Orgy of Souls

“It’s getting closer!” Samuel yelled.

“I’m doing eighty! I can’t go any faster with all of these turns. I’ll flip the car and kill all of us. Where did that thing come from and why the hell is it chasing us?” The cab driver was having a harder time dealing with everything that was going on than the two brothers. His panic actually relaxed them. Samuel grew dizzy, his chest burned with each breath.

“There’s the church! We’re going to be okay, Samuel!” Samson tried to sound positive even as his face contorted in agony while perspiration issued from him as he fought to contain the restless, panic-stricken spirits within him.

The cabbie turned the wheel sharply and jumped the curb, driving the taxi right up the steps of the church and bashing open the church doors with his front bumper. Samson grabbed his brother and hauled him out of the car, pulling him into the church. Samuel’s legs dragged behind him, his body limp in Samson’s arms.

“Come on little brother, you’ve got to fight. You cannot die on me now!” Samuel was still sweating profusely, wheezing as if he were having an asthma attack. His eyes rolled, focused on nothing. “Don’t die, Samuel. Stay with me little brother. Stay with me.”

The cab driver slammed the church doors shut and bolted them. He scurried about to barricade them as best he could. Samson set his brother down on the floor then joined the cabbie in snatching up pews and piling them in front of the door.

“I don’t think it could fit through those doors anyway.” Samuel whispered in between his labored breaths.

“He’s right. If that thing wants in here it’s going to come right through the wall.”

All three of them turned to look at the wall as if expecting it to implode at any moment. Returning his attention to Samson, the cabbie backed away, wild eyes staring at Samson’s undulating flesh. The souls inside of him bubbled his skin, preparing to mutiny. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You possessed or something? You’re what brought that thing here, aren’t you? What the fuck are you?”

“He’s my brother,” Samuel whispered.

The cabbie glared at Samuel, his eyes falling on the white collar barely hidden beneath his jacket, and began to relax again.

“Well, what the hell is wrong with him, Father?”

“It’s that thing out there. It’s doing something to him.”

“It damn sure is! It’s tearing him apart from the inside out!”

Throooom!

Something struck the church, shaking it to its foundations.

“Shit! It’s trying to get in here.” The cab driver lowered his voice. “What does it want? Why is it here?”

Both Samuel and the cabdriver faced Samson now.

“It wants what I promised it,” Samson said. “It wants these souls.”

“Fuck, then give them to him!” the cab driver shouted.

“It isn’t that simple.” A stranger’s voice that came out of Samson—a high-pitched, near-feminine voice exaggerated like that of a drag queen. Even Samson’s face had changed.

“Samson?”

“No, this is Jacque Willet. At least, that’s what I called myself when I was still human, before I sold my soul to a demon and became one myself. Before your brother here decided to try and take my soul back from Asmodeus.”

“Asmodeus? Is that what’s out there?”

“No. That’s who’s in here, what your brother invited in when he took my soul. What’s out there is far worse. That’s who you apes once named Mastema. Hostility. The Adversary. The Satan, if you will. He is the deceiver of man and the leader of fallen angels. He has come in the form of Leviathan to take what is his.”

“Bullshit! This is all bullshit! There’s no such thing as demons!” The cabbie spit out the words with as much venom as he could muster. He twitched, his face convulsing with ticks as if he were imitating the chaos in Samson’s flesh.

“Then what the hell is it then? What do you call that thing out there?” Samuel’s strength was slowly returning.

“It has to be some kind of genetic experiment. Something escaped from a science lab like Jurassic Park or some shit like that. Like one of those dinosaurs they cloned and grew in a lab.”

“FULFILL THE BARGAIN. BRING THE SOULS TO ME NOW!!!” the beast cried from outside the church.

The cabbie’s eyes widened, staring in bewilderment at Samson and Samuel. He held himself like a frightened child.

“A dinosaur that talks, huh?” Samuel shook his head and he rose from the floor. Dusting himself off, he reached for the Bible in his breast pocket. He knew he was the only one who could put an end to this madness.

The stained glass windows shattered as the beast exhaled; smoke billowed into the church. Candles melted, dripping wax onto the floors. Tapestries caught fire and burned to ash in an instant. Even the pews smoldered. The walls of the church cracked as if wounded, belching dust into the already polluted air. The floors quaked.