The Minotauress

'It's time for you to shaddap,' Dean replied, and in a reflex like instinct, he—

CRACK!

—slammed his fist into the side of her face. Daphne flew backwards, turning, her Bally shoes flying off her feet. As the inertia transferred from fist to face, Dean saw her eyeballs criss-cross. She thumped to the floor, unconscious.

Yadduh yadduh yadduh, Dean thought. That's all they do, run their mouths, bellyache, bitch. He poured another shot of Johnny B., slugged it back. That he'd just knocked his wife unconscious didn't faze him, nor did the potential assault and battery charges. 'Fuck it. Women.' He picked up his can of Skoal, put a pinch between his lip and gum.

There it is! he thought.

Nicotine rush abuzz, he looked down at his very unconscious wife. In her fall, she'd landed on her belly, her classy creped black skirt flipped up. Beneath the see-through pantyhose, her ass sat there like a pair of succulent dumplings.

'Fuck it,' Dean said to himself.

Back in the old days, back on the ranch in DeSmet, Dean's far larger than average reproductive member had taken up residency in many a backdoor. But he'd never done 'the anal thing' with Daphne. He'd never even broached the subject, knowing his wife regarded the act as unnatural and degrading.

'Fuck it.'

He knelt, yanked the pantyhose right off like peeling a condom. Saliva tinted brown with high-grade nicotine dribbled from his mouth and fell precisely into the furrow of her creamy buttocks.

Dean plugged The Captain right in, and plungered her 'star' but good. Spitting in her ass-crack seemed sufficient foreplay—all any woman deserved—he just went to town for a quick one. After all, the bitch hadn't put out in two months!

Dean's spooge drained in volume. He thought of squeezing the innards out of a fat lizard's mouth.

'There's one for ya, sweetheart.' He wiped his sullied cock off on the pantyhose, then leaned back against the coffee table and took another hit of the good Mr. Black. Eventually Daphne revived, raised her head sluggishly, and brought an errant hand back to her buttocks.

'What... What did you do?' her words slipped out, incredulous.

'You looked like you were running a fever,' Dean replied, then ejected a thread-thin stream of tobacco juice between his teeth. The stream landed on the plush beige carpet. 'So I took your temperature. With a big thermometer.'

Her words wheezed with her breath. 'You-you-you—SODOMIZED me! How-how-how—COULD you?'

'Easy. My dick was hard and your ass was on the floor.'

She began to crawl up, teary and outraged. 'I'm-I'm-I'm gonna call my father, I'm gonna call the police, I'm gonna press charges—'

Dean just calmly shook his head. Sometimes they just don't get it, do they?

He grabbed her not by the hair but by the face, taking a handful of already bruised cheek, and lifted her to her feet. She squealed like a mouse in a vice the whole way up. 'No,' he said, 'the only thing your gonna do is cook me some dinner. Now.' He shoved her recklessly into the kitchen. 'Something good, otherwise I'll have to get violent'—

—and then it happened again, the cacophonous drone in his head like water pouring into a sewer inlet and his vision shifting through cloud-blossom blurs and his heart like a water balloon about to pop—

—again—

—again—

—here they were.

The Jig-Jags.

'What the hell is this?'

Dean was staring at her. He'd fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for Daphne to get home from her meeting, and he'd wakened when she entered. He was just staring at her. My God, he thought.

'You promised me that you'd never use that shit again! You promised me when we got married! It's filthy! It's dirty! Only rednecks and slobs use that stuff! It's disgusting!'

Dean sat in turmoil, his consciousness revolving like a ferris wheel on high-speed. I didn't buy that can of Skoal... did I?

'How can you betray me like this!' Daphne's soprano shriek continued to unwind. 'How many other promises have you broken?'

'Honey, I—'

'Don't lie to me, you bastard!'

'Honey, I—'

'Christ in Heaven, I work my ass off day in and day out while you sit in here chewing tobacco like some common redneck! You're not in South Fucking Dakota anymore, Dean! The joyride's over! We agreed! I pull the weight around here, I make the money! We can't depend on your pissant salary! You're the one who's supposed to keep this place cleaned up.'

Dean's hands spread. 'It's clean—'

'It's a SHITHOLE!' Daphne cracked. 'It's FILTHY. Ever heard of a vacuum cleaner? Ever heard of a mop?'

'Sweetheart, I—'

'Just shut up! My God, I'm doing everything I possibly can to make this pitiful marriage work!' Her voice raced around the room like a mad ferret. 'It would really be nice if JUST ONCE, you'd help me out! But, no! You're too busy sleeping on the fucking couch and chewing that goddamn redneck tobacco!'

Daphne stormed off down the hall. Dean, entrapped by terror, raced after her. 'Honey, please! I'm sorry! I'll clean the house better tomorrow, I promise! And I swear to God I don't know where that can of—'