rithmatic! Well, I'll tell you one thing, Writer. That thing upstairs shore as shit's a demon."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Writer winced, then mounted the steps.

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

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

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

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

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

The Writer closed his eyes.

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

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

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

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

Balls, Dicky, and Cora all looked at him.

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

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

"Me, too," Dicky admitted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

"The fuck is that exactly?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence.

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

The Writer thought: Oh, dear...

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

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

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

POP!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POOF!

—the pilot flared from the surge of propane.

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

And then the dirty-work began.

(IX)

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

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

CRUNCH...

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

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

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

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

"It don't," Dicky assured.

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

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

crack! crack! crack!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dang, Balls! Aw, man!"

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

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

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

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

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

The Writer blanched.

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

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

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

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

All that filled the doorway were bricks.

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

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

"Put on the what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would anything really come through that door?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Kiss my ass, Balls!"

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

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

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

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

"Oh... Yeah... "

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

"Over the keystone in the archway."

"With my blammed hand?"

"Sure. Why not?"

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

"What now?"

The Writer shrugged. "Open the door."

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

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

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

—the rickety door swung open on its own.

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

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

Footsteps? the Writer wondered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Shee-it," Balls sputtered.

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

The Spermatogoyle bowed.

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

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

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

"Aw, man!" Balls complained.

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

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

The Writer lit another cigarette and sighed.

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

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

"Aw, good Gawd!" Balls exclaimed.

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

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

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

"Act ingratiated," the Writer suggested.

"Huh?"

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

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

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

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

The beast nodded.

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

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

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

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

"Aw, gross," Dicky said.

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

"Be patient," the Writer observed.

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

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

Then the creature stepped back..and watched.

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

"It knocked her up!" Dicky railed.

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

SPLAT!

—an evil-smelling liquid spilled out, then—

plop...

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

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

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

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

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

Dicky gawped.

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

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

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

The previous process repeated: the belly swelled, and—

CLUNK!

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

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

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

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

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

A hush filled the room.

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

"No vocal cords," the Writer assumed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ceiling shook as the Minotauress howled upstairs.

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

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

The Writer gulped.

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

"Minotauress," the Writer corrected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dang!" Dicky exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What now, Balls?" Dicky asked.

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

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

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

"A conjecture, Mr. Balls?"

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

"What'cha need them fer?"

"Just git 'em... "

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

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

"What, Balls?"

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

"Yeah?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The hail?" Dicky remarked.

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

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

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

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

"The what?" Balls questioned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Writer preferred not to speculate.

««—»»

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

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

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

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

"Et what?"

The Writer smiled. "Leave it to me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fuck!"

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

"Come on, let's go—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You can start pumping now."

"Thank you."

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

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

"Hey, Writer? You like graham crackers?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Balls walked outside, smirking.

"That thing workin' yet?"

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

(X)

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

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

"Tell me about it."

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

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

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

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

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

Stu just laughed and shook his head.

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

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

"What—oh, knocking on wood?"

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

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

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

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

Stu sighed. "A damn month ago."

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

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

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

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

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

"God, I hope so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Annual Big Stone Gap Testicle Festival—"

"What?" Stu gaped.

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

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

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

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

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

"Jesus," Stu muttered at the thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You get a call, Stu?"

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

"Be careful!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir, it shore is."

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

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

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

Oddly, the two rednecks both looked to White Shirt.

"Stolen?" White Shirt whispered.

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

Silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"With a stolen credit card?"

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

"But forgot to?"

"Precisely."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You look like a con," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great. A wack-job...

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah?"

"Irony... "

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What he do, Stu?"

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

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

White Shirt closed his mouth.

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

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

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

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

Stu paused between puffs, looking cockeyed at the guy.

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

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

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

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

Both Stu and Courtney stared.

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

"Yeah?" he grumbled.

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

Stu frowned at her. "What?"

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

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

He gulped dryly. "Is it... "

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

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

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

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

"But what!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Thanks, Courtney!

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

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

"You! Stand up!"

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

"Hit the road!"

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

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

White Shirt lit a cigarette and quietly left the station.

(XI)

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

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

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

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

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

"Fuckin'-A... "

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

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

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

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

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

"Ain't gonna happen, Dicky."

"How ya figgure that?"

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

Dicky seemed to chew on the speculation.

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

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

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

"Dang straight—"

CLANK!

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

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

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

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

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

They stood.

They stared.

They slumped.

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

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

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

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

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

EPILOGUE

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

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

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

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

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

God help me...

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

The Writer's heart seemed to stop.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's that on your head?"

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

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

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

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

Her adorable little nose scrinched up. "Huh?"

"Sorry, I'm philosophizing. But how was your evening?"

She glowed. "Aw, it was just dandy, it was. Got me over a dozen tricks'n made probably five hunnert bucks!"

"That's superb. You're quite industrious, Nancy, and quite the entrepreneur."

She took another step closer. "And how was your evenin'?"

"Wonderful," he breathed. "It was an evening of advents and revelation, of anticlimaxes and dichotomies. Indeed... an evening of signs and wonders."

The remark fuddled her. "Well we'se could all hear ya typin' away in yer room all night long. You must'a got a lot'a yer book wrote tonight."

Strange, he thought. I barely wrote a word today, and I've been out of the house for hours. She probably heard the air-conditioner rattling. "The book's coming along just fine," he bluffed.

She took another step... The Writer's eyes continued to shudder over the immaculate physique. Moments of silence passed, the two of them gazing at each other.

Suddenly, he wanted to weep. "My God, Nancy... "

"Yeah?" she giggled.

"You're so beautiful it's killing me... "

At last the space between them collapsed, and that warm, paragonic body was pressing him against the wall. Feminine heat and redneck perfume blanketed him; it seeped into his nostrils and through his pores like the most indulgent narcotic. When her hands slid up his chest, he felt pleasantly electrocuted. He moaned, then, nearly convulsing when she licked up his neck, sucked his earlobe, then stuck her hand inside his shirt to his bare skin. "I just got such a fixin' fer you, I'se all in a tizzy," she whispered. She'd opened his shirt fully now, and pressed her bare breasts against him. The sensation catalyzed him in a rapport of euphoria that he could only describe as heavenly. Her nipples seemed to sweetly brand him and then she licked along his neck again, giggled, and finessed a delectable tongue into his mouth. The Writer's arms wrapped around her as if holding onto an abstraction that would prevent him from plummeting to his death—a death that he might even welcome in the midst of this ephemeral bliss.

Suction pulled his tongue into her mouth. Her hand cradled his crotch, squeezing in pulses and inciting an erection that was suddenly so hard it hurt. Carry me away, he thought to the Fates. He convulsed in the gentle jaws of this penultimate contradiction—Evanescent permanence, he mused. Cacophonic silence. Fleeting immortality...

"I belong to you body'n soul," a delicious whisper twanged in his ear.

She's Thomas Pynchon's V, he knew. She's the woman I want the most but, alas, the woman I can never have, because to have her is to beckon chaos.

The Writer could barely breathe as he gingerly pushed away from her and the rest of her world-tainted perfection.

"You're the woman of my dreams, Nancy," he returned her whisper, "and that is the reason I must go now... "

Her smile lit up every corner of his psyche as she daintily backed away, bunny ears pitching. "I'll'se get you one'a these days... "

"I know," he croaked. "Goodnight... "

"See ya tomorrow, Mr. Writer!" she said and slipped back into her room, and—yes!—she'd pronounced the word writer as "ratter."

Shuddering, his mind a schism now, the Writer entered his own room and turned in the feeble light.

Did a shadow move?

A ghost, perhaps?

After a night such as this, could his spirit now be a beacon for apparitions?

No, I'm just tired and exhilarated at the same time. So much happened tonight: portents, marvels, the sheer unfathomable...

His lighter stalled beneath the cigarette he'd just put in his mouth. He was staring down at his desk. Beside the Remington Standard Typing-Machine No. 2 was a veritable stack of paper.

A drone filled his head when he picked it up. Three hundred pages at least, and every single one filled with type-written words.

My God, my novel... He stared further, as if over a cliff. It's finished...

He looked at the first page and gulped. The original title, WHITE TRASH GOTHIC, had been typed over with X's, and a line below it, a mysterious new title had been typed. The new title was this: THE MINOTAURESS.

THE HORN-CRANKER

PROLOGUE

The high sun beamed in the sleepy South Dakota summer, and its light painted the boy's already well-tanned arms. This was all part of him, part of his rich and hardy upbringing. The grazeland scent, the whipping wind, and the sun.

The day's beauty sang across the endless land.

"Their horns are their power, son," the boy's father warned. Rugged, overalled. Kind-eyed but resolute. "So ya gotta take that power, take it right away from 'em. Otherwise, they'll gore ya; they'll ram their horns right up your ass. I seen it happen to a man once, and it weren't pretty. He died like a dog 'cos his shit mixed all up with his blood."

Wow! the young boy thought. Shit... mixed with blood!

"He got to pukin' too, throwin' up his own shit right there in the cattle-gate."

Wuh—WOW!

The boy was but nine years old at the time of this crucial indoctrination. He didn't know what dick hair was, nor sex, nor did he even know what the infrequent hardening of this dinger meant. It was just something that happened. The boy was innocence unspoiled. Until now.

"So here's what'cha do—" The boy's father grabbed the instrument—called a torque-plier—and raised it in the sun. "Handy as a pocket on a shirt, boy—this here pair'a horn-crankers." He took a strong, hard huff, and fit the queer tool's clamps over the steer's horn.

Then twisted for all he was worth.

The act begot the strangest sound, like a hinge squeaking, then wood splintering:

kreeeee-CRUNCH!

"Eeee-YEAH!" the boy's father grunted with earnest effort, and simultaneously the wicked tool in his hands successfully yanked the left horn out of the 1,900-pound Black Angus gelding's skull.

The steer, understandably, howled.

The young boy looked into the hole that had been caused by this rude and cruel extraction. A gritty, wet hole in the skull now replaced the once-proud horn. Pinpoints of blood began to appear inside.

Wow! the boy thought. A hole—in its head!

The mammoth beast bucked in its steel gate, still howling, snot flying away in ropes. Metal clattered, hooves pounded the earth.

"If it could get out of there, son, it'd gore us lickety-split. It'd kill every thing that moved."

The boy peered closer at the huge trapped beast. Yeah, but it CAN'T get out! It CAN'T! Then came a fit of giggling.

Next, the boy's father wrenched out poor beast's second horn.

kreeee-CRUNCH!

The steer, again, howled. Its howl trumpeted over the farm's vast expanse like a vociferation from hell...

"There ya go."

The two horns lay in the dust now, between the boy's high-top Keds.

"See? That's all it takes to turn this mean-ass creature into a harmless pud. " The man set down the infernal instrument, then put his arm around his son. "And one day, boy, you'll be a horn-cranker too, just like me and my father before me... "

CHAPTER ONE

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 1999

When it wasn't raining, the entire city of Seattle sighed in relief. Which wasn't often. No, God saw fit to tinkle liberally on this city 280 days per year. Hence the floods, the washed out roads, the houses sliding off hillsides, and the highest suicide rate of any national metropolis came as little surprise, forging a dismal inclement cement shit-house with a candyass monorail, a ripoff "Underground," and a piercingly ugly Space Needle that most residents hoped would fall over onto 5th Avenue rush hour. Tourists were in for a big surprise should they venture past the scenic "Waterfront," for then they would see what the city was really about: derelict vomit splattered on every sidewalk and buses that smelled worse than the shit-hoppers at a compost dump. Seattle was a wino-loogie-pasted rain bucket which attracted too many fish-belly-white "Goths" who thought it "chic" to live in environs bereft of sunlight, too many women with knapsacks and unshaved legs, bums, drunks, and homeless crack addicts (because showers, here, were free), and police kicked off of every major city on the West Coast (because what qualified officer would want to work here if he could get a job anywhere else in America?) Teeming rain ruled, as did people blowing off their heads due to protracted Vitamin-D deficiency and Seasonal Affect Disorder.

In a city as fucked up as this? Who knew what other "disorders" might be percolating? Who knew what other slow-burning sicknesses were beginning to smolder in unsuspecting heads?

Who knew?

««—»»

When Dean Lohan's wife pulled up at the corner of 4th and Virginia, Dean just stood there a moment, looking at her face behind the half-opened driver's side window. Pert, classy, with penetrating indigo eyes, Daphne's beauty only seemed to evolve since their marriage three years ago. They both had jobs in the city, rode to and from work together, had lunch together every day... Well, not every day; lately Daphne was having to skip her own lunch hour for important work meetings. She worked for a national clothing distributor, was moving fast up the ranks, working hard for the marriage. She's my life, Dean thought as he stood looking at her. The image and the thought nearly brought him to tears She's my very world...

"I'm going to Ajax's to drink beer," he said to her. "I need the car."

Daphne, with a creased expression, rolled the window down the rest of the way. "What?"

Dean's voice was already honing its edge of impatience. "I'm going to Ajax's to drink," he repeated. "You deaf? Get out of the car."

Daphne's model-face froze, then went lax as she laughed. It was a joke, of course. Dean joked around all the time.

"Think it's a joke?" he said. He yanked open the car door. Then he grabbed her, not by the collar and not by the hair, but by the face, and hauled her shrieking out of the Honda Accord.

"What's wrong with you?" came her shrill and flabbergasted objection.

"I'm thirsty. I need a beer."

Daphne stood stiffly on the sidewalk, her fists at her side. "How am I going to get home?"

Dean grabbed her—again, not by the hair but by the face—and shoved her toward the bus stop. She nearly lost her footing, nearly fell into the street.

"Take the fuckin' bus," Dean said.

—as the drone rang in his head, he couldn't move, he couldn't—

"... mind taking the bus?"

—and Dean's mind jigged, then jagged, and he snapped out of the waking dream. He was standing on the corner of 4th and Virginia, looking at his beautiful wife behind the wheel of their car.

"Honey?" Daphne asked through the open window. "Are you all right?"

Reality slammed back. "I'm sorry, honey," he said once he recomposed himself. "Forgot to change the air in my head today."

Daphne seemed concerned. "You looked like you were in a trance. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Fit as a fiddle, however fit that is," Dean tried to joke. "Seriously, how fit are fiddles? What's that you were saying?"

Her profuse lashes blinked at him. She looked depressed. "Mr. Thron called a work meeting tonight. Quarterly inventory."

"Bosses do that," Dean tossed it off.

"The meeting's now. Would you mind taking the bus home?"

"No biggie," Dean said. "I enjoy busses, actually. You might even call me a bus-loving man."

"I knew you'd understand." She batted her big eyes again. "Kiss-kiss."

"Ah, of course." Dean leaned over and kissed wife on the lips.

"Love you," Daphne whispered.

"I love you more... "

"Do not."

"Do too."

Dean grinned, stepping back. He could stand there and kiss her forever, and that would be fine with him. But then she'd miss her meeting!

"Oh, and I might be late," Daphne added, slipping the car into gear. "So don't wait up."

The love in Dean's eyes shone like hot embers as he watched Daphne drive off. He thought nothing of the fact her office was south yet she was driving north. It didn't even register.

Dean looked at the Metro bus stop, less than enthused about the hour-and-a-half ride back home. Hell, it's Friday night, he thought. A minute later, he was on the pay phone.

"Ajax, it's Dean. What say we have a few beers?"

««—»»

Ajax, like Dean, was not a true Seattlelite. He'd moved here from the east coast to pursue the more bountiful employment opportunities. He stuffed envelopes for a national survey corporation and was quite proud to make a living at it—not that many would call his existence a living.

Ajax looked like Rush Limbaugh with a beard, and possessed similar political sentiments. Well, make that Rush Limbaugh with a beard who dressed like a pan-handler. He and Dean had met quite by accident, at a Fremont tavern called THE DUBLINER during the last game of the World Series. They'd been the only two cheering when the Yankees had won. Since then, both never fitting into the Seattle grunge-goth-Left Coast-shaven-headed-everyone-has-a-fucking-knapsack scene, they became fast friends.

Ajax' surname was Jackson, and his parents had absurdly dubbed him with the first name Andrew. In his bent political persuasions, however, he regarded the seventh president of the United States as the nation's first "pinko," a closet separatist who boldly killed unarmed Indians while the rest of the Continental Army was fighting the well-trained British, and who "lucked out" at the Battle of New Orleans because his drinking habits forced subordinate officers to lead the battle. Hence, Ajax didn't like his name, so he insisted he be called Ajax.

Ajax was also a bit of a pervert.

"Man," he said, "I'd like to pee on her back."

Dean frowned at the table.

With this comment, Ajax had been referring to the zombie-shuffling waitress who'd just brought them their beers. She was rack-skinny, straight black hair like a mortician wig, with unbra'd tits pushing against her black PIERCE ME! T-shirt like a couple of under-ripe peaches. Tattoos of skeleton hands crawled up her neck to strangle her, and she had something in her lower lip that looked like a shower-curtain ring.

"Shit," Ajax appended, "that tramp's probably had more abortions than I've had beers. Bet she gargles biker piss like Listerine. Pops empty Jim Beam bottles out of her pussy for parlor tricks and has an asshole bigger than the drydock for a Nimitz-class carrier."

Dean blanched.

"Yeah, I'd yank that bitch's reins bigtime; she'd whinny like a horse, " Ajax went on, his eyes fogged in fantasy as he stared after the vapid barmaid. She moved like one of the cast of Cemetery Man. "I'd fist-fuck her entire large intestine, then piss on her so hard her Ozzy Osborne tattoos would wash off." Dean blocked out his friend's pornographic rant. God he's so sexist! No wonder women don't go out with him.

Full of reeking bums eating their own boogers, bovine-faced bald lesbians, and a man with a beard and large breast implants—God Bless Seattle!—the Rte. 25 bus had brought Dean here from downtown—here being a tavern called THE WHARF which sat one street away from beautiful Lake Union, or not so beautiful when one considered the lake's history. For a hundred years, a coal-oil processing plant had dumped its petro-chemical effluence into the lake's pristine depths. Swimming was strictly prohibited, and if you ate a fish caught in Union's waters, any sequent offspring would more than likely be born with flippers. As for THE WHARF itself, it was an actual murder site: A number of years ago, a local "businessman" was shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon, evidently for running up too lofty a marker with other local "businessmen." Ajax and Dean sat at the self-same table.

The tavern made a garbage pit look well-appointed. Some entrepreneur took a couple of double-wide trailers, smacked them together, and that was it. That was the bar. The clientele fit right in, West Coast rednecks to the max. Heavy metal blared from the juke, billiard balls clacked in the back. A giant projection TV in the corner sported Monster Truck races.

Ajax sipped his Redhook ESB and winced. "So the wife let you out of the cage tonight, huh? Let me guess. Work meeting?"

Dean squirted lemon juice into his Pyramid Hefeweizen. "How'd you know?"

"Duh. What is this, like the eighth Friday night in a row she's had a work meeting?"

Dean grinned triumph against the ceaseless implication. "No, it's the sixth, smart guy."

"Oh, that's right. The other two work meetings were on Saturday nights. And you don't think that's odd."

"Why should I?" Dean retorted. "She's in an odd business. Clothing distribution isn't like working at a bank, you know. Most of their invoices go out on weekends."

"Whatever you say... "

For as long as they'd been friends, Ajax had always intimated that Daphne might be cheating on Dean, the prospect of which Dean viewed as preposterous. We're in love! he thought. He doesn't understand true love.

"How often do you drop wax?" Ajax asked.

"What?"

Ajax rolled his eyes. "How often do you fuck her? Let me guess—once every two weeks?"

Dean was taken aback. "Well, not quite that often. Once a month or so." Actually, it was more like once every two months... but why quibble?

Ajax laughed. "Christ, my grandparents fuck more than that."

"Marriage isn't about sex," Dean explained. "It's about a spiritual bond, an everlasting one. It's about commitment and total faith. It's about sharing your life with someone else. It's about love, Ajax," and at that precise moment an uncharacteristic selection switched on over the juke: "All You Need Is Love," by The Beatles.

"See that!" Dean clapped at the coincidence.

The side of Ajax's bearded face flopped into his palm. "You're hopeless. You live your life by advice from The Beatles."

"The Beatles were monumental," Dean defended. "The most important musical assembly in history."

"They were a bunch of acid-head hippie pinko guru-loving junkie shit-heads—"

Dean was long used to Ajax's rather conservative nature. Best to change the subject as quickly as possible. "We were talking about the reality of marriage, Ajax. Sex becomes faddish, much less important."

Ajax grinned. "Faddish?"

"Statistically, sex amongst happily married couple drops drastically after the second year."

"Not into the toilet," Ajax said. "Shit, man. If I was married to a woman as good-looking as your wife, I wouldn't even care if she was cheating on me. But I'd sure as shit be busting my nut up her cooze twice a day. No, with her? Make that three times. I'd be hosing her down like a fuckin' fire truck."

There was no arguing with him. He just doesn't understand, Dean realized. He's never been truly in love. Best to just leave it lie.

But even though Ajax was a weirdo, pervert, and asshole, he was also Dean's friend. And true friends were always there when you needed them. "Look, Ajax, I've got a problem. Do you know anything about—"

Ajax was rubbing his hands together at an image. "Yeah, I'd be dick-spanking that tramp every night. I'd be coring her asshole and dropping big peter-tracks on her back. Shit, I'd whittle my dick down to pencil-width and fuck her nose—"

"Ajax!" Dean was disgusted. "That's my wife you're talking about!"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just... .abstracting."

Dean simmered. "I was asking if you knew anything about psychology."

Ajax sipped his beer, then winced. "Does the pope have nocturnal emissions? Fuck, yes, I know about psychology. Shit, I majored in psych... before I quit college."

"Well, see, I've been having these—"

"Nocturnal emissions?"

"No," Dean said.

"So what's the problem, partner?"

"Sometimes I think... " How could he say it? "I have these... dreams. I call them the Jig-Jags, 'cos that's how my mind feels. It's like vertigo or something; my brain jigs and jags, and then it's like I'm someone else."

"Dreams, huh?"

"Well, no, it doesn't happen when I'm asleep. It's more like a day dream."

"The Jig-Jags? Sounds like lucid dreaming to me," Ajax said. "Let me guess. When this happens, you see yourself doing something you'd never do in real life."

"Exactly!" Dean excitedly replied. "Like today, I was standing there, and I saw myself grab Daphne by the face and yank her out of the car."

"By the face—I like it," Ajax remarked. "And if you ask me, you should've done it for real, the way the bitch treats you."

Dean scowled.

"It's called non-REM imagery, waking fantasy construction," Ajax went on. "Freud wrote all about it. The strictures of society repress everyone to an extent, but some people get squeezed harder."

"What strictures?" Dean asked. "Society doesn't impose any strictures on me."

"Don't be a dope; of course it does. Everything that's made mankind civilized can be viewed as a stricture. Progress is a stricture. Part of us, in our psyches, will always be cavemen. It's in our genetic code. Raping cavewoman pussy, eating raw meat, and shitting in the woods. Then civility' comes along, and we gotta shit in shiny white bowls and wipe our asses with toilet paper. We don't eat raw meat, we eat a balanced diet' consisting of the four major food groups. When our dicks get hard, we don't drag a bitch by the hair into the nearest cave and stick her; now we gotta date 'em first, hold hands in the park and buy 'em roses. Shit, we gotta take 'em out to dinner before we come in their pies. Cavemen didn't do any of that shit! When they got horny they just spit on their dicks and stuck it in, and if the bitch didn't like it, she'd get her head cracked with a rock. In a sense, the modernization of society wages war with our true primordial selves. Get it?"

"No," Dean said.

"Domestication is one of those strictures, nimrod. Relationships. Pair-bonding." Ajax winked. "Marriage."

"I don't believe it," Dean attested. "You're talking like human love is an aberration but it's not. It's part of how your primordial cavemen evolved," and then, at that precise moment, another uncharacteristic song switched on to the jukebox: "Love Me Tender" by the King.

"See!" Dean clapped at the coincidence.

"First The Beatles, now Elvis."

"What's wrong with Elvis? He was the most monumental vocalist in—"

"He was a fat drug-addicted cracker who never wrote a song in his life and died on a toilet seat."

Dean grit his teeth at such blasphemy. "Let's stick to the point, huh?"

"And the point is, you've got these Jig-Jags,' and I'm telling you why. Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is commonly experienced by people who've undergone a drastic change in their lives. And look at you. You spent the first twenty-five years of your life growing up in a rural environment, then—BAM—you move to a big city. Three years later, you're married and you're damn near having hallucinations. Something ain't right in the gearbox, Dean. And I know what it is: your wife."

"No it's not—"

"Come on, you just told me you had a waking fantasy about being violent to Daphne. She's the common denominator in what's not working in your life. Face it, she treats you like shit—"

"She does not treat me like shit," Dean had to rebel. "She—"

"She walks all over you. She makes you clean the house, cook dinner, wash the dishes. Last year when you fell off the ladder and broke your arm, you had to drive yourself to the damn hospital because she refused to."

"That's only because... she wasn't feeling well."

"Christ almighty!" Ajax railed. "She won't even let you have a dog—"

"Well, they do leave lots of hair on the carpet—"

"At home, all she does is yell at you—"

"Well, I'm kind of lazy, I need yelling at sometimes—"

"—and I'll bet my ass she's cheating on you," Ajax finished his avalanche.

Dean tempered himself. "She is not cheat—"

Ajax shook his head right along with his words. "And all you do is keep making excuses for her. I'm telling you, man. The reason you're having these Jig-Jags, these waking dreams, is because of her. First you move here—drastic enough of a change—then you marry her. Too much change at once, too much shock-repression. She's turned you into something you're not, and now your psyche is rebelling. No offense, pal, but she's turned you into a pussy-whipped putz."

"Thanks," Dean said through the frown.

"Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is no joke, Dean," Ajax cautioned. He sipped his beer and winced. "Next step is Multiple-Personality Disorder. These Jig-Jags are telling you something, paisan. You better listen."

Dean let the foam in the bottom of his glass slide into his mouth. "Fine, Mr. Freud. What are they telling me?"

"Get back to your true nature. These fantasy images? It's the real you, the genuine primordial you, struggling to get away from what you've become since you got married."

"The caveman, huh?"

"That's right. It's your Id trying to bust out of the cement your wife has poured over you. Everything about your life now is the polar opposite of what your life was."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "What my life was?"

"Sure. Come on! You grew up in bumfuck South Dakota, on a ranch. You've told me all the stories. You were a rough and tumble rancher kicking ass in roadhouse bars, bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver. Shit, you were getting laid when you were twelve!"

Dean's shoulders flinched at the volume of Ajax's last exclamation. "Tell the whole bar why don't you?"

"Fuck the bar," Ajax came back. "Talk about black to white. No wonder you're hallucinating. Everything your psyche meant for you to be has been turned inside out. Do yourself a favor. Get back to your roots. Get back to being what you were: a tobacco-chewing, gash-busting, hard-knocking, give-a-shit son of a bitch."

Dean didn't buy a word of Ajax's advice, but it was true—in the past, he'd been all those things and more. And getting laid at age twelve? True. "You don't understand anything," he said. "All those things I used to be—that's why I moved here, to get away from that."

"Bullshit," Ajax put it bluntly. "Consciously you believe that, but this is your psyche screaming to get out." Ajax lit a cigarette, sucked smoke like it was syrup. "You used to be a hardcore redneck motherfucker. Look at you now."

Hardcore, Dean thought.

Ajax continued to enthuse, "Man, you used to artificially inseminate cows. You'd stick your arm all the way down the cow's cooze. Now that's hardcore."

Dean thought about. Ajax had a point. Being married in Seattle was definitely different from what he'd been used to.

"When the cattle got abscesses, you'd stick your hand right in their mouths and pop out the puss. That's hardcore."

Back on the farm, Dean had discharged that duty too—watching the ranch dogs scuffle to eat the wads of pus—and now that he thought about it... It was kind of... fun...

"Yes sir, a hardcore farmboy motherfucker," Ajax said. He drained the last of his beer, then winced.

"Hey, Ajax," Dean asked. "How come you wince every time you take a sip of beer?"

"Because the beer sucks. All this candyass Northwest microbrew bullshit?" Ajax waved a dismissive hand. "It's garbage, taste like fruit."

"Then why do you drink it?"

"'Cos it's all they got here."

Dean shook his head. "All right, then if you don't like the beer, why do you come here?"

"Are you kidding?" Ajax seemed dismayed. "I love looking at these tramp Goth waitresses. They put wood in my shorts." Then he raised his hand, signaled the girl who'd waited on them. "Hey, toots? When you get a chance?"

She shuffled over like a corpse on tranquilizers. Her nose ring swung like a doorknocker. "My name's not toots," she informed him.

"Aw, gee, I'm sorry," Ajax apologized. "Just a figure of speech, you know? So what is your name?"

"Vermillia."

Ajax bit his lip in order to stifle an outburst. "Another round, please... Vermillia."

She shuffled away. The back of her PIERCE ME! T-shirt read I HAD MY CLIT SPLIT AT THE DEVIL DAN'S TATTOO AND PIERCING PARLOR!

"Jeeeeesus Christ," Ajax murmured. "That fruitcake bitch? I'd stick my head all the way up her gash and suck her cervix."

Dean shook his head.

"Oh, and speaking of hardcore," Ajax tacked on. "What was that other thing you did back on the ranch, the thing you won the statewide championship for?"

Did Dean's eyes actually sparkle for a moment?

"Horn-cranking," he answered more to himself. "And I wasn't just the state champ. I was the best horn-cranker in the world... "

CHAPTER TWO

When most seventeen-year-olds were playing sandlot baseball, contemplating their futures, driving their first car, Dean Lohan was inserting his arm up cow "coozes" all the way to the shoulder, to properly place the frozen semen pellet. But actually it wasn't just one arm, it was both. His other arm, also to the shoulder, slid up the rectal tract, to dilate the spermatic inlet through the intestinal wall. This meant that young Dean's right cheek was firmly placed against the ungainly area of space that existed between the cow's anus and vagina. And Dean performed this less than eloquent procedure thousands of times.

Pretty hardcore.

And so too: When most fifteen-year-olds were delivering newspapers or mowing yards, Dean Lohan was, without an official work-permit, employed at the Johnson Meat-Packing Plant: gutting cattle summarily, often when they weren't quite dead; hauling out bovine innards like loops of rope and then squeezing out the grassy cream of excrement with his bare hands; and hosing out the rendering gutters flowing deep with offal, blood, and skin. Young Dean never so much as flinched. And when batches of ground beef went bad, it was Dean's job wash off the slime and then mix it with the good ground beef, which was later sold to local fast-food restaurants and retirement homes at a cut rate that provided a kick-back to the plant manager.

And when most twelve-year-olds were watching Scooby Doo and playing with army men, Dean Lohan, was squirting his first seminal drops into the mouth of a rather precocious honey-haired girl named Marthie, who was two years his senior. Marthie, who had evidently learned well from a number of relatives including her father, swallowed without so much as a frown. Dean's young penis, too, delved deep the depths of Marthie's vaginal barrel on many an occasion.

And little Marthie came like a fucking freight train each and every time.

Even when he was too young to really know was sex was, Dean Lohan was a sex machine.

He was also the school-yard bully, sending many a classmate home crying through black eyes. Why? For the hell of it.

He'd partaken in his first "titty-fuck" at age thirteen, his first act of sodomy at fourteen (which had left a young lass with bloody stool for a week), and at sixteen he was copulating with two girls at a time, then three, then four.

Handsome, endowed, and tough as the earth he'd stomped on his father's ranch, Dean Lohan became the man every woman wanted in DeSmet, South Dakota, even before he was legally a man at all.

Whatever it was that lit a fire under a girl's ass, Dean did it right. And there was something else he did right—something, in fact, he did better than anyone else not only in South Dakota but in the entire world.

Dean Lohan could crank a horn out of a steer's head faster than other men could spit. And he performed this act—with no remorse and with no hesitation whatever—on not hundreds but on thousands of farm-raised steers.

The strange sound was as familiar to him as the sound of summer rain to normal boys...

kreeeee-CRUNCH!

—and out that horn came, like pulling a sweet potato from moist earth.

Dean didn't care. Not about the animal, not about the pain, not about the torment nor the objective cruelty of the act. He just did it. He cranked those horns out of those steer heads a mile a minute. It was his job, and Dean Lohan quailed at no task.

He was a horn-cranker.

Some towns had oyster-shucking contests, or pie eating contests, but DeSmet, South Dakota, had something far more unique. In 1988, at the age of eighteen, Dean entered the annual state horn-cranking contest, not only competing against the best in the land but against the very man who'd come in First Place in this esteemed competition for nine years in a row.

His very own father.

Muscles bulging, mind set, and torque-plier in hand, Dean had embarked on this gladiatorial event. The most horns cranked fully out of their seats within a one-minute time-limit would be declared the victor. The previous record was forty-three.

That's a lot of horns to crank.

The sun blazed and the crowd cheered, and the day was split open by the hellish howls of the steers being de-horned.

Spittle-speckled and arms gorged with blood, the end of the day found Dean the easy winner. The coveted trophy—two genuine gold-plated horns—was passed to him by a teary-eyed woman in a red, white, and blue swimsuit and a MISS HORN-CRANKER banner as the audience went mad in their applause.

Dean not only won this year's state contest, he also set a world record. In sixty seconds he had expertly divorced an even fifty horns from the steer-heads they'd naturally grown in.

Hence, Dean would have his name in Guinness for some time to come—decades, in fact. His father, teary-eyed himself, embraced Dean after the match. "Boy," he sobbed. "Would you lookit that pile of horns? My God, you've made me the proudest father to ever walk the earth."

Exuberance surged through Dean's chest. He shed a tear or two himself, seeing his father so happy, and when he turned to the crowd and waved, their applause threatened to rock the entire county.

I'm the best horn-cranker... in the world, he realized.

Later, he fucked the dog-shit out of MISS HORN-CRANKER. Indeed, he fucked her so hard she fully lost consciousness in the backseat of Dean's finely rebuilt '72 Mustang Fastback. Then he swigged a beer, pinched some Skoal, and fucked her again.

For the hell of it.

««—»»

"What the hell is this!"

Dean grunted, then slowly opened his eyes. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, hadn't he? Yes, after a few shots of Johnny Black to mellow out. And now—

"What the hell is this!"

—his beautiful wife Daphne was screaming in his face.

"What the hell is what?" he griped. "Christ your voice is louder than a truck horn."

"This!" It was a disk she held between her fingers, the size of a hockey puck.

A can of Skoal.

"It was on the coffee table!" she continued to yell, "next to your whiskey!"

Still groggy, Dean shrugged on the couch. "It's a can of dip. So what? What are you bitching about?"

"So what? Is that what you said to me?" Rage pinkened her face, her eyes bulging like a cartoon. "Bitching?" She threw the can at him; it bounced off his chest. "You promised me that you'd never use that shit again! You promised me when we got married! It's filthy! It's dirty! Only rednecks and slobs use that stuff! It's—"

"It's time for you to shaddap," Dean replied, and in a reflex like instinct, he—

CRACK!

—slammed his fist into the side of her face. Daphne flew backwards, turning, her Bally shoes flying off her feet. As the inertia transferred from fist to face, Dean saw her eyeballs criss-cross. She thumped to the floor, unconscious.

Yadduh yadduh yadduh, Dean thought. That's all they do, run their mouths, bellyache, bitch. He poured another shot of Johnny B., slugged it back. That he'd just knocked his wife unconscious didn't faze him, nor did the potential assault and battery charges. "Fuck it. Women." He picked up his can of Skoal, put a pinch between his lip and gum.

There it is! he thought.

Nicotine rush abuzz, he looked down at his very unconscious wife. In her fall, she'd landed on her belly, her classy creped black skirt flipped up. Beneath the see-through pantyhose, her ass sat there like a pair of succulent dumplings.

"Fuck it," Dean said to himself.

Back in the old days, back on the ranch in DeSmet, Dean's far larger than average reproductive member had taken up residency in many a backdoor. But he'd never done "the anal thing" with Daphne. He'd never even broached the subject, knowing his wife regarded the act as unnatural and degrading.

"Fuck it."

He knelt, yanked the pantyhose right off like peeling a condom. Saliva tinted brown with high-grade nicotine dribbled from his mouth and fell precisely into the furrow of her creamy buttocks.

Dean plugged The Captain right in, and plungered her "star" but good. Spitting in her ass-crack seemed sufficient foreplay—all any woman deserved—he just went to town for a quick one. After all, the bitch hadn't put out in two months!

Dean's spooge drained in volume. He thought of squeezing the innards out of a fat lizard's mouth.

"There's one for ya, sweetheart." He wiped his sullied cock off on the pantyhose, then leaned back against the coffee table and took another hit of the good Mr. Black. Eventually Daphne revived, raised her head sluggishly, and brought an errant hand back to her buttocks.

"What... What did you do?" her words slipped out, incredulous.

"You looked like you were running a fever," Dean replied, then ejected a thread-thin stream of tobacco juice between his teeth. The stream landed on the plush beige carpet. "So I took your temperature. With a big thermometer."

Her words wheezed with her breath. "You-you-you—SODOMIZED me! How-how-how—COULD you?"

"Easy. My dick was hard and your ass was on the floor."

She began to crawl up, teary and outraged. "I'm-I'm-I'm gonna call my father, I'm gonna call the police, I'm gonna press charges—"

Dean just calmly shook his head. Sometimes they just don't get it, do they?

He grabbed her not by the hair but by the face, taking a handful of already bruised cheek, and lifted her to her feet. She squealed like a mouse in a vice the whole way up. "No," he said, "the only thing your gonna do is cook me some dinner. Now." He shoved her recklessly into the kitchen. "Something good, otherwise I'll have to get violent"—

—and then it happened again, the cacophonous drone in his head like water pouring into a sewer inlet and his vision shifting through cloud-blossom blurs and his heart like a water balloon about to pop—

—again—

—again—

—here they were.

The Jig-Jags.

"What the hell is this?"

Dean was staring at her. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for Daphne to get home from her meeting, and he'd wakened when she entered. He was just staring at her. My God, he thought.

"You promised me that you'd never use that shit again! You promised me when we got married! It's filthy! It's dirty! Only rednecks and slobs use that stuff! It's disgusting!"

Dean sat in turmoil, his consciousness revolving like a ferris wheel on high-speed. I didn't buy that can of Skoal... did I?

"How can you betray me like this!" Daphne's soprano shriek continued to unwind. "How many other promises have you broken?"

"Honey, I—"

"Don't lie to me, you bastard!"

"Honey, I—"

"Christ in Heaven, I work my ass off day in and day out while you sit in here chewing tobacco like some common redneck! You're not in South Fucking Dakota anymore, Dean! The joyride's over! We agreed! I pull the weight around here, I make the money! We can't depend on your pissant salary! You're the one who's supposed to keep this place cleaned up."

Dean's hands spread. "It's clean—"

"It's a SHITHOLE!" Daphne cracked. "It's FILTHY. Ever heard of a vacuum cleaner? Ever heard of a mop?"

"Sweetheart, I—"

"Just shut up! My God, I'm doing everything I possibly can to make this pitiful marriage work!" Her voice raced around the room like a mad ferret. "It would really be nice if JUST ONCE, you'd help me out! But, no! You're too busy sleeping on the fucking couch and chewing that goddamn redneck tobacco!"

Daphne stormed off down the hall. Dean, entrapped by terror, raced after her. "Honey, please! I'm sorry! I'll clean the house better tomorrow, I promise! And I swear to God I don't know where that can of—"

The bedroom door slammed in his face so hard the entire house shook.

««—»»

DESMET, SOUTH DAKOTA

"Name?"

Arianne's skin crawled. "Arianne."

The fat-faced cop scowled. "Last name?"

"Zausner."

"Current place of residence?"

That was a good one. "Uh... I used to live at the Callisto-Brownsroad Trailer Court."

"Current place of residence?" the fat cop repeated

"My car!" Arianne blurted and just thought Fuck... I'm fucked now.

The desk sergeant, whose name tag displayed A.T. LASS, filled out the rest of the booking report. This would be her third bust for solicitation—it didn't matter that the johns had ripped her off. She was crazy; whenever she smoked a piece of ice, she went out of her mind.

Her memory felt like a sheet of skin shorn by razors; she could only see through the minute red lines. She'd pulled up at the GORTYN'S WOODLAND TAVERN, swearing to herself No ice tonight, no ice. I'll just have a few beers and turn a few blowjobs. The promise had corroded as quickly as her future. Her first john had offered her a piece of ice in trade, and that had been it. Next thing she knew she was flying. She was on her back in the woods behind the tavern with her feet jacked up in the air and a line of men standing in wait, each with a sawbuck in their hand. By the end of the train her pussy felt like an overflowing sauce pan full of Sperm Stew, and her purse was empty as chuckles faded through the trees. That's when the police had found her. A fat line of semen ran down the inside of her leg when she was hauled up, covered with a raincoat, and Mirandized. They let her sit in the tank for eighteen hours (that's how good the ice was around here; the Callisto-Brownsroad Court was the location of the town's biggest meth lab, and it was real funny how the cops had never busted the place), then she lay for a few more, wracked in withdrawal. If she'd had a gun in her hand, she would've blown her brains out onto the cell wall, no hesitation.

"Three-Time Loser now, Arianne," the sergeant reminded her. "Three strikes and you're out. No more PBJ, no more court leniency because of your past. You're up for thirty months, no parole, no good behavior. The county slam, honey. It ain't no joovie hall and it ain't Club Med."

Arianne's drawn face fell into her lap. Her tears plipped onto the floor. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she sobbed. "I can't stop, I just can't... "

The following silence smothered her. She thought of the same silence within a buried coffin. That's what she needed: to be dead, to be buried.

"You know," the bulbous sergeant remarked, "I remember you. I'd only been on the force three years when you graduated from DeSmet Senior High. You were top of the bill, honey. Top of the honor roll, 4.0 student, valedictorian, prom queen, and scholarship offers from Harvard, UCLA, and Georgetown." Rancor ran steep in his voice. "You had it all, you had what no one from this pinch-of-dung town ever had. And look what you did with it."

Kill me, just kill me, she thought. Death seemed so much less cruel than living like this. There was no way out, though. She couldn't stop.

"What happened?" the sergeant asked. "What turned you into a meth-head whore?"

Dean, she thought. Dean's what happened.

"I don't know if I can do the dry-out," she croaked into her knees. "I don't think I can make it."

"Look."

Her spine felt like a creaking board as she raised up, blinked, and looked at the booking sergeant. His fat fingers spun the arrest report around for her to read.

He hadn't filled it out.

"One more chance," he said.

Then he dropped a plastic bag full of chunks of crystal methamphetamine on top of the blank report.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"But nothing's free, you know?" He stood up and lowered his starched-blue police trousers. "You know the game, right?"

Nodding, she stood up, came around the desk, and got on her knees. His little dick looked like the end of someone's nose in a nest. But then he turned around, bent over, and spread his buttocks.

"Rim job first, okay?"

"Sure," Arianne said and slowly slid her practiced tongue up the hairy crack until it found the puckered aperture. She pressed the cheeks further apart and began to suck.

««—»»

And as Arianne commenced with the indecorous task of sucking dirty police ass—tasting spoiled tints of Burger King and grape-jelly donuts—a few miles away, a shadow slouched in the dark, an outrage beyond description, beyond cogitation. It tasted smidgens of consternation and ancient blasphemy.

A breeze slipped across her subcorporeal face like spirits whispering.

The world just got worse—she understood that now after so long a gentle slumber. She could not imagine...

She was beautiful in her skein-weave of darkness. She was made of darkness. It was darkness which flowed through her veins of ghostly dust. It was darkness that filled her eye sockets.

And when she thought of what she would do—as she'd just done, in fact—it was darkness that dripped like ichor from her dark goddess cunt.

The breeze, over the night air, continued to sigh. Messages from her world? Chatterings from the overseers of the dead?

Her name was Pasiphae, the Slut Mother.

Her pretty, bare feet were but a dark fog, her cunt a night-smile. In her excitement, black milk shed from her ebon bosom.

In the shit-pocked dust, the sentry lay, his odd garb pulled down. As his glorious cock had plumbed her long-dead loins, she'd sucked out his eyes, swallowed them as sweet white-chocolate buds. He'd still been quivering, still been alive, as she sucked out his sperm, then sucked out his gorgeous balls. Later, sated, she'd pressed her unreal lips to an empty eye socket and sucked out his brain.

The meat fell richly into her gut, made her more real.

Soon she'd be real enough to call out...

Outrage for outrage. That's how it was and how it had always been.

Her bottomless gaze surveyed the sentry's corpse a last time. Seeing him like that, splayed and ravaged and dead, left her cringing. Pasiphae's nebulous hand touched her clitoris—a small nugget of coal—and she could actually feel solidity burgeoning, smoke turning to slime. What would the slime become tomorrow? Gel? And the day after that?

Then she could conjure up her son through the same threshold of horror that had summoned her.

She left the corpse, sauntered her nightness through the night, ghost-feet stepping daintily between the hideous scatterings of horns—the horns which lay like so many curled fetuses in the dirt, aborted for some meager mortal's indulgence like the tiny lives kicked, clubbed, or cut from innocent wombs by wine-drunk Athenian soldiers.

Black tears bled from Pasiphae's cosmic eyes.

Some things, some horrors, could even bring dead gods back to life.

CHAPTER THREE

"You're kidding me, right?" Ajax asked.

Dean fidgeted over his halibut fish and chips. "Well, I mean, it's reasonable. After all, I only make twenty-five a year at the credit union, Daphne makes three times that. She brings home more money so it's only fair that I take care of the house. And I guess I have been a bit negligent in my chores. The house was a little dirty."

Ajax'd met him for lunch at Anthony's Fish Bar on the waterfront. He put his face in his hand, shook his head. "And what time did she get home?"

"Like, one in the morning," Dean told him.

"One in the morning—from a work meeting?"

"Like I told you, she's in a hectic business. It's non-stop."

"Right, those quarterly inventories," Ajax droned. "Till one in the morning. And now she's gone off to Las Vegas? For a work convention?"

Dean knew what he was getting at. "Ever heard of the Las Vegas Convention Center, smart guy?"

"Yeah, and she left her wedding ring on the bathroom sink." Ajax crunched into a pile of fried clams. "How long does it take you to realize that two plus two equals infidelity?"

"She's not cheating on me for Christ's sake," Dean insisted. "And the ring?" He'd noticed it this morning, after driving her to the airport. "Simple explanation. You take your ring off to wash your hands, then you forget to put it back on."

"Yep, simple explanation." Ajax ate some more clams in order to avoid chuckling. "But you had another Jig-Jag. Isn't that what you said on the phone?"

Dean nodded as if in dread. "This one was really bad. In my mind... I actually saw myself—"he gulped in shame—"doing violence to her. Then I... kind of like... raped her."

"Kind of like?" Now Ajax laughed out loud. "That's like saying you kind of like' took a shit. You either dropped a steamer or you didn't."

Well then... I guess I did. "It was horrible because it seemed so real," Dean drew on. "Then I snapped out of it, and there she is for real, bawling me out for not cleaning the house and for having a can of Skoal."

"I thought she made you give that stuff up."

"She didn't make me," Dean clarified through a frown. "It's a bad habit, it's bad for my health, so I cut it loose."

"She made you give it up 'cos she knows she's got you wrapped around her finger—" Suddenly Ajax craned his gaze as an attractive, busty blond traipsed by on mile-long legs and high heels, smirking in self-confidence. "Man, I'd like to fry that smug bimbo's clam, and I've got some super special tartar sauce to put in that pouty face. I'd ass-fuck her so hard her colon would bust—then she'd really have something to smirk about."

"Come on, Ajax," Dean complained. "I'm trying to talk to you about something."

"Yeah, sorry." Ajax dragged his gaze off the sauntering blonde. "Where were we—oh, yeah, Skoal. If you gave it up, why'd you buy it?"

"That's the craziest part. I didn't—er, at least I don't remember buying it."

"Not good." For once, Ajax appeared serious. "First, you're having spells of Non-REM Imagery Syndrome, and now you're having blackouts."

"Blackouts?"

"The fuckin' can of tobacco probably didn't walk into the house, and unless the Good Fairy put it there, you must've bought it in an unsentient state. That's what shrinks call it. It's like sleepwalking during the day."

Dean chewed his lip, considering this.

"You might want to think about seeing a shrink," Ajax added.

Oh, man, Dean thought. I'm not crazy, am I?

"So what did you do with the Skoal? Stuff it all into your yap for a taste of the old days?"

"Hell, no. I threw it out."

"Really? Not one little pinch?"

"Nope."

"But I'll bet you wanted to, huh?"

Dean's fortitude crashed. "Well, yeah, I did want to. And I almost did... but I threw it out instead."

"Good boy. So back to the Jig-Jag. You saw yourself beating her up and raping her. You never did stuff like that in the past, did you? Back in South Dakota?"

"No, I never raped anyone," Dean hastened. "Christ, what do you take me as?"

"You didn't answer the entire question." Now Ajax was flicking clam crumbs off his plate. "You ever beat up any girlfriends?"

Dean calculated an answer. "Well, I didn't exactly beat them... but I guess you could say I slapped some of 'em around a little."

Ajax grinned in shock. "You guess I could say, huh? How many?"

"How many what?"

"How many past girlfriends did you slap around?'"

Dean cast a sheepish look. "All of them," he admitted. "But I swear, half of 'em like it anyway—"

"Don't change the subject." Now Ajax looked studied as a pro chess player. "Why? You catch them cheating on you?"

"Naw. They couldn't have cheated on me if they wanted to," Dean said, fully uncomfortable now. "I was the horn-cranking champ and, well, I was kind of a bad-ass back then. I beat the shit out of dozens of guys, never lost a fight. Shit, I'd send guys to the hospital for just looking at one of my girls."

"Hardcore," Ajax said in awe.

"I'm not proud of it. I admit it, I was an asshole back in DeSmet. I was a redneck rancher, getting drunk in bars every night, slapping my girlfriends around for no reason, cheating on them whenever I felt like it. I was a prick, I was a bastard."

Ajax stared, amazed. "Young, dumb, and full'a cum."

"That was me."

"But... you look like a frat boy," Ajax couldn't get over it.

Short hair, conservative clothes, good manners. Dean had to agree that that was the appearance he gave people, and that's the appearance he wanted. "This is what I used to look like, before I moved to Seattle." He slipped an old photo out of his wallet. It was a snapshot of himself with his arm around one of his droves of girlfriends.

Ajax spat out a mouthful of Diet Coke when he looked at the picture. "You gotta be shitting me! This is you?"

"I was about twenty-five when that was taken. Couple months later, I blew town, moved here, started my life over."

Ajax was aghast; the picture showed a sun-bronzed stud in a muscle shirt, hair down to his shoulders and a goatee. His arms bulged like a power-lifter's. Ajax repeatedly switched glances between Dean and the photograph. "Unbelievable. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde. This is incredible. And—" Ajax reglanced at the photo and gulped. "And who's the brick shit-house piece of box standing next to you?"

"Arianne," Dean revealed with remorse in his throat. "She was my last girlfriend in DeSmet. I dated her for three years... and cheated on her for three years. I treated that poor girl like total dog shit."

"Why?"

Dean shrugged. "Cos, like I was telling you, I was an asshole." The memory sunk in his gut. "Arianne loved me bigtime, and all I did was shit on her. She had a scholarship to Harvard but I wouldn't let her go. Told her we'd get married, have kids, all that, but I never meant a word of it. I just strung her along till I got sick of the whole town, my whole life. One day I told her I was going out to pick up a can of Skoal, but I went to the airport instead. I split, left her cold. Never spoke to her again." Dean's guts just sank and sank. "She was so depressed when I dumped her, she just went off the deep-end. Now she's a street whore, turning twenty-dollar tricks to support a drug habit."

Ajax just sat there with his mouth hanging open. "Man, you were a Grade-A Number One low-down motherfucker! What a scumbag!"

"I know, and I don't feel too good about it."

Dean didn't feel like talking anymore, and Ajax could tell. Dark clouds slipped in over Elliot Bay, and the wind gusted up. "Shit, man, it's Saturday. You've got the car, your wife's out of town—it's settled."

"What's settled?"

Ajax put his cigarette out in his tartar sauce cup. "We're going to your place."

"Why not?" Dean said. "You can help me vacuum the carpet."

Ajax laughed as they walked away. He eye-balled several girls getting off the Waterfront Street Car, uttering typical sexist comments. But as he and Dean waited for the WALK sign, Ajax said, "Hey, what did you say you did with that can of Skoal?"

"I threw it out," Dean said.

"You sure?"

Dean cocked a brow. "Yeah."

"Then I guess that's a can of lark's tongues in aspic sticking out in your back pocket."

Huh? Dean's hand padded back to the rear pocket of his jeans. His hand froze.

Then he withdrew another can of Skoal.

"You're putting me on, right?" Ajax asked. "You're making all this shit up just to jerk me."

"I wish I was." Dean's eyes fixed wide on the inexplicable can. "This is really creeping me out."

He looked at the can some more. His mouth began to water. And then:

"Fuck it."

Dean opened the can, and took a big dip.

««—»»

"What the damn bloody fuck?" exclaimed the first cop.

The second cop squinted. "What's that... hangin' out of his... "

"Dick?" the third cop finished.

The third cop would be one Sergeant Alphonse Taylor Lass, the DeSmet Police Department's ranking officer. He was essentially the chief, having only to answer to the town counsel and the mayor. His asshole and cock still felt radiant from the whore's first-class butt-suck and blow job back at the station. Fine indeed. But the recollection turned to rot at what he was looking at now in the hard streams of three police Mag-Lites.

It was the security guard who lay at their feet.

Pants down.

Eyes gone.

And—

Jesus! Sergeant Lass thought.

The kid's nuts were hanging out of his dead dick, from tender threads tracing back through his peehole.

"Jesus!" Sergeant Lass said aloud.

Eventually the county coroner—who was also the county recorder of deeds, the county magistrate, and the county's official notary—would transfer the perplexing corpus delectus to the Office of the South Dakota Medical Examiner where it would be properly autopsied and found to have had the entirety of its brain aspirated through the right ocular cavity.

This unfortunate security guard would not only prove to be the most bizarre murder to ever take place in DeSmet, South Dakota.

It would be the only murder to take place in DeSmet, South Dakota.

Sergeant Lass glared at his two accompanying constables. "For fuck's sake! Isn't anybody gonna say anything? This guy's lying here with no eyes and his fuckin' balls hanging out of his dick!"

The first officer only stared, jaw jacked open. The second officer had already fainted.

Lass scratched his head, idly glanced up at the massive wooden sign erected above the cattle coves behind them. The sign read:

WELCOME TO THE LOHAN RANCH

««—»»

"Let me ask you something?" Ajax was examining the gold-plated trophy. "How much did you get paid to crank the horns out of bulls?"

"Steers, not bulls. And I didn't get paid anything. I worked on my father's ranch. It was just one of the chores, like taking out the garbage."

Ajax wheezed laughter, slapping his thighs. "Cranking horns off of magnificent spectacles of nature is the same thing as taking out the garbage?"

"You pansy city boys take out the garbage, farm boys crank horns," Dean elaborated.

Ajax continued to wheeze as they set down the case of Tsing Tao beer, which they'd picked up at the Ballard Market on their way over. Ajax was on an oriental-beer kick. Dean didn't care. He spat tobacco juice in the sink.

"That's the spirit," Ajax observed, then looked around the quaint split-level. "Guess you cleaned the place up since your wife had her conniption fit."

"Well, no," Dean said.

"But the place is immaculate!"

"Not really. It could use a vacuuming, and a dusting."

"Man, you are whipped. Daphne's turned you into a slave." Ajax cracked open two Tsing Tao's, passed one to Dean. "She should be doing that shit. I'll bet you even do the cooking."

"Yeah, but only because I like to cook."

"Um-hmm." Ajax wasn't convinced as he browsed around with his beer. It was a modest but nice new house, appointed in light tones and new furniture. "Decent crib," he approved. But when he turned back around, Dean was walking away up the dark stairs.

Some host. Ajax followed. "Ah, the love den," he observed when he found Dean standing in the bedroom. "So this is where you get it on with your beautiful wife... once a month?"

Dean wasn't listening. He rummaged for something in the opened closet, his back to Ajax. "You got me remembering," he murmured.

"What?"

Dean pulled out a moving box full of books, sat down on the bed with it. He swigged more beer, then began to search through the books.

"Let me ask you something," Ajax said. "How the hell can you chew that funky tobacco and drink beer at the same time?"

"Fifteen years of experience, that's how. Every day from age ten to twenty-five, I pinched a can a day."

"Back in the old days, huh?" Ajax grinned. "The horn-crankin' days."

"Any rancher with balls eats and drinks with a lip full of Skoal. Only pussies don't."

"I'm edified," Ajax remarked. "And what are you looking for?"

"Just... something... "

"You're acting weird, man. I like it." Something in the back of the closet caught his eye, something long that reminded him of a giant pair of pliers. He walked over, pulled it out, then weighed it heavily in his hands. Parallel steel handles, two-feet long, intersected at the business-end, sporting twin half-circles lined with sharpened serrations that interlocked when you drew the handles apart. "What the hell is this thing?"

Dean looked up, disinterested. "My torque-plier."

"What the hell's a—"

"My horn-cranker," Dean corrected.

Ajax' eyes widened on the tool as if knowing what it was gave it some strange heat. "So this is the thing you used to tear the horns out of innocent bulls."

"Steers," Dean corrected. "A young gelding. They're not full-grown; the horns are pretty much just nubs about three to six inches long."

"And you just yank 'em out like teeth." Ajax hefted the tool in his hands. "Say, do you ever go back the DeSmet to defend your championship?"

"Hell no. They don't even have a state horn-cranking competition anymore. It's not like the old days now. Everything's automated. Now they have these mechanical things on rails that move down the cattle-gate line and extract the horns automatically. Just pops 'em out one right after another."

"Progress sucks, huh?"

Ajax put the torque-plier back. "Come on, admit it. You miss all that shit at least a little, don't you?"

Dean didn't answer.

"Come on? The old days on the ranch? Cranking horns and chewing Skoal? Humping any and all available pussy? Gettin' pissy drunk in the bars every night and slapping your bitches around?"

Dean didn't answer.

Ajax nosed around while Dean continued flipping through his books. He noticed a half opened dresser drawer. Hmm, he thought. Then—Oh, Christmas!

The drawer was full of lacy women's under garments a la Victoria's Secret. Tough stuff! Ajax thought. He ran his fingers over the smooth, shiny garments. A quick glance over his shoulder, then he deftly grabbed a pair of devil-red panties trimmed in black lace, and stuffed them in his pants. Hell, she'll never miss 'em. Then he plucked another pair out—cornflower-blue and crotchless—and held them up. "Holy shit, man. I can't imagine a prettier picture in the world than Daphne walking around in these."

Dean glanced over, shrugged, then got back to his books. "It gets dull after a while."

Ajax gaped. "Yeah, you're acting weird, all right. A woman with Daphne's bod walking around in these can never be dull. It's perpetual wood, man. It's Hard-On City."

"Let me tell you something, Ajax," Dean said aside. "Show me the best-looking woman in the world and I'll show you a guy who's sick of fucking her."

Ajax gaped. He almost choked on his Tsing Tao. "You're telling me... you're sick of fucking Daphne?"

"That's right. Sick to death. She's a bossy, prissy bitch. She never wants to have sex anyway and, between you and I, that's fine with me. I'd rather fuck a pumpkin than stick my cock in her hole again."

Ajax gaped.

"Ah, here it is." Dean pulled out a black-covered hard-back book entitled Incubi by some chump author named Edward Lee.

Ajax squinted. "What's that, a horror novel? Only idiots read that stuff. People who take drugs and shit."

Dean had opened the book. "Here's one box I never got sick of fucking." The inside of the book had been cut out, creating a secret compartment. Inside lay a stack of polaroids. He flipped through the photos, then passed them to Ajax.

Ajax... gaped. And got wood. The dozen or so polaroids showed different poses of the same girl. Beautiful. Stark naked. Pert breasts with nipples sticking out like rose-pink thumb-ends, long honey-nut hair and ocean-blue eyes, a tight flat stomach and a perfectly shaved—

"Man oh man," Ajax muttered. "This is the same chick you showed me at Anthony's. Your last ex in DeSmet."

Each lewd pose punched him in the eye like glaring pornography. Lying on a bed with her long legs straight up, fingers squeezing her cherry-sized clitoris. Hands and knees, grinning wickedly over her shoulder, perfect ass upthrust. Lounging on her side with a dildo the size of a gourd stuck up in her to the end. And much, much more.

"Arianne," Dean whispered.

Ajax was shaking his head back and forth over and over, pressed by disbelief. "This girl's hotter than a rock in a campfire... and you dumped her?"

"Didn't just dump her," Dean reminded. "I cheated on her, treated her like shit, and beat the crap out of her. More times than I can count."

Ajax' gaze widened on Dean. "You're fuckin' nuts. This girl's even hotter than Daphne. Ten times hotter."

"And ten times hotter in bed. Arianne had a pussy that would suck your cock like a mouth. Every time we changed positions, she'd give me head. And she had an asshole so tight, you'd think you were fucking a puppy. She was the best lay of my life. She'd fuck my brains out every day and fall asleep with my dick in her mouth every night."

"Hardcore," Ajax muttered, still eyeing the pictures and pitching an uncomfortable tent. "Your wife ever let you take pix of her like this?"

"Aw, fuck no. That fickle cunt? She wouldn't be caught dead. If I even suggested it, she'd make me see a counselor. Look, I know you think Daphne's cheating on me, but here's why I know she's not. She's a fussy prude, she's frigid. I know I'm good in the sack. Just ask any girl in DeSmet. But Daphne? She could care less about sex. She acts like she's doing me a fucking favor every two months when she puts out. But I'll tell you, whenever I fuck that snitty hosebag... I pretend she's Arianne. Arianne was the ultimate hot number, and she really loved me. Christ, she'd fuck my balls dry, wash my clothes, clean the apartment, cook my meals—shit, she did everything for me."

"And you cheated on her, beat her up, and dumped her," Ajax added.

Dean solemnly nodded.

"You're whacked, brother. I don't care how good-looking Daphne is, this Arianne chick is hotter, and she didn't jerk you around. Daphne treats you like a bad dog."

At that moment, the phone rang.

"Aren't you going to answer it?" Ajax asked.

"Hell no. It's her."

The phone rang a few more times, then the answering machine kicked on. "It's me," Daphne said. "Just thought you might want to know that I got to Vegas safely. Obviously you're not home, probably out drinking with that dingleberry Ajax. Honestly, Dean, can't you cultivate some friends who aren't useless detriments to society? And make sure that goddamn house is clean when I get back, or there'll be hell to pay."

click

Dean and Ajax traded glances.

"Sorry," Dean said.

"I'm delighted to be so highly thought of by the lady of the house."

"Don't feel bad. She hates anybody I know."

Ajax finished his beer, set in on the dresser. "Look, I don't care if your wife thinks I'm a dingleberry and a useless detriment to society. My question is how can you let her treat you like that?"

Dean silently shook his head.

"That's love? That's respect?"

"No," Dean admitted.

"You gotta listen to shit like that till death do you part?"

"It's fucked up."

"So why the hell did you get married?"

Dean sat limp on the bed. "My old life... It just seemed wrong. That's why I cut bait and moved here. I felt I needed to change."

Ajax sighed. "Dean, seasons change, tides change, baseball lineups change, but people don't change. I am who I am, and you are who you are. It's not change you're talking about, it's adaptation. You're trying to adapt to Daphne's way of life because you think that's the right thing to do. You've got this idea in your head that the way you used to be was bad."

"It was bad," Dean countered. "Fighting in bars every night, hot-rodding, drinking enough beer and whiskey to fill Lake Union, and abusing the only woman who every really loved me? That's not the way it's supposed to be. I needed to change."

"No," Ajax said, "you needed to modify some aspects of your life. There's a difference." When Dean wasn't looking, Ajax slipped one of the polaroids into his pants. What the fuck? he thought. Then he continued, "You left your home and got married for all the wrong reasons."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "I know."

"And there's a bigger problem right now," Ajax added.

"What's that?"

"This is a textbook gradual degradation of your every day persona." Even Ajax was astonished. "Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is one thing, but I hate to say it, buddy. You're displaying some far worse symptoms."

"Symptoms of what?"

"Full-scale multiple-personality disorder."

"That's a crock of shit," Dean sluffed.

"Is it? A couple of hours ago, you were making every excuse in the book for Daphne. Any time I've ever suggested that she's a lousy wife and treats you like shit, you cover for her, you deny it, you blame yourself for what's not right about the marriage. But now it's the absolute polar opposite. You tell me you're sick of fucking her, you tell me she's a bossy prissy bitch' and a snitty hosebag.' You're talking like you hate her."

"I don't hate her," Dean elucidated. "I'm just so goddamn sick of her that I could bend over and throw up all over the carpet I have to vacuum every day."

By now, Ajax almost wished he hadn't dropped out of his psych major. "You're two different people, Dean. You're Good Dean and Bad Dean. Good Dean is the subservient pussy-whipped butt-kissing wimp I've known since we first met. But tonight Bad Dean has finally stuck his head out of the sand, chewing tobacco and bad-mouthing his wife. And what's the catalyst? Me asking you details of your past. You're longing for your past, and your inability to retrieve it is what's causing these manifestations."

Good Dean, Bad Dean... Dean thought about this and felt flustered as a result. "But I hate my past. I was disgusted with it."

"That may be what you consciously believe, but we're talking about the subconscious, and that's a different animal. It's what we were talking about yesterday: strictures. Social strictures, environmental strictures, strictures based on experience, and then all the potential counter-strictures too." Ajax seemed intent, urgently focused, which was unusual for him. Evidently, some of his past was coming back too: the collegiate interests that he'd later dumped to become a slovenly envelope-stuffer. "We're talking about Freudian denial mechanisms, unsystematized causal demand characteristics, and full-blown personality transposition."

Dean looked askance, irritated. "I don't want to hear a bunch of high-brow California psycho-babble." Then he spat a stream of tobacco juice on the plush beige carpet. "I just want to know why I'm so fucked up all of a sudden."

Shocked, Ajax looked at the indelible stain on the carpet. "That's what I'm trying to tell you!"

"Fine. What's the bottom line?"

"Like I said. You need to see a shrink. But in the meantime, you should probably look into some therapy of a more available sort."

"And what would that be?"

"Have another beer," Ajax advised to the best of his clinical expertise.

"Sounds like a good idea." Dean followed Ajax out of the bedroom, but before he fully left, he eyed the framed wedding photo of himself and Daphne.

And spat tobacco juice on it.

CHAPTER FOUR

In this modern age, the fabric of decency was not safe even in down-home rural America, the land of hard work, an honest buck, and apple pie—towns such as DeSmet, South Dakota. In fact, even here, that same fabric had become as sullied as the ass-rag of Babylon's Whore. Dwindling was the notion of the American Work Ethic, replaced by welfare. Scarce were the wise grandmothers in front-porch rocking chairs, replaced by barred windows. And gone was the universal ideal that honesty was the best policy, replaced by meth labs and domestic brutality. Indeed, even the once-quaint DeSmet had spiraled downward into the domain of Jerry Springer.

And worse.

Little Scotty Nash was only ten years old by the time he'd had sexual congress with four girls—not including his Mom—and though this was clearly sexual congress of the forced variety, Scotty was too young to know the actual entails of the crime called rape. All he knew was that if he dragged a girl behind the school and put his wiener in her, it would feel good. He liked it. He'd learned how to do it just by watching his step-daddy and Mom. These were grown-ups, and Scotty wanted to do what grown-ups did. He wanted to be a Man, just like his step-daddy. He wanted to punch girls in the face and stick his diggler in 'em, lots of 'em. That's what girls were for; the music said so.

The girls he'd done this to never ratted because they knew they'd get whupped, and they'd all been broken in anyway, probably by their daddies. Plus, he told the bitches he'd kill 'em if they told, he'd bust a cap in their heads. He'd pull a Boo-Yah on the bitches!

Scotty's Walkman headset blared the latest rap: "I'se got demons in my semen, yo white bitch! You'll be screamin' while I'm reamin', how ya like the itch!" Scotty listened to Schooly D., Tupac, R.U. 2 Kuul 4 U., and Badd Blacque Busta Kapp, even though his face was as white as the Lincoln Memorial. He loved the lingo: duh bitches, duh hos, kill duh poe-leece. "Hey White boy, what can I say? Gonna kill yo' white ass wiff my AK." Scotty got the rap and dressed the scene, in unlaced pump-up Nikes with blinking lights on the heels, a backward Yankees cap, and pants ten sizes too big for him.

He got it down. Yeah. He tripped it Ice-T style just like a take-no-shit street player, just like a bro' in duh hood. Indeed, and as clear as the proof of Newton's Third Law of Motion and his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Scotty Nash was the first ten-year-old white gangsta niggah to ever hip the hop down Rural Route 2 in DeSmet, South Dakota. Jivin', stepping it out. Bustin' moves.

He didn't have pubic hair yet, but Scotty knew what happened when a grown-up cock busted a ho's pussy. It squirted spunk into her. Of course, Scotty was too young to shoot spunk but he could sure come. He found that out at age four, the first time his Mom jerked his pee-pee off. By five he was doing it himself several times a day. It felt good but what felt better was sticking it in a real live girl, same way his Mom had let him when she was high on crank between tricks. Scotty couldn't wait till he got the dick hair and the juice. The Little Man would just have to wait a few more years till he was a Big Man. Then he'd be jammin'...

"You bring yo' jive into my space, I'll'se bust a cap in yo' white face," his Walkman rapped.

"Lick it!" Scotty yelled in his cracked pre-pubescent voice. He had his willy out in front of Dawnie Weller, a nine-year-old with a nougat-brown ponytail from Vista View Park. She'd been walking home from the QWIK-MART tonight when Scotty'd spied her in her little shorts and titless top, marching back to her 14' by 72' Silver Stream. Her bag of groceries fell apart when he'd yanked her behind the PROPOSED LAND-USE ACTION sign posted on the vacant lot between Paduana's Guitar Shop and Cooper's Adult Goods. Rats scattered from the pile of garbage he threw her on. He twisted her hair till she squealed like his baby brother Danny the time their step-daddy put a Marlboro out in his belly button. Dawnie's knees scuffed in garbage and dirt; she was crying. "Lick it, ho," he repeated, but the excitement had already hardened him to his full three inches, and over his Walkman headset, he could hear the revered words of his hero Badd Blacque Busta Kapp: "Lick it, ho! Then lick my crack! Once you go black, you never go back!"

Sobbing, she began to lick the macadamia-nut-sized glans as snot glistened from her nose. Scotty's legs began to tremble with the music beating in his ears. His little grape-sized balls constricted.

"Yo' momma's a ho, yo' daddy slams, I'se fuck yo' li'l sister and start to jam!"

But Scotty didn't want to have his dry orgasm just yet. He wanted to have it in her little bald pie. Next her legs were flailing as he pulled off her shorts. Shit fell out she was so scared... but shit didn't bother Scotty, considering how much time he'd spent sitting in it as a baby. Her bare legs were shiny with pee; it reminded him of the water fountain at school, the way the pee was looping from her gash.

"Hey white bitch, you my ho now," his headset rocked, "wanna be top dro', I'll'se show ya how!"

Yeah, Scotty thought. Right now he was Badd Blacque Busta Kapp, and he was gonna show this nine-year-old white bitch just how it was done, get her turned, get her on the right track fo' the hood. In fact, this was his destiny! Scotty was breaking in some fresh ho, then she'd sell her ass on the street and she'd give him the money. He could be a pimp, just like Ice-T and Big Mistah K!

He'd be Superfly!

Dawnie began to upchuck now, wriggling in the dirt. Her upchuck smelled like Pop Tarts. Long as an adult's pinkie now, Scotty's dick throbbed hard. He was just about to drop his baggy pants and stick it in the bitch's pie when...

From behind, hands smoothed slowly up his back. Scotty went rigid. Dah pigs! he thought. Dah poe-leece! Where my AK just like Dr. Dre?

But that couldn't be right because the hands slid around his waist across his stomach. Then down.

They were soft, hot hands, and suddenly there was a cooing in his ears. He pulled off the Walkman headset.

"Honey? Honey?" a voice like a babbling brook issued behind him. "Let me."

Scotty was lovingly turned around, his pre-pubescent dick sticking out like a flesh-colored piece of chalk. Behind him, little Dawnie Weller ran away, a trail of her pee following her.

But Scotty was enraptured now. Every inch of his Little Gangsta Man skin felt electric, like the time his Mom had been high and stuck his finger into the light socket when he'd been bawling louder than a maternity ward—only this didn't hurt, this felt good.

It felt even better when the soft, warm hands played with his little apricot-pit nuts. Scotty's eyes were squeezed shut, but then some minuscule sense of logic occurred to him: Who was doing this? Who was playing with his marbles?

He opened his eyes.

In the deep shadow of the LAND USE sign, he saw... a woman. A black woman but she wasn't black like an African American, she was... just... black.

Black, he thought, eyes pried open.

She was as black as the shadow thrown by the big sign. In fact, she was a shadow.

That's what she was made of. Shadows.

But she was full-grown, like his Mom.

"Come here, baby." Her voice sounded like wind through the trees in autumn. "Let me make you feel good... "

Scotty could say nothing as the shadow-woman took his little boner into her mouth. Back and forth, she sucked it, while her black fingers played with his tiny testicles, and after just a few back-and-forths, Scotty went up on his tip-toes and had his semenless orgasm.

It was the best he'd ever had. Better than the little girls, better than jerking himself, and better than his Mom's hot, hairy pie.

When he was done, the woman smiled. He couldn't see the smile because the smile was darker than the dark. But, somehow, he could feel it.

"Did that feel good, baby?"

"Yuh-yuh-yeah."

"Come on, baby," her voice slithered. Her hand played with his slackened dick. "Come with me. I have a little boy just like you. Would you like to meet him?"

"Yuh-yuh-yeah."

"I knew you would."

She was more than a woman. She was the mother he'd never really had, not a meth-whore but someone who loved him. She was his nurturing Night-Mother, his Angel of Shadows, and now she was leading him by the hand, as he hitched up his baggy gangsta pants, further into the darkness, and from the earphones draped at his neckline, he could hear Badd Blacque Busta Kapp rapping: "How bad you are, you just a clown. Cos it gonna be a bitch who take the player down... "

Darkness, darkness...

««—»»

Aw, Jesus, Arianne thought. But she wasn't thinking long before she was fellating. Kermit Crole's penis was indeed the largest she'd seen in her life, and after so many years on the street, that was a lot of penises. Instantly, she was gagging as his callused hands guided her head, by grasps of hair, up and down in his lap in the front seat of his candy-apple red Ranchero.

She wasn't blowing him, he was fucking her throat. Deep.

Air raced through her nostrils. He grabbed her tremoring hand and placed it on his balls, things the size of Silly-Putty eggs. He humped her stretched mouth harder, then, just as Arianne thought she'd suffocate, he came copiously down her throat. When some of the semen slid into her epiglottis, she wheezed, jerked her mouth off, and involuntarily coughed a spatter of fresh sperm onto the inside of the broad windshield.

"Ain't ya got no manners, whore?" He cracked his fist into her chin so hard her teeth rattled. "This ride cost me thirty grand, ya dirty spunk-bucket, and here you are spitting my cum on the glass." He punched her just as hard in the belly, and all her wind slipped out. Arianne couldn't breathe. "Shit, whore, I kin smell yer dirty pussy through yer shorts, damn! Smells worse than the bottom of the gut can at the slaughter house." Then his big paw hands grabbed her breasts and pinched like two pair of vice-grips. "Ya stupid whore. Spitting cum in my truck? I oughta twist these little tits rights off, and what're you gonna do about it? Tell the cops?" Kermit Crole's throat jacked laughter. He pinched her nipples so hard blood came out, then he popped the passenger door, and—

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 38th 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."

"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