Orgy of Souls

15

“Can I take your coat?” Samson held out his hands. Bare-chested and shoeless, wearing only a pair of jeans, his body glistened in the light of the bright moon. Tara brushed past him with a knowing linger of her weight against him. She slipped from her thin jacket in a fluid motion. She reeked of alcohol and stale smoke, reporting promptly from her interrupted evening at Requiem for his booty call. “Here, I’ll take your purse, too, if you’d like.”

“My, aren’t we being the complete gentleman?”

“You make it sound as if I’m usually not a gentleman.”

“I’ll let you know when I want you gentle.”

“Goes with the spirit of the evening. If I gave you my belt, would that make you happy?”

“Well, let’s just say I plan on putting it to good use later.”

“Promises, promises.”

Tara’s long black hair had been pulled into a loose ponytail, highlighting her dove-like eyes and practiced smile. Her electric blue satin camisole bobbed merrily with each step, matching the bounce of her freed breasts. A black leather miniskirt showcased her toasted almond complexion. Samson led her to his spacious living room. Haunting, tuneless strains of hip-hop influenced jazz emanated as dull beats from his speakers. Spartan by design as well as necessity, the unadorned walls held a bleakness about them. With no knickknacks along his shelves, the room was impersonal. Cold.

Only a picture of him and Samuel, in much younger and happier days, rested on the mantle above the faux fireplace next to a stand with a Japanese Samurai sword and two other smaller swords. Tara immediately gravitated to it, running her fingers over the swords. She removed the bushido blade from the stand and ran the sharpened edge over her tongue, bathing the cold steel with her saliva. The very tip cut into her tongue and her blood ran down the blade. She began to dance with it, a striptease, sliding the blade across her breasts, over her belly, down between her legs, leaving trails of her own blood and saliva.

Samson sat, mesmerized by the dance. If she’d wanted to, she could have cut his throat before he could have so much as blinked, he was so enthralled. When she slid the sword back into its sheath and replaced it on the stand, he sighed his disappointment; he’d wanted to see more.

His heart skipped with apprehension when she picked up the picture of Samuel and him. The sight of her cradling it quickened the pulse at his temples, inviting a sliver of doubt that tugged at his insides as he wondered what his brother would think. Not that his brother had many positive things to say about how Samson chose to live his life. Samuel tended to keep his disapproval to himself, carrying himself without judgment of Samson, which was why Samson remained close to him. Samson couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to their mother. With something akin to remorse threatening to stir within him, he wiped a cold sweat from his forehead. His course was set. After several deep, calming breaths, he steeled himself to his course of action; he had simply come too far to turn back. He took the picture from Tara and set it face down.

“Would you like something to drink?” Samson asked.

“Whatever you’re having.”

The best thing about being “Samson,” he often thought, was the multitude of connections he managed to make. People always wanted to be able to get their hands on whatever, whenever. From celebrities to lowlifes, he mixed with them all because you never knew who could provide. So he was never in want of alcohol or drugs, no matter how exotic. Tara took the glass from him and stepped nearer in order to kiss him passionately, reveling in the heat of his musk. She ran her hands along his naked back before letting her hand trail down to the bulge in his pants. Taking a large swallow of his drink, he proceeded to kiss her neck then work his way lower, running his tongue along her belly. He slipped his hand under her camisole and teased her nipple. Samson poured some of his drink into her navel and sipped. Tara leaned back against the couch and languidly drank. Like a boy unwrapping a Christmas gift, his free hand unzipped her miniskirt. A lone tuft, like a pubic soul patch, greeted him.

“Do you know what a covenant is?” Samson asked.

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“It’s a binding agreement between two people. In the Old Testament, you didn’t make a covenant, you cut a covenant.”

“Sounds kinky,” she cooed.

“You see, I have this problem. The contract you signed, it wasn’t enough. Just words on a page, not especially binding, less so with all the lawyers we have today. So we need some sort of, well, sacrifice might be too strong of a word, but it gets the point across. It just sounds so dramatic, you know.”

“Can’t…” Tara’s eyes glazed and her glass tipped from her unmoving hand. Samson moved toward her, checking for a pulse before squatting to lock eyes with her. He took another breath, scooped her up, then lowered her onto the rug in the center of his room.

“Yeah. That would be the tetrodotoxin extract taking effect. It’s a paralytic agent, the same base voodoo practitioners use to make zombies. You can’t move, but you’ll remain conscious. I slipped you a couple roofies, too, just to make certain. That’s important, because people, whatever their role, should enter into things with their eyes wide open.”

Tara’s lamb-like mewling began in earnest, following Samson as he left the room. Her protests increased when Samson crossed the room to remove the Japanese tanto knife from the stand of samurai swords.

“I guess this brings us back to cutting the covenant.” Samson stood between her legs. “The two parties kill an animal and cut it down the middle. Then they lay the halves opposite each other and walk between them as they make a vow: ‘May God do this and more to me if I break this covenant. This is a blood covenant and cannot be broken.’”

Samson slid the knife from its sheath and placed it between her legs. A true Samurai was said to be able to sever limbs, heads, and even cut an enemy in half with one clean stroke. Unfortunately, Samson was not a true Samurai. The blade wasn’t as sharp as he had hoped. He made a mess of Tara’s body, carving repeatedly at her pelvic bone, trying to cut her in half, reducing her sex to a bloody ruin as he brought the blade down again and again as if he were chopping a block of wood. Her eyes were wild, screaming soundlessly, trying to do the work her paralyzed vocal chords could not manage. He hacked and slashed through meat, bone, and organs, wielding the blade more like a hatchet than a knife. Her breath quickened, chest rising up and down, panting like a dog. She was going into shock from the pain and blood loss. Her body began to convulse violently, thrashing on the floor like a woman in the grips of a titanic orgasm, saliva and blood foaming up out of her mouth. She had bitten through her bottom lip and it unhinged on one side and hung down her chin, giving her a lopsided grin. Fat bubbled up like bright yellow popcorn from the gashes and avulsions he’d chopped in her flesh. Samson dropped down onto all fours, his stomach heaving desperate spasms against his spine as he regurgitated the last vestiges of his stomach contents into the widening pool of blood.

Samson was still dizzy when the spell of nausea subsided. Saliva mixed with vomit dripped from his mouth and chin which he wiped with the back of his fist before gripping the hilt of the tanto knife in both hands. He rose to his feet, his stomach threatening to revolt again as he studied the butchered meat between Tara’s thighs. Samson sucked the scalding bile back down his throat, then turned and snatched the sword from the mantle. It was sharper, heavier. He swung it in a wide arc down at Tara’s groin, wielding it the way he’d seen it done in countless movies as a boy. He turned his head as blood and bone flew into the air when he wrenched the sword from her groin for another strike, trying his best not to throw up again. He had no idea at what point Tara finally died. When he had last peered into her eyes as he hewed at her pelvis with the tanto knife, she’d still been completely conscious, eyes still trying their best to convey their pain and terror as if she thought to reach some last remnant of humanity within him. By the time he’d gone for the sword, she’d begun those corybantic convulsions, growing still only after he’d chopped halfway through her pelvis. Her chest had continued to rise and fall until he’d cut well up into her abdomen, breathing out her last breaths as her bisected intestines spilled out onto the floor on either side of her.

The ribcage was considerably easier.

Images reverberated in his mind—the echo of the knife cracking into her, the sword slicing through the meat of her breast and bursting ribs, the sight of her organs spilling out of her divided torso and her head falling free from her neck. It took nearly twenty minutes but he managed to cut her completely in half and separate her head from her shoulders. Chunks of strawberry red pulp spattered his arms, face, and chest.

The horror of what he’d done slowly sank in. He knew that he’d had to do it, to save his brother. If there had ever been any hope of him one day entering heaven, he’d surely ended that with his…offering. He’d have to come up with something better for his next meeting with Jacque. Perhaps he’d forego cutting him in half. He knew he wouldn’t have the heart for that again; it was just too damned messy. The main thing was the spirit of the law, the contract and the blood. Death for life. Twenty for one. You live and learn.

Samson was confident that the effete little photographer would sign the contract. His loneliness trailed like a palpable fog around him, one that none of his expensive perfumes and makeups, his airs and affectations, could disperse. He’d sign the contract and Samson would cut his soul from his chest.

A surge of exhilaration swept through Samson as his stomach settled. He had broken the final commandment, had completely defied the will of God. He took a moment to wonder if perhaps he was starting to enjoy the ego boost he got from having someone sign their soul over to him, the feeling of power he was enjoying now. Samson began to wonder if he was really still in this for his brother. He had to admit that even as revolting as the process of dismantling Tara’s body had been, killing made him feel like a god.