“No. Go home. Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning when you’ve decided.”
11
Nkosi’s room allowed a measure of privacy, an oasis of dignity against the encroachment of an intractable trespasser. Like all of the rooms, a large bay window faced the rising sun. Painted a neutral taupe, not falsely cheery nor hope-crushingly dreary, the room was an austere testimony to Nkosi’s life. Samuel sat next to her bed and watched her for nearly an hour as she slept before she knew he was in the room. She waved meekly for him to draw near. Her breathing had grown shallow, her voice no louder than a whisper, lost in a swirl of semi-consciousness.
“Don’t you want your mirror?”
“The way I look? My eyes so big and hollow, like I’m already dead and I’m staring back from the other side.”
A Bible lay open on the stand that used to hold her meal trays. It mocked him. The deceitful strength that so long buoyed her had fled in the night. She couldn’t walk, her thin frame no longer capable of supporting her. She convulsed as if gripped by a terrible chill. Her weak voice, once so vibrant, unnerved Samuel.
“I hadn’t heard from your family. One of the nurses had to call me.”
“I just wanted to hide from everyone. No one should have to look at me.”
A paralyzing fear gripped him. He avoided meeting her eyes because every time he did, he became afraid. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her to be strong, that she was having a bad day; hope stuck in his throat. She didn’t have much longer—the disease consumed her so quickly, yet she stared at him as if he was supposed to have the answers.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
“I didn’t ask. Anything I want to know, I’ll find out soon enough. Oh, the way I must look. You can see my skull and bones. You look like you’re losing more weight, too.”
Samuel dropped his head. The Nkosi he knew faded in and out, already repeating her thoughts through the jumbled haze of her mind. The last thing he wanted was to talk about his own struggle with the virus. He eyed her long dull curls that puddled into her pillow.
“You think God abandoned us, don’t you?” Nkosi asked.
“Don’t you?”
“Hold my hand.”
Samuel wrapped his hand with hers. Her muscles tensed, and he knew she meant to pull him closer, so he leaned in.
“You have been God for me. You’ve wiped my tears and held my hand. Your presence...I feel Him through you. Don’t you see?”
“If I’m God, I’m doing a pretty lousy job of things.”
She coughed violently, all that remained of her barreling laugh, spittles of blood spraying her sheets. Not that he had anything to fear from them. “You’re doing better than you think.”
“I wish I had your faith.” He held her tighter.
“Mine? You’re funny. It’s been yours keeping me going all this time. But I’m so tired.” She folded into him like an exhausted dove. Still so beautiful, so loving, so trusting, his heart yearned toward her. She charged the very air around her, the air he breathed.
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it. I stare out the window and I want to see one more day. Keep looking out for your brother. He’d be lost without you.”
The words fell like loose dirt on a coffin. She closed her eyes, still smiling a bit. Her breath became shallower, settling into sleep.
12
Requiem, a hole in the wall night club, used to be a church. The refurbished sanctuary was now the main dance floor broken by rows of columns. Clusters of tables and chairs separated it from the lounge and bar area, the words “Entertainment one better than sterno enemas” painted on a nearby column. A dimly lit balcony ringed the main floor as huddles of shadows watched from above. Roadies scurried about the stage that had once supported a pulpit and choir loft, preparing for the band, Madonna’s Abortion, to play.
An overweight girl with a feather boa draped around her shoulders and her hair pulled up sat in a corner of the club. A crescent moon caught in a shower of stars advertised tarot readings. Her business cards read “The Witch Cottage.” The prospect intrigued Samson; he’d never gotten a tarot reading before. He sat down across from her, attempting to hide the condescending smirk etched on his face.
“How much?”
“Fifteen dollars. You can ask me as many questions as you like. Here, shuffle these cards.” She handed him a stack of well-worn, oversized cards. Samson shuffled them awkwardly then handed the deck back to her. She dealt them in front of him.
“How long will I be married?” he baited her. He wasn’t going to let this turn into one of those eerie moments. He suspected how this worked: the more he expressed on his face or in his voice, the more information she’d have for the con.
“You will end up alone,” she said as if she didn’t hear his question. Studying the cards with a brooding intensity, Samson wanted to lean over to see what she was reading. “If you did the right thing, which you won’t, things might work out. You’re being punished by the Divine. What you’ve put out is coming back to you.”
“Yeah? Well, fuck you too.” He threw a twenty dollar bill in the fortune teller’s face as he rose from the table.
Techno strains from the band drew him back to the main floor; the music was little more than violent whining, like rending metal to a beat. Maroon light bathed the stage and the fog machine worked overtime. Between the multiple strobes and psychedelic haze of smoke, the dancing figures were little more than shadowy faces crying in the night. Sticking to the periphery, he walked to the bar, discrete from the dance area in its own pocket universe. Candles created flickering pools of amber light from the lounge. Incense burned in scattered piles. Samson ordered a drink, but everything tasted gray.
No, tonight was about the hunt.
He turned his attention to the gyrating flesh. Reading people, women especially, was what he did. One woman strayed from the pack of her friends as if afraid to catch a case of popularity. She chewed on the tip of her right thumb, her hair pulled back in a low maintenance ponytail. Leather straps encased her small breasts. Boots came up to the knees of her lanky legs, a matching mini skirt barely covering her behind. Her face was androgynous, not pretty, though fascinating all the same, conspicuous by her paucity of makeup.
She lacked the smell of prey: too little of the neediness, the lack of self-esteem, the eagerness to please that Samson knew he could twist and pervert until she was happily signing her soul away for the self-validation of casual sex with one of the world’s most desirable men.
That was when he spied his true intended. She struck a pose of too-cool-to-dance, catching herself if her head bobbed to the music. Her tall frame possessed an awkward grace, her swaying suggested sexiness in its own way. She wore a blood red gown that flowed and swirled with her movements. Long ivory gloves, the sleeves slit up the middle, revealed lengthwise scars down her wrists. Her long black hair—too black, obviously dyed—draped down her alluring neck. Her skin chalked to a drained, grayish hue, bordered on whiteface. She met his lingering gaze.
She had probably spent two hours getting herself ready for the club, afraid to be seen without every hair intact, every visible patch of skin creamed and powdered to a ghostly white pallor. Afraid that others would see the missing parts of her if they weren’t covered in make-up, afraid that she was little more than a pretty thing others wanted to fuck. An Egyptian hieroglyph encircled her large eyes, giving them a vaguely Asian appearance. Radiating a special brand of vivaciousness, she would do. She sauntered over to him.
“Why do you keep staring at me?” she said with a deep, gravelly voice. A sexy rasp. Completely affected. Another layer of her mask.
“Because you’re beautiful and I want to make love to you.”
Her eyebrows rose sharply and a smile broke quickly onto her face, shattering her cool aloof exterior. “Damn! You don’t waste time with small talk do you?”
“Not when I find what I’m looking for, when I find someone worthy of
what I have to offer.”
“And what is it you’re offering?”
“Freedom. I’m offering absolute freedom through total subservience.”
“Oh, you’re a dom then? I would have never guessed you were into all of that. You don’t dress the part,” she said as she stepped back to get a better view, taking in Samson’s Bruno Mali shoes, Hugo Boss jeans and Versace silk shirt.
“Why else would anyone come to a club like this?”
“Most people come because they have no idea what they want or what they are.”
Samson leaned over and breathed his next words directly into her ear. “Oh, I know exactly what I want and exactly what I am.” His deep, resonant voice vibrated against her earlobe as his lips brushed against her jaw line.
“And what’s that?”
“I’m looking for Life,” he said.
“Well, there’s no life here. Usually, only the lost come here. I think you’re looking for what we all are—love.”
“Love?” Samson laughed out loud, the bemused expression on his face bordering on pity. “My father always told me that there was no such thing as love. It was just a four letter word you used to get pussy. People toss it around too casually for it to mean anything. I don’t believe in love. Fuck love. My way is much better.”
She nodded, though her face appeared pained. “Yeah. Fuck love. It’s overrated. I haven’t really loved anything since my mother died when I was two years old. I never even got to know her. Only a smell I always imagined my mother would smell like, a mix of tea rose oil and a soft scent, like baby powder. I don’t even know if that’s how she really smelled. It’s just all I can remember.” She chuckled without mirth. “Two loveless souls finding each other, that’s quite the coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence. Everything happens for a reason,” Samson said. “It must be someone’s plan.”
“So you still believe in God?”
“I never said I didn’t. Who else would you blame for your mother’s death or my parent’s never giving a fuck about me, if He didn’t exist? I just don’t get His sense of humor.”
“Me neither, but then, I’m not a believer.” She wrapped her hands around his, curling his hand into a fist.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“To where? Do you know where the after-hours party is?”
“The only party that matters is the one at my house. Do you want to party with me?” He smiled when he said it. Then he reached out and caressed her cheek with one hand while still holding her other hand. She returned his smile, her eyes already clouding with lust.
“I don’t do drugs or anything anymore. I’ve been clean for almost a year.”
“I’m not offering drugs. I’m offering me.”
“I’m not really into the whole B&D thing either. I don’t really get off on pain.”
“The type of submission I’m talking about doesn’t require whips and chains. I want you to submit your soul to me.”
“My soul?” her face twisted into a scowl and she stepped back from Samson as if he’d slapped her face, “What are you. some born again Christian or something? I told you, I don’t believe in God.”
“I said I wanted you to submit your soul to me, not Christ.”
“Well, that does sound kinky.” She smirked at him again, attempting to be coy and seductive.
“I want you to give me your immortal soul. Your soul…” He turned her hand so that the palm rested against his hard pectoral muscles, then began to slide her hand down his chest, over his rippling abs, over his belt buckle, to the thick swell of his cock bulging through his jeans. “…for my flesh.”
Her hand trembled as he slid it back up his body, over the striated muscles beneath his silk shirt and up to his pursed lips. He kissed each finger, then released her hand and let it fall back to her side. The woman took a deep breath to calm herself. Still, her voice shook when she spoke.
“That’s…that’s a pretty high price. Are you worth it?”
“It’s not so high a price for an atheist. If you don’t believe in God, then what do you need a soul for? This should be a bargain for you…and yes, I am worth it.”
He winked at her and licked his lips, looking her up and down.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be the one offering me your soul to sleep with me?”
“Sex is easy to come by. You are beautiful, but beauty in a woman is expected. It’s not so terribly remarkable. Just look around this club. There are beautiful women everywhere. I could pull ten girls a night out of this club every bit as lovely as you. How about you? How many men like me could you pull out of this club?”
She took a head-to-toe appraisal. “Okay, so there aren’t a lot of men as fine as you. But is that worth my soul?”
“Come with me and find out.”
13
Samson was amazed at how easy this was. He had expected to meet far more resistance. Were he still a devout Christian he would have found it offensive how easy it was to talk a woman out of her soul. Samson lifted the woman off the bed as he continued to thrust deep inside of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Most of her weight was supported by Samson’s hands cupping her buttocks as he slid her up and down his body, her clitoris rubbing against his washboard stomach even as his erection swelled within her. Her legs suddenly tightened around his waist. She whipped her head back and screamed. Her body began to buck and thrash as the first of many orgasms ripped through her like a hurricane.
“Who’s your God now?”
“You are! You Are! My soul to keep,” she said as he settled her back down onto the bed and began kissing his way down her body, still slick with their combined sweat. “My soul is yours to keep forever.”
Once again Samson marveled at how little the human soul was worth to those who possessed it. He could only hope it would be worth more to Him.
14
Samuel wondered when exactly his childhood died. When was that precise moment? When did he lose—without mourning—his ability to look about creation with a sense of awe and mystery? To have his soul astonished and eyes light up with glee because the world was rife with the amazing and unexpected? To be able to believe in miracles? That was what he longed for—to truly encounter the miraculous.
Samuel, for all of his talk about community, led a solitary existence. The sheets of his bed were pulled taut with a meticulous crispness. A chair rested under a free-standing light; he hated reading in bed because the words slurred together in a pool of slush as he drifted to sleep. A television set faced the chair on the opposite side of the room, but he had long ago lost the remote and never thought it worth the effort to cross the room to turn it on. To call it a life would be to infuse his world with color and vibrance often found wanting. No, he chose his gray, contemplative way, a monk’s solitude as if balancing some scales only he saw. Making up for Samson’s life. Foolishness, he knew. God didn’t work that way—leave Karma to the Buddhists.
“O God, by the life, death and resurrection of Your only begotten Son, You purchased for us the rewards of eternal life; grant, we beseech You, that while meditating on these mysteries…we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.”
This morning, the walk from his chambers to the main vestibule proved especially long. The days of gothic architecture were a thing of the past, but Samuel couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for the shadows and arches that stretched within cavernous cathedrals. A call to glory made terrifying, he thought. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, though quite cavernous, was bright and cheery. A fountain spurted mildly in the lobby beneath a statue of Mary. The lights were too brilliant and somehow off-putting. He knew before he took his seat in the confessional that he would regret getting up this morning.
“I did it again, Sammy.”
“Samson?”
“I met a woman at the club. She was so lost, so al
one. After we made love she told me all about how she’d grown up without a father, how her mother had only been fifteen when she gave birth to her so she’d been raised mostly by her grandmother. She told me about getting pregnant herself when she was fourteen and having an abortion and how it still plagues her when she thinks about how old her child would have been if it had been born. She cries every year on what would have been her child’s birthday. She was young and didn’t know anything about life and she’d been taken advantage of by a much older man. That’s when she stopped believing in God. I guess the guy was very active in the church and no one believed her when she told them that he was the father of her child. Her grandmother slapped her for it. Still, with all the animosity she had built up inside her toward the church and God, she had the hardest time signing the contract when it came down to it. She even cried after she signed it.”
“You’ve got to stop this, Samson. You need to think about your own soul for a minute.”
“I’ve known that I was going to hell for a long time, Samuel. I’ve broken commandments God hadn’t thought about giving us. There’s no hope for me.”
“I know that you think you’ve wasted your life, but look at all you’ve accomplished, how successful and famous you are.”
“If I die it won’t matter. The world won’t stop spinning.”
“It will matter to me. Don’t you care if you live or die? Is your life that bad? That…empty?” Samuel touched the screen that separated them in the confines of the booth.
“I care, Bro. Believe me, I care. But I also care about you.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing or why, but intentions don’t count. Caring doesn’t count. How you live is what counts. Did you really think you’re life’s purpose was to protect me?”
“You’re all I’ve got, Samuel. All we have is each other.”
“Then why take the one decent thing in your life and strip it of all meaning? Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve stood for...this goes against all of it. You have so much anger inside you. You define yourself by your mind and your body; you trust yourself too much, have too much faith in who you are. You’ve gotten by on your looks and your charm and it’s pretty much gotten you everything you wanted out of life, but you are still hurting. You use sex to cover your pain and self-loathing, to be a balm on the emptiness of your life. I think that’s how you see God: He’s just another irresponsible father who refuses to follow through on His responsibilities.”
Orgy of Souls Page 4