The Minotauress Edward Lee

"All I packed was some clothes." Dean hefted the suitcase with a look of dismay. "You're right, it is heavy," he concurred. Then he shook it and heard a heavy clack. "What the... " He opened the suitcase on the bed, fished through his clothes, then slowly pulled out—

"What the hell did you bring that for?" Ajax asked.

Dean was holding his old pair of horn-crankers. He looked wide-eyed to Ajax and admitted in a slow drone, "I honestly don't remember putting them in the suitcase."

"Terrific," Ajax complained. "More memory blackouts. Shit, I thought sure that would all stop once you got back home."

"But why on earth would I bring my horn-crankers?"

"Something in your subconscious," Ajax posited. "Or I should say something in your fucked-up subconscious."

Dean felt an itch of dread in his gut. This was getting serious. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should see a shrink."

"No maybes about it."

"Maybe I should call Daphne—"

Ajax's face went creased in a scowl. "That's the dumbest thing you could do. If she's the catalyst to your fragmenting personality, the only way to know for sure is to avoid contact with her and see what happens."

"But-but," Dean stammered. "She'll be worried about me, she'll be—"

"Forget it," Ajax said. "Besides, she's probably at a work meeting right now."

But before Dean could further object, Shirley's distant voice called out from downstairs: "Boys! Boys! Come right away! More children have disappeared!"

««—»»

The 54-inch Magnavox television screen filled the darkened parlor with throbs of color. The three of them stood aghast as the local news channel related the latest details of the crisis. "... as another name is added to the otherwise quiet town's staggering body count," a brunette in a smart burgundy coatdress spoke stoically into a microphone. Behind her, state police investigators milled about in the woods, making way for a pair of EMT's bearing a covered stretcher. "Veteran DeSmet Police Sergeant A.T. Lass was found dead early this morning in a wooded clearing off Auburn Street and 38th Avenue, the victim of what local medical officials can only describe as a ‘goring' by a wild, horned animal. Thus far, eight men and thirteen children have been found dead by the same brutal means."

"Jesus," Ajax muttered.

The brunette newscaster continued, "But what baffles investigators further is that nearly all of the dead children appear to have been abducted before meeting their death, which seems to connect some manner of human involvement with the animal attacks. And to make matters compoundedly worse, local single mother Mitzy Rundstedt of the Callisto-Brownsroad Trailer Park, hysterically reported to state police that her infant twins, Ryan and Geoff, disappeared from her home earlier this afternoon. The Rundstedt Twins are only ten months old. Tune in at ten o'clock for updates of this terrible tragedy. From DeSmet, South Dakota, this is Laura Von Paulus, KSKY News."

Shirley gripped Ajax' arm. "What a horrible thing! Those poor adorable little twins!"

Ajax put a consoling arm around the buxom housemaid. "We can only hope the police'll find them before—"

"Before it's too late," Dean finished. He changed channels, searching for more coverage, then found another quick clip on CNN: "—described as the worst tragedy to befall the unassuming town of DeSmet, South Dakota," a narrator was saying. First came a still photo of the Rundstedt Twins, smiling up toothlessly and wielding rattles from their cribs. Then a clip of the mother, pallid, tears streaming down her thin meth-tramp face: "My poor little babies! Please, bring back my babies!" and lastly a live cut to the most recent crime scene where the fine and upstanding Sergeant Lass had been found gored and crushed. A white van was parked before the trees, and men roamed about in windbreakers that read STATE POLICE FORENSICS UNIT on their backs. The narrator returned, "Today, police crime-scene examiners were dispatched to search for clues but, as bad luck would have it, tonight's impending thunderstorm will likely wash away any tangible evidence—"

Dean turned off the set, horrified himself by what was taking place in his hometown. His mind whirled with names, places, sights, and sounds which all melded together to form the picture of the DeSmet he'd always known. But now the picture was different, soiled and flecked with dirt.

Shirley, in her grief, didn't seem to notice the distance that Ajax' hand had traveled down her back. "It's like some evil spirit has infected our goodly town," she half-sobbed. "A devil. God in Heaven, who could do such a thing? Who could ever want to bring harm to those lovely babies?"

Evil, Dean recanted in his mind. A devil. But she was right, something had come to DeSmet and was taking bites out of it. A maniac seething in insanity? A pagan cult sacrificing children to some imagined horned deity? A real devil, if such things could be real? It didn't matter which. They were all the same.

"Shirley, don't bother fixing dinner for us," Dean announced. "We're going out there, right now."

"We are?" Ajax asked, with more complaint in his voice than query.

"But, Dean!" Shirley gibbered away. "You can't! It's too dangerous!"

"We'll be fine, Shirley," Dean assured, drawing out the car keys. "I just want to check the place out before the storm rolls in. Come on, Ajax."

Ajax reluctantly withdrew his consoling arm from around Shirley.

"Be careful, boys!" Shirley's big tits wobbled as she waved after them.

Dean and Ajax went out the front door and down the slate-topped steps to the cul-de-sac. "Aw, man," Ajax griped. "I was getting wood. She thinks I'm hot. I was moving my hand down her ass and all she did was squeeze me tighter."

"Ajax, we're here on business," Dean reminded. "You're not supposed to be feeling up the housekeeper."

"I wasn't feeling her up. I was consoling her. I was imparting solace to her obvious state of unease."

"The only thing you were imparting was your hand up her ass." Dean unlocked the 4x4. "You were pawing on her like she was a prom date. For God's sake, Ajax. She's an old lady."

"An old lady's head on Shannon Tweed's body. Fuck. My dick's leaking."

They got in and drove back out the service road, Ajax shaking his head all the way. "And what's this shit about a storm? The sky was crystal clear when we drove up."

Over the next hill, thunder rumbled. "Welcome to South Dakota," Dean said. "Storms sneak up fast. You can be out working the fields with the sun beating on your back, and five minutes later it's pouring rain and you're dodging lightning." Even as he spoke, churning black thunderheads, like an abyssal surf, began to consume the twilight.

"So where are we going?" Ajax asked. "Your dad's ranch?"

"No. The woods along Stoddard's Mill, where the cop was killed last night. 38th and Auburn—that's what they said on the news."

"Fine, but what are we gonna do?"

"I just... want to... see something," Dean cryptically replied.

Twenty minutes later, they were there, idling slowly down the unlit street. Trailers and salt-box houses lined the left side of Auburn, while all that flanked the right side was the forest. Dean kept his eyes peeled as Ajax smoked. At the corner of 38th, Dean pulled to a stop.

"Just as I thought," he murmured.

"What? The woods?"

Nudged into the woods, a small clearing could be seen, and woven within it, yellow police cordons flapped in the rising wind. "That's where they found the cop's body," Dean projected.

"Uh-huh. But that still doesn't explain why we're sitting here instead of having a nice home-cooked meal at your mansion."

"All of the dead kids were found near Stoddard's Mill," Dean explained. He pointed. "That's just east of here."

"Fine. East of here ain't here," Ajax reasoned.

"At the hospital my father said something. He said that he was attacked near the old gypsum mine, which is right behind Stoddard's Mill."

That seemed to ring a bell even in Ajax' nicotine-sodden, sex-crazed brain. "What a minute. The night we got kicked out of the bar—"

"We didn't get kicked out of the bar," Dean refreshed his friend's memory. "You got kicked out of the bar."

"Right, but that night, didn't you tell me that you used to dump the rendering bilge from dead cattle into—"

"The gypsum mine, yes. Hell, if a cow or steer died at night, we'd throw the whole carcass down there. Must be thousands of gallons of rancid bilge down that shaft, and hundreds of rotten cattle. We'd even dump the extracted horns down the mine. Thousands of them, tens of thousands."

"Sweet. But I still don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Don't you think it's a little odd?" Dean asked.

"I think it's a little odd that we're sitting here on the brink of a thunderstorm when we should be chowing down at your pad and I could be goosing your housemaid."

Dean smirked at his friend's incognizance. "You're telling me it's coincidence? Eight men and over a dozen kids, all gored to death by an animal with horns. All near the old gypsum mine, and the old gypsum mine just happens to be the illegal depository for... what?"

"Dead cattle, dead cattle bilge, and dead cattle horns," Ajax calculated.

"Right. And that bothers me."

Ajax looked at him askance. "What do you mean?"

Dean felt his teeth grinding together. What did he mean? It was just something that bothered him, not by any avenue of logic. It was deeper than that. It was a ghost's whisper, or an idea seen on the surface of a rippling brook. It was an abstraction he could not decrypt. Yeah, he thought. All this from a guy who's probably got a split-personality. He wearily rubbed his face, and when his gaze inched back up the windshield—

His bones turned to ice. "FUCK!" he shouted. "LOOK!"

"WHAT!" Ajax shouted in startlement.

"Right there! Look! A woman!" Then Dean jumped out of the vehicle and crazily dashed into the woods. Ajax huffed after him.

"I saw her! Right here!" Dean was nearly shrieking when Ajax caught up. They stood just a few yard beyond the dell, amongst stands of pine and maple trees.

"You saw who?" Ajax asked.

Dean simmered down, pressing his fists to his thighs. "A woman," he said more calmly. "She was standing right here, looking right at us."

"Uh-huh. A woman. Standing in the woods." Ajax lit another cigarette, spewed smoke. "Well, what did this woman look like?"

"She—" Dean's thoughts stumbled. How could he say it? "She was... dark."

"Dark? A black woman, you mean."

"No. Dark like... smoke. Like wood-smoke."

Ajax gave him a long look.

"But she was real!" Dean insisted. "Fictile darkness, tangible black ether—something from the cosmos, I think."

Ajax' long look got longer fast.

"She was naked, grinning at us as she ran her hands up her breasts. But her eyes glowed, like smudge-pots. She was—she was... a personification of evil."

Ajax nodded, stroking his beard. "Uh... huh."

"And then I ran right up to her and... she disappeared."

"Got'cha."

Dean grimaced. It was no use. He knew how crazy he must sound but—damn it!—he also knew what he saw.

"Look Dean, you're under a lot of stress with your dad being in the hospital and all, and—"

Before Ajax could go on, though, the rumbling storm clouds overhead broke wide open, and an instant later, rain fell in sheets. They ran back to the 4x4 and fell into it, drenched. The vehicle rocked when they slammed the doors shut.

Ajax didn't say anything; he just shook his head, the wet cigarette still sticking out of his mouth.

"I know it sounds crazy," Dean confirmed, "but that's what I saw. There was a woman in the woods."

"Yeah, fictile darkness. Tangible black ether from the cosmos. Why, she was even the very personification of evil... . You know, Dean. They have medication for things like this. Now... can we just go home?"

Dean pulled off, the wipers thumping. The rain fell so hard it diluted all view out the windshield. Dean could only accelerate a few miles per hour to keep from driving off the road. The only saving grace was the lightning, which alternately illuminated the roadway with its fulgent whiplashes of light. The rain fell so hard, in fact, that it was nearly deafening inside the cab.

When Dean turned the corner onto Main Street—

"FUCK! LOOK!"

—he slammed the brakes and fishtailed to a stop on the gleaming asphalt.

"What now?" Ajax bellowed.

"There... was a woman in the road," Dean said.

"And let me guess. She was fictile darkness, she was tangible black ether—"

"No, no," Dean said. "Just a woman, lying in the road." He jumped out of the truck. This time Ajax didn't bother getting out. Why waste another perfectly good cigarette? But ahead of him, in the deluge, he could see Dean bending over in the headlight beams, as if to pick something up in the road. And a moment later he trudged back, popped the back door, and slid something into the seat.

Ajax turned on the dome light, then craned around and looked into the back seat. "Holy shit! It is a woman," he saw.

It was a woman indeed who lay across the seat, sodden with rain, shoes long gone, lank hair hanging in drenched strings over her face. Skinny legs and wet cut-off jeans, lemon tits beneath the trashy colorless halter. She looked emaciated, white as an embalmed corpse.

"Is she dead?" Ajax asked.

Dean pressed two fingers to her throat. "No, thank God. She's got a pulse."

Then Dean pushed the wet clots of hair out of her face. He gasped.

"Oh holy Christ," he guttered, his eyes wide as an owl's. "It's Arianne."

CHAPTER TEN

Pasiphae slipped through the teeming night, the cleansing rain running in rivulets down her stygian breasts. More rivulets tickled her underworld pussy, and summoned radiant sensations right up through her subcarnate guts. She passed through the trees, indeed, like smoke, yet any living thing she passed—bugs, tree frogs, small mammals—died in her poisoned wake.

She couldn't help it, her daedelic hand set an elegant finger into the groove of her cunt, and rubbed. Each further supernal step touched off effusive, drooling orgasms as she progressed back toward her son's beautifully foul demense.

Children for my child, she thought. Babies for my baby...

The wares of her orgasms slickened her long black legs. Desire filled her shadow-black tits, and her nipples stood out to delicious pinpoints.

She was winning, wasn't she? She was bringing recompense with a terrible, swift blow. Her eyes burned out into the night, and her smile felt like fire in her mouth.

Pasiphae was ecstatic, for tonight she had seen him.

Tonight she had seen the malefactor.

Oh, yes...

Moments later, she stood pretty and lissome at the gaping black mouth of the labyrinth. Its foulness wafted up strong as Pluto's breath of the excrement of eons. It was a rich perfume in her nostrils, and on her tongue, it tasted sweet as licking the skin of a sweetsop. Beyond the labyrinth's entry, she could hear the fervid grunts of her son in rut. This brought joy to her dead heart, such that she lost control. She sat down promptly in the wet detritus of the woods and masturbated to a frenzy, her black fingers blurring over the tender flesh of her black sex. When she came a final time, the sensations evacuated her. She leaned over and vomited in the same way a man might ejaculate, pumping up a bellyful of wonderful hatred and glorious despair onto the sopping ground. One plume after another, until her gut was empty.

She sighed in bliss.

Now there was room for more. Lots more.

Pashiphae couldn't wait to get her fill.

Yes, the malefactor had returned, the nemesis. And—

Tonight, she decided, I think we'll send him a little welcoming party.

««—»»

"Oh, the poor dear!" Shirley fretted.

"Arianne? Arianne?" Dean gently patted her cheek. "Can you hear me?"

They'd come back to the mansion and lain her across the tea-leaf-tan pleated flounce antique couch that most collectors would kill for. It had taken them two hours to creep back home in the blinding rain. Even now, the rain beat against the house in noisy sheets, and the thunder cracked in the sky. Once back, Dean and Ajax had hustled a very unconscious Arianne in the paneled parlor.

"Shit, maybe we should've taken her to the hospital," Dean suggested.

"In this weather?" Ajax reminded. "We'd crash before we got there."

Outside, the storm cracked and boomed. Dean looked down worriedly. "What do you think's wrong with her?"

"Well, just for starters, let's try severe malnutrition, dehydration, chronic substance withdrawal, and—oh—did I say severe malnutrition?"

"What should we do!" Dean yelled.

"Keep her warm. A warm bath would be good. Hell, I'd be happy to get her in the tub—"

"I'll do that," Dean insisted. "What else?"

"Some sustenance. Solid food would probably be too obstructive. Soup or something."

"I'll go make the poor dear some hot soup," Shirley volunteered and hurried away in her nightgown.

"She's shivering," Dean stammered. "I better go run a bath."

"On second thought," Ajax remembered. "That might not be such a good idea; they say you shouldn't take a bath during a lightning storm. If the lightning hits the house, it could electrocute anyone in the tub. Put a blanket over her for now."

Dean looked around frantically, saw no blankets, then yanked up the Herat 19th Century throw rug off the parlor floor and wrapped it around her. Ajax remarked, "You just wrapped a dirty wet junkie up in a piece of carpet that probably costs fifty grand."

"She's not a junkie! Don't call her that!" Dean objected. "She's a victim of society, taken advantage of by a hostile environment!"

"Whatever... "

"Arianne? Please, be all right!" Dean pleaded with the fates. He patted her cheek some more, hugged her in her new warm cloak of Persian carpet.

Eventually, her smudged eyes fluttered open. They shot wide.

"Dean?" she cried. "No, no, it can't be you. It's just another horrible dream—"

"It's me, I'm here! We're at my father's mansion! You're safe now!"

She exhaled long and hard, her eyes closed in relief. "You'd never believe it," she whispered thinly. "You'd never believe what I saw."

"The smoke-woman," Dean said abruptly. "And something—something... about the cattle."

Her little mouth fell open, as it had no doubt fallen open to admit hundreds—no, thousands—of penises. But there was no penis in wait this time. Dean recognized that she somehow knew what he meant.

"It was... the worst thing I've ever seen," she whimpered.

"What?" Dean begged. "What did you see?"

Her face went blank in the recollection. "A monster... "

"A monster? A monster with horns?"

"Yes... "

"Was it anywhere near the old mine shaft behind Stoddard's Mill?"

"Yes," her voice grated again like stones rubbing.

Big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown, Shirley returned with a steaming bowl of chowder. When she leaned over, Ajax cringed at the sight of her state-of-the-art cleavage. "You should try some of this, honey," she offered to Arianne.

One whiff and Arianne made a face like she'd puke. "Get that shit away from me! It'll make me sick!"

Shirley recoiled. "But, honey, you need some nutrition."

"Fuck food! I need to cop! Somebody get me a piece of rock!"

Dean and Ajax exchanged raised glances. Dean held her hand and implored, "Arianne, you've got to straighten up. You've got to tell me what you saw."

Her small face quivered. She closed her eyes to force remembrance but could only continue to sob in response. At the same time, another crack of thunder exploded in the sky. The mansion shook, then—

"Great, that's just great," Ajax bellyached.

—the lights went out.

"Oh, dear!" Shirley exclaimed.

"Don't worry," Dean said. "The generator will kick on in a second... "

They stood in the dark. After several minutes, Dean said, "Damn it. I'll bet the generator's out of fuel. I better go check."

"Don't leave me alone in the dark!" Arianne pleaded.

"I'll go," Ajax volunteered. "Shirley, would you mind showing me where it is?"

"Oh, I'd be delighted!" Big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown, Shirley retrieved some flashlights from an antique highboy, then she took Ajax' arm. "Right this way, young man," and she led him out of the dark parlor for the basement.

Dean switched on his flashlight, then briefly traversed the room lighting candles. He wanted to make Arianne at ease. She took his hand when he sat beside her on the couch. "Oh, Dean, I've missed you so much... "

Dean wanted to say that he missed her too... but he couldn't. I'm married, he reminded himself. I'm married to a loving woman. "Jesus, Arianne, how could you let yourself go like this?"

"I couldn't help it," she sniffled. "After you left, I had nothing to live for."

"Come on, Arianne. There are plenty of guys in town you could be happy with."

"No there aren't. The only real man in this town was you. The rest are just a bunch of little boys." More sniffles in the dark. "You're the only man to ever make me come."

Dean raised his brow in pride, in spite of himself. "You've got to get yourself straightened out, Arianne. You'll die if you keep this up."

"If I can't have you, I want to die."

"Don't say that—"

She shrugged out of the carpet, tiny and wan in the flashlight beam. "Make love to me, Dean."

"No. I'm married now. I'm in love with someone else."

"Well... then just kiss me."

"No."

She put her hand on his leg. "Let me blow you."

"No."

"I'll suck your balls—"

"No."

"Rim job?"

"No."

"Punch me in the face, then beat off on a Twinkie and make me eat it?"

Dean had to give that one some thought. "No. I told you, I'm happily married. Now stop this—"

She pounced on him, a ravenous little animal, groping, crying, pleading. "But I still love you! Let me prove it!"

Dean struggled at the sudden fury of junkie passion.

"Don't you still care about me at all?" she pleaded. She quickly peeled off the ratty little cut-off shorts. "Baby, please! I know you still care! Fuck me hard like you used to—"

"NO!" Dean shouted, and that was it. He lost control. Next thing he knew he was standing, having grabbed her by the throat with his left hand. Meanwhile, his right hand, balled into a tight fist, slammed into her mouth.

The exchange of inertia caused Arianne to somersault backwards and crash into a spread of Hummel knickknacks arranged on a gold-leaf-trimmed mahogany 18th-Century Demilune table. The table cracked like tinders.

Dean gaped in horror.

This was no Jig-Jag. He'd really done it, he'd struck her, and that was putting it mildly. He'd hit her nearly as hard as if he'd done it with a baseball bat.

Just like the old days.

Nearly in tears, he rushed to her in the candle-lit dark. She was out cold. He carried her back to the couch, touching her face and mumbling incomprehensible apologies.

My God! What's wrong with me! he screamed at himself.

Eventually she came to in his arms—

"Arianne, I'm so so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you—"

Her skinny junkie head leaned up. She smiled, drooling blood, and took his hand. "I knew it," she whispered in a sated contentedness. "I knew you still cared for me... "

««—»»

Big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown, Shirley led Ajax to the basement. Ajax had wood. Sixty years old be damned, he thought. This woman is one hunka-hunka slab of fuck-flesh.

Every so often, the side of a big wobbling tit brushed his arm. Ajax began to leak. Their flashlights bobbed as they descended the wood stairs. "It's right down here, hon. Thank the Lord I've got a man with me. Women don't know about mechanical things and such."

"Leave the generator to me," Ajax assured. "I'll have this place glowing in no time."

"That's not the only thing you've got glowing—"

"What's that?"

"Oh, nothing. The generator's right over there."

Ajax wielded his flashlight with authority. Thank Christ it was dark; the boner in his pants was concealed. He unscrewed the tank lid on the generator and shined the light in. Sure enough, just as Dean had said, the tank was empty.

"There's a can of gasoline on the shelf," Shirley pointed out, her big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown. Ajax' own flash stalled a moment on tremendous bosom. Holy shit! Those tits could put wood on an entire Catholic seminary! But, cognizant as always, he sniffed the open fuel cell. "This generator runs on diesel," he said, "not gas."

"Such a smart young man," Shirley complimented. "I would never have considered that. There are some other cans on the top."

Ajax' flashlight beam lingered a moment more on Shirley's abundant mammalian carriage. Her nipples are as big a round Big Gulp lids! He found a jerry-can of diesel fuel on the shelf and poured it into the generator. All it took after that was one yank on the starting cord, and the generator fired up with a steady rumble. Lights snapped on at once.

"Piece of cake," Ajax bragged. Then he turned back around.

Shirley was sitting up on a work table, her nightgown hiked back, her legs jacked back in the air. Her big hairy seasoned pussy stared at Ajax like a knowing face.

"Hon," she said, "that generator tank ain't the only thing around here in need of a filling."

Ajax gulped. Looks like I'm going to get laid this year after all. He pulled it out, stepped right up, and stuck it in. Fuckin'-A. That big wet pussy felt like a hot peach pie, and Ajax had just broken the crust. He stroked in and out a few times—

"Ooo, honey. Give an old woman a break. Don't bust me all up inside!"

The compliment only brought him closer. Two more strokes, and Ajax' eyes were going crossed. Fuck, my dick hasn't been in her five seconds and I'm ready to spooge.

Fucking her sounded like someone eating spaghetti... loudly. "Aw, shit, Shirley," he guffed. "I'm sorry but I think I'm gonna, I'm think I'm gonna—"

"Don't you worry one bit, you sweet thing," she said and stroked his cheek. She pushed back on his beer gut, easing out his cock. "First one can be quick, that ain't no matter. You can take care'a me with the second."

Ajax's cock throbbed to bust, like nuking a hot dog on high in the microwave. When it slipped out, it made a sound like someone slurping soup. She turned him around, got on her knees.

Her big tits wobbled beneath the sheer nightgown.

With excruciating slowness, she sucked his cock into her mouth. Ajax's face screwed up like Shemp's. Soon she had every whopping inch—all six of them—sheathed in her hot, drooly mouth. She kept sucking forward as if she were about to begin eating his entire groin, but then, just as slowly, she retracted. After a liquid pop, her mouth was off, and Ajax stood cringing on his tiptoes, his dick a glimmering Monte Cristo cigar.

"Just let it all out, baby," she cooed, and then her hand slid rapidly back and forth over the spitty pole. "Go ahead and bust it. Bust it right out. Let me see it all shoot out, sugar—"

Ajax busted it quite promptly. Just a couple of shucks on his spit-wet dick, and he was jettisoning sperm over her shoulder.

"Ah-ah-ah," he moaned at each pump. He could swear he felt his balls shrink with each release. His tongue clogged between his lips as more semen vaulted out of him, each spasm shooting feet over Shirley's shoulder. But even as he came, amidst what was clearly the greatest orgasm of his life, he couldn't help but notice several of his seminal plumes fall directly into still-opened fuel tank on the generator.

"Holy shit, Shirley!" he exclaimed. "You just jacked me off in the generator!"

Dismayed, Shirley glanced behind her, big tits wobbling in the sheer nightgown. Several strings of sperm seemed to hang out of the open fuel egress. "Oh, dear," she remarked. "Do you think that will—"

The generator chugged and sputtered and stopped. Then all the lights went out again.

««—»»

"What the hell happened?" Dean complained when Ajax and Shirley returned to the candle-lit parlor. "The lights came back on for thirty seconds, then they went back out."

"Don't remind me," Ajax muttered.

"What?"

Ajax spoke with more volume. "I think something's clogging your fuel filter. You really need to maintain these things, you know."

"Damn it," Dean cursed.

Shirley's big tits wobbled beneath the sheer nightgown. She noticed Arianne's ratty cut-off shorts on the floor. "I guess it's none of my business." But, next, she noticed the broken Demilune table. "What happened here?"

"None of your business," Dean said. Arianne sat cuddled up next to him on the couch, asleep, the fur of her pubic hair glistening in candle light.

"At least she's calmed down," Shirley observed.

"What a stud!" Ajax made his own conclusion. "You slipped her the high hard one for old time's sake! Stuck it to her to the balls!"

"I did not," Dean countered.

"Oh? Then how come she's not wearing anything but halter-top smaller than the average handkerchief?"

"None of your business," Dean murmured, his arm tight about her shoulder. But before any more questions could be asked, or any more insinuations declared, the house shuddered at a loud, heavy—

CRUNK!

Dean, Ajax, and Shirley all jumped in their places.

"The fuck was that?" Ajax shouted.

"Something hit the front of the house!" Shirley exclaimed.

Dean sat rigid. "It sounded like—"

CRUNK!

The house shuddered again. Then—

CRUNK! CRUNK-CRUNK! CRUNK!

It sounded as though the front of the mansion were being assailed by random wrecking balls. Several more impacts ensued, and plaster began to sift from the ceiling.

Dean rushed to the window. At first, he could see nothing, but after the next crack of lightning—

My God!

He easily saw that the Lohan mansion was... under attack.

"Shirley!" he commanded. "Break open the gun cabinet!"

Shirley's big tits wobbled beneath the sheer night gown as she rushed to do so. Ajax inquired with a shout: "What the hell's going on?"

"They're trying to break into the house."

"Who?"

Dean's mouth froze before he could actually give voice to the reply. "Cattle!"

CRUNK-CRUNK-CRUNK! CRUNK-CRUNK!

Ajax went to the window, peered out. "You gotta be shitting me!"

But, lo, no one was shitting Ajax at all. When he glanced out the window, in the lightning-veined dark, he could see dozens of longhorned cattle rushing the mansion, ramming their brick heads against the outer walls. Dean knew that the oxen had brains that were little more than synaptic dish rags, but at this rate it was equally clear: it wouldn't take them long to break into the house.

"What happens if they break in?" Ajax moronically asked.

"Then we're all kabob!" Dean answered. "See those horns? Think they're sharp?"

Shirley re-entered the parlor with an armful of shotguns. "Here, boys!"

"Keep loading us up, Shirley!" Dean shouted. "This might take a while!" Dean and Ajax both racked rounds, then broke open the window panes. They aimed at the veritable morass of cattle charging the house and opened fire.

One blast after the next, they fired into the rainy night. Ox heads blew apart like piñatas, only it was not candy and toys which erupted from each gunshot, it was wet nuggets of brain. Ox faces exploded, blowing chunks of cud. Cattle bellies burst. Blood flew in sheets as innards uncoiled, and the sound was cacophonic: the desolate moos of psycho cattle dying in the night.

Dean and Ajax fired frenetically, popping a round, then jacking in the next, and Shirley, her big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown, expertly cycled reloaded shotguns back to them. But even in this death-wave of double-00 buckshot, the oxen kept charging. Even when the killed beasts lay in piles before the house, more charged forward, ramming their great horned heads against outer walls. Each time the lightning flashed, Dean could see dozens more thundering up the hill to the mansion.

How many could they kill before one crashed through a window?

The killing went on for a solid hour, blast after blast after blast, gunsmoke stinging their nostrils, their eyes full of spots from muzzle-flash. But when it seemed to be over—

"Holy motherfucking shit," Ajax sighed.

Dean couldn't believe what he saw beyond his white-hot gun barrel. The vast hill which rose up to the Lohan Mansion lay heaped with dead and dying cattle corpses.

"Oh, man," Ajax exclaimed. "That's a lot of fucking Quarter Pounders."

"Did'ja get 'em all?" Shirley asked, her big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown.

"I think so, Shirley. Christ. What's happening here?" But even as Dean asked the question, something abstract and camouflaged deep in his spirit thought he already knew.

And he knew it wasn't over yet.

Dean glanced over his shoulder, to make sure Arianne was safe; she still lay asleep on the couch. Ajax glanced over his shoulder, to make sure that Shirley's big tits were still wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown.

They were.

"I-I think we did it," Ajax sighed in relief, but just as he'd said it—

Thuh-RUNK-thuh-RUNK-thuh-RUNK...

The trampling sound could easily be heard by them both. Suddenly the house was vibrating again. Dean looked out the front bay window and at first saw nothing.

Then the lightning flashed.

"Oh, no... " he whispered.

"What?" Ajax yelled.

"Four Black Gertrudis are charging the house."

"Four what?"

"Four bulls," Dean further croaked. "The biggest species in the country. Four thousand pounds apiece... "

"Oh, that's just terrific!"

The windows exploded as if grenaded. Glass flew like shrapnel and, soon, so did bull snot, flying in long thin ropes as the four horned beasts crashed their way inside. Dean and Ajax stood back to back, facing the monstrous animals down. Their nostrils flared like turbine ducts opening and closing. But when Dean looked into their eyes, he saw the glow of something... evil.

"Fire!" Dean wailed.

Ajax pumped two rounds into the first bull's head. It exploded after the second impact. Dean killed the next two with four quick jerks of the shotgun's slide. The fourth two-fuckin'-ton bull leveled its possessed gaze and scuffed its front hoofs on the carpet.

"I got him," Ajax said. He raised the shotgun and squeezed the trigger—

click

"Fuck!" he yelled. His weapon empty, Ajax promptly saturated his pants with urine. The fourth bull began to charge—

"Oh SHIT!"

BAM!

Shirley's big tits wobbled beneath the sheer nightgown as she plugged the demon-possessed bull right between the eyes with a Remington 870P chock full of big-ball buck. The animal's head flew apart, splaying brains, blood, and mucus onto the fine avacado-and butternut wallpaper.

"Great shot, Shirley," Ajax wheezed. "What a fuckin' battle."

Dean felt a strange static crawl over his skin. "The battle might not be over yet," he said.

Thuh-RUNK, thuh-RUNK-thuh-RUNK...

"Oh no!"

They looked out the window and saw not four but six more two-ton Black Gertrudis monsters charging up the hill.

"Shit!" Ajax yelled. "Shirley! More guns!"

Shirley shrieked the final revelation. "Oh my God, boys! We're plumb out of ammo!"

Ajax liberally filled the back of his jeans with his last meal, but Dean—

"Dean, what are you—"

Dean dropped his empty gun and ran away, fleeing up the stairs.

"Thanks a lot, buddy!" Ajax shouted. He glanced quickly to Arianne, still asleep on the couch, then glanced to Shirley. Fuck that dirty skinny junkie, he thought. He grabbed Shirley, tried to haul her out of the room, but—

CRASH!

—it was too late.

Suddenly the room was full of crazy sharp-horned oxen. The beasts were as big as cars, and torns stretched nearly a yard wide, their points sharp as awls.

Shirley's big tits wobbled beneath the sheer nightgown. "Oh, Lord!" she cried. "We're gonna die, ain't we?"

Ajax kissed her on the lips. "Yes," he said. He hugged her tight. "But it won't hurt for long."

The lead bull stared at Ajax, its devil-red eyes like hot coals. Ropes of snot dangled from the silver-dollar-sized nostrils. Its front hoofs scuffed... then it began to charge—

"It won't hurt for long," Ajax whispered again and hugged Shirley tighter.

They squeezed their eyes shut, grit their teeth and waited for the end, but—

Ajax opened his eyes. The bull had stopped in its tracks, its deadly horn-tips a full foot away from Ajax' belly.

As a shadow grew before him, the bull reluctantly backed up. Ajax thought he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

Dean stepped in front of them.

"Dean!" Shirley shouted in glee.

Dean walked confidently between the crazed bull and Ajax and Shirley. The bull kept backing up.

The bull was... scared.

Ajax wasn't sure but it seemed that the most vague lime-green light glowed off of Dean's head. There was one thing, though, that he was sure about: what Dean held in his hands, like a branch-cutter, was his rusty pair of horn-crankers.

He pointed them at the first bull. "I'm the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be," he told the bull. Then, for effect, he clacked the horn-crankers a few times. "I'll dehorn you like pulling toothpicks out of cocktail fruit, so go back to your evil mama." Dean's voice resonated, not a man's voice now but something almost godlike. He held the horn-cranker upward, a demented Moses raising his holy staff.

"Fuck with me," he said to the bull. "I dare ya."

The giant bull whinnied, jerked its huge head to and fro—then it jumped back out the window from whence it came. The other bulls followed suit, thrashing their mammoth bodies out the windows, exploding the frames, and disappearing into the teeming, thundering storm.

"God be praised!" Shirley said. "It's over!"

Ajax whooped it up. "Man, you've got some kind of magic! Those big motherfuckin' things just took one look at you and they were heading for the hills!"

But Dean stood agitated in the candle light. His horn-crankers—the nexus of his power—hung limp from one hand.

"Something—something's wrong," he sensed. Then he looked at the couch.

Arianne was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"You two! Halt!"

Dean and Ajax stopped cold at the muddy trail which wound down from behind Stoddard's Mill to the opening of the mine. They'd driven here posthaste in the rented Blazer, and were fortunate that the storm had blown over shortly after their wholesale slaughter of the demon-possessed cattle back at the mansion. Before they'd left, Shirley had managed to scrounge up a few more rounds for the shotguns. Then she'd waved teary-eyed as they'd driven off, her big tits wobbling beneath the sheer nightgown.

Dean had only one thing on his mind: saving Arianne. And he was well aware now of the supernatural intricacies draped around all that was happening.

He knew things now.

He knew who the smoke-woman was. He knew that she'd used her evil will to possess the cattle back at the mansion. And he knew that she'd been the one who'd abducted Arianne. She'd been the one responsible for all of the recent abductions about town. Dean could taste the answers in his brain. He could smell them.

But when he and Ajax had arrived at the trail to the mine, a uniformed state police officer in foul-weather gear had stopped them at once, gun drawn.

"I said halt!" he ordered through the pouring rain. "And drop those shotguns!"

Dean and Ajax obeyed, and held their hands up. "Great idea, hoss," Ajax muttered. "He probably thinks we're involved in the abductions and killings."

"I didn't know cops were out here. They weren't here before."

"This is a crime scene," the cop reminded them. "What are you doing here?"

Ajax stepped right up. "We're just concerned citizens, officer. We'd heard about the horrible things that've happened out here, so we wanted to come out and try to get the culprit ourselves." He could see five other cops surveying the perimeter around the mine entrance. "But since you fine officers are out, there's no reason for us to be here. So we'll just be on our way, sir."

"You'll be on your way to the back seat of my patrol car," the cop informed him. "You're both under arrest. I'm taking you in for questioning. Start moving—" but no sooner had the cop given the order, his colleagues at the mine began to shout. Several shots rang out. "Stay here!" he commanded to Dean and Ajax. "Don't move!"

Dean and Ajax froze with their hands up, watched the cop run off into the dripping woods. "We're leaving now, right?" Ajax asked. "We can get back to the Blazer and be the fuck out of here before he can catch us—"

More gunshots rang out, then—screams.

"Grab the guns!" Dean yelled. "They need help!"

Ajax stalled as more screams resounded. "Fuck those guys. Let's go back to your mansion and have a beer."

"Come on!'

They retrieved their shotguns—Ajax however reluctantly—and ran toward the skirmish. More screams sprang through the dark, after the gunfire died. By the time Dean and Ajax arrived at the wood-propped portal to the mine...

The six poncho'd police officers lay dead in the mud, gored to death, the high horn-holes still seeping blood.

"Fuck," Dean uttered.

"Yeah, fuck—as in let's get the fuck out of here, like now!" Ajax hotly suggested.

As he stared at the mine entry, Dean's voice sounded like bricks scraping together. "Arianne's down there somewhere."

"You don't know that!" Ajax contested. "She could be dead in the woods somewhere! She could be lying dead behind the mansion for all you know!"

"She's down there," Dean corrected, staring at the entry with his new-found psychic vision. "I'm not leaving here till I get her back."

"Well that's your gig, man! You want to stick your neck out so your head'll be lopped off, that's your business! Me—no way!"

"Fine... " Dean walked into the mine's wide egress; Ajax, without much faith, followed. Their flashlights beamed dead ahead: dirt walls propped up by heavy wooden stulls like railroad ties. Railroad tracks led them down further, until...

"Damn," Dean muttered.

The entry ramp stopped at a four-tined fork which led further down into multitudinous branches and off-shoots: tunnels within tunnels.

"It's a fuckin' maze!" Ajax complained. "We'll never find our way through this shit!"

"Yes we will," Dean croaked back in assurance. "Follow me... back to the entry."

They both stomped back to the entrance of the mine. "You got a knife?" Dean asked.

"Well, yeah," Ajax replied. "You wanna butter some bread?"

"Start cutting," Dean ordered. He whipped out his own knife and began... cutting open the abdominal vaults of the dead police officers. From the rents, he yanked out long tubes of the small intestine. Like yanking yarn from the belly of a stuffed doll.

"Yank! Yank!" he shouted.

Confused, Ajax thought what the hell, and he cut open another dead cop's belly and began yanking out intestines. Got nothin' much else to do right now, he considered.

Soon six piles of pink-gray intestinal whirls lay at their feet. "Cut each loop off at the end," Dean instructed. "Then tie each end together."

"Say what?" Ajax inquired.

"Just do it!" Dean yelled. "You saw the mine! It's a labyrinth! If I'm going down there, I need to be able to find my way out."

Ajax seethed in his distaste, but he did it just the same. The human small intestine was twenty-four to thirty-two feet long. Ajax snipped of each end with his knife, then tied the ends together by way of a sheet-bend knot, connecting each end as effectively as possible. Shit squeezed out of each end, which set Ajax' face long. I'm handling police officer excrement, he thought. He flapped each wad off his hand like slabs of warm brown clay. But by then, at least, he was beginning to get it... when Dean tied the last end to his back belt loop.

A guideline, Ajax thought.

"Come on," Dean said, shotgun in one hand, flashlight in the other. "I'm going down there... to get Arianne out."

Ajax didn't argue. He followed Dean deep into the front mine stope, to the area which branched out into four different corridors. Ajax dropped the 150-foot reel of intestines to the dirt floor and kept his end tied about his wrist.

"I'll try one at a time," Dean said. "If I shout... pull me back."

"Got'cha," Ajax understood.

Dean took a deep breath. Then he began to lower himself into the first egress.

««—»»

This eats dick, Dean thought, plodding forward. The earth-formed corridor wound ever downward. The deeper Dean descended, the harder the stench wafted up.

The foulest stench to ever assail his nose, which stood to reason: it was into the main shaft of this very mine that they'd dumped hundreds of dead cattle and probably enough rendering bilge to fill a community swimming pool.

Some of the corridors were manways—barely wide enough to squeeze through—while others were haulage passages. Some, he knew, would lead to the main shaft, others to dead ends. Eventually, the corridor he now occupied ended at a great pile of rubble. Damn... Frustrated, Dean followed the life-line of intestines back to entry.

"No luck," he told Ajax. "A dead end."

"Maybe they're all dead ends," Ajax pointed out. "Maybe she's not even here."

"I know she's here," Dean felt assured. He couldn't explain how he knew, he just knew. This place was full of archaic evil, and it was some equally archaic benevolence that whispered its secrets to him, emboldened him with its supereal wisdom. "Arianne's in there somewhere, and so is the hellish mother and son who've been tearing this town a new asshole."

"How do you know?" Ajax countered.

"I just do. And I know why they're here, I know what summoned them— vengeance."

"Vengeance? For what?"

"It's me they want. They've brought their horror here as vengeance against what I've done."

Ajax smirked as though the words were ridiculous. "And what's that?"

Dean's voice grated out as if confessing to murder. "I've cranked more horns out of more cattle heads than anyone in history."

Dean checked the second set of passages, then the third. Both were clueless dead ends. "This one," he said of the fourth, "has got to be it."

He stepped in as if entering the esophagus of an immense dead beast, then began moving toward its belly.

««—»»

When Arianne awoke she thought she must be drowning in filth; she didn't breathe as much as gulp great mouthfuls of air. She hung naked, suspended by her wrists, in some low cavern of beslimed wet rock. The old mine, she realized. I'm at the bottom of the mine. No source of light could be detected yet she could see the entails of her surroundings as if through some sort of filter, as if evil had a light of its own. Arianne knew at least that much: it was evil that had brought her to this foul place.

Before her lay piles of dead cattle, some corpses mummified to twisted sacks of leather, others bloated by rot and putrefactive gas, while still more seemed to have melted down to puddles of nameless slop in which maggots churned voraciously. But what stretched beyond was even more vile: a veritable lake of befoulment, as though all the waste of hell had been dumped here. Indeed, this was the place where the Devil emptied his bowels.

And it was from this lake that the woman emerged. Arianne had seen her before, on the night she was nearly killed by Sergeant Lass: a woman who existed not as a being of flesh but a being of darkness, a woman made solid by every evil thought and loathsome desire generated by humankind. She was the lust behind every rape, child-molestation, and act of incest. She was the erection at the groin of every Serbian torturer. She was the synapse which triggered every finger to ever drop napalm on women and children, and the blood that pumped in the hearts of every SS death-camp guard. She was Pasiphae.

She traipsed knee-deep through the liquid filth, bringing her black smile ever closer. Arianne just hung there, watching.

"Not quite the Harlot of Sodom, hmm?" The spectral queen's voice echoed like words cast out in a mountain range. "All the power you could have over men, and look what you've done with it. You've given it away, and now you are ruled by them."

"Got any crank? Got any cokesmoke?" Arianne asked. "I'm stringing out."

"Not a real woman at all but just a silly little piece of meat for men to drain their loins in."

"Guess not," Arianne muttered in dejection. "So fuck you."

"So it's only fitting that you shall be the bait for your paramour."

"My power mower? Bitch, what the fuck're you talking about? Hey, I'll eat your pussy for twenty bucks."

"And he'll be here soon," the dark woman promised. "I can taste him in the air."

"All right, ten bucks. Shit."

A hand of purified darkness touched Arianne's nearly breastless bosom, then glided down the rest of her pale dirty skinny junkie body. "Then my son and I shall feast. You'll be the appetizer, of course. And as for the entrée?" Her black hands came away and then reached into a crevice. "This pair of fresh, fat dumplings—" and from the crevice she withdrew two chubby naked infants.

The Rundstedt Twins! Arianne recognized at once.

"Yes, these two should provide an excellent main course," the woman remarked, holding the babies to her ebon bosom. They made cute goo-goo-ga-ga noises.

Even Arianne was disgusted. "You are one whacked-out sick-in-the-head bitch, you know that? What kind of demon-goddess are you, anyway? They're just babies, for God's sake. Leave 'em alone."

"Oh, we'll leave them alone... after my son and I have sucked their tender innards from their mouths, gobbled their baby-fat, and inhaled their blood."

"What an asshole," Arianne complained. "Only assholes fuck with babies and little kids. If that's all you can do, you better throw in the towel."

Pasiphae paused as if offended. "But we'll be saving the best for last," she promised haughtily. "Dessert shall be your paramour, this Thesean malefactor, the destroyer who's gone unpunished for far too long."

There she went with the power mower again. "Are you talking about my ex-boyfriend Dean? The all-time world horn-cranking champion?"

"Yes!" the woman's voice thundered in timeless anger. "My son and I will pick him apart a speck at a time until nothing remains!"

Arianne laughed. "In your dreams, lady. Dean'll wear your ass out. He'll kick you in the twat so hard you'll be coughing up your fuckin' uterus. He's the toughest guy in town, and no pissant little baby-killer is gonna take him down."

"What my son does to your lover will make Procrustes seem harmless as a shrew."

"Who the fuck's Crusty? And where's this son you keep yacking about?"

Pasiphae's whisper licked Arianne's cheek like a snake tongue. "You shall meet him now."

In an instant, the foul air grew fouler, and something huge came trudging through the lake of muck. Arianne, now in the grips of full drug withdrawal, didn't much care. It was the monster she'd seen the other night, and it stood before her now: seven feet tall, its slime-streaked body corded in muscle, the nostrils of its snout flaring. Button-black eyes appraised her insanely. The two great horns jutting from its skull raised to flawless points.

"Aw, big deal," Arianne scoffed. "A man with a bull's head. Looks more like a Fire Island pansy to me. I'll bet he drinks pink champagne and eats quiche. What a flamer."

"I'm weary of your levity," the dark woman's voice grew stern. "My son will now work up his appetite... by raping you half to death."

The monster drooled, stepping closer on its human feet and rearing its inhuman head. Meaty hands pushed Arianne's knees up to her chin, and then the vicious netherworld rape began...

««—»»

Flashlight taped to the barrel of his shotgun, Dean squeezed through the most narrow manway yet. Soon, he knew, he'd run out of intestines, which would leave only a pair of choices: untie the loop from his belt and continue, or return without Arianne.

No way I'm going back, he determined.

As he squeezed further, the skin of his face began to tingle. A warm draft seemed to eddy up the manway, and though its odor was abominable, Dean viewed this as a good sign. He was getting closer to the main shaft.

"Please, God, please," he prayed aloud. "Let me find her... "

Just as the guideline began to tauten, the barely passable corridor emptied out into a larger cavern. Just feet ahead of him, he could see the great gaping hole of the main shaft. Dean's prayers were answered. He untied the loop of gut at his belt. Rails of an old personnel ladder could be seen rising over the lip of the main shaft's maw.

No time like the present, he supposed. He dipped a pinch of Skoal and began to climb down the ladder.

Into the stench of hell.

««—»»

—began the vicious netherworld rape... which ended precisely two seconds later. The monster stepped back, huffing, satisfaction and victory stamped onto its animal face.

Arianne rolled her eyes. "What—that's it? Jesus Christ, I thought you said you were gonna rape me half to death. You didn't even get me wet, you asshole." Arianne frowned, half disappointed, half pissed-off. "Buddy, I've had better sex with pickles. Let me give you some advice—next time you rape a girl, make it last more than two seconds."

The creature seemed shocked at these words. It looked questioningly at its infernal mother.

"Damn your mouth, whore!" the goddess blared to Arianne. "How dare you speak to my son like that!"

Arianne laughed. "Your son's uglier than a baboon's ass, and he can't fuck for shit. Hell, I'll bet those babies could give me a better fuck than that ugly bull-headed motherfucker. And the babies've got bigger dicks."

The monster mewled at the insult. "Stop it!" his mother shrieked. "You'll hurt his feelings!"

"And I'll tell you something else—" Arianne grinned. "Dean got me off every time. Now there's a real man. None of this two-second bullshit; that man can fuck." She shot a glance to the beast's genitals and chuckled. "And his dick makes yours look like a tadpole. Dean's big as a fuckin' beer bottle."

Pasiphae shuddered in rage as the beast... began to cry. "There, there, honey," she consoled, hugging her son's giant ox-head. "Don't listen to that mean nasty whore. You're a wonderful lover—"

Arianne cackled laughter from where she hung. "He's a big sissy, lady. A big sissy with a tiny dick."

The beast blubbered and sobbed, blubbered and sobbed.

"Harlot!" The demonness glared, grinding obsidian teeth. "Your death will be an exercise in agony," she seethed. "And we'll not wait for your paramour. Better that he come all this way to find you in shreds." Then, to the beast: "Go, my son. Eat her skin off, in tiny bites."

The monster shook out of the despair of his wounded ego, then giantly approached Arianne—

"I don't think so," a voice echoed in the low cavern.

Arianne's eyes popped wide. She shrieked in glee, her skinny junkie legs flailing.

It was Dean!

««—»»

Dean dropped down the last few rungs, landing squarely on his feet. He looked at the monster and didn't flinch. Then he racked a round into the shotgun. "Party's over," he said.

"Oh, no," the shadow woman cooed. "It's only just begun."

Dean aimed and fired, pumping all five magnum shotgun rounds into the beast's huge head. The reports cracked within the cavern: positively ear-splitting bangs. But when the smoke cleared, the woman made of darkness laughed.

The beasts stood unharmed.

"Your puny weapons don't work against us," Pasiphae guttered. "We're older than eons. And it will take a weapon older than eons to defeat us."

Dean spat tobacco juice and shrugged. "I took that possibility into account," he said. "And brought... this... "

He reached around and withdrew something hooked to the back of his belt. He held it up into the evil supernatural light for all to see.

His torque-plier, his... horn-crankers.

The beast continued to mewl in terror, and even its mother paused in hesitation.

"Come and get it, Bessie," Dean said.

"Kill him!" the woman shouted at her son. "Charge him and use your mighty horns to dig his guts out!"

But the beast cowered, stepping back.

"Just as I thought," Dean commented. He twirled the horn-crankers in his hands, clicking, like a fancy butterfly knife. "You're only the big bad-ass monster when it comes to killing kids. Ain't got the balls to take on a real man."

It boo-hoo'd further, tears streaming, looking at its mother for comfort.

"KILL HIM!" the goddess shouted. "What are you? A EUNUCH?"

The beast shook its great oxen head, snot flying. Then it lowered its awl-sharp horns and charged.

Dean laughed with gusto, took one step to the left, and landed the plier onto a horn. With the greatest of ease, then—

kreeeee-CRUNCH!

—he cranked the horn out of the man-animal's head.

"NOOOOO!" the woman shrieked.

"Yes," Dean retorted. He clapped the horn-crankers, and the horn dropped to the filth-carpeted floor. The half-human thing continued to sob outright, cowering back into a corner of rock, the minuscule penis voiding piss in sheer terror.

"WAIT!" Pasiphae shouted. "Spare my son—I beg thee!"

"Tongue my balls," Dean retorted.

"I'll offer a bargain." Her dead-black eyes somehow glowed. "I will trade you your lover in exchange for my son. And as further incentive... I'll give you these." Her bone-shadowed figure fluttered backward, then seemed to pluck something from the rock's cragged face. She pulled out two naked babies—the missing Rundstedt Twins. "Your lover and the babies—for my son."

Dean sucked his wad of Skoal, thinking. "Naaaa."

"Dean!" Arianne shouted.

"Relax, hon," Dean assured. "I'll get you out of here and the twins, and I'll put the drop on this bitch and her pug-ugly bull-looking kid." He grinned at Pasiphae. "I know the secret now."

Pasiphae held the twins aloft. They rowed their chubby arms and legs in the air, goo-gooing and ga-ga-ing. "I'll kill these babies!" she warned.

"No you won't," Dean attested, "because you'll be dead before you can even think about it."

"What makes you so sure," her bottomless voice inquired.

"Because, like I said, I know the secret now."

"And what secret is that?"

Indeed, Dean remembered, some twenty years hence: the bright morning on the ranch and his father showing him how it was done. Their horns are their power, son, he'd told the very young Dean Lohan. So ya gotta take that power, take it right away from 'em...

"Its horns are its power," Dean repeated to the obsidian bitch. "But they're your power too, aren't they?"

The shadow-woman just stood there, holding the twins up high. She made no answer.

In a movement too rapid to be properly recorded by the naked eye, Dean twirled in a blur, slapped the horn-crankers on the monster's remaining horn, and—

kreeeee-CRUNCH!

—tugged it out as easily as a candle from a cupcake. Suddenly the lake of filth began to bubble... and Pasiphae began to shriek.

The Minotaur died at once; dehorned now, it shivered in its corner, and in the wink of an eye, it was nothing but a black puddle on the floor. Its atrocious mother took a bit longer, her black scream bursting forth as she melted to a puddle of filth herself. When it was over, the two naked babies waddled gleefully in her stinking liquid remains.

I'd say that does the trick. Dean slipped his horn-crankers back on his belt, then took Arianne down off her hook.

She wept tears of joy. "I love you," she said.

Dean smirked. "Grab the kids, jizz-pot. Let's get the fuck out of this slime bowl."

CHAPTER TWELVE

By the time Dean emerged from the mine, it was day-break. Camera crews stood in wait. It didn't take long before Dean Lohan was a national hero, thanks to CNN and wire services.

The Rundstedt Twins were happily returned to their redneck mother at the trailer park. Arianne was saved (though still bitching for ice), and the murder spree in DeSmet, South Dakota—though it could never be fully explained—ended as abruptly as it started. Soon johns were cruising main street every night for tricks, and the steady commerce of crystal-meth resumed.

All was back to rights.

Dean, Ajax, and Arianne lounged back on the plush Edgewood sofa of the Lohan Mansion's elegantly paneled den. Mr. Jake Lohan, by the way, remained in the hospital in stable condition but was expected to fully recover in a matter of weeks. During his stay, however, he'd decided to retire from the ranching business, and signed all of his wealth, property, and business over to his dutiful son Dean.

"Hey, Shirley!" Dean cracked. "Sometime before Christmas, huh? Where're them beers?"

The three of them sat with their feet up on the 18th Century black japanned coffee table, its invaluable finish stained by many previous beer rings. Shirley rushed back in with the beverages, then plopped right down next to Ajax, placing a hand on his leg. Ajax smiled... and got wood.

"Here it is, it's coming up," Arianne exclaimed, pointing at the big television.

The familiar brunette in the same burgundy coatdress stood in front of the mine opening behind Stoddard's Mill, speaking stoically into a microphone: "... can now breathe a collective sigh of relief in the aftermath of the terrible slew of abductions and murders which have cursed the town for the last week. The most recent, and clearly the most horrific, tragedy—the abduction of the Rundstedt Twins—was foiled this morning by DeSmet native Dean Lohan, who braved the mine's deep depths and saved the twins... "

A video clip showed Dean emerging from the mine's portal, holding both of the Rundstedt Twins in his arms.

"You're a movie star!" Ajax shouted.

"He's always been my star," Arianne added.

"Dean Lohan," the newscaster continued, "moved to Seattle several years ago, and had returned just two days ago to see his father, Jack, the owner of the largest cattle ranch in the state, who was recently injured by whatever wild animal it was plaguing the otherwise quiet town. Nevertheless, it was Dean who bravely ventured into the long-closed and very dangerous gypsum mine and saved the twins when he heard the babies crying from within." Another quick video clip of Dean passing the babies back to their sobbing mother. "Yes, Dean Lohan, the hero of a town, and the hero of a nation. From DeSmet, South Dakota, this is Laura Von Paulus, KSKY News."

Ajax, Arianne, and Shirley applauded, whooping it up. Dean blushed. "What a man!" Ajax exclaimed. "Our hero!" Arianne added. Then, Shirley, whose big tits wobbled beneath her blouse: "We should have a party! A celebration! Invite the whole town!"

It sounded like a great idea to Dean, but... "I can't," he regretted. "I have to go back to Seattle, but I'll be back soon. Ajax, how would you like to quit stuffing envelopes and live here at the mansion, as Shirley's assistant?"

"Sounds good to me," Ajax said, swigging beer. "To tell you the truth, I'm damn sick of that goth commie nipple-pierced pinko save-the-whales rain-hole. And I'd love to be Shirley's assistant."

Shirley gave Ajax a tight hug and restrained the urge to shove her hand down his pants. "I have all kinds of things you can assist me with, honey," she said.

"And Arianne," Dean said next, "I'll be sending you to the best rehab center in the state. But I'm off now, folks. I'll be back in a few days, with my loving wife!"

Dean stalked off to the front door; Arianne followed, grabbed his arm before he could leave. "Dean," she pleaded, tears in her eyes. "I can't make it without you."

"There, there," he attempted.

"I love you!"

"Arianne, I've already told you, I'm married. I'm in love with someone else now, and I'll be bringing her back to the mansion to live with me. If I weren't married, it'd be you," he lied. "But I am married." He consolingly touched her skinny junkie cheek. "So that's the way it has to be."

Arianne nodded dejectedly. "Sure you don't want to fuck my brains out on the floor one last time, for old time's sake?"

"No, really, Arianne—"

"One last blowjob? I'll swallow."

"No, I—"

"Knock my teeth loose and shit on my head?"

Dean's brow jittered. "We'll always be friends, Arianne. I promise." Then he briefly kissed her on the cheek and walked off for the Blazer.

««—»»

By sundown, Dean was landing at Sea-Tac International airport, and not fifteen minutes later, he was pulling up into his own driveway. There's no place like home, he thought with the widest of grins. He grabbed his suitcase and charged into the house, his heart racing to see his loving wife once again.

"Honey! I'm home!" he shouted with glee in the foyer. He checked the kitchen, the TV room, but Daphne wasn't there. Upstairs, he deduced, and ran up. "Honey? Did you see me on TV?" Then he barged into the bedroom, his smile a beacon of love.

He looked at the bed but it was not Daphne who lay there in wait for him.

"Who the fuck are you?" Dean asked.

It was a tall, naked man who lay on the bed, his head shaved, a satanic goatee around his chin, devil tattoos all over his skin. He was smoking marijuana and reading a comic book called Grub Girl.

"Who the fuck are you?" the man snidely replied.

Dean dropped his suitcase, aghast. "Well, pardon me, but I just happen to be Dean Lohan and I live here!"

The bald man's face crinkled. "What? Daphne's married?"

"Damn right she is! To me!"

The man shrugged. "Muff is muff, so don't get your dander up." He toked more of his joint, flipped the next page of the comic. "She never told me she was hitched, so I ain't doing nothin' wrong."

There's a naked tattooed bald guy in my bed! Dean finally got the full brunt. "Who the FUCK are you!"

"I'm Thron," the man said.

Dean gawped. "You? You're... Mr. Thron?"

"Yeah."

"You're my wife's boss?"

"Yeah."

"BULLSHIT!" Dean railed. "Guys with shaved heads and devil tattoos don't own high-end clothing companies!"

Thron cocked a funky brow. "Clothing company? I run a fuckin' outcall whorehouse, pal. And your wife's one my whores."

Dean's eyeballs felt as though they'd jettison from his head. "Whuh-whuh-what?"

"Magic Fingers Escorts," Thron related, not taking his gaze off the comic.

It must've been a good comic.

"Look it up in the phone book," Thron suggested. "I'm not ashamed of what I do. Any decent-looking woman with a working pussy is stupid if she doesn't sell it. Money's what makes the world go ‘round, and Daphne's slapping on some extra spin, let me tell ya. She's a real trooper, she takes all the kinks—you know, the scat guys, the enemas, the guys who like to wear diapers. Daphne's something. And—as you well know—she's hot. She begs to fuck me. What am I gonna say? No?"

Dean's eyeballs had not quite yet jettisoned, but they were getting close. It was disconcerting enough to walk into your own bedroom and find a naked, bald, tattooed guy lounging casually in your marriage bed. The cum-stains were disconcerting too. But worse was that Thron penis, however deflated, looked like a fuckin' roll of bratwurst, sheened shiny with what could only be the vaginal fluids of Dean's wife.

Just then the bathroom door clicked open, and out walked an unsuspecting and very naked Daphne. "I'm a fuckin' goat today, darling," she said clearly to Thron. "I gotta have it again."

"Come on," Thron complained. "Four times in an hour? Give a guy a break. Besides, I think your hubby might want to have a word with you, and thanks very much for telling me you were married." Before the words fully registered, Daphne's gaze slowly turned. Then she saw Dean standing there.

"Dean... honey! I—"

Dean just stared. No words were necessary... yet.

"I-I-I—"

Ajax was right. She's been cheating on me at every opportunity—and then, finally, the Good Dean metamorphosed into the Bad Dean, something which had not yet fully happened but something that was now totally in order.

"I've been Mr. Nice Guy too long," Dean uttered. He didn't open his suitcase, he ripped it apart, and a second later, he was holding his pair of horn-crankers.

In less time than it took to an average person to cough, Dean whipped the horn-crankers down and expertly had Thron's cock in their grips.

"Hey, man!" Thron reasoned. "Your beef isn't with me!" His groin shuddered, inches of limp dick laying over the horn-crankers' jaws. "It ain't my fault your cock-crazy wife came on to me and never told me she was married! Pussy's pussy! When it's in your face, you take it! What natural man wouldn't?"

Dean looked insane as the horn-cranker's jaw closed on Thron's cock. It would be so easy to yank it all out by the root... and it would be fun. But even Bad Dean retained some fund of reason. Everything Ajax had said was right, and everything Thron was saying now was just as correct.

Dean opened the horn-crankers, pulled them away. Thron's fat cock remained intact. Then Dean faced Daphne.

"Dean! Honey!" she stammered. "I love you! He's lying! He-he-he... raped me! I swear!"

Dean grinned at her. He began to step forward.

"No, honey! Please! Please don't kill me!" she begged.

Dean kept stepping forward. "Oh, darling, I'd never do anything like that. I'm not going to kill you, I'm just gonna... shove you around a little—" He grabbed her not by the hair but by the face, and slammed her hard against the wall. Flecks of sheetrock blew out. Then he punched her in the face, punched her in the stomach, one after another, alternately: the face, the stomach, the face, the stomach, for a good ten minutes. She shit on the floor and urine sprayed freely from her vaginal cleft. A final blow to her cheek shot several teeth out of her mouth. A final blow to her stomach made her vomit.

Daphne lolled in the corner, her face a cross-eyed bruise. Her pleas of mercy continued but all that surfaced were big bubbles of spit and blood.

"I'd fuck you one last time but... you're not worth the energy it take to pop a load," he said. "Shit, I'd rather fuck a box of frogs."

Her pleading blubbered more blood and drool. Several more teeth fell out onto the floor, like big white pills.

"Take care of yourself, honey," he said and began to walk out. But then he stopped short. "Oh, I forgot something."

Daphne, barely conscious, looked up as if to ask What?

"This," he said, and forcefully kicked her one last time in the gut. Bile and vomit sprayed the wall. Then he gave her an additional kick square in the vulva, for what he perceived of as good measure. "Happy trails," he bid.

Wreathed in relief, Dean walked out. "Later," he said to the bald man, who remained naked on the bed reading his comic. "She's all yours."

"Thanks," Thron replied. "Have a good one, buddy. And don't feel bad, she was getting crusty if you want to know the truth. Stretched out."

Dean loped happily out of the house, pinching a dip of Skoal and casting an errant spit into the bushes. He got into the car and drove back to the airport. Back to his life, and back to his true love.

Back to his true self.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Happily ever after. That's what awaited him when he returned to the Lohan Mansion. His father recovered from his wounds, and counseled Dean in the running of the ranch. Cash poured in, and in very short order, Dean Lohan was the richest redneck in the entirety of the state of South Dakota. He grew his beard back, let his hair fall to his shoulders, and was seldom seen dressed in anything other than faded blue jeans and black METALLICA T-shirts.

He dipped a full can of Skoal per day.

Ajax gratefully became the estate's new groundskeeper, while his new wife, Shirley, continued to run the house and willingly offered herself up as a living sperm depository for Ajax' throbbing need. Her big tits wobbled... everywhere.

But Dean had a new wife too: Arianne. It was a wonderful life by both of their standards. Dean got laid or got his dick sucked whenever he pleased, and Arianne had her man. The true heart was enough, in fact. Now that Dean was back with her, she kicked her drug habit without a hitch. But Arianne's drug habit wasn't the only thing that was kicked.

Arianne's ass was kicked just as thoroughly. Some women liked it rough, and this skinny little tramp was the epitome of the notion. It was a woman's secret, of course: a man's love was never proven until he demonstrated the promptitude with which he was willing to slap the snot out of the woman he adored.

"Where's my beer, bitch?" Dean demanded on a lazy summer day when the sun was high and the grasslands of his lucrative ranch swayed deep-green in the northern breeze. He was watching a Yankees game on the television.

"Your beer's in the fuckin' refrigerator, dick-shit," she replied. "What am I? Your fuckin' maid?"

Dean got up and punched her hard in the mouth. The sound of the wet smack echoed about the mansion.

Arianne blinked out the stars, got her husband's beer, and brought it to him. She even opened it for him, then cuddled up close to his strong warm body and smiled with blood smearing her lips.

"I love you, baby," she whispered and kissed him on the cheek. The kiss left a print of blood.

"Yeah, yeah," he replied and swigged his beer. "Let me watch my game. Clemens is pitching."

She hugged him tight, then dozed comfortably against his muscled shoulder.

No, life couldn't be more perfect.

And standing in the cluttered dark, in a disused coat closet in the foyer, was the rusting pair of horn-crankers.

They would never be picked up again.

Edward Lee has had over thirty books published in the horror and suspense field, including Flesh Gothic, Messenger and City Infernal, Infernal Angel and House Infernal. He is a Bram Stoker award nominee, and his short stories have appeared in over a dozen mass-market anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of 2000, Pocket's Hot Blood series, and the award-wining 999. Several of his novels have recently sold translation rights to Germany and Romania. His movie, Header, will be available on DVD in mid-2007. Meanwhile, City Infernal, Messenger, Ghouls, The Bighead, and Family Tradition have been optioned for film. Upcoming mass-market novels include Golemesque, and Brides of the Impaler. Lee lives on Florida's St. Pete Beach. Visit him online at:

edwardleeonline.com