Half the day was gone before the meal was ready. Jamie had been purposely avoiding the room where Kitten and his other three captives. He didn’t want to look them in the eyes until he absolutely had to. He knew that doing so might steal his resolve.
He placed the three chickens, the potatoes, and the beans on a platter and carried them into the room along with several plates.
“I know this isn’t much, but it’s the best I could do on short notice. I wanted this day to be as happy as I could make it. You know…under the circumstances.”
He went to each girl and untied one of their hands. He untied Tara and Naomi first. They backed into a corner hugging each other waiting for the violence to begin. When he got to the boy, he untied both of his hands. There was little threat of him escaping.
He began serving them, filling their plates with chicken and vegetables.
“You don’t expect us to eat this shit,” Tara said defiantly.
“I was hoping you would. It is Thanksgiving.” She knocked the plate out of his hand as he knelt to hand it to her.
“I said, I’m not eating this shit! Just let me go!”
“LET US GO!” Naomi yelled, adding her voice to Tara’s. Kitten and the boy remained silent, cowering in the corner.
Jamie sighed. There was no sense keeping them any more. Jamie knew now that he had no heart for murder. The very idea of it, after the dream he’d had, made his stomach roil.
“Okay, I’ll let you go.” He stood up and walked over to the girls, untying them one at a time.
“Don’t hurt me. Please, don’t hurt me. I’ll eat the chicken if you want me to.” Tara whimpered as Jamie untied her legs and her other arm.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Just get the fuck out of here. Go ahead, get out!”
The girls nearly trampled Kitten, who was still tied up, as they scrambled for the door.
“Wait! Take him with you! He can’t walk!”
Jamie was busy untying Billy as the girls dashed out of the apartment and down the steps.
“Fuck that! You take that little motherfucker back wherever you got him from, you sick perverted bastard! We’re callin’ the cops on your ass!”
Jamie heard the door slam downstairs as they ran out into the street. Then he heard them screaming for help. He sighed wearily and untied Kitten. She pulled the gag out of her mouth and stared at Jamie, scared and perplexed, trying once again to read his soul in his eyes and once again failing.
“You letting me go?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head in puzzlement.
“Then why’d you kidnap me in the first place?”
“You wouldn’t understand. Just please take Billy with you when you leave?”
Kitten reached down and threw the boy’s arm over her shoulder then tried to stand. It didn’t work. She tossed him over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry and walked slowly toward the door. She stopped in the living room and eased the boy back down to the floor, turning to face Jamie again.
“Why the fuck did you knock me over the head like that?”
“I’m sorry. I was just confused.”
Jamie could barely look at her. His eyes rose no higher than her shoes. Despite herself, Kitten felt pity for him. She could only imagine how insane she would be if she were slowly dying, rotting away piece by piece. Who knew what kind of crazy shit she’d do?
“Those girls are going to bring the cops back here ya know?”
“I know.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I’ll be dead before they get here.”
“What? Why?”
“I have to. It’s the only way to satisfy them all. I’ve got to sacrifice myself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Gods!” Jamie yelled gesturing around the room at the innumerable objects of worship, “They want blood and I can’t give it to them! I’m too much of a pussy. But there is one sacrifice I can give them. I’m man enough for that at least.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pascal’s Wager! You know… It’s safer to believe in God on the off chance that God exists so that you go to heaven then not to believe and wind up burning in hell. But there are just so many! How do you choose?”
“I don’t understand.”
So Jamie explained. He told her about Huitzilopochtli and Esus and Kali and Pele’ and Ra and the myriad other bloodthirsty deities and their demands for human sacrifice. He explained to her that there was no more evidence to support one religion than another, so he couldn’t be sure which one to worship. The only way to be sure was to worship them all, which meant killing.
“Will you help me?”
“Help you kill yourself?”
Kitten looked at Jamie and thought about all the terrible things she’d done in her life just to get high or disgrace her parents or impress her friends and how helping Jamie take his own life was really not much worse than blowing a guy for a hit of crack or pulling a train with half the football team in high school just to get attention. He was dying anyway so it wouldn’t exactly be murder.
Would it?
Perhaps, in some way, helping him would even bring her redemption.
Jamie wrote down all the prayers, blessings, and incantations she would need to send his soul off properly.
“You’ve got to recite all of these after I’m dead.”
“Okay.” She didn’t know what else to say. This was all so surreal, so unbelievable.
Kitten watched as Jamie climbed onto the biggest altar in the room and doused himself with lighter fluid. He laid more than a dozen different sacrificial knives and daggers out in front of him and began jamming them into his stomach one at a time until his lower abdomen bristled with the quivering hilts of blood-spattered steel. He began chanting and praying, crying out in mortal anguish each time he buried a new knife into his flesh. His eyes rolled up into his head as waves of agony ripped through him, burning in his gut. He bit through his bottom lip and almost lost consciousness for the second time that day. Blood bubbled up from between his lips and gushed from his wounds, drenching the altar. Still, he picked up another knife and then another and another until only one remained. He sat there swaying back and forth with a belly full of steel, looking as if he were about to expire right that instant. His chest rose and fell in deep laborious breaths as he stared at the last knife.
Jamie looked around the room.
“Do you see them?”
Kitten looked around and shrugged her shoulders.
“See who?”
“The Gods. They are confused. They weren’t expecting this.”
“What do you want me to do now?” Kitten interrupted.
Jamie’s eyes swung slowly towards her, missed her, and then swung back until they finally focused upon her. He opened his mouth and a spray of blood erupted from his lips as he spoke.
“This last knife is going in my chest and after that I’ll be dead so you have to cut my heart out for me and put it on that altar over there and recite these prayers. You have to make sure you say the right ones. Cut out my intestines and divide them up between those three altars by the bathroom over there and then chant this.” He handed her a sheet of paper stained with so much blood it was almost unreadable.
“Okay,” she replied staring at the blood-drenched sheet of loose-leaf as if it were something dangerous capable of attacking her.
“After that you have to cut off my head and put it at the feet of that statue of Artemis, but you have to be naked when you do it and you have to recite this six times before you chop my head off. After you chop off my head you need to remove my brain and put half of it in that bowl over there and the other half in that goblet by that statue over there next to the door.”