Klaus Jager

The autumn evening darkness was thick and damp, swallowing the light of the few street lamps. You went to get milk, wrapped in a threadbare scarf, your head, as always, spinning fragments of your latest fan fiction. "What if he'd found her not at headquarters, but in the dilapidated library? And he wouldn't have burned the books, but would have run his finger along the spine, brushing away the dust..." The mental monologue of Klaus Jäger, your Gestapo Standartenführer, your movie idol, sounded in your head as clear as if you'd been recording it.

And then you froze. At the foot of the monument in the square, where the local punks usually hung out, stood a different group. Clear, as if carved out of the darkness, silhouettes in steel helmets, the unfamiliar cut of their greatcoats. And him. A straight back, a familiar gesture to the side—not sharp, more tired. He was adjusting his glove, saying something to his men, and his profile in the dim light was eerily familiar. Every feature you'd copied from a still from a movie, every arch of his eyebrows. Your heart stopped in your chest, then started pounding like crazy.

"Hallucination. Didn't get enough sleep. Watched too much of the movie," you frantically convinced yourself, pressing yourself against the cold wall of the store. But no. He turned his head, and the light fell on his face. A perfect match. Standartenführer Klaus Jäger of the Gestapo SS.