The Minotauress (56 page)
Authors: Edward Lee
"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—
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.
"
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?"
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.
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
P
asiphae 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.
asiphae 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...
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.
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.
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?
"
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!"
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