The Minotauress

Balls shot him a funky look. 'Huh?'

'There is indeed an odd substance on the floor that no manner of speculation on my part can account for.'

'I told ya!' Dicky cut in again. 'It's my load all mixed up with some black shit in her cunt, and then it all squirted out while's I were watchin'.'

'Shee-it,' Balls snapped. 'I don't know which one'a yawl's more fucked up in the head! Guess I gotta see fer myself!'

But before Balls could bound up the stairs, the Writer interjected, 'Mr. Balls? It's my deduction that we can go up and down those stairs all night, and we won't find any answers to our questions. However, I have an inclination—er, I should say I have a hunch... that there is a more likely place in this house where we will find those answers.'

Balls smirked his irritation. 'Where?'

The Writer pointed. 'The basement.'

'The fuckin' place stinks. Why there?'

'Because, as I've said, I have an inclination.'

Balls and Dicky paused. 'All right,' Balls said. 'Let's go. Dicky—bring that dirty cum-dump and drag her ass down with us.'

The Writer led the way, steeling himself against the rotten aroma coming up the cinderblock steps. Balls swore behind him, gagging. Dicky trudged down, too, with the still-unconscious Cora slung across his back.

The stench thickened once downstairs. The flashlights lit up circles of strange doors, tables, and—yes!— shelves of books. The Writer flicked his Bic to light numerous sconce-set candles, and then—

The low-ceilinged room was alive now in squirming light. Dicky, Balls, and the Writer all stared speechless at the same thing.

'No fuckin' wonder the joint stinks,' Balls muttered.

'Jaysus Chrast!' Dicky exclaimed, and in his disconcertion actually dropped poor Cora on to the cement floor.

'This place looks more like a temple than a basement,' the Writer noted, 'and how appropriate... A sacrificial temple.'

Three of the room's walls were ornamented by Doric pillars, however short, and between them were a total of six shoddy wood-plank doors hung within keystoned arches. But it was what hung in one of these arches that flagged their concern:

A naked woman's corpse.

Only the Writer dared to approach, to register details. A rive had been made from navel to throat, separating two flaccid breasts the color of oatmeal. A pair of surgical retractors remained in place on her chest, which forced the rive open, much like double doors, to expose the cardiac cavity. Said cavity was empty.

'Now that's what I call a ruckin',' Balls remarked with a crook in his voice.

'Looks like someone... sacker-ficed her,' Dicky contributed.

'Indeed, her heart's gone,' the Writer told them, then shined his light on various areas about the room. 'And by the looks of that crucible, that crematory, and that old book on tephramancy, I'd say she was sacrificed in grand style. Look. See these ashes?' The Writer gestured the smear of ashes over the door's stone transom. 'Tephramancy is an occult science which utilizes the ashes of a sacrifice victim for a variety of dark arts, including incarnation.'

'You're talkin' more'a that satanic shit, like what Crafter's into, ain't'cha?' Balls needed clarification.

'Oh, yes. This man Crafter has quite a hobby.'

Dicky fidgeted at the sight of the girl. 'What's that big college word you just used?'

'Incarnation? It means ‘to make flesh,' in other words, Crafter solicited this tephramanic ritual to summon a netherwordly spirit or even... a demon.'

Balls and Dicky stood silent.

The Writer lit another cigarette and made a closer inspection. The unfortunate woman had been hung on the door by means of a sharpened iron spike sunk directly through the hollow of her throat. Much blood was in evidence, naturally, running down her pallid body and cellulite-pocked legs, to pool at the floor. The blood was dry and browning. Her feet and lower legs were a murky blue. 'I'd say she's been dead a day or two,' the Writer estimated. 'The decomposition of the body is not yet acute, and I'd also say... she's not the first to suffer such a fate in this room.' Now his flashlight tracked along the floor. More splotches of dried blood existed before each of the six wood-plank doors in the bizarre room.

The Writer opened the door to which the girl had been impaled. There was nothing behind it except for crudely lain bricks.

'The fuck's that all about?' Balls asked. 'If Crafter did all this devil's jazz to get a demon here, a hallway to hell's what should be behind that door, not just bricks, right?'

The Writer chuckled. 'While the ritual is active, yes, but of course only in Crafter's mind. There are no real doorways to Hell or demons, Mr. Balls.'

'Yeah?'

'Let's not get carried away here, gentlemen. Crafter is an occult fanatic. He believes himself to be a retainer for the Devil, by serving him in such ways. But the notion is actually no different from someone rubbing a rabbit's foot for good luck, or avoiding cracks on the sidewalk. It's superstition. Crafter is probably just delusional, and thinks he's summoning demons or whatever, but it's really just hoopla.'

Dicky squinted. 'Hoopla?'

'You know. Ballyhoo.'

'What's ballyhoo?' Balls asked.

The Writer slumped. 'It's bullshit, gentlemen! Occult science does not exist. It's not functional. Its supporters merely believe it is.'

'Oh.' Balls stroked his goatee.

'But if it's all bullshit,' Dicky posed, 'then you's mean the chick I'se fucked upstairs all painted black who dumped all that slop out her pussy... wasn't a demon?'