The Minotauress

Dicky froze in place, but the Writer raced up the basement steps and opened the door to let a petrified Balls burst in and fall all the way down the stairs. In the second or two before the Writer reclosed the door, his eyes reached out unto the candle-lit sitting-room where he thought he saw a sleek shadow diced by snatches of white bare skin. He caught a half-glimpse of pre-eminent breasts, a half-glimpse of a flat female abdomen, and even a quarter-glimpse of a bald, plump, beauteous pubis with a seraphic pink twist of flesh peeking through the bifurcation.

And a one-eighth-glimpse of a Black Angus bull's head complete with horns.

The Writer slammed and barred the door just as the shadow would be at the threshold, and with the slam, he heard an animal-like howl...

The Writer trembled back down the steps and at once lit a cigarette.

Dicky was helping Balls up, the latter appearing just as shaken as the Writer.

'Balls!' Dicky exclaimed. 'Who's were ya shootin' at?'

'I hit it, I know I hit it!' Balls yelled. 'Couldn't'a missed in a million years, but then I seed the bullet-holes in the back wall... '

The Writer sat down and took a deep breath. 'Mr. Balls. What exactly did you see upstairs?'

'Bet it was that weirdo chick painted black,' Dicky said. 'She come back, ain't she?'

Balls looked at his cohort with befuddlement. 'Naw, Dicky. It was a white chick with a body that'd make the Pope kick out a stained-glass winder, and-and-and—'

'A bull's head?' the Writer asked.

'You saw it too?'

'Yes.' The Writer spewed smoke. I'd sell my soul right now for just one drink. 'A Minotaur, the offspring of Pasiphae.'

'And you see the tits on that brick shit-house?'

Tits, the Writer thought obscurely. 'I did, Mr. Balls. I actually saw a bull's head on a female body, so I guess that could only be a Minotauress.' He shook his head, however, convinced of his resolve. 'But just as before, I insist, it was not real—'

The inhuman howl resounded again from upstairs, shaking the house.

'Not real, huh? Then what the fuck was that? One'a yer fuckin' ‘lucina-shun-uns?'

'I contend it was exactly that. The duress we're all under, along with the macabre circumstances—' He gestured the sacrificed corpse. 'It's all simply reinforcing the power of suggestion and creating a mode of multiple hallucinations.'

'Aw fuck you'n yer bullshit, man!' Balls dismissed. 'You're the asshole who says there ain't no Devil or demons and God's a bunch'a ‘rithmatic! Well, I'll tell you one thing, Writer. That thing upstairs shore as shit's a demon.'

'If it were a demon, Mr. Balls, then why didn't it break the door down and come down here?'

''Cos of the cross on the door, ya dick-head!' Balls answered without missing a beat.

The Writer could think of no argument. My existential actualization has now met its greatest challenge, he deemed. He thought of Sartre's protagonist in 'The Wall,' who faced a similar challenge by submitting to the firing squad...

'I'll prove Emmanuel Kant's theory that God is the only supernatural entity that can exist,' and then the Writer got up and headed for the steps.

'Take the gun!' Balls implored. 'Er—well, strike that. I shot the bitch point blank and the slugs went right through it.'

'I won't need a gun, Mr. Balls, nor will I have any utility for any means of defense because I am certain that there is nothing upstairs I need to defend myself against. All that is upstairs is a figment of mind that can't hurt any of us.'

Balls smirked a grin. 'That big-tit bitch is gonna nail your college ass to the fuckin' wall with them horns. Don't be a moe-ron.'

'Don't go! Don't go!' Cora shrieked.

The Writer winced, then mounted the steps.

Only faith can save me now, he thought and smiled.

He took the bar off the door and swung it boldly open. He stepped out, turned, then without hesitation strode into the sitting-room and its cloak of flickering candlelight.

The Minotauress stood in the opposite corner. Ropes of bull-snot flew when it jerked its great head toward him.

The Writer forced himself to stare, forced his gaze to slowly draw upward along the creature's provocative physique and then stop at the beastly, horned head.

'You are not the incarnation of demonic offspring,' the Writer spoke right up to it. 'You are nothing but the product of hallucination. I'm going to blink now, and when the blink is completed, you will be gone, because for that to not be the case is to reject all that I believe to be true. There is no power greater than the power of truth.'

The Writer closed his eyes.

Sheer consternation followed: the hellish snorting, the ungodly mewls, and the blur of impossible mass rushing forward, perfect human breasts riding up and down as the animal-head lowered to advance its deadly horns. The Writer opened his eyes again, just as the thing slammed into him, causing the house to tremor. The horns just missed goring him, instead pinning him from either side under his arms. Plaster fell from the walls amid the impact, paintings popped off, and marble busts toppled. The Writer liberally urinated in his pants, and he couldn't be sure but it seemed the impossible bull-face was smiling at him.

Shouting, he shot his arms up, slipped out of the brace of horns, and ran blubbering back to the basement door. In the background he heard the Minotauress yank its horns from the wall, snort again, and tear after him, screaming.

The Writer leapt into the black stairwell and slammed the door behind him. All the hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the creature's bellow of objection.

Dejected even more than he was terrified, he came back down the steps.

Balls, Dicky, and Cora all looked at him.

'I guess... Emmanuel Kant was wrong,' the Writer admitted. He slumped down in a chair. 'And... I seem to have wet my pants.'

'Don't feel bad,' Balls laughed. 'So did I.'

'Me, too,' Dicky admitted.