The Minotauress Edward Lee

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WHACK!

—literally punched her out of the truck.

Arianne's head collided with the gravel-lined parking lot. Her scalp sliced. Then she rolled over to stare at the stars.

Like bird-shot, more gravel sprayed against the side of her face as the Ranchero peeled off.

There's got to be a better way to earn ten bucks than this, she thought.

Then, for the briefest moment, as her gaze remained stuck on the cosmos, she thought she saw, somewhere in Orion's Belt, a glittering facsimile of the face of the only man she'd ever loved.

Dean Lohan.

Why did you leave me, Dean? she wondered as tears formed. Why?

She dragged herself up, sharp stones cutting her knees, and remnant seed falling from her lips. Not much else she could do except shuffle back into Gortyn's Woodland Tavern and try to tag another trick.

She was dizzy, she was sick. Nevertheless, her feet shuffled back toward the door, and that's when she heard the high braying sound of police sirens off toward Main Street.

««—»»

The night watchman's body wasn't even cold before DeSmet Police Sergeant A.T. Lass was called out yet again. This one was worse. This was a kid.

"Christ, A.T.," his blanched partner, Hoiter, quailed. "It's Scotty Nash from down the Route. Shit, we must'a busted his mother a hundred times."

Fuck, Lass thought. He didn't give a shit about the kid, just the fact that it was a kid. Can't have kids gettin' killed in DeSmet! Makes me look bad!

Where young Scotty's abdominal wall should have been was now simply a gnawed evacuation of flesh. The boy's innards had been removed, and with not much finesse; his belly looked roto-tilled. What could do something like that? But an even more logical question struck Lass as he stood in the flashlight-painted darkness behind the old Stoddard Mill.

"What happened to the punk's insides?" he mouthed aloud.

"Must'a been some kind of animal attack," Hoiter suggested. "A wolf or a coyote."

"Yeah, must'a been."

The kid's baggy pants hung around his ankles, his NIGGUZS ROOL 4 U T-shirt bunched up. One of those dumbass Walkman things hung around his neck by a wire connected to a set of earphones. Hoiter picked it up, switched it on.

"I gots the motherfuckin' herpes, I don't give a shit! Need a bottle'a fuckin' Mickey's, yo white bitch!"

"Turn that crap off," Lass griped.

"Oh, wow, it's Badd Blacque," his partner remarked. "It's good stuff."

"It's a bunch of ghetto home-boy horse-shit, sounds worse than a busted chainsaw. Christ, the idiots just pick any word that rhymes."

"To the contrary, A.T. Rap and Hip-Hop is the Shakespeare of the modern African-American culture. It's the poetry of their times, their language of art. Listen."

Hoiter switched it back on. "Zippadee motherfuckin' doo-dah, zippadee motherfuckin' yay. My oh my what a motherfuckin' wonderful day—yo white bitch!"

Lass snatched the Walkman away, shut it off. "Quit fuckin' around! What's that on the punk's chest? Gunshot wounds?"

Hoiter leaned over with the flashlight and pulled up the decedent's T-shirt past his nipples. Indeed, two marks were present, two holes spaced a foot apart.

"See? What the fuck is that?" Lass questioned. "Somebody shoot the punk with a couple of deer-slugs?"

"I know what it is," Hoiter replied in a darkened tone. "Ain't no deer-slugs, A.T. This boy's been gored."

"Gored?"

"That's right, boss. Gored. As in by a bull."

CHAPTER FIVE

The scream shrilled through the house, but not a scream of horror or pain. A scream of outrage. Then the voice cracked and boomed like cannon-fire. "DEAN! GET YOUR ASS IN HERE NOW!"

Dean climbed off the couch, where'd he'd slept instead of the bed, and headed for the bedroom, scratching his balls through his shorts. "What?" he said.

Daphne, having just placed her Samsonites on the bed, twirled. Her face was beet-red. "That's TOBACCO JUICE on the floor, isn't it?"

Dean glanced at the long shit-colored stain in the beige carpet. "Yeah," he said. "That's tobacco juice, all right."

"You reckless inconsiderate REDNECK!" Daphne wailed in her smart Givenchy off-shoulder organdy dress. "You SPIT on the floor!"

"Yup."

"That's it! The more I try, the worse you get! I want a divorce!"

"You got it," Dean agreed, still scratching his balls. "How about a quick blow-job before we sign the papers?"

Enraged, she picked up her carry-on bag and threw it at him. Dean ducked, and it sailed overhead.

"That was a mistake," he calmly informed her.

He broke the bedside lamp over her head, wrapped its cord around her neck and, by the cord, dragged her out of the room. Her ass thunked down the stairs. She gagged, kicking as he dragged her further into the dining room. The dining room was perfect—the big bay window. Then he grabbed her not by the hair but by the face, and propped her up in front of the multiple panes.

"Have your lawyer give me a call," he suggested and punched her in the face so hard she flew back as if jerked by a towline. The bay window exploded and out Daphne went, landing on her back in the front yard amongst flecks of broken glass.

Dean scratched his balls again, and loped for the kitchen—

—and shifted and jigged and jagged and—

"Oh no," Dean croaked.

There he stood, in the bedroom, as Daphne, in the same Givenchy off-shoulder organdy, railed at the all-too-obvious evidence of tobacco juice on the carpet.

Her face burned at him, a rigid mask of contempt. "I KNOW what that is on the floor! And you WILL clean it up!" Daphne's bellow threatened to beat plaster-dust from the ceiling. "You'll shampoo this rug, TODAY!"

"But-but-but, honey? It's Sunday. There's no place open where I can rent a carpet cleaner—"

"You'll do it by HAND, on your KNEES!" came her next bellow. "Jesus CHRIST, Dean! The harder I work, the lazier you get! That convention in Vegas was HARD work! And for the whole time you're sitting here on your ass drinking with that dingleberry Ajax and SPITTING on the FLOOR!"

"Honey, please—"

"Shut up, you redneck slob. Christ, all I've done for you, and this is how you repay me? You're not back at the ranch anymore, shoveling cow shit and hosing down the stalls! We're in the CITY now, we're CITY PEOPLE! And you better start acting like it!"

Dean stood slack as a Gumby doll. "I'm sorry, honey. I don't know what came over me. I—"

"Shut up!" she repeated. "Get out of my sight! And start getting this SHIT-HOLE cleaned up! Oh, and you were supposed to roll up that GODDAMN hose in the front yard a fucking WEEK ago! So roll it up so I don't have to TRIP over it anymore!"

"Yes, honey, I'm sorry, honey," Dean blathered and backed out of the bedroom. He wasn't scratching his balls now; in fact, at this precise moment, he felt like he didn't have any balls at all. Daphne might as well have been wearing them for earrings.

What the hell happened? he thought in the utmost distress. His brain felt like overcooked meatloaf. Did I really spit chaw on the rug?

Yes. He remembered that much, at least. Last night Ajax had come over. They'd gotten ‘faced. Ajax had taken the late 194 home, leaving Dean to chug whiskey and pass out on the couch.

But I didn't really spit on the rug, did I?

The answer was plain, unless Santa Claus had been in here last night six months early with a lip full of Skoal.

Oh, man. What's happening to me?

All too suddenly, Ajax' unconvincing psycho-babble didn't sound quite so unconvincing any more.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I'm really two people, divided between my ideals. Maybe I really do have a genuine split personality...

"And get the fucking newspaper!" Daphne shouted down from upstairs. "It's been sitting out in the middle of the GODDAMN driveway all morning!"

"Yes, sweetheart!" he raised his voice back. "I was just about to do that."

Dean pulled on his jeans, which were strewn across the coffee table. He stumbled out the front door, into raving sunlight, then stumbled again and tripped over a coil of unrolled garden hose that lay stretched across the sidewalk like a trip-wire.

Dean fell flat on his chin.

CHAPTER SIX

Within a week, six more DeSmet children where found dead within proximity to the long-closed Stoddard's Mill. All were found in the same disrepair: gastro-intestinal organs evacuated through a ragged aperture. All appeared to have been gored in the chest.

As if by a bull.

Sergeant A.T. Lass was sufficiently apeshit, and so were the residents of DeSmet.

"My baby boy got killed! Where were you!" shrieked Janice Stumore when Lass went to pick up his "pad." Janice lived at the Callisto-Brownsroad Trailer Court with her common-law hubby Leonard. Leonard had a masters in organic chemistry from M.I.T.; he was also a meth-head who'd gravitated to DeSmet after escaping the correctional custody of the Massachusetts State Police Narcotics Unit. Here, Leonard ran the biggest ice lab in the county, and in order to continue to operate, certain payments needed to be made to certain constables of the law. One day, Lass knew, this trailer and a third of the park would go up in a minor mushroom cloud when Leonard fired up a pipe too close to the solvent.

"Here ya go, Adam-12," Leonard said through his Fu Manchu beard. Greasy hair hung like black worms. "Always a pleasure." Then he slapped five century notes into Lass' fat paw. Janice's mad bellowing ripped through the paper-thin walls.

"Guess she's taking it pretty hard," Lass, not much in the way of smarts, deducted.

Leonard put his thick black glasses on, squinting at a triple-beam balance as he weighed product. "Sure. Her kid's ground chuck in the morgue."

"Come on. Her kid was a retard with a head shaped like a pinto bean," Lass pointed out. "Christ, she had him turning tricks on Main Street for chickenhawk pervs." This much was true. Kevvy Stumore, thirteen years old, had every learning disability known to the American Journal of Psychiatry, and a malformed cranial vault due to maladapted fissural calcium formation during the first trimester, thanks to his mother's chronic speed use during pregnancy. Kevvy was a trick baby to a meth-whore. He was all fucked up.

Perv homos paid the little mutant ten bucks for front-seat blowjobs. The way Lass saw it, the world was a teensy bit better without him.

"Look, I gotta bust one," Lass informed because, see, the first part of the deal was hush-money. But Lass was also entitled to partake of Janice's sexual flesh whenever the urge rose—that was the second part of the deal. "She's sounding kind of crazy now—"

Leonard got up from his make-shift lab table, walked out to the "living" room. "My poor little baby boy got butchered while that fat cop piece of shit was eating donuts, Leonard!" Spit gusted from her lips. "My beautiful baby boy!"

Leonard promptly kicked her in the side of the head, which put an end to her agitation but fast. One of her few remaining teeth flew out. "She's all yours, Officer," Leonard told Lass. "Go to town." Then he walked back to his lab and closed the door.

Fuck. Janice was thirty-five but looked fifty-five. She certainly wasn't busy now; that's why Lass never saw any harm. Her dirty feet stuck up as he pulled her dirty jeans off her dirty legs. Looking at her split junkie beaver, his far-less-than-average-sized penis rocked in his pants. Aw, shit! By the time he got his trooper trousers down, there was no time to sink it in her. Two quick shucks with his hand and he was squirting all over her. Oh well, he thought at the waves of sensation. The droplets of sperm glittered off her corpse-white skin. Lass beat out the last and sighed.

That's what I call good lovemaking, he thought. He stuffed his putty dick back in his pants as his heart raced down.

Janice looked dead lying there. Perhaps she was dead, but that would be no biggie. One less meth-head whore in the world was almost as good as one less lawyer.

"Sorry about your kid," he muttered and left. But even Lass could not have guessed that as his sperm dried on Janice's face and fried-egg junkie tits, yet another DeSmet, South Dakota, child was gored, mauled, and eaten only a few miles away.

««—»»

Dean's mouth sucked to hers. Their bodies entwined, and their tongues roved over one another. Each stroke into the hot cup of her sex brought an intractable bliss, and she cried into his mouth. She came for fifteen minutes, and when she could come no further, she pushed him off, then sucked him off. Dean spent himself in volume down her tongue. She swallowed without hesitance.

Dean lolled over, exhausted. She massaged his spent balls with one hand, caressed his face with the other... .

"Why did you leave me, why did you leave me?"

Leave? Dean thought. "Daphne, I would never le—"

Blackish liquid began to trickle from her nostrils and corners of her mouth; simultaneously, a stench rose so foul that Dean audibly gagged. His eyes burned like riot gas. But he recognized the stench at once—it was rendering bilge—and when he looked between her legs, more of the noxious liquid oozed from her sex.

"Why, honey? Why? I loved you... ."

Moonlight blazed on her face. It was not Daphne. It was Arianne.

"We could have had everything," she sobbed. Even her tears were bilge. Then she vomited in a plume directly into his face. Not puke. Rendering bilge.

The Baby Ben alarm clock rattled like an annoying toy. Dean woke up in an empty bed, flinging off imaginary bilge.

Holy shit...

The nightmare left him bolt upright, shivering. His hand padded sideward and found nothing but cold sheets where his wife should be. Then he remembered: she'd left yesterday for a design show in Chicago.

God in heaven, he thought.

Dean sat up, wearing only boxers. He scratched his balls and fell into nebulous thought as a long sigh stretched across his mind.

He saw his life now, in its utter disappointment, and then he saw his old life, in its crude, earthy glory. I was somebody back then, he realized. I was somebody special.

Good Dean, Bad Dean, he thought. Blackouts, split-personality, and now nightmares about rendering bilge.

Dean wondered if he could be any more fucked up... and doubted it.

««—»»

"What the fuck is rendering bilge?" Ajax asked.

"Liquefied waste from dead cattle," Dean explained from the bar stool. "Drippings. Organic flux." He'd asked Ajax to meet him at THE WHARF after work, curious to the point of anxiety as to how his friend would interpret the nightmare.

"Sounds lovely." Ajax chewed a contemplative lip. "And I'm wondering... "

"Yeah?"

"In what manner does this... bilge... reflect the inner-workings of Dean Lohan's tumultuous subconscious mind? How can it be applied to the symbology of your soul?"

"That's what I want you to tell me," Dean asserted.

"I need a drink... to help me think." Ajax frowned down the long bar. "Christ, do I gotta scalp myself to get the barmaid's attention? What's a guy gotta do to get a beer in this out-house?"

"Scalping is fine, but that's kind of messy," the barmaid said, appearing from nowhere. 38 double-D's looked like twin duckpin balls stretching a make-shift black halter-top that read DEMONOID PHENOMENON in dripping white letters. Pewter skulls clinked, dangling from the ends of Kool-Aid-pink corn-rows. "Just hang yourself. That'll get my attention for sure."

Ajax slumped, embarrassed at being overheard. Dean chuckled.

"A Redhook and a Hefeweizen," Ajax ordered.

The barmaid stared. "Excuse me? What's the magic word?"

Ajax's face smoldered. "Uh, please?"

The barmaid trounced off for the taps, tits rocking.

"What a hostile goth bitch," Ajax remarked under his breath. "I think I'm in love. Christ, I could spend the rest of my life just checking her for lumps."

"Back to the topic, please," Dean said.

"The topic? Her tits? Yeah, man, she doesn't even need air bags in her car. I wish I was her kid—I'd breast-feed till I was forty."

"The topic is my nightmare," Dean frustratingly reminded. "My... dilemma."

"Not a dilemma. You're way past dilemma, pal. You're one egg-shell crunch away from a full-scale schizophrenic episode."

The barmaid returned, thunked Ajax' Redhook before him. "Here ya go, Meat Loaf." Then she leaned forward and glanced at the sufficient beer-belly occupying Ajax' lap. "Eat much? Or is that just the swollen liver from the chronic alcoholism?"

Ajax's mouth opened to make a comeback, but nothing managed to come out.

"Yours is on me... cutie," she said to Dean. Then she winked and sauntered off, her ass, like orbs of ripe fruit, riding up and down in her black cut-off shorts.

"Meat Loaf, huh?" Ajax simpered. "Gee, I wonder if she likes me?"

"What's the matter? Can't take it like you dish it out?"

"No," Ajax blustered. "Life ain't fair, I'll tell ya. You've got a drop-dead gorgeous wife and this big-tit Rob-Zombie bitch hot for you. You're gonna ask her out, right?"

"Hell, no," Dean testified. "I'm married, and I love my wife."

Ajax peered longingly at the barmaid who was now at the other end of the bar. "You should be gelded. I'm so horny I could spit on the floor and fuck the spit, and you've got this hot fuck-package winking at you. But you're not gonna go for it 'cos your married? Gimme a break, Bishop Lohan."

Dean sipped his beer with resolve. "Marriage is a sacrament, it's a contract of life-long love and fidelity."

"Yeah? And every time your wife goes out of town to some work convention, she conveniently forgets her wedding ring, not to mention three times a week she's coming home late from work meetings because she's probably having affairs with her boss and every other guy at the office."

Dean didn't even need to think. Something took him over, something possessed him as effectively as a demon, and next thing he knew the entire bar fell silent as Dean had stood up, grabbed Ajax by the throat, and lifted him several inches off the ground.

"You know what?" Dean said. "I'm really getting tired of your implications."

Ajax's hands roved empty air. He was trying to talk but only gags came out. His face began to redden.

What am I doing! a voice shouted in Dean's head. Immediately, he let Ajax down. "Shit, man! I'm sorry! I-I-I don't know what came over me."

Ajax wheezed to get his breath back, slumped back to his stool. "Man, you really are fucked up. You're a walking time-bomb."

"I'm sorry," Dean repeated. "Something... just—"

"Snapped?"

"Yeah, that's right," Dean admitted.

Ajax regained his composure, slugged on his beer. At the end of the bar, the barmaid was laughing. Several moments passed, then the tavern returned to its typical revelry. Dean felt foolish, bewildered.

"Right now? Right this instant?" Ajax continued, "I'm looking at Good Dean. But a minute ago when you were holding me off the ground by my throat—"

"That was... Bad Dean," Dean surmised.

"Uh-huh, and I'm telling you, it's getting worse every day. You're telling me you love your wife?"

"Well, yeah," Dean felt assured.

"And a few nights ago you... what were you calling your beloved wife?"

Dean felt walked on by an elephant. "A fussy prude, a fickle—"

"—cunt," Ajax added all too quickly, "who you're sick of having sex with. In fact, when you do have sex with Daphne, you pretend she's—who?"

"Arianne," Dean's throat grated.

Ajax finished his beer, nodding. "And now this nightmare. Nightmares can be very revealing as to a person's true, deep-seated emotions... ." His discourse trailed off, then he waved his index finger at the barmaid. She waved her middle finger back.

"How do you like that insolent devil-tattooed cum-dumpster?" Ajax complained at the treatment. "Watch me. I'm ready for her this time."

The barmaid returned, thunked Ajax' beer down. "I didn't know Curly had kids."

"Where'd ya get all that extra tit, bitch? Some doctor lipo-suck your brain and pump it all into your bags?"

"No, they lipo-sucked point-one-one percent of your body fat. Thanks for the contribution." She drew her hands up her sides, then caressed the sumptuous breasts.

Ajax frowned. "How's the herpes? Does it hurt much?"

"I got it from riding your mother's bike, but, no, it just itches sometimes. Then I get a big dick to scratch it." Her face blankened at Ajax. "I guess that leaves you out, huh, Pinkie?" Next, she placed another beer before Dean. "Your money's no good while I'm working." The tip of her pierced tongue glided across her upper lip, and she slipped him a piece of paper with her phone number on it. "Call me soon. Baby, you can lock me in a cage, and I'll be your pet forever."

"You fuckin' pretty-boy stud," Ajax complained when the barmaid left. "Jesus Christ. Next she'll be offering you money. How can you say no to that walking brick shit-house?"

"Easy. The spiritual bonds of matrimony are far more important than blatant one-night stands."

Ajax gawped after her. "With me, it'd be a one-century stand. I'd suck the lentil seeds and Safeway sushi out of her death-metal asshole just to give her a big brown kiss."

"Probably ain't gonna happen, Ajax. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think she digs you."

"Yeah, well, fuck her. I'd slop my jizz right on her Marilyn Manson lipstick, and pee on her back for good measure. How do you like that whore talking to me like that?"

"Please," Dean urged. "Back to the point?"

"Yeah, the nightmare. Liquefied cattle waste." He gazed into his beer glass as if it were a crystal ball. "Tell me more about the details."

The details? Dean wondered. "Well, when you work on a ranch, cattle die. Sometimes disease, sometimes natural causes, sometimes accidents—like that. And sometimes—wow—sometimes they'd die out in the grazelands, and we wouldn't know for several days. By the time we'd find them, they'd be bloated up like balloons."

"Balloons full of dead-cow gas."

"That's right. They'd balloon up in the sun to the size of VW's. And when the fork-lift'd scoop 'em up, they'd break wind. Man, it's the worse smell in the world."

"So what happened then?"

"Well, there are laws—state health department, Department of Agriculture, DNR. If you're a rancher and one of your cattle dies, you have to report it to the government, send in blood samples to check for anthrax and hoof and mouth, then you have to call a rendering company to take the carcass away for proper disposal. But the thing is, these rendering plants charge, like, ten cents a pound, and when you're talking about an animal that weighs up to a ton and a half, that can work out to a lot of money. So we had our ways of... lowering the pickup cost."

Ajax seemed fascinated. "Ways?"

"Well," Dean admitted, "we'd use our own fork lifts and tractors to bring 'em back to the ranch but, then we'd take 'em to a special warehouse loaded with racks and draining trays, and we'd let them sit for a few days after... scoring their sides with a knife... and letting them... drain."

Ajax made a face.

"We'd let 'em rot for a few more days, and a lot of their bilge would drain off. Then we'd take the carcasses back out to the field, dump 'em, and call the rendering plant. They'd send a crew out to pick the carcass up, but by then it would weigh—"

"A lot less," Ajax reasoned. "‘Cos all that—"

"—liquefied rot would drain out of the animal," Dean went on. "We'd save fifty to a hundred bucks per carcass doing it this way. Independent ranchers have it hard enough. If the government can cut legal spending corners by charging $600 for Pentagon toilet seats and $130,000 for custom leather couches on Air Force One so Bill Clinton can get comfortable blowjobs, hard-working ranchers can goddamn cut a few corners to stay afloat."

Ajax slapped the bar-top. "I like what I'm hearing! And all this time I thought you were a pinko lib!"

"Fuck Bill Clinton and his tax-and-spend democrat abortion," Dean declared. "It's the farmers and the ranchers that keep the United States the best-fed country in the world. The only President who didn't fuck us in the ass was Ronald Reagan."

"I like it!"

"Now we've got Bill Clinton and his clandestine regime urging U.S. farms and ranches to file bankruptcy so he can buy imported beef and farm goods from fucking Communist China in an under-the-table deal in exchange for political contributions to the Democratic National Committee."

Ajax stared bulge-eyed.

Dean waved a slack hand. "But that's all beside the point. We're not talking about Bill Clinton selling out his country. If it was a Republican president sexually exploiting a young White House employee and jerking off on her dress in the Oval Office library, the feminist movements would go apeshit and the press would bury him. But not Bill Clinton. He just made a simple error in judgment, so everything's okay. Never mind the ex-girlfriends who all wound up dead by ‘suicide.' Never mind the Tyson Food scams, and never mind that Paula Jones passed a battery of polygraphs. It's all okay because it's Bill. It's all okay because inflation is low."

Ajax continued to stare bulge-eyed. "I-I-I... like it!"

"And that's not even to mention Vince Foster, who had a documented affair with Clinton's wife, and who was found conveniently dead in Fort Marcy Park with a revolver in his right hand but he was left-handed. That's not to mention NBC news deliberately cutting out the interview clips of Susan McDougal admitting to a sexual relationship with Bill, nor to the same liberal news blackout of Roger Clinton admitting that he was Bill's major coke supplier, who later referred to him as a ‘Hoover vacuum' whenever cocaine arrived at the governor's mansion. But that's all beside the point, and so is Meña Airport and all the Arkansas State Troopers who passed repeated polygraph tests and Charlie Trie and Castle-Grande and the Lippo Group and no security clearances for Clinton's White House staff and Travel Gate and David Hale and 700 FBI files with Bill's fingerprints on them, and Whitewater records with Hillary's fingerprints on them, and all the other shit the press swept under the carpet. No, this isn't about any of that. This is about my nightmare."

Ajax was dumbstruck. "See? More of the real Dean coming out."

Dean pushed the notion back. "The dream, Ajax. The nightmare."

Ajax took another hefty sip of the beer, winced. Then— "This place you were talking about, where you drained the dead cows—"

"Well, not just cows. Steers and bulls too. Whatever died in the field."

"Fine, fine. So where was this place?"

"On the ranch. It was just a processing warehouse, like any other. But this one was... secret."

"‘Cos you didn't want the authorities to know what you were doing in there. Letting the cattle rot a few more days, letting them drain, so you wouldn't have to pay full price to the rendering company."

"Right. We called it ‘The Dump' and ‘The Slop-Shop.' It was pretty gross. Sometimes you couldn't even walk in there without a gas-mask 'cos the air was so toxic."

"The Slop-Shop." Ajax reflected. "A place where you deliberately drained ‘rendering bilge' from dead cattle." Then he drank more. "Can you remember the first time you saw the Slop-Shop? I mean, the very first time?"

"Well, yeah," Dean answered. "I was sixteen. I'd heard about it from some of the other field hands, so one day I simply decided to check it out for myself."

Ajax nodded, looking at him. "You were alone when you did this?"

"Well—" Dean's thoughts ticked back. "No, no I wasn't. I took my girlfriend at the time."

"And would this girlfriend's name be Arianne?"

Dean's further thoughts stopped short. He gulped. "Yeah."

Ajax held his hands up as if full of mystical answers. "Then the answer's easy. Your nightmare was a classic symbol of systematized, reactive loss. Intervential and dissociative. It's textbook, man. It's in the DSM-III, the modern field guide for diagnostic and statistical mental disorders. You're a walking, talking case, Dean!"

Dean was not quite so elated. "Great. But what's it mean? What's my nightmare mean, Mr. Freud?"

"It's a calling back," Dean insisted as if it were obvious. "Your current domestic misery collided with the fruits of your past. The ultimate psychological inner struggle—the real you fighting to break out of the encapsulation of urban life and conventional domestic order! Don't you see?"

"No," Dean said.

"You dreamed of rendering bilge pouring out of Arianne's pussy! The rendering bilge is the target-symbol of subconscious connectivity to your true love! Arianne!"

Was it? Wow, Dean thought.

"She was with you the first time you saw the bilge, and she was with you the first time you fell in love. She was the final common-denominator of the direction of your real life. Then you move away, and it all falls apart. You're sitting in the middle of the pieces every day."

Am I? Dean thought. Ajax was a long-haired, drunken fat slob... but this made sense.

"Want another beer, Porky?" the barmaid asked Ajax, "since you drained that one in—what? Two minutes?"

"How about I drain my gila monster in your East African Rift cleavage?"

"Don't turn me on for nothing. You ain't got a gila monster, just a newt."

"You sure about that, Lydia Lunch? My dick's got teeth, baby, and it'd bite all that silly metal shit off your dumbass goth zombie lesbo commie face and fill up my nail box. Why don't you get a life instead of another skull tattoo and another pile of coke up your giant peninsula-sized nose? You oughta shake some of that yeast out of your satanic pussy and start your own microbrew."

"Hey, Knuckles!" the barmaid shouted over them. In one second, a four-hundred-pound bearded golem appeared, wearing a stained T-shirt that read I EAT AFTER-BIRTH FOR BREAKFAST.

"You know what I eat for breakfast, Abdullah?" Ajax posed. "Your mother. Bet I sucked out a couple of your brothers and sisters and swallowed 'em like aspirins. But what the hell? Fewer crack babies is a good thing, right?"

Ajax was grabbed by the collar and the back of the belt, and thrown out of the bar. Dean slapped money onto the counter and followed the fracas out. On the street, he helped Ajax up. The wind of Lake Union abraded their faces.

"You really are the life of the party," Dean said once Ajax got back to his feet.

"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," Ajax murmured. "And that big-tit, pink-haired Ho chi Minh cum-guzzler? I wouldn't fuck her with a dead man's dick."

"Right, Ajax... "

"But I wouldn't mind peeing on her back."

"I hear ya."

They stumbled down the street, the water shimmering. "Let's go to another bar," Ajax suggested. "The Dubliner! They got a red-haired commie cooze in there waiting tables who's as skinny as a white stringbean. You know who I'm talking about. She looks like Scully... only skinnier. Man, I'd suck the venereal warts right off her cervical wall."

"I think it'd be better if I just drove you home now," Dean suggested.

"Whatever."

Eventually Dean guided Ajax to his car.

"Hey," Ajax drunkenly recalled. "There's one thing I forgot to ask you."

"And what might that be?" Dean asked.

"What did you do with the slop?"

"Huh?"

"The rendering bilge." Ajax wobbled against the passenger door. "All those gallons and gallons of putrefied waste, pus, discharge, and rancid blood? What the hell did you do with it? You had to get rid of it somewhere, didn't you?"

Dean stood stock-still by the driver's door, keys hanging on his finger. It didn't even sound like his own voice when he answered:

"We dumped it. Down the old gypsum mine. Right behind—"

CHAPTER SEVEN

"—right behind Stoddard's Mill!" the old biddy wailed. "That's where I saw it. This woman, buck nekit and black as the night, and she were standing there leadin' this monster by the hand! She were leadin' this monster down into the old mine shaft behind Stoddard's Mill. I knows it sure as I knows I saw my husband lose his legs in that tredder accident!"

"Now, now, Mrs. Codder," Sergeant A.T. Lass appealed, patting the old woman's bony shoulder. "We'll investigate thoroughly. Don't you worry one bit."

"Well ya better!" she cracked back in her split-timber voice. "‘Cos there's somethin'... there's somethin' a blammed fucked up going on out there behind Stoddard's Mill!"

"We'll check it out presently, ma'am," Lass' partner tonight, Oly Dodell, assured.

They left the wily old woman on the front step of her 14 x 64 Mini-Lux trailer, then stomped back to the DeSmet patrol car.

Dodell's crooked-toothed grin gaped over the top of the patrol car. "What'cha think, Sarge? Ya think ya could fuck the old bitch in a pinch?"

Lass shot an outraged expression right back at Dodell. "Come on, man! She's pushing ninety! Fuck, she looks like Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies."

"Yeah," Dodell agreed over the dopey shucks grin. "But could ya fuck her? Like in a real pinch?"

Lass was an officer of the law, and the last people he needed to be lying to were his own men. He traced his hand up his crotch. "Well... shit. Yeah, I guess I could. You know. In a pinch. I guess gash is pretty much gash when you get right down to it. One hairy hole is pretty much the same as another."

"Damn right, Sarge, and I'm glad ya pointed that out." Dodell slid into the passenger seat. They pulled away from the trailer. "It's all about comin', not about what'cha come in, right?"

Lass cruised past rows of rusted trailers and tiny yards filled with junk. "Well, yeah, I guess you could say that."

"I ain't ashamed to admit, I've fucked a sheep or two in my time. You?"

"Of course not!" Lass replied, but this was a bold-faced lie. He'd spent his whole growin'-up days getting his willy off in any manner of farm animal. But there were some secrets that were personal, so denying it wasn't really a lie, not as far at A.T. Lass saw it. "I ain't no pervert, Dodell."

"But it's like you were just sayin', one hole's the same as another. Your dick don't give a shit, long as it gets ta squirt." Dodell shrugged lackadaisically. "Shit, I ain't ashamed ta say I've fucked a few fellas in my time, too. No difference between a man's ass and a gal's. I mean, don't get me wrong, I ain't no homo, but if there ain't no pussy around, a man's bunger gets the job done just as pretty as you please."

Lass' face crinkled up. "You're shitting me?"

"Sure am not, Sarge. And I ain't ashamed. I've fucked men and I've been fucked by men. And I've had balls across my nose on more than several occasions. A mouth's a mouth, and a hole to put your dick in is a hole to put your dick in." Another shrug. "It ain't a queer thing, it's a reciprocal kind of thing."

"Reciprocal? What the hell are you talking about?" Lass demanded.

"Just friends takin' care of each other. Like last year's Alfalfa Festival Bull Roast. I went with my pal Kit Nuller. We had a ol' good time, good food, good beer, but by the end of it, there weren't no chicks left to pick up. But we were both horny as dogs so we said fuck it. I blew him, he blew me, no big deal. A friendship thing. One guy helpin' another guy out in his time of need."

Lass didn't like where this conversation was going. "You get your shift report written up? Don't forget the old lady."

"Sure, Sarge, but like I was sayin', comin' is comin'. For instance, if there weren't no available pussy and you were hard, I wouldn't have no problem with you fuckin' me in the ass, long as ya gave me a reach around. And if ya needed a quick blow job to take the edge off a hard day's work, why, I'd be happy to oblige."

"Look, Dodell, what you do in your private life is your business," Lass pointed out. "But I don't care how horny I was, the last thing I'd ever want to do is put my dick up your ass. Now shut up with that stuff. If any shit gets packed up my piss-hole, it ain't gonna be yours. It's gonna be a gal's."

"Well how about head? You know what they say about head, don't you?"

Lass scowled. "No, Dodell. What? What do they say about head?"

"Men give head better than women any day of the week, and it stands to reason. How can a woman know the best way to suck a dick when she ain't got one herself? Shit, I've had many a lousy blow job from gals but ain't never had a bad one from a guy. Half the time, gals don't know what the hell they're doin', rubbin' their teeth against your dick-skin, too much time on the knob but not enough on the pole, and they'll never suck your balls unless ya tell 'em too. But a guy? Think about it, Sarge. A guy knows. Shit, you don't know what a good blow job is, not till you've had your cock in a man's mouth. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Pretend it's a chick doin' it. Then you know ya ain't really queer."

Lass gnawed the inside of his cheek as he drove down Rural Route 2. He considered Dodell's points, and come to think of it, Lass was pretty horny. And there was no way Dodell would tell anyone—Lass was his boss.

"All right," Lass said. "What the hell? A mouth's a mouth."

Dodell grinned in the dark car. "Knew you'd see it my way, Sarge."

Lass unbuckled his police pants, pulled out his dick. "You suck, I drive."

"That's a big 10-4, Sarge... "

Lass raised a quick brow once Dodell got to work. Dodell sucked hard and slow, with a mouthful of spit; Lass' knees wobbled. Damn, he thought. Then: Shit. Then: Holy fuck. Dodell gives some damn good head.

Dodell paused for a minute to suck his senior watch-commander's testicles, first one, then the other, then both. He picked up the tempo once he got back to the main course. Rhythmic sucking sounds filled the cruiser's interior as Lass' hips clenched, and then—

"Aw-aw-aw... FUCK!"

—he came in his subordinate's mouth.

Dodell took his time with the denouement, wringing out the final drops with expertise. Lass' cock turned to meat-putty.

"I stand corrected," Lass admitted, wiping his brow. "That was the best blow job of my life."

Dodell slipped his mouth off, then swallowed in a loud gulp. "Told ya. And nut don't taste nearly as bad as ya'd think. You get used to it."

I'll bet you do.

Lass pulled over at the next turn, and suddenly gravel was popping under the tires. In the darkness, Stoddard's Mill loomed like a stark black-marble ruin. Seven dead kids they'd found thus far in the vicinity. What would they find tonight?

Lass stuffed his wet dick back in his pants and zipped up. "Grab the flashlights. Let's check this out."

Dodell babbled in disbelief. "Uh, wuh-well, Sarge?"

"What?"

"Ain't you got something to take care of first?" Dodell had his penis out. "Like we said? Reciprocal? Fellas takin' care of each other in their time of need?"

Lass laughed out loud. "Fuck you, ya goddamn homo. You think I'm gonna suck your dick, you're even dumber than I thought. You tell anyone, they'll never believe you, and I'll make goddamn sure you never work in law enforcement again. Shit, you won't even be able to get a job swabbing the floors at Barnett's Diner. Now put your dick back in your pants and grab the flashlights like I told you, you cum-swallowing dick-sucking queen."

"Aw, Jesus, Sarge!" Dodell rebelled. "That ain't right! I do for you, you do for me—that was the deal!"

"The only deal is you suck my dick any time I tell you to, and you don't say shit. Homo. Fruitbar. Now get the goddamn flashlights unless you want your queer ass kicked from here clear to Canada."

"That's blackmail!" Dodell shouted.

"Yeah. Don't like it, do something about it." Lass' heavy chest rattled from the laughter. "Unass this car, Suzy. We've got work to do."

Lass got out, looking into the darkness. Dodell clumped out himself, flashlights clinking. He passed one to Lass.

"That's low-down, Sarge. That's a scumbag thing ta do."

"Uh-huh," Lass agreed. "And look at it this way, Liberace. The sooner we get this check-out finished, the sooner my dick's gonna be back in your yap."

Lass' big size-12 shoes crunched forward, gravel popping. Dodell followed. Ahead of them, the long-closed Stoddard's Mill seemed to grow as they approached, its silo tower spearing the night. They walked around behind the drooping edifice, and Lass scanned his Mag-Lite to and fro over the range where they'd previously found seven dead, gutted children.

Nothing tonight.

"Thank, God," Lass mumbled.

"What's that, Sarge?" Dodell asked.

"Shut up, queercakes. And keep your hand out of your pants. That old shriveled bitch Mrs. Codder said something about way behind the mill, near the old mine."

"She said she saw a monster," Dodell reminded.

"That's right, Elton. So let's check it out. Probably just a rummie cooping in the trees. We'll find him and beat his ass black and blue and be on our way. Go check around the right. I'll check the left."

They both parted. Their bright flashlight beams roved through the darkness. The woods rose before Lass. Lass stopped, cock throbbing.

Fuck. That was one doozy of a head job, he thought. He rubbed his crotch in recollection. I might have ta, I might—

Lass was too aroused. He needed another nut—bigtime. The follow-through and all that. Second nut's always better than the first. Dodell's footsteps could be heard crunching away.

No one would know.

Lass whipped it out in the dark, not thinking of Rachel Welch or Pamela Anderson but of Private Dodell's hot, balls-of-fire mouth. He shucked his stiff meat back and forth like skin on a fresh pork sausage, then raised up on his police tip-toes and—

"Oooooooo!"

He squirted his restless seed deep out into the night.

Man! he thought.

But no sooner had he replaced his penis into his trousers... he heard the smacking sound.

"The fuck?"

He switched his Mag back on, roved it to the left.

And stared.

What he was staring at was not another dead child but a veritable pile of dead children.

And, if the flashlight beam could be trusted, the child on the top—a boy—was still alive.

Quivering. Shuddering. Convulsing.

But still alive.

"Hold on, son!" Lass proclaimed. "I'll help ya!"

It was then, though, that Lass noticed just exactly where his plume of sperm had landed: in the boy's mouth.

"Aw, Jesus, kid. I'm sorry... "

The apology was hardly needed; the boy died a moment later, smacking Lass' sperm. He'd been gutted and gored, and so had the six other children who lay there between twin oak trees, stacked neatly as bags of heifer feed. This is DAMN fucked up! he thought. What the hell am I gonna do! I can't keep all these dead kids out of the papers!"

Dead kids were bad enough. But what about a dead cop?

That's what Lass found when he tromped off to the other side of the mill's rear. An old track-trail led down the cleared path, toward the head shaft of the gypsum mine that had been closed decades ago. Lass' bright flashlight scoured the space between the rusted rails, and he saw—

Footprints? he wondered.

They were footprints, all right. But not human. They were—

Hoofprints, he discerned. Like a bull's.

Ten feet further down the tracks, Lass found Dodell's body sprawled in the dirt. The best cock-suck in town was dead. The younger officer's chest had been ripped open, gored.

Lass was too scared to scream. Mindless, now, he turned and ran back to the cruiser, certain he would hear the manic hoofbeats following him. By the time he'd returned to the front of the mill, he was shaking feces out of his pant legs. He drove off, spinning wheels in gravel, and sitting in his own hot shit.

««—»»

Pasiphae exhaled the rich darkness, watching the idiot constable flee. Such fools, she thought. What has happened over the ages, to turn the world into this... folly? She was back now, that's all that mattered, and for however long, she would turn her hatred into blood, into screams, into the same wreckage that had summoned her return.

She drifted through the woods, a voluptuous oil slick, not moving around the trees but through them. Her footfalls made no sound, and not even the most minute branch snapped beneath her feet, not even a crisped leaf. But she was flesh too, she was real. She could smell and taste and feel, and in this she rejoiced.

Before her lay the pile of freshly dead children. As if to verify what she already knew—that she was real—she ran her slender black hand through the tilled gut of the child who lay on top. Her hand came away wet, and slicked with cooling blood. Her fingers fondled the small shriveled genitals, and then, out of the strangest curiosity, she leaned over and sucked on the little penis. Perhaps her own reality would bring the sprig of flesh back to life but, lo, that didn't happen. The thing remained tiny in her unearthly mouth, and all that it gave up were a few suckings of stale urine. Pasiphae spat it out.

No, here, in this domain, the dead stayed dead. But from hers?

Gods and goddesses never quite died. They just slept.

Pasiphae was fully awake now. And so was her son.

She traipsed back to the opening of the pit, its foulness wafting up like honeysuckles in a warm breeze. Moonlight shifted through the forest. In the entry stood her son, darkness snorting from his fierce nostrils, his manly naked body corded with muscle, glistening in pungent sweat. His cock stood up hard.

There was love in the monster's eyes.

She knelt before the monument of her own womb, and the grand seed of Minos. Then she lay back and spread her legs of night, gasping as her beloved snorted and humped her in the dirt. Her obsidian flesh clenched in orgasm, and then her hot beast-son drained his loins in her, jet after jet of semi-god sperm drooling into her midnight cunt.

When it was over, she embraced him, a black tear of joy in her eye. The huge flap of tongue lolled against her cheek. She stroked the muscled buttocks.

"Tomorrow, my son," Pasiphae whispered endearingly. "Tomorrow you'll have more food, and I'll have more death. Both of us will feast."

Then she kissed each of her son's great horns and sighed into the twilight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"I thought I told you to clean this dump!"

Daphne stood appalled in the open doorway, her bags in hand.

"I cleaned it," Dean said, lounging with his feet up on the couch.

Daphne dropped her bag. "It's a FUCKIN' SHIT-HOLE!" she bellowed. She left her luggage in the doorway, stomped upstairs.

Women, Dean thought. What pains in the ass. He glanced around. Dishes piled a foot high in the sink, the garbage can overflowing, empty beer bottles littering the floor. Looks clean to me, he thought and shrugged. Guess I better go straighten her out.

He swigged the last of his Hefeweizen, pitched the empty bottle to the floor, then went upstairs. "How was Chicago?" he asked. Steam poured out of the bathroom; the shower hissed.

"Huh?" Dean stuck his head in. "How was Chicago?"

"Leave me alone!" she yelled from the stall. "Clean the house!"

"How come you're taking a shower now? You just got home."

"I've got a regional merchandise meeting in an hour!" she wailed back. "I gotta pay the bills, remember? Now leave me alone and go clean the house!"

Dean nodded. That was about enough. He stomped into the bathroom, threw back the curtain, and grabbed Daphne not by the hair but by the face, and hauled her out of the stall. Water flew off her perfect-white skin, and her equally perfect breasts bobbed in terror. Her first shriek pierced his ears, but Dean put an end to that noise fast, with two solid right-crosses to the mouth. Whap-whap! Her pretty eyes went cockeyed, and now she was murmuring manically with blood smeared at her lips.

"So the house needs to be cleaned?" Dean asked, throwing his naked wife to the floor. "Well, how about the toilet? Let's see if it's dirty."

He got on his knees, then shoved her head into the commode. Gurgling noises spat upward.

"How's it look, honey? Clean or dirty?"

Her arms and legs flailed as she blew bubbles of terror in the toilet water. Dean's hand vised in her hair, holding her down.

"Think maybe you should lick it? That'd get it nice and clean, wouldn't it, sweetheart?"

He shoved her head in harder, with both hands now. The bubbles were literary bursting now; it looked like a full-tilt hot tub down there.

But then the bubbles stopped, and her naked body fell slack.

"Oopsie!" Dean remarked. "Goodness gracious what have I done?"

Daphne lay dead, her head hanging in the commode. Dean considered giving her a last poke but then said to hell with it. He'd been sick of that pussy a week after the honeymoon.

So instead of fucking her he simply pissed on her head, flushed the toilet, and went back downstairs for another brewsky—

"—it's a FUCKIN' SHIT-HOLE!" Daphne bellowed so hard little veins bulged at her temples. Dean was staring at her from the couch. He looked around and noticed the house was clean.

Just not clean enough, evidently.

By the time Dean's mind surfaced from this next—and worst—Jig-Jag, Daphne had already stormed upstairs. But Dean remained frozen on the couch: in the Jig-Jag, he'd—

I killed her, he recalled. I killed my loving wife!

He couldn't imagine what could spur such thoughts, but then he remembered all the things Ajax had told him. More and more, it seemed to all be true.

I guess I really need to get some help...

He made to get up, go and talk to Daphne, when the phone rang—

"Hello?"

"Dean, this is Ajax. You need to—"

"Ajax! I gotta tell you something," Dean rushed in. "I think maybe you're right about a lot of this. I just had the worst—"

"Forget about all that," Ajax insisted. "Turn on CNN, right now!"

Dean kept the phone to his ear and he punched up the remote control.

A blond newscaster reeled off the short news-clip, "—say authorities in the ranch town of DeSmet, South Dakota. Thus far, thirteen children have been found mutilated, along with a police officer and security guard—"

"What the hell!" Dean declared.

"That's the place you grew up, isn't it?" Ajax said over the line. "DeSmet?"

"Yeah... "

Next, a video clip showed—

"That's the old Stoddard Mill!" Dean exclaimed.

"—in the vicinity of the old Stoddard Mill," the newscaster went on, "which officially closed in the early eighties. All of the bodies of the children have been found here as well as the body of the police officer. The first shocking murder, however, occurred when a security guard was found similarly mutilated on the property of DeSmet's largest cattle ranch—" The next clip showed a place much familiar to Dean: the great sign in high sunlight which read WELCOME TO THE LOHAN RANCH

"That's my dad's ranch!" Dean exclaimed.

"All of the deceased seemed to be victims of some kind of bizarre animal attack. State authorities will be stepping in to aid in this brutal crisis, which far surpasses the resources and capabilities of the modest, six-man DeSmet department headed by veteran sergeant A.T. Lass." On the screen, Lass' plump face appeared, his mouth like two twisting worms as he attempted to assert authority. "It's a horrible, horrible tragedy we got goin' here in our good town, but my department will do everything in its power to assist the state investigation squad which should be arriving shortly." Lass, then, inadvertently picked his nose before the TV news camera. "But one thing I need to impress upon folks is that this is a police matter, and the last thing any of us needs is citizens runnin' off and tryin' to kill the varmint on their own. It's an accident waitin' to happen, and we can't have a bunch of good ol' boys shooting at each other's shadows in the woods. This needs to be left to the proper authorities." The screen switched back to the blond newscaster. "After last night's grim discovery, rumors have abounded that male residents are in the process of arming themselves and venturing out into the woods to hunt down the vicious animal—"

Dean sat locked in rigor as the shocking newscast ended.

"Ain't that some weird shit?" Ajax asked over the phone.

"I'll talk to you later," Dean stammered and hung up. Gotta call dad, his thoughts rushed. Gotta find out what's going on out there... He quickly dialed his father's number in South Dakota, but it wasn't Dean's father who picked up; it was Shirley, the Lohan housekeeper for the last thirty years.

Dean spoke, identified himself and asked about his father, but Shirley was hysterical, could not be understood through the gibberish of sobs.

"Shirley, please!" Dean insisted. "Get a grip on yourself! What's wrong?"

Eventually the woman became comprehensible. Choking back tears, she revealed, "Oh dear Dean—it only happened a little while ago! Your wonderful father... he's in the hospital!"

Dean was gripped in dread. "The hospital? What for?"

"He's in a coma, Dean! They say he's going to die! Come home at once!"

No! Not Dad! Dean felt frantic, confused, shattered. "I'm grabbing the first flight out!" he told Shirley and hung up. Next he raced up the stairs, taking three steps at a time, barged into the bedroom and began throwing clothes into a suitcase. Steam poured out of the bathroom; the shower hissed. Dean stuck his head in.

"Sweetheart? I'm-I'm sorry but—" His lower lip trembled—"I'm not going to be able to clean the house—"

"Why not!" she shouted from behind the shower curtain.

"My dad's in a coma."

Her voice turned regretful. "Oh, Dean, honey. I'm so sorry."

"So I have to go back to DeSmet. I'm not sure when I'll be back."

"Okay, honey. Have a good trip," she said and continued with her shower.

What a woman! Dean beamed. I knew she'd understand!

««—»»

Still rattled by the sight of his dead deputy Dodell (and the loss of a pre-eminent source of fellation), Sergeant A.T. Lass cruised down night-shrouded Main Street, frowning at its new-found desolation. Any other time, Main Street would be abuzz with hookers and dealers at this hour. But not tonight, he complained to himself. Everyone's off the street, sitting at home with their doors bolted. All afraid of the big bad wolf.

Diligent law-enforcement officers would approve of this sudden lack of skell, whores, and scumbags prowling the streets but less-than-diligent officers, such as Lass, saw it from a different angle. He wanted those dealers on their street selling their wares; he wanted those hookers turning twenty tricks a night because the first thing they did with their trick money was buy more crystal-meth. Lass had his fingers in those profits, and it was a big pie.

How am I gonna pay for my new Cherokee and pool table if this shit keeps up? he wondered.

That blond bitch newscaster didn't help improve his mood much, either. Made me look like a damn fool, he thought. Tellin' folks we need the damn state fuzz in here 'cos of our limited ‘resources.' The fuckin' bitch!

That was the last thing Lass needed. To hell with the dead kids. Bunch'a state investigators got in here nosing around, they might easily find out about some of Lass' less than dutiful involvements.

Yeah, the blond bitch... Lass wouldn't mind taking her skinny ass around back behind the station and breaking up her pursy face with his billy. Then she'd be too ugly to be on TV. He could toss her to a pimp who'd have her ass turned in one day, out on the street earning cash.

Bitch, he thought a last time.

Couple of kids die in this shit-pit town and once it makes the national news, the whole country's going nuts. And only 'cos it's kids, Lass thought bitterly. And they don't give a hoot that each and every one of 'em wasn't nothin' but trailer park skell no ways. Bunch'a little white ‘gers raping ten-year-olds on the playground, quittin' school in the fourth grade to steal hub caps and CD players and prance around in their ball caps and baggy pants listening to that rap shit. Lass didn't get this Rap business, no matter what that pussy suck-face Hoiter said. To Lass it just sounded like a bunch of shit; all these players did was make up words that rhymed.

Lass, come to think of it, needed some real music now. Like some Reba or Bonnie Rait, or some of the good ‘ol Dolly. He flicked on the console radio:

"Got the big dick itch, dig a motherfuckin' ditch, then my AOL glitch—yo white bitch!"

Lass snapped it off, clacking his teeth. Obviously, Hoiter had fucked up all of Lass' pre-set stations. I'll fix his ass tomorrow. See how he likes scrubbing all the bum puke out of the drunk tank.

He idled down the back streets now. No action here, either. Just house after house and trailer after trailer with their shades drawn. Shut in. Scared.

Bad for business.

And now, to top it all off, those damn hayseed ranchers had to go out and get their asses killed too. I warned 'em, Lass congratulated himself. I warned 'em not to go fuckin' around out there. And look what happens.

Eight of them had met at Lohan's Ranch, and old Jake Lohan himself had been the one to rile them all up with shit like if the police couldn't protect their kids, they'd have to do it themselves. So they'd all grabbed their guns and run off in the woods like a bunch of perfect asses. Couple hours later, the rescue squad was hauling them out of the trees behind Stoddard's Mill in body bags. They'd all been gored right through their hearts.

The only one of them that lived was Jake Lohan but he was in a coma and looking like he'd be cold by morning.

I told 'em so, the dickbrains.

Lass cruised down more dark streets. This wasn't exactly routine patrol, of course. The main reason he was out tonight transcended his law-enforcement obligations. Lass needed a nut in a bad way. And it damn sure pissed him off that none of the whores were out plying their trade like they should be. Ordinarily, any time Lass got horny, all he had to do was pluck a gal off the street and pull it out. They weren't stupid, and they'd always swallow. To tell the truth, though, what Lass really wanted was another hum-dinger cocksuck from that closet-fairy Oly Dodell but there was no way that would be happening tonight, not unless Lass went to the morgue and opened Dodell's drawer.

Christ! Lass pawed his crotch. I need to get off!

His plight took him deeper and deeper into DeSmet's more remote roads. He turned at the corner of 38^th Avenue and Auburn Street, thinking: Please, please! Just one fuckin' whore!

And by the time he'd finished the turn, his plea was answered.

Lass grinned. It was Arianne Zausner, the meth-freak who'd sucked his ass last week. Lass measured a woman's right to exist not by her contribution to society, nor her intelligence, but by her ability to suck ass. And Arianne Zauser got the highest mark in town.

He pulled over, stopped, and flipped open the passenger door.

"Aw, shit," she said. Her wan face looked half-dead already. "You're busting me again?"

"Simmer down, sweetie. Your good old Uncle A.T. isn't gonna arrest your dirty ass. It's just time to pay a little street toll. Don't forget about that break I gave you last week."

"Yeah, some break," she came back. "I got to lick the shit out of your asshole."

Lass' jaw set. He wasn't in the mood for back-talk, especially from a skinny dope-addict. "Don't make this hard, hon. You can get in and pay the toll, or maybe the next time you fire up a pipe, you'll get a lump of ammonia instead of ice."

The girl slumped into the cruiser, shut the door.

"That's a smart girl. And all this time I thought you had cum for brains."

She sat with her arms tightly crossed, chin down. Her bare legs sticking out of the faded cut-off shorts looked white as a grouper-belly in the moonlight. "I need to cop bad," she admitted, shivering. "I need some ice. Like really bad."

"Well, I can't help ya there, baby," Lass announced from behind the wheel. "What happened to that bag I gave ya last week?"

"That was gone in two days."

"Not my problem." Lass found one of his hide-outs, a little snip of an old haulage trail. What didn't occur to him, however, was that this long-disused haulage trail was once an auxiliary access lane to the gypsum mine behind Stoddard's Mill.

He parked, let the car idle.

"I'll need twenty for this," she peeped a demand.

Lass laughed. "Honeybunch, you seem to be forgetting something. I don't pay for blowjobs. I'm The Man. I'm John Law. You suck my dick for free whenever I tell you to."

"Okay, a ten!" she nearly shrieked. "I need to cop some ice!"

"Well then I guess you need to walk your dirty ass to Callisto and buy some from Leonard."

She shrieked again, "I can't buy with no money."

"Then I guess you need to peddle that junkie fuck-hole of yours a little harder, huh?"

"There's no johns out! There's no tricks! Nobody's cruising the strip because of the killings! Goddamn you! I need to score!"

Lass nodded in consideration. "Okay, I'll give you ten, but this is the only time, understand?"

Suddenly her hands were on him, she was practically panting. "Yes, yes! Thank you—"

"Here's five," he said placidly, and then jerked around and punched her in the face. The collision of his fist to her cheek sounded like wet-leather snapping. "And here's another five... " A second blow caught her right up under the chin. Her head bobbed like a ball on a spring.

"There's your ten, whore," he said. He unzipped his fly, pulled out his cock and balls. "Now, unless you want your skinny body to be found by hunters five years from now, you make nice to Big Mack and the Twins."

He forced her face to his groin. Frothing blood, she replied, "That looks like a penis... only smaller. Big Mack and the Twins, huh? More like Little Twig and the Peas."

Lass frowned. What was wrong with people? Was everyone crazy? His right hand grabbed her throat and squeezed down as effectively as a hose clamp. She convulsed; no gagging sounds could be heard for the force with which he choked her. Her thin faced darkened very quickly, robbed of all blood, and then he forced her head to his lap. The action spurred a spontaneous erection; with his left hand, then, he masturbated. His chest heaved. It didn't take long. Soon his sperm was smearing her mulberry-dark face.

When he was done coming, he released her throat. Arianne flinched back in the seat, her desperate inhalations literally shrieking into her throat.

"See what happens when you sass the Law, young lady?"

She continued to suck the life-breath back into her.

"But, see, some of you cum-pots are just too damn ungrateful for your own good," Lass continued. "You don't know no manners and never will. So what I'm sayin', hon, is that you are one stinky junkie this town can sure as shit do without. Think of it as a public service—" and with that, Lass' fist turned in her hair and grabbed a handful. He dragged her squealing from the car, dragged her around in the dirt and rocks awhile, then slipped out his black-walnut billy club with his free hand. "Time to turn your head into Kibbles ‘N' Bits, snookums. Don't worry, someone'll find your skeleton someday. ‘Oh, what a tragedy! Local prostitute killed by drug dealers! What a mean, nasty world! Bad bad world!'"

As Lass had been pulling the girl from the car, however, her foot had inadvertently hit the radio knob, snapping it on.

"A damn fine day, what can I say? Killed some motherfuckin' cops wiff my AK—"

Lass raised his nightstick, prepared to first crush the bridge of her nose and then whip her junkie brain to puree—

The radio blared on: "Dah motherfuckin' cops, bunch'a motherfuckin' clowns, put the white motherfuckers deep underground!"

The music beat on but before Lass could land his first blow, a maniac blur rushed him, and suddenly he was screaming blood like a water fountain out of his mouth. Some monstrous shape had rushed him, rammed him, and next he was hoisted high off his feet by what felt like a pair of stainless-steel meat-hooks sunk deep in his chest. Lass' arms and legs pinwheeled in mid-air as more blood fountained outward, splattering, and some final thread of reasoning left in his brain deduced that he'd just been gored by a very large bull.

Lass dangled limp. A moment before he died, he looked down and saw that the bull stood on two legs.

CHAPTER NINE

Harney Peak, the state's highest mountainous peak, drifted below the 737's oval window. Dean peered out in something like awe. Of course, he'd seen it before many times but somehow it felt different now. As he continued to gaze out the minuscule window, Dean felt home whispering to him, an eerie notion since home was the place he'd fled with the utmost determination not so many years ago.

Beside him sat Ajax, complaining about not being able to smoke. Given all that Dean had psychologically experienced over the last week, he needed Ajax' counsel for the trip; that's why Dean had sprung for the extra round-trip fare for his sullied friend.

"Don't you own any decent clothes?" Dean asked, smirking at Ajax' holey jeans, beat loafers, and the stained, Wermacht-gray jacket with rips down the inner sleeves,

"What's wrong with my clothes?" Ajax asked, truly dismayed.

"Never mind."

"But thanks for bringing me along. I need a vacation."

"This isn't a vacation, Ajax. My father might be dying. Something really strange is happening in town, and considering the really strange things that have been happening to me, lately, I need you."

"Consider me your personal psycho-therapist," Ajax assured. Then he rubbed his face in aggravation. "Since when can't you smoke on planes?"

"Since about fifteen years ago."

"Fascists. Some free country. I'll bet Bill Clinton smokes on Air Force One while some subjugated and thoroughly exploited female White House aide smokes his—"

"That's enough, Ajax."

The three-hour flight passed in what seemed minutes, along with the beautiful landscapes below. Dean's eyes kept dragging back to the window. It wasn't so much the landscapes he was seeing as much as it was his past. He wondered what else he'd be seeing once he got—

Home, he thought.

They landed in Sioux Falls, rented a 4x4, and several hours later were pulling into the visitor's lot at DeSmet General Hospital.

««—»»

The heart-monitor beeped all too slowly. When he stepped into the wanly lit room and parted the privacy curtain, Dean's heart slowed to a rate less than the monitor's when he looked down. The figure on the bed looked dead already.

"Dad?" he choked out the single, simple word. Indeed, Dean thought that his father must be dead, until he remembered the heart monitor. Gray whiskers speckled his father's chin; long grayer hair sprawled over the pillow. Long lines from dangling IV bags drooped to a variety of needles sunk into his bone-thin arm. The worst sight, though, were the great swathes of bandages plastered across the entirety of Jake Lohan's chest.

Dean stared for a long time.

Gored, he thought. That's what the ward nurse had told him. "They're saying it was a mad bull out in the woods," she'd clarified. "Your daddy was the only survivor of the entire shooting party. Combination of initial blood-loss and shock's what put him in the coma. God forbid, if your daddy dies... no one'll ever know what really happened out there."

The rest of the information was just as sketchy. His father and several other local men had gone out to the vicinity where over a dozen children's bodies had been found, around Stoddard's Mill. They'd gone out there with guns and were all crack shots. All their ammunition had been expended yet no "wild bull" had been recovered. Just a bunch of dead men and one man—Dean's father—clinging to life.

The whole thing was crazy. Dean couldn't imagine it. The nurse had also told him that his father had not yet surfaced from the coma, and that there was a fair chance he never would.

He's dying, Dean reasoned, a tear in his eye. He's as good as dead now.

Dean didn't know how long he stood there looking. "Dad? Dad?" he kept saying over and over again. "It's me, it's Dean. I'm home," but the only reply was the faltering beep of the monitor.

"I'm sorry but visiting hours are over," the nurse came in and said. "Try to wrap it up in a few minutes, okay, hon? You can come back tomorrow at eleven." Then she'd left as quickly as she'd arrived, kind enough to give him a few more minutes.

"It's me, Dad," he repeated to the still, sheeted figure. "I'm home."

Nothing. His last minutes ticked by, then Dean turned to leave.

"You're home," a voice rattled behind him.

"Dad!" Dean rushed to the bed, hovering, gripping his father's hand. "I'm here! Let me get the nurse! You're going to be all right!"

"No time." Jake Lohan's mouth barely moved as the words leaked out. "Something's here—"

"I know, they told me. Stoddard's Mill—"

"No!" the old man cracked in a gust. He winced in pain. "Behind Stoddard's Mill... "

Behind? Dean thought. "But, Dad, there's nothing behind the mill except—" Then he caught himself, remembering his childhood. Dean and his friends, as kids, had regularly escaped behind Stoddard's Mill to flip through their stash of Playboy's and chew tobacco and talk about girls. Yes, Dean and Kit and Darrell and Boner. And come to think of it—

The old gypsum mine, he remembered now. More memories flashed back. The old mine had been closed for longer than he could remember, but no one had ever boarded up the gaping entry to the main shaft.

The mouth of the old gypsum mine had been the secret place where they'd illegally dumped all of the ranch's rendering bilge. They'd even dumped whole dead cattle down there when they could get away with it.

"The mine," Dean said to his father.

Jake Lohan squeezed his son's hand in acknowledgment, nodding feebly. Then the parchment-dry voice creaked on: "My boy. My fine strong son finally come back to the roots of his blood."

"Never mind that, Dad," Dean whispered fiercely. "What happened? You've got to tell me what happened out there!"

"Evil," his father croaked like a frog. "That's what's happenin' out there, son. I've a mind to tell ya to catch the next plane and git your ass out'a here."

"I can't do that, Dad. Not while you're like this. And what did you say about—"

A pained cough ripped from Jake Lohan's bandaged chest. "It's blammed fuckin' evil is what' I'm sayin', son. I know it is... 'cos I saw it."

Dean leaned closer. "What, Dad? What did you see?"

But his father was already fading back out, his grip loosening. Then, in a course exhalation that was nearly inaudible, he said, "Only you can save us, son... "

Jake Lohan fell back into the smothering embrace of his coma, perhaps forever.

««—»»

"Sorry about your dad, man," Ajax said on the ride back.

Dean didn't reply, keeping his eye on the darkening road. He didn't want to talk, not now. He was too confused, and Ajax seemed to understand this. What Dean needed was distraction, not focus, and—like magic—Ajax provided it, when a souped ‘72 Chevelle soared by in the oncoming lane.

"Oh, man!" Ajax railed. "Did you see the blond hunk'a box in that Chevelle?"

"That was Judy Nesher," Dean remarked aside.

Ajax shot a funky glance. "You know her?"

"Know her? I fucked her in high school. Does the term ‘screamer' mean anything to you?"

"Shit, man! You fucked that piece of work? And you left this town?"

Dean shrugged. "She's a pig. I'd only fuck her when I didn't feel like jerking off."

"What a fuckin' stud!"

"Actually, her mother's a lot hotter."

"You fucked her mother?"

"Yeah," Dean admitted as though it were an inconsequential matter. "A threesome—fucked both their brains out on the kitchen table where Mrs. Nesher was making deviled eggs for the homecoming party. Shit, between the two of 'em, I don't know which was louder: Judy, her mom, or a rock in a gearbox."

"What a fuckin' stud!" Ajax repeated in awe.

After a quick glance, Dean decelerated, then pulled a screeching U-turn. Next, the 4x4 was pulling into the gravel parking lot of a long roadside bar. A gaudy neon sign blinked: GORTYN'S WOODLAND TAVERN.

"Gorty's," Dean said under his breath. He idled around the parking lot, then backed into a distance space.

"Dynamite," Ajax celebrated. "I could use a beer but... why are you parking way over here?"

"We're not going in. I just want to see who's here."

Ajax flicked a cigarette out the window and lit another. "Earth to Dean's brain? Best way to see who's inside is—duh—to walk inside."

"You don't understand," Dean sniped back. "I can't just walk into Gorty's and have a beer."

"Why?"

"I'm Dean Lohan," Dean said. "That's why."

Ajax frowned at the reply but before he could say anything, he caught a glimpse of another hot blond walking toward the front door. "Shit! Look at that slice of meat—"

"That's Mary Cotten."

"A brick motherfuckin' shit-house—"

"I fucked her," Dean admitted. "But then I shit-canned her the next day 'cos she shaves her pussy."

Ajax gawped at him. "You—"

"I don't like all that shaved shit, and that racing-stripe shit. I wanna fucking fistful of hair down there. I want sod." Dean paused, pointing at the long tavern window. "See the tall redhead, in the Danzig T-shirt?"

"Oh, you mean the one right there stacked like Thanksgiving dinner?"

"Yeah. That's Chrissy Croner. I fucked her."

Ajax was flabbergasted.

"She was an ass-fuck freak. She'd give herself an enema every time I came over."

"How long did you date her?"

Dean's face crinkled in objection. "I didn't date her, I just fucked her in the ass a bunch of times. I'd never date a girl like that. She wears too much makeup."

"Are you shitting me, man? Hell, I'd eat her makeup!"

"She's a trailer hog. I ain't got time to hold hands in the fuckin' park." Dean whipped out a can of Skoal and dipped a pinch. "All these girls out here? They're skoads."

"Skoads?"

"They're fuck-pigs, Ajax—"

"Oink, oink—"

"And they ain't worth a guy's time except the time it takes to punch their holes and slam the door in their whiny faces." He pointed again. "See the brunette over there by the pool table?"

Ajax squinted. "Yeah... and I just came in my pants. Let me guess? You fucked her."

"I fucked her," Dean said. "I'd pin her feet back behind her ears and fuck her so hard she'd sound like a dog-toy being stepped on. She was a good nut... but then I got sick of listening to her talk. She wouldn't get the message, so I started beating the shit out of her... but she still wouldn't leave. Said she loved me, said I was the best thing to ever happen to her. One night I kicked her in the head so hard she was out cold for the next twelve hours. When she came to, she sucked my dick."

Ajax could do nothing gawp at him.

"Women are fucked up," Dean continued. "The harder you kick their asses, the more they love you. See that life-support for a pussy hanging by the bowling machine? That's Tina Blacker—"

"She's hotter than the lid on a wood stove," Ajax drooled.

"Yeah, and she had a pussy tighter than a frog's ass. But she got too clingy, you know what I mean?"

"No," Ajax said.

"And she was a motor-mouth; she wouldn't shut up. One night when I was ‘faced, I just got sick of it and broke a plank over her head. When she got out of the hospital, did she press charges? Fuck no. She begged me to marry her, threatened to kill herself if I said no."

"What did you say?"

"No," Dean said. "I didn't have time for all that lovey-dovey psycho-tramp bullshit. I told her if she killed herself, I'd go to her funeral... if I wasn't busy."

"What a motherfucker!" Ajax proclaimed.

"That's right. Feel 'em, fuck 'em, and forget 'em. That was my philosophy back in the old days. So two months later, Tina calls me up and says she's pregnant, says it's mine, but I know she's been fucking my best friend Paul for the expressed purpose of getting knocked up and trying to tag me with it. So I tell her to stick an ice-pick up her hole and prick the kid out into the toilet, then she starts screaming and cuts her wrists. The only bad part is she didn't die. Spent a couple years in the state ward, and here she is back again, trawling for cock at the bar."

Ajax looked exhausted from the shock of what he was hearing. "Man, you fuckin' ranch-boys are hardcore woman-hating pieces of shit."

"Yeah... and I was the biggest piece of shit of them all," Dean said. "So now you understand why we can't go into the bar. Half the girls in there would want to kill me, the other half would want to marry me. That's just the way it is. I ain't just some guy walking the street in DeSmet. I'm Dean Lohan. And that name is bad news in this berg, buddy."

Ajax's astonished stared never lightened. It took full minutes for him to speak again. He cast a last hard squint at the tavern windows. "Let me guess," he said. "You've fucked every girl in that bar."

Dean roved his own squint across the windows. "Yeah."

"What a fuckin' stud!"

Dean started the engine back up, then pulled out of the parking lot. "They all look real good," he said, "sure. But after a couple of pops, they ain't nothing but wet slits. Upside down in the snow, it all looks the same. It's just a hot hole attached to a yammering mouth that won't shut up. Fuck it. Who needs the headache?" Dean paused to spit out the window. "Here's a question: What's the best way to make a woman have an orgasm?"

"What?"

"Who cares?" Dean laughed aloud. He tromped the gas and spun wheels out of the lot.

««—»»

The first tints of dusk were touching the sky when Dean turned off onto the long familiar service road lined by perfect endless hedge-rows. The grasslands beyond shimmered a deep, fecund green, wavering in breezes which skimmed up the rolling hills. The road wound upward, and soon the perfect hedge-rows gave over to perfectly spaced sassafras trees a hundred feet high.

"This is some scenery," Ajax remarked, gazing out past the road. By now his gawp had practically become a permanent facial feature.

"It's beautiful land, and about forty thousand acres of it belong to us."

"Jesus. That's a shitload of real estate."

Eventually the road led up to the highest hill and Dean was pulling around a plush cul-de-sac appointed with statues, a fountain, and more meticulously trimmed hedges.

"Here's my old digs," Dean said and parked.

Before them loomed the Lohan mansion.

"Digs?" Ajax remarked. "It looks like something on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. You never told me you were a millionaire's kid."

They got out and carried their luggage to the house, passing the gushing marble fountain. "The Lohan Ranch is the biggest and most productive ranch in the entire state," Dean said. "My father had the mansion built in 1980. He made five million in net profit that year."

Ajax just gasped.

Great stone columns, like those of a southern plantation house, fronted the wide three-story edifice whose outer brick walls were now almost festooned completely with sheets of ivy. Higher, cement verandas jutted from the mansion's face, and warm light glowed behind high casement windows. Slate-topped steps led to the wide double doors sided by polished-granite blocks which gave perch for lazing stone lions.

When Dean opened the ornate front doors, he was at once greeted by a bosomy, well-rounded woman of indeterminate age wearing a bland housedress and with long ink-black hair streaked with gray.

"Oh, Dean, it's so wonderful to have you back!" she gushed and hugged him unmercifully.

"Hi, Shirley," Dean hugged back. "We've just come from the hospital—"

"How is he?"

"In and out, I guess," came Dean's dispirited reply. "Oh, this is Ajax, my friend from Seattle. Ajax, Shirley. She keeps the house in order."

"Nice to meet you," Ajax said, his eyes struggling away from the woman's packed bosom. Her big tits wobbled beneath her top when she shook Ajax' hand.

Did the woman wink? "Very nice to meet you. Such fine boys, both of you. Why don't you get yourselves settled, while I tend to dinner."

They parted in the sumptuous foyer, Ajax carrying the suitcases behind Dean. Dark cherrywood paneling, genuine Persian carpets, and antique furniture filled the mansion's interior. A high chandelier threw sparkles of warm light as Dean led Ajax up the wide, curving stairwell.

"Did you catch that?" Ajax whispered.

"Catch what?"

"Shirley winked at me. She thinks I'm hot."

Dean winced. "Ajax, she's in her sixties. It would be like fucking your grandmother."

"If my grandmother had tits like that... I'd fuck her."

"You've got to be the most perverted person I've ever known," Dean commented on the second-floor landing.

"Perverted? Me?" Ajax countered.

"You want to fuck an old lady, you want to pee on girls' backs, and the other night you stuck a pair of my wife's panties into your pants."

Ajax scratched his chin in genuine contemplation. "Yeah? So what's the perverted part?"

"Here's your room." Dean showed him in. A four-posted bed, framed oil paintings hundreds of years old, dormer doors which opened to a high veranda.

"Jesus. It's the Lincoln Bedroom. Do I gotta give you campaign funds to sleep here?"

"My room's right next door. Let's get cleaned up for dinner."

"Great, I'm starving. I could eat a—well, I could eat your housekeeper if you want to know the truth."

"In that case, I don't want to know the truth."

"Hey—" Suddenly Ajax looked quizzical as he prepared to pass Dean his suitcase. "You got cinderblocks in here? This suitcase is heavy as a motherfucker."

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