The Minotauress Edward Lee

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The Writer looked closer this time. "Given the obvious heroin needlemarks and the LOVE DEPOSIT tattoo, it's probably safe to say that she's not a church organist."

"But what the fuck happened to the dirty skank?" Cora queried.

Dicky was all too proud to explain. "A sorcerer sacker-ficed her to the Devil, so's he could open a doorway to places where demons hang out. That's where that black chick upstairs come from."

The Writer winced yet again. "Actually, Mr. Dicky, it's just superstitious nonsense of Crafter's. No demons really came through that door, no woman painted black. Like I postulated previously, we think we all saw something supernatural but in truth it was just an example of shared hallucinations."

Then, from upstairs:

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

Cora shrieked.

The Writer ground his teeth again.

Dicky pissed his pants and yelled, "Balls is plum shootin' someone!"

They could hear the mad footsteps thundering downward, then the fist banging on the door.

"Dickyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Open the fuckin' door!"

Dicky froze in place, but the Writer raced up the basement steps and opened the door to let a petrified Balls burst in and fall all the way down the stairs. In the second or two before the Writer reclosed the door, his eyes reached out unto the candle-lit sitting-room where he thought he saw a sleek shadow diced by snatches of white bare skin. He caught a half-glimpse of pre-eminent breasts, a half-glimpse of a flat female abdomen, and even a quarter-glimpse of a bald, plump, beauteous pubis with a seraphic pink twist of flesh peeking through the bifurcation.

And a one-eighth-glimpse of a Black Angus bull's head complete with horns.

The Writer slammed and barred the door just as the shadow would be at the threshold, and with the slam, he heard an animal-like howl...

The Writer trembled back down the steps and at once lit a cigarette.

Dicky was helping Balls up, the latter appearing just as shaken as the Writer.

"Balls!" Dicky exclaimed. "Who's were ya shootin' at?"

"I hit it, I know I hit it!" Balls yelled. "Couldn't'a missed in a million years, but then I seed the bullet-holes in the back wall... "

The Writer sat down and took a deep breath. "Mr. Balls. What exactly did you see upstairs?"

"Bet it was that weirdo chick painted black," Dicky said. "She come back, ain't she?"

Balls looked at his cohort with befuddlement. "Naw, Dicky. It was a white chick with a body that'd make the Pope kick out a stained-glass winder, and-and-and—"

"A bull's head?" the Writer asked.

"You saw it too?"

"Yes." The Writer spewed smoke. I'd sell my soul right now for just one drink. "A Minotaur, the offspring of Pasiphae."

"And you see the tits on that brick shit-house?"

Tits, the Writer thought obscurely. "I did, Mr. Balls. I actually saw a bull's head on a female body, so I guess that could only be a Minotauress." He shook his head, however, convinced of his resolve. "But just as before, I insist, it was not real—"

The inhuman howl resounded again from upstairs, shaking the house.

"Not real, huh? Then what the fuck was that? One'a yer fuckin' ‘lucina-shun-uns?"

"I contend it was exactly that. The duress we're all under, along with the macabre circumstances—" He gestured the sacrificed corpse. "It's all simply reinforcing the power of suggestion and creating a mode of multiple hallucinations."

"Aw fuck you'n yer bullshit, man!" Balls dismissed. "You're the asshole who says there ain't no Devil or demons and God's a bunch'a ‘rithmatic! Well, I'll tell you one thing, Writer. That thing upstairs shore as shit's a demon."

"If it were a demon, Mr. Balls, then why didn't it break the door down and come down here?"

"'Cos of the cross on the door, ya dick-head!" Balls answered without missing a beat.

The Writer could think of no argument. My existential actualization has now met its greatest challenge, he deemed. He thought of Sartre's protagonist in "The Wall," who faced a similar challenge by submitting to the firing squad...

"I'll prove Emmanuel Kant's theory that God is the only supernatural entity that can exist," and then the Writer got up and headed for the steps.

"Take the gun!" Balls implored. "Er—well, strike that. I shot the bitch point blank and the slugs went right through it."

"I won't need a gun, Mr. Balls, nor will I have any utility for any means of defense because I am certain that there is nothing upstairs I need to defend myself against. All that is upstairs is a figment of mind that can't hurt any of us."

Balls smirked a grin. "That big-tit bitch is gonna nail your college ass to the fuckin' wall with them horns. Don't be a moe-ron."

"Don't go! Don't go!" Cora shrieked.

The Writer winced, then mounted the steps.

Only faith can save me now, he thought and smiled.

He took the bar off the door and swung it boldly open. He stepped out, turned, then without hesitation strode into the sitting-room and its cloak of flickering candlelight.

The Minotauress stood in the opposite corner. Ropes of bull-snot flew when it jerked its great head toward him.

The Writer forced himself to stare, forced his gaze to slowly draw upward along the creature's provocative physique and then stop at the beastly, horned head.

"You are not the incarnation of demonic offspring," the Writer spoke right up to it. "You are nothing but the product of hallucination. I'm going to blink now, and when the blink is completed, you will be gone, because for that to not be the case is to reject all that I believe to be true. There is no power greater than the power of truth."

The Writer closed his eyes.

Sheer consternation followed: the hellish snorting, the ungodly mewls, and the blur of impossible mass rushing forward, perfect human breasts riding up and down as the animal-head lowered to advance its deadly horns. The Writer opened his eyes again, just as the thing slammed into him, causing the house to tremor. The horns just missed goring him, instead pinning him from either side under his arms. Plaster fell from the walls amid the impact, paintings popped off, and marble busts toppled. The Writer liberally urinated in his pants, and he couldn't be sure but it seemed the impossible bull-face was smiling at him.

Shouting, he shot his arms up, slipped out of the brace of horns, and ran blubbering back to the basement door. In the background he heard the Minotauress yank its horns from the wall, snort again, and tear after him, screaming.

The Writer leapt into the black stairwell and slammed the door behind him. All the hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the creature's bellow of objection.

Dejected even more than he was terrified, he came back down the steps.

Balls, Dicky, and Cora all looked at him.

"I guess... Emmanuel Kant was wrong," the Writer admitted. He slumped down in a chair. "And... I seem to have wet my pants."

"Don't feel bad," Balls laughed. "So did I."

"Me, too," Dicky admitted.

"What're we gonna do?" Cora squealed. "That thing ain't gonna let us get out'a here!"

"We-we can wait till Crafter gets back," Dicky stammered.

"You got pig turds fer brains," Balls remarked. "He ain't comin' back fer a week, and all he'd probably do is use us fer sacker-ficin'."

"But won't the thing upstairs kill him when he comes in the house?" Cora asked.

"More than likely not," the Writer said. "In demonic incarnation—which I suppose I believe in now—that which is summoned can not harm the summoner. The Minotauress born to such an incarnation: Pasiphae."

"Pasiphae," Balls muttered, searching for a chronology. "Crafter brought her here from Hell by killin' that fat chick on the door?"

"I have no choice at this point but to say yes," the Writer said.

"Then she fucked Dicky, dropped all that spooge'n slop on the floor, and that's what turned inta that bitch with the bull's head?"

"Yes."

"And it were a good nut, too," Dicky offered. "Dang good, it was."

"Shut up," Balls said. Now he was staring at the unfortunate dead woman. "And all this shit's hittin' the fan 'cos ‘fore Crafter left, he sacker-ficed that butt-ugly ‘ho on the door."

The Writer nodded, opening a hand to the implements on the table. "By using the ritual instructions found in these books and undertaking a particularized ritual invocation known as tephramancy."

"The fuck is that exactly?"

"He impaled her on the chosen door—the Traversion Bridle—removed her heart by means of those branch-cutters and surgical retractors, put the heart in that crucible, it would seem, and then reduced it to ash in the crematory. After that, he applied the ashes to the transom stones over the door and then... the Bridle was lowered and Pasiphae's domain in Hell was opened to this room long enough for her to emerge."

Dicky picked his nose. Cora sniffled. The Writer lit another cigarette and wished he could down a couple of pitchers real fast. But Balls set his chin atop the tips of his fingers, thinking...

"And the Writer here says that what a warlock brings through them doors his own self cain't hurt him... " Balls' eyes caught the Writer's.

"You're thinking that if we initiated our own invocation, we could use what we summoned to kill the Minotauress—"

"Yeah! And thens we can high-tail it out's this fuckin' place!" Balls rallied. "Why not! Crafter done it so's why cain't we?"

The Writer chuckled smoke. "Mr. Balls—the process would require one of us to be sacrificed."

Silence.

Very slowly, then, Balls and Dicky turned their gazes to Cora.

The Writer thought: Oh, dear...

Cora flailed against her bonds. "Why the fuck you rednecks lookin' at me?"

Balls shrugged. "Well, see, me'n Dicky still got a haul to make, and the Writer here, he's got the smarts, but you, Cora? You don't bring much to the table, in fact the way I see it, you're about as useful as a dick on a cow... "

"Let me go, you fucker!" she squealed.

POP!

Balls' fist made short work of Cora's protestations. She slumped over again, out cold.

"It's murder," the Writer reminded them. "It's a capital offense."

"Does it look like I care?" Balls retorted. "Shee-it. We'se'll just summon ourselfs our own demon, then we can get out'a here and still walk off with a shitload's Crafter's hair-looms."

"That's purdy dang good thankin', Balls," Dicky said.

The Writer struggled for any idea to thwart the plan. "Tephramancy requires human ashes; that's why Crafter has his own crematory. It probably won't even work with all the power shut off."

Dicky's minuscule intuition fired up. "But that thing runs on gas, don't it? We done seed all them propane tanks outside."

Balls stalked right up to the idle machine, pushed the ON button, and—

POOF!

—the pilot flared from the surge of propane.

"So much fer that, Writer!" Balls turned the knob to high. "Looks like we're ready to have ourselves our very own demoneric sacker-fice!"

And then the dirty-work began.

(IX)

The Writer felt ultimately responsible but then poor Cora didn't have much of a life to begin with. At least her travails and the pain of her addictions is at an end, he tried to rationalize.

Balls didn't need much instruction; he and Dicky, first, picked up Cora's unconscious form, and—

CRUNCH...

—impaled her throat on the iron spike of the last wooden door. Her junkie eyes sprang open; she flipped feebly on the spike, whose tip exited the hollow of her throat. Then she began to gargle foamy blood.

Balls looked to the first corpse, then to the Writer. "She gotta be nekit?"

Queasy, the Writer reeled at the gargling sound. "It doesn't say so specifically in these tomes but naked sacrifice victims do seem to support the time-held cliché. Nakedness begets lust, and lust offends God. By soliciting a demonic source, you pay tribute to it by offering a naked sacrifant."

Balls' Buck knife cut off Cora's tube-top. He frowned at the irregularly nippled breasts that were flat as proverbial beer coasters. "Shee-it. I seen bigger lumps in pancake batter. Hope her cooze looks a right better than them little skin-bags she's got fer tits."

"It don't," Dicky assured.

Balls hauled the cutoff shorts off her dirty legs and feet. "Oww! You gotta be shittin' me, man!" he howled in objection at the woman's groin. "Is that groaty or what? Her cunt looks like a fuckin' baby gorilla!"

Neither the Writer nor Dicky even looked this time. Balls' expression puckered as he grabbed the branch-cutters. "Any gal with a pussy that ugly deserves ta be sacker-ficed... ," and without delay he hooked the cutter's lower blade into her navel, pushed, and—

crack! crack! crack!

—began to clip a rive from her upper abdomen to her neck. Dark, disease-rife blood poured from the opening.

"Er, let's see now... Dicky, grab me that metal frame-lookin' thing off the other ‘ho—right, Writer?"

The Writer sighed in place. "Yes. It'll be necessary to widen the chest cavity enough to access her heart."

Balls figured it out by intuition. He sunk the retractor's prongs into the wound, then turned each of its two knobs. Each crank divided the severed ribcage in increments. Balls reached right in and manually spread the tainted, pink-black lungs, to reveal a quivering white sac.

"Wow, it's white. I'd always thunk hearts were red."

Dismally, the Writer informed, "The white mass is actually the pericardium which surrounds the heart. I'm afraid you'll have to cut both out."

The mass was still barely beating. Balls grabbed it and yanked, then with surprising finesse severed the aortic arch with the razor-sharp Buck knife.

After doing so, an inch-thick plume of blood vaulted out and hit Dicky right in the face.

"Dang, Balls! Aw, man!"

Balls chuckled. "Sorry, Dicky. Don't swaller none. Bet it's loaded with the AIDS and everthang."

Dicky spat, frantically flapping the blood off his face, while Balls twisted the sac and severed the pulmonary trunk, superior and inferior vena cava, and all the other meaty connections.

"Like cuttin' fuckin' steak." Eventually he unseated it all. Cora hung limp now, eyes still open in a look that seemed accusory, tongue sticking out. Never again would she have to suck dirty redneck penises for meth money. Her bladder voided like a pregnant woman breaking her water.

"Hope she don't shit, too," Dicky fretted.

"Naw. All she eats is fellas' cum. Bet she ain't taken a solid shit in five years. Cum don't turn to turds, I don't imagine."

The Writer blanched.

Balls turned with the severed heart in a red hand. "So's now I gotta... "

"Put it in the crucible, then put the crucible in the crematory," the Writer droned. "Use the tongs. It's probably close to 2000 degrees in there."

Balls followed the instructions, and opened the crematory hatch. Heat flooded the room at once. Balls' shadow moved meticulously on the wall when he placed the crucible inside, removed the tongs, and closed the hatch.

"There. Purdy dang easy, I gotta say." He wiped his hands off on Cora's tube top. Then he walked to the door on which Cora's regrettable corpse hung, and opened it.

All that filled the doorway were bricks.

"The hail? There's supposed ta be a demon in there now!"

"No, no, Mr. Balls," the Writer corrected. "In tephramancy, the heart must first be reverted to ash, then the ashes must be spread over the gems in the door. It'll take a while for that heart to burn down. Oh, and now that I think of it, it can't hurt for you to put on that surplice."

"Put on the what?"

"This here," Dicky said and grabbed the stone-studded smock. "It's like a magic jacket that warlocks gotta wear."

"Yeah?" Balls slipped it on. The hundreds of semi-precious stones glittered like a disco ball. "Cool! Look at me—I'se a genuine warlock!"

Dicky chuckled. "Look more like a Fire Island fag."

"Shut up!" Balls huffed, and again addressed the Writer. "Hadn't even thunk of it before, but just what kind'a demon are we summonin'?"

"The door you chose—according to this written index—supposedly opens to an accessway in Hell that is in proximity to the domain of the Spermotagoyle."

Balls shot his now familiar funky look. "Say again?"

The Writer held out his hands. "That's what it says in the book and on that brass plate. I have no idea what it is," and after he'd responded he had to wonder.

Would anything really come through that door?

No, he felt certain. Even after everything I've witnessed tonight... I simply can't believe it.

"Did'ju say sperm? Like man-batter, petersnot, dick-loogie?"

"Spermatogoyle," the Writer repeated. "I can only presume it's some sort of fertility demon."

"Well, will it be tough enough ta whup that bitch upstairs with the bull's head?"

"All we can do is hope so... "

Balls stroked his goatee in further contemplation. "And, hail, should we be reading some kinda incanter-ray-shun or some shit?"

Another dejected sigh. "I'm a speculative novelist, not a sorcerer. I don't know. It does support the folklore: prayers, intercessions, hymns of praise to the Devil. It's been recorded that vocal incantations often accompany such rites, but... there are no such prerequisites mentioned in any of Crafter's notes or sources."

"Guess we just sit tight, and wait," but, lo, Balls pronounced the word tight as "tat" The heat in the room grew, which only worsened the death-stench from the first corpse. The three of them sat around sweating, fidgeting, tapping their feet. None of them said anything on occasions when the Minotauress bellowed or snorted upstairs. Every so often a crash could be heard when it knocked something over. Its footfalls paced back and forth along the hall by the basement door.

It's waiting for us to make a move, the Writer presumed.

An hour later, Balls checked the crucible. "Looks like ash ta me!"

"Now carefully pour the ashes on that sheet of slate," the Writer advised. "You'll have to let them cool before you can proceed with the rest."

Balls shot the cuffs of his sorcerer's surplice, and did as he was told. He gently fanned the ashes with one of the books, then said, "Dicky, put'cher hand in them ashes ta see if they'se cool."

"Kiss my ass, Balls!"

Balls chuckled. "Ya know? I kind'a dig this warlock shit. Might even take it up as a hobby."

"In another time," the Writer informed, "you would be burned alive or disemboweled for saying such a thing. Black magic was considered the worst crime a person could commit. Worse than murder, worse than rape and child molestation."

"Yeah? Well I done all's that without no problem. Why not this, too?"

"Aw, Balls," Dicky pointed out. "You should stick ta runnin' ‘shine. If ya wanna be a full-time warlock, ya gots to wear that magic jacket a lot. Folks'll think ya turned inta Liberace."

"Oh... Yeah... "

Eventually, the ashes had cooled to the touch. "All's right, Writer. Now all I gotta do is spread these here ashes over the door?"

"Over the keystone in the archway."

"With my blammed hand?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Balls grabbed a fistful of the ash, then spread it across the jeweled keystone above Cora's very dead head.

"What now?"

The Writer shrugged. "Open the door."

"Here goes... " Balls took hold of the door's iron latch. He thumbed down the release, paused, took a deep breath...

Dicky shivered, but the Writer only looked on in the certainty that nothing but bricks would be found behind the door.

Balls' thumb slowly lowered, raising the latch, and—

—the rickety door swung open on its own.

Down went the Writer's jaw. The brick wall behind the door no longer existed, but in its place stood a black gulf. Greenish-gray fog slowly eddied into the room along with still more humid heat. Sounds could be heard as if at a great distance: wind, the mad clatter of metal, and layered screams. The Writer, Balls, and Dicky sat or stood frozen in shock.

And another noise—much closer—could be heard coming from the arcane passageway.

Footsteps? the Writer wondered.

A series of wet, slapping thuds. Balls stood closest to the open Bridle. His eyes widened as they detected the approach of something, and he slowly stepped back, aghast.

"You guys ain't gonna believe what's walkin' out'a there... "

A queerly shaped shadow crossed the floor as the arranged mass of muscular flesh stepped into the room. It possessed bare arms and legs that could be described as humanish rather than human: stout, corded but with more girth, more muscle than a human being could have. Hands large as dinner plates, hairy knuckled, and splayed bare feet that were large and thick, which the Writer could only think of as like that of an ogre. The arms were connected directly atop the legs, and it was from this fleshy apex that the creature's "body" sprouted. Not a trunk, thorax, or anything that could be called a mid-section. The thing's body, instead, was a yard-long, eight-inch-thick human penile erection.

"That's the demon?" Dicky stammered, unbelieving.

Balls seemed more angry now than shocked. "A demon's supposed to have horns and a pointed tail'n shit—that ain't no demon. It's a giant dick!"

Indeed, an enormous erection with arms and legs but also... a face.

Long slit-like eyes blinked at them: red irises and white pupils, and below them protruded a great pug noise the size of a pine cone. No mouth could be detected, but now it must be said where this face was located: at the top of a dangling scrotum as big as a grocery bag, which encapsulated two melon-sized testicles. The great crinkled sack of scrotal flesh was rife with long wiry black hairs.

Balls sat down, irate. "That's the damn stupidest-lookin' thing I ever seen!"

"It ain't nothin' but a big dick," Dicky offered.

"Dang straight, and we'se shore as shit gonna need somethin' more than a big dick to kill that thing upstairs."

So this, the Writer thought, is a Spermatogoyle. "You may be right, but we've got no choice but to try."

By now, the Bridle had raised again; only bricks filled the egress. Meanwhile, the Spermatogoyle glanced around as if curious, or even surprised by the three men staring back at it.

The Writer ventured, "Perhaps we're as ridiculous-looking to it as it is to us."

"Shee-it," Balls sputtered.

The stout legs hunkered up and down as the creature plodded about the room. It seemed to glance at the books on the table, then turned toward Balls in his glittering smock.

The Spermatogoyle bowed.

"It's paying you reverence," the Writer told him. "It's thanking you for bringing it out of its domain in Hell."

Balls stared, appalled. "Well yer fuckin' welcome, ya big dick... "

Morbid curiosity forced the Writer to take a closer look at the heinous entity. The great column of penile meat was beating, and beneath the flag-sized swath of flesh that covered the erection, veins fat as garden hose throbbed. The hood of the foreskin hung limp over the tip, but then the brawny hands reached up and pulled it back over a corona like the top of a bald man's head... but with a hole in it that more resembled the deep doughy navel of the dead prostitute on the first door. Stranger still, the thing seemed to be displaying the ghastly glans to Balls in particular. And then—

"Aw, man!" Balls complained.

The beastly hands lowered down the fat shaft and began to stroke up and down...

"It's jerkin' itself off!" Dicky marveled.

The Writer lit another cigarette and sighed.

As the stroking continued, the scrotum began to tighten and the infernally large testes drew up. The ponderous legs flexed as the hands quickened their pace, and in a few more moments the creature was actually thumping up and down on its callused heels, in apparent excitement.

When the action of the hands reached a fever-pitch, the creature tipped its entire penile body toward the floor and—

"Aw, good Gawd!" Balls exclaimed.

The opening in the glans widened like an empty eye socket, and out poured a dozen gushes of thick, globular sperm. When the climax had concluded a virtual five-pound pile of the stuff lay on the floor.

"That's just fuckin' great," Balls muttered.

The thing regained its composure, stepped back, and bowed once more, to Balls.

"Act ingratiated," the Writer suggested.

"Huh?"

"Say thank you. In its act of masturbation, it's paying homage to you. It's offering you a gift, Mr. Balls. The gift of its infernal seed."

Balls looked cockeyed at the Writer. "You're tellin' me to thank a giant dick fer comin' on the floor?"

"It would be a good idea. It needs to know that it's pleased its master—you. Then it will serve you more effectively."

Balls turned a smirking gaze to the Spermatogoyle. "Thanks fer the pile'a cum... "

The beast nodded.

"And though it may not look formidable against an incarnation such as the Minotauress," the Writer surmised further, "we may be surprised. We have no idea to the extent of its powers, and it will obey your every command."

"Yeah? Hmm... " Balls looked right in the thing's scarlet eyes. "Uh, see, what I'd like fer ya to do is sort'a... show us what'cha kin do. Give us like a demonstration of some'a yer demon powers."

The creature tensed its muscular arms and legs and then reached down and scooped up a handful of the voided semen.

The matter looked similar to human sperm but was much thicker, akin to frog eggs. It plodded over to the first door where the pudgy prostitute hung in mid-stages of decomposition. The Spermatogoyle rubbed the handful of sperm up between the dead woman's legs.

"Aw, gross," Dicky said.

"It's rubbin' its cum in the dead chick's snatch!" Balls protested. "What kind'a fuckin' demon power is that?"

"Be patient," the Writer observed.

Now, with a fingertip, the Spermatogoyle wrote an invisible word on the dead woman's stomach, as if finger-painting, but with semen instead of paint.

"A cabalistic inscription, no doubt," the Writer supposed.

Then the creature stepped back..and watched.

The dead girl's stretchmark-streaked belly began to inflate.

"It knocked her up!" Dicky railed.

The belly continued to distend, the LOVE DEPOSIT tattoo growing until it was warped. When the stomach looked fit to burst—

SPLAT!

—an evil-smelling liquid spilled out, then—

plop...

The stomach deflated, after squeezing something irregular and brown onto the floor, maybe nine inches long and six in girth.

"It made her have a baby!" Dicky cried.

Then they all did a double-take. "That ain't no baby," Balls noted. "Looks like a giant lump'a shit... "

The Writer summoned his bravado. He picked up the odd brown lump, wiped off some post-natal slime. "No—" and then he pulled the object apart with his hands. He showed it to everyone.

"I thought so. It's a loaf of pumpernickel."

Dicky gawped.

"A fuckin' loaf'a bread?" Balls questioned. "I'se supposed ta be impressed by that? Shee-it! That ain't no power. I wanna see some real magic."

The Spermatogoyle seemed to sense its master's displeasure. It slopped another handful of sperm up betwixt the dead woman's legs, fingered another word on her belly, and—

"Plum knocked the bitch up again!" Dicky exclaimed.

The previous process repeated: the belly swelled, and—

CLUNK!

Something much more substantial hit the floor this time: a severed human head.

"How's that for magic?" the Writer asked.

Dicky gulped. "A dude's head... "

This time Balls appeared rattled. He nudged the head with his boot, turned it face up. The head's eyes looked propped open in rage, and its lips moved, agitated.

"That ain't just any dude's head," Balls admitted in a low drone. "That's my dead Daddy's head... "

A hush filled the room.

"It's alive," Dicky whispered. "It's tryin' ta talk, but ain't no words comin' out."

"No vocal cords," the Writer assumed.

"Never did like the prick." Balls picked the head up by slimy hair. "Spent my whole childhood listenin' to him call me asshole'n shit-head'n white trash... " He opened the crematory hatch. The head's lips silently shouted, Asshole! Shit-head! White trash! and then Balls lobbed it in and reclosed the hatch. "Fuck him."

"That were amazin'!" Dicky applauded. "But look... "

"Our denizen doesn't appear to be finished with its magic show," the Writer noted.

The Spermatogoyle held up a stout finger to flag Balls' attention, then it scooped more sperm off the floor, two handfuls this time.

"What's it doin' now?" Balls asked.

"Continuing the demonstration you demanded," the Writer assumed.

The beast hunkered over now to where Cora's corpse hung. A slick wet sound clicked in all their ears as the thing spread the demonic sperm all over Cora's dead body until she shined as if shellacked. Again it inscribed some invisible occult word, but this time on her forehead.

And then—

Cora's eyes fluttered, and she began to move...

"I'se don't believe it!" Dicky posed. "It's magic dick-loogie!"

"Dang thing's spunk done brought Cora back ta life!" Balls yelled.

Cora's skinny arms raised like a sleepwalker's, and she began to squirm lethargically on the spike through her throat.

Her lips moved feebly. "I... I... " Finally the ruined voice croaked, "I need some fuckin' meth... "

"Well... shee-it," Balls remarked.

The Writer was dumbfounded by what he knew his own eyes had just seen. "That's some serious sorcerial science, gentlemen. You're not impressed?"

"Yeah," Balls reluctantly agreed. "I guess any demon who can do all'a that must know his business."

"I'd say that our erect friend is quite the metaphysician," the Writer complimented. "But now... I think it's time to unleash it upon the Minotauress."

The ceiling shook as the Minotauress howled upstairs.

"So far the Writer's been right 'bout everythang," Dicky observed.

Balls nodded snidely. "And he better be right 'bout this... 'cos if he ain't, he'll be the next one who gets sacker-ficed."

The Writer gulped.

Balls stepped right up to the Spermatogoyle. "What I want'cha ta do is git on upstairs and take care'a the Minner-tortise—"

"Minotauress," the Writer corrected.

"Whatever. You think ya kin handle it, Mr. Dick-Monster?"

The Spermatogoyle bowed in obedience one more time, then turned and thunked up the steps.

The Writer, Balls, and Dicky all looked uneasily at one another, but it was the Writer who broke the silence:

"Gentlemen? I don't think this is something we can miss."

The Writer went up the brick steps, right behind the Spermatogoyle. Balls and Dicky paused, then followed.

They could hear the vicious snorting through the door. The Writer had the impression that the Minotauress knew an adversary was in its midst. I'm following... a giant penis up the stairs, he thought. Hemingway himself couldn't have asked for more adventure.

The Spermatogoyle opened the door with no reluctance and plodded right out into the hall on its big, splayed feet.

The candlelight moved like a luminous veil over the walls. Much of the first floor was a shambles now, the Minotauress having had a heyday of vandalism. The voluptuous-bodied demon stood in the background, its perfect breasts heaving, the eyes in its bovine head strained open in what the Writer thought could only be fear. With horns like that, he wondered, why would this thing be afraid of a ridiculous giant penis on two legs?

Once again, the Spermatogoyle began to masturbate, brawny hands stroking its elephantine body...

The Minotauress bellowed, snot flying, then turned and fled down another hall. The Spermatogoyle thunked after it.

"What's it gonna do?" Dicky asked. "Looks likes its jerkin' off again."

"Maybe it's fixin' ta dick-spank her," Balls ventured.

Thrashing and more bellows could be heard in the rear hall. When they looked down, the Writer was amazed to witness the Minotauress cowering terrified in the corner. The Spermatogoyle's hands stroked its body more frenetically now, hose-like veins tensing.

"I believe we're about to witness an anointment the likes of which have yet to be espied on God's green earth," the Writer said.

What followed next had little to do with the earth or God. The penile demon shuddered, veins standing out beneath its sheath of flesh, and then its second inhuman ejaculation transpired. This time the puckered hole atop its glans seemed to vomit another massive pile of sperm. The first gout splattered the Minotuaress' head, while subsequent gouts ran over the impeccable physique until it was cocooned in the thick, semi-translucent slop.

The house shook as the Minotauress, teary-eyed now, gave up one last, pitiable howl and then fell limp to a bout of harmless shivering, as the Spermatogoyle finger-wrote another supernaturally charged word on her belly...

"Dang!" Dicky exclaimed.

"That's what I'se call hosin' a bitch down hard," Balls added. Their flashlights beamed on the quivering, sperm-cloaked form. "Is it dead?"

"No," the Writer ventured. "The potent brew of supernatural sperm seems to have subdued the Minotauress to a comatose state. I can only presume that the word our ally wrote on her abdomen triggered some sort of paresis spell."

The Spermatogoyle stepped back as if winded, then bowed to Balls in veneration. The bastard daughter of Pasiphae had been rendered innocuous.

The Writer seized the moment for a metaphysical summation. "The ultimate allegorical showdown between male and female: virility versus fertility. As in quality speculative fiction, the themes become tangible living things. It's clear that in the realm of the occult, abstractions such as symbolism are as concrete and objective as the physical in our realm. Notions are represented by sentient entities."

"That's the reason the big dick's cum took the wind out'a the bitch's sails?" Dicky asked, confused.

"No doubt, Mr. Dicky. The symbol of masculinity reigns supreme."

Balls shot the Writer a funky look. "That's the dumbest-ass thing I ever heard!"

The Writer lit a cigarette and shrugged. Sounded good to me...

Balls opened the front door. "You done great," he said to the ludicrous bipedal sex organ. "Go have yerself a run around the yard. You deserve it."

Enthused, the Spermatagoyle leapt through the doorway to revel in the twilit night.

"What now, Balls?" Dicky asked.

"Finish loadin' Crafter's shit in the U-Haul and split, I reckon."

"What a night of great adventure," the Writer commented. "And now, it would seem, great profit for you gentlemen."

But Balls seemed seized by a contemplation. He scratched his goatee, looking down at the incapacitated Minotauress. "Shee-it, guys... "

"A conjecture, Mr. Balls?"

"Dicky! Go out ta the car'n fetch some'a them Flex-Cuffs you gots from yer uncle."

"What'cha need them fer?"

"Just git 'em... "

Dicky lumbered out the door and returned momentarily with said Flex-Cuffs.

Now Balls walked eagerly about the candle-lit room, rubbing his hands. "Ya know what's worth more than all the ‘spensive shit in this house, Dicky?"

"What, Balls?"

"That," and Balls pointed down to the afflicted Minotauress. He quickly Flex-Cuffed the creature's ankles and wrists. "We'se gonna be millionaires!"

"Yeah?"

"Shee-it, Dicky! Use yer noggin! We'se gonna sell this big-tit bitch to a circus or zoo or somethin', make a fortune!"

"Quite an industrious endeavor," the Writer said. "Or perhaps start your own exhibition, traveling from city to city to sell tickets to the public. I suspect people would pay handsomely to see such a spectacle."

"Hail yeah!" Balls whooped. "And ya knows what, Writer? We ain't even gonna kill you now! Dicky and me? We're gonna make you a partner!"

"My gratitude knows no constraint," the Writer said.

"Come on, boys! Lets get this bull-headed ‘ho loaded!"

The three of them pitched in to carry the spermatically enslimed Minotauress outside to the U-Haul. Balls secured the latch, and the sound of the door closing echoed through the night. The Writer glanced errantly into the back property and saw the Spermatogoyle chasing squirrels amongst the gravestones.

"Time ta blow this pop-stand!" Balls celebrated.

Dicky got behind the wheel while the Writer squeezed in next to Balls. The big engine revved, fracturing the night's stillness; then Dicky put the Hurst in first and drove out the front gate.

The car passed fine but as soon as its back bumper cleared the entrance—

"The hail?" Dicky remarked.

The El Camino stopped short as if it had run into a wall.

Balls glared. "Don't tell me you just dumped yer brand-new trannie ‘fore we'se can even get out'a here!"

Dicky tried to continue forward but the hot-rod only spun its wheels.

"I know what the problem is," the Writer volunteered. "The salt."

"The what?" Balls questioned.

"What we observed previously. The property is completely surrounded by a line of hexed salt, what an occultist would refer to as a warding barrier or a totemic boundary. Presumably anything hellborn can't cross it. That's why the car stopped. The salt functions as a force field, so to speak. Once it detected the presence of the Minotauress in back, the field activated, causing the creature's mass to be repulsed."

"Well what the hail we gonna do now?" Balls complained.

"Mr. Dicky? Back the car up, please. I'll be right back." The Writer disembarked, and when the vehicle had backed up past the salt-line, he got down on his knees and pushed the salt back with his hands. "Try driving through now," he called out.

The car rumbled past the gate, encountering no preternatural resistance. The Writer quickly redistributed the salt back across the entrance and hopped back in the car.

"I think that should do it," the Writer announced.

Dicky paused before pulling off. "Hey, wait a minute... What about the dick-demon?"

They all looked over their shoulders and saw the Spermatogoyle continuing its romp through the graveyard. It was masturbating itself once again.

"Dang. How many times can that thing beat off?" Dicky posed.

Balls' arched a brow. "Wants ta bust another pile'a demon jizz, looks like."

Intrigued, the Writer watched. Dicky asked, "Think we ought'a take it with us? That way we'd have two demons in our road show."

Balls seemed to mull the prospect over. "Naw, leave that ‘un be. I've had me about enough'a that wacky peter."

"Shore," Dicky agreed. "But I wouldn't mind seein' the look on Crafter's face when he comes home."

Balls chuckled. "Yeah. The old geezer's gonna pull up to find a big dick runnin' ‘round his yard."

Dicky laughed and pulled off. The Writer continued to watch out the back window as they cruised down the lane. Now the Spermatogoyle was heaping still more sperm, this time onto one of the unconsecrated graves. Would the infernal seed seep down through the soil to resurrect the cursed corpse beneath?

The Writer preferred not to speculate.

««—»»

The car sped around winding, tree-lined roads, cruising through the dim night. They were on their way back to Luntville. But what would happen now?

"How ‘zactly do we go inta the freakshow business?" Dicky raised the issue.

"Dang, Dicky. I don't know." Balls looked to the Writer. "You's the one with all the brains. Thank'a somethin'."

"Oh, I'm confident that with a solid business plan, we'll be making money in no time. Just let me do a little marketing research, find some carnival schedules, etcetera."

"Et what?"

The Writer smiled. "Leave it to me."

Of course the Writer had no true intention of going into the freakshow business. I'm a novelist, not a carnival barker. He'd simply go along with the plan until he could escape these two dimwits and get back to his work in progress. Yes, he thought with an unsurpassed creative elation. White Trash Gothic...

Next, Dicky scratched his head in another contemplation. "I was just thankin'. What we gonna do if that dick-demon's cum... you know... wears off, and maybe that special word it wrote on the bull-gal's belly loses its kick?"

The Paresis Spell, the Writer mused. And it was a good question. How long would it keep the Minotauress subdued? "I can't say with any authority, but you men did seem to secure her sufficiently. Plus, I'd imagine the latch and hinges on the U-Haul are quite sturdy."

"Aw, shee-it," Balls dismissed. "You boy's are worryin' like a couple'a chicks. Dicky, them Flex-Cuffs are as good as steel cable. Even if the big dick's mumbo-jumbo does wear off, ain't no way that bitch'll snap those cuffs."

Dicky seemed pacified by the response, but then his face turned concerned in the dim dashboard light. "Dang. We ain't doin' squat less'n we get some gas, and I'se mean like right now."

Balls glanced down. "What'cha got fer a brain, Dicky? The tank's on E!"

"Yeah, sorry. I were so excited 'bout knocking over Crafter's place, I didn't check it."

"Man, you're about as smart as the loaf'a pumpernickel that dead ‘ho popped out her pussy! We ain't even halfway back to town yet!"

"Relax, gentlemen," the Writer cut in. "There's a filling station right there."

CRICK CITY EXXON, the glowing sign read. OPEN 24 HOURS!

Dicky pulled in. "Fuck, I left our cut from Clyde Nale's run at the house. You got any dough?"

Balls fished in his jeans' pocket. "Dang. I got's nothin' neither." He nudged the Writer. "Don't tell me you're broke too."

The Writer checked his pockets and ankle belt. "I'm afraid I spent the last of my cash at the bar—"

"Fuck!"

"But take heart, gentlemen. I do have my credit card."

"Come on, let's go—"

"Hey, git me a bag'a Funyuns while's yer in there," Dicky called after them. "And a Mr. Pibb, but not that diet stuff."

Dicky, lo and behold, had pronounced the word diet as "dat."

Balls and the Writer approached the pump, but a sign told them: PAY INSIDE AFTER 10 P.M. A bell rang when they entered the brightly lit mini-mart. Balls parted at once to pull several bags of Funyuns off the shelf, and get drinks. The Writer's eyes slid across a magazine rack comprised mostly by x-rated fare, with names like Poppin' Mammas! and Gobblin' Grannies! and Tinkle Drinkers! Next, he noticed a revolving rack of used paperbacks and he perused the titles, hoping for a gem. Satan's Lovechild, Nazi Nuns in Heat, Lusty Lesbo Love Party. The Writer nearly shrieked when he saw one of his own books, The Red Confession, next to a book entitled, Farm Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

He looked over his shoulder, then quickly placed his book on the top of the rack.

"Can I help you?" asked a drab, pimply faced young man behind the bulletproof cubby.

"Yes, please. We'd like to fill it on Pump 1," and then passed his credit card through the slot. "And, also, my friend's getting some snacks."

The boy ran the card through the machine, then passed it back.

"You can start pumping now."

"Thank you."

The Writer went back outside into the humid night, reflecting all that he'd experienced. He fumbled with the pump, not well-versed in such procedures, put the nozzle in the hole, then squeezed, but nothing happened. Am I doing something wrong here? he wondered. When he looked back up at the pump, the tiny screen read: SEE CASHIER.

The Writer walked back inside. Balls stood at the magazine rack, thumbing through a glossy publication with the odd title, Crazy For Crackers!

"Hey, Writer? You like graham crackers?"

The Writer stalled. "Why, yes, I supposed so... though it's been some time since I've had any. Why do you ask?"

"Check it out," and then Balls showed him a page in the magazine. A naked woman grinned over her shoulder as her hands reached back to spread her superior buttocks. She was expertly expelling a long dribble of semen from her anus, under which another naked woman held a graham cracker.

"Bet'cha wouldn't eat that graham cracker, huh?" Balls chuckled.

The Writer's face ballooned in disgust; he rushed back to the cashier and told Pimple Face, "I seem to be having some trouble with the pump."

"Oh, yeah. The credit card machine's down... "

Balls sneered over. "Come on, hoss! Git'cher shit together. We'se in a hurry."

"Don't worry, it happens all the time. Just wait a few minutes and then try the pump again."

Technology, the Writer thought and went back outside. He waited, leaning against the car and staring at the U-Haul in tow. No one would ever believe what's inside there...

Had he been more observant, he would've noticed the lit sign just a block down the road, CRICK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, but there was also something else he was unaware of:

He'd given the pimply faced guy a credit card bearing the name Reginald Hildreth, which was not the Writer's name.

Balls walked outside, smirking.

"That thing workin' yet?"

The Writer squeezed the pump handle again. Nothing happened. "Not yet, but I'm sure it will be shortly...

(X)

There's got to be more to police work than this, Sergeant Stu Cummings thought and audibly groaned. The midnight shift in THIS hick town?

"What'choo moanin' and groanin' about, Stu?" Courtney asked. "You do that a lot, ya know."

"Tell me about it."

Courtney was the Crick City Police Department's night dispatcher. She was also—if the rumors were genuine—the chief's secret paramour on occasion. Her face beamed like a beautiful beacon, in spite of the 200-pound body and 5'4" frame. She'd made a play for Stu himself once or twice, but...

I didn't leave the city for that shit, he thought. It was all the same everywhere, he supposed. His idealism hadn't worn off yet. "Courtney, I've been here two years and I still haven't solved a crime more major than a domestic dispute or drunk driving. I'm turning to porridge in this town."

"Well, you could'a been a cop in the Big Apple but then... you'd probably be dead by now. That or on the take."

Not me, he thought. "I just want some real police work, you know? This redneck stuff is boring me shitless."

"Watch that, cutie. Rednecks got their good points too," and then she grinned rather salaciously and winked. "End of our shift, you'n me, why we'se could grab a bottle'a shine, check in ta the no-tell motel'n have ourselfs a fine ole time... real redneck style."

Stu just laughed and shook his head.

He looked around the drab booking room, eyed the wall calendar, and then the clock. It was past two in the morning. Six more hours of sitting around, came the grim realization. I just want to make a difference, but that's not ever going to happen here, not in this hayseed burg... Then, without thinking, he reached under his desk and knocked on wood.

"You do that a lot, too. Bet'cha don't even realize it."

"What—oh, knocking on wood?"

"Yeah. I'se know what'cher knockin' for, and don't worry, I didn't tell the chief you up'n applied to another department. Ain't heard back yet?"

Stu shook his head. Two months ago he'd submitted an application for transfer, to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. He'd go from this boring Gomer-Pyle duty to busting gun-runners and pulling stings on radical militia groups. That's real police work...

"Nope," he finally answered. "And you know what bites me in the ass hardest? I aced the exam, then they called me in for three interviews and they all went great. The recruitment officer told me there was a ninety-percent chance I'd get hired. The only hold up was federal quotas or some shit like that. Said I'd know in two weeks if I was in."

Courtney flipped a page of some soap opera magazine. "When was that?"

Stu sighed. "A damn month ago."

"Hate to tell ya this, Stu, but most'a those ATF guys? Mostly all they do is bust stills and chase ‘shine runners."

"Sure, Courtney, but half of those guys transporting illegal liquor also transport drugs. I'm dying to bust drug dealers. And if you do a good job, they promote you to the even more important duty, like investigating skinhead militias and dropping the boom on gun-runners that supply arms to terrorists."

Courtney smiled the way a mother might at a naive child. "You're such a boy scout, Stu, and that's a good thing. But I also hate to tell ya that a lot'a them ATF guys are on the take."

Stu's face hardened on her. "I will never go on the take, Courtney. Never."

Courtney decided not to push it. "Well, at least yer on the list, sweetie. You'll get hired eventually."

"God, I hope so."

She giggled. "‘Course, when that happens, you'll break the hearts'a ever gal in Crick City... mine included."

Stu smiled. "Believe me, Courtney," he lied. "If I wasn't dating Kathy, I'd be all over you like a cheap suit."

"Don't tease me like that, City Boy!" she laughed.

He struggled to change the subject. "Hey, day-shift said the chief was all pissed off about something today."

"Oh, yeah, his dang tickets. He thinks someone stole 'em."

Stu lit a Blue Devil cigarette, then kicked his feet up on the desk. "Tickets?"

"The Annual Big Stone Gap Testicle Festival—"

"What?" Stu gaped.

"They'se real hard ta get, but the chief pulled some strings and got on the invite list—"

"Courtney! What the hell is a testicle festival?"

"Oh, a'course, you're from the city. Ever heard'a Smoky Mountain Oysters?"

Stu winced at once. "Oh, shit, you mean like fried goat balls?"

"Yeah. Only these are bull balls, and they'se dang good, too, I've had 'em a bunch'a times. They dip 'em in corn batter and deep-fry 'em in a big kettle. Taste sort'a like meatballs only a little crunchy."

"Jesus," Stu muttered at the thought.

"Anyway, ever two years they have this big whupdeedo in the fairgrounds near the Gap. It's a privilege ta be on the guest list 'cos five thousand people show up."

Stu blanched. "That's a lot of bull balls."

Courtney giggled. "Yeah, I guess it is. Tickets are, like forty bucks, but the county exec gets ten free ones and invites a few folks. That's why the chief's so bent out'a shape. He's all set ta hob-knob at the festival with the county exec and his cronies."

Stu didn't get it. "If he got invited, what's he pissed off about?"

"'Cos he ain't got his tickets yet. He thinks someone stolt 'em out the mailbox."

"For God's sake," Stu sputtered. "See what I mean, Courtney? We got a world full of drug dealers, rapists, child molesters, and murderers, and all our chief cares about are his tickets to a bull-ball party so he can be seen rubbing elbows with a bunch of redneck politicians. Jesus... "

Courtney closed her magazine and got up. "Come to think of it, I plum fergot ta bring in the mail today. Maybe his tickets come in," and then she waddled out the station door.

Stu rubbed his face, depressed. I should've just joined the Army...

When the phone rang, he picked it up before the end of the first ring. A call! Finally! Please, be something hot...

"Sergeant Cummings, Crick City Police," he answered.

"Hey, Stu?" came a guarded male tone. "This is Corky, over at the Exxon."

Shit! A robbery! He stood right up, reaching for his keys. "Someone sticking the place up?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I just got this guy here trying to fill up, but when I ran his credit card, they said it's been reported as lost or stolen... "

Stu exhaled dismally. Shit. That's all? "Did he run off with the card?"

"No, no, that's just it. I jived him about the machine being slow... "

"Good thinking, Corky. Keep stalling the guy and I'll be right there."

Stu hung up and jogged outside for the town cruiser. Courtney's large breasts joggled in her bra as she walked back up toward the station.

"You get a call, Stu?"

"Yeah," he said getting into the car. "Might be a stolen credit card beef up at the Exxon. I'll be back in a few."

"Be careful!"

Stu drove off. He lead-footed it down the street, headlights out, and squealed Adam-12 style into the gas station. God, that was fun...

Parked at the pump was a close-to-mint ‘69 El Camino with a U-Haul hooked up to it. Damn nice car, Stu couldn't help but think. When his cruiser had fishtailed into the lot, two guys leaning against the car looked over in dismay.

Stu got out and hit the thumb-snap on his holster. You never know...

A geeky looking guy in a white button-down shirt and glasses stood next to another guy with long hair, a John Deere hat, a redneck goatee, jeans, and shit-kicker boots. What's wrong with this picture? Stu thought. The two were an odd couple, indeed.

Stu's steel-toed police shoes snapped on the pavement as he approached.

"Good evening, Officer," greeted the guy in the white shirt. "Is something amiss?"

"Amiss?" Stu spoke with authority. "You tell me." He gave them both the dead-eye. "Both of you. Keep your hands in plain view, and don't make any sudden movements." He shot a harder eye to the Long-Hair. "Tell your buddy to get out of the car. Slow."

He looks like a convict, was Stu's first impression. Nevertheless, Long-Hair did as he was told, stiff-upper-lipped. No, no, I definitely don't like this guy's face...

A dopey, fat ‘neck with a buzzcut got out and stood with his cohorts. "Huh-huh-howdy, sir. We-we-we ain't done nothin' wrong."

Stu let them see his hand on his holster. "This your car?"

"Yes, sir, it shore is."

"What's gonna happen one minute from now when I run the plates?"

"Nothin', sir. I gots my insurance'n registration right here... "

Stu studied the three of them. "Which one of you used the stolen credit card?"

Oddly, the two rednecks both looked to White Shirt.

"Stolen?" White Shirt whispered.

"Make it quick, guys. If I hear one word that sounds like bullshit... I'm busting all three of you."

Silence.

"Sir, there's been mistake," White Shirt stepped up. "I used the credit card." Next, he looked at it with a puzzled expression. Then he sighed. "And you know what? This one's not mine. I know what happened, Officer. About a month ago, I found a man's wallet in the parking lot of the Qwik-Mart in Luntville, and I returned it to him immediately. It was a man in a Rolls Royce, and he even gave me a $100 bill as a reward for returning the wallet. But after he drove away, I discovered that one of his cards had fallen out of it... "

"And you've been using it ever since," Stu said.

"Oh, no, that's not the case at all, sir. I had every intention of calling the credit card company the next day to report it misplaced but I simply forgot."

Stu tapped his foot. "And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"I assure you, sir. I'm not prevaricating in the least."

"Prevaricating, huh?" This was starting to stink. Stu glared at Long-Hair and Fattie. "You two guys looks like townies—" Then he glared at White Shirt. "—and you look like a librarian. Something's not right here. You three guys know each other?"

"Actually, no, sir, not really," White Shirt stepped right up again. "I was walking home tonight and these gentlemen kindly offered me a ride, and in their generosity, I thought it only fair for me to buy them some gas."

"With a stolen credit card?"

"No, sir," he said, slightly weary now. "I intended to use my own card but I used this one by mistake." He raised the card in emphasis. "This card, that I found and intended to report lost."

"But forgot to?"

"Precisely."

Stu's eyes flicked back to the rednecks. "Is that true?"

"Aw, yeah, it shore is... sir," answered Long-Hair. "We'se just offered him a ride's all."

"Don't really know him," Fattie said. "We'se was just bein' neighborly."

Stu ruminated further. I don't have probable cause to bust the rednecks or do a search. "Mind telling me what's in the U-Haul?"

"Just some old furniture'n stuff we'se movin' to my Daddy's house down the way," Long-Hair said.

Hmm. Stu kept tapping his foot. Make the decision. "You," he said to White Shirt. "Turn around, hands behind your back."

He took the credit card, did a quick pat-down, and cuffed the guy. "Don't move," he ordered. He walked right up to Long-Hair till their faces were an inch apart.

"You look like a con," he said.

Long-Hair didn't bat an eye. "I don't know what'cha mean... sir. All I been doin' tonight is mindin' my own business... "

I don't know what's wrong here, Stu realized, but I don't have anything to take them in for. "You boys be on your way." He started back toward White Shirt but paused to take one last glance at the shining El Camino. "Nice car, by the way."

"Why-why—thank ya, sir!" Fattie enthused. "Just you have a good night!"

Stu walked White Shirt to the cruiser. "In the car, and—" He pulled a small, very old book out of the guy's back pocket. He looked at the title, bewildered.

"The Account of the Incubi of Vasr Monastery? London, 1787? What the hell is this?"

"It's a grimoire, Officer, since you asked. For your information, I'm a Harvard graduate, and one of my fields of study involves antiquarian literature. I'm also a nationally published novelist. Perhaps you've heard of me. My name is—"

"Just get in the car," Stu said, and pushed the guy in back.

He drove back to the station, disappointed. "I'm going to have to arrest you for the credit card. When we get to the station, I'll read you your rights and give you a piece of paper to sign stating that you understand your rights."

"That's fine with me, sir," the guy said, quite cheerily.

Stu lit a cigarette. Still. There's something funny. "So what have I got? A Harvard grad with a two-hundred-year-old book in his pocket hanging out with two redneck deadbeats in a hotrod at two in the morning?"

Oddly, White Shirt seemed relieved. "Well, since you're arresting me, I guess I'll have my day in court."

"Yeah, you will. And you know what else? You don't seem to care in the least that you're going to jail."

The guy smiled in the rearview. "Perhaps it's my predestination. All experience is life, Officer, and all of life is experience, and the truth of that experience is what I crave, to infuse into my novels. My books allegorically bid the question: How Powerful Is The Power Of Truth?"

Great. A wack-job...

The man rambled on. "I don't mind the experience of arrest, for I've never been arrested before. It's something I can later write about... in truth; and I'm certain I'll be exonerated once I have some discourse with the judge. As for the personages I was cavorting with previously?" The man paused, smiling meditatively. "Good or bad, all people are part of the truth of the world, sir. An unlikely trio indeed, I'll admit. But as a writer, I learn from everybody."

Stu was sick of the chatter. "I guess on that note I'll remind you that you have the right to remain silent."

"Of course, but one last thing, if I may, in response to your query. Isn't it possible that people, good or bad, can be symbols for something else, something much more esoteric, even daedalic? Almost like characters in a work of fiction, but fiction with a meaning extant between the lines. You can only hope that it's a worthy work, hmm? See, I'm a writer but in a much deeper sense, I'm a seer. What I long for more than all else is to see. And, alas, I've seen much tonight, and for that I give great thanks... to God."

"Are you on drugs? You don't look the type but if you are, things will be easier on you if you let me know in advance."

"The only drug I'm on, sir, is one that's quite legal."

"Yeah?"

"Irony... "

Stu smirked as he pulled into the station. "I think you're a weirdo, and you're getting on my nerves. I need you to be quiet."

White Shirt said nothing more, but that subtle smile never left his face, almost as though it were part of his spirit.

Courtney looked up, alarmed, when Stu gently shoved the guy into the booking room.

"Well what have we here?" the woman enthused. "You shore don't look like a bad guy."

"I'm a speculative novelist," the man said.

"Shut up," Stu ordered. "And sit down."

"What he do, Stu?"

"Ripped off a credit card and tried to buy gas with it."

White Shirt opened his mouth to object, but Stu pointed at him.

White Shirt closed his mouth.

"Oh," Courtney added, "and look. The chief's tickets to the Testicle Festival were in the mail."

"Good." Stu stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. "Now he'll be in a good mood tomorrow, and a better mood when he sees that I got a bust. Shit, I haven't had a solid arrest in a month."

"Good work, Stu... " But Courtney, now, seemed to be looking at White Shirt with some scrutiny. "Ain't I seen you before, on TV? Some show on one'a them weird cable channels?"

White Shirt beamed. "The Signatures show, on Ovation Channel, yes! I was interviewed last year about my most recent novel, The NEW American Tragedy."

Stu paused between puffs, looking cockeyed at the guy.

"This guy's a famous book writer, Stu—"

"Not actually famous in the popular sense but critically acclaimed," the man interrupted. "Raymond Carver wasn't terribly popular either; nevertheless, he remains perhaps the great American prose writer of the century, modernity's answer to, say, Sherwood Anderson."

"Shut up," Stu told him again. He rubbed his temples. Maybe this guy ISN'T bullshitting. Stu looked right at him. "What the hell is a critically acclaimed novelist doing in Redneckland?"

"Searching for errant truths, Officer. See, I infuse relatable modern fiction scenarios with charactorial demonstrations of the existential condition. Allegorical symbology, it's called, rooted in various philosophical systems."

Both Stu and Courtney stared.

The guy kept it zipped as Stu rolled an arrest report in the typewriter but before he could even begin to ask the prelim questions, Courtney peeped, "Uh, Stu?"

"Yeah?" he grumbled.

"I gots somethin' ta tell ya... "

Stu frowned at her. "What?"

She seemed sheepish. "Them Testicle Festival tickets weren't the only thing that come in today's mail... "

Stu snapped his gaze on her. She was holding up an envelope.

He gulped dryly. "Is it... "

"For Sergeant Stewart Cummings, from the Richmond Field Office of the Bureau of Alcoholic, Tobacco, and Firearms... "

"Speaking of tobacco," White Shirt interrupted again, "would it be all right if I smoked?"

"Be quiet!" Stu yelled but kept his gaze horned in on Courtney. "Aw, shit, I'm sure it's the rejection letter. If ATF was going to hire me, I would've known weeks ago," and then his hand reached over to take the letter.

But she didn't give it to him. "Stu? Don't be mad, but—"

"But what!"

"I, uh, well, see... I was so curious... I opened it... "

Stu's face reddened. "You had no right—"

Her broad peaches-and-cream face broke into a grin. "They hired ya, Stu... "

Stu snapped the letter away, read it, then jumped up and shot his hands to the air. His chair flew back against the wall, and he shouted, "I'm finally out of this no-horse town! I'm finally going to be a REAL cop!" Maniacally, he ran to Courtney and gave her a big wet sloppy kiss.

"Hate ta see ya go, Stu," she said, tearing up, "but I'm happy for ya."

"Thanks, Courtney!

White Shirt offered a warm smile. "Congratulations, Officer. I'm sure you'll make an exemplary federal agent, and I share in your exuberance."

Stu continued to hoot and holler, doing an awkward moonwalk about the booking room. Then he stopped abruptly and stared at White Shirt.

"You! Stand up!"

White Shirt did so, and Stu took off his handcuffs.

"Hit the road!"

The man turned. "Thank you very, very much, Officer... "

Stu pumped his fist in the air and did a Rebel Yell worthy of any redneck this side of the Mississippi. "Courtney? Gimme the key to the chief's office! He's got a bottle of Jack in there, and you and me are SURE AS SHIT gonna party tonight!"

White Shirt lit a cigarette and quietly left the station.

(XI)

"We gotta get out'a here and dump this U-Haul ‘fore that cop comes back," Dicky panicked in the front seat. He dug in his pocket and pulled up some change. "I gots seven cents! How much you got?"

"Fuck me and the horse my mamma rode in on!" Balls yammered, searching his own pockets. "Shee-it, look! Two quarters on the floor!"

"That's enough to get us out'a here!"

Balls ran in, paid, and pumped fifty-seven cents worth of regular unleaded into the car.

Dicky hauled out of the lot, engine screaming. "I cain't believe that shit, man! Of all the fucked up thangs!"

"Fuckin'-A... "

"We gotta bury this U-Haul in the woods somewhere—deep, Balls! Can you imagine if he'd opened it up and seed that thing back there?"

"Ya ain't gotta tell me, brother. But ya know... " Suddenly a calm settled into Balls. " I ak-shure-lee don't thank we got anything ta worry 'bout."

Dicky slowed down, staring. "What'cha mean? The Writer's gonna finger us to that cop!"

Balls stroked the goatee. "Naw, Dicky, I bet he don't... 'cos it ain't lodger-kul."

"We abducter'd him, man, and we was fixin' ta kill him! We made him help us rob a house and then he watched us sacker-fice Cora! That's murder, Balls! We'se'll get the death penalty!"

"Ain't gonna happen, Dicky."

"How ya figgure that?"

Balls let his long black redneck hair blow serenely out the window. "If the Writer was gonna finger us, he would'a done it right in front of the cop. He would'a showed him what's in the U-Haul and he would'a sung like a canary 'bout Crafter's house. But he didn't do none'a that."

Dicky seemed to chew on the speculation.

"Instead? He took the credit card rap and let hisself git arrested so's we could get away."

"Well... yeah," Dicky said in a slow drawl. "Now that I thank about it, I reckon yer right."

"Ya know, Dicky? The Writer's a geek and a tubesteak but he's also a stand-up guy."

"Dang straight—"

CLANK!

Dicky weaved in startlement. The sudden sound caused them both to flinch.

"Did you just throw a fuckin' rod?" Balls asked.

"Naw, man—" Dicky looked over his shoulder. "Sounded like it come from the back."

"Somethin' must'a falled over in the U-Haul. Pull'er over... "

Dicky idled the ‘Mino to the shoulder and cut the big engine. They both jumped out and ran back—

They stood.

They stared.

They slumped.

The U-Haul's door had been busted open from the inside, its steel latch bent and unseated. Inside, there was no sign of the Minotauress.

"That magic cum-spell must'a wore off!" Dicky exclaimed.

Behind them, in the woods, they heard a thrashing laced by vicious snorts. The sounds seemed to dim and eventually disappear as their source receded.

"There goes our million bucks," Balls lamented, hands on hips. He half-laughed to Dicky, then said, "Ain't that just a great big kick in the behind?"

But Balls had pronounced the word behind as "bee-hand."

EPILOGUE

It took the Writer two hours to walk back to downtown Luntville, yet he did so with a lively step and a studied joy on his face. The warm night's caress accompanied him, along with the gibbous moon and the aural sweep of crickets. Along the way, he pondered everything that had happened to him today and realized that the entire ordeal nearly existed as an allegorical masterpiece. Yes... Intrigue and advents, epiphanies and a resultant actualization, all wrapped up in an ever-important anti-climax. All necessary ingredients for fiction of literary worth—especially the latter component. Like Pope's Rape of the Lock, Melville's Bartleby, Lewis' Main Street, and—the best always last—Sartre's monumental "The Wall... " A gentle satisfaction swept the Writer, because he knew that the truth of his own life reflected the greatness of classic fiction along the same lines as A Tale of Two Cites and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn... Back at the Gilman House, he stepped into proverbial pin-drop silence. He thought of Poe's quintessential protagonist stepping across the threshold of the brooding House of Usher...

Up the stairs, then. Was there a bizarre vibe in the air? On the darkened landing, he paused at a barely audible hum. It was coming from behind one of the girls' doors. A marital aid? he suggested to himself, but then a feisty young-voiced woman yelled, "Git out'a there, ya little bugger! Git out!" and he thought he had a pretty good idea what the sound was. Behind another door, bedsprings creaked insanely, and a crotchety man's voice railed, "Aw jeezus-ta-pete! Kilt a dozen commies in Korea'n now I cain't even get a load'a jism off! Ain't good fer nothin' ‘cept sellin' tater chips ta immer-grints'n crackers! What I fight the war for?"

The Writer had a pretty good idea who the client was.

Another door clicked open deeper in the hall. It was darker back there; the Writer could barely see.

"Is someone th—" he began, but the formation of a figure began to sharpen. Must be one of the girls, he reasoned. The semi-silhouette took more shape: a stunningly curvaceous woman but with—

God help me...

—a peculiar V spreading wide from atop her head... like horns.

The Writer's heart seemed to stop.

"Haa!" came the chirpy voice, and finally the rear-hall's darkness disgorged the woman and her identifiable features. It was Nancy.

The Writer made a rare departure from his avoidance of profanity. "Nancy. You scared the living shit out of me."

She cracked a hick laugh. "You're afraid'a l'il ole me?" and then she came close enough to be seen.

All she wore was her exquisite nakedness. Even in the murky light, that young, raw beauty raved, so intensely that the Writer's knees nearly went out. The ripe breasts and sleek, perfect flesh left him helpless and in awe.

I could... marry her, the outrageous thought swept halo-like round his head, and scarier still was the immediacy with which the impression had arrived.

But then the oddity registered in his brain. On her head she wore a facsimile of bunny ears, which he'd first feared were the horns of the dread Minotauress.

"What's that on your head?"

Her eyes bloomed at the afterthought. "Oh, tarnations! I plum fergot ta take 'em off after my last trick. The fella likes me to wear bunny ears 'cos he said his daughter was a Playboy Bunny long time ago, and I'se guess he wants ta pretend that I'm... Well, you know."

"Ah, yes." There's aberration everywhere, like evil, but after another moment's thought, he added, but also like good. Certainly mankind's sin must pave the prospect for its redemption. Kierkegaard proved that. The hope of the surmise brought him an instant well-being.

Downstairs, the clock tolled three. "Dang, it's so late," the nude girl commented. "Don't seem like it, though."

"Time is simply a form of intuition, relative to space. It's not so much time that passes with each tick of the clock but experience and, hence, truth."

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