The Minotauress

'Precisely. So if you don't mind... '

Waldo didn't mind at all, proof of the Subservience Charm's potency. He leaned over and scooped up the excreta in his bare hands, with no more concern than if he were scooping up popcorn. 'What'cha want me to do with it, sir?'

Good Lord...  The old man opened the iron hatch on the back wall. 'In the crematory, if you please.'

Waldo flapped the excrement into the fiery hatch, and continued doing so until it was all up. The old man fervently sprayed a can of Renuz-It Apple Cinnamon Home Fragrance around. Waldo whistled 'Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,' then, as he happily mopped up the smears on the floor.

'Now I'd like you to wash her, please,' the old man directed. 'These girls are just so foul.'

'Yer wish is my command, sir,' Waldo chuckled. The old man shook his head.

Metal links clinked; Waldo yanked on the pulleyed chain and watched the morbidly naked girl rise in the air, her wrists being cuffed to one end of the chain. Beneath her dirty bare feet the broad-shouldered manservant slipped a washtub. Then he cranked on the faucet, hosed her down, soaped up a car sponge, and began to suds her off.

Gad, thought the old man. The girl was appalling, pudgy flesh the hue of vanilla ice cream, cellulite-dimpled, and peppered by needlemarks and scabs from abscesses. Her buttocks could've been two twenty-pound sacks of flour pushed together, her pubis a great swatch of dull brown hair that had begun to grow traceably down the insides of her thighs and trailed up to her navel. A preposterous tattoo across her belly read LOVE DEPOSIT in large cursive letters.

Waldo seemed rapt whilst thoroughly sudsing the caramel smears out of her rump's cleft. Fat, expansive breasts hung unevenly, and one nipple was as big around as a coffee cup's rim, the other but a small puckered oval. The navel looked like a deep finger-hole in raw dough.

The old man busied himself by arranging the retractors and saw, and securing the proper crucible. He'd already done this once before but he did it again nonetheless, to distract him from the vision of the unwholesome human hulk hanging from the chain. Next, from an armoire, he inspected the glittering surplice which he would wear during the rite: a simple black-dyed cotton smock stitched with sundry gemstones. The stones were worthless to a jeweler, but to a sorcerer?

They were more valuable than a bucket full of Faberge eggs.

The power of faith, the old man mused.

Content, he turned—

'For goodness sake, Waldo!'

Waldo was kneeling now, performing fastidious cunnilingus on the suspended girl. The majora looked like a slice of baloney—the 'cotto' kind—folded in half. At the old man's objection, Waldo glanced guiltily over his shoulder.

'What on earth are you doing?'

Waldo's brows rose. 'Well, sir, I'se eatin' me some hair pie. It's a right fun, it is.' Waldo's eyes widened in concern. 'Ya wanna take a lick, sir? Bet it's been a whiles since ya et a splittail's gash, huh?'

'Oh, for goodness' sake!' the old man repeated, appalled. 'Waldo, she's a prostitute!  Do you have any idea how many filthy, immoral men have ejaculated in her orifice?'

'Orif— Oh, you mean her joy-hole? Well, I guess quite a number but... so what?' His grin flashed back. 'Say, sir, can I fuck her in the graveyard and bleed her some, like ya let me do with that last gal?'

'No, no, that was an oblatory rite, this is for a materialization... ,' but now the old man was getting a headache, and it was with further distaste that he noticed what Waldo had been doing while his tongue had ranged the abominable folds. His trousers were open, his hand wrapped around his penis which, like the rest of him, was overly large. This was one unfortunate side-effect of the Subservience Spell: accelerated libidiny.

'Please, Waldo, try to focus on your task. Don't succumb to diversions of the flesh.'

Waldo's broad shoulders slumped. 'Sorry, sir... ' He stood up and forced the unsated erection back into his trousers. But suddenly a confusion lit in his eyes. 'Sir? What'cha need the splittail fer if you're goin' on yer trip in the mornin'?'

'That's the surprise, Waldo.'

'Surprise?'

'Yes. Now that you're done washing our sacrifant, you can go back upstairs and finish packing my bags, and when you're done with that, you can pack your own. You see, Waldo, I've decided to take you to Toledo with me.'

Waldo's face brightened in delight. 'Aw, shucks, sir! I'se always wanted to go to Ohio!'

The old man groaned. 'Spain, Waldo. Toledo, Spain. There's a broker of sensitive collectibles there, and I see him every year at this time. You've worked hard during your time under my employ, so I thought you'd enjoy a trip overseas.'

'Shee-it-yeah, sir!' Waldo rejoiced. The boy's twenty-six years of redneck oblivion had never taken him across the Russell County line. 'You're a super-cool boss, I'll tell ya!'

'Actually, Waldo, I'm morose, narcissistic, and boring, but thank you for the compliment.' In truth, though, it was not any impression of reward that urged him to take Waldo along. This particular excursion would require him to venture into some of the cryptic city's back alleys which more and more were being overrun by a ruffian element. This year his broker had procured for him a blasphemous 15th Century codex supposedly owned by one of Vlad Tepes' concubines—Canessa—a prostitute and sorceress who had, at Vlad's order, infiltrated a Wallachian monastery and cast, among other things, a Bloodlusting Hex on all of its monks. The hex had proved a whopping success, turning the monastery's contingent of faithful friars into Satan-worshiping madmen who wound up draining the blood of several dozen local children before a tribunal from the Holy See had condemned them and ordered the monastery razed. The codex was a book of intercessions said to conjure a demon named Baalzephon. The old man would also be visiting another dealer—his ossifist of choice—to purchase the pelvic bone of one Saint Radegunde, whose tomb in Poitiers, France, had been plundered by professional grave-robbers-for-hire. The bones of saints, especially those known to have displayed stigmata, were of great value to occultists; when powdered or tinctured they could be used very effectively in smoke-divinations and automatic-writing trances.

'Run along now, Waldo, and when you're done with the packing you'd best get to sleep. It's a long drive to the airport in the morning.'

'Hot dog, sir! You kin count on me!' And then he turned for the stairs. 'I'se going ta Spain... !'