Day 303: Blood Money

The Prompt: Continuing with the previous prompt, what happened to Delilah when she heard about Samson’s punishment and death? Judges 16.

Delilah had been drinking wine in the city with a man she had met earlier that day when she found out the news.

"Come on, Delilah, g-give us-s a kiss," he slurred as he pulled her chin to his face.

"Get off me."  She slapped him as she rose from his side and walked to where she heard the news.  "Repeat what you said, merchant," she commanded to a middle-aged man who had arrived an hour ago, "about that blind slave."

"Oh, Samson?" he asked, his breath making Delilah step back a pace.  "Like I said, the Philistines had chained him in the square, as a sort of trophy exhibition, and he called something out to his God about getting revenge on the Philistines.  He knew he would die with them when he pushed against those pillars.  Selfish suicide.  If you ask me, I don't think he could take the pain anymore and claimed he took his life as an 'act of God.'  They dug him out of the rubble later, all bruised and squished."

"Are they sure it was him?" her voice cracked.

"Saw the same scars on his arms and backs from the whippings of a slave.  Plus he had Israelite blood."

Delilah walked out the inn and into the dusty streets.  She wasn't sure where her feet took her.  Dead.  Samson, the strong, powerful Samson, was dead, and by his own hand.  She shook her head.

"Serves him right.  I told him he shouldn't have gotten himself involved with the Philistines."  It shocked her to think that she had barely thought of Samson after she betrayed him.  The hurt in his eyes and voice had stayed with her like a shoulder out of joint, but wine and new people had buried it deep in her mind.  "I didn't kill him," she tried to reassure herself as she heard the jingle of silver in her bag.  A few steps more, and she pulled a coin out.  She fingered its bumpy edges.

"Blood money," a voice whispered.  She heard Samson's screams of agony as the boulders crunched his bones, just as he had crunched the bones of his enemies with the donkey's bone. 

"I didn't kill him!" she screamed.  Tears flung from her eyes as she whipped the bag to the ground and ran down the path.