Pale, trembling hands clutched the handle of a well-used cat o' nine tails as blood seeped from fresh and shallow wounds on an equally trembling and scarred back.
Heavy breaths (the kind most associated with procreational excitement) filled the empty room and echoed, re-entering the Aryan's damaged head moments after he released them.
Saliva threatened to drip from the side of his mouth and, head dipped, he forgot about such trivial ticks and instead focused on tensing his shoulders, swinging the rope handle of the whip upwards to allow his back to be struck again, the sharp sound of contact mingling with his cries of pain and pleasure.
Karl wished he could see the effects himself. The tensing of his back muscles, breaking of skin delicate skin, and the rush of heat through his whole body that concentrated in several parts to produce that frustrating, on-the-edge feeling he craved so much.
However, the pain was enough – he'd decided that long ago when he'd begun delving into masochism. He had graduated from fresh oak leaves, now preferring the more professional and arousing touch of leather.
Blonde hair plastered to his sweat-clad face, Karl took several more deep breaths, savouring the pleasure that ripped through his bare body. He smiled with soft lips that would soon come to be rotting discarded flesh removed from an increasingly perfect face. His blue eyes watered at the corners as he lifted an arm to wipe saliva that now snaked slowly down his chin, the bodily fluid warm and thick, instantly cooling as it clung to the fair hair on his forearm.
With his other hand, he dragged the cat o' nine tails along his back, slowly over his shoulders and head. He looked at the rope strips as they dangled in front of him, each tipped with a small hardened knot. Blood from his increasingly abused back had soaked onto the material and he found eroticism in the evidence of abuse.
Feeling a rush, he whipped himself repeatedly now, not pausing to bathe in the purity of one thrashing at a time. He cried out with each impact, voice growing hoarse with twisted orgasmic content.
Feeling the blood drip down his back and over his hips to his buttocks, Karl dropped the whip to the floor and crouched on his knees, hands on the cold floor beneath him as he basked in the brilliance of his torture. His face was flushed, head swimming in unexplainable content; he stood up and tipped his head back.
Shoulders still tense as he stared at the ceiling, Karl muttered words to himself in his mother tongue. He pressed a hand to his chest, relishing in the feel of a relatively fresh set of stitches from obsessive cosmetic surgery. He traced them from his right side, below the ribcage, curving upwards, bumping over ribs, skimming a nipple and ending at the collarbone.
The surrounding flesh was still swollen and red, the area's muscle contracting with the sting of touch as he applied pressure with worn fingers. His hand trailed slowly to his face, to those once charismatic Aryan features now beginning to wear out. His blonde hair was left ragged around his ears, but he'd soon shave it off completely. His blue eyes were the only thing of conformist beauty on his face that might remain.
His cold fingers touched soft, plump lips, and he felt along the line that distinguished lip from skin. They covered his pearly teeth perfectly, but he hated them, like most of his body. His obsession with perfection drove him to bolder and bolder surgeries, performed mostly by him for sick gratification.
His lips were probably what others would strive for. They were perfect, the kind of lips that young flirty girls would love to join with, to feel against their own. In a matter of months, he would find no need for them, and remove them along with his eyelids, another beautiful aspect of his opinionatedly imperfect face. With plentiful, lightly coloured eyelashes gracing dazzling water-coloured eyes, they were what every almost-Aryan dreamed of.
Nevertheless, his meeting in a decade or so with Rasputin would change things. By then he'd be closer to perfection and deeper in his pleasures than ever before. If only now he knew the things to come. The rank of Obersturmbannführer; an iron cross, a tour of duty acting as commandant of Auschwitz, and an induction into the Thule society he would one day lead. Oh, how he would love that. For now, however, he was blissfully ignorant and lost in a word of writhing sadistic gratification.
Soon he could wear that beautiful mask he'd been planning and constructing – predicting in a supposedly foolish, albeit right manner that it would come to be a trademark of his social stance. It was perfect – unlike him. It could filter out bacteria and bad air, which would be important when he perfected his features and removed those that would be useless.
For now, he was still just a mentally broken man, barely twenty years old, his singing dream ruined by puberty, which still plagued him now as his mind wandered from work to women. It would not be long before he perfected that useless lust and removed what was not needed.
Ironically, perfecting his body below the hips may have, in the future, restored his once awesome high pitched voice. It was a shame by that time, he would have no lips for which to sing with. How bitter.
He trailed both hands shakily over his eyelids again, and then his lips. Which ones would need to go first?
Decisions, decisions. He thought about it often, even though it was a cross-the-bridge-when-you-come-to-it scenario. He forced his mind from the aspiration of purity and instead knelt down, lifting up that bloody whip from the floor.
He stood again naked, staring at it for a moment, before crouching once more and deciding he was ready for the orgasm of round two, clenching his fist around the hardened rope and leather shaft of his chosen tool.
His aspirations appeared closer and closer with each thrashing, and he could feel with every wretch of his muscles, his body driving towards both mental and physical purity.
Karl Ruprecht Kroenen would come to make his name known in the Third Reich, and it would lead to both wonderful and tragic things.