the last sounds he would hear, and he savored the simplicity of them, closing his eyes and imagining that he was back in the meadows of his hometown, where fat, docile cows lazed in the shade of oak trees and crows darted through the fields, stealing the wheat bit by bit with their sharp beaks.
His one regret, the one matter that tore at his heart, was the wife he would leave behind. She would need to be strong now, he realized. She would get a telegram that would inform her that he was missing, and he knew that her gentle heart would wait for years, never giving up the hope that he would be found. Someday, she would go to her grave, never having known what had happened to him.
He blinked away the shameful tears that burned in his eyes, forcing the thought out of his mind. There was no comfort in salvation; he would never see her sweet, open face again. She would go to live among the angels, while he would be cast into fire. After the things he had witnessed, the things he had done, the things that weighed on his soul in the middle of the night when his mind was left to wander, there was simply no other option.
A meaty hand clapped on his shoulder stopped him in the small clearing, the Russians taking their places, their cruel sneers visible as the surrounded him, facing their victim. At least we never looked people in the eyes when we executed them… he thought bitterly. At least we had some vestige of decency.
A cheap pistol was raised in his direction, and he stood at attention, ready to leave the earth as a man, as a soldier, as a hero to his people. A short prayer was not needed; there was no time for an attempt to atone for his many sins.
After all, he thought as he heard the gun being cocked, better to stand tall and reign in hell than to serve on my knees in heaven.
asking someone to say “I love you” even though you both know it’s a lie
In the moments before he left, after he had crawled from the rumpled sheets in the hushed stillness of a bedroom that wasn’t his to be in, he knelt at her bedside, resting his head on her bare knees in an act of reverence, his sharp blue eyes tracking upward to meet hers in silent supplication. It was a ritual for him to come to her this way, to pay homage to the woman he could never fully have and silently plead to hear the words that would finally give him peace, a gracious closure before his ravaged body was inevitably buried in in blood-soaked foreign soil, a release time and time again denied to him no matter the pity in her eyes or the softness of her fingers running through his dark hair. The fingertips that haunted him when his mind wandered as he lay awake in his command post traced down to lift him by the chin, her thumb resting in the stubbled dimple for the briefest moment before retreating, his signal to come to his feet and fade away from her like the ghost he had become, his own boot-clad footsteps a personal death march.
She watched him slip on his leather overcoat and tuck his officer’s cap under his arm in the dim light of her bedside lamp, a guilty tug pulling at her stomach as he turned the doorknob for what she worried would be the last time, his movements pausing only at the sound of a whispered “I love you” that they both wished was true.
admitting to your mistakes
Such a lonely old man, the neighbors always said. Such a shame, that he never married or had a family of his own. So quiet, always keeping to himself, but polite when people saw him in the shops or his front garden. Such a sad way to end a life, alone in a house with no one to keep him company. What they didn’t know was that he had once had a happy future in the palm of his hand, and with a single finger, he had taken it away.
______________________________________________________________________
The percussive shocks of the artillery rocked the foundations of the building, the only shelter that they had. Any moment the Russians would be there, and the end would arrive. It was only a matter of waiting. He had sworn an oath, and though he knew it was futile, he would keep fighting until the end.
Whenever that was.
He was amazed by her bravery, never having expected a woman to be able to withstand the horrors of the last few weeks. Time and again, he had urged her to leave, to seek safety in the west, to flee from the advancing hordes. And time and again, she had vehemently refused, wanting only to remain by his side, wherever that took her. She knew as well as he did what would happen if the Soviets found them, but that was a chance she was apparently willing to take. He had shoved money and rations at her, trying everything to get her to attempt an escape, but it never worked.
I will stay here with you. And if I die here, then at least I died at your side.
Her words echoed in his head as she curled next to him in the empty apartment, the sounds of battle all around them. An engagement ring rested on her finger, a symbol of the promise he had made, should they make it out to freedom.
The foreign sound of Russian voices echoed in the stair hall, and her eyes were wide with terror. She knew what was imminent, and her grip on his wrist betrayed her panic.
Shoot me, Siegfried. Don’t let them touch me. Please, shoot me.
He hesitated, shocked at the words coming from her sweet mouth.
Shoot me. Bitte. If you love me, you will shoot me.
Her eyes were bright with tears, and he felt himself leave his body as he knelt down to kiss her one last time, lips salty from her crying. From some vantage point above, he watched himself stand and take his pistol from the holster.
Don’t do it! he screamed silently, floating in some sort of cruel Purgatory.
A shot rang out, the voices grew louder, and the Russians broke down the door, finding no resistance: just a dead girl and a man who didn’t care if he lived anymore.
The trauma of what she had asked him so fervently to do stayed with him, a weight upon his heart through the torture and starvation, the years in the gulag mining gold for the Kremlin. He did not feel anymore, he did not care. Life, death, torture – these things held no meaning for him. He deserved to die, he reasoned, and was almost disappointed when he was returned, alive and relatively well, to his Heimat after ten years of hell. He would never marry, never search for happiness, never forgive himself.
He simply waited.
When death finally took him in his sleep, at eighty years of age, he would be happy. Freed from this life, he would finally join her again, to beg her forgiveness, to pick up where they had left off as 20-year-old youths in the May of 1945.
Just one last time
Just one last time, he needed her. He longed for her, sitting in that dank cell, on the cot that was too short, in the prison clothes that were too small, alone with his thoughts for hour after torturous hour. Of course he thought of his children, of his brothers, of his childhood. He spent long evenings recalling his days at the university, of the parties and the duels, the women and wine. But most of all, he remembered her.
Her cheerful, gentle demeanor, her radiant face, seemingly always smiling up at him. She adored him and everyone could see it plainly, for she refused to hide it, to hell with what others thought. He loved his wife – truly, he did – but he loved her in another way entirely.
His fingers fumbled with the buttons on his suit, drably matching his fellow defendants in the dock. He was gaunt now, wiry, a far cry from his former powerful self. The hemmorrhages had taken their toll. Why had they saved him then, only to kill him now?
Sick victors’ justice, he fumed. Sadists, the lot of them.
But he saw her then, through the metal grille, looking tired and anxious, her face drawn and guarded. He could tell that she had gotten little sleep, that she had cried ever since his sentence had been announced. Even so, she was more beautiful than before, and he ran to her, closing the distance between them as best he could. His fingers reached in vain through the cruel wire, struggling to touch her once more, putting his lips against the mesh, the taste of her mouth mixing with the tang of steel and the saltiness of tears.
To touch you just one last time…
Taking him home when he’s had too much to drink
She was so used to it by now, collecting him at the end of the night when his comrades called for her, knowing of that office romance though they would never openly acknowledge it in the daytime. She would emerge from the ballroom in her elegant evening gown, finding him slumped in a leather armchair in the corner of the conference room. His perfectly styled hair would be mussed, bangs falling across his forehead, and his uniform would be rumpled, his tie loosened and shirt unbuttoned at the top. And still, even so, she would find him as handsome as ever.
He kissed her hand as she approached, and she helped him to his unsteady feet, turning beet red as his fingers clumsily groped her breast.
“Kannst du noch laufen?”
His pale eyes were glassy and he managed to nod, his comrades watching with amusement as she braced his back with her delicate arm, guiding him into the marble hall.
“Brauchen Sie Hilfe, Ingrid?” one of them called out, clearly enjoying the comical sight of the petite young woman trying to support the much taller SS officer.
She ignored their jolly laughter, focusing instead on bringing the man next to her into the cool, sobering night air. He always did this, whenever there was a gala or a party, or even a late evening. He had learned to drink during his student days, and could still finish off a Kanne faster than just about anyone in the Gestapo headquarters. And as the war progressed, that practice had served him well.
And until the end, until he sent her out of Berlin with the threat of death and rape at the hands of the Soviets, until he handed her a wad of cash and a pistol and ordered her to save herself, she would be there after every late night, ready to serve as the man’s sober guardian angel, to lead him safely home.
Calling ernst kaltenbrunner “daddy”
The beautiful young blonde smiled to herself as she waited in the plush Berlin hotel room, patiently counting the hours for him to return from his meeting with Himmler. She could not wait to see his powerful form walk through the door, to see the light catch on the scars that crossed his left cheek, slashes that called forth both respect and primal fear. His tailored field-gray uniform would stink of cigarette smoke and hard liquor, but she loved those scents because they belonged so intrinsically to him.
This is what Himiltrude, the lover of Karl der Große, must have felt like, she thought to herself. A strong lover at the height of his power, the world at his feet, and she had earned her place at his side, securing it in a way that only a woman could. No, Gisela, don’t call her a lover. She was a wife, that’s what Ernst would say. Perhaps not in the pure legal sense, but in the old Germanic tradition of the Friedelehe. She could just hear his voice in her imagination, the mark of his northern Austrian accent always charming to the ear. Lisl may be my wife on paper, sweetheart, but you are my wife in my heart. You, liebe, are my Himiltrude.
The sound of his boots on the parquet floor brought her to her senses, hurrying to fall into his arms, the place where she felt most at home. He lifted her up, his lips burning with the taste of cognac, and her heart could have burst for joy.
Feet back on the ground, she twined her fingers in his, ignoring the yellow nicotine stains that would never wash away, pointedly not looking at the silver wedding band that he wore below his Death’s Head ring. “How I’ve missed you.” he admitted. “You won’t believe the stress I’ve had with the goddamn ghetto revolt in Warschau.”
Her heart skipped a beat as she moved his broad hand to her svelte middle. “Well, I’ll make it up to you with some happy news, Vati.”
He was wearing nothing but high black boots and dog collar wit his iron cross.
Her Heinz was a very handsome man, Greta knew this. Tall, blond, with high cheekbones and eyes like the winter sky, and while Greta always tought of herself ever too smart to fall for all the race propaganda she had to admit that he had perfect, symmetrical features. She knew this as she had seduced him away from the jealous stares of other women, and as she walked down the aisle next to him, full of pride and satisfaction for her choice in a husband.
She also knew how handsome he looked especially in uniform. Straight posture and high boots and for a very long time she had thought that this was the look that suited him best, all tall and reserved, and she was as glad to make love to his naked body at night as she was to let him bend her over his desk, next to his pretty Wehrmacht officer’s cap, and take her like that, uniform still on, trousers barely pulled down.
But it seemed that, just as the Fatherland had become more and more hungry and demanding for power, so had her appetites, and as the pretty black cross had appeared in her husband’s neck she knew exactly what she wanted. And Heinz, her perfect officer, was just as obedient and good at following orders as his rank demanded of him, or even more so now, that he was crawling at her feet like a good dog with only the colar his own valor had given him and the officer’s boots she so adored, begging to serve her.
Reichblr Ficathon 