Summary:
These stories are based around the "lore" of Rammstein's music videos. The premise is that, as seen in Till's music video for "NSL," he is dreaming that he is a character in each of the videos, living alternate lives. The tags may change accordingly.
Notes:
Does anyone else imagine backstories to the Rammstein music videos whenever they watch them, or is it just me? Like, who are these versions of the guys? What worlds are they from? I flesh them out in my head.
Based upon that, I decided to write this. I don't know how many I'll do at this point. I'm just letting the awen (primordial force of creativity) take me where it wants to lead me.
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Chapter Text
The scene looks entirely ordinary.
Till Lindemann, a man with a complicated past, a complicated relationship to his motherland, Germany, and a complicated soul, boards a plane.
He has no carry-on baggage, so he simply places his fedora into the overhead bin.
The plane seems especially populated with women, of all ages, races, and ethnicities. Some are alone, others are mothers. He scoffs as he notices a small boy, plugged into headphones, listening to one of his own songs.
Ich steige in ein Flugzeug ein
Es wird kalt, ich hör' es schrei'n
Ich kenne meine Sitzplatznummer
Panik reitet großen Kummer
Ich näher' mich der Klagereihe
Immer lauter das Geschreie
Der Angst weicht nun Gewissheit hier
Ein Kleinkind sitzt gleich neben mir
Hier die Frage aller Klassen:
“Darf und kann man Kinder hassen?”
Oh, how fitting. He is on a plane, and there is a child.
As he observes the other passengers, he already can feel the vice of anxiety tightening. He absently tugs at the neckline of his shirt, feeling his pulse being constricted. He reaches into his coat pocket, only to find his bottle of medication is empty.
Flagging down a stewardess, he asks if she can provide him with one simple pill.
This is his first mistake.
The stewardess returns with something novel: upon a pewter serving platter with an elegant napkin, there is a heap of different pills. Pills, like the women around him, of all shapes, sizes, and uses.
Well, at least one looks similar enough to his missing anxiety pills, so he selects it. As he does, the stewardess kisses his cheek. He ingests the pill.
Instant regret.
Immediately upon opening his eyes, he is besieged with a nightmarish vision of his new reality. The women around him are all naked, save for plaster casts of his own face in place of their faces. His head whips about in panic, and he spots himself upon the opposite plane wing, jubilantly waving his hat at him in greeting. What the fuck.
He shakes his head to clear it, and the women are back to normal.
He closes his eyes, opens them again, and they are back to being naked.
Some women began to reach for him. He tries to escape by standing.
Rather than having slowed his heart, the strange pill seems to be quickening its pace. His mood vacillates between the joy of having a hundred naked women’s hands clamoring for his own body, to the horror of being in the air, trapped with nude strangers.
What the fuck is going on?
He crawls down the aisle of the plane and begins smashing his head against the wall, breaking… something. He kneels there, hyperventilating, screaming, refusing a stewardess’s attempt to bring him a glass of water.
He goes back and forth down the aisle, sometimes with hands trailing, snatching at his clothes, other times having normal, clothed women gawking at him as if he’s gone insane. And has he? Is this actually the pill? Or has his psyche, weakened from drugs, trauma, notoriety, finally snapped? Is he screaming for the situation he’s been thrust into, or for himself? Does it matter? What can he do?
Smash your head.
Crawl on the floor.
Sit down in acceptance.
Do a little dance.
Scream.
Finally, a sliver of a rational thought—reach the cockpit. Surely everything is fine there?
He clamors to the front of the plane, only to witness a similar sight: women, naked, save for wearing doppelgangers of his hat.
He closes the door, then re-enters. This time, the women are wearing suits identical to his.
They stare at him curiously as he shakes his head and exits once again.
The bathroom. Maybe he can induce vomiting, cough up these damned pills, and finally be free from these deranged, chemically-induced fantasies.
As he struggles to reach it, the plane hits turbulence, shuddering violently. He can barely walk against its seizing. Everywhere he looks are jiggling breasts.
He collapses to the floor of the small bathroom and begins to weep. Whatever this nightmare is, whatever its cause, it feels eternal, endless.
Getting back to his feet, he is knocked back against the doorframe, and feels the pills eject from his mouth.
Nevertheless, the visions remain. Naked women, wearing his face, clamor for the oxygen masks descending from the ceiling.
He clamors for a seat and has only barely secured his own when he feels the plane begin plummeting from the sky.
His eyes snap shut in dread. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever open them again.
The breeze of a warm night ruffles through his hair and he inhales it. He opens his eyes to see a city whizzing by, as he stands in the doorway of a speeding vehicle. The Resistance battalion had selected them, the finest fighters amongst them, to infiltrate Ground Zero. They would be approaching the Lab in a matter of minutes.
He rejoins his comrades on the inside. The atmosphere is one of utmost tension. Doom straps on his mask, as does Ollie. He takes a swig of liquid courage from his canteen, then passes it around to the others. RZK cocks his rifle in preparation, while Paul readies his round. The van comes to a screeching halt, and they disembark.
In billowing black trench-coats, they mount the steps, RZK and Flake in the lead. Till is right behind them with his own gun, while Paul carries the gasoline.
The first sight they behold are the android sentries which guard the Lab, standing at attention around its mysterious torchlight. The décor of the Labs isn’t what they expected: it’s regal, operatic, more like Versailles than a factory. RZK is first, swaggering inside haughtily, drawing two pistols and blowing away the human security. He pauses to light up a cigarette as the rest of his comrades get into positions around him.
The androids are there within seconds, guns at the ready. Ollie acts first with his gatling gun, raising its massive barrel into the air and cranking out several rounds of ammunition. His comrades rally around him, shooting everything that moves. They make their way up the main staircase, encircling the brains of the operation, Flake, their master codebreaker. Only he can hack the doors that lead down into the depths of hell. Bringing up the rear are Doom and Paul, Till in the middle on the lookout back down the foyer for any mechanized assassins they might have missed. RZK stands on the exterior of the backside, pistols pointed back towards their assailants. As the five cover him, Flake advances ahead with his computer towards the entry, tapping away at the keys, hoping to crack the safe-like thick doors that stand in their way. They keep shooting, some return fire zooming dangerously close past their heads. Flake uploads the virus into the Lab system, eerily calm amongst the onslaught.
The doors whoosh open.
As they continue to fire upon their attackers, all step backwards and across the threshold into the unknown.
In order to brace himself for whatever atrocities against morality and mankind he may be about to witness in the labs, Till takes a deep breath in and out his nose. He closes his eyes.
The next thing he feels is warm sunlight upon his face.
He has yet to realize it, but he is drifting.
The sea gently washes the mattress he is riding up onto a beach. Confused, he looks around. He is wearing different clothes than a few moments ago. Somehow, his hair has also grown considerably in length, and he’s also got a machete strapped to his waist.
Seeing a dense jungle before him, he wanders lackadaisically into it, chopping and slashing at the underbrush as he goes.
He soon realizes that he needs to take a piss. He doesn’t realize that, as he steps off the path to stand under the fronds of a palm, he has carelessly stepped onto a patch of earth that isn’t exactly… normal.
He still doesn’t notice the patch of earth sprout eyes, and begin to rise and crawl towards him, as he relieves himself. He only, finally, sees that something is amiss when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye.
He shouts in surprise and horror. Somehow, he knows exactly what this strange creature is. Upon this island, there is rumor and myth of forest nymphs. This is his first time witnessing one. She looks like a naked young woman, only her eyes are a strange, catlike green, and she doesn’t walk, but crawls, sideways, in a crablike motion. He kicks at her to shoo her away, but she persists, skittering around his feet.
A strange feeling comes over him. She sits, her green eyes somehow luring him closer. His dick is still out from trying to piss, and she is at the perfect height in front of him to receive it. He then decides to slip its full, considerable length into her mouth.
It’s perhaps the dumbest decision of his life, as she reflexively bites down. In shock, he, yet again, passes out.
When he rises, he doesn’t know the time. Time feels meaningless. He opens his eyes. Unbeknownst to him, they are now the same beguiling green. All he knows is that now, he’s hungry. Starving.
He wanders out of the jungle and offshore, into the shallows of the high tide. Approaching some manner of mangrove bush, he begins tugging off leaves, shoving handfuls into his mouth. They barely have any taste, but he keeps eating.
He wanders further out, and a flitting motion under the surface of the water catches his eye. Under the mangrove roots, there is a catfish. He finds a large, long-forgotten tree branch, and begins pummeling the fish, trying to stun it. He tracks it with his eyes as it attempts to swim away, but it’s clearly injured. Lightning fast, like a heron or other seabird, his hands plunge into the water and he snatches it. He puts it into his pocket, slowly dying, saving it for later. Since he’s so close to the water’s surface, he takes up a big mouthful of water to drink. Oddly enough, it doesn’t taste salty, it’s actually quite refreshing. But then he notices something.
A short stretch away from him, amongst the mangroves, is a black shape. As his eyes focus, he makes out what it is—and recoils. Surely it couldn’t have been--?
He’s not taking any chances. He runs away, climbing up the remains up a mangrove tree, above the line of the water.
The next several hours are a panic-filled blur, where he constantly feels as if this spectral menace is pursuing him. He goes back to land, onto the beach. Still, the shape follows. He finds an abandoned stadium and wanders around all the seats, tearing up some of the old, deteriorated foam from their padding.
As clear as day, the black wraith sits, far off in the nosebleeds, applauding his performance.
He feels the same helpless, adrenaline-filled, slightly manic panic that he did upon the plane. He runs about like a prey animal, sometimes giggling to himself, sometimes breaking out into little dances. He digs at his scalp, trying to dig the dreads out of his hair.
In darkness, he stumbles hurriedly down a lonely stretch of road, not knowing where he is, not caring where he ends up, as long as it’s away from It.
Unbeknownst to him, a new predator is now on his trail.
A feminine specter comes slinking out of the dark. This is not one of the nymphs; her name is Cigua. Her prey is men alone at night, wandering close to bodies of water. She’s not sure which land this man hails from, nor does she care. He has come too close to the stream she calls her home, and she has been left longing.
Without warning, Till feels a sharp pain in the side of his neck. A woman with a face like that of a rotting corpse, with needle-like teeth, is gnawing into the flesh of his neck. As he screams in horror and pain, she kisses him, and also rips off his bottom lip. Despite her demure size, she’s impossibly strong, and he can’t fight her off of him. She goes back to his neck, ripping more flesh from him.
The only way he can escape being eaten alive is the water. He decides to run. He runs for his life, his boots thudding thunderously against the pavement, his chest and lungs transported back to his old swimming days. He makes a swan dive, his hat flying from his head, forgotten. He plunges deep into inky blackness.
Inexplicably, Till is now back at the lab. The group is stepping cautiously and ponderously into the large, cold room that feels like a cavern of horrors. There are strange, man-sized pods as far as the eye can see, in every direction.
It doesn’t take long for them to ascertain what’s inside of them.
Each man peers up at his exact double. Using Oliver as an example, they inspect the data files. Subject 0001070. Male specimen, 53 years old. It even has his facial hair.
They know what they must do, knew it before even getting there, and seeing this. Surely, if the tyrannical government ever unleashed clones of its greatest warriors out onto the street, nothing, not even their originals, would ever be able to stop them. Still, these are unlike any lives they have ever taken before, and for the first time in a long time, they feel as if they are sinning against God. Many in the group pause at this thought. Some of them weep. RZK kneels before his clone and feels as if he has met his brother, and his heart aches. Doom kneels and places a kiss upon his head to comfort him.
Paul begins to dump the gasoline. Despite his reservations, it is RZK who ignites it, by flipping his cigarette into the liquid. As they walk away, the tortured screams of their clones can be heard in the distance as they are burned alive.
There is only one place they must go now, and it is back to see the Damned.
oh well" while she's sitting here drinking her 27$ a case soda and shilling her patches, and people here were wondering why staph couldn't send food or money or grocery store giftcards. she's just so self centered.
