The Minotauress

unreal lips to an empty eye socket and sucked out his brain.

The meat fell richly into her gut, made her more real.

Soon she'd be real enough to call out...

Outrage for outrage. That's how it was and how it had always been.

Her bottomless gaze surveyed the sentry's corpse a last time. Seeing him like that, splayed and ravaged and dead, left her cringing. Pasiphae's nebulous hand touched her clitoris—a small nugget of coal—and she could actually feel solidity burgeoning, smoke turning to slime. What would the slime become tomorrow? Gel? And the day after that?

Then she could conjure up her son through the same threshold of horror that had summoned her.

She left the corpse, sauntered her nightness through the night, ghost-feet stepping daintily between the hideous scatterings of horns—the horns which lay like so many curled fetuses in the dirt, aborted for some meager mortal's indulgence like the tiny lives kicked, clubbed, or cut from innocent wombs by wine-drunk Athenian soldiers.

Black tears bled from Pasiphae's cosmic eyes.

Some things, some horrors, could even bring dead gods back to life.

CHAPTER THREE

'You're kidding me, right?' Ajax asked.

Dean fidgeted over his halibut fish and chips. 'Well, I mean, it's reasonable. After all, I only make twenty-five a year at the credit union, Daphne makes three times that. She brings home more money so it's only fair that I take care of the house. And I guess I have been a bit negligent in my chores. The house was a little dirty.'

Ajax'd met him for lunch at Anthony's Fish Bar on the waterfront. He put his face in his hand, shook his head. 'And what time did she get home?'

'Like, one in the morning,' Dean told him.

'One in the morning—from a work meeting?'

'Like I told you, she's in a hectic business. It's non-stop.'

'Right, those quarterly inventories,' Ajax droned. 'Till one in the morning. And now she's gone off to Las Vegas? For a work convention?'

Dean knew what he was getting at. 'Ever heard of the Las Vegas Convention Center, smart guy?'

'Yeah, and she left her wedding ring on the bathroom sink.' Ajax crunched into a pile of fried clams. 'How long does it take you to realize that two plus two equals infidelity?'

'She's not cheating on me for Christ's sake,' Dean insisted. 'And the ring?' He'd noticed it this morning, after driving her to the airport. 'Simple explanation. You take your ring off to wash your hands, then you forget to put it back on.'

'Yep, simple explanation.' Ajax ate some more clams in order to avoid chuckling. 'But you had another Jig- Jag. Isn't that what you said on the phone?'

Dean nodded as if in dread. 'This one was really bad. In my mind... I actually saw myself—'he gulped in shame—'doing violence to her. Then I... kind of like... raped her.'

'Kind of like?' Now Ajax laughed out loud. 'That's like saying you ‘kind of like' took a shit. You either dropped a steamer or you didn't.'

Well then... I guess I did. 'It was horrible because it seemed so real,' Dean drew on. 'Then I snapped out of it, and there she is for real, bawling me out for not cleaning the house and for having a can of Skoal.'

'I thought she made you give that stuff up.'

'She didn't make me,' Dean clarified through a frown. 'It's a bad habit, it's bad for my health, so I cut it loose.'

'She made you give it up 'cos she knows she's got you wrapped around her finger—' Suddenly Ajax craned his gaze as an attractive, busty blond traipsed by on mile-long legs and high heels, smirking in self-confidence. 'Man, I'd like to fry that smug bimbo's clam, and I've got some super special tartar sauce to put in that pouty face. I'd ass- fuck her so hard her colon would bust—then she'd really have something to smirk about.'

'Come on, Ajax,' Dean complained. 'I'm trying to talk to you about something.'

'Yeah, sorry.' Ajax dragged his gaze off the sauntering blonde. 'Where were we—oh, yeah, Skoal. If you gave it up, why'd you buy it?'

'That's the craziest part. I didn't—er, at least I don't remember buying it.'

'Not good.' For once, Ajax appeared serious. 'First, you're having spells of Non-REM Imagery Syndrome, and now you're having blackouts.'

'Blackouts?'

'The fuckin' can of tobacco probably didn't walk into the house, and unless the Good Fairy put it there, you must've bought it in an unsentient state. That's what shrinks call it. It's like sleepwalking during the day.'

Dean chewed his lip, considering this.

'You might want to think about seeing a shrink,' Ajax added.

Oh, man, Dean thought. I'm not crazy, am I?

'So what did you do with the Skoal? Stuff it all into your yap for a taste of the old days?'

'Hell, no. I threw it out.'

'Really? Not one little pinch?'

'Nope.'