Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus (8 page)

The road was four lanes of street and the tract of land it cut through contained overdeveloped lots of expensive subdivisions. Back then, the road was a long, straight, poorly lit stretch, going from two lanes down to one whenever it came to one of its frequent bridges. Samuel knew it well and was used to playing chicken with oncoming traffic, other cars yielding to let him pass. Too late, he saw movement along the shoulder of the road, a black Labrador retriever charging into the range of his headlights. Samson cried out “Watch it!” but there was no time to swerve.

Everything moved quickly after that. The braking squeal of the tires interrupted by the double thump of something hitting the car. Samuel saw flashes of two bodies coming over the windshield, suddenly feeling worse that he had hit a mother and her pup. Pulling the car over, he watched the taillights of the girl’s car speed off into the night, oblivious to what had happened. The brothers sat there for a minute, Samson’s hand still locked onto the dashboard, having braced himself for impact. Samuel’s heart fired against his chest, pistoning so fast he didn’t know if he’d ever catch his breath again.

“You all right?” he asked with a weak voice. Samson only nodded. They opened the doors to survey the damage. Blood smeared the window and streaks of shit trailed along the car. Wet, rasping winces led them to the brush along the side of the road where Samson found the mother, or rather, what was left of her.

Blood was everywhere; pools slowly formed, Samuel was amazed at the body’s ability to keep going, to fight for life even when all hope was gone. The dog’s breathing was reduced to gasping puffs of steam in the cool night air. Samson knelt beside it, the blood staining his hands and clothes, and put his hand on the poor beast’s chest, letting it feel his warmth and presence until it finally stopped breathing. The sight of his brother, kneeling and covered in blood, haunted Samuel. The picture of both horror and compassion – he looked so lost, so in need of someone to guide him, and Samuel never felt up to the task.

At times like these Samuel wished that his father was still alive. The man had been hard and sometimes even cold but he was the wisest man Samuel had ever known. He told it like it was, even when it was all fucked up. Samuel needed that type of counsel right now, to know what to do about Samson. Consulting with other priests left him feeling like he was some sort of tattle-tale, yet he didn’t want to take it to God in prayer either. As if somehow that wasn’t keeping everything between him and his brother. This was ironic considering he often chastised others in his parish about the ridiculousness of that type of thinking. “You can’t hide anything from God. Your confessions have to be complete and honest.” But he was having a hard time following his own advice.

He cracked open his Bible and began reading, finding himself going over the words without really thinking about them. All he could think about was his crazy brother out there collecting souls to ransom for his life. It was the most outlandish thing he’d ever heard. Samuel forced himself to go back and reread all the passages he’d just read, this time concentrating on the words, trying to force himself to think about the verses. But once again he began daydreaming about Samson, preoccupied with the madness of his mission and one nagging question: “What if it works? What if Sam really gets God to let me off the hook? Would I be okay with that? Would I let all those women lose their souls to save my life?”

It wasn’t his life that he was afraid of losing. It was his dignity. He was afraid of the humiliation of a slow, agonizing death. He didn’t want to break out in rashes and melanomas all over his body and lose weight until he was some emaciated scarecrow so weak and brittle that he could barely stand. Nkosi was his living nightmare. He chastised himself for his pride and tried to read the Bible again, but the tears welling up in his eyes blurred all the letters. He began to pray because sometimes that was all there was left to do. No magic formula, only feeble words, the jumble of nouns and verbs he hoped came together to tilt God’s ear in his direction. He only wanted to be heard, if not answered in the way he’d have liked.

“I don’t want to die like that. Oh God, I’m so afraid. Give me strength, Lord. Give me the strength to endure this test.”

18

“Stop! Stop! Jesus! This isn’t what I wanted!” Jacque screamed.

“But it’s what I want.” Samson smiled as he checked the leather restraints around Jacque’s wrists and ankles. The photographer was lashed to a seven foot crucifix in his basement “playroom” by thick leather cuffs secured with steel bolts. Samson cracked a thick leather bullwhip across the photographer’s back, drawing more blood as the braided tip broke the sound barrier and sliced through his skin, reducing the blood to a pink mist as it tossed the spray back into the air.

“Oh God, God, Jesus, God, no. I can’t take it! Let me down you sick motherfucker!”

“All you have to do is say the safe word if you want me to stop.”

“You didn’t give me a fucking safe word!”

Samson cracked the whip again, spraying more blood into the air.

Perspiration washed down Jacque as he strained against the nerve-rending agony in his back and buttocks. Samson watched the salty sweat run into the man’s wounds, knowing it amplified his anguish. Strips of skin and flesh hung from his back like tattered silk, curled up where the whip had flayed it away from the muscle, cutting deep lacerations whose pain must have run clean through to the bone.

Samson steadily increased the intensity of the torture, slowly letting go of all pretense of consent. A profusion of safety pins pierced Jacques nipples and even more were clustered in his scrotum. Jacque had been okay with that, not issuing a single complaint as Samson threaded each pin through the wrinkled flesh surrounding his testicles. He hadn’t begun to complain until he’d felt the first sting of the whip.

“That’s too hard! You’ll draw blood like that.”

“Relax. I know what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing with that cat? That’s just for show. You’re not going to really use that on me are you?”

“Jacque, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want to you. I own you remember? Body and soul.”

From the look on his face, Jacque got the first notion that he was in trouble. Blood rained down his chest, back, and legs. Occasionally Samson let the whip stray low and its ruinous tip bit into Jacque’s perforated nutsack, causing the photographer to convulse in such pain he almost puked.

“When you want me to stop all you have to do is say ‘Kill me.’ Then your suffering ends.”

“I signed your fucking contract! I just wanted to fuck. What do you want from me?”

“Oh, you know what I want.”

“You’re going to kill me aren’t you?”

“How else am I supposed to get your soul? Wait for you to finally OD? No, by then it will be too late. I need it now.”

“But why? I never did shit to you! I haven’t done anything to you! Why are you doing this to me?”

Samson stood naked in a widening puddle of Jacque’s blood. He dropped the bullwhip and Jacque breathed an exhausted sigh of relief until he caught the glint of steel in Samson’s hand. His breath seized in his chest.

“No. No. Oh, God. No. Why? Why?”

“Because I don’t like you, Jacque. You are a pompous, egotistical, manipulative parasite. And I love my brother. You are going to die so that he can live. But first I am going to enjoy myself. You wanted to fuck? Let’s fuck. But I’m kind of big and you look kind of tight back there. I think I’m going to have to widen you up a bit before I can fit.”

The knife bored its way inside Jacque and slowly rotated. He screamed and kicked and fought against his restraints. He had briefly passed out by the time Samson replaced the knife with his own turgid flesh. Samson’s hard thrusting deep inside of him awakened him. Like a caressing finger, he ran the knife along Jacque’s belly. Almost as an afterthought, Samson sliced from the photographer’s abdomen to his throat.

“You still won’t get my soul.” Blood bubbled up from the photographer’s mouth as he spoke, spraying from his lips and dripping off his chin onto his blood-drenched chest.

“Oh, no? And why is that? You signed a contract. In blood. Your soul is mine!”

“But I never owned it. It wasn’t mine to sell.”

Samson paused. Intestines flopped out of the massive gash in the photographer’s torso as blood poured out in sheets. It was amazing that the man could still talk. In fact, it was impossible.

“What do you mean you never owned it?”

“I sold my soul to the devil back when I was a teenager. See, according to my parents, I was already condemned to hell for being gay so I figured, what the hell did I have to lose? So I sold my soul for fame and fortune, and the opportunity to fuck the sexiest men in the world.”

Jacque’s voice grew weaker, little more than a whisper. Samson felt the photographer’s heartbeat against the knife, slowly fading. The photographer laughed and more blood sprayed from his lips. Samson withdrew himself from the man and walked around to face him.

“Bullshit!”

All of the blood had drained from the photographer’s face. He already looked like a corpse.

“Oh, it’s true. It’s all true. You’ll see. You wanted my soul so bad, well you’ve got it, but I think you’re going to have to fight to keep it.”

“Fuck you!”

He grabbed Jacque by his chin and jerked his head back as he began sawing through the man’s esophagus, trying to remove his head. Gurgling sounds continued to come from the photographer’s throat as Samson slashed through it with the blade. It sounded as if Jacque were still laughing at him.

19

Evil had to have a face.

Samuel left it to smarter people than he to argue the finer philosophical points about the nature and origins of evil. He was more practical. He knew it when he saw it. True evil had to be incarnated—the brutality humanity was capable of inflicting on itself—or worse, experienced. In all of his years in the priesthood, he had learned much about the darkness, the shadow that trailed people. He saw it as a process, a corruption, much like the virus that slowly ate away at some of the very things that made him human. A stalking entropy from within that created moral blind spots, that allowed people to treat each other badly. He feared for any who got caught up in the rush, the confidence that came from it.

Evil had to have a face; only now, Samuel feared that face belonged to Samson.

Ever since the incident where he and his brother hit the dog, Samuel hated driving at night. He loathed the swirling bundle of neuroses that accompanied him every time he got behind the wheel, though it grew worse at night, the rataplan of his heart as he turned onto poorly lit roads. He hated negotiating the darkness through the vision of his headlights, but he had to get to Samson’s.

Samuel knew that he and Samson were inextricably linked, sharing a special connection, an inner language that only they understood. They had a bond forged from years of relying on each other, and Samuel had too long ignored the feeling that his brother was in trouble. Needed him. Samson was so disillusioned, as if God had pulled on a thread of the tapestry of his world and forced Samson to watch it all unravel around him. And it would be so like Samson to embrace the darkness, the nightmares, the hurt, rather than flee to the light.

If he had faith that there was light left to flee to, Samuel supposed.

Even Samuel didn’t know what to think of a God who was in meticulous control of everything yet allowed atrocities to happen, of one who stood back like some master chess player, moving people around, arbitrarily allowing horror into their lives. Maybe he didn’t know God at all or didn’t understand how He worked. It was difficult to reconcile all of the depictions of God that he’d been taught. Samuel had questions, but he didn’t know if the answers would terrify him more than not knowing.

Yet he couldn’t just give up on Samson, couldn’t abandon him. Something stirred Samuel, tugging at his heart like a nagging spirit. Part of him knew why he had sat back and done nothing for far too long. Should Samson’s scheme work, Samuel’s hands would be guilt free. He hadn’t done anything wrong and certainly couldn’t be held responsible. He prayed that he wasn’t too late to undo his mistake.

Samson was still a creature of habit, keeping a spare key hidden in the light fixture. He might as well have a lit neon sign that read “I left it unlocked. I dare your dumb ass to enter.”

Samuel wandered around the place, as it had been years since he’d been invited. The drift in their closeness began when he had entered the priesthood. The decision alone had started a rift, but his vows made it official. The way Samson saw the situation, it was the first time God interfered in their lives.

A noxious scent wafted in from the kitchen. Precariously stacked dishes lined the counter, tumbled piles slid into the sink. Remnants of hastily prepared meals teemed with small black ants. The plates that bobbed above the surface of the water, thick with bloated bits of food, sported various shades of mold. Samuel quickly retreated from there and shut the door behind him.