Easy

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

It’s easy money, Goebbels’ friend had told him with a leer, giving him a quick elbow in the ribs to compliment it, what are you so worried about, you do like girls don’t you?

Then a fast little bob of his head nodding up and down while he thought, yes, but…and that ‘yes, but’ must have showed on his face because his friend rolled his eyes and then left him alone in the university dormitory.

Now he’s standing at the door of the woman he’s been told will pay good money just to look at a pretty youth. Well, perhaps his friend never told him she wanted ‘pretty’, he was told she had certain…tastes, and he would suit them perfectly, that’s all. Mustering up the courage to knock on the door makes him feel mildly dizzy with apprehension but it’s better than begging his father for more funds.  

A servant opens the door, takes one look at him and tells him to wait in the room to the left. Goebbels crosses his arms and tries not to vibrate his good foot on the spot. The house reminds him of a church, the smell of it at least, what he imagines is the scent of old wood. Maybe all these places just use the same furniture polish and it’s as simple as that.

The nervous sweat has spread up from his palms to the back of his neck by the time she enters the room. He glances at her face once and then down to the floor. She could be your mother, some insidious internal voice croons to him.

“Are you worried, dear?”

She’s standing right in front of him now. Her hand touches his cheek, it’s very dry, hot.

“Your friend told you didn’t he?  Just… show me,” she says. “Let me touch you. That’s all. You won’t have to do anything.”

Goebbels stares harder at the floor, yes, of course he was told, why should hearing it now make him want to flee from this place at once? And she’s just a woman, just some old, sad, lonely woman, he can come back to campus crowing about how he earned a pretty penny at her expense.

He thinks that but his mouth feels parched, incapable of his speech and a cold chill has spread from where her fingers have touched him and still he can’t bring his eyes up from the ground.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “Just let me see your body. Touch you.”

Goebbels stands and fixes his gaze on the far wall, where there’s a clock. It almost seems as though it’s standing still. He feels hollow, adrift from himself, raw and empty inside.  His fingers struggle with the buttons on his shirt. The lady(he realises just now he doesn’t know her name) doesn’t make a comment but seems to find his fumbling all part of the exquisite enjoyment she’s wringing out of this moment.

He lays his shirt down gently. Then his trousers. He’s standing in his underthings and he knows they are expected to be discarded too and in the middle of this room where the daylight is streaming in, the high ceilings, the wooden floor tacky underneath his feet, he hooks his fingers into his drawers and-

“Wait a minute.”

The lady steps closer, kneels, reaching her fingers to his malformed leg, the tracery of damage that’s as much a part of his body as he wish it weren’t, that soft touch reminding him of how faint those memories are of when he was young and perfect and whole.

Her fingers are damp as she presses them to the twisted limb . Goebbels’ stomach begins to writhe with bile; he locks it down, resolutely.

“Take the rest off,” she says.

He does. He tries to lift his chin up, proud, cocksure, but instead his arms are shivering with the need to cover himself up.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see the woman is no longer smiling. She circles Goebbels on soft feet, touching him with clammy hands.

His jaw is clenched so tight it’s cracking. His fists furl at his sides. Her hands hover at his nipples then slip down to his hips, cradling his pelvis, feeling out its bones. He’s too thin, he knows that. He wonders if that’s what she likes and the thought fills him with equal pride and disgust. When her hands move between his thighs, he can’t keep still. His knees buckle, and he staggers as the room sucks darkly at him.

“Careful…” She breathes the word into the back of his neck, barely able to contain her excitement at the effect her touch is having on him.

He reaches for the edge of the table in front of him and steadies himself, taking shallow breaths until his pulse slows..

It’s just a body. Goebbels has already taught himself that. All those nights looking at himself with disgust and willing the fact that this was attached to him away. He can put himself higher than that, he doesn’t need to be connected to it. No amount of touching can touch him. Not now. And especially not this. A quick grope by a middle-aged dowager? It’s nothing.

He repeats it like a mantra as her hand closes over his erection and the filthiness of the whole thing worms under his skin, tears falling silently down his face as he braces himself and images himself begging her to stop but he doesn’t even have the courage for that.

Pervitin

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

On the day of the last advance I found the Standartenführer curled up all alone in the back of his Kübelwagen. He had fallen asleep fully clothed. The hat with the death’s head was still set at exactly the same angle as always showing some of his light brown hair, which was now dark from pomade and sweat. His wrinkled leather coat clung to his body like a macabre nightgown fit for a butcher. His gloved hands were holding on to his binoculars in the tight grip I had seen so often on men killed in the moment of action. Maybe they were of use in his dreams that nervously fluttered behind his eyelashes.

Oh, his eyes, they always worried me. During the past weeks he had looked horribly sick, dying even. His skin was almost transparently white, marbled with pale blue veins, and grey in the hollows of his face. The corners of his eyes were red from days without rest and stood in stark contrast with the blue of his iris. A beautiful composition often found these days in the ranks of the SS.

It was early in the morning and the light was dim and pale. The smell of burned wood was still in the air and occasionally the wind lifted the ash of the charred remains of the village, which we had set ablaze last night in cold frenzy. The tiny particles seemed to gain a life of their own now, swirling like black spirits around the resting men. It was like a painting of Nordic myth with the Standartenführer at its centre, a scrawny greyhound with blood drenched fur resting after a good night’s hunt.

I woke our hound up with a light touch to his shoulder. He opened his eyes so abruptly that I froze under his stare thinking he might jump at my throat. When he recognized me his look softened and he gave me a tired smile. The dry leather of his coat crackled. He raised himself off the seat into a sitting position with slow, deliberate movements. His hands were shaking as he tried to rest his weight on them. I felt a pang of sorrow and averted my eyes. All the blood, brains and guts, the tears, piss and shit, but that small loss of control still bothered me.

“What time is it?”, he asked demanding my attention again. He was holding one hand with the other now in a pose reminiscent of prayer, evidently intended to suppress the shaking by force.

I looked at my clock. “It’s six ten”, I said, “in the morning.”

He scanned the surroundings, clever blue eyes jumping from tanks, cars and smouldering ruins to his men, who were huddled together in groups of two to a dozen, some still asleep, others munching on dry bread looking cold and miserable.

He loosened the grasp on his hand only to find the shaking return. He groaned quietly and clenched his fists but to no avail. The open acknowledgement of his condition took a burden off me. His stimulant abuse was an open secret. There were limits to the human condition even if the will wouldn’t falter.

“You need to do something for me”, he said with the intonation of a command. I snapped back into military posture and habits. “Jawohl, Standartenführer.” He could look quite charming when one gave him his due respect. Some people praised kind leaders who mingled with their men and treated them like equals, I had always been partial to the likes of our Standartenführer. His orders were clear and absolute. His word, his responsibility, my duty. I embraced this obedience, it brought a clarity to my mind that I had lacked in my teenage years. It is quite wonderful what man can do when he must.

“Do you have any bandages on you?”, he asked. I rummaged in my bags and found a couple. “Get in the car”, he said patting the seat next to him. I did as I was told. He was sitting almost comfortably now, legs crossed at the knees and his back resting on the seat. His hands however were digging into the edge of it as if holding on for his life.

“Open my coat”, he said. I took off my gloves and fumbled with the thick leather buttons until I had opened the front of the coat revealing the grey tunic underneath. The knight’s cross was pinned to his breast pocket. “The tunic too.” When I opened his tunic I realized something was wrong. The shirt underneath was dark brown. It felt starched. Dried blood. I hastily opened it too and found his undershirt drenched in blood, old and brown mixed with the wet shine of fresh blood. Learned instinct kicked in. I hurried to peel him out of his uniform to inspect the wound. He was weak under my hands, offering no resistance as I took off coat, tunic, shirt and undershirt. I had stripped his torso completely when he stopped me. “I’m fine”, he said with such clarity that I halted. “I’ll have a medic take care off it when we rendezvous with Kampfgruppe Werner. I just need you to change the bandage.”

I realized how much I had overstepped his boundaries. I had never seen him naked. He didn’t wash himself together with us, he hadn’t sunbathed on the hot summer days in Russia or went swimming on the days off in France. I felt an unseemly urge to see what he was hiding. He looked so fragile, bedded on his uniform like a doll thrown by a disinterested child. His body was as wiry and pale as his clothed appearance suggested. His left arm was dotted with large round yellow spots, bruises, more than a week old by the looks of it. His hands were still shaking and not just his hands, his arms too were affected by spasms, less frequent than his hands but when they came the blue veins of his underarms writhed like worms under the skin. The only part on his torso that had retained some fat was his chest which looked almost boyish except for the trail of brown hair running vertically across it down to his bellybutton, there it was swallowed by the waist of his trousers. Blood drenched bandages were wrapped around his chest and fastened under his armpits, where they cut into the flesh and trapped strands of his axillary hair. Blood and sweat made for a potent smell. The impression was difficult to reconcile with my memory of him as that fearless daredevil with unyielding haughtiness.

“It’s just superficial shrapnel,” he said with a smirk and I became aware again that he wasn’t as vulnerable as his body suggested. He had been observing me intently. “Just cut the bandage”, he said and pointed to the bayonet on my belt. To suppress the shaking he grabbed the seat with one hand and my thigh with the other. I slid the long blade under the cloth, careful not to cut into him. He watched, not anxiously but with interest. The bandage came off with a snip and I saw the wound. A wide gash across his right breast revealing the flesh like layers of an onion. It was diamond shaped and perfectly symmetrical. The skin was cut and peeled back by the force of the hit revealing the muscle underneath and in the middle of it was a deeper cut right into the flesh. It must have been a sharp thing, more piercing, like a bullet, which was lucky for him as it meant less tearing, crushing and chance of infection.

I threw out the dirty bandages and made sure to peel any remains of the cloth from the wound. Mindful of the cold I tried to act fast. A little too fast maybe. His grip on my thigh became painfully tight.

“The funny thing is, now it stops.”

He let go of me and raised his hands in front of his eyes. They were perfectly still. We stared at them for some seconds before the shaking started again and he threw them down in bitter anger. Then he turned to me, a curious glimmer in his eyes. “Do that again.” I looked at him in disbelief. His expression didn’t allow for disobedience. “Hurt me”, he said sharply.

I placed my thumb on the wound where it was the deepest and pressed lightly. He shook his head disapprovingly. “No, that’s nothing. Harder.” I obeyed. He exhaled sharply. His heart was racing under my thumb. He didn’t tell me to stop. His heaving breast pushed my finger deeper into his flesh, soaking it in fresher blood. His chapped bottom lip dropped. I could hear the shortness of his breath. His pupils dilated, swallowing up the blue of his iris, two black discs staring right through me. My hand was hot with his blood. It dripped down on him, tiny red pearls rolling over the concave of his stomach, downwards where they were sucked up by his waist band. I stared unashamedly, hypnotized by the twistedly erotic image.

“I said stop. That’s enough”, he barked. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my hand away roughly. I hadn’t heard him at all. That entranced expression was wiped off his face and he just looked mildly annoyed. “Clean the blood off and finish the job”, he said, “Don’t waste my time.”

I cleaned and wrapped him up. His annoyance with me didn’t run deep. “Good job”, he praised my work placing his hand on my shoulder – perfectly still. “See, it stopped.”

It wouldn’t go through my head that I had failed to hear a commanding officer’s order and violated his personal trust. I crawled out of the car while he was still dressing himself, now closing every button of his uniform with utmost control and care. “Go get some tea for me. And tell the boys to get ready, we leave in half an hour.” I snapped my heels and walked away, wondering if everything I had just seen was just a sick day dream. But there was still blood on my hand, a cold and sticky reminder.

Captive

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

It doesn’t start with a knife. The burning stick comes first. About a foot long, sharply crooked in the middle, the last three inches or so a glowing red ember. The Tommy holds it like a weapon; there’s  no mistaking it for a gesture of warmth, of trying to bring the heat of the fire to him after a long cold night in the miserable swamp they’d caged him in. He holds it close enough for the ember’s heat to warm his cheek, and then moves it closer until Max can no longer look at it and the warmth becomes pain.

“I can make you ugly,” he says, his voice thick and low. “So ugly the girls will scream and even your father will not want to look at you.”

Max stares at him, meets his eyes. He does not nod, or flinch or show his fear. Being burned does not seem more horrifying than having a noose around his neck. All of this is more than he can face and so levels of terror become irrelevant.

When he doesn’t move, the soldier puts his stick back in the fire to heat.

“You don’t care if you’re ugly? I don’t believe that. The last pretty German boy let me break his fingers, but when I threatened his face he cried. You don’t know what’s important. Hands, you need to work. To make something of yourself. But you are so soft, you think you need your looks.”

He pulls the stick out of the fire again, bringing it towards Max’s left cheek, then shifts trajectory at the last second and pokes it at his right eye. Max wants to jerk back, to drop to the ground, tighten the noose around his neck and escape them once and for all. He wants to keep still, his eyes on the face of this thug and away from the stick, and somehow he gets his wish. The stick comes closer and the smell of burning hair pricks his nose. He feels the terror flare in his eyes, sees the chuckling British soldiers around him  notice, and is relieved that something in them is satisfied by it. They laugh and the man in front of him throws the stick on the fire, where it can’t be retrieved unless he wants to lose the skin on his arm.

Max’s relief is short-lived. The stick is replaced with a knife. A hunting knife with a four or five inch blade, it is designed for close-in work. The man kneels down in front of him, runs the point of the blade down the side of his nose. He grabs Max’s fringe and pulls his head up. “If ugly doesn’t bother you, how about I cut your face right off?”

Max is sure he feels the scrape of metal against the bone of his skull. The blood in his eye feels like hot oil. He flinches then, hard.

‘”No,” he says. Pleads. Using their language. He doesn’t know if it’s the firelight or the wash of blood that makes these men’s teeth gleam red when they grin.

“No. You’re right,” the British soldier says. “It would be a shame to ruin those pretty looks so soon. We have time, I think.”

The man who had been happily carving away at him leaves the circle with a grunt about needing to take a piss and Max realizes he isn’t even sure what rank he holds, who is in charge here? The dark is folding in all around, a lead blanket that confuses all these ugly Anglo faces together. The horizon is lit up with artillery like the dawn – there is still hope isn’t there?

None of the British in this camp seem to be moving. Four English men are watching him from the other side of the fire. He wipes the blood from his eye with his fingers and presses his sleeve to the stinging cut. The seep is warm against his wrist. He is so thirsty that he wonders if there is enough blood for him to drink some.

One of the Englishmen  throws a biscuit into the dirt.

“Eat it,” he says.

“Essen…it,” says another and then bursts into laughter.

At the edges of the campfire he watches a man walk past with a long moustache and all the signs of a Field Marshall plastered to him. Their eyes meet for a moment. The gentleman nods to his men and then keeps walking.

“Here.” Max hears the voice at his ear before his face is pushed down into the mud.  

–

They give him a tin mug of water and a piece of bread with some sort of paste smeared on it. It tastes like blood and dirt.    

The next time they lay out his ration on the ground and piss over it. They don’t make him eat it and he doesn’t.

They shove him into a tent, where the bedding looks like heaven and he collapses on top of it without a struggle.

–

When he wakes someone is pulling his trousers down without undoing them. Five days with little water and less food mean that even the button stays intact.

He concentrates on the feel of the pillow under his face as fingers are dug into his hips, lifting him, and ripping into him with no further warning than that. He doesn’t cry out until a calloused hand pulls his dislocated elbow up behind his back. The nauseous, intense agony of it forces him back into his body; each thrust pushes tears of pain to his eyes, his hands hurt where they grip so tightly into fists.    

The British soldier grunts when he comes, hot, heavy breath against Max’s ear as he thrusts his dick into him as far as it will go. He can’t feel it but he knows he’s being bred like a woman. The clammy breath against his ear mirrors the awful stickiness that leaks out between his thighs as the cock inside him withdraws.

–

The next time Max wakes, he’s tied to a tree by his ankle like a stray dog. He hardly has time to wonder why his hands aren’t tied before he sees the man on an ammunition crate stool pointing a rifle at his head from less than five feet away. Suddenly even the ankle-leash seems overkill.

These British boys like to visit his tree. They ask him questions in a language he doesn’t quite understand. After a while, starving, it doesn’t even sound like human language at all.  

–

He’s dancing in the dark, eyes fixed on the cold grey horizon, trying not to move too much so he doesn’t rub his wrists raw. Someone pulls him up by his collar, pries his mouth open, and with a rifle-toting guard laughing, pushes his filthy cock past his lips and down his throat.

Max doesn’t mean to bite him. It’s a reflex, like retching.  

They cut the rope tying him to the tree and between them they carry him closer to the fire. They lash him on his side, facing the crackling logs so he can’t roll away when they kick him, and so every kick has the threat of immolation as a counterpoint. Unconsciousness feels like death.

When the next Tommy fucks his face with a pistol, he says, “This time if you bite it breaks your teeth.” Every time.

–

The spoon holds something that looks like porridge.  

The ropes around his arms and chest that tie him to the stake prevent him from feeding himself, but the English occasionally shove bits of bread in his mouth, pouring water after it, leaving him to figure out how to chew and swallow without choking.  

This is not just oats and water, but milk and sugar and salt. The taste of something like real food is something amazing and Max almost cries with the pleasure of it. When he’s offered a second spoonful, he opens his mouth eagerly.  

The man feeding him tips the food to the ground and pushes the empty spoon over his tongue and down his throat, holding it there, his face impassive, as Max gags and gasps, then thrashes. The world begins to grey from lack of oxygen.

“You eat like a pig,” he says. “You don’t deserve food.”

More Schnapsideen

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

More hourglass sand trickling down my back, rough but softly caressing. Silly me, I miss Jochen. No, more precisely I miss his hand around my cock. Fine, tight fingers on the base of it. Nicely manicured nails scratching the sensitive skin. And with the other hand cupping my balls and slowly but unrelentingly squeezing. He didn’t do that actually, not the part with the balls. But I wish he had and I can imagine it vividly when I jerk off into the bathroom sink while my girls outside just won’t stop knocking on the door, asking if daddy is okay.

Jochen still writes me letters like nothing happened. Friendly, soppy, heartfelt letters that don’t mention anything about the night in that hotel room. And I respect that because there is no way of politely asking whether he remembers jerking me off and possibly wishes to eventually repeat the experience. I imagine proposing this to his face and grind my teeth remembering the way his hands felt on my throat and I think about how nice it would sound if he closed them tighter, cutting off the air and called me a dirty old man and other such innocent words, quiet, softly, like he speaks when he is angry, so that the insult would eventually be drowned out by my own gasps for air.

There are no more happy events, the Leibstandarte only ever assembles when comrades die. One of these days I meet Jochen again. It’s like a kick in the balls, hard to describe why seeing him has that effect on me when the pain is still so sharp. He looks good in black. I am reminded of his uniform, the black Panzer one. I can’t control myself. When I greet him I grab him by his small waist. I could lift him up so easily, he seems as light as one of my girls. He jumps like something crawled up his back and still standing on tiptoes scolds me with a quiet look until I wrestle my hands back wishing he would have slapped me across the face instead.

I hadn’t expected it to be that bad, the intrusive thoughts are terrible. I should be mourning, but I’m just horny. I’m like a schoolboy in gym class, hiding the tent in my very expensive dress pants while I stand at the old comrade’s grave. And good, solemn Jochen stands on the other side of that hole in the ground. His hair is so neatly parted. His eyes are wet. I wonder if they ever made him cry in Landsberg and wonder if maybe I could make him cry if he was drunk enough to allow it. If I suck you off will you let me stick it up your ass?

They put our comrade in the ground. It starts to rain. His wife cries. I’m utterly disgusting.

It’s tradition to celebrate the dead with a feast. The HIAG helped out with the finances and it’s to our own benefit as we are both the financiers and the guests. In a small local restaurant we say farewell to our comrade and I say sorry for being such a swine. To my relief Jochen keeps his distance, talking to some younger men in a corner that I can’t see from my seat, and judging by the laughs entertaining them greatly. With increased alcohol intake the relief turns into anger. It’s just normal that I want what’s being withheld from me.

I watch Jochen as he walks out of the room, wandering off alone by himself. He is fiddling with his wedding ring, his nervous tick. It’s a sort of invitation. I follow him. He walks past the kitchen and out the back door leaving it open for the cold air to get in and me to slip out after him. It’s definitely an invitation.

It’s dark outside except for a light above the door. There is nothing here but mud, empty barrels and the edge of a forest. He is leaning on the wall next to the door, hiding from the rain under the overhang. I’m hardly drunk, but already so unrestrained. He has no excuse to be here, he’s not even smoking. When our eyes meet he smiles like he only smiles for me, affectedly coy. I grab him by the shoulders – he feels softer than I thought he would be, and push him closer to the wall, trap him with my body. Muffled conversations spill out of the door next to us. If he screamed they’d hear it, but he doesn’t make a sound. He just cocks his head and looks at me with something resembling curiosity and an underlying note that I can’t grasp but I remember from that night, knowing it should not be worn with such an innocent expression. He waits patiently, shifts his weight with a soft rustle, his knee rubs the inside of my thigh. The cold air bites my gums. I smell the alcohol on my own breath. I feel like I’m trapped there under my own heavy body, not him. Now that I have him I don’t know what to do with him.

“At a funeral service, Kurt?” he asks and there is no smile in his voice, it’s all cold and sharp like his eyes when he musters me up and down. “You’re shameless.” Shameless. What a wonderful poignant word. He drops it like a knife and it strikes me somewhere deep in my guts, leaving a queasy feeling, like blood spreading, horrible really, but also nice and warm and most of all deserved. I want him to say it again, rend me with words, cut me open, gut me like a pig and pull out all those rotten entrails.

I remember something stupid, something someone told me once who was nearly as good a disciple of Heini as Jochen. Maybe he’ll like that, I think, actually I am not thinking at all, just acting on quick reflexes, trying to get to him one way or another, preferably the hard way, make him angry so he shows his teeth. “Did you know the Saxons used to feast for three nights for each of their fallen warriors to..” Yet I hesitate, reflexively lick my lips, I think about fucking and placing my seed deep inside a girl, but I try to find better words for Jochen, who is so much more delicate than I am, “..ensure there would be enough babies to replace the dead?”

He tilts his head slowly to the other side not breaking eye contact for a moment, more snake than kitten now. “Kurt, evidently you haven’t paid much attention in biology class,” he says dryly, “The two of us are not going to pull that off.”

“We can still try,” I reply with a wink and I absolutely mean it, think about it too, him instead of that girl, back arched and dripping come.

He sighs, barely concealing an amused smile with this protest.

“Thank you for the offer, but I must reject,” he says and he pries my fingers from his jacket. I grab him by the wrists and slam them hard into the wall, clumsily, hurting myself just as much as him. The pain makes him wince. Disapproving folds appear between his furrowed brows. But he doesn’t fight me at all. His hands drop at an uncomfortable looking angle, such a theatrically emphasized lack of resistance. He must reject, but he must also not fight me. I can feel his heart beating under my thumbs. Not moving from my position I close the door with one foot, cutting off the distant mumble. Now it’s only the soft thrumming of the rain on the roof and the grass and the leaves. And Jochen’s heartbeat and his breathing, disappointingly calm, he doesn’t even look angry with me anymore.

“Aren’t you scared of the big bad wolf?” I say and show my teeth like a big bad wolf does.

He squints at me, flashing daggers from deep, dark eye sockets.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

I stumble at the question, answering it in my head. God, how much I would love it if he shivered before me. It’s not right, absolutely not right, to think like that about my dear old comrade in arms, yet here I am digging my nails into his skin and waiting for him to do something fun, like whimper or moan. I can see him grind his teeth and clench his jaw, the hard outline of his muscles jutting out. He tries to stare me down, but I’m not that easy, I won’t budge. Long, drawn-out seconds later the tension leaves his face, he lowers his eyes. I win. His smile is bittersweet.

“I thought you only fuck them to make them squeal,” he says and then looks up at me again, intelligent eyes behind dark eyelashes, his smile cocky now, calculated trick, just the right provocative expression, the kind that makes me aware of the weight of my cock, trapped by my pants, hard against my leg. Don’t ruin your outfit, Kurt. And he waits another moment, makes me think about the way he said ‘fuck’ and really shouldn’t have, good, innocent Peiper, makes me feel what it does to my dick. “I won’t squeal,” he says unflinching, begging to be proven wrong. I could drag him off into the forest, show him just how easy it is, I reckon it wouldn’t take much. He still keeps his hair that perfect length to hold on to. All I need is hand on the back of his head, one on his hip and he’ll be my piglet in no time.

I must stop my thoughts before actions follow all too quickly. He is my dear Jochen and I must remember how much he loves me and how good he is to me and how despicable I am for thinking of breaking this sacred bond between us, just because my dick is hard and I want to destroy something small and feeble; and small and feeble he is not, but maybe that’s why he riles me up so much.

“You’re abnormal,” he says so low it’s almost a whisper, the suggestion is barely audible over the constant drizzle of rain. It cuts right through me, splits me open, body and thought and all that lust now in his hands to play with. I know he’s doing it on purpose, a well calculated choice for words, twist the blade in my hand until it points back at me. I envy him for how good he is at it, reading me and finding that weak spot to probe, but that knowledge doesn’t help the fact that it does hurt and it hurts precisely where I need it to hurt now. My grip on his wrists becomes weak. I nod. “Yes, I am.”

“What are you?” he asks and he’s all kitten again, looking at least a decade younger than he is, like I remember him from the war, the doe-eyed admirer, practically begging to be allowed to taste my cock the way he looked at me then. Except of course, he never did want me like that, he’s just a tease and I’m the idiot falling for it over and over again. It is all so predictable. I know exactly what gets him off. He needs me to repeat his words, put me as the subject, make me say and really mean it, establish hierarchy by verbal submission.

I did want to be punished, did it not?

“I am a disgusting swine.” Anticipatory obedience, let’s get on with it. It does feel nice to say it out loud, that constant nagging thought, throbbing under my cranium. Like pulling a fat maggot out of rotten flesh. See, it’s still perfectly good to eat if just a little bitter.

“Yes, you are, Kurt,”I still like the way he says my name. It’s so affectionate, like he wants to swallow me whole. He slides his arms out of my hold and crosses them in front of his chest. The posture reminds me of my wife when she finds me nibbling on sweets. My arms, still caging him, are useless now without anything to hold on to, so I retreat and fold my hands behind my back. He must love that, I know I would.

It’s like a switch, sweet lovely Jochen to stern Standartenführer Peiper, to be addressed only with the full title, but preferably not addressed at all. “You’ve been fantasizing about me; at the burial,” he says, more statement than question. I nod.

“Tell me.”

My tongue becomes heavy, weighed down, too many things to say, all the nasty images clogged up in my heads, all of them likely to make him retch. I swallow them for him. It makes me sick. Even on fantasies I overeat.

He’s not patient with me. “Tell me,” he repeats with added emphasis, the anger barely concealed in the tone of it, but so apparent from the way his fingers dig into the fabric of his own suit. I have never seen him that unrestrained, but I should know better, the ‘flamethrower battalion’ moniker didn’t attest to a reserved character. Of course I don’t answer, just smile foolishly, knowing very well he wouldn’t accept that. He is so delightfully angry with me; his nails must by now be digging into his own flesh. Don’t hurt yourself, hurt me. I must have spoken out loud. Suddenly he lets go and smacks me in the face. The blow is harder than I had anticipated from his pretty hands, not as strong as my father’s were but enough to make my cheek feel warm and numb. The way Jochen looks at me then I can’t tell if he’s disgusted or intrigued or both, like when you see a particularly deformed animal in the wild and wonder how it can even live like that. Maybe he needs to see more of my depravities to come to a conclusion. I’ll show him how much I love pain. I can see his arms twitch to hit me again. I brace for it and am disappointed when he spares me. He sighs, glances over to the door and back to me.

“Get on your knees.”

I hit the ground before the downwards gesture of his index finger even points where he wants me. The grass under my knees is wet and muddy. Dirty water soaks my pants. I want to jump up again but I don’t, because he says “good boy” and says it as if it was a joke with a sarcastic edge and a smugness that makes my stomach twists. I’m not a good boy, I’m very bad and I need to be punished. I get on all fours, my hands sink into the wet grass, my sleeves are wet now too. There are steps behind the door, heavy, no heels, approaching. My heart is racing. To be seen like this, put in my place, they would all know what kind of a dirty pig I am. They stop, I freeze. They start again, going the other way, leaving us.

I am so relieved. I look up at Jochen, stick out my tongue and pant like a dog. I must look very silly. Jochen laughs just like you would if your pet did something absolutely adorable. He pats me on the head, two times, his hand remains there. Does he not see how vile I am? He strokes the back of my head, I barely feel the touch, too much pomade, it’s like an itch. I can’t stand his tenderness. It’s fake, he’s just toying with me.

“Hurt me,” I say with stifled anger.

He just quietly looks down at me, a hint of that laugh still remaining in the corner of his mouth. His fingers have gone through the slick strands of my hair, his nails scrape along my scalp, the sensation sends shivers down my spine. “Please hurt me,” I try again and twist my neck to give myself into his hand, knowing he will understand, hoping he will just grab my hair and pull. He hastily lets go of me, I’m not good enough to touch. He wipes the pomade off on my shoulder. I am as disgusted with myself as he is with me. I try to get up and get away, anywhere but here and on my knees.

“No,” he says, “stay.”

I am a good boy, I stay. Back on my knees again, closer now, getting accustomed to it.

“You’ll have to repay me,” he says. For what? I haven’t said anything, I’ve only been naughty in my mind. He can’t know that. “For when I jerked you off. Don’t tell me you forgot?” He puts on the face that I’m sure he uses on the girls, so understanding, so thoughtful, intense; he’s only got eyes for me. “No, of course not.” I sound like a bootlicker. “Good,” he says and grabs the hair on the back of my head, just like I wanted it. A slight pull snaps my head back, I stare at the lamp above us, little moths are trapped in its light. It’s blinding me too. I can’t see Jochen’s face when he says, “Now you suck me off.”

It’s only fair. My hands are too messy to touch his clothing, he unzips for me. He’s half hard, entirely unimpressed by my performance. A droll sight if I was fucking him, knowing he was getting off on it so little but just enough to be ashamed. Now it’s simply cruel. I try my best to excite him, I pull back his foreskin, lick the head, suck on it, stuff his dick in my mouth. He’s not dirty, but something about it still remains repulsive. I can not get used to the taste of his cock. Eventually I get him hard, when I try to go so deep down on him that I gag. He likes that. Precum rubs into the back of my throat, salty like blood. I would prefer it if he pissed on me, I think, I would feel less like a cunt. There is that look again, I’m his girlfriend now. He starts fucking my mouth, sharp jabs, always enough time between them to watch me squirm. I nearly forgot how much of a sadist he is. It’s cute. I gag again and taste sick on my tongue, he pushes deeper, as deep down my throat as he can go, and feeds me his spunk. A fitting punishment for a glutton. It’s kind that he doesn’t get it on my face, makes it a little easier to explain the condition of my clothing when I go back inside. I can taste him still, on the back of my tongue, all evening, the beer won’t wash it down.

Boating

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

Magda wears dark glasses when they’re out on the boat so Lida only has the uniformly placid set of her smile to guess her mood by. Although it seems to Lida there should, unfortunately, be nothing very difficult about guessing that mood, everything about this trip has felt like a queasy sort of dream without logic and her stomach has been tightly coiled with nerves all day – even as she reclines; the picture of relaxation and leisure under a sun glaring highlights on the bright metal railings of the ship and on Magda’s hair, each flash of light slipping and shifting in time to the lazy bobbing of the waves.

Magda’s maternal softness and sweet familiarity of address are mirages that come and go. Thank heaven none of the children are here at least, no pointed, jealous dandling of little girls on laps, just the strangeness of Magda talking to her as though she were a child, or a simple little sister. Worse than when she talks of their duty to Joseph as though they were fellows. Equals even. That first time when Magda had clasped their hands together and spoken of how things ought to go on between the three of them all, Lida had thought she might weep for the both of them until she understood the sheer, vindictive venom behind it all.

How could there be fellowship in their suffering when her distress is Magda’s only consolation in all this? Though not to forget the torture of Joseph, who (when they are together alone) in turns rails against his wife and shies away from mentioning her at all, or makes black, oblique remarks with self-conscious glances and sighs, or smiles and says that things will be altogether perfect and very, very soon, the last often stated so beautifully that Lida can almost believe it.

Joseph, at the other end of the boat, is sunning himself like a lizard and watching the two of them with one eye always until Magda, all needlelike languor, instructs Lida to go fetch her a drink and then laughs as though it were a joke. A frigid little moment that causes him to put his fingers to his temple and says he must go lie down inside for just a moment or the heat is going to give him a migraine. He touches Lida’s shoulder briefly as he passes. She would like to go with him but it’s impossible.

“You’re no different you realize?” Magda says, only a murmur and Lida thinks about pretending she didn’t hear it.

“I’m sorry?”

“Than the others.” Magda slides her glasses down her nose an inch, gazes at her coolly. Her silver-grey dress compliments the look in her eyes.

Lida shakes her head. It comes off more like a shudder. The tightness in her belly spreads to her chest, a horrid, hot weight of shame. The denial is anaemic, though she believes it with all her heart (Joseph does love her, that’s the misery of it all) it only has to be bloodless since all her blood has rushed to her cheeks. It’s the thought of the gossip that humiliates her, the actual, almost tangible murmur of Berlin. She digs her thumbnail into the palm of her hand and turns back to face Magda since even in the ugliness of this scene she can find a streak of pride in meeting her stare forthrightly and cling to that. There’s gossip about Magda too isn’t there after all?

They’re both trapped sharing this stage. The wind skims the lake, touches them both with a fine mist of water. It does nothing for the heat in her face. Magda is beautiful. She holds her gaze steadily, composed; and though Lida has watched her stumbling tipsy, noticed  her carefully folding her hands and gazing forward slow-blinking back tears, heard her voice shrill and troubled, coming in tinny on the other end of a telephone receiver covered furtively by Joseph’s palm; still she feels no pity – she knows this woman could destroy her and never has she felt it more acutely than she does right now.

“You’re an expensive whore,” Magda says, as though they’re discussing a novel or a play – calm and almost as though she is testing to see if the opinion will float.

Lida keeps her mouth shut but tips her chin up, a little defiance despite knowing what her best interests are. But then her career has taught her a great deal about charm, its value and its currency and it’s already clear that charm will cut no ice here. Magda’s eyes drift to the diamond brooch pinned to her shirt. Without thinking Lida finds hers gaze flicking to the rings on Magda’s fingers. When she realizes what she’s doing she looks back up hastily.

“I can fetch you a drink if you would like,” she says, and tries not to look at Magda’s hands again, which seem keen to give off the impression that she’s never fetched her own drink in her life, though she’s no princess and they both know that.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Magda says.

Lida peers toward the shadowy interior of the little vessel and hopes she can imagine to life the shape of Joseph moving behind the glass, coming to return to them.  

“Liduschka.”

The voice is so close she almost shrieks. Magda sits down beside her.

She leans away on instinct, as one would step back from some dreadful sight and the dreadful sight is her own stricken face distorted in the reflection of Magda’s dark glasses. She would scramble to her feet but Magda’s hand is wrapped firmly around her wrist.

“I know exactly what he thinks he sees in you,” Magda says.

They’re on a level but she still manages to say it looking down her nose. The grip at her wrist is unwaveringly proprietorial. Lida feels her heart hammer in her chest and wonders dizzily if Magda can feel it too. Magda traces the line of her cheekbone, fingers warm and smelling faintly of talcum – a polished fingernail presses slightly at the delicate skin just beneath her eye.

“I just want to make it clear where we all stand.”

Magda’s smile is not broad or snarled, it’s dainty even; neat white teeth and a subdued, fashionable colour painted in tidy lines around her lips and absolutely savage at the basest  level as she takes her hand from her cheek and drives it between Lida’s legs. The heel of a thumb grinds her underwear hard against her, the setting of one of her rings, the facet of some stone, etches a cold, sharp line at the very top of her inner thigh.

“Don’t-”

She tries to pull Magda’s hand away but those elegant fingers twist into a curl of her pubic hair and tug at it painfully.

“It’s clear isn’t it?”

“Yes!” Lida gasps.

Magda’s fingernails pry past the gusset of her underwear and up into the folds of her sex, pinching and probing at her carelessly until she finds what she is searching for and crushes that most sensitive part of her between two merciless fingers. The pain so sharp and sudden and acute that Lida’s  still choking on the breath to squeal before Magda removes her hand as quickly as she began.

“Now you can get me that drink.” Magda looks at her hand with disgust. “And a wash cloth. Oh and try not to disturb my husband either, thank you, Lida.”

Estrangement

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

When her dear husband returned from the front for his much needed home leave he was hungry for fried potatoes and starved for the gentle touch of his wife. She made him the former with bacon and eggs and refused him the latter until he came crawling on his knees.

She didn’t like the fact that he hadn’t brought her any presents and she didn’t like what she had heard about the general conduct of the German soldiers abroad, in particular about the brothels and the fraternizing. She didn’t believe that he had done anything seriously barbaric, he was a good soldier and a good German after all; the two white chevrons on the sleeve of his uniform and the good proportions of his face attested to that. She also thought he would not have been quite so pathetic about his needs if he had learned to take what he desired by force.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t wanted to kiss him at the railway station but when she saw him get off the train, so dull grey and ragged and very hollow in the face, something had overcome her and made her freeze. When he hugged her, unaware of the change in her heart, she stood still, clutching her handbag raised as a barrier between them. She denied him his kiss, turning her head away just enough to make the point, and he failed to take what she did not willingly give him. Defeated and desperate for some form of compensation he nuzzled into her neck, tickling her with his hot breath just below the ear.

Since she didn’t like to sit on his lap anymore, he instead sat on hers. It seemed only appropriate to her, he weighed barely more than her now and her thighs were much more comfortable to sit on anyway. The position suited him well. He had learned to be inconspicuous. When he was not holding his peaked cap he always kept his hands neatly folded in his lap, occasionally fondling one of his rings; and he would sit like this quietly unless directly addressed.

Just one week after his arrival he had to return to the front. She knitted earmuffs for him, because his ears stuck out so much she was sure they’d fall off from the cold. She also gave him some canned meat and her father’s two bottles of cognac. On the last night they drank together from the cognac. The intoxication made him very soppy, he would not stop kissing her wrists. Around midnight she indicated that she wanted to go to bed and he eagerly followed her like a shadow or a well trained pet. She told him to leave her alone and sleep on the couch, because he smelled too much like alcohol; and also because she wanted to see the face he would make and if he would cry. He looked like something had struck him in the chest. His hands seemed to search for the arrow lodged in his heart but he could not find it, so it stayed there and hurt him badly. When the pain became too much to bear he fell to his knees and begged to be allowed to sleep next to her, to touch her, make love to her, please, just one last time, only because he would tomorrow be send back to Russia, where he would soon lie in a ditch, dead, frozen and forever alone. To act so lowly didn’t seem to trouble him psychologically. He looked very much at home with his forehead touching the ground. She suspected these sort of displays were part of the military training, but was surprised to see him still so apt at it. It was very endearing though, so she allowed him in her bed as long as he kept that attitude, which sure enough he did with outstanding obedience.

Schnapsideen

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

It’s strange to meet Jochen again after all those years. When I had last seen him we were both in uniform talking tanks and war and Germany. He addressed me so formally then, what was it again? SS-Oberführer Meyer? Dates and titles are hazy.

Now there he is in a room full of old men, alcoholic beverages and heavy food. For so many years I only had the words in his letters but my visual impression of him and the sound of his voice was still fresh in my mind.

Sometimes his letters sounded so bitter, even depressed. He would never say so of course, but the desperation for contact was clear in his closing words. The whole ordeal never struck me quite as severely as him. I’m not a man of intellect but cunning. The ramifications of my actions and circumstances aren’t quite as obvious to me as to him. He sees a darker future where I see a grey present.

He is different and all the same. Older of course. Unlike me he didn’t gain weight, it seems like he never really got the fat back on his rips after the war stripped it off him. He’s a little grey around the edges, but still as handsome as ever. And so very solemn. His face lightens up the moment he spots me. He embraces me and laughs. He stills sounds like Berlin royalty, his controlled choice of words is in pleasant contrast with the relaxed demeanour. And he has so much to tell, but even more so he wants to hear about me, about Canada, Britain, my plans of escape from the POW camp. I see he’s still glowing with the same admiration he had for me the moment we first met. He would still call me SS-Brigadeführer had I not literally shaken it out of him. I get nostalgic again. But no more ranks now, It’s just “Kurt” and “Jochen”.

Sepp is there too. Like the good old days. We laugh a lot. It’s a good night with plenty of alcohol to grease the tongue. We drink to the fallen comrades.

Time passes quickly. Jochen misses his ride home. As the meeting splits up I offer my hotel room. He gladly accepts. We throw ourselves on the bed in the gloomy bedroom. There is no space for sitting areas in old fashioned places like this.

I’m not tired and neither is he. I’m not even sure he’s really drunk, had it not been for the missed ride home. I feel tipsy and unfocused yet his eyes are so clear and so unwaveringly pinned on me. You need a pair of balls to withstand a look like that. It’s not like he means harm, but he’s just so damn intense in everything he does. So much will for such a small body. Well, I shouldn’t be talking.

He takes his jacket off. The fit of his pants is flattering around his hip. My mind makes two jumps.

“Probably the worst thing in there was having no decent German around. I heard you guys could really spend some quality time together?” He nods, his eyes are still glued onto mine. “I heard Sepp had a… special kind of friend.” His expression changes ever so slightly. I’m too drunk to read it.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

God, he sounds cold now. Where is that warm admiration? He makes it sound like I implied him in the matter. I wouldn’t dare. I need to win him back, think of something.

“The Americans. Did you ever?” I imitate a gun with my hand and make a shooting motion. He looks at my hand and back into my eyes. Is that a little curiosity maybe? I set the gun to his forehead. His body tenses visibly. “Did you see it?”

“I wasn’t present,” he says in a rehearsed manner and then a little calmer, “and if I was I had other matters to attend to.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

He looks intoxicated now. The red shows so easily on his pale skin. The tip of my fingers are still on his forehead. I’m not sure I understand his expression any longer. Is he flirting with me? I feel hot. When in doubt, keep talking.

“The Canadians… I’ve seen it all. When… I forgot his name… when he shot them. Every one of them. That moment when the light leaves their eyes and they spill their brains. Such a funny way to go.” The memory is still vivid. It brings a smile to my face. I feel dizzy.

Jochen holds his breath. He’s tense. I feel something I haven’t felt in years. The urge to grab his throat is suddenly unbearable. I could swear his eyes beckon me to do it too. I can’t refuse. I grab him by the neck and pin him to the headrest. To my surprise he lowers his eyes into an almost submissive expression. Then they shoot back at me again, warm, glowing with newly kindled adoration.

“I hated thinking about the noose,” he says. Slowly, carefully he also grabs me by the throat. Smaller hands but a firm grip. I can’t tell if this situation of mutual choking is comical or intimate. It makes me giggle either way.

“Did you ever think about what it would feel like if they don’t snap your neck immediately? To have your windpipe slowly crushed. Not enough air to live but enough to draw your death out for hours if they want to.” A sad smile. “What a disgrace, for a knight of the black order to dance and moan and soil himself in front of a common hangman.” There is something so much more vulgar about his choice of words than my plain vocabulary. My thoughts are too dirty for this. Does he even understand what he’s doing to me? I always grin when I’m horny.

Evidently he very much understands what he’s doing to me. His eyes flicker down. No way of hiding this. Oh, how will he deal with that? Himmler’s first man. Such a decent German couldn’t possibly accept sharing a bed with someone as degenerate as me? He lets go of my throat. I hastily follow. I expect some insult, disgust. Yes, I’m pathetic. Normally I would never. I’m not that kind of man. Just a little too much alcohol and dirty talk.

His hand drops on my chest. Heavy fingertips going up and down with every breath. One finger slips between the buttons of my shirt and rests on the sticky hair of my chest. I feel like a disgusting slop. His every move is so controlled. It seems silly, that he could seem so reserved when he places his other hand on the bulge in my pants.

“Tell me.” He stops to think. “Tell me about Russia.”

I know exactly what he means. I dig out my most exquisite memories. That church filled with Russian peasants, crammed in there like cattle to the slaughter. I give him every detail. Their screams as the fire starts to engulf them. That disgusting meaty sound as the grenades detonate between them. The wails, the smoke, the smell. God, that smell.

He listens as if I’m giving an interesting lecture. But his hand seems to be operate separately from his brain. He opens my pants, pulls out my cock. I’m leaking and desperate for touch. I don’t dare break eye contact lest I break the spell and make him stop. I keep talking. He jerks me off. More details, more horrors. I never told anyone any of this. I feel like a piece of meat, a little toy soldier, just pathetic. But I need this. I have to keep talking. Can I talk about the women, what we did to them? I’m so close. He stops.

“Do you think that is becoming of a German soldier?” he asks. He looks so angry. I buckle into his hand. Don’t do this to me now.

“This is disgusting, Kurt.” I can see the delight on his face as he says that. My name is a delicacy to him. Twisted little fuck, I always knew there was something wrong with him. No wonder he liked me so much. Sadistic little shit just like me. I want to hurt him, but I just rub my cock on his hand like a stupid teenage boy. I want to fuck him now. I imagine his cocky little face pressed into the sheets. Wouldn’t be so fucking arrogant with my cock up his ass. No more sarcasm, just muffled screams.

“Over my dead body,” he says and laughs. He looks like one of those Hitler Youth boys on the posters. His hand moves erratically. I wince. He’s hurting me. I close my eyes, think about tearing into him and come.

While I’m still catching my breath he stares at the pool of semen in his hands then back to me. “How can I make you lick this up?”, he asks innocently. Fuck that. I resist the urge to throw him out of the room in a fit of disgust. He cleans himself up and we just sleep next to each other like an old married couple. I’m glad he doesn’t touch me again. I don’t feel like I can trust my body any longer. God knows what he’d make me do.

the power of yes

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

“Get on the floor, next to the bed, on your knees,” Göring instructs Goebbels, and he quickly scrambles down to the cold, hard wood.

(Once, as they sat side by side, Göring’s slow regard of him slanting more predatory by degrees, he had asked, do you miss Confession, Goebbels? Turning his rings on his fat fingers. You must, I’ve heard that sort of…upbringing is impossible to completely scrub out.)

“Lower,” Göring says, maintaining an aura of the beneficent and, a queasy yet unavoidable lurch in Goebbels’ stomach, the paternal even while he grips the back of his head and pushes him lower beneath him, trapping him against the bed, smiling at the tremble in Goebbels’ shoulders

(Your lot must have some more grandiose term for it though? The amusement in Göring’s voice had Goebbels turn his scowl toward the window, wanting to deny him the satisfaction, wanting to bite back at the implication of ‘your lot’, to tear apart the utter audacity of Hermann Göring of all people to scoff at grandiosity. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, quietly, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.)

This isn’t a ritual or an unburdening of sins. Those aren’t the things he misses. He looks up at Göring’s cock, the bed frame is a dull ache at the back of his skull. Göring smears his erection around his cheeks, lips, forehead, and back again and again. The hot, wet tip of his prick slides against the side of his nose and presses against his eyelid, leaving a sticky stripe of precome in its wake. The oily salt-tang of it fills his nostrils. A tiny retch hiccups at the back of his throat.  

“I am going to fuck that pretty little face,” Göring says, then pulls Goebbels’ head back, so he can look up into his eyes as he positions his cock in front of his mouth.

(All the words spilled out of him in the end, escaped while he wasn’t watching. Göring pressed a thumb against his mouth to stop him but he continued until the outpouring became a trickle, stuttered in-between desperate flicks of his tongue and the suckling of his lips around Göring’s fingers until finally there were only two words left.)

“Yes, please,” he says in a soft little tone, widens his mouth and sticks out his tongue.  

Baton

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

The contrasting black of my baton flatters Peiper’s features, the dark eye sockets and pale lips. I stroke him with it, poke his face, pressing into the hollow under his cheekbone. He looks bored, demonstratively, but I can tell he’s getting so excited already, his eyes scurrying when the tip of the baton grazes his lips. Implication of fellatio. His breathing halts. I apply light pressure to part his lips, a fraction of an inch like a whore does it to attract her customers. Now he stares at me, cold blue, hard steel, judgemental, disgusted. Ironic. I’m not the one getting off on this.

I drop the baton down on his chest. Disappointment flickers over his face. Now now, not so fast, I’ll give you what you need. I draw a vertical line down his torso. No condescending look can hide the tenseness of his body. He once took out a tank by climbing on it and dropping a grenade down the hatch. Hard to believe now, him being so small. Finally I find a warm, soft spot to rest the tip of my baton. There is recollection in his eyes and then expectation on the verge of want.

Remember me now? I gave his balls a good whack some time ago and fondly remember the sound of him panting, muffled by the hood, when he rolled on the floor, cramped up around the pain. Might do it again if he misbehaves. Until they pop. I was a little disappointed he couldn’t keep our little moment to himself, the braggart. Had to tell everyone what a brave soldier he was. But I’ve seen his hands shaking then, I heard his voice breaking.

Did you miss me? Emphasized with a light tap on the soft parts. He jerks forward. The good officer is so eager to earn his wound badge. All the others already have their medals. Black eyes, broken ribs and broken teeth and occasionally strangulation marks and pissed pants. Fine medals. But this prisoner here is too precious to break. Not even that Jewish butcher will touch him. It must be so frustrating, waiting every day for your turn.

The way he looks at me. Defiant doesn’t even come close to describing it. But every challenge is also an invitation. He knows that. Strip. More invitations in the curl of his lips and the red of his cheeks and the discovery that his body looks entirely too boyish for a man of his age. A crescent moon of dirt under my fingernail disappears into the flesh of his chest just below a white, circular scar. His heart it racing. He wishes he didn’t want it so bad. Left unattended it will tear him in two, tragically. I’ll make you feel better.

The baton connects with his face with a meaty thud. Once, twice. A red line pours out from between his lips. Sorry, sir, he fell down the stairs, no, practically threw himself. You know how they are. Another blow to his thigh. He stumbles and falls and cowers from me like an animal, crawling away on his hands and knees. Where are you going? We’re not done here. He’s hyperventilating. Sounds like he’s in heat. His back is bent so that his vertebrae stick out like nails stretching the skin, like they could break through if I made them. One hit on his back drives the air out of his lungs. I count the seconds until he draws breath. Like a drowning man, half a dozen times and increasingly more frantic. When I hit him again, the rhythm breaks, his arms give out, his forehead smacks on the ground. I stop. I mustn’t break him.

With weak arms he raises himself on all fours again and coughs, blood dripping from his mouth, speckling the concrete floor under him. He looks at it and laughs and then turns to look up at me. He’s smiling wide, euphoric. His teeth are pink with blood, his eyes wet with tears. Didn’t think the sourpuss could be that happy. Suddenly my urge to hurt him wanes. I feel drained like after a good fuck. Lazily I kick him in the balls. He moans. I realize he does that just for me. Sickening. “Thank you,” he says when I leave.

Scene From a Birthday Party

bunkerarchivesLeave a comment

Hermann comes down glittering and really it should be ridiculous but that’s not the feeling tying Joseph’s guts into tight little knots. Hermann is strutting; effortless, enormous and graceful and commanding, all eyes on him and Joseph’s as well naturally – his stomach turns queasily at the knowledge he’s just part of this crowd, caught in this eddy too, unable to resist though he knows better.

Up close he can see a peacock swipe of colour across Hermann’s eyelids. He’s powdered and rouged and draped in some chimeric confabulation that’s half Roman emperor and half Renaissance Duke.

“Really, Joseph?” Hermann is smiling but the reproach feels genuine as he looks him up and down in his drab little suit. “I did tell you to wear something appropriate.”

And he does feel out of place amidst this close circle of party goers in masks and feathers and gold. He tries to summon the will to feel disgust at them, at their opulence, even at Hermann’s corpulence which is excess made flesh, writ large, in the most literal way.

What he feels is paltry and ragged. What he feels is the desire for Hermann to pull him in close so his nose is pressed into the soft, fragrant patch of skin behind his ear – the private scent of Hermann’s flesh.

You’re abhorrrent, he wants to say, looking at the way Hermann has painted his lips, the way it matches the nails on those hands that could crush the very life out of him, that have been, in spectral form, pulling the trigger on an ocean of arms vast and ceaselessly moving as the shells of beetles in some gargantuan infestation.

“That could have been my birthday present you realize.” Hermann smiles from ear to ear.  

“What?”

“Really, Joseph,” Hermann repeats, though whether this echo is a question or a statement seems uncertain. He makes a small gesture that has someone immediately scuttering along to hand him a flute of champagne which he presses at once into Goebbels’ hand.

Later, as they sit together on the couch and Joseph toys with his empty glass, rolling the stem between his fingertips and trying to retain his borders, Hermann tells the white-blond boy who comes to refresh his drink to stay and stay must mean kneel since that’s what he does, at Joseph’s feet, irritatingly beautiful – though almost sexless really, like the statues he saw in Greece where the chastity of marble was self evident and all appreciation could be pure.

The boy touches his knee and Joseph swats it away unhappily.

“Let him touch you,” Hermann says.

He strokes the back of Joseph’s head and the lazy, feasting way Hermann’s eyes roam over his body almost make him capitulate. There’s so much certain authority in the way Hermann pets him, as though the warm drag of each firm finger is remaking him as a simple ornament for Hermann to play with and no denial of his could ever change this fact.

“Can’t you call over one of them?” Joseph snaps, flinging a hand in the direction of a gaggle of girls in skirts short enough to flash their garters with every little movement.

“I’m just trying to make you more comfortable,” Hermann says.

“Comfortable with what?”

“Accepting pleasure, without these parochial restrictions of yours.”

Goebbels considers the smug, pitying look on Hermann’s face. The condescension washes over him in a hot wave not unlike arousal. He lifts up his refilled glass as though to make a toast and then, quite definitely ceremoniously, upends it over the boy kneeling in front of him who gasps and sputters and looks to Hermann with wide, lost eyes.

Hermann only laughs and effortlessly pulls Joseph closer to him, ignoring the black little look Joseph knows is scrawled across his face from the tightness in his jaw to the vein at his temples, pulls him in with one strong arm around his waist and  kisses him on the forehead so Goebbels can feel the greasy smear of his lip colour marking him and calls him his dear sparrow and beckons over another tray of champagne.