The Minotauress

naked sacrifice victims do seem to support the time-held cliche. Nakedness begets lust, and lust offends God. By soliciting a demonic source, you pay tribute to it by offering a naked sacrifant.'

Balls' Buck knife cut off Cora's tube-top. He frowned at the irregularly nippled breasts that were flat as proverbial beer coasters. 'Shee-it. I seen bigger lumps in pancake batter. Hope her cooze looks a right better than them little skin-bags she's got fer tits.'

'It don't,' Dicky assured.

Balls hauled the cutoff shorts off her dirty legs and feet. 'Oww! You gotta be shittin' me, man!' he howled in objection at the woman's groin. 'Is that groaty or what? Her cunt looks like a fuckin' baby gorilla!'

Neither the Writer nor Dicky even looked this time. Balls' expression puckered as he grabbed the branch- cutters. 'Any gal with a pussy that ugly deserves ta be sacker- ficed... ,' and without delay he hooked the cutter's lower blade into her navel, pushed, and—

crack! crack! crack!

—began to clip a rive from her upper abdomen to her neck. Dark, disease-rife blood poured from the opening.

'Er, let's see now... Dicky, grab me that metal frame-lookin' thing off the other ‘ho—right, Writer?'

The Writer sighed in place. 'Yes. It'll be necessary to widen the chest cavity enough to access her heart.'

Balls figured it out by intuition. He sunk the retractor's prongs into the wound, then turned each of its two knobs. Each crank divided the severed ribcage in increments. Balls reached right in and manually spread the tainted, pink-black lungs, to reveal a quivering white sac.

'Wow, it's white. I'd always thunk hearts were red.'

Dismally, the Writer informed, 'The white mass is actually the pericardium which surrounds the heart. I'm afraid you'll have to cut both out.'

The mass was still barely beating. Balls grabbed it and yanked, then with surprising finesse severed the aortic arch with the razor-sharp Buck knife.

After doing so, an inch-thick plume of blood vaulted out and hit Dicky right in the face.

'Dang, Balls! Aw, man!'

Balls chuckled. 'Sorry, Dicky. Don't swaller none. Bet it's loaded with the AIDS and everthang.'

Dicky spat, frantically flapping the blood off his face, while Balls twisted the sac and severed the pulmonary trunk, superior and inferior vena cava, and all the other meaty connections.

'Like cuttin' fuckin' steak.' Eventually he unseated it all. Cora hung limp now, eyes still open in a look that seemed accusory, tongue sticking out. Never again would she have to suck dirty redneck penises for meth money. Her bladder voided like a pregnant woman breaking her water.

'Hope she don't shit, too,' Dicky fretted.

'Naw. All she eats is fellas' cum. Bet she ain't taken a solid shit in five years. Cum don't turn to turds, I don't imagine.'

The Writer blanched.

Balls turned with the severed heart in a red hand. 'So's now I gotta... '

'Put it in the crucible, then put the crucible in the crematory,' the Writer droned. 'Use the tongs. It's probably close to 2000 degrees in there.'

Balls followed the instructions, and opened the crematory hatch. Heat flooded the room at once. Balls' shadow moved meticulously on the wall when he placed the crucible inside, removed the tongs, and closed the hatch.

'There. Purdy dang easy, I gotta say.' He wiped his hands off on Cora's tube top. Then he walked to the door on which Cora's regrettable corpse hung, and opened it.

All that filled the doorway were bricks.

'The hail? There's supposed ta be a demon in there now!'

'No, no, Mr. Balls,' the Writer corrected. 'In tephramancy, the heart must first be reverted to ash, then the ashes must be spread over the gems in the door. It'll take a while for that heart to burn down. Oh, and now that I think of it, it can't hurt for you to put on that surplice.'

'Put on the what?'

'This here,' Dicky said and grabbed the stone-studded smock. 'It's like a magic jacket that warlocks gotta wear.'

'Yeah?' Balls slipped it on. The hundreds of semi-precious stones glittered like a disco ball. 'Cool! Look at me—I'se a genuine warlock!'

Dicky chuckled. 'Look more like a Fire Island fag.'

'Shut up!' Balls huffed, and again addressed the Writer. 'Hadn't even thunk of it before, but just what kind'a demon are we summonin'?'

'The door you chose—according to this written index—supposedly opens to an accessway in Hell that is in proximity to the domain of the Spermotagoyle.'

Balls shot his now familiar funky look. 'Say again?'

The Writer held out his hands. 'That's what it says in the book and on that brass plate. I have no idea what it is,' and after he'd responded he had to wonder.

Would anything really come through that door?

No, he felt certain. Even after everything I've witnessed tonight... I simply can't believe it.

'Did'ju say sperm? Like man-batter, petersnot, dick-loogie?'

'Spermatogoyle,' the Writer repeated. 'I can only presume it's some sort of fertility demon.'

'Well, will it be tough enough ta whup that bitch upstairs with the bull's head?'

'All we can do is hope so... '

Balls stroked his goatee in further contemplation. 'And, hail, should we be reading some kinda incanter-ray-