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Language:
English
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Published:
2025-12-11
Completed:
2025-12-16
Words:
1,246
Chapters:
2/2
Comments:
2
Kudos:
3
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To my Dear Darling Kiel,

Summary:

In a snow-covered Berlin on January 2nd, 1939, Stantly Marsch sits down to write his last letter to his beloved spouse, Kiel. Separated by war and danger, he reflects on their forbidden love, the children he cannot be with, and the life he longs for. Wounded and facing death, Stantly pours his regrets, hopes, love into the letter, imagining a place where they can be together without fear, shame, or violence. This is a story of devotion, longing, and the quiet strength of love in the face of impossible circumstances.

Notes:

Hi! My name is Michael. You might be a little confused by the names Stantly and Kiel, but don’t worry, this is written in a normal style, just set in the 1940s. Stantly wanted many things in his life: to be with his husband openly, to live without shame for being gay, and to have a long life. Unfortunately, he never got any of those. 1939 was the last year he was alive. At just 24, he died in battle in Berlin, holding onto the letter he wrote for his dearest husband, Kiel, who was a vampire from Germany.

Stantly and Kiel originally started as a Halloween special in 2023, when my girlfriend and I wanted to explore them differently. We fell in love with their dynamic, and they became canon in our South Park inspired writing. Since then, we made Stantly a direct relative of Stanley, the one we know and love, and Kiel was reincarnated into Kyle.

This piece is a little different from my other two writings because it is just a letter and was one of my first attempts at first-person perspective, which I rarely do.

I really hope you enjoy the letter

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

To my dear darling Kiel,

Morrow arose, and the day in counting is January 2nd, 1939. My caring, dashing darling, how I long to see you beside me once more. I am now dispatched to Berlin, Germany. The weather is cold, and it is snowing. The snow reminds me of you. Careful, fragile, and heavenly. A pure bliss of some untouched purity within the hell it is here. Every time the flakes touch my hand, I think of how your fingers felt against mine, gentle and warm even when the world around us was not. I miss my divine being of a spouse and the jewels I call my children. I can still picture them, running through the yard, their laughter like little bells in the distance. I pray they are safe, that they are well fed, that they smile still. My darling, tell them I love them more than the air that fills my chest. Tell them their father thought of them with every beat of his heart, even as the sound of gunfire tried to drown it out. I have many regrets in this life. I regret not being there to raise my children. Many regrets too are not meeting you sooner, my light. I regret never getting to be public about our love in fear of being arrested. Oh, how I wish in another life I could call you mine openly, without shame, without hiding. We lived in silence, yet our love spoke louder than any words I have ever known. I still remember the first time I saw you, the night light catching your hair. I thought then that if there were ever a heaven, it had already sent one of its angels down to earth. Truth be told, my darling, the bells have been ringing all day. Bells can mean many things, but to me they mean the end of something. They toll for the fallen, for the broken, for those who will not see another dawn. Yesterday I was shot. The bullet struck near my shoulder and tore through. I crawled from the field to the camp, leaving a trail of blood that the snow quickly covered. The pain is strong, but it is not what frightens me. What frightens me is the thought of leaving you and my darling children behind without a proper goodbye. I apologize for my writing, my hand is shaking, darling. The ink runs thin, my body weaker with each word I write. My death is near, but I wish to die knowing you will have some clarity of me and my final thoughts. I do not want you to mourn me as a soldier, for I am not one by choice. I am only a man who loved you deeply and was sent to fight in a war he never believed in. If I am to go soon, I want you to know that I am not afraid. I see your face every time I close my eyes, and that gives me peace. I imagine your hand in mine, your breath near my ear, and I can almost forget the sound of the guns ringing and the bodies dropping. When I pass, I will think of you, my dearest heart. I will think of the city where we met, the nights we whispered to each other in secret in fear of our children waking, the mornings I woke to find you still sleeping beside me, soft and perfect. If heaven exists, I shall wait for you there by the snow. I will build a home there for us, where no one can tell us our love is wrong, where no law can separate us, where no war can find us. The snow will never melt there, and I will wait, watching the flakes fall until you arrive.

Yours eternally,
Stantly Marsch