Edward Lee - The Minotauress

"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.