Orgy of Souls

The crowd thickened, but through it Samuel spied his brother talking to a woman at the rear of the club. Dancers flailed their arms like burning windmills. Samuel pushed his way through the throng, not taking his eyes from the two of them. Two somnambulant wanderers lost in a dream of reality, the reality that began on the other side of the club’s doors.

“Samson!” he called out.

That was when the screams started.

One moment, Samson was taking her right there in the middle of the crowd, her face contorted in approaching ecstasy. The next, Samson’s body rippled as if a tidal wave rushed over his flesh. Hunching over, his body swelled, his muscles engorged; perhaps he even grew taller. The woman’s bliss interrupted, fractured into a rictus of frozen terror and suddenly splayed apart as if split by some unseen scythe. Then Samuel saw the blade, gripped by his brother, blood raining down from a knife in a long liquid red film. It was the tanto knife from the sword rack on Samson’s mantle, the one that sat next to the picture of the two of them.

Blood splattered the walls around them. Samson was awash in it.

He didn’t mean to kill her. Lord, I have to believe that he didn’t mean to kill her.

The erupting screams turned to blind panic. Bodies pressed past Samuel, threatening to carry him off in the undertow of their fear. He struggled to make his way to his brother, determined not to believe what his heart already knew.

“Samson, what have you done?”

“Samuel, you—you weren’t supposed to see this. But I’m glad you came. I was going to tell you everything in the confessional. Now I don’t have to. Don’t look at me like that, Samuel. You don’t understand, but you will. You’ll see. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.”

Samson took off his shirt and knelt over the strewn remains of the woman, sifting through her flesh. He divided her organs in a pattern that made sense only to him. He dipped his fingers in her blood and painted a series of symbols on his skin.

“My God, Samson! What the hell are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get you some…some help.”

Deep down Samuel knew that whatever was wrong with his brother was far beyond the help of a psychiatrist. His face betrayed a stoic determination that didn’t seem so much insane as possessed. Anti-psychotics weren’t going to do anything for him.

“Help? I don’t need any help. I’m helping you.”

“Helping? Helping me? This…this is not helping. Whatever you’ve done, you didn’t do it for me, you did it for you!”

“No, Samuel. I’m trying to save you. I love you, man. Don’t you see? I’m just following the rules of your God. He demands sacrifice, doesn’t He? Blood? Life exchanged for life?”

“Samson, this...my disease, it’s my test. My faith...” The words failed him. He didn’t want to fall back on tired clichés; he’d come too far for that.

“If inflicting pain and suffering is how your God tests faith, He’s a vindictive son of a bitch ain’t he? Why would you want anything to do with a motherfucker like that? I’m the only one who can help you now, Samuel. Me! Just like I always have.”

“No, Samson. God will help me if it’s His will. Either way, there’s no justification for this. You used to believe, you wanted to believe, that’s why you hurt so much. The question isn’t how you can keep believing in God, but how you can keep believing in yourself.”

Samuel stepped forward and a face appeared under the skin of his brother’s chest, distending his flesh as it writhed to the surface. It gnashed its teeth at Samuel. Other mouths opened and closed, screaming from beneath the skin; hands pressed against the flesh prison.

Samuel backed away, shaking his head in disbelief. A dozen different faces pressed to the surface of Samson’s flesh like bubbles boiling up to the top of a roiling cauldron before disappearing back down inside. Most of them were women. Tears streamed from Samuel’s eyes as he began to comprehend the amount of destruction his brother had done in his name.

“You can’t save yourself, and then you turn your back on me when I can save you? After all that I’ve done for you?”

“But there are things after you. I’ve seen them. They tried to get me, too. They’re coming. We’ve got to get you out of here. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve unleashed something, something evil, and it wants you.”

Samson’s hands still dripped blood, the woman’s gutted body at his feet. He wore the defeated face of a child who knew he was about to be punished. His eyes scanned the club, now almost empty, then glanced back over at his brother.

“You can’t save me, Samuel. Why are you still trying? I was lost a long time ago. There’s no salvation for me. It’s you we have to save. You’re the good one. I don’t matter. Saving you will be the one thing I ever do that really matters.”