Orgy of Souls

Father Samuel turned the pages of his breviary, his eyes moving across the hymns and prayers, his mind adrift on waves of distracted thoughts. It was as close to prayer as he allowed himself these days. Huddled in the corner of a pew in the sanctuary chapel, he escaped to the nearest thing to solitude that Our Lady of Mount Carmel had to offer as he prepared to say Mass.

Some days were easier for Samuel than others. There were days when his faith made perfect sense to him. Christ dying on a cross as a sacrifice reconciling man and God. The Bible being God’s inspired Word, instructing man on how to draw closer to Him, no matter what century he lived in. The Holy Spirit speaking to man, comforting him in his dark times.

Then there were days like today.

Christ was some loon running around claiming to be God and was strung up for his efforts. The Bible was a collection of books men chose in order to maintain their power and grip on people. The Holy Spirit was his imaginary friend who remained silent when it counted most.

Samuel dry-swallowed his pills though he was tempted to wash them down with wine.

“Samuel?” Father Glenn tapped him on his shoulder. A short, bulbous man with a jowly face punctuated by a large nose, Father Glenn managed to sneak about the chapel without making a sound. “You’re up.”

“I know, I know.” Samuel closed his breviary and stood up, fighting a swell of nausea. “Shoot you for it.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll take the next month’s worth of confessions.” A lot of old women prone to complaint numbered among the faithful of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. They came to the confessional more for the company and conversation, gossiping by way of confessing.

“Forget it. You like confession. Tell you what. You take hospice visitation.”

The prospect gave him pause. Though he wasn’t up for Mass, he doubted he was any more up for a trip to the hospice ward. Father Glenn could be a thoughtless bastard that way. However, Samuel had a bit of a gambler’s streak in him. “Odds or evens?”

“Odds.”

“One. Two. Three. Shoot.” Odds. “Damn it.”

“You look good today. You’ll be fine,” Father Glenn turned from him.

“You’re a magnificent liar, but thanks.”

Samuel’s vestments weighed especially heavy today, but that might have been his general weakness, his body wasting away beneath his robes. The pasty film in his mouth tasted like decaying meat. He walked around the chapel, greeting his parishioners, the tingling in his hands and feet down to a dull burn. He preferred the numbness.

Samuel knew he was going through the motions.

His was a pernicious strain of AIDS. He wasn’t a drug user, and despite the recent bad press regarding his religion, he did not engage in sex, anal or otherwise, not since he’d taken his vows and only once before, with the woman he thought he would marry. No, in service to God he got the disease—a blood transfusion while on a mission trip to Africa. In October he was diagnosed with HIV and within months had full blown AIDS, a strain resistant to three out of four classes of medication used to treat HIV.

Politely pushing through the throng, he couldn’t help but think of how he missed his brother, Samson. Samuel and Samson, his devout mother’s idea of a joke. They weren’t twins—Samuel was, in fact, fourteen months older—however, she treated them as if they were. And they did share a special bond of sorts, he supposed. Though being the younger brother, it was Samson who was the overprotective one, probably due to his growth spurt that had left him towering six inches above Samuel. Samson had always called him his “little brother” because of the height difference. In high school, Samson would often walk in front of Samuel proclaiming “My brother’s coming through. Get out the way.” His idea of a joke, his way of showing love.

No greater love has a man for his brother and all that. If Samuel couldn’t find God in his brother’s love, there was no God to be had. With that, he had the topic for the morning’s homily.

Samuel’s malaise began to ease as he drank of the blood and ate of the flesh of Christ. That same divine love he often questioned—when the fevers and chills burnt through his flesh and kept him up all night tossing and turning—now filled him with its unmistakable warmth. One after another the faithful knelt before him to take communion, and he could see the light of faith burning furiously in their eyes as he placed the sacrament upon their tongues and blessed them one by one. His own doubts were not mirrored in his parishioners. Their faith humbled him. These were people he had grown up with, gone to school with, played handball on the streets with, now coming to him for spiritual salvation. Samuel thought it odd that the old woman who’d once called the police on him for smacking a tennis ball through her window during a stickball game now knelt before him and called him Father. But he could see none of his own discomfort reflected in her eyes. For her, all was as it should be.