“Mmm-hmmm.”
“It’s a binding agreement between two people. In the Old Testament, you didn’t make a covenant, you cut a covenant.”
“Sounds kinky,” she cooed.
“You see, I have this problem. The contract you signed, it wasn’t enough. Just words on a page, not especially binding, less so with all the lawyers we have today. So we need some sort of, well, sacrifice might be too strong of a word, but it gets the point across. It just sounds so dramatic, you know.”
“Can’t...” Tara’s eyes glazed and her glass tipped from her unmoving hand. Samson moved toward her, checking for a pulse before squatting to lock eyes with her. He took another breath, scooped her up, then lowered her onto the rug in the center of his room.
“Yeah. That would be the tetrodotoxin extract taking effect. It’s a paralytic agent, the same base voodoo practitioners use to make zombies. You can’t move, but you’ll remain conscious. I slipped you a couple roofies, too, just to make certain. That’s important, because people, whatever their role, should enter into things with their eyes wide open.”
Tara’s lamb-like mewling began in earnest, following Samson as he left the room. Her protests increased when Samson crossed the room to remove the Japanese tanto knife from the stand of samurai swords.
“I guess this brings us back to cutting the covenant.” Samson stood between her legs. “The two parties kill an animal and cut it down the middle. Then they lay the halves opposite each other and walk between them as they make a vow: ‘May God do this and more to me if I break this covenant. This is a blood covenant and cannot be broken.’”
Samson slid the knife from its sheath and placed it between her legs. A true Samurai was said to be able to sever limbs, heads, and even cut an enemy in half with one clean stroke. Unfortunately, Samson was not a true Samurai. The blade wasn’t as sharp as he had hoped. He made a mess of Tara’s body, carving repeatedly at her pelvic bone, trying to cut her in half, reducing her sex to a bloody ruin as he brought the blade down again and again as if he were chopping a block of wood. Her eyes were wild, screaming soundlessly, trying to do the work her paralyzed vocal chords could not manage. He hacked and slashed through meat, bone, and organs, wielding the blade more like a hatchet than a knife. Her breath quickened, chest rising up and down, panting like a dog. She was going into shock from the pain and blood loss. Her body began to convulse violently, thrashing on the floor like a woman in the grips of a titanic orgasm, saliva and blood foaming up out of her mouth. She had bitten through her bottom lip and it unhinged on one side and hung down her chin, giving her a lopsided grin. Fat bubbled up like bright yellow popcorn from the gashes and avulsions he’d chopped in her flesh. Samson dropped down onto all fours, his stomach heaving desperate spasms against his spine as he regurgitated the last vestiges of his stomach contents into the widening pool of blood.
Samson was still dizzy when the spell of nausea subsided. Saliva mixed with vomit dripped from his mouth and chin which he wiped with the back of his fist before gripping the hilt of the tanto knife in both hands. He rose to his feet, his stomach threatening to revolt again as he studied the butchered meat between Tara’s thighs. Samson sucked the scalding bile back down his throat, then turned and snatched the sword from the mantle. It was sharper, heavier. He swung it in a wide arc down at Tara’s groin, wielding it the way he’d seen it done in countless movies as a boy. He turned his head as blood and bone flew into the air when he wrenched the sword from her groin for another strike, trying his best not to throw up again. He had no idea at what point Tara finally died. When he had last peered into her eyes as he hewed at her pelvis with the tanto knife, she’d still been completely conscious, eyes still trying their best to convey their pain and terror as if she thought to reach some last remnant of humanity within him. By the time he’d gone for the sword, she’d begun those corybantic convulsions, growing still only after he’d chopped halfway through her pelvis. Her chest had continued to rise and fall until he'd cut well up into her abdomen, breathing out her last breaths as her bisected intestines spilled out onto the floor on either side of her.
The ribcage was considerably easier.
Images reverberated in his mind—the echo of the knife cracking into her, the sword slicing through the meat of her breast and bursting ribs, the sight of her organs spilling out of her divided torso and her head falling free from her neck. It took nearly twenty minutes but he managed to cut her completely in half and separate her head from her shoulders. Chunks of strawberry red pulp spattered his arms, face, and chest.
The horror of what he’d done slowly sank in. He knew that he’d had to do it, to save his brother. If there had ever been any hope of him one day entering heaven, he’d surely ended that with his…offering. He’d have to come up with something better for his next meeting with Jacque. Perhaps he’d forego cutting him in half. He knew he wouldn’t have the heart for that again; it was just too damned messy. The main thing was the spirit of the law, the contract and the blood. Death for life. Twenty for one. You live and learn.
Samson was confident that the effete little photographer would sign the contract. His loneliness trailed like a palpable fog around him, one that none of his expensive perfumes and makeups, his airs and affectations, could disperse. He’d sign the contract and Samson would cut his soul from his chest.
A surge of exhilaration swept through Samson as his stomach settled. He had broken the final commandment, had completely defied the will of God. He took a moment to wonder if perhaps he was starting to enjoy the ego boost he got from having someone sign their soul over to him, the feeling of power he was enjoying now. Samson began to wonder if he was really still in this for his brother. He had to admit that even as revolting as the process of dismantling Tara’s body had been, killing made him feel like a god.
16
“Is this thing for real?” Jacque barely let a few days pass before calling Samson to set up another date. He made a show of examining the contract again.
“What did your lawyers say?” Samson reclined on a velvet loveseat in the VIP room of Club 7, one of the most exclusive nightclubs in San Francisco. Society’s elite packed the room, including a smattering of TV and movie stars, rock, pop, and hip-hop stars, and models like himself, rubbing elbows with businessmen and mafiosos. Everyone seemed to be high on something. A bottle of Moet rested between Samson’s legs, lines of cocaine covered the table in front of him. He casually leaned over and snorted one, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his Versace shirt.
Jacque sat on a recliner next to him with a dusting of cocaine ringing each nostril. His eyes twinkled from the Ecstasy he’d taken earlier in the evening and the cocaine fueled his passions to blinding, manic heights. Two of his usual boy toys hovered in the background casting jealous glares at Samson behind Jacque’s back. Samson flicked them both the finger and then ran his hand down between his legs to seize his cock, brandishing it at them as if it were a weapon. Jacque was so high and so focused on Samson that he misinterpreted the gesture as some type of crude come-on and licked his lips in reply. Samson rolled his eyes and chuckled to himself.
“So? What did your lawyers say about the contract?”
“My lawyers say it’s an air-tight contract. They just aren’t sure what it’s actually for.”
“Just what it appears to be. It is a contract giving me all rights, powers, and privileges, including the right of ownership, of your immortal soul.”
Jacque laughed.
“But you can’t be serious. I
“It means that when you die your soul won’t go to heaven or Nirvana or fucking Valhalla or wherever it’s supposed to go. It won’t go to hell. It would revert to me.”
Jacque smiled, opening his mouth wide without laughing. His eyes were still sparkling like diamonds in a volcano.
“Soooo, then you’d have two souls? What good would that do you?”
“I’d have much more than that.”
Jacque leaned over and took the bottle of Moet from between Samson’s legs. He drank the remaining champagne straight from the bottle in long gulps until it was almost empty.
“Well, I don’t believe in all of that religious bullshit. When you’re dead, you’re dead. And when you’re alive, you’re alive.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind parting with your fictitious soul.”
Samson took the bottle of Moet from Jacque’s hands, maintaining eye contact the entire time, and drained the last of the champagne.
