The Soul Dealer
How long will a thousand souls keep you warm in the empty, frigid, eternal void of Hell?
How long?
I ask myself every day now. How long?
I don’t know. If she knows, she wont tell me. However long it is, isn’t long enough. Ten thousand souls aren’t eternal. A hundred thousand can’t last forever. The life after death can. What comes after all them souls are used up?
Cold biting cold. Bitter endless cold without the feelin of cold. Because a feelin would be something, and Hell is empty and full of nothing. Like drifting in space but with no stars or planets or nuthin.
No sensations. No feelings. No thoughts or memories. That’s what it had told him. That’s what Hell is. Church people say it’s fire and brimstone and a guy with horns who rapes you with a burning cock made of serpents. But they’re wrong.
That would be something. Hell is nothing. The total absence of anything. A void your soul falls into with only your screaming voice, that always talking internal chatter to keep you company and drive you insane forever. Talking to yourself for eternity.
Hell is a mile thick wall of ice you’re buried under. Souls are warmth. Souls are experiences. Souls are love. Souls are experiences to rape in the bleak night.
I need more souls. Ten thousand isn’t enough. A hundred thousand isn’t enough.
Even she feels like enough right now, more than I ever expected. But she wont be there in the afterlife.
I’ll be alone. We’ll all be alone.
~
She’s with me now, but she wasn’t at the beginning. It all started innocent enough. Well as innocent as it can when you’re an alkie on disability who spends all day at the roadhouse rather than selling insurance and time-shares like I’m supposed to. The Route 69 T-bar where the first argument happened.
He was young, he was drunk and he looked out of sorts there. A washed out hipster in a biker bar near Barstow. He was arguing with his lady friends at a booth near the door. I think they were from the local community college. Probably hanging out with the lowlifes ironically.
He was arguing religion. Arguing there was no god. I was six tequilas into the afternoon and I was sick of him talking like he knew it all. He was loud. He was arrogant. He was as bad as the anti-christ’s pulpit preacher. I hated his young cheeks and curly hair and the way the pretty girls looked at him.
I coulda moved but I was too tipsy to stand. I wanted him to shut the fuck up.
I leaned over the back of the booth and focused on his pretty blue eyes.
“You there,” I said, surprising him. “There’s no god college boy? How do you know?”
It’s a myth, he said. A fable told by our ignorant great great grandparents to explain a world they didn’t understand. He went on and on about superstition and science. He said there was no god or heaven or human soulI had me an idea.
“Fine then college boy. Then if you’re so sure there’s no god, how about you sell me your soul?”
He laughed. “Sure thing old man,” he said. “Cash or credit?” The girls twittered. He beamed.
I held up a stained twenty. He looked at the girls across the booth. He was called out. He had to pay up or fold.
‘Yeah sure old man, I’ll take your money. Ain’t no thing as a soul to sell anyway.’ One of the girls got us some paper from her backpack and we wrote it up. Michael James Collins agreed to sell me his eternal soul for twenty dollars. I told him he needed to sign in blood and he told me to go screw myself.
Fucking hipsters take themselves too seriously.
I took the contract and he took my money. The girls kept their vodka and cranberry giggles but the kid was quiet the rest of the afternoon. Shut him up good.
And I got my soul.
~
After that, it became my thing. I fancied a hobby and it was a hoot to say I owned souls. Over the next few years, I collected maybe a couple dozen souls.
I talked to a lot of people for my work. Bars were good. It got them away from their wives who nagged about their drinking, gambling or spending. It got them talking and made their checkbooks come out easy.
And they talked and they talked and they talked. About all kinds of shit. Their annoying kids, how much they hated their jobs, who they were fucking behind their wife’s back. And god. People loved talking about god.
Good thing I listened real good when I had a couple of G&Ts in me. Real good.
If I knew the timeshare sale was going nowhere, then I’d ask em. Sell their soul? Most of them told me to go screw myself. That didn’t work so well.
But the gamblers, the ones that didn’t go to church none. Those folks might not sell me their soul, but they’d bet it against a clean fifty or a steak dinner.
I only bet cinches and hunches and I never had a hunch. So I collected some souls and didn’t pay nothin for them.
I could’a bought more than I won. But anyone who wanted to sell asked for fifty, a hundred or more. Some thought their souls were worth thousands. Imagine that! Thousands for the soul of a drunk.
It was a few years after I bought my first soul that someone offered me money to buy one of my souls. That’s where life went a bit crooked.
~
Back then I used to show my souls to the other boozers at the bar for laughs. I don’t do that no more.
The Italian came and sat next to me at a roadhouse outside Reno. Said his boss heard I had some souls for sale. Said his boss might be interested in buying some.
He looked like a small time hood. Maybe he wanted to get all familiar so he could rob me? I told him it was just a joke, a hobby, a thing I did with the other deadbeats when I won bets. But he was serious. He wanted to buy a soul.
So I named a number. Two fifty I told him. I musta gone too low because he didn’t even counter. He just peeled two hundreds and a fifty from his roll and put it on the bar under the peanut bowl. I shrugged and went outside to my old Lincoln, grabbed a soul I’d won the month before and went back inside.
I gave him the paper and he looked it over. He asked me what the fuck it was. I told him it was a contract for a soul. I told him I made the form myself on a computer.
He asked me how he could know it was genuine and such. I didn’t know. I made the contract, we both signed it. I didn’t know if it was legal. I thought it was just for show.
But he was satisfied enough. He carefully folded the paper, slipped it in an envelope and into his jacket and got up to leave.
Hey, I said, you left your beer. He told me to drink it if I liked. The two fifty was under the peanut dish. I grabbed it.
As he turned to leave I told him I had more where that came from. He said he’d be in touch. And he left.
I got drinking money for a week for nothin. I was happy as a tornado in a trailer park.
~
For bout a week, every time some shady Italian came in a bar, I stared at ’em until I figured they weren’t there for me. After a couple months I forgot about it. But on a sweaty drive from Yuma to Indio, he called me.
He said his boss wanted more souls. Asked me how many I could get. I could get as many as he wanted. Said his boss wanted fifty. How long would that take?
Fifty? Screw me, I thought. Were they framing them and sellin them in some Vegas shit shop? Must have been.
I told him I needed a month. He said I had a week. I told him two fifty each. He said two hundred per for a bulk discount.
Fifty at two hundred each was ten large.
The chiller on the Lincoln had quit about a week ago. Even with the windows down, the sweat was tracing a river from my brow down my chest and around my balls, pooling at my ass. I had to drive leaning on the steering wheel to keep my back from sweating through my cabana.
Ten large could fix the AC, pay most of my bar bills and get me a few nights at a nice place on the Salton Sea.
I said yes.
But where the hells was I going to get fifty? I pulled over on the highway and went into my trunk. The heat was so bad the road was all wavy on the horizon. As the semis drove by, they pushed so much air past it felt like a giant hair dryer on high. My trunk was like the hotbox at the state pen and by the time I finished counting, sweat was stinging my eyes and dripping off my nose.
I wiped the sweat off where it dropped on one of the contracts and it smeared the ink in an arc. Another mark on some tarnished soul.
It took me over four years to come across twenty-two souls. I already sold one, so I needed twenty nine more. In a week.
But I also had money to play with. Plenty of scrubs offered me their soul for a fifty or hundred. It would take money to make money.
First stop was Easy Cash. I got two thou for a lien on the Lincoln. The pawn shop gave me fifteen hundred for some gold I bought for seven fifty from a guy in the parking lot of a BBQ in Desert Valley.
Now I had some working cash.
Next stop was a shyster lawyer I knew in Indio. He laughed when I told him I needed an airtight contract to buy souls, but he took my money and wrote it up.
I was all set.
~
Seven days later I was at a La Quinta cantina near Amboy, pushing hard for number fifty. I had rode the mark down to three seventy, but he wasn’t going no lower. He kept pulling his little crucifix from it’s home in his forest of chest hair, and waving it at me. Kept telling me he’d have to answer to god and couldn’t let his soul go for less than three seventy.
My phone had been ringing all morning. The Italian was calling, wanted to know where I was. Wanted to know where his souls were.
It was 11am and I was already four drinks into the mark. Usually the drunker they get the lower the price got, but this one was an endless trough. I don’t think he thought I was serious, but he was happy to drink tequila sunrises on my tab.
He called again. Said if I didn’t call him back within an hour with the goods the deal was off.
I looked around at the other stiffs in the cantina. A fat woman with a big hat eyeballing me over her enchiladas. An old couple on a shitty vacation or just passing through, staring at each other. And the chubby mark in front of me, wearing a swimsuit and ratty flowered shirt unbuttoned to his bulging belly. Long black hair compensating for a receding hairline. Stroking his patchy beard. He looked hard up for cash. This was the best mark for miles.
Fuck it. Better less of somethin than all of nothin. I put three hundred and the contract on the table.
Sign it, take your money, I gotta go. I went to the bar and poured my drink into a plastic cup. Back at the table he was still considering.
You want the money or not, I’m leaving. He didn’t sign.
Fair nuff I told him. I took the contract and turned to go, leaving the money on the table. I got to the door and spun round. The mark was staring at the cash.
‘Whoops,’ I said ‘forgot the money.’ I snatched it off the table and turned to the door.
He said ‘wait’ and I had him. He thought I forgot it and had the money for a moment. It was his. The pain of having and losing was worse than the longing of not having but wanting.
He signed and I got my fiftieth soul for only a hundred over my rake. Better less of somethin than all of nothin.
~
I met him at a bar outside needles. The Italian came in and didn’t sit. He took me outside and we went to his shiny new town car. The guy up front looked more like muscle than driver. But this was a cash deal so I wasn’t alarmed or nothin. Standard practice.
I got the folder of souls out of my trunk and got in the Italian’s town car. He set an envelope on the seat. I counted the money while he counted the souls. Satisfied, he squared the pages and put them back in the folder.
Drink? Yes. He poured me an aged scotch, neat. I savored the sweet sauce.
He said his boss wanted a steady supply of souls. Fifty a week. Too tough I told him. It was true. I had busted my ass and hustled faster than I had in my life for those souls. And they cost me. I spent nearly five large to make this ten. Hardly drank all week.
Too many too soon. Thirty a month was better. And I needed three fifty per. I had expenses — hotels, gas, fees. It’s not like I could buy them on the Interwebs.
He stepped outside the car to call his boss. I refilled my glass from the crystal bottle and made a mental note to see if I could buy souls on the Interwebs. The heavy up front was eyeballing me in the rear view mirror and scowling at my pour. I toasted him and downed the four fingers of brown.
The Italian got back in the car. His boss said he needed fifty a month and would offer three hundred per.
Shit, I just got a raise. More money for less work. He even gave me three large as a retainer.
I proposed we drink on it, and we did.
~
My hobby became my job, and I was a shark at buying souls. Wednesdays and Thursdays were good in Henderson. Lots of bad treatment programs for junkies and gambling addicts meant good business for me.
Lovelock was great on Fridays. They released the felons on Monday and by Friday they was hard up for cash money for booze and whores. Them cons liked to try and sell their souls two or three times, but I had an eye for faces. It was good for a laugh, but not too much or you’d lose that eye, or worse.
Saturday night was good anywhere. Drunks, hookers, burnouts, users, unlucky fuckers and everyone in between wanted to have a good time, numb their pain or get their wicket sticky. Those things cost money. Selling your soul was free, or so they thought.
So I thought back then.
I had a good business going. I got my margins down to twenty, twenty five percent. I was clearing ten to twelve large per month. I bought a new Lincoln. Not new-new mind you. I didn’t want to encourage the marks to bid me up, or get something so shiny I’d be robbed. But new to me.
I could stay in hotels with pools rather than motels where people shoot up or get shot. Every week I could get me a girl, and no more of that streetwalker AIDS shit. A real girl from a flier where you went to her place and she had scented candles and nice underwear. A real professional.
Those were the good times. I was the soul dealer and it was making me rich.
Then I met her.
~
I was at the La Quinta in Indio enjoying a frozen margarita at the pool and reading the box scores when I got a call. It was some fancy sounding lady with an accent. Said her boss wanted to talk to me in Reno. I asked what for and she told me he wanted souls. A lot of souls.
I had an exclusive, but she didn’t want to hear that. She kept saying her boss would take care of it. I wasn’t going to drive all the way to Tahoe for some random phone call from a high class secretary. But she told me they’d buy me an airplane ticket and meet me with a car at the airport. Pay me for my time.
I thought I was being put on, but the next day I got one of those FedEx envelopes with a round trip ticket to Tahoe and a cashier’s check for fifteen hundred. I had to leave the next day and the return flight was the day after. I figured if they could afford to pay me fifteen hundred for two days, I could take time out to listen.
I got on an airplane the next day for only the second time in my life. When I was ten my momma took me to Phoenix to visit my auntie. Auntie bought the tickets and it was the only time I ever saw her. She lived in a big house on a golf course that felt like a castle compared to our trailer. Auntie was so glad to see momma healthy and to meet me. But I think I was disappointing to auntie. Her kids were no fun. They just liked to read and play board games. I wasn’t good at either. I dug in the yard, climbed their scratchy trees and swam in the pool with momma.
I thought we’d be going back to Phoenix, but within a month momma was in the county hospital for meth and I was back in foster care. Never saw auntie or rode on a plane again. Until now.
On the plane with fifty-seven other souls bound for Tahoe, I wondered what the Italian was using them for. They were just pieces of paper right?
I wondered what it would take to buy the souls of everyone on that plane. Probably take the plane going into a tailspin and me learning to fly. Souls to get you out of the jam. Your soul or your life. Most people would make that trade right quick.
I looked out the window and watched the tiny world go by.
~
The fancy lady with the voice met me at the Reno-Tahoe Airport in a big shiny caddy. It was a beaut. Fully restored ’59 with the wings. She said her name was Lilin. Her red dress matched the paint. I expected a driver, but she slipped behind the wheel.
I asked about her boss but she wasn’t saying nothing. I thought Lilin was from England or Australia or somewhere around there because even though she spoke better than me I couldn’t understand one word out of ten. But as I learned later, she wasn’t from any of those places.
She looked fancy too. Her reddish brown hair curled over a made up face that barely covered her freckles, and she was built like a brick shithouse.
I think she caught me admiring her goods because she started chatting me up. On the drive to Incline Village she told me all about Lake Tahoe. She said it was the second deepest lake in the country and it was formed during the ice ages. She said the ice was over a mile thick in this part of the country, but I couldn’t believe that was true. I had seen the peaks by Mount Whitney in the winter. There was a lot of snow up there but it wasn’t no mile thick.
She took me to a fancy hotel with shiny wood floors, shiny wood walls and gigantic whole tree trunks for a ceiling. Animal heads were all over the walls so I figured it was some sort of hunting lodge. She tried to take my bag but I told her a gentleman would never let a lady carry his suitcase. A bellhop came, but I didn’t want to waste money on a tip so I shooed him away.
Lilin was smiling at me like no woman had before, at least not the ones I didn’t pay. She took me up to a room, and I asked her why. She told me I needed to unwrap my present and she smoothed the sides of her dress over her hips and winked. For a time I thought maybe she was a high class escort. But I couldn’t figure out why she’d be paying me. I was half stiff in anticipation when she opened the door and showed me inside. But her boss was there sipping something out of a glass that looked like green pond scum.
He was young, balding, wearing one of those cotton summer suits. He wore dark sunglasses all the time. He asked me to sit and I did. Lilin left and I was a bit sad she did. I liked looking at her and she smelled like incense.
The Boss had a bottle of scotch on the table with a bow on it. My present. He poured me a tumbler but kept drinking the green. It was good scotch — thirty year old single malt. Almost as good a present as time with the fancy lady.
The Boss was always moving his hands and talking real fast. He was like one of those meth heads always talking-talking, except this guy used big words and made sense. And he wasn’t the type to use meth and had nice white teeth. He probably took that Adderall or Ritalin or some other smart drug.
I had some money. I made a note to get myself some smart drugs of my own.
He talked and talked. He told me about the computer business in San Francisco. He told me about the snow-skiing in Tahoe. He talked about his fast cars and big-titted women from Russia. I think he was trying to be all friendly-like. I knew that when you’re trying to make a deal with a chatty drunk, best to let him run. He poured me twice and I poured again. I was through a third of the bottle before he got to the point.
He understood I had souls. He wanted souls. I asked what for but he just said he liked to have them, just in case. He asked how much and I told him I had a steady customer. The boss said the name of some whop gangster and asked if that was my customer. I didn’t know. I only dealt with his man so I kept quiet.
The Boss said the Italian’s boss was superstitious. He was mafia and Catholic and had done a lot of bad things in life. The gangster thought that the souls were like something called indulgences. The gangster used them to wipe his own soul’s ass and clean up all his bad deeds. I didn’t know nuthin about that. They were just pieces of paper to me.
The Boss got real serious. They weren’t pieces of paper he told me. They were human souls. The soul was a piece of property, a treasure unique to everyone and transferrable. And I could get them. He wanted what I could get. He said he could square it with the gangster if I stopped selling to him and sold only to the Boss.
I asked him how much and he told me. I drank deep. I asked him how many and he told me. I laughed. That was too many. It would take years to get that many. He offered me more money. Then he doubled it again. I told him he wasn’t serious.
Then he showed me the cash. More money than I had ever seen. He said it was a million dollars, but I didn’t believe you could fit a million dollars into a suitcase like that. The Boss said he’d give me a million now, and another million and a half when I delivered the souls.
I had to pull out pen and paper. He watched while I scribbled.
He was offering five hundred per soul. Looking back, I should have charged him a hundred times that much.
It was a lot of money. More money than I ever even thought about. I used to dream about winning the scratch lotto, hitting the one hundred-k jackpot and retiring. This was a fortune.
But he wanted five thousand souls in six months. Where was I going to find five thousand souls? I didn’t know where to get them, but I wanted that money. I needed to take my own word on faith that I’d get them.
I told him he had a deal. He shook my hand, told me the room was mine for the night and the fancy lady would take me back to the airport in the morning. The money would be waiting for me in Indio when I returned.
He left. I sat in the room, drinking the scotch, relaxing on the bed and looking out the window at the trees. What did anyone need with five thousand souls?
~
I went down to the hotel bar, but the people and drinks were too rich for my taste. I fetched the bottle from my room and took a walk along the lake. The sun was going down and the forest was getting that grey color below, and the sky was the color of fire above. The lake reflected the fire in the water to the horizon. I was by myself on the beach.
I had that itch in my neck like someone was following me, but it was just the trees. I hated the woods. You’d get lost in all that sameness and you’d never know which way was which and what was behind the next tree until wham, a bear or something got you.
There was somethin in them trees above the lake, something watching me, watching all of us. Whether it was from the fire in the sky or the water or the Earth I didn’t know, but I went fast as I could without breaking a run back to the hotel. When I was within earshot of the pier where people was playing in the water and having their sundowners, I relaxed a bit and put the bottle to my lips.
It was still back there, but dropping behind now.
I looked out at the lake and tried to think about a mile of ice above us. A plane winked in the reflection of the sun, a shooting star riding a contrail. It was at least a mile high. That was too much ice.
~
The next morning the fancy lady Lilin picked me up in the caddy. She was wearing another sexy red dress with no straps and a big hat with a red bow. She drove me to the airport and talked about Reno the whole way. I tried to ask her about her boss, but she just kept talking about Reno.
Did I know that Reno was so dry because it was in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada? I asked what that was, and she said it was when a mountain blocked all the wet air from going any further to the land on the other side.
I remember smiling. I liked that. Rain shadow. I’d use that story next time I was at the bar and wanted to sound smart.
I flew again, and stared out the window again. Forty three souls traveled with me back to Indio.
~
I got my bag and went to the curb, waiting for the money that didn’t come. The boss never told me where to get it. He just said it would be waiting. After an hour at the terminal, I gave up and got my car from the lot. Maybe he had second thoughts. I drove back to La Quinta and took my bag upstairs.
I opened the door to my room and there she was. Lilin was in my room. But it couldn’t have been her. How did she beat me home? She was dressed in one of those sporty red tennis skirts and tight top.
Did she fly down on a private plane? I asked how she got here but she just said the Boss asked her to deliver the case personally. She opened it up and showed me the money. I asked to touch it and she giggled.
I pulled out a bundle of clean, fresh hundreds. The band around them said ten thousand. There were a hundred hundreds in each bundle, and a hundred bundles in the case. One million bucks.
She told me it was mine, and she told me she was mine, for the night. I told her to stop kidding an old man. She started to unbutton my shirt. She put my hand on her thigh and moved it up under her skirt to her ass. She wasn’t wearing underwear. I squeezed, expecting a slap, but I got a smile.
She was close. Her hot breath was on my neck and she bit at my nose, her teeth snapping together. I looked in her eye and she didn’t look away like the other girls. She slid a hand down and felt me hard. Her eyes reflected the red color of the sunset outside. I rubbed her ass under her skirt. Her skin was hot, flushed, almost like she had a fever. I started to sweat.
I tried to move her to the bed but she resisted. It was like pushing on a horse. I leaned in to kiss her but she pulled back. She told me she needed me to sign a contract. She said the Boss needed collateral for the million dollars, so I didn’t run off. She was rubbing my junk and I was so hot I didn’t think about nuthin but putting it inside her. She was way way higher class than any pro I could afford. I wanted her so bad.
She put the pen in my hand and pointed to the paper on the table. I started reading but she was rubbing me and I couldn’t think straight. I signed on the line. She smiled and said it was done then.
She took the pen and threw it across the room. She ripped off her top and her perfect breasts just fell out at me. She leaped up to wrap her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. She felt like she weighed nothing. She stuck her tongue in my mouth. I grabbed her ass with both hands and we fell into the bed.
~
I must have nodded off after, because I woke in the dark. The room was stuffy and it smelled like the old man in the next room was smoking cigars again. I coughed and took a towel from the bathroom, stuffing it in the crack under the adjoining door. I slid open the curtains and the sliding glass door. I leaned naked in the doorway. Below I could hear kids playing and splashing in the pool.
I looked at the fancy lady Lilin on the bed. She was naked on her side, her back to me. The moonlight outlined the perfect shape of her ass in the darkness. Her back was smooth and hairless, and she had a small tattoo on the back of her neck, just showing under her reddish-brown hair.
I wondered what an ugly, stupid fuck like me had done to get here. A knockout in my bed and a million dollars on my table. Then I remembered.
I was the Soul Dealer. I bought and sold human souls. And some morons were willing to pay me for little pieces of paper that didn’t mean nothin.
Life hadn’t ever done anything good for me for the first forty-odd years. Maybe that’s the way it worked. Maybe it all just evened out for everyone.
~
When I woke up the next morning, Lilin was gone. For a moment I panicked and thought she might have taken the case, but it was still there. There was also a carbon copy of the contract I signed. I read it and panicked again. I started sweating as I read the contract over and again, slowly. I had read it right the first time.
I had put up my soul as collateral for the one million dollars.
Screw me.
~
I dressed, took the contract and case with me to the bar and ordered two highballs and a ham sandwich. I wanted to get drunk. I needed to get blotto. But I made myself eat the sandwich and stop at the third highball.
I read the contract again. I had to deliver five thousand souls in six months, or my own soul would be the property of Boss man. I could ask for more money if I made a first delivery, but the contract was clear. Five thousand in six or mine was gone.
I didn’t know why this bothered me. It shouldn’t be a bother. They were just pieces of paper. This was just a piece of paper. I didn’t believe that superstitious shit.
But still, would I have signed it if I had known what it was? I might have stopped, but all I could think about was being inside her.
I had bigger problems. Now problems. What the fuck was I going to do with a million in cash? If I took that to the bank I’d be arrested. They’d think I was a meth dealer.
No way I’d trust the shyster with it.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I got a GPS and a shovel at the hardware store and drove out in the desert. I wrapped the case in trash bags and buried it three feet under. I kept four bundles for working cash.
I had six months to get five thousand souls. I had never collected more than sixty souls in a month. Never had to. To get that many meant I couldn’t just wander the Mojave, Sonora and Great Basin. I’d have to go to where the people were. I’d have to go back where I wasn’t supposed to go. Where I didn’t want to go.
I had to go back to Sin City.
~
I fucking hated Vegas and Vegas hated me back. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Vegas was a death sentence for me. But it was where I could harvest souls like okra in a south Georgia field. There were millions of players, marks, johns, janes, users, pimps, whores, junkies, gamblers, addicts and just plain simpletons coming and going every day in Vegas. I just had to harvest a small percentage of their souls.
I was doing ok too, keeping my head down, taking my rake. Not making my number, but working my way up. But it was too good to be true thinking I could avoid their notice.
Within two weeks they found me. The Finger found me. Snuck up behind me while I was drinking.
Nobody knew why they called him the Finger. Some said if he Fingered you, then you were dead. Others said it was because he had an itchy trigger Finger. Some said it was a sex thing. But everyone knew he was a killer.
So when I felt a poke in my ribs and I heard the Finger whisper in my ear, your money or your life, I nearly fell off my barstool. My scotch sloshed all over my lap. He laughed, that maniacal monkey laugh that could be heard across the bar.
He was with some heavy I’d never seen before. I knew this was business because the heavy didn’t sit with us at the bar. He sat on the other side of the room in a corner, behind me. The Finger slid into the stool next to me. I was glad for a companion rather than a bullet, even if it was the Finger.
The Finger wondered if this place wasn’t more high class than my usual. He wondered what I was doing that I could afford single malt scotch. He wondered whether I had a death wish and asked me why I was back in town.
I didn’t have any good answers for him. So I told him I had a nice business going buying and selling people’s souls. He laughed like a drunk chimp. That scared me.
He asked if I knew Fat Bernie was dead. I didn’t. Fat Bernie said I’d be dead if I ever came back to Vegas. Fat Bernie didn’t appreciate me fucking his fat truffle pig of a daughter. I was his errand boy and while I was running errands I was also running my dick in his little girl. She was nineteen and all, but the family was off limits to the help. So I had to leave.
I was glad to go. The casinos and hustlers took all my money and when I didn’t have any left they told me to screw off. Fat Bernie paid shit, his people treated me worse and his daughter gave me herpes. I hated Vegas.
But I knew Vegas. I knew where the marks lived, worked, drank and fucked. I knew where to collect souls. And I was doing ok. Three weeks in I had over four hundred. Not nearly enough, but a start. And I had some ideas on how to franchise.
The Finger was going on and on about everything that happened with the crew since Fat Bernie left. Lester was dead. Angelo was in the pen. Bernie’s daughter was turning tricks. And apparently now Harvey was the new top cap.
The Finger told me Harv didn’t give a shit about my problems with Fat Bernie, but he’d lose respect if he didn’t honor the former boss. The Finger said if he put in the good word, Harv might let me stay in Vegas. If not I’d have to leave or I might disappear.
The Finger asked if I wanted him to do this, as a favor. That was no small matter, to be indebted to the Finger. I told him I’d think about it and bought him drinks to keep him calm. I even sent some beers to the heavy in the corner.
The Finger was trying to figure it out. He was trying to find out how much money I had. He wanted to know if he could shake me down regular-like for protection from Harv, or whether he should just take what I had now and bury me in the desert. I played poor and told him I was selling insurance and time-shares, but business was shit in the desert and I needed to move to the city. I think he bought into a regular pay-off. After three more drinks, he got bored and left.
I waited in the bar as long as I could. I thought it was long enough. But when I went out to the parking lot, the Finger and the heavy were in a car waiting. They didn’t do nuthin, but they saw me get into my Lincoln. They knew I had some scratch. They definitely wanted a piece.
They had their headlights on high beams and it was no secret they were following me. They kept with me through a few turns, then lost interest and left. No way was I going to lead them to my apartment.
First thing the next morning, I went to the pawn shop and bought a piece. Nothing large, just a small concealed job. I knew the guy, so he back-dated the five days for an extra hundred. I had protection.
Now I needed more souls.
~
I was two months in and struggling mighty. I needed over eight hundred a month and I only had four hundred sixty three after two. That meant I had four months and needed over a thousand a month.
I was screwed. I was gonna lose my soul.
I tried to hire a couple of stiffs I knew to help me buy souls, but they just disappeared with the money I fronted and didn’t produce nuthin. They probably thought I was just a crazy mark who would feed their habits for a week. I tried putting an ad in the paper, but they wouldn’t take it. Told me I was doing the devil’s work. Nuts.
I had to pound the pavement. I was in the hotel bar at Vegas World trying to chat up a mark when the fancy lady Lilin called. I asked the mark, a young punk on his first trip to Sin City, to wait and I fed ten dollars into video poker for him.
Lilin wanted to know how it was going. I thought about lying, but there was no sense in that. I told her I was short.
She asked me where I was staying and said she’d come down the next day. I thought about that. She didn’t seem the type to try and break a knee or something, but you never knew these days. She musta known I was worried and she told me she just wanted to come down and help. I told her my address and we hung up.
My mark was leaving, and I tried to chase him down. He said he had to go meet his friends. I gave him my card and told him to call me if he changed his mind.
~
The next evening, Lilin showed up at my door. She must have been out of her mind cause she was wearing a long fur coat and it was still a hundred and ten. But she wasn’t even sweating. She asked if I missed her and I winked and I told her I did. She opened up the coat and was only wearing fancy red underwear underneath.
I barely got the door closed. We did it right there on the living room carpet in my little apartment. The chiller must have kicked off, because it got so hot I thought I was going to pop a vein. When we were done, I was on my back on the carpet, her head was on my shoulder. I was wet with sweat as if I’d jumped in the pool, but she looked like she just did her makeup. Steam was rising where our bodies met.
I never thought I had it in me, but we did it three more times that night. She let me do things I would have had to pay big money for, and did things I didn’t think you could pay for. When we were both exhausted, we fell asleep in my little bed, her under the sheets and me on top with the AC on full blast
~
The next morning she I woke as she was getting up to go. I asked her to stay, but she said she had business back in Tahoe. She passed me the number of a man the Boss knew in Vegas, a man who could help me buy souls. I asked her why her boss didn’t buy them through the man, and she said something about ‘intermediary theological liability.’ I didn’t understand. But I did get that they needed a front man.
Maybe they needed a patsy.
She kissed me on the lips and left me there on the bed, spent. I slept half the day.
I met her contact the next day. He said he was a geek website developer and could make me one of those online sites where you can buy things. But instead of me selling stuff, I’d be buying souls. The Geek said he could even advertise, but we’d have to be careful not to get too much attention. I asked who might give us attention. The Geek said, from people who might want to take my souls.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
I asked how long. He said a week. Good enough.
~
Damned if it didn’t work. That month I bought eight hundred more. Still not enough, but a lot better than before. I only had sixteen hundred fifty, but had two months to make the balance. I needed more numbers
I was walking the strip one night when a Mexican handed me a little printed flyer with pretty escorts on it. That gave me an idea. I printed up a few thousand fliers and hired a couple of Mexicans of my own. They handed them off outside low-life casinos, watering holes, known shady alleys and the like.
It worked! I printed up more fliers and had Mexicans all over the strip. I even had to hire an old mammy to answer the phone we had so many people wanting to sell their souls. Vegas was full of people desperate for a buck.
That month I made over two thousand souls. I had to buy thirteen hundred in just under four weeks. I should make it just fine.
But that’s when the Finger paid me another visit.
~
I had been passing the Finger a few hundred a month, complaining all the while and buying enough drinks to keep him off my back. He found me at the casino bar at the Mirage. Shit. I saw him coming and fed quarters into the video poker machine.
He asked me how I was drinking at such a fancy place. I pointed to the video poker machine and told him it was the cheapest way to drink for free. He laughed the monkey laugh, but his eyes weren’t smiling. He slid over one of my fliers.
The Finger said he heard I’d been buying low-lifes drinks all over town and there weren’t any video poker machines paying for them. He said he called my girl and found out I was the one behind the fliers. He said he knew about the website.
I thought he’d want to know what the hell I was doing buying souls, but he didn’t ask. He just told me something that chilled my bones.
He said he wanted my souls. All of them.
I asked him what he wanted them for. He laughed the monkey laugh again at the fact I didn’t know. He just said it was insurance.
Insurance for what?
For the afterlife. He wouldn’t say no more, and he just laughed harder every time I asked. So I stopped askin.
I told him I had a buyer and I’d sell them if he’d beat their price. The Finger put his arm around my shoulder, had me almost in a headlock, and leaned in close. His breath smelled like trash and bourbon.
He said he wasn’t buying. He was taking. And if I didn’t give him the five thousand souls, he’d put nine millimeters in my heart and head each.
How did he know I was getting five thousand? I didn’t ask, but he answered anyway. He said the word was out that I had a big buyer from California for five thousand souls at two point five mil.
I drank deep with my right hand and felt the back of my waistband with my left. The piece was there, reassuring. I wasn’t going to start a gunfight in the Mirage. But neither was the Finger.
I signed my death certificate and told him no. I wasn’t going to give up my fortune He squeezed my shoulder harder. I struggled. His eyes went bloodshot with anger. He growled like a dog and told me to give him those souls or be dammed to hell. But before it could get more heated, casino security grabbed us both and told us to leave. I went the opposite way from the Finger.
I got home, packed everything in the Lincoln and moved to a motel on the highway to Death Valley.
I just had to stay alive for one more month, then I’d be gone.
~
One of my Mexicans wound up shot dead in a parking garage off the strip. Whoever killed him dumped the box of fliers on him as he bled out on the concrete. Another was run over on eighteenth avenue by a hit and run. Fliers were all over the street. The press picked it up and called it the Soul Dealer Murders. The church people were going crazy once they found out what was going on.
The old mammy wouldn’t answer the phones anymore cause of all the press and church people hassling her. The police wanted to talk to me, and I met them at the station. They had lots of questions, but I told them I didn’t know nuthin about the murders. I had alibis — people I was drinking with at the time, so they couldn’t charge me.
I knew it was the Finger, but I wasn’t no snitch. The souls were my business and I wouldn’t tell them nothin about that. They told me not to leave Nevada.
The Geek called. He said that all the press had blown up my website. I asked how it got destroyed but he laughed and said it blew up in a good way. He said it went viral and I wondered how a computer could get sick. But it didn’t matter. College kids thought it was funny to sell their souls and make money for it.
In just three days I bought over three thousand souls. I was right mad with the Geek. I only needed thirteen hundred more. That was wasted money. But he said it was ok. He had build a demand based math formula that lowered the offer price when lots of people were buying. Those three thousand souls only cost me an average of sixty-three per. I was happier than a baby in a barrel of titties. Even if the Boss didn’t buy em, other people wanted em. So I’d take em. I knew value when I saw it.
But it didn’t last. After two more days, the Geek told me some group of anonymous-type computer hackers took the website offline. They erased his computer and threatened to harass him to hell and back. He said I could find another geek and go to the dark web, but only drug dealers and criminals went there. No soul sellers. He was done, which meant we were done.
But I had nearly seven thousand souls. And I still had forty thousand dollars from the million the Boss had fronted me. I called the fancy lady and set up a meeting in Reno in two days to make the exchange.
~
I was holed up in a motel outside Reno napping. When I woke up and turned on the TV I saw my mug on the news. Someone — either the Geek or the mammy or one of the Mexicans — had talked. They didn’t know my real name — I had been smart about that — but they had my picture. The press was calling me the Soul Dealer. Said I might be a suspect in the murder of the Mexicans. The church types was speculating that I was doing the work of the devil.
They was interviewing college kids who had sold me their souls. Kids thought it was funny and free money. The parents said the contracts weren’t legal but my sheyster told me they were. All my sellers were over eighteen and legally allowed to sign a contract. Their souls were mine.
When I checked my phone there was so many messages. From the press wanting to know who I was and why I was buying souls. From church types threatening to perform rites and such on me. From parents begging me to sell their kids souls back to them, some offering thousands of dollars. I erased the press and religious crazies. I took note of all the names I had offers to buy back so I could pull them out of the stack.
Those parents would pay dear for their kids souls back. My eyes were gleaming gold.
I was going to be rich in a day, and could get even richer. I’d need to find a new Geek. Put up a new website. Hire some purchasing agents.
I needed more souls.
~
That night I was at a run down steak joint sawing my way through a t-bone. It was lower class than I was used to now, but I figured the Finger would be looking for me at the nicer joints. I was halfway through dinner when a man just sat down at my table. He was dressed in a nice jacket and black shirt. His hair was slicked back and he looked like a celebrity or somethin.
I asked him if he was lost and he said no, he was looking for the Soul Dealer and had found him. I got up to leave, but he said he knew me and used my real name. He said he knew about the Boss and Fancy lady and Harv and the Finger and even knew how my momma died in jail.
He said he couldn’t guarantee my safety if I left the restaurant.
I sat back down. Who the fuck are you then?
He said he was an interested buyer. I said I had a buyer. He said he could offer me more.
He offered a lot more.
I told him there was a problem. The Boss had my soul. I had to deliver or he would foreclose.
He laughed and I asked why. He told me I believed now, and I guess I was surprised. I did believe. Souls weren’t nothin.
He asked me what my soul was worth and I told him I didn’t know. He laughed softly and ordered a bottle of fancy wine. He said that was my problem. I didn’t know what my own soul was worth. I had forgotten my nature.
How much was it worth? I asked.
He told me. It was worth almost nothing.
Well screw me then.
I was done with the riddling. I slid the piece out of my waistband and held it between my legs. I told him I needed to know what sould were for, now, or I was leaving. He sniffed the wine the waiter had poured, tasted it and nodded. The waiter poured us two glasses and he told me.
I wished to god he hadn’t.
~
When you die and done evil in life, there is just nothing after. But not nothing like you disappear. You’re still there. But there is nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to taste or smell. Nothing to feel except a lack of touch. He said this was like a deep, hollow cold. There is nothing but you and your mind and your thoughts and the things you remember.
There is nothing to do. So it’s just you, talking to yourself in the cold and the darkness.
All you have are your recollections — of foods you ate, places you visited, women you fucked. But he said, memories are funny. The more you think about them, the less they’re about what happened and more they’re about what you think happened.
And so once you go through your memories a thousand times, they aren’t memories anymore, just your thoughts about the past. So it’s just you talking to yourself in the cold and darkness, forever. It’s like being buried under a mile of your own talk talk talk for a million, million years. It’s like being trapped in the ice, alone. It drives you mad.
He said if you can ever find another soul in the darkness, then there’s a hope of something; a chance to feel something. One soul might find another in a year, or it could take a thousand years or ten thousand. When they meet there’s a fight of sorts. He said it’s like like two single celled animals in an ocean of water, trying to find and eat each other. He said, eventually there is a winner and there is a loser.
Then there is a rape. He said that’s the only way to describe it. When you’re beat, the dominant soul rapes your life. Souls are starving for input in the darkness, so it feeds on your thoughts and memories. It feels everything you felt and sees everything you saw. It knows all your lies, all the women you cheated on, all the marks you conned. It eats your life, every feeling, every thought, every embarrassment. It feels the things you felt and thinks the thoughts you didn’t even remember you had. He said you can’t do nothing about it. Only lay there and take it, giving up all your experience but getting nothing in return except a feeling of violation and deeper emptiness.
He said you are laid naked and bare and the dominant soul has its way with you. When it’s had enough, and your life becomes like its life, it moves on. And you are more alone than before it started, for at least the rape of your soul was something. Now it is just you, talking to yourself, again and again, the only new memory the rape of your life, which you replay over and over just to have something to feel.
It’s better to be the raper, he said. The raped get weaker and are raped again and again. They wind up the most mad, muttering and screaming to themselves in the darkness.
The rapers grow stronger. They are filled with anger, hatred and disregard for the sufferings of those they ravish for pleasure.They learn to sense other souls in the darkness. They hunt them down. They are the lions of the afterlife.
“They are the demons,” he said.
I felt my spine turn to ice as I knew it was true, sure as I knew he was one of them. I could barely get the words out and I asked him if I was right.
He swirled his wine and smiled at me. It was a smile that would crack a granite wall. He said the most powerful demons could sense souls outside the afterlife, and the longing for a taste of their real lives was so strong it was like a blood lust.
And the most powerful demons of all could move from the afterlife, for a time, and live people’s lives, drink good wine — he sipped at his glass — and eat good food — he pointed to my steak which was getting cold.
Eat up he told me. In time I’ll be wanting to remember how that steak tastes.
I set down my knife and fork and put my napkin on the table. He still hadn’t told me why he wanted the souls.
He said it was for the same reason the Boss and the Finger and every other sinner wanted them — so they could feed on them in the afterlife and grow fat and strong. So they could come back to this world and find pleasure. So they could come back to this world and find souls to dine on.
He said I had some very special souls he was interested in. Most of my souls were degenerates — users, hustlers and such. But I had collected some souls from young, good people.
I thought back to the news show — it was the college kids he wanted.
He said many of those souls were good and would never wind up in the void if they weren’t sold. He said those souls were the rarest, tastiest and most nourishing. Just one soul from a good virgin girl could sustain you for a hundred years or more in the void.
My head was swimming and I knew I was going to be sick. I ran for the toilet and barely made it before emptying my belly into the bowl. I felt a hand on the back of my neck, comforting me, but it was ice cold. I spun around in the stall but there was no one there.
I saw a window above the toilet. I climbed on the back of the tank and shimmied out fast as a weasel in the hen-house. As I ran to my car, I felt those eyes on me again. It was the same eyes from the forest at Tahoe. Only this wasn’t no bear — this was much much worse.
I started the Lincoln in a cold sweat and drove away fast into the desert night.
~
As I drove the dark lonely highway, I felt like all this was too familiar. There was nothing to see except the blacktop and yellow lines rushing at me out of the dark. And I remembered a feeling, a craving, a wanting so bad it hurt me to my bones.
I wanted — no — I needed more souls. In that moment, I knew I was going to that bad place and I’d need them souls to keep me warm. Maybe I’d even been to that place already…
I thought about turning left, heading to Mexico and never coming back. But I wanted my own soul back.
I drove on to Tahoe.
~
I met the Boss and Lilin in a burger joint parking lot out in the middle of nowhere. I kept the piece close at hand in case there was any funny stuff. They just pulled up in a black limo and I got in. He was wearing the usual — cotton suit, sunglasses, that crazed mouth flapping. She was dressed in a red skirt and black halter top with no bra.
I gave the keys to the Lincoln to the Boss who gave them to the driver. He went to the trunk of the Lincoln to check the souls. It made me burn the way she sat so close to him and rubbed his chest while I drank scotch. But she was his, not mine. I was just lucky enough to borrow her.
The Boss talked and talked for ten minutes straight. The whole time I was staring at the silver case on the seat next to them and trying not to fume as she held his shoulder. Then the driver came back from counting. He said they was all there, all five thousand. The driver went back to my car and started moving boxes of souls to the limo.
The Boss toasted me and slid over the case. Inside it was full of ten-thousand dollar bundles. A million and a half bucks. I nodded and waited for the rest.
“Where’s my soul?” I asked him.
He grinned and sipped that green pond scum. He said I was too good at getting souls. He said he wanted to do another deal. The Boss waved to the driver who went to the trunk and returned with another case. He gave it to the Boss and closed the door.
The Boss opened the case and showed it to me. It was stuffed full of cash. “Two million up front,” he said. “Two more when you deliver me eight thousand within six months.”
My eyes bulged at all that money. I could walk out of this car with three point five mil. I still had seventeen hundred souls. I could set up a new website. Hire more Mexicans in other countries. Start buying souls in Africa and Europe. Franchise.
But that also meant he’d keep my soul. I still didn’t know what that meant, but I knew in my gut it wasn’t good.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll just take my money and my soul and be on my way. A deal’s a deal.”
The Boss snapped shut the lid on the case and pushed it across to me. He made himself look real big in the car and leaned forward. Lilin’s eyes bounced from me to the Boss and she looked worried, which made me worried.
“It’s not a negotiation,” he said. “You’ll do the deal or your soul will be forfeit for eternity.”
Give it back, I told him. But he didn’t look flaky anymore. He looked mean and hard. He told me if I didn’t do as he liked, he’d keep my soul and rape it himself as soon as he was in the beyond. He’d rape it long and hard and leave me so lifeless and weak that any old tired soul could just come along and use me any time.
I didn’t know if that was true or not, but could I take that chance? I reached behind me and felt for the piece. The Boss rapped his knuckles hard on the glass and took out a very large black gun which he lay on his lap. The driver moved over to the door. He had a hand cannon too.
I was boxed in.
Just then, the windows of the limo were all smashed in and I heard shots. The fancy lady and I dove on the floor of the limo and the Boss turned and started shooting out the window. I saw the driver slide down the side of the car, red spots marking a pattern across his white suit coat. The Boss was firing and firing at something in the distance.
I peeked over the edge of the window. It was the Finger! He and the two heavies were shooting long guns at us from the back of the burger joint. The Boss emptied his hand cannon and then lay flat back on the seat. He pulled a radio out of his jacket and yelled into it. The Boss reloaded.
I raised my gun to shoot at the Finger but then saw him drop. Then one of the heavies fell. The last heavy looked around frantic like and started shooting up into the hills. But then he dropped. The echo of a single shot bounced around the limo.
The Boss stuck his head up and looked at the three dead mobsters. He smiled at me, told me he had a shooter in the hills. Just in case.
I reached down to help Lilin up from the floor but she was deadweight. My hand came up sticky. I rolled her over and was sick. One of the bullets had caught her just above the ear and tore a hole out the other side of her head. She was dead.
The Boss shrugged and told me not to worry, there was always another.
I looked at him with fury, but then saw another man with a rifle coming towards us. I raised my piece, but the Boss pushed it down. He said that was his shooter.
The Boss got out and waved to the man. They moved together and spoke. I slipped out of the car. When the Boss turned around, I raised my gun and he was surprised. I shot him in the chest.
The shooter tried to raise his rifle, but I had him dead to rights. I dropped him too.
The Boss was still squirming on the ground, reaching for something with his right hand. But his gun was off to his left. I stepped on his hand and reached down to grab. It was one of those dongle drives.
He rolled over with a groan, one hand to his soggy red chest, one hand reaching out to me.
I’m dying, he said. At least give me my souls.
I looked at the dongle drive and wondered how many souls were in there. The Boss croaked at me. Blood came out his mouth. I fired my gun again and he was quiet.
There were some looky loos peeking out of the burger joint, so I put one through the front window. They ran back inside.
I pulled the Lincoln up to the limo and quick as I could put all the souls in the trunk. The two cases of money went in the back seat. The dongle drive was in my pocket.
I gave one sad look to Lilin in the back seat. I thought about bringing her with me, but it was no good. She was gone.
I fired another round in the air to keep the witnesses’ heads down, then drove off fast as I could.
I kept thinking I’d see johnny law behind me or blocking the road ahead, but they never came. I was away.
~
That night in a motel near Grass Valley, I put the dongle drive into my computer. There was nothing on it but files. Lots and lots of files. I looked down at the little count at the bottom. It said 118,324 files. Each one was a scan of a contract. Each one was a soul.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I sat by the motel room window with my piece in my hand. I had two cases on the bed with three point five mil in them. I had a hundred eighteen thousand souls on a dongle in my pocket and near seven thousand more in the car.
Someone was going to come looking for me. Someone was going to find me.
At two AM I couldn’t take it no more. I grabbed one of the cases and my bag and threw them in the Lincoln. When I went back for the last case, I was terrified I’d see the Finger in the shadows, or the Boss would show up with a crew, or a single shot would echo in my brain.
But none did.
Sweating in the cool fall night, I drove the Lincoln out into the darkness.
~
Ten miles out of Grass Valley, I saw a lonely gas station with one streetlight. I pulled next to the pumps to to fill up. As I was filling my tank, I saw someone over under the streetlight. They were looking at me. I squinted in the dark, but in my gut I knew who it was. I walked over.
“You were dead,” I said. “I saw the hole. Felt your blood.” She was wearing blue jeans, a denim shirt and red boots. She shrugged.
“I’m easy to kill but hard to keep dead,” she said. The streetlight flickered out and for a moment all I could see was her soft red eyes gently glowing in the desert night. I thought about all those souls. I started to get afraid but she slid over to me and put her hand on my chest.
“I can feel your heart racing,” she said. “Don’t be scared.”
“I got a lot of things to fear,” I said.
“Do you?” she said. She pulled closer, sliding her arms around my waist and putting her lips to my ear. Her breath was hot on my neck and smelled slightly of sweet smoke.
“Didn’t you notice,” she whispered. “There’s no one watching you now.”
I looked around the dark shadows of the desert hills. She was right. The eyes that had been following me from Tahoe to Vegas were gone.
Her lips brushed my ear and she nipped, not gently. “Your eyes are the only ones that see in the dark now Soul Dealer.” She bit again, hard, but it didn’t hurt.
I pulled her away and looked into her glowing eyes. They were beautiful and I wanted her. “What are you?” I said.
“I’m yours,” she said, “for as long as you’ll have me.” She came in for a kiss. I tried to push her away but my arms had no strength when her lips touched mine. I kissed her long and deep and drank from the fire in her heart.
We was kissing and groping on the side of the road when the streetlight came back on. A college boy in a passing car yelled at us to get a room. We laughed and walked back to the Lincoln.
I got behind the wheel and she sat next to me, her hand on my chest.
“Your heart is steady,” she said.
“You do that to me,” I said.
“Do you have it?” she asked. I nodded. “I want to see it.”
I pulled it out of my pocket slowly and her eyes were all expectant, her breath heavy. I held up the dongle, half expecting her to try and snatch it away. But she just sighed and licked her lips. She looked at me with a wanting and a passion like I never thought any woman ever would. She didn’t want the dongle. She passionately wanted me to have the souls, and her also.
“Take me somewhere,” she said “and make love to me right now…” she paused a sec, as if unsure, then finished her sentence, “…make love to me, master.”
I startled at the last, but then nodded and put the keys in the car. It felt right. I was the Soul Dealer and she was mine, for as long as I had those souls.
Lilin put her head on my shoulder, her hand fell to my thigh and she gently cooed as I ran my nails along the tattoo on the back of her neck. The harder I dug in, the more her back arched and the louder she purred.
Her skin was hot enough to melt through a mile of ice.
I started the Lincoln, put it in drive and we sped away into the darkness, together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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