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
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