Basterds Fic: Corpses (Hellstrom), R
Title: Corpses
Characters: Dieter Hellstrom, mentions of Hicox and Stiglitz.
Rating: R
Word Count: 965
Warnings: Sexual references, gun use, violence, sadism, grotesque imagery.
Summary: Dieter Hellstrom is a man with many corpses buried in the back of his mind.
Disclaimer: Inglourious Basterds belongs to Quentin Tarantino, I'm just borrowing the characters for nefarious purposes.
Notes: I don't really know how to explain this, other than it is an attempt at a Hellstrom character study that was subsequently taken over by zombie metaphors. Yeah, I don't know either.
Corpses
Cold metal, rubbing against coarse material. He licks his lips, doesn’t let the comfort of sheer panic blind his actions.
So this is the end.
---
Well, not quite. It is the end of one story, perhaps, but there are many stories in the life of Dieter Hellstrom. Many little threads, woven together in a knotty old blanket that is fraying at the edges, the type you never use but you keep anyway because it has sentimental value.
Dieter doesn’t see the point in sentiment. Sentiment is weakness, and weakness invites exploitation. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, it is just one more target for a fatal blow.
If you were to look in Dieter’s apartment, you would find no memories, just remnants of the person he was when he entered La Louisiane. The only trace of back-story you will find is in the depths of his subconscious, shadows and bogeymen that attack during the night, when he will wake with a start, sweat prickling across his forehead.
---
A boy sits on the grass, his legs crossed and a book in his hands. He turns a page, and a football flies past, only just missing his head. A small sigh if relief disguised by loud groans of disappointment. It is not the first time that he has been grateful for the abysmal aim of his classmates.
The boy stands, begins to walk away. They begin to circle, vultures being drawn in by the scent of fresh meat to the carcass. They taunt, he utters snide comebacks under his breath, little insults which the vultures do not understand. Their answers come in the form of fists.
A boy on the ground, arms wrapped around the knees that are pinned to his chest.
Blood trickles from his nose to, falls on to grass. Green stained with beads of red.
---
A brother who hates his older sister for everything that she is, everything that she doesn’t stand for. Hates her meekness, her idiocy. Detests the fact that she would happily let people trample all over as long as she was still pretty at the end of the day. The brother delights in outsmarting her. Convincing her to do stupid things with vague hints of a mythical reward, taunting her about the things she had that he himself would never possess.
Satisfaction as the tears start to run down her face.
---
A student who always excelled in history. An above average memory for dates, an acute interest in politics. That smile on his face when he reads tales of bloodshed, of senseless violence and vainglorious death. That smile which shows too many of his teeth. He imagines blood-soaked fields, the smell of gunpowder, and the sound of planes flying overhead. He stands alone in this vision, the mutilated corpses of his enemies at his feet. It is not a beautiful image, it is horrific, and it is vile. It is the stuff of nightmares, and yet, the student still smiles.
To him, this was the stuff of dreams. The beauty of the chaos.
---
A son who was never enough. A mother, whose hand is never five second away from a bottle, slurred screams erupting from her mouth in dribbles. The sentences never make sense, but you always get the general idea.
The son who looks so much like the man who wasn’t there.
The son who will always be a disappointment, for reasons that he cannot help.
---
A teen who is all limbs and doesn’t know what it is that he should do with them. A derisive snort when a teacher starts a sentence by saying, “Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ…”
A cane let loose across knuckles, a murmur of suppressed laughter rippling around him.
He straightens his back, the beginnings of a smirk that will eventually send shivers down people’s spines playing across his face, as he stares directly at his teacher. “Is that all?”
---
A young man who doesn’t know where to put his hands. He touches flesh, cold, hard hands moving against soft, warm skin. He doesn’t know what he should feel, but knows that it shouldn’t be apathy. She tells him to say that he loves her, but he can’t. It’s not that he doesn’t know what that word means, at least theoretically. It’s just that the word doesn’t apply.
She slaps him across the face, and leaves him with his trousers around his ankles.
---
A man in a black uniform, the red sash around his arm a stark contrast to the darkness. If he wore a heart on his sleeve, it would be that sash. The symbol of the man who isn’t the boy, the son, or the young man.
There are possibly a few hints of the student, a glimpse or two of the teen, maybe a trace of the brother, but not enough to invite comparison. To the man, all of the people who came before him are more or less dead. There is just the man in uniform, the Walther in his hand aimed at an impostor’s testicles, while some one claiming to be a real Fredrick Zoller is caressing a gun against his own.
Dieter Hellstrom is a man with many corpses buried in the back of his mind. Corpses that only rise from the grave in the deepest of sleeps, when too much whiskey has been poured into his body. Their long, rotting limbs grab at morsels of his brain, ripping at the meat with their teeth, gnawing at blood vessels and meat until he wakes up, screaming into the dark.
---
Dieter stares death in the face, meets it head-on with a sadistic smirk. He is far too well versed in the subject to be scared of it now.
Characters: Dieter Hellstrom, mentions of Hicox and Stiglitz.
Rating: R
Word Count: 965
Warnings: Sexual references, gun use, violence, sadism, grotesque imagery.
Summary: Dieter Hellstrom is a man with many corpses buried in the back of his mind.
Disclaimer: Inglourious Basterds belongs to Quentin Tarantino, I'm just borrowing the characters for nefarious purposes.
Notes: I don't really know how to explain this, other than it is an attempt at a Hellstrom character study that was subsequently taken over by zombie metaphors. Yeah, I don't know either.
Corpses
Cold metal, rubbing against coarse material. He licks his lips, doesn’t let the comfort of sheer panic blind his actions.
So this is the end.
---
Well, not quite. It is the end of one story, perhaps, but there are many stories in the life of Dieter Hellstrom. Many little threads, woven together in a knotty old blanket that is fraying at the edges, the type you never use but you keep anyway because it has sentimental value.
Dieter doesn’t see the point in sentiment. Sentiment is weakness, and weakness invites exploitation. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, it is just one more target for a fatal blow.
If you were to look in Dieter’s apartment, you would find no memories, just remnants of the person he was when he entered La Louisiane. The only trace of back-story you will find is in the depths of his subconscious, shadows and bogeymen that attack during the night, when he will wake with a start, sweat prickling across his forehead.
---
A boy sits on the grass, his legs crossed and a book in his hands. He turns a page, and a football flies past, only just missing his head. A small sigh if relief disguised by loud groans of disappointment. It is not the first time that he has been grateful for the abysmal aim of his classmates.
The boy stands, begins to walk away. They begin to circle, vultures being drawn in by the scent of fresh meat to the carcass. They taunt, he utters snide comebacks under his breath, little insults which the vultures do not understand. Their answers come in the form of fists.
A boy on the ground, arms wrapped around the knees that are pinned to his chest.
Blood trickles from his nose to, falls on to grass. Green stained with beads of red.
---
A brother who hates his older sister for everything that she is, everything that she doesn’t stand for. Hates her meekness, her idiocy. Detests the fact that she would happily let people trample all over as long as she was still pretty at the end of the day. The brother delights in outsmarting her. Convincing her to do stupid things with vague hints of a mythical reward, taunting her about the things she had that he himself would never possess.
Satisfaction as the tears start to run down her face.
---
A student who always excelled in history. An above average memory for dates, an acute interest in politics. That smile on his face when he reads tales of bloodshed, of senseless violence and vainglorious death. That smile which shows too many of his teeth. He imagines blood-soaked fields, the smell of gunpowder, and the sound of planes flying overhead. He stands alone in this vision, the mutilated corpses of his enemies at his feet. It is not a beautiful image, it is horrific, and it is vile. It is the stuff of nightmares, and yet, the student still smiles.
To him, this was the stuff of dreams. The beauty of the chaos.
---
A son who was never enough. A mother, whose hand is never five second away from a bottle, slurred screams erupting from her mouth in dribbles. The sentences never make sense, but you always get the general idea.
The son who looks so much like the man who wasn’t there.
The son who will always be a disappointment, for reasons that he cannot help.
---
A teen who is all limbs and doesn’t know what it is that he should do with them. A derisive snort when a teacher starts a sentence by saying, “Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ…”
A cane let loose across knuckles, a murmur of suppressed laughter rippling around him.
He straightens his back, the beginnings of a smirk that will eventually send shivers down people’s spines playing across his face, as he stares directly at his teacher. “Is that all?”
---
A young man who doesn’t know where to put his hands. He touches flesh, cold, hard hands moving against soft, warm skin. He doesn’t know what he should feel, but knows that it shouldn’t be apathy. She tells him to say that he loves her, but he can’t. It’s not that he doesn’t know what that word means, at least theoretically. It’s just that the word doesn’t apply.
She slaps him across the face, and leaves him with his trousers around his ankles.
---
A man in a black uniform, the red sash around his arm a stark contrast to the darkness. If he wore a heart on his sleeve, it would be that sash. The symbol of the man who isn’t the boy, the son, or the young man.
There are possibly a few hints of the student, a glimpse or two of the teen, maybe a trace of the brother, but not enough to invite comparison. To the man, all of the people who came before him are more or less dead. There is just the man in uniform, the Walther in his hand aimed at an impostor’s testicles, while some one claiming to be a real Fredrick Zoller is caressing a gun against his own.
Dieter Hellstrom is a man with many corpses buried in the back of his mind. Corpses that only rise from the grave in the deepest of sleeps, when too much whiskey has been poured into his body. Their long, rotting limbs grab at morsels of his brain, ripping at the meat with their teeth, gnawing at blood vessels and meat until he wakes up, screaming into the dark.
---
Dieter stares death in the face, meets it head-on with a sadistic smirk. He is far too well versed in the subject to be scared of it now.