Chapter Text
December 25th, 1983
There’s the usual meal happening in the mess hall right now, but I’m not quite feeling up to it. The doctor said I could have the afternoon off after bringing the lunch tray. I feel pretty aimless. He gave me this notebook some time ago with the thought that journaling might help me “get the words out.” I haven’t felt like using it at all.
I used to imagine myself writing an auto-biography. But then I’d have to be the kind of person people actually want to read about rather than spit on. Yeah, that’s a goal best left unaccomplished.
But for some reason, I suddenly feel like writing today. Not because I think it will do a thing for my speech, but I just have to get these thoughts down on paper. To see if there’s any meaning to it all.
Guess I’ll start with what happened one year ago. Christmas Day.
I thought I was doing a good job hiding it, but that day I must have lost my inhibitions with all the festivities. Father noticed me passing my dessert to Emile, noticed the look I gave him.
Father didn’t say anything at the time, but the next day he dragged me to a visit with Herr Doktor. Getting an appointment was easy enough for him with his rank. It was the most mortifying experience of my life.
“This is my son, Heinrich. He’s new to the battalion, joined up three months ago. I’d like you to help him with his – er, how shall I say? – problem.”
I doubt anyone alive can read the doctor’s mood very well, but at that moment the tightness around his mouth told me plenty.
“Have a seat over there while I check his file.”
We sat together, saying nothing, and I was pretty sure I was going to die of shame before the doctor returned to talk to us.
“He had a clean bill of health during intake. What is this about? Speak for yourself, Recruit.”
I don’t even remember what I said then. I probably just blathered something incoherent until my father interjected again.
“My son has a perversion for other men. Believe me, if I had known, I never would have suggested he be recruited and shipped all the way here.”
That was a lie.
The doctor really seemed to look at me then. For a second I thought maybe he was even sympathetic.
“You have homosexual thoughts? Tendencies?”
I’m sure my face gave it away. It must have been flushed bright red, I felt so hot. But I nodded anyway, just in case.
I do remember the doctor sighing but he wasn’t angry.
“This is not exactly a crime within Millennium. We have opted to overlook sexual orientation, seeing as our organization requires that our members remain celibate.”
My father, bold as he is, dared to argue. “That may be true, but it’s affecting his ability to perform. He’s not sleeping, he’s distracted during training. His commanding officer is beginning to take notice. Pretty soon, everyone will seeing as the boy can’t keep his eyes or hands off the other recruits.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said. It was the only defense I could come up with at the time.
“You sure as hell better not have. And we’re going to fix this, or so help me. Herr Doktor, you can assist with this, can’t you? Isn’t there a drug or something you can give him to suppress these…unnatural urges?”
Like I said, most embarrassing day of my life.
My first mistake had been joining up with Millennium. Not that my life was headed anywhere promising. At college it was easy to blend in with all the flamboyant artists and poets, so no one ever bothered me or considered me to be the strange one. But afterwards, I ended up back in the countryside with Mother, and there people talked and frowned. It was lonely, and it hurt to see her worry so much. Then came the letter from Father, with an invitation to join him in South America, to be a part of something bigger than I could possibly imagine. A place of miracles and brotherhood, where I would finally be at peace with myself. When he left it was with the understanding that we would never hear from him again, so I felt honored that he had managed to pull the strings that allowed me this opportunity. I couldn’t say no. It was a second chance to prove to him that I wasn’t worthless after all. Mother cried, but she agreed that it was probably for the best if I went.
They had convinced themselves, even convinced me that it was going to change me for the better.
They couldn’t have been more wrong. Even with the uniform and the duties and the oaths to uphold, I was still me.
Heinrich, the failure.
Heinrich, the outcast.
Heinrich, their queer son.
The doctor and I met again that following week after Christmas. Alone this time. I guess, in retrospect, he never actually forced me to take a cure. But I was so desperate to fit the mold, for my father’s sake, for Millennium’s sake. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about what I really wanted to be.
So that was the second mistake. The pills did seem to work at first and my mind wasn’t so absorbed in certain thoughts as it had been.
But one day we were lined up after training and the sergeant asked me a question. It was a simple question, although I can’t remember more than that.
All I know is that I couldn’t answer him. I tried, but the stutter just got worse and worse. Everyone looked at me like I’d grown an extra head right in front of them. I was dismissed immediately and sent down to the clinic.
The doctor stopped the treatment immediately and of course the distracting thoughts returned after a few days. But my voice didn’t come back at all.
How could I explain to anyone what had happened without looking like a fool? It was impossible. The few friends I had made disappeared quickly once I could no longer communicate without embarrassment. Social hygiene, you might call it.
Soon after that I started to make a plan for how I was going to die. I felt completely trapped and alone, shunned by my peers, rejected by my father, and humiliated by the doctor. Seeing as I was now damaged property, the thought did cross my mind that Millennium might just do the job for me, but for some reason they kept me around. Meanwhile the doctor tried to fix the problem. At least he did for a short time, but I wasn’t valuable enough to put much effort into. I knew that death would be the only way forward.
Ideally, I would make it look like an accident, so that I wouldn’t bring more shame to my family. Despite everything, I didn’t hate my father. I just wanted him to be free of me and the disappointment I forever caused him to feel.
I was getting closer all the time to enacting my plan. It was all I could think about, all that could distract me from the stares. But then out of nowhere came the missive from Herr Major. I’ll copy it word-for-word here, because I have it memorized.
Private H,
I have a unique opportunity that Herr Doktor says you are the ideal candidate for. Your understanding of and ability speaking the English language will be of great value. As of today, you will be reporting directly to him.
Yours, etc.
MMM
At first I thought it must be a prank being played on me by my roommates. Especially the part about my skills speaking English. That was a good bit. I probably do know more of the language than most of them, since Mother is English and we spoke quite a bit of it at home.
Incidentally, even though she never really accepted the real me, I do miss her. I hope her life has improved since I left. At least she still has Hans and his wife, maybe even a grandchild by now.
Anyway, I reported to the doctor once again as requested, convinced I was heading down into a deeper level of hell.
“There will be a young woman coming to work with me for the foreseeable future,” Dok explained. “I do not have the time or resources to manage her constantly, so I am placing you in charge of her. You will be responsible for keeping her safe and seeing to basic needs under my supervision.”
What an elaborate prank, I thought. Even the doctor decided to get involved.
I think it was sorting through the box of women’s clothing that finally convinced me otherwise.
There was a lot of information to take in, but the work was far from challenging. The doctor gave me a pager and several keys. If I hadn’t been completely petrified that I was going to become the laughingstock of the battalion once word got out, I might have actually felt important.
Wasn’t it obvious that they only trusted the gay man to supervise this girl? I wanted to start putting my plan into action again, but the doctor kept me so busy that I just didn’t have much time to think about it.
Being in the know, I managed to catch a glimpse of her shortly after she arrived at the base. This was back in mid-February and I remember she was wearing a dress with flowers on it. Seemed pretty average to me, but I knew that wouldn’t protect her from the other men around here. She looked so scared that it made me feel sick, and I didn’t want to be involved with the doctor’s project anymore. But for the moment, I had to keep going along with it until I could be free of Millennium forever.
The morning we actually met, I was a nervous wreck. After leaving a meal tray outside her door, I kept practicing over and over again what I was going to say when I’d finally have to bring her downstairs to the lab for the first time. Trying so hard to say it without the damn stutter. It was stupid, and I knew she wasn’t going to be in any state to judge me, but I still couldn’t help myself.
“I’m supposed to take you to the lab.”
“Are you ready to go?”
“Follow me.”
It got to the point where I thought I might actually be able to say the words clearly. But when she opened the door and I saw her looking just as miserable as the previous day, I still struggled.
Somehow I got through that first day, but it got harder after that. Each day more people started to notice the two of us together, and before long everyone knew what was happening.
Did it matter if they were jealous or just saw me as a laughingstock? I despised being seen with her, but doing things for and with her was now my primary job.
At the end of the first week, Sunday I think, I told the doctor I couldn’t do it anymore.
“Why?” he asked me.
“Because I can’t communicate very well,” I typed out for him on his computer. It was the closest to the truth I was able to admit at the time.
He told me that he had no complaints about my performance so far. I mentioned that perhaps someone else might be given more respect in this position. The doctor stated that respect had nothing to do with it and that I was to remain focused on the tasks as he gave them to me.
Who was I to argue further? So I had to continue, my life looking so different from what it was before.
I had to get all of her meals.
I had to wash her clothes and bedding.
I had to make sure she had all the items she needed. I learned so much about women’s hygiene during those first few months.
Anything concerning or out of the ordinary I had to report to the doctor.
Pretty much wherever she went, I escorted her there.
When we walked together the silence was so deafening. I don’t think she could stand it either and she started talking to me. Just a little at first, like she’d nervously ask me a single question, but eventually she became bold enough to ask me more and to even make a little small talk. To my relief, Tamara was incredibly patient about my speech impediment, never once got frustrated with it. Or with me.
One day she asked me, “How do you say ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ in German?” We worked on that for an entire week, and that was when I decided that I liked her all right.
Obviously I didn’t desire her. I didn’t desire much of anything now that I was taking the drugs again. If being off of them didn’t help the stutter, then there was no reason to avoid them. Or so my father told me. At first I think he was deeply disturbed to see me going about my new duties, but eventually he reasoned that it must be okay since I had been recruited by two of the most powerful people in our organization. He even started bragging about it to anyone who would listen. When I took Tamara to the roof, he’d usually be there since he’s the chief controller at the helipad. The stutter definitely bothered him, but he dealt with it by doing all of the talking.
So there I was, trying to teach German to someone who was, for all intents and purposes, my prisoner. She wasn’t exactly a quick learner, either, which meant a lot of repeating myself. It was quite laughable, really, and people did laugh at me.
There were some days we didn’t talk at all. I could see in her eyes how heavy it all was for her. And I saw just how cruel Millennium could be in the name of their ideals.
Where to start. We kidnapped her and her husband, locked them up, tortured him, impregnated her, all the while trying to convince her it was for the greater good. And it wasn’t because she was an enemy or a criminal or had “impure blood.” She was just unlucky enough to be what the doctor wanted for his experiments. How her mind didn’t break is beyond me.
But she kept going somehow, and honestly I needed her to. Not just because the whole arrangement was going to become more unpleasant for us if she stopped cooperating, but because I needed to see that it was possible in the face of adversity.
I, too, felt trapped and imprisoned in a sort of way. Although it was too embarrassing to admit since I was the one holding the keys and a pair of handcuffs for just in case.
Things were starting to settle into a routine when the attack happened. It’s funny to think now that I put the entirety of the blame on myself, as if I had actually been the one to break into her room and try to force myself on her. Really shows just where my mind was at back then, with my complete lack of self-esteem.
As it turned out, the doctor felt the exact opposite and acted as if I had saved her life by opening that door when I did. Maybe he was right; I’m still not exactly sure myself. But he had my name moved up by ten places in the list. It doesn’t seem like much, and probably only brings you a few weeks closer to becoming a vampire, but everyone notices when that happens. They’re so obsessed with the damn list, it’s comical. Guys would come up to me with an impressed look and say, “Hey, moving up in the world, Heinrich?” They meant to tease me, but by that point it didn’t really bother me. And my father – It sent my father over the moon. Not only was his precious son favored by Herr Major and Herr Doktor, but now everybody knew it.
Secretly, I was happy that he was happy.
It was hard to talk to her again after that, though. For a long time, I thought she was angry at me for what happened. To her I was just another tormentor who made her life a living hell. So I just gave her extra space and hoped the doctor would find the two idiots that had hurt her. He did, and he even had one of them executed for it. Brutally. The other one, Gunther, I haven’t seen around but I know he’s still here somewhere. Not sure what he would do if we ever came face to face, or even what I would do. Thank God my stutter didn’t get worse after the concussion he gave me.
I guess that’s the majority of the excitement that’s happened in the last year. A few things have changed, though, like how we moved all of her things to one of the rooms behind the lab. This means I don’t walk with her as often as I used to, although we still make trips to the roof and the prison where she gets to visit her husband. She also spends time with Lieutenants Rip Van Winkle and Zorin Blitz. Those two are truly intimidating, everyone thinks so, but they never talk to me or even seem to notice me. I can’t imagine what the three of them do when they are alone together. Guess I don’t really want to know what vampire women talk about.
Again, it’s mostly settled down, although Tamara is pregnant now and I don’t know how much longer I’ll have this assignment. I try not to think about what happens after the baby gets here. I try to take it one day at a time. That’s probably what she is doing, too.
Out of curiosity, I peeked under her meal tray today and saw that it wasn’t anything special, considering what day it is. The doctor keeps her on a fairly uninteresting and bland diet. Well, this morning all the recruits got candy for Christmas and when I delivered lunch to her door, I passed her the entire bag. She knows I’m not supposed to, but she looked really happy after seeing what it was. We both looked up and down the hallway at the same time to see if Dok was watching us. Almost as if we were in on the same mischief.
“Thank you, Heinrich. Merry Christmas.” She said it straight to my face with the warmest, most genuine smile. I might have smiled back a little bit.
Incidentally, it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to jump off the roof.