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The spotlight burned brighter than ever, cutting through the hazy cloud of cigarette smoke that hung over the Kit Kat Club.
The Emcee stood center stage, painted lips curled in a devilish grin, arms thrown open wide to embrace the reveling crowd. “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!” he crooned. His movements practiced, precise, and effortless. He was of course a master of his craft, no one who looked upon his act could deny that, no matter how queer his displays became. Tha patrons of the Kit Kat Club couldn't complain at the sinful nature of the club, even if he may have made a few of the more rigid ones uncomfortable with how he palmed the boys on call the same he did the girls. For one didn't enter the Kit Kat Club hoping to fuck a virgin after all.
No. One entered the Kit Kat Club to distract themselves from the fact that they couldn't find a good fuck anywhere else.
That's what the club was there for after all. And in like, that was the Master of Ceremonies' job: to be the most enticing distraction.
And he was good at it too.
Beneath the rhinestones, the garish getups, and the greasey facepaint that clung and never seemed to wash entirely off, there was another man.
Hidden under all the glamour and stomped down until he was unrecognisable, there was a man who the Emcee longed to forget. To wash away with the alcohol, nicotine and any other substance he could get his hands on. To wash away the ugly scar branded on his soul, etched into his skin.
It was a stain on his reflection, a shadow in his laughter, a crack in the mask he painted every night. It was the haunting certainty that no amount of charm, no twist of the lips or sparkle of the eye, could ever make him invisible enough to the world that sought to destroy him.
He mused to himself sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, nursing a glass of whiskey and a cigarette: he must be the world's greatest actor, a true master of his craft.
He carried it with him everywhere, this invisible mark, as though he were already tattooed with the numbers they would one day force onto his skin.
.
Words blurred together as the Emcee twirled his conductors stick, twisting on his heel as the bright lights blinded him in their familiar pattern.
His painted face was a kabuki mask of decadence, the sharp lines of eyeliner cutting like daggers, his ruby-red lips curled into a grin that was both inviting and sinister, like the smile of a Cheshire Cat in a fever dream.
He danced with an uncanny grace, as if his joints were held together by invisible strings. His gestures exaggerated, an emulation of puppetry really, each flick of his wrist or tilt of his head as deliberate as the stroke of a brush on a masterpiece, twisting his body into that practiced shape of a swastika. Sometimes he wondered if anyone noticed; in the crowd or in his ensamble.
He jumps out of his position with a grace that his teenage self would have greatly envied, and pressed Lulu close to him in a grind as the song continued and the familiar pounding in his heart followed the beat of the music.
To one particular man, blonde hair slicked back and dressed as it he hadn't wasted any time venturing here from work, the Emcee's leering gaze felt almost accusatory. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably as he watched the host's tounge dart out to lick at his ruby red lips. He averted his eyes to one of the messily dressed girls and missed how the Emcee snorted softly, mocking.
At times he had to remind himself not to judge the pathetic patrons he had, they did fund his livelihood after all. But they were also the type to enter a bar and pay for a girl to pretend to be interested in them, which had never been a problem for him.
He didn't often waste time wondering who they were, a simple glance over allowed him to improvise in playing their perfect partner. A nazi was easy prey and a private laugh at their hypocrisy, a communist was
a delicate dance, requiring just the right blend of camaraderie and detachment, as if to say, I see you, comrade, but I’m no threat. The wealthy industrialists were like cats — stroke their egos gently, let them purr, and they’d empty their pockets for another bottle of champagne. The desperate, clinging lovers were the easiest of all; he simply mirrored their hunger back at them, feeding their illusion that the world outside the club didn’t exist.
For the soldiers, whether swaggering brownshirts or weary veterans, he became a chameleon of camaraderie. To the brash ones, he offered bawdy jokes and raucous laughter, a brother-in-arms in their pursuit of indulgence. To the haunted ones, he was softer, a conspiratorial smile or a touch of the arm that said, I know, I know — it’s too much, isn’t it?
He toyed with the intellectuals who came to slum among the riffraff, tweaking their pretensions hoping and often succeeding in leaving them questioning whether they were mocking him or being mocked themselves. His job was a fun one.
Admittedly he was slightly more genuine when he beaded a woman of the night. Bruised and defiant under their rouge, he treated them with exaggerated gallantry, a performance of respect that made them laugh and sigh, if only for a moment.
Each patron became a thread in the tapestry of his performance, and he wove himself into their fantasies with ruthless precision. He didn’t need to know their names, their histories, or their futures —they were sketches, silhouettes to be filled with whatever version of himself would keep them coming back.
An actor he was after all. It was survival, a game he’d learned to play so well that even he sometimes forgot where the performance ended and he began.
Some of the girls talked about their patrons with such disgust he rolled his eyes at their exaggeration. For the truth was, they were a mirror of the club itself. And he was the club itself.
There they were, sat at booths, unfocused eyes looking up at him as he fluttered around the stage. A fractured and distorted mirror, its true, reflecting his own attempts to mask fear with bravado.
The wealthy men in their tailored suits, their eyes glassy with gin and ennui, a reminder of how easily power can decay into apathy. The young men tucked into shadowed corners, as he kissed them, always feverish with urgency; a bittersweet reminder of a passion he’s long since forgotten how to feel.
Yet, for all his cynicism, there is a peculiar fondness in the way he regards them. He understands them because he is them —chasing oblivion in the form of music and spectacle, trading tomorrow’s certainty for tonight’s fleeting euphoria. He plays to their hunger, their sadness, their lust, and their loneliness, feeding them a feast of laughter and lewdness that leaves them hungrier than before.
They laugh too loudly, drink too much, and clutch at fleeting moments of joy as though they could bottle them, ignoring the rot seeping into the edges of their lives. They are drowning men and women clutching champagne glasses instead of life rafts. He can understand that, empathise with it even.
But sometimes, as he looked into their eyes — glassy with drink or alight with desire — he felt a flicker of resentment, a shadow of disgust. But he so hated when he felt like this. Negativity and pessimism had no place in the Kit Kat Club; it was so boring to feel this way.
And so, he kept dancing, kept smiling, kept spinning the world they wanted to see. Because if he didn’t, the illusion would shatter, and there would be nothing left but the cold, unforgiving reality waiting outside the club’s doors.
He shoves it down as he does every ugliness and rolls his eyes with a huff and a coy smile towards one of the girls.
They will cheer for him, adore him, but if his truth ever slipped out — if they knew what he carried under his painted skin — they would turn on him in an instant. Their applause is fleeting, their admiration conditional, and their loyalty as thin as the smoke curling from their cigarettes.
In the end, they are both his sanctuary and his cage. He performs for them because he must — because their laughter and their money keep the lights on and the darkness at bay. And though he smiles and winks and twirls for them, he knows that one day, when the music stops, he will fade out of existance as if he was never there in the first place.
He only hopes he goes out high rather than low.
.
The Emcee had always thought little of his Jewish heritage. It was something from his childhood, tucked away like an old photograph in a forgotten drawer. His parents had been secular, more inclined to argue politics than to light Shabbat candles. Religion, tradition — it had felt irrelevant in his youth. He’d abandoned it all when he ran away to Berlin, leaving behind a small-town life for the decadence and anonymity of the big city.
But the world outside the club was changing.
It felt distant at first — he had scoffed at the idea that anyone would take it seriously. The city was a bastion of culture and freedom, after all. But the whispers became shouts, and the shouts became screams. And the Emcee watched, silent, as a young man was dragged away by the police. Yanked out of his very own club, contradicting his famous words at the start of every night.
It was a disgrace to his legacy. Here life is beautiful!
He’d wanted to shout, to throw a drink in one of their faces, to do something. But he didn’t. He’d simply continued dancing a fog coming over his mind, the specter of his own secret binding him in his place. That night, he couldn’t sleep. The man's terrified face haunted him, and for the first time, he thought about his own.
It was the first time this had happened. It was not the last. Eventually he resorted to drinking himself to sleep.
.
He didn't believe in God. It wasn’t even as if he’d ever been to synagogue in Berlin. But as dogs were slaughtered and windows were shattered, the fact of his Jewishness wasn’t something he could ignore.
It wasn’t a matter of faith; it was a shadow that followed him wherever he went. No one in the club knew. Why would they? He was the Emcee — bawdy, outrageous, irreverent. He joked about everyone and everything, spared no taboo. But now, every laugh he drew from the crowd felt ever increasingly hollow.
Now, when he painted his face he could only spot the flaws in his technique. Theough he had done the same for what felt like hundreds of years, it seemed that he just couldnt paint his face right anymore. Was his nose too prominent? His cheekbones too sharp? He scrutinized his reflection for clues, as if his own face might betray him, as if it had ever been his to begin with.
And the shame — oh, the shame. Why should he be feeling any shame? That wasnt something he had ever really felt before, not for his oddities, not for his queerness, not for his jovb, and certainly not for being Jewish. There was no shame in being born into one particular family, he couldn't choose that fact after all.
He wasn’t even religious. He hadn’t cared before. So why did it feel like this weight, pressing down on him, suffocating him? He despised himself for the way he checked over his shoulder before entering the club, for the way his hands shook when he passed a brownshirt on the street. He hated the way his heart leapt in fear every time someone called his title, one of the many fake German names he carted around. He hated himself for being afraid.
He had always known he was a fake, acting his way through life, but struggled to feel pride in it anymore as he shielded the phantom brand on his soul, invisible to the naked eye, yet seared painfully into him, as if a ghostly iron had kissed his flesh and left its mark deep within.
He knew his Jewish blood marked him, even if he hadn’t set foot in a synagogue since he was a boy. It didn’t matter to them, the ones in uniforms with eyes like stone. It wouldn’t matter to anyone when the truth came out. For eventually it... well it surely would with his luck.
One night, a regular patron of the club — a man with a quick laugh, and a generous wallet that compensated for just enough — made a joke about the Jews that sent the room roaring with laughter. The Emcee smiled, played along, and took another drink, and ignored the shadow of smoke curling at the edge of his mind, acrid and choking, though no fire had yet been lit.
That night, he slipped out of the club and wandered the streets. Of course, nowadays one could not wander the streets without coming across a sheet-covered body thrice a week. As if the sheet blocked everything out, made anything easier to stomach. But is apparently did for some people.
He didn't stop, the street was empty but he still couldn't stop. Not now.
When he returned to the club, early enough that dawn was breaking and Max was surely asleep by now, he ventured up to his room. His dressing room, living room, bedroom, and probably dying room.
He plays the bone-chilling record on his dresser, the beautiful singing meeting his ears and he feels a repellent urge to throw up. With the stillness of his haven disturbed by that damned song, he finally feels comfortable enough to whisper a prayer — not one he remembered from childhood, but one he made up on the spot, for he only holds memories of vague half-sung melodies of which he would not be able to recall the words if he tried.
He was not religious, but that body probably was. That person - for it was a person before it became a barren lump of flesh - wouldn't be buried in the Jewish way, wouldn't get to be seen off my family, none of them would get the closure they wanted in death.
.
When he returned to the club, he wore the same makeup, the same costume. He cracked the same jokes, sang the same songs. The audience laughed and applauded. But inside, something had shifted. He was no longer just performing for escape. He was performing for survival, for defiance, for every piece of himself he refused to let the world erase.
He had always lived on the edge of a razor, a balancing act of glitter and guile, but as Germany changed, that razor felt sharper, pressing closer to his throat.
The laughter in the Kit Kat Klub had grown brittle, the kind that shatters into silence too easily. Outside its doors, the world was unraveling in ways that no amount of sequins or smoke could disguise. He watched it happen, bit by bit, atrocity by atrocity, each new horror creeping closer like the tide swallowing the shore.
He told himself he was safe — safer than most, at least. He had always been able to blend in should he wish to, contrary to when he was painted in charm.
The Emcee didn’t know how long he could keep going. He didn’t know if he’d ever tell anyone the truth. But for now, he would keep smiling, keep singing, keep dancing. Because in the darkness of the Kit Kat Club, he could be about as free as society had ever allowed a fool like him.