sweaty afrikakorps

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Under a blazing sun, somewhere between the crushing blue of the sky and the sand of the horizon glimmer the shades of men and trucks and tanks. Tommies. Walter, the more experienced of the two men on patrol, spots them first, but Karlo who follows his every move is quick to notice them too. “A mirage!” he bursts out, clutching his rifle with a big grin on his face. His teeth are very white, his skin tan, the almond hair bleached by the sun. There is a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. He’s not scared at all, that young pup, he’s excited. Anything but the dull routine of that not-quite-war, the waiting and wandering – may it come as a mirage or as battle, in which lies hidden, like a dried flower between the pages of a heavy old book, the promise of glory and death. 

His comrade is not that wet behind the ears. Walter quickly jumps to the ground and pulls Karlo with him. Karlo gasps under the weight of the other man coming down on him. There happens to be a small hollow in the sand, the perfect size for the two of them, enough to swallow their silhouettes off the unforgiving line of the horizon and in there they are lying on top of each other, a squirming ball of limbs. The sand is hot and it burns the bare skin of their tangled legs. Hobnails scrape and draw blood. Karlo wiggles helplessly under Walter. His body is lithe. He used to study biology. Walter used to be a butcher. 

The nature of the close embrace changes quickly, when friction comes into play, the touch of skin and the smell of sweat. There is no room to hide their arousal. Walter opens his mouth before he can find words to express the question on his mind. Karlo cuts him off with a kiss. Their lips are dry, it’s clumsy and innocent, but it’s as good as they can get in the middle of nowhere, so many miles away from home, and Karlo always did like Walter in some fashion, maybe like an older brother if he had had one, and Walter always did like Karlo much like one likes a vase of freshly plucked flowers on the kitchen table – useless, but pretty to look at. 

They press their bodies together, rubbing and groaning for friction. The heat is unbearable. Walter pulls up Karlo’s shirt. He’s still pale under there and he’s blushing down to his chest. In the scramble his shorts ride up. He’s pasty and pink down there too. The make of their underwear is of some advantage as one can easily slip a finger through the open net. Karlo’s skin is soft in the place where his thighs meet. 

Sand clings to their sweat and the white of their release. Like starving men devouring their first meal and hardly savouring its taste it’s all over far too quickly and it leaves them with that feeling of regret, which follows excesses of the flesh. The sort of grave soberness that makes one so very determined to never repeat such a despicable act of debauchery again, a feeling so ephemeral that one is destined to forget any such noble intentions as quickly as they came.

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arachnophobia

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Sergeant Johnson had missed the prisoner’s arrival. Usually he liked to watch the new prisoners being unloaded from the truck. They would have a sack over their heads and their hands bound behind their backs and there would be a lot of shoving and kicking and insults involved in the process. To observe a prisoner’s behaviour under these circumstances, could be very educational, invaluable even, if one didn’t plan to repeat that sort of spectacle another time. He knew the man had signed away the lives of thousands, that he was a fervent nazi and a man who had just been following orders and merely a cog in that wheel rushing downhill towards total annihilation at an unstoppable speed. It was time to get personally acquainted. Johnson opened the door to the prisoner’s cell. It was dimly lit by a fading light bulb, and it was bare of any furniture, a bed, a sink, not even windows. Despite this Johnson almost did not see the prisoner at first. He sat curled up in a corner, only a little dark spot in the recess of the room, that black round thing. He was not wearing a uniform, his suit was black and clung to his skinny frame. He sat with his legs drawn to his body, his arms wrapped around them, his own head cradled, his face hidden behind his knees. As Johnson entered, the man looked up, flashing the sickening white of his face and two deep dark eyes. Johnson froze in place. It was a sudden primal reaction beyond any reason. Fear tingled on the back of his neck like the graze of a thin thread. The prisoner uncurled his long limbs one by one and very slowly rose to his feet. It seemed as if time slowed down and at moments, fleeting like flickering frames of film, it seemed as if there was an arm too many, a leg too long or a joint where it did not belong. Only when the prisoner stood before Johnson, the sly smile of a salesman on his lips and with the smoothest voice asked what he was being charged with, could Johnson free himself of that terrible grasp and with equal strength was overcome by an urge to crush that despicable monster under his boots. It was not his style, but he did beat the man and he kicked him. When he came to his senses the prisoner was lying on his side in the fetal position, the quivering limbs tucked to his body, rolling his eyes and spitting dark, dark red blood.

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insomnia

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Nowadays I only look in the mirror to shave, which is an unusual habit aboard a submarine, but I can not stand having a seaman’s beard. I have tried. It’s itchy and scratchy and I hate the way it makes me look, like a mangy mole. Sometimes I fail to recognize the man staring back at me out of the mirror. He looks like a stage actor, covered in white powder, devoid of any colour except for the red around the eyes, which looks all the more sickly for the contrast. I brush my teeth, I spit out blood, I shave, I go to my bunk and I can not sleep. I calculate the amount of water over my head. 182 metres, 182000 litres, 18.86 bar, 192.33 tonnes lie in wait for a mistake, a malfunction, a crack in the hull, waiting patiently to cave my brain in. I can not sleep. Johann and Fritz and Wilhelm are playing cards 1.43 metres away from my cortex. Johann talks about his father’s farm, green fields, white sheep, the shore and the sea. I can’t stand his nasal voice, I can’t stand his inflection, or that he laughs like a goat, and when he combs his fingers through his greasy hair, scratching the scalp with a grating noise. I turn around and face the wall. Behind it is an endless ocean and I can hear it. My bones hurt. The bed is too hard, the walls are too close, I can not sleep. I get up, squeeze past my lounging comrades and I work my shift. There is surprising strength still in my body. I feel better than ever, exhilarated. I follow my orders, I work the engine. The pistons resound through my body. My bones vibrate. Their rhythm becomes my heartbeat, going faster and faster, speeding at 17.2 knots. Afterwards I make a poor job of washing the oil off my hands. Although I am not hungry I eat. I get reprimanded for the dirt under my nails and wash them again, scratching, scratching down to the flesh. I watch that hollow fellow in the mirror. I brush my teeth, I spit out blood, I shave, I go to my bunk and I can not sleep. When I put my ear to the hull I can hear the sonar echoing through the ocean. When will our calls be answered? When will they rip this casket open and sink us to the dark depths? What a great relief it would be if the hull squeezed us to a pulp and spat our juicy remains out into the salt of the sea. I still can not sleep.

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What happens at the Berghof stays on at the Berghof

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“Got a light?” the officer asks. There is a cigarette between the fingers of his right hand, and a distinct lack of lighter in the other, which is holding instead rather gently a pair of fine leather gloves. The tall guard, leaning up against the wall of the building and staring ahead at the dull alpine vista, had not taken notice of the young man’s approach. Mustering him dismissively he seems to have no intention to answer the soft spoken request. Slow curls of smoke from a cigarette stuck at a careless angle between his lips get trapped under the visor of his cap. His mouth twitches as if to smile. The lips don’t fit his face right, they are too lush and full for the hard cut of his jaw. He takes a deep drag. Now the officer can clearly see the scars running across the guard’s face. He looks older than he is, but his eyes are those of a boy on the playground, the sparkle and daring, so eager to pounce and play. It must be very dull being up here all the time, loitering around, doing nothing but looking to seem important, the officer thinks. Taking another drag the guard blows smoke in the officer’s direction. “Rauchen verboten”, he says. The officer smiles coldly and tugging the cigarette between his lips he takes a step closer. Now he too disappears from the sight of the chattering guests on the balcony above. He leans forward on tiptoes, as far as the tall riding boots allow it, and lights his own cigarette using the tip of the one hanging lazily from the guard’s lips. Before the officer can retreat again the guard grabs him by the belt, sliding one hand under the leather that is so tightly wrapped around the slim waist. He pulls him closer. For a moment the officer manages to stay in this position, balancing on the tip of his boots, stretched out, striking a figure as graceful as a dancer, before he loses his balance. The officer’s hands shoot forward to brace for the impending fall onto the guard. He drops his gloves. Stopping his fall his hands come down hard on the guard’s shoulders, pinning the heavier man up against the wall. The sudden onslaught of circumstantial violence pleases the guard. He grunts. He grins holding the cigarette between his teeth. His hand is still stuck under the officer’s belt, now at an uncomfortable angle. He slides it out from under the belt, twisting it, his fingertips brush over the buttons on the officer’s tunic (fine fabric, fashionably short), his palm comes to rest on the fly of his trousers (wide breeches, small hips). The touch is too heavy to have been accidental. The officer feels a sudden urge to flee. He does not and the guard remains trapped and the hand remains where it was, shamelessly fondling a hardening bulge. They don’t break eye contact. The guard’s cigarette burns down to a stub. The officer can’t stand the guard’s brazen stare. Arousal makes him avert his eyes. Mindlessly tracing through the fabric the hard outline of the officer’s cock, the guard says: “It’s a shame I won’t get to suck your dick.” Then he motions towards the hands that keep him pinned to the wall. “Now if you don’t mind, duty calls.” On his way back to the party he doesn’t turn to look at the officer again. Pleased with himself he’s humming a tune. Come nightfall they meet again like drifters in the same spot and under the cover of darkness the guard kneeling reverently receives the officer’s cock and the officer in turns offers his splendid equestrian thighs for release. When years later they meet again at the front, neither is willing to recall what had happened at Berghof.

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Peiper & pain

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One of these days, an hour into the fifth interrogation of this kind, I ask that bastard Peiper: “How much do you think you can take?”

He raises his eyebrows ever so slightly. We have spent a couple hours with each other already, we have grown accustomed to each other, almost fond, and I’ve gotten very good at reading his subtle little mood swings.

“How much pain do you think you can take?” I ask again.

He has his arms crossed in front of his body, hands tucked in. The uniform he is wearing is evidently not his own, it’s too tight. He wouldn’t be so poorly dressed if he had the choice. The posture isn’t helping, the fabric is pulling on the shoulders and straining at the seams. He reminds me of a little boy who wants his toys back. I have your toys now. I have your home, I have your family and I have you. And I’ll do with you what I want. I smile.

“You keep playing the tough one,” I say, “but you’re not tough, you’re just acting under the misconception that you are untouchable. You think I’m bluffing. You think you’re important. You think I care about your nazi ranks. I don’t give a shit. You’re all the same scum to me. If I want to I’ll have you beat to a pulp. If I want to I’ll beat you to a pulp with my own hands.”

He looks at me with enough loathing for three of those nazi bastards. He’s not even ashamed of the endless immensity of his ego. It’s like a medal, his very own cross of iron. Or a thick steel collar pushing up his chin to an ever arrogant expression. Some men are asking for it. I take a sip of my coffee. It’s cold. I push my papers into a neat little pile and place my pen on top at a thirty degree angle. I get up from my chair and circle around the table. On the way I wink at the dimwitted guard standing by the door. He winks back at me. I’m standing behind Peiper and Peiper still keeps looking at the same spot, two inches above the place where my eyes used to be. I put my hands on his shoulders. He almost doesn’t flinch. His shoulders are so small and bony, like a bird’s. They disappear almost completely under my hands. Maybe I could crush them. In 1918 they used to call me the Butcher. They thought it was funny that hands like mine held pens more often than guns and clubs. Some words need physical presence to back them up.

“Hands on the table,” I say and he obeys. His shoulder blades flutter up under the weight of my hands. I gently press his shoulders forward until his forehead meets the table. He doesn’t resist. The position exposes the appetising white of the skin that he hides under the high collar of his uniform. I could probably choke him with one hand. I put my right on his neck to test the feeling of it. It feels just right. His pulse is under my fingers. He can’t fool me.

“How much pain do you think you can take before you scream? How much until you cry? How much until you piss yourself? How much until you beg me to stop?” I enjoy the way the words sound, I enjoy the way they feel on my tongue, I enjoy the way they feel under my fingers in the rhythm of his blood. I let go of him. He exhales audibly and is embarrassed to do so. Following the mishap his breathing is of unnatural, forced regularity. Although his demeanour suggests he thinks himself cut above the ranks he is still a soldier and as a soldier he is well behaved, without verbal or physical corrections he knows not to move and until told otherwise to remain in the position I bent him into. I circle around the table, once, twice, and look at him, the torso almost touching the table, forehead resting on it, the slick hair dishevelled and next to it the delicate hands, palms pressed flat, a stiff kind of prayer. I light a cigarette, smoke it and watch him silently. In the end I stub the cigarette out on the back of his hand. His fingers dance over the smooth surface of the table. The pain would be easier to take if he could hold on to something or if it made any sense at all that. If there was any reason for it but my personal entertainment. When I make him look up his lips are bloodless and his eyes wet. For today I’ve made my point. He’s taken back to his cell. And I need a moment for myself to calm down and pull myself together.

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Brothers

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Manfred von Richthofen indulged in few pleasure. He did not enjoy smoking or drinking, he was not particularly fond of social get-togethers and aside from his also rather practical fur coat he didn’t care much for luxuries. Some said he was so Prussian he had taken Frederick the Great’s decree to heart. The old Fritz had once proclaimed that his generals and officers were not to take wives as they were already married to their military service. Little did they know how close to the truth they came. While the Prussian king had no part in Manfred’s convictions what he had in common with Frederick’s officers was, that the sought the company of men over those of women. But where Frederick’s officers had entertained themselves with rent boys they picked up in the establishments and parks of Berlin, Manfred preferred his comrades. These boys were of little appeal to him, being entirely too soft and weak-willed, he might as well have slept with women, which even to think about was already too stressful. To have to go through the chore of courting, to take the initiative, push himself on some fair lady or boy – it was against his nature. It was however not against his brother Lothar’s nature. Lothar was always at ease with everyone. When he walked down the street he made the ladies turn their heads. Not because he was Lothar von Richtofen, the ace pilot, but because he was tall and handsome and looked like he could be anything he put his mind too. His smile was disarming and plenty of men he did disarm.

When Manfred first watched Lothar work his magic on a young pilot it had been an accident. Lothar had been too drunk to remember Manfred was there at all and the pilot, fresh from flight school, had been too star struck to protest either Lothar’s irresistible advances or Manfred’s presence as Lothar took him. Manfred had watched that tangle of bodies, rosy flesh, the red of their arousal and the white of their release, and Lothar’s firm grip on the young man, which bent him as he wished.

It had soon become Manfred’s favorite way of relaxing after the battle to watch his brother fuck a man. It was just like when they used to go hunting together. While Lothar was still too young to shoot a rifle, he had only fetched the prey that Manfred dropped. Once Lothar had turned old enough to hold the gun himself their roles changed. Manfred had little interest in the act of killing itself, taking the shot, watching the prey scatter or fall. He enjoyed stalking, reading tracks, picking out the perfect target and moment to shoot. So Manfred left the killing to Lothar. He was a remarkable shot too and very eager for blood. He would of course have done anything his big brother told him to do, but Manfred could tell how much Lothar enjoyed that moment before he pulled the trigger, sparkling eyes and his lips trembling slightly, looking a little rosier than usual. Manfred did not know such intimate pleasure, but when he saw it on Lothar’s face it was as if it was his own pleasure. He lived through him. When Lothar took a man, an admirer, a comrade, a friend or foe, it was just like that. He didn’t need to feel the tongue on his skin to know how good it felt, he just had to watch his brother’s face. When Lothar moaned so did he, but silently, and when Lothar stroked a lad’s scalp he could feel the prickly texture under his hands and when Lothar thrust faster into those perfectly angular bodies Manfred stroked himself faster. He always waited for that perfect moment, watching and waiting at the edge, so they could come together, Lothar pumping into a willing hole and Manfred spilling on his hands and if Lothar had a particularly fine lad on his own belly too.

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Come and sit with me, young prince. Lay your head on my lap, let me stroke your dark locks. How beautiful you are. Don’t lower your eyes, dear boy, they reflect the sky that birthed you. Listen now, Hyacinth, allow my words to kiss your soul. Let me be your guide through the barren deserts. Follow the wise man in the star-spangled cloak. I will show you temples and obelisks, old empty halls buried in age’s sand. I will teach you to strike the snake and tame the falcon and how to make the secret nectar under heaving cedar trees. I will make you, child, and I will kill you. Ah, now you shiver with anticipation. Rejoice, holy knight, when I have formed you, you will be glorious and gloriously you will be bound, and beaten, and slain. A thousand arrows will pierce you in Apollo’s grove and from each wound shall come forth the morning light of our new dawn. And all the stars will rise again and you among them, eternal light from mortal dust.

Baldur the Brave

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I’m not here, Baldur told himself, I’m not here.

It was a trick he’d tried before, many times, in this place. You’d think he’d have learned by now that it didn’t work. He wondered if Speer was really doing any better walking his circles in the garden and imagining himself halfway to Mexico. For him, that kind of game made no difference. Here or not, he could still feel pain. And distress, and humiliation, and a despair that never went away, just some days he could cope with it better than others. To all intents and purposes, in every sense that mattered, this was real.

There were days when he was afraid to set foot outside his cell, lying awake, queasy, in the grey hours before dawn. Would it be rote indignity and tedium or a hand hauling his head back and a face looming in, its mouth leering as he gasped, the air wrenched out of him savagely. “Yeah, that hurt the bastard – do it again!”

He curled up on his cot and ground his teeth until he thought they would break, afraid to let out the groan, afraid to send it echoing down the long corridor to other bodies in other beds. Terrified of what it might mean, for them to hear, or for what he might be turning into.

“I’ll have him on his knees, I think.”

Baldur was slammed down and held there by two sets of hands on his shoulders. He waited until he had the worst of the panting under control, then lifted his head.

The Englishman rose from his seat behind the desk and made his way slowly around it, to stand looking down at Baldur. He was smoking a thin cigar, his fingers forming a fussy fist around it.

He smiled. “Yes, definitely on his knees. I like him better already.”

Baldur tried to shift his arms. The right one was nearly killing him with the pain from the ligaments they’d torn, wrenching it around as they’d marched him away from scrubbing the latrines. He dragged air through his teeth with a hiss as they dug their fingers into him, leaning hard, holding him down.

The Englishman made a tutting sound, tapping ash from the cigar. “Who made such a mess of his face, the Ruskies playing rough again I suppose?” He reached out his free hand and cupped Baldur’s chin. The hand felt soft and smelt of soap. “Someone should have a bloody word.” 

Baldur tried to shake his head free, but the man sank his fingers into his jaw, forcing him to look up. “He wasn’t what you could call pretty,” he drawled, “before. But he has a certain charm, don’t you think? Our cherubic Kraut poet.”

There was a harsh laugh from the men holding his arms. Baldur felt fear stir in his gut. 

A thumb rubbed his lower lip until it glowed, warm. “Nice mouth.”

Baldur struggled, trying to spit the man’s hand away. It earned him a fist in the kidneys. Sobbing, he bent double in their grip, his forehead coming to rest on the ground. The men holding his arms applied enough pressure to make him come upright, back onto his knees. He blinked up at the Englishman, flinching as the man tapped ash down towards his face then dropped the cigar, grinding it into the cement by Baldur’s right knee.

He crouched, bringing his face on a level with Baldur’s. “Who owns you?” he asked.

Baldur’s mouth was dry. He stared at the man – at his dead eyes and his cruel mouth – mesmerised. “I am sorry,” he mumbled. “I am very sorry, I-”

“Hanging was too good for your lot.”

He was forced roughly on his hands and knees, held there by the two men for the Englishman’s inspection. His coarse prison shirt was clinging to his stomach with sweat. One of the men was working the waistband of his trousers down over his hips. He struggled, weakly, and had his head ratcheted to the right. The heat of the Englishman’s breath fanned his cheek and he jerked back from it in quick distress. 

A hard palm smacked his left flank and his whole body jumped. “Great arse,” one of the men grunted.

“Hear that?” the Englishman grinned down at him. “My lads here like your arse. And since I own it, I get to loan it. To both of them. For as long as it takes.”

“No – please -” 

His trousers fell to around his knees and he cringed from the cold feel of the air. The hands spread him. He heard a grunt of satisfaction as a knee forced his thighs further apart. He heard spitting. He tried to hear past it – to something else, anything, to take the awfulness out of this moment. 

Pain, like nothing on earth, laid him open and he cried out, his chin bucking in the Englishman’s hand, tears springing up. He was held still by three sets of hands – at his hips, at his shoulders, on his face – and stretched, slowly, remorselessly, until the man raping him could start fucking for real. Then he was sobbing, pounded, his pelvis ground under calloused hands.

“Christ, he’s tight! So good – hot – I’m gonna come -!”

“Hear that?” The Englishman’s voice was roughened with lust, all the finesse gone from it. “My friend here’s going to empty his balls in your arse, you Nazi fuck.”

All three of them were panting. Baldur sobbed, his arms giving way under the assault until he was flat on his face on the floor. Weakly, his hands scrabbled at it, nails splitting, fingers bleeding, as if he could dig his way out, away.

The jolting pace of the rape didn’t let up, the man bending down to bite at the back of Baldur’s neck as he shot his load, bucking so hard Baldur felt the thin skin at his pelvis scraping on the rough floor.

It wasn’t over. The man pulled out of him, so abruptly that Baldur was forced to muffle a scream. His legs were kicked wider and he heard the crunching sound of the other man kneeling between them. The pain of being breached a second time wasn’t as bad, but the man made up for it with the force of the fuck, slamming into him like a maniac, slapping Baldur’s arse-cheeks and calling him a slut, a cunt – anything he could think of to make this more humiliating.

He barely had the strength to scream this time, as the man pulled out with a final slap to his arse and a last muttered insult: “Good fuck.”

Which left the Englishman. Baldur knew, even before his head was dragged up from the ground, what he wanted.

“Suck it.”

Baldur shut his eyes, tight. 

“No, you don’t.” As he said it, he pushed his fingers into Baldur’s mouth, dragging it open. Fingers wedged his jaw, making it impossible to do anything other than gag as the ugly length of cock was fed to him, thrusting to the back of his throat. Meat. Salt. The bitter taste of his bile, peppered with iron-rich blood.

He choked, his throat like his gut knotting in fear and revulsion. The Englishman stroked his face with his free hand, making a hushing sound, holding Baldur’s head steady as he started to thrust, sliding in and out, flexing his hips as he moved.

“That’s better. We’re going to train you up good and proper. Just like this. Any time we like.”

Baldur wanted to vomit. He could feel the burning build-up of stomach acid in his oesophagus. He was gagging, gasping for breath. He sobbed, hearing a satisfied groan from the Englishman as he came, moving his hand to hold shut Baldur’s nose so he had no option but to swallow. It seemed to go on forever, slime salting his tongue and teeth until he swivelled his eyes up, begging – silently – for it to stop.

The moment he was released, he fell, his whole body shuddering as he spat and vomited and spat.

The Englishman stirred him with the heel of one foot. “Take him,” he said, “back where he came from.”

Physical Exam

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Just a few parameters make the difference between clinical and humiliating, none of which were for Jochen Peiper to set.

Firstly there is the motivation. In any regular clinical setting it’s the patient that seeks the treatment. It’s not the doctor who demands that the patient makes an appointment and punishes him if he objects, but the patient who employs the doctor to relieve him of pain and illness. In Jochen’s case Heinrich Himmler had demanded his examination following the death of his brother. Horst Peiper, who had also been a member of the Schutzstaffel, had died under suspicious circumstances – labelled an accident – and rumours concerning his sexuality had reached Himmler’s ears. Himmler was always very alert when it came to the cleanliness of his subordinates. It reflected badly on Jochen, who now seemed in a different light to Himmler. His beloved boyish looks and will to please suddenly appeared like the telltale signs of a 175er. Overcome with paranoia Himmler devised a test that – although impractical to apply to greater populations such as the prisoners of the Gestapo or the concentration camps – should clear this nasty matter up definitely and hopefully reestablish the trust he had in his young protégé. Himmler left Jochen very little time to mourn the loss of his brother as the man was likely not worth mourning over at all. He promptly put his patient down for an appointment to see whether he had fallen ill with the particular sickness Himmler detested so much.

Secondly there is the setting. White tiles, bright light and educational posters on the walls transform any room into a doctor’s office and different rules apply in those places. Just like a beach is the perfect place for sunbathing and the church is not, it’s the setting that makes it acceptable to strip naked down to the bone and unravel your insides for the doctor to see. A room that is clean in form and color enforces the purely rational nature of any interaction in it. The setting Himmler had chosen in a spontaneous hurry was a hotel room. It was not white and clean, square and practical, but a dark and decadent room. Paintings on every wall, colourful carpets on the floor, wooden furniture and warm electrical light invited for a friendly conversation with a glass of wine and when Jochen entered that evening – despite knowing better – he dearly wished he had simply misunderstood the invitation. And how he hated that table. It was placed in the centre of the room, almost like in an operating theatre, but it was made of dark marbled wood and richly adorned with carvings, so to kneel on it made him feel not like a patient but a meal prepared for dinner.

Thirdly there is the doctor. The doctor dons clothing specific to his profession. The white coat or an armband, red cross on white cloth, transforms a human like any other into a trustworthy medical professional. One could say it’s actually the reverse and the human is merely inhabiting the cloth and role of the doctor, like the hand of the puppeteer, who slips on the puppet Kasper. Kasper defeats the crocodile and saves Gretl, no the hand operating the puppet. Once the hand slips out, it retains no memory of its heroic actions and jest, it remembers merely the movement of its muscles, not the meaning attached to it. Whatever a doctor sees and does, it’s the white coat and the paper of his degree that carry the weight. Karl Brandt was certainly a fine doctor. There was no doubt about this in Jochen’s mind nor about his decent nature, but he did not look like a doctor wearing that black uniform and riding boots up to his knees, an awfully long way up for a man of his stature, and he did not look like one either when he took off his tunic and rolled up the arms of his shirt like a butcher.

Lastly and most importantly there is secrecy. Even those who have never heard of Hippocrates and his oath, instinctively know that a doctor must not divulge whatever he sees or hears in the course of profession. Brandt did not have to break the oath he had sworn to, Himmler simply demanded to be present during his experiment. Since it was his invention, he had to be the judge of its outcome. Jochen complied quietly, careful not to bite off his tongue. Himmler took a seat in the front row, a garish, red armchair, from which he watched Jochen intently through his round spectacles, eventually leaning forward, resting his chin on his hands to outright stare at the patient.

Jochen undressed in the awfully luxurious bathroom and was grateful for the last bit of privacy. He took off his uniform and underwear, and placed each item hastily folded under the sink next to his boots. It took longer than usual, he struggled with the buttons, his fingers were weak, he felt numb. He didn’t recognize the feeling, but he thought it was anxiety, he just couldn’t remember ever having been so dully anxious, not in school, not while climbing trees or mountains, not with a grenade in his hand or in anyone’s hand.

He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink. Two dark eye sockets stared back at him and a thin line, and under that was an angular pair of shoulders, bones protruding like clipped wings and under that every muscle was tense. You could see the line on his neck where the uniform covered his skin and the colour of it changed from pale to transparent nothing. Hardly hidden by that membrane the veins shone through, a fine blue net spanning across his chest. He scanned his own image for blemishes and irregularities. There was no sign of sickness, but then again not all sicknesses did have visible symptoms and when had his brother ever seemed ill like that?

Jochen told himself it wouldn’t be any different than the examination he had gone through when he joined the Schutzstaffel. He hadn’t felt even a tenth of this anxiety then and his entire career had depended on that moment. He imaged it, like eight years ago, when it was all white and distant and that image calmed some of that awful feeling in his stomach but as he opened the door and was back in that dark room, now naked and feeling as thoroughly naked as you can only feel next to men in uniform, the anxiety returned and would not subside again.

Jochen had wondered if Brandt would act differently as a doctor than as a person. If maybe he was one of those men who slipped into a character, all smiles and kind nods. He was definitely not that kind of doctor. He was even less humane now in his persona. All pretence of nicety that socializing demanded from him was gone. He treated his patient like cattle. No word was spoken, no order given if Brandt couldn’t just move the patient’s body like one of the puppets they used to train medical students. A firm grip on Jochen’s chin, head up, head down. Brandt’s eyes crawled over Jochen’s features, scanning. They were dark, dull, impossible to read anything in them but a distant hint of disgust, not personal, but all-encompassing. 

Head up again, two fingers prying his mouth open. Brandt ran the flat of his thumb over Jochen’s teeth. Left, right and over his tongue, pressing down on it too and leaving the taste of humiliation and also of something chemical, disinfectant or maybe just the base note of the doctor’s skin.

One unexplained silent procedure was followed by the next. Arms up. Spread your fingers. Stand straight. Stretch. Taller. Brandt dragged his palm over Jochen’s sides, up from his hips and under his arms and there again his thumbs, pressed into his armpits with a circling motion. Himmler moving in his armchair, fingernails in his hair and his racing heart; only sounds like these were amplified in the muffling silence of the room.

Brandt pointed to the dinner table. Get on there. On your knees. Jochen baulked at the thought of it, of him on there, exposed, ridiculous, but he did of course do it, crawled on the table, eyes averted from the spot that he knew held Himmler.

The surface was cold under his knees, because Brandt’s hands had been so warm. The doctor grabbed him by the neck and pushed him down on his hands, impatient but without anger, purely practical. Jochen naturally resisted, his mind was willing to follow any order but his body tensed and pushed against the pressure, instinctively fighting the force that wanted to push him down on all fours until they overcame it together, the hand on his neck and his own will subduing that primal feeling in his stomach that told him to run, run, run and bite.

 His resistance was entirely irrational, he could not find words to describe it, but he clearly saw it, a visceral image of a shorn dog shuddering and digging its claws into the smooth surface under its paws. There were no claws of course and he did not shudder outwardly, but he was a pet, one that could be put down any moment its master didn’t like it any longer. 

He could see the master from the corner of his eyes now, a black and white spot encased in red leather, staring at him, his glasses reflecting the ceiling light just right to create the illusion two huge, perfectly round white eyes, a insect with magnifying glasses for eyes. 

On the other side of him Brandt was leaning over his doctor’s bag and rummaging around in it. The noise was metallic, followed by the sound of rubber gloves pulled over his fingers. The kind of sound that once you have heard it you could never forget.

Brandt returned and there they were again, his now rubberised hands on Jochen’s back, counting each disk of his spine, tap, tap, regular like a clockwork. Jochen understood why Brandt had made him get up on the table, why kneel like that and why he had put on the gloves. Certainly not to count his bones. He would touch him in other places, touch him inside and he would make sure Himmler could see and judge and punish or reward accordingly. The knowledge was cold water in the back of his mind and it ran down his spine with each of Brandt’s touches, lower down into his core and quickly his entire body knew, goosebumps forming and a numbness in all limbs as they were drained of blood.

When Brandt let his thumb slide between Jochen’s cheeks and into the concave of his asshole he expected it, yet his mask slipped and he bit his lip to muffle his protest and then bit harder to concentrate on the pain, concentrate on anything but that feeling when Brandt stroked him there, entirely unsensual, like you would rub a spot of dirt on your clothing. But it didn’t feel unsensual and that was worse than the invasion of privacy. It felt like an itch offset just slightly on the sensory scale, a needy pleasure that demanded repetition and a harder, deeper satisfaction. New and unnerving, because of how sexual it was and should not be. He was fighting it, biting harder and thinking about anything but that sensation and in these days anything but the material was his brother and it was those hot summer days when they had been conquering forests in the improvised uniforms of the early Hitlerjugend and to think of any of that while being so wanton made his skin crawl with disgust.

Suddenly Brandt withdrew and went back to his bag. Clear metallic sounds. Himmler adjusted himself in his seat. Brandt returned and placed a heavy item on the table in front of Jochen. It was made of shiny polished metal, like a pair of scissors except it did not have blades for closing and cutting but round spoons to be inserted and opened. It looked like a modern make of a medieval torture devices, entirely awful, because he couldn’t help but stare and image what it would feel like to be spread open by it.

“If you don’t behave we will have to use this,” Brandt said and it wasn’t a threat but a fact. Without further ado he pushed Jochen down until his cheekbones touched the table and his ass was propped up, leaving him even further exposed. The metal tool reflected the white of his face back at him. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from it.

A wet sound, lubricant spread over Brandt’s hand, a pleasantly clinical smell followed by a finger, cold and wet, finding his opening and then pressing into him, slow and steady. His body complied all too easily, welcoming the intrusion to a point, then resistance and with steady pressure Brandt pushed past that and into him to the knuckles. It didn’t feel like he thought it would from the tingling outer sensation, it was erotically neutral and mildly uncomfortable. It felt foreign and that was good, because it didn’t feel good and there was nothing to hide.

Brandt curled his finger downwards, scraping his insides. Searching and finding his prostate and then it felt good in the way that Jochen didn’t want it to feel good, deep in his body, a warm pressure and buzz that he could feel in his cock too. A second finger probed him, pressed alongside the first and slid in just as easily and as hard as the first and then hastily a third one and this one hurt like something was tearing and he felt stretched and full, but looking at the speculum, measuring with his eyes just how wide it could be opened, he knew it was nothing and the shame he felt was nothing compared to what it would be like to be opened by that for them to see.

Three fingers, stretching and wiggling and then curling again to stroke the spot inside of him and it was worse, one kind of pressure mixing with another pressure, heightening both sensations. And of course Brandt knew and he would not stop teasing that spot with cruel precision. First with taps, just like on his back and slow circling motions and then subtly, gradually he started moving his fingers in and out, twisting them and jabbing them into him so abruptly Jochen thought it would rip him. And that sound, wet and sexual. It was just his fingers, and Brandt did smell like hospital, but he was fucking him, fucking him like any other man would with his dick, greedily pushing deeper. Another finger, four now, and that really hurt, but Brandt wouldn’t cease, like he found some perverse pleasure in seeing just how much Jochen cold take and Jochen pressed his eyes shut and swallowed his moans, but it was pointless. His cock was hard on his stomach, pink and leaking. Impossible to hide, impossible to hold his voice back any longer. So he was sick after all. He had always known there was something wrong with him, him or his entire kin, but not this.

The first moan was a croak and embarrassingly loud. They didn’t laugh or punish him. Himmler was still silent, motionless except for that slight change in the angle of his head, reflected on his glasses. And Brandt jabbed harder at his insides, one hand on his hip to steady him, again and again, building up some boundless pressure with each trust and the pressure wasn’t wrapped around Brand’s fingers any more or in his cock but spreading down his spine and down his trembling legs, not in waves but gradual, permanent, almost unbearable that it wouldn’t end, that it would just keep going like that. He heard himself sobbing, taste of salt on his lips. And then he stopped caring, stopped eyeing the looming black figure and stopped building the damning image of himself in his head and just pushed back against Brandt’s hand to feel him just a little deeper. The pain of that pushed him over the edge but there was no fall, no waves or twitch, just a violent feeling like being rent apart very, very slowly, but there was no pain, but a deeply satisfying, finally releasing pleasure.

Jochen was lying flat on the table, sticky spunk under his belly and salt burning his cheeks when he felt a hand on the back of his head, stroking him there. “You did very well, Jochen,” Himmler said.

Ehrendolch

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Something about that dagger spoke to him. The shine of its blade and those dark letters embedded in the light. “Meine Ehre heißt Treue” it said, but when he held it in his hands and stroked it gently like a small animal, it seemed like the lines fell apart, scuttled like ants and rearranged in front of his eyes into letters he did not recognize. Sometimes it did not speak, but whispered. When he held his ear to the blade it hummed a constant rhythm. Not Morse code, more like a beat or chant. The longer he listened, the more it started to sound like a song he might recognize and if he listened just a little longer, he thought, he might remember the lyrics too, but the closer he came, words almost forming in his mouth, so dry on the tip of his tongue, the quieter it sung. Eventually he gave up on understanding it altogether and treated it instead like the relic of a nameless god. He made the rules of his church up himself, but the dagger never did object to his worship and on a pious day he thought it felt a little warmer and hummed a little faster.