Orgy of Souls

The tabloids speculated wide and far about the fate of Samson. Rumors floated around that he had checked himself into the Crossroads Center for rehab for an undetermined amount of time, desperately in need of mental rest. After all, he was questioned as a “person of interest” in connection to the disappearance of famous photographer Jacque Willet. His name had surfaced in the events surrounding the tragic incident at a night club. Some news rags went so far as to ask if the loss of his brother, a priest, in a senseless accident might have been what pushed Samson over the edge and off the celebrity radar.

None of that mattered to Samson.

Mysterious circumstances. Tragic accidents. Evil could hide in plain sight because everyone would ignore it unless its wake splashed onto them. Like a bad dream they had to rationalize, but Samson didn’t have anything to say. Witnesses couldn’t accept what they saw. The jumbled mess of contradictory statements convinced police of psychedelic drugs being dealt out of Requiem. When asked about what happened that night, Samson stuck to the only refrain he knew for sure.

“I don’t know.”

Samson pulled into a parking lot and sat there. During his times of doubt, the thought of prayer still held the ring of something ridiculous, the superstitious mumblings to an invisible friend. These days, he liked the idea of being still. Of listening.

Samuel was the one for those higher ideas, wrestling with the theological implications of everything. Being caught up in a cosmological battle between good and evil, that was for better men to argue. Men like his brother. In a world of chance and random accidents—when the tumbling of natural selection led to the genetic fall of a man named Samuel and another man named Samson, with the odds of these two men meeting, much less being brothers, being beyond calculation—in such a meaningless world, why was there was still so much beauty and laughter?

“I don’t know.”

Samson walked the hallways, searching for the room number. All his designer clothes were gone now; he shambled along in clothes picked from Salvation Army bins. His hair was wild and unkempt and his eyes dark and heavy. Orderlies scrutinized then turned away from him. Nurses pointed him in the right direction, but with a wary, searching-for-security manner. No matter, Samson ignored them, choosing to focus on what he came to do.

He knew what it was like to be alone.

The room stank of grief and fear. The machines bleeped and chirped, exhaled and inhaled, a cacophony of life-prolonging measures. A black woman’s thin frame barely disturbed the sheets as she slept. Samson closed the door behind them but was overwhelmed by the feeling of not knowing what to do next. Guilt whispered like dry leaves across pavement. How many times had Samuel done this? He had been such a natural at this. Samson stumbled over the bedside chair, catching it but silently cursing himself for making such a racket. The woman stirred.

“Who is this handsome man?” she asked with an accented croak of a voice. She fluttered in and out of a dream state.

“I heard there was a beautiful woman here who I ought to get to know.”

“You look familiar.”

“You knew my brother, Samuel. I’m here to finish what he started.” With that, Samson took her hand.

And listened.

Afterword

Samuel had to die. There was just no other way to end it. See, I don’t believe in God, but Maurice does, very much so. That could have turned this into one long theological debate between an atheist and a faithful Christian rehashing the Evidential Argument from Evil. Why does an all-powerful omni-benevolent deity allow terrible things to happen to people? Why does it seem that good befalls the bad and bad befalls the good? Be thankful that we didn’t take it there. It would have made the book three times as long and could have gotten ugly. Besides, that’s what non-fiction is for. Maybe one day.

Our purpose here was to set up the premises of the argument for you: a pious and devout priest dying of AIDS, a vain hedonistic sinner living a life of fame and prosperity. What we could not do is answer the question for you because our answers would have been different. Very, very different.