The robed figures gathered around his bed. In the darkened room Jason saw they wore black, or dark-colored robes. The right side of his bed was next to the wall, so they formed a semi-circle from the foot of his bed up to the head of his bed, where someone lurked outside of Jason’s vision behind him. Jason’s bed was propped up, with the back hinged forward at an incline, so he had a clear view of the cult stripping his sheet off of him, then his gown. One of them removed his diaper from his waist by unfastening the large safety pins.

“We need the seed of a dead priest,” the woman said. She was the one removing his diaper, which she threw aside. Her hands then picked up Jason’s fat shaft, which lay limp along his inner thigh.

Looking at the window in the door, Jason saw two eyes glowing unnaturally, with one eye smoldering red, casting a red aura that penetrated the dark room.

“Hey!” Jason was only able to shout the very beginning of his cry for help when a thin rag was whipped over his face, held by two strong hands that forced his head forward, while yanking in on the rag rope, so that it bit into his mouth like the reins of a horse. The ends of the rag were tied tightly behind his skull, so he was effectively gagged. Jason thought that if he told them he wasn’t really a priest, then maybe he might be able to talk his way out of it, but he just lost that faint hope.

The woman’s hands caressed his bloated member, which began swelling with blood despite Jason’s wishes. He tried to think of the fat nurse, of his feces being scraped out of his rectum—anything to stop his sexual response—but to no avail.

“We’re going to have a stiff on our hands,” the man standing behind him said. “How are we going to explain that?”

“I already have a stiff on my hands.” The woman laughed as her hands kept stroking him, up and down his length. “He was paralyzed from the waist down, so he decided to do the dance.”

“Do the dance” was roaring twenties slang for getting hanged. Maybe what they planned was to make it look like he was a despondent paralytic who hanged or strangled himself. Jason had his answer when another soft fabric, feeling like a narrow towel or a bandana, was whipped down over his neck, and tightened by the man standing behind him.

“We want to time this right, so he dies just as he climaxes, so his soul departs with his essence.” The way she worked him, sliding, twisting, squeezing, and wringing with her hands, she was going to give him a powerful orgasm. A second hand, a feminine hand, joined in the woman’s efforts, caressing his scrotum and rolling his testicles around in their sack.

The cloth ligature at his neck bit into his throat, and he felt his face flush red. This was a trick of the Thuggee cult of India, from which the English word “thug” is derived: strangle a man by catching him from behind with a cloth loop, which often has a coin embedded in it so that it catches at the throat and digs on. He reached up with both hands to remove the fabric that was strangling him, but it was already digging into the skin of his neck and throat. Jason coughed, or tried to, but hacked drily, and found himself becoming light-headed.

What were his options? He had no gun, no knife, no sap. No weapons. He couldn’t yell for help. He couldn’t get out of bed to fight, nor could he fight them while lying down. He needed both hands to try to get the strangling fabric off of his neck, or at least create a gap where he could breathe.

Yeah, that felt good, real good, the sensation of smooth hands sliding slowly up and down his shaft, wrenching in opposite directions…

No! He mustn’t give in to the temptation of those soft hands, because when he climaxed he was dead, but he felt dizzy and thinking was hard, or fuzzy. He clawed and swiped at the cloth that sank into his neck, and at the strong hands that tightened it around his throat. Wasn’t this the way that David Carradine died, the star of the TV series Kung-Fu and the movie Kill Bill, masturbating while strangling himself, trying to orgasm just as he lost consciousness, but he went too far, and stumbled into that sleep from which no one returns?

Jason’s vision was foggy, but he saw the second woman bring up a silver chalice. The woman stroking him kept beating his meat, working it like dough, but aimed his beet red knob so that it pointed into the chalice.

Ohhh, that felt good, and he moaned, but was blocked by the gag in his mouth, so that his moan of pleasure rumbled in his chest.

Dammit! No! he had to fight it, had to hold back, because once he let go, and started filling the chalice with his seed, the man behind him would haul in with everything he had, and strangle Jason to death.

Jason was spinning, floating, light-headed. So it was his last night in the game, after all. But as he entered a dreamy state, he gained the ability of insight, a mode of thinking, of grasping patterns that was unavailable to the rational, rigidly logical mind.

Jason slammed his left hand down onto a lever at the side of his bed. The upper half of the bed, which had been tilted up, suddenly dropped, sending the metal edge of the bed frame downward, chopping into the thighs of the man who stood behind him, tightening the cloth at his throat. The falling upper section of the bed knocked the man’s hips backward, so that he bent forward at the waist. Ignoring the cloth encircling his neck, Jason shot both hands upward—one into the man’s throat and the other into his eyes, then squeezed with all his might. This bastard was going to pay. In his mind, Jason imagined crushing the strangler’s eyes like grapes, and collapsing his throat like an empty tube of toilet paper.

Jason was orgasming, perhaps from the pleasure of turning the tables on the sonofabitch strangling him, and now the cult member was the one choking, gasping and hacking, but Jason’s grip was like an eagle’s talons, gripping, crushing, and tearing. His semen gushed out of him, which made him even more tired, but he had to finish. Jason’s fingers dug into the strangler’s eye sockets and twisted.

“He’s killing Mark!” someone at the foot of the bed shouted in a whisper.

“No names!” the woman hissed. “It doesn’t matter, we have what we came for. We’ll carry him out.”

The woman shook Jason’s fat tool, knocking it against the rim of the sperm-filled chalice to get the last drops.

“You bitch!” Jason cursed, or tried to, but the gag in his mouth resulted in a gurgling sound. He seized her wrist with his right hand. She’d come in here to kill him, and now she thought she was just going to walk out like visiting hours were ending?

The woman cried out in pain once Jason’s hand latched onto her wrist and exerted tremendous pressure, so much that she feared her bones might break. “Stop him!” she yelled, and in her panic lost the discipline to speak in a whisper.

She backed up, but Jason’s hand latched onto her arm. The sudden stop of her backward movement caused his semen to spill over the edge of the chalice and splash over the floor. The cult leader dug in her heels to try to haul herself out of Jason’s grasp, but only succeeded in dragging him out of his bed while other members of the cult punched or clawed at Jason.

Jason’s legs rolled off the bed and struck the floor, landing inertly, as though someone had dropped a sack of meat. He realized that he was the equivalent of a corpse from the waist down, so he felt no pain when his legs slapped the tile floor. The leader tried to push off with her heels again, but her shoes slipped on a puddle of his ejaculate, causing her feet to slide out from under her. The priestess, if that’s what she was, fell to the floor, and when her arm flailed, she threw the contents of the chalice over the wall.

Jason’s hand was ripped from the throat of the man who was strangling him earlier, but Jason made every effort to bring a piece of the bastard’s trachea with him, so the man could be heard coughing and retching as he writhed on the floor. Now Jason could bring up his free left hand to strip the cloth ligature from around his neck, but another cult members was riding his back, trying to grab the ends of the cloth to regain the stranglehold. The priestess dug with her fingernails into Jason’s hand, which had latched onto her wrist, but Jason wasn’t letting go.

It didn’t help at all that Jason didn’t have the use of his legs, so he couldn’t push off with his feet, or sprawl like a wrestler, or drive his hips into an opponent.

Jason heard the first sound, like a cantaloupe being struck with a tire iron. The retching and hacking of the strangler on the floor went quiet.

Someone cried out in fear, but the cry was cut abruptly short by an impact, a deep, dull sound of someone being clubbed. The women lying on his back and trying to claw at his eyes felt as though she were nodding yes on his back, when a resounding thwack, this one accompanied by the sound of bones snapping, struck her. She slumped and rolled off of his back.

There was now the matter of the priestess, whose eyes grew wide as she attempted to pedal backward. Jason’s right hand still latched onto her right wrist, and she removed her left hand, which had been trying to pry off Jason’s hand, to ward off the blow. A heavy spiked club smashed into her hand and blew through it, knocking it into her face. She screamed, and the spike embedded in her hand lifted it like a marionette when the attacker drew back his club. The final blow stuck her in the forehead, and she lay still. The club retreated, but the spike embedded in the priestess’ forehead pulled her head up with it. With a sudden wrench and a twist, the spiked club broke free.

Looking at the priestess, Jason now recognized her as the older, fat nurse with the thinning hair, and he thought that he never really liked her at all.

There were times when Jason questioned his grandfather’s video game design, and this was one of those times. Right about now, Pong seemed like a nice game to play, and what was wrong with Super Mario? Try as he might, Jason couldn’t remember a scene where Mario or Luigi got jerked off while being strangled to death by a cult of devil worshippers.

Jason rolled over onto his back, which was difficult because he didn’t have the use of his legs, and saw the killer silhouetted against the window. The man was dark, and Jason couldn’t figure out if he was African-American or if his face was painted black.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you; I’m here to protect you.”

The man’s voice sounded familiar, but Jason couldn’t place it. He was conscious of the fact that he was naked, which made him feel vulnerable.

The killer set down his spiked club, and knelt beside Jason, who involuntarily tried to back away. Nevertheless, the man scooped up Jason and stepped over a corpse as he headed to Jason’s bed, which now lay flat. The killer lay Jason down and handed him the sheet, then went back to retrieve his club from the floor. Jason reached up and tore the gag from his mouth, then threw the saliva-soaked rag onto the floor.

“Wait!” Jason said as the man started to leave. Only now did Jason notice that the window had been opened, and the cold December air streamed in. “Who are you?”

The killer turned and stood to face Jason. “I am the Angel of Death.”