The Minotauress

by Edward Lee

  Silence.

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

  The Writer thought: Oh, dear...

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

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

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

  POP!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  POOF!

  —the pilot flared from the surge of propane.

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

  And then the dirty-work began.

  (IX)

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

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

  CRUNCH...

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

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

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

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

  "It don't," Dicky assured.

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

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

  crack! crack! crack!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Dang, Balls! Aw, man!"

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

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

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

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

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

  The Writer blanched.

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

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

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

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

  All that filled the doorway were bricks.

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

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

  "Put on the what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Would anything really come through that door?

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

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

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

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

  "All we can do is hope so... "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Kiss my ass, Balls!"

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

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

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

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

  "Oh... Yeah... "

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

  "Over the keystone in the archway."

  "With my blammed hand?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

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

  "What now?"

  The Writer shrugged. "Open the door."

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

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

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

  —the rickety door swung open on its own.

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

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

  Footsteps? the Writer wondered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Shee-it," Balls sputtered.

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

  The Spermatogoyle bowed.

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

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

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

  "Aw, man!" Balls complained.

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

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

  The Writer lit another cigarette and sighed.

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

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

  "Aw, good Gawd!" Balls exclaimed.

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

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

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

  "Act ingratiated," the Writer suggested.

  "Huh?"

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

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

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

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

  The beast nodded.

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

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

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

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

  "Aw, gross," Dicky said.

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

  "Be patient," the Writer observed.

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

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

  Then the creature stepped back..and watched.

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

  "It knocked her up!" Dicky railed.

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