The Minotauress

'No, Mr. Dicky,' the Writer insured. 'She was a hallucination. The kariolytic fumes from this corpse made you and Cora see the woman and made me see that growing starfish shape upstairs. Or something along those lines. Let me make myself perfectly clear. Have you guys even heard of Emmanuel Kant?'

'No,' Balls and Dicky answered in unison.

Ask a silly question... The Writer thought of a way to dumb things down. 'Kant was the greatest philosopher to ever live. He disproved every philosophy and in this disproval he thereby proved something else: that mankind must have been created by a higher being—God, in other words. He proved this with mathematical theorems. It's incontestible. The only entity that can possibly exist beyond man is God. There's no room for anything else, including the Devil, demons, Hell, etc. For God and the Devil to exist simultaneously, then human volition would have to be teleologic—and we know that this cannot be. It's all math.'

Balls' eyes seemed mistrustful. 'So God ain't nothin' but a bunch'a numbers?'

'In a sense, yes. He exists by means of a never-ending equation that created everything, and God is the beginning of the equation. Understand?'

'No,' Balls and Dicky answered in unison.

The Writer sighed smoke. 'Listen, just trust me. Crafter didn't bring any demons here—he merely thinks he did.'

'Then what's that writin' on that little plate over the door, above the dead chick's head?' Balls pointed.

The Writer squinted. 'Oh, I didn't see that.' He shined his light right up.

And stared.

A tiny brass plate had been mounted in the keystone, and engraved upon it was were several Greek letters.

The Writer made a rare departure from his avoidance of profanity. 'Holy shit... '

'What is it?' Balls urged, impatient.

'It's Greek... '

'You speak Greek?'

The Writer rolled his eyes. 'Of course.'

'Then what the fuck's it say?'

After a difficult pause, the Writer told him.

'It says ‘Pasiphae.''

««—»»

The Writer tried to assess every conceivable angle of the situation. Dicky had said this 'woman' had called herself Pasiphae. How could he make that up? These two guys are white trash, not scholars of myth. Still, the Writer had to ask.

'Gentlemen, if I may. Are either of you familiar with the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur?'

Balls and Dicky looked at him cockeyed.

'That's what I thought.' The Writer sat down at the table full of books and instruments. 'I'm trying to reckon a conclusion: how Dicky could have heard the name Pasiphae upstairs earlier, and then we come down here to find the name written in its original Greek on the transom of that door. So when you gentlemen were children, in school, you never learned any Greek mythology?'

'Writer,' Balls began an honest answer, 'when we was kids, we was cuttin' class, stealin' hubcaps, and peepin' inta chicks winders so's we could gander some hair pie'n beat off. We didn't learn no Greek shit.'

'You talkin' 'bout stuff like Herck-a-lees?' Dicky ventured.

Eureka! The Writer cracked his hands together. 'Yes! This is a story along similar lines. Greek mythology comprises the first stories of sophistication in the history of mankind. The first genuine allegories. Thousands of years ago, it is said, the great god Poseidon gave Minos, the king of Crete, a splendid white bull to be sacrificed, but before that could take place, Minos' wife... became, uh, attracted to the bull and, well, she decided to have sex with it.'

Dicky stared, mouth open. Balls frowned. 'The chick fucked the bull, you mean?'

'Actually, yes, Mr. Balls. The chick... fucked the bull, a bull that was intended to be sacrificed to the gods. By circumventing Poseidon's will, big trouble would ensue. Minos' wife later gave birth to the product of her aberrant union: a terrifying creature stronger than Hercules himself, a creature called the Minotaur. This beast was, for all intents and purposes, a demon. It possessed the body of a man and the head of a bull.' Then the Writer glanced at Balls and Dicky for effect.

Balls slammed his fist down on the table. 'What kind of a a-hole are you? We'se got some serious whacked out shit goin' on here and you're blabberin' 'bout some king's squeeze who got the blocks put to her by a fuckin' bull! What the fuck are we'se supposed to do with that?'

The Writer half-smiled. 'The king's ‘squeeze' was a woman of untold beauty, and her name was Pasiphae.'

Balls' anger dissipated, giving over to puzzlement.

'That's what the splittail upstairs tolt me her name was,' Dicky re-clarified, '‘Fore I'se fucked her and then she started squirtin'—'

'Yes, yes,' the Writer severed the viscid retelling. 'I'm simply trying to find a way to justify the coincidence.'

Balls gave a mirthful laugh. 'So's this time, instead'a fuckin' a bull, she fucked Dicky?'

Dicky laughed back. 'Well, I'm damn near hung like one!'

'Yeah, well your mamma tolt me she'd seen bigger cigarettes.'

'Yeah? Well your Daddy tolt me when you's were a baby you spent more time suckin' his dick than suckin' your momma's tittie!'

What am I going to do with these guys? 'Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. We're in a conundrum here, and we need to take some action.' The Writer gestured the floppy breasted corpse hanging on the door. 'Crafter's occult delusions are obviously of a very extreme nature, and whether you believe in the occult or not, a murder has been committed. Our most logical course of action is to leave without delay. If we get caught in