The Minotauress

'What're we gonna do?' Cora squealed. 'That thing ain't gonna let us get out'a here!'

'We-we can wait till Crafter gets back,' Dicky stammered.

'You got pig turds fer brains,' Balls remarked. 'He ain't comin' back fer a week, and all he'd probably do is use us fer sacker-ficin'.'

'But won't the thing upstairs kill him when he comes in the house?' Cora asked.

'More than likely not,' the Writer said. 'In demonic incarnation—which I suppose I believe in now—that which is summoned can not harm the summoner. The Minotauress born to such an incarnation: Pasiphae.'

'Pasiphae,' Balls muttered, searching for a chronology. 'Crafter brought her here from Hell by killin' that fat chick on the door?'

'I have no choice at this point but to say yes,' the Writer said.

'Then she fucked Dicky, dropped all that spooge'n slop on the floor, and that's what turned inta that bitch with the bull's head?'

'Yes.'

'And it were a good nut, too,' Dicky offered. 'Dang good, it was.'

'Shut up,' Balls said. Now he was staring at the unfortunate dead woman. 'And all this shit's hittin' the fan 'cos ‘fore Crafter left, he sacker-ficed that butt-ugly ‘ho on the door.'

The Writer nodded, opening a hand to the implements on the table. 'By using the ritual instructions found in these books and undertaking a particularized ritual invocation known as tephramancy.'

'The fuck is that exactly?'

'He impaled her on the chosen door—the Traversion Bridle—removed her heart by means of those branch- cutters and surgical retractors, put the heart in that crucible, it would seem, and then reduced it to ash in the crematory. After that, he applied the ashes to the transom stones over the door and then... the Bridle was lowered and Pasiphae's domain in Hell was opened to this room long enough for her to emerge.'

Dicky picked his nose. Cora sniffled. The Writer lit another cigarette and wished he could down a couple of pitchers real fast. But Balls set his chin atop the tips of his fingers, thinking...

'And the Writer here says that what a warlock brings through them doors his own self cain't hurt him... ' Balls' eyes caught the Writer's.

'You're thinking that if we initiated our own invocation, we could use what we summoned to kill the Minotauress—'

'Yeah! And thens we can high-tail it out's this fuckin' place!' Balls rallied. 'Why not! Crafter done it so's why cain't we?'

The Writer chuckled smoke. 'Mr. Balls—the process would require one of us to be sacrificed.'

Silence.

Very slowly, then, Balls and Dicky turned their gazes to Cora.

The Writer thought: Oh, dear...

Cora flailed against her bonds. 'Why the fuck you rednecks lookin' at me?'

Balls shrugged. 'Well, see, me'n Dicky still got a haul to make, and the Writer here, he's got the smarts, but you, Cora? You don't bring much to the table, in fact the way I see it, you're about as useful as a dick on a cow... '

'Let me go, you fucker!' she squealed.

POP!

Balls' fist made short work of Cora's protestations. She slumped over again, out cold.

'It's murder,' the Writer reminded them. 'It's a capital offense.'

'Does it look like I care?' Balls retorted. 'Shee-it. We'se'll just summon ourselfs our own demon, then we can get out'a here and still walk off with a shitload's Crafter's hair-looms.'

'That's purdy dang good thankin', Balls,' Dicky said.

The Writer struggled for any idea to thwart the plan. 'Tephramancy requires human ashes; that's why Crafter has his own crematory. It probably won't even work with all the power shut off.'

Dicky's minuscule intuition fired up. 'But that thing runs on gas, don't it? We done seed all them propane tanks outside.'

Balls stalked right up to the idle machine, pushed the ON button, and—

POOF!

—the pilot flared from the surge of propane.

'So much fer that, Writer!' Balls turned the knob to high. 'Looks like we're ready to have ourselves our very own demoneric sacker-fice!'

And then the dirty-work began.

(IX)

The Writer felt ultimately responsible but then poor Cora didn't have much of a life to begin with. At least her travails and the pain of her addictions is at an end, he tried to rationalize.

Balls didn't need much instruction; he and Dicky, first, picked up Cora's unconscious form, and—

CRUNCH...

—impaled her throat on the iron spike of the last wooden door. Her junkie eyes sprang open; she flipped feebly on the spike, whose tip exited the hollow of her throat. Then she began to gargle foamy blood.

Balls looked to the first corpse, then to the Writer. 'She gotta be nekit?'

Queasy, the Writer reeled at the gargling sound. 'It doesn't say so specifically in these tomes but