Orgy of Souls

Samson, or whatever demonic presence now controlled him, stood gibbering madly in front of the church doors, his flesh still undulating as the souls clustered within him sought exodus before the coming holocaust. Samson turned and peered at Samuel, grinning wide like a lunatic, ropes of saliva drooling from his mouth, eyes burning like funeral pyres.

“He’ll rip the souls right out of your brother’s flesh. All of them!” The cabbie sucked in a quick breath and clutched his chest as if having a cardiac arrest, drawing Samson’s attention. “Then he’ll take yours as well.” Finally, he pointed at Samuel, “You, he’ll let live. He’ll let you live with the memory of your brother’s death, of his immortal essence being torn apart and consumed, then shat out into the inferno. Then, when you pass away in your bed, drink yourself to death, or succumb to your disease, he’ll come for your soul too.”

Samuel knew that his faith alone would not be strong enough to defeat the hellish abomination tearing through the church walls.

“FULFILL THE BARGAIN!”

“What was your bargain? What bargain did you strike with my brother?”

“YOUR LIFE FOR TWENTY SOULS.”

“I can’t let you take these innocent souls. I can’t. You can’t take my brother!”

Leviathan’s laughter drove Samuel to his knees. “THERE ARE NO INNOCENT SOULS!”

“I can’t let you take my brother!” The strength in his voice surprised him. The cabdriver stared at Samuel with renewed hope in his eyes. Samuel felt the weight of his expectations and wished he had an actual plan to save them.

“THEY ARE MINE!”

The front of the church crumbled to dust and the darkness rolled in. Leviathan emerged from the shadows. His presence stole the breath from Samuel’s lungs and burst the capillaries in his eyes, making him weep blood. Standing in the church entrance was a creature like an enormous crocodile with six snake-like heads, each filled with rows of dagger-sharp teeth like the jaws of a shark, and eyes that burned like exploding suns. Its mouths erupted like volcanoes, belching flame and ash and dripping molten lava-like drool onto the church floor, leaving steaming holes wherever it touched.

Samuel remembered the description of Leviathan in the Bible, which fell short of what stood before him now. It raised one of its taloned claws to rend Samson’s flesh into a steaming pile of meat, bone, and viscera. Samson or Jacque or Asmodeus, or whatever being that had control of his brother’s body, simply stood there with an idiot’s grin, arms outstretched in welcome.

“Take me home, Master.”

“Not if there is no bargain to make.” Samuel stepped in front of his brother and shoved him out of the way just as Leviathan’s claws struck.

“NOOOOOOOOoooo!”

The creature bellowed, crying out as if it had been the one disemboweled, its voice bringing the rest of the church down around them. Samuel’s body came apart as Leviathan’s claws sliced through his flesh and bone. He smiled as the life fled from him, his last sight the disappointment on the face of Satan and the sorrow in his brother’s eyes as the spirits vacated his flesh. Samuel fell to the floor in pieces, intestines tumbling out across the marble floors in thick oily coils, even his skull laid open to reveal the brain matter beneath.

“Samuel! Oh God! Samuel no!” Samson rushed over to hold his brother, gathering up the broken pieces of his corpse. He cradled his brother’s head in his lap and rocked back and forth, eyes squeezed shut, holding back hot tears. Clinging to the darkness of grief and regret, not giving voice to the pain that ached his soul. If the beast wanted to take him now, it was more than welcome to.

Like an enormous tidal wave of unrepentant fury, it crashed against his brother, its force abated. It slowly withdrew to whatever raging sea of chaos, whatever fearsome place it called home. Not that Samson cared. The sound of a vacuum being filled, the sounds of wet slithering retreat, the cursing howl of an enraged creature as if stabbed in the heart, nothing mattered to him. He clutched his brother, praying perhaps that sheer force of will might stitch him back together and bring him back.

“It’s gone, buddy,” the taxi driver said. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

“Yes. Yes he is.”

His brother had died for him, died to keep Satan from getting the souls Samson had stolen, the souls he’d stolen to save Samuel’s life. None of it made sense. Everything he’d done to save his brother and now Samuel was dead anyway.

“It should have been me, little brother. Why’d you do it? I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve it. You shouldn’t have done it for me. Not for me. I’m not worthy of this. All those people I killed. I’m not worthy of this.”

He knew what his brother would have said. With the cacophony of restless souls now gone he could hear his brother’s voice in his head as clearly as he had heard theirs.

“Then become worthy of it.”

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