Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus (10 page)

He scrawled his name quickly onto the contract then turned and wrapped his arms around Samson, kissing him sloppily. Samson slid the tanto knife between the bouncer’s ribs, up into his heart, neatly severing his aorta. Milton sighed, went rigid for a second, and then dropped, his lifeless body collapsing like a punctured sex doll. Samson watched the body convulse amongst the party ornaments, voiding all its fluids as Milton’s brain starved for blood.

The bouncer’s soul enmeshed him immediately, still horny, still wanting to fuck as his spirit adhered to Samson’s flesh. Samson sucked in several quick breaths as Milton’s soul invaded him. The sensation was shocking, bitterly cold at first like a splash of ice water. The spirit coursed through him in a heady rush, the sensation a cross between having the meat flayed from his bones and being caught in the throes of an orgasm.

Samson stepped out of the closet, his shirt stained with blood, certain that no one would notice or care. He was reeling from the powerful sensations of this third soul charging through his veins like a blast of nitrous oxide, filling his capillaries, his muscle tissue, his every sinew, every organ. Even his skin crackled with the energy of Milton’s spirit, sparking in the air like static electricity. He could feel it following the path blazed by Jacque and Tara until it had permeated every iota of his essence, joining with Samson’s own spirit, enervating him. He was starting to enjoy this feeling and wasn’t so sure he wanted to give any of these souls away.

Even to save his brother.

The minute Samson stepped back into the black lights of the VIP room he saw the girl with the “Porn Star” shirt mount the stairs with five others in tow. This was going to be easier than he expected.

“So where’s the party?”

“You sign these contracts and the party starts right now.”

Samson held up the bag of cocaine and all of their eyes zeroed in on it. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and handed them the contracts and the pen.

“What kind of contracts are these?” The girls took the papers without reading them and instead looked to Samson for clarification.

“They are contracts giving me sole ownership of your immortal souls. Sign them and I own you forever.”

Samson laughed ghoulishly to lighten the mood. They all laughed with him.

“You’re crazy.”

“Just sign the contract so we can party.”

“Is this for real?” One of the girls asked hesitantly as the others squinted, trying to read the fine print.

“Yup. I want to own your souls before I take your flesh—that way even our spirits can make love. Love is, after all, the desire to unite with the love object. Fucking is so incomplete in that regard. It’s just a marriage of the flesh. This is a marriage of the soul.”

“Man, you talk pretty. My mother always warned me about pretty talkin’ niggas,” said one of the glamour models, a black one with a large afro and big hoop earrings. She had big brown eyes, thick pillowy lips, long muscular legs, and an ass like an Olympic sprinter.

Samson smiled back at her.

“Maybe your momma was right. If you ain’t down you can always leave the way you came. But if you stay you have to sign.”

Another girl piped up with another question, but he’d quit listening. In the end, she’d sign, too. She was a typical model type, six feet tall, blonde, and barely a hundred pounds. He thought he detected a slight Swedish accent. She’d probably worked hard with a vocal coach to lose it. Probably thinking her accent was the only impediment to her acting career and not the fact that she looked like every other would-be-actress in California.

Samson dehumanized them in order to make the kill easier, but he knew that being naïve and superficial were not sufficient flaws to merit what he had planned for them. He’d have to kill them knowing that he was taking innocent lives. After the murders he’d already committed, he found the notion surprisingly easy to swallow. His brother’s life was worth more than every cum-dumpster in this club. Their deaths would open up more room on the world’s casting couches for other self-deluded sluts.

The girls still squinted at the papers, trying to read in the darkened club.

“Samson, you are one twisted dude. But hell, I’ll sign the shit. I’ve been wanting to fuck you forever!” said the little porn star. She was already too high to care.

“Please, allow me,” He pricked her finger with the pen, “You have to sign it in blood.”

“I’m so high I just want to feel your cock inside of me when the Ecstasy kicks in. There’s nothing like fucking on X, you know? I hope one of these bitches licks pussy. That’s the best feeling ever. Getting fucked and licked at the same time while you’re high! Oh my God! I almost came just thinking about it! Hurry up bitches and sign the man’s contract! Let’s get ta fuckin’!”

She was loud and obnoxious and he would normally not have touched her with someone else’s dick, but tonight, she was perfect.

The girls all did what they were told. They all signed. Every one of them. Then they started stripping out of their clothes. Some added little burlesque hip gyrations and coy winks, the black chick bent over and made her ass shake and wobble like it had a mind of its own. Samson was unimpressed. Their flesh was now just in the way of him getting at their souls. Still, as long as it was being offered, he might as well indulge.

Samson laid out the coke on one of the art deco-looking stainless steel tables and all the girls bent down and inhaled in unison, filling their noses with the synthetic heavens. Then he handed out the Ecstasy.

“I’m horny as hell! Take out your cock. I want to suck it.”

“Come here.”

He reached for the thick one with the Olympic ass and she stumbled toward him as if she was in awe. Her huge breasts wobbled to and fro as she came over and straddled his lap. Samson wore only his underwear. He placed a tab of Ecstasy on her tongue and gave her a sip of Cristal from a glass one of the girls brought with her to wash it down.

“Kneel down between my legs.” He reached out for the porn star. “Both of you.”

Again they looked at each other nervously, not sure what to do. Then they did as Samson asked, kneeling down between his legs as he withdrew his cock from his silk boxers. He gave the skinny girl some Ecstasy as well. They both twittered with excitement.

“Kiss each other.”

They reached apprehensively for one another, still giggling as their lips touched and then their tongues intertwined. Samson’s manhood swelled as he watched the two girls kiss. He reached out and stroked their hair. They turned to look at him, smiling, excited, waiting for more instructions.

“Now, suck my cock.”

He lowered the Olympian’s head to his penis and let out a moan as it slid easily down her throat. He pushed the skinny girl’s head down and soon her tongue pressed on his scrotum, and then squirmed its way up the crack of his ass. In minutes he was baptizing their young faces in his seed. He knelt down and kissed them both.

“That was beautiful, girls. Do you want more?”

They both nodded eagerly, tittering again. All of them reached out, kissing, caressing, and sucking every inch of him as it was revealed. Samson fell down amongst them, indulging himself briefly in their mouths and vaginas before unsheathing his blade and cutting them open one by one. They were so high, he’d already killed the first three before the others even noticed. He hamstringed one before she could run and tackled the other two as they made for the stairs, slitting their throats one at a time before going back to finish off the one he had crippled. He slit her open like a fish and tore her heart from her chest. One by one he cut out each of their hearts. He then picked up their blood-dappled contracts, and shoved them back into his jacket pocket before dropping it back onto one of the suede couches.

He dragged their bodies into the closet, and waited. It wasn’t long before two more girls ventured upstairs to join the party. Samson still had a dozen more contracts left in his jacket and the night was young. If God really loved these worthless sacks of flesh, then perhaps Samson would have plenty to bargain with for Samuel’s life; maybe even enough to get himself into heaven, or at least an exalted place in hell.

The girls smiled wide, obviously new to the club and happy to be there. Unlike the rest of the club goers they hadn’t yet learned the airs of apathy. Eyes glowing in the black light, they looked like two demonic nymphs. The room radiated from his earlier party, the air thick with the scent of sex tinged with blood.

“Hello ladies,” he said. “Do you want to party with me?”

20

Requiem was in an older industrial section of town. Historically preserved and then reclaimed by the young, its thin streets congested at all hours of the night. Samuel had only a vague sense of where he was going. Dark alleys veined the city blocks. Shops stacked upon shops, night clubs piled upon night clubs, cramped and claustrophobic. At well past midnight, there were more people out than he would have imagined. Usually in bed by nine o’clock and fast asleep no later than ten, he had led a rather sheltered life. College students tumbled out of one bar, staggered to an alley to puke and piss, then stumbled into the next. The party never stopped.

Samuel focused his thoughts on his brother. He wondered if this was how his brother lived. This bizarre nocturnal existence of night clubs, alcohol, drugs, and sex. Everyone around him carried a quiet desperation, an insatiable longing—all appetite and lust—so powerful that it pained even him. Suddenly, something moved in his spirit, a whispered alarm that warned him that he was in danger. A scream was forming at the base of his throat even before he started to turn, and two pairs of hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him into a narrow alley between two warehouse buildings.

“What are you doing?” Samuel cried out.

Two men dressed in expensive silk shirts and with hair perfectly coiffed, stinking of hair spray and expensive colognes, seized him and dragged him further into the sunless gloom of the alleyway. Despite their frail, effeminate appearance, he struggled in vain within their tremendous grip. A wave of nausea, like an attack of dizziness, hit him. His mind reeled. Their faces began to warp, melting and reshaping, running like wax, layers of reality peeled back for his inspection; the pretty feminine beauty masked an ugliness that rattled the young priest. He had seen their faces before in the old non-canonical texts he used to read in the church library back when he was first ordained—the ones that described demons and other fallen creatures. Truth be told, part of him considered them a myth, nothing more than fairy tales to terrify children.

Samuel had consulted with deliverance ministries, huddled old men telling what amounted to spiritual ghost stories in hushed voices, as if sharing secrets kept even from themselves, because to give voice to them too loudly would be like dragging a nightmare into waking reality.

“Help! Somebody help me! They’re trying to kill me!” Samuel struggled to break free from the two hell-spawned GQ models. He knew it had to have something to do with Samson.
What the hell have you gotten yourself into, my brother?

“Scream all you want, they can’t hear you. They won’t hear you. The sheep have to maintain their illusions.”

Samuel had known why those old men whispered. He knew it was for the same reason he pushed those stories to the back of his mind. There came a point where faith shouldn’t confront, no, be confirmed by, reality. There needed to be a buffer between the spiritual and the physical. He needed the platitudes of “God moves in mysterious ways” and “life is full of mystery” to explain the reality he was comfortable with. He needed the protecting shade of mystery from the reality of demons, of spiritual forces.

He wondered what he must look like to the passers-by, a black priest fighting two metrosexual male fashion models. They couldn’t see the evil and sinful corruption in his two attackers or else their terror would have mirrored his.

“You can’t save him. He’s ours!”

“What do you want with my brother?”

“He has something that belongs to us.”

“What? I’ll pay it back for him!”

“Yes. You’ll pay. And so will he.”

Their fingers squeezed the soft meat of his throat. Samuel saw the delight in their eyes at his slow torture, enjoying the dance of fear in his eyes. The crushing pressure would soon rob him of his voice. The final darkness called to him, but before he gave into its embrace a whisper nudged the desperate bid of an exorcism.

“I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ.”

The creatures paused as if contemplating a joke they didn’t quite get. In every book he’d read, for a true exorcism he had to speak to the possessed person directly. But he didn’t know anything about the two strangers. No ground had been prepared nor was he sure he could depend on any formulas, even for such obviously minor demons. He wasn’t even sure these two were possessed. They might have just been demons disguised as humans. He wasn’t sure what to do and his options were running out. If he didn’t figure something out quick he’d be in Jesus’ loving arms sooner than he ever imagined. In the moments his prayer command bought him, he wondered “What would Jesus do?”