Samson
I dream of blood.
I see a great sheet of blood; the entire room is blood. Everything is red and bloody and covered with the sticky sap of a person’s body. I stumble around the room and wonder what the hell happened. Where did all this blood come from? How many people died here to create this much blood? Ten? Twenty? This is more blood than I have ever seen, than anybody has ever seen. How can there be so much? This is madness.
But then I realize that the room is not covered in blood. It simply drips from the wound in my head, down my eyes, coating them crimson. I wipe at my face, and my old house is revealed, the house I lived in with the brute Dad. The bastard who liked to hit and hurt and didn’t particularly care who his fists landed on. I stumble away from the TV and turn, and there he is, huge, far bigger than he ever was in real life, wearing a stained tank top and briefs, swaying from side to side.
“You little shit!” he cries. “You worthless fuck!”
He charges at me, and as he charges, horns sprout from his head, curving magnificent horns. I try to dodge, but I can’t move, and Dad bows his head and punctures me through the chest with the horns, clean through; the horns slide between my shoulder blades and into the TV, pinning me. Static bursts and the TV screen crinkles like a potato chip packet.
“You’re a bad, bad person, Samson,” Dad says, voice muffled because his head is bowed, his horns lodged firmly in my flesh. “You’re a waste of space. Pathetic. Who’s your father? Me, I am! But who do you go to for help, you little fuck? Richard! Richard! Is he your father? Is he?”
I reach down and grip the horns, wedging my hands between them and my chest, but no matter how hard I pull, they won’t budge. I begin to wonder if both of us will starve to death here, starve and starve and we’ll be found years later, two skeletons, skeletal horns locked through my ribcage.
“Richard doesn’t hit me,” I say. Or I try to say; blood pours from between my lips.
I try to speak again, but the blood makes it impossible. And the wound on my head pours more blood than I think I can survive. Everything is red and Dad is hurting me and all I want is to run, to run and get away from him and get somewhere safe. All I want is Dad to stop hurting me, to stop hitting me. All I want is to be normal. Be normal like the kids at school. But I know I can’t and soon I start to like the violence and the anger and the pain and the killing.
“Dad—”
He thrusts forward; his horns wrench something vital in my chest.
###
I wake panting, Anna leaning over me, looking down at me. “Bad dream?” she says.
I reach up and touch her face. It is free of makeup and her cheeks are red. She looks alive, vibrant, like somebody who has just stepped in from the cold. Her hair is a shaggy mess, framing her face, and her black eyes watch me closely, caring. I stroke her cheek and she reaches up and places her hand upon mine, securing it close to her skin. For a moment it’s as though I am outside of my body, watching.
A man, a killer, blood-soaked and without remorse, holding the face of an innocent woman, a lover of animals, flushed with life and excitement and a little fear. I watch myself with bemusement, wondering how I became this man who wakes from a nightmare and, instead of taking a drink or pacing or hitting something, finds solace in the simple touch of a woman.
But I don’t have to wonder for long. It is Anna, the quality inside of Anna which pulls me outside of the normal routine of my life and forces me to change. It is Anna, with her kindness and her understanding and her lack of judgement—and yes, her body, her sweet pleasure-giving body.
“Are you okay?” she says, rubbing my hand.
“I am now,” I reply, and then take my hand away.
I roll over and pick up my cell. Nine o’clock in the morning. “We have to leave,” I say.
“Leave? Where?”
“We have to keep moving. I have a place prepared for us. It’s a nice place. I think you’ll like it. And I have a surprise for you when we get there.” I’d prepared the surprise the night before with Jack, before entering the cabin.
“A surprise?”
We both stand up and start getting dressed, but as we dress, our eyes are locked on each other. I watch her body closely, memorizing every detail. I know that if we’re ever parted, I’ll want to be able to remember everything about her, the small mole just above her left nipple, the way her pale skin flushes red at the slightest provocation, her habit of chewing her lip without realizing she’s doing it. I pull on jeans and a shirt, and Anna roots through her bag and dresses herself in jeans and a sweatshirt with a picture of a wolf on the front.
“A surprise.” I nod. “It doesn’t all have to be doom and gloom, does it?”
She smiles. “Apparently not.”
I walk right up to her, taking pleasure in the way she breathes deep and quick as I do so, and then place my hands on her shoulders. “I’ll protect you,” I say. “I’ll die for you if I have to. I’ll kill for you.”
She touches my face lightly; I savor the feel of her soft, small hand. “I know,” she says.
###
We leave the house shortly after and meet Jack in the black sedan just outside. He sits behind the tinted windows. To Anna he must just seem like some ghostly man, sitting behind the wheel and never once talking. It doesn’t matter that he was there all last night, protecting her. I think about asking Jack to get out of the car and say hello, but I know he won’t. His time in the military made him skittish. I can’t blame him. War and bloodshed tends to do that. Even I, who have only ever fought in the wars of New York City and was only in the army for training, can get skittish.
I open the door for Anna and she steps in, giving me a small smile. I step in after her and shut the door.
“So,” she says, “where are we going?”
“That’s a secret.” I feel like a young boy, hopeful and happy. I know I have no right to feel like this in the circumstances, but I can’t help it. I feel hopeful and happy and I find myself thinking that life wouldn’t be so bad, driving around and having adventures with Anna. I can’t wait for her to see her surprise.
“You’re impossible, you know that,” she says.
I tap the screen which divides the backseats from the driver’s area. “Let’s get going.”
Jack doesn’t say anything, just starts the engine. He reverses away from the cabin, swerves, and then drives away from Point Lookout. Anna looks out of the back window as we drive away. I turn with her, and together we watch as the morning sunlight glitters off the ocean spray. “This place is amazing,” Anna says. “It’s odd, but I’m almost sad to leave it.”
“Maybe we’ll come back one day,” I say.
She smiles at me. I’m discovering more about myself over the course of a few days with Anna than I ever did over months with River. Like how a woman’s smile can slide into your soul and make you unaccountably happy. I want to make her smile as often as I can, want to spend whole weeks just trying to make her smile.
‘If only you’d met under different circumstances, eh?’ Black Knight laughs. ‘If only you weren’t a killer and she wasn’t a target. You have to remember, Samson, your life can’t be like everybody else’s. You’re a killer and you have to hold that close to you, own it, and never forget it.’ I know that, as usual, Uncle Richard is right. But that doesn’t mean the desire isn’t there, and growing stronger every minute.
We grow silent for the rest of the journey, except for the occasional piece of small talk. We’re both tired. Tired from the sex and the swelling emotion and the chase and the drama of it all.
After a while, Anna realizes that we aren’t driving west back toward the city, but east toward the small hamlets sometimes called the East End. She turns her gaze to me, questioning, but I feign ignorance and shrug.
“Oh, you think I’m going to believe that, do you?” she laughs. “You’re a horrible and evil man, Samson, do you know that?” She shoves me playfully.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, but I laugh. Can’t help but laugh when Anna looks so happy, so content, so at ease. Can’t help but laugh when Anna looks like the exact opposite of what my life really is. I know she’s worried, anxious, but she appears at ease and that gives me strength.
Leaning forward, she slaps me lightly on the hand. “You, Samson Black, are a strange, beautiful man.”
“I’ve never been called beautiful before. Strange, yes, but beautiful?”
She moves her hand from mine to my knee, and then up higher on my leg. She slides it almost to my crotch and then snatches it away just as my breathing quickens and my heartbeat increases. She giggles coquettishly, winking at me. “Sorry. Do I drive you mad, Samson? Do I make you angry?”
My cock got hard when she was touching me. Even now, with her hand removed, it’s still hard. I drink in the sight of her. Fully-clothed, and yet I know what’s beneath those clothes, what fleshy pleasures. I know the shape and sight of her body naked, the feel of it. I think about tearing them away now, revealing her, losing myself in her. But then I remember Jack and decide against it. I swallow, pushing back my lust. The last thing I need is for Jack to see me making love. Making love, I think. There’s that phrase again. Not fucking or screwing, but making love.
The car drives into a high-class neighborhood in the Hamptons, dominated by five- and six- and seven-bedroom mansions. Expensive sports cars are parked in the driveways. The streets are the cleanest streets I’ve ever seen, not even a piece of gum buried in the concrete. Everything is orderly, brushed clean. Several gardeners, wearing overalls and gloves, tend the long, well-kept front gardens. Moms push strollers, but these are glamorous moms wearing sweatpants with full faces of makeup, combining the act of taking their child out with a power-walking session.
I look to Anna. Her jaw has dropped and she gazes out of the window with frank amazement. “You can’t be serious,” she says. “A safe house, sure, but a safe house here? Doesn’t that seem . . .”
“Only the best for you,” I say. “Just because you’re on the run, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t live in comfort. And don’t use all your excitement up yet. There’s more to come. You haven’t even seen where we’re staying yet—ah, here we are.”
The car pulls up outside a huge mansion, at least eight-bedroom, the eaves held up by magnificent marble pillars. The front door is wide and the porch is huge, sporting tables and chairs and big potted plants. The lawn is mowed and cleaned and the driveway is spotless grey cobblestone.
“This is yours?” Anna says, look sideways at me. “This is yours . . . really?”
“Really,” I say. “Are you impressed?”
She shakes her head in wonderment. “That’s one word for it.”