“Well, isn’t He? How many times have you prayed to Him to cure you? How many times did we pray for Dad not to beat us? How many children are praying right now while they starve or die of diseases or neglect or abuse? Isn’t God just like our father who art on earth? Hasn’t he ignored us the exact same goddamned way? But then Dad didn’t ignore you did he? He only ignored me. He loved you.”
“See? Things always come back to Dad.”
“Fuck Dad! If he doesn’t love me then I don’t love him either. I’m over all that childhood shit. I’m talking about you and me.”
“I know. You have all of this distrust and anger and then God has the nerve to take away your best friend.”
“That’s right. That’s exactly what He’s fucking doing. God doesn’t give a fuck about either one of us. He didn’t stop you from getting sick and He hasn’t stopped me from...”
“From what?”
“Nothing. It’s too late for me.”
“Jesus forgives, Samson. He forgives us all. I don’t believe in pat answers to difficult questions. I wrestle with my faith every day. But, this isn’t about me, it’s about you. It’s always been about you. Your needs. Your redemption.”
“I don’t want His forgiveness. Not for me anyway. He should be asking for my forgiveness. I just want Him to stop punishing you for my sins.”
“Is that what you think? You think this is all happening to me just to punish you?”
“I’ve got to go, Sammy.”
“Is that what you think?”
The door to the confessional opened and Samson rose to leave.
“I love you, Bro.”
“Wait! What about your penance?”
“Save it. There is no penance for me.”
The door to the confessional closed. Minutes later, it opened again and the next parishioner shuffled in.
“Bless me father for I have sinned…”
Haven’t we all. Samuel thought as tears welled up in his eyes. Haven’t we all.
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, carvi
ng 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.
16
“Is this thing for real?” Jacque barely let a few days pass before calling Samson to set up another date. He made a show of examining the contract again.
“What did your lawyers say?” Samson reclined on a velvet loveseat in the VIP room of Club 7, one of the most exclusive nightclubs in San Francisco. Society’s elite packed the room, including a smattering of TV and movie stars, rock, pop, and hip-hop stars, and models like himself, rubbing elbows with businessmen and mafiosos. Everyone seemed to be high on something. A bottle of Moet rested between Samson’s legs, lines of cocaine covered the table in front of him. He casually leaned over and snorted one, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his Versace shirt.
Jacque sat on a recliner next to him with a dusting of cocaine ringing each nostril. His eyes twinkled from the Ecstasy he’d taken earlier in the evening and the cocaine fueled his passions to blinding, manic heights. Two of his usual boy toys hovered in the background casting jealous glares at Samson behind Jacque’s back. Samson flicked them both the finger and then ran his hand down between his legs to seize his cock, brandishing it at them as if it were a weapon. Jacque was so high and so focused on Samson that he misinterpreted the gesture as some type of crude come-on and licked his lips in reply. Samson rolled his eyes and chuckled to himself.
“So? What did your lawyers say about the contract?”
“My lawyers say it’s an air-tight contract. They just aren’t sure what it’s actually for.”
“Just what it appears to be. It is a contract giving me all rights, powers, and privileges, including the right of ownership, of your immortal soul.”
Jacque laughed.
“But you can’t be serious. I mean what does that even mean?”
“It means that when you die your soul won’t go to heaven or Nirvana or fucking Valhalla or wherever it’s supposed to go. It won’t go to hell. It would revert to me.”
Jacque smiled, opening his mouth wide without laughing. His eyes were still sparkling like diamonds in a volcano.
“Soooo, then you’d have two souls? What good would that do you?”
“I’d have much more than that.”
Jacque leaned over and took the bottle of Moet from between Samson’s legs. He drank the remaining champagne straight from the bottle in long gulps until it was almost empty.
“Well, I don’t believe in all of that religious bullshit. When you’re dead, you’re dead. And when you’re alive, you’re alive.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind parting with your fictitious soul.”
Samson took the bottle of Moet from Jacque’s hands, maintaining eye contact the entire time, and drained the last of the champagne.
“To fuck you? I wouldn’t give a fuck if there really was such a thing as a soul. Spending the rest of eternity with my soul in the possession of such a beautiful man would be my idea of paradise anyway. Heaven would be a drag. Do you think they even fuck in heaven?”
“Probably not. Best to get in all your fucking down here while you can.” Samson produced a hypodermic needle. Jacque’s eyes widened in fear. He shook his head slowly back and forth.
“I don’t do the hard stuff.”
“No. This isn’t heroine. This is to take a little bit of your blood. The contract has to be signed in blood.”
“Oh, Jesus! Are you serious? Honey, you are just too melodramatic.”
“Maybe. Still, that’s the only way you’re getting a piece of me.”
Jacque stared at Samson for a long moment with the hypodermic needle between them in Samson’s outstretched hand. Samson smiled when he saw the first hint of fear break through the photographer’s façade. For a split second the flamboyant fashionista appeared almost sad—his eyes moistened and his bottom lip quivered. Then he sighed and took the needle from Samson’s hand.
“Fuck it. You only live once right? This could be the most expensive piece of ass I’ve ever had. You’d better be worth it. Oh, you know what I heard? I heard that Icon magazine has you in the running for this year’s “world’s sexiest man.” Can you believe that, shit
? Now I’ll be able to say that I fucked the world’s sexiest man. What a trip!”
“Yeah. What a trip.”
Jacque slid the needle into the thin blue vein in the crook of his elbow and drew out his blood with an ease and sureness that belied his assertion that he wasn’t into hard drugs. He signed his name on the contract in a theatrical calligraphy and slid it back to Samson. Samson smiled and stroked the blade strapped to his thigh beneath his loose-fitting Tommy Hilfiger jeans. He was so excited that his erection was almost as hard as the knife that had inspired it.
“Let’s go to my place.”
17
Samuel remembered a night, soon after he got his license, when he and Samson were following some girls home after a party. Ostensibly it was to make sure they got home safe and had nothing to do with the fact that the girls were having a sleepover and the brothers were trying to crash it.
The road was four lanes of street and the tract of land it cut through contained overdeveloped lots of expensive subdivisions. Back then, the road was a long, straight, poorly lit stretch, going from two lanes down to one whenever it came to one of its frequent bridges. Samuel knew it well and was used to playing chicken with oncoming traffic, other cars yielding to let him pass. Too late, he saw movement along the shoulder of the road, a black Labrador retriever charging into the range of his headlights. Samson cried out “Watch it!” but there was no time to swerve.
Everything moved quickly after that. The braking squeal of the tires interrupted by the double thump of something hitting the car. Samuel saw flashes of two bodies coming over the windshield, suddenly feeling worse that he had hit a mother and her pup. Pulling the car over, he watched the taillights of the girl’s car speed off into the night, oblivious to what had happened. The brothers sat there for a minute, Samson’s hand still locked onto the dashboard, having braced himself for impact. Samuel’s heart fired against his chest, pistoning so fast he didn’t know if he’d ever catch his breath again.
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