The Minotauress

'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