The Minotauress (42 page)
Authors: Edward Lee
"Well, they do leave lots of hair on the carpet—"
"At home, all she does is yell at you—"
"Well, I'm kind of lazy, I need yelling at sometimes—"
"—and I'll bet my ass she's cheating on you," Ajax finished his avalanche.
Dean tempered himself. "She is not cheat—"
Ajax shook his head right along with his words. "And all you do is keep making excuses for her. I'm telling you, man. The reason you're having these Jig-Jags, these waking dreams, is because of her. First you move here—drastic enough of a change—then you marry her. Too much change at once, too much shock-repression. She's turned you into something you're not, and now your psyche is rebelling. No offense, pal, but she's turned you into a pussy-whipped putz."
"Thanks," Dean said through the frown.
"Non-REM Imagery Syndrome is no joke, Dean," Ajax cautioned. He sipped his beer and winced. "Next step is Multiple-Personality Disorder. These Jig-Jags are telling you something, paisan. You better listen."
Dean let the foam in the bottom of his glass slide into his mouth. "Fine, Mr. Freud. What are they telling me?"
"Get back to your true nature. These fantasy images? It's the real you, the genuine primordial
you,
struggling to get away from what you've become since you got married."
you,
struggling to get away from what you've become since you got married."
"The caveman, huh?"
"That's right. It's your Id trying to bust out of the cement your wife has poured over you. Everything about your life
now
is the polar opposite of what your life
was.
"
now
is the polar opposite of what your life
was.
"
Dean's eyes narrowed. "What my life
was?
"
was?
"
"Sure. Come on! You grew up in bumfuck South Dakota, on a
ranch.
You've told me all the stories. You were a rough and tumble rancher kicking ass in roadhouse bars, bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver. Shit, you were getting laid when you were
twelve!
"
ranch.
You've told me all the stories. You were a rough and tumble rancher kicking ass in roadhouse bars, bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver. Shit, you were getting laid when you were
twelve!
"
Dean's shoulders flinched at the volume of Ajax's last exclamation. "Tell the whole bar why don't you?"
"Fuck the bar," Ajax came back. "Talk about black to white. No wonder you're hallucinating. Everything your psyche meant for you to be has been turned inside out. Do yourself a favor. Get back to your roots. Get back to being what you
were:
a tobacco-chewing, gash-busting, hard-knocking, give-a-shit son of a bitch."
were:
a tobacco-chewing, gash-busting, hard-knocking, give-a-shit son of a bitch."
Dean didn't buy a word of Ajax's advice, but it was true—in the past, he'd been all those things and more. And getting laid at age twelve? True. "You don't understand anything," he said. "All those things I used to be—that's why I moved here, to get away from that."
"Bullshit," Ajax put it bluntly. "Consciously you believe that, but this is your psyche screaming to get out." Ajax lit a cigarette, sucked smoke like it was syrup. "You used to be a hardcore redneck motherfucker. Look at you now."
Hardcore,
Dean thought.
Dean thought.
Ajax continued to enthuse, "Man, you used to artificially inseminate
cows.
You'd stick your arm all the way down the cow's
cooze
. Now
that's
hardcore."
cows.
You'd stick your arm all the way down the cow's
cooze
. Now
that's
hardcore."
Dean thought about. Ajax had a point. Being married in Seattle was definitely different from what he'd been used to.
"When the cattle got abscesses, you'd stick your hand right in their mouths and pop out the puss.
That's
hardcore."
That's
hardcore."
Back on the farm, Dean had discharged that duty too—watching the ranch dogs scuffle to eat the wads of pus—and now that he thought about it...
It was kind of... fun...
It was kind of... fun...
"Yes sir, a hardcore farmboy motherfucker," Ajax said. He drained the last of his beer, then winced.
"Hey, Ajax," Dean asked. "How come you wince every time you take a sip of beer?"
"Because the beer sucks. All this candyass Northwest microbrew bullshit?" Ajax waved a dismissive hand. "It's garbage, taste like fruit."
"Then why do you drink it?"
"'Cos it's all they got here."
Dean shook his head. "All right, then if you don't like the beer, why do you come here?"
"Are you kidding?" Ajax seemed dismayed. "I love looking at these tramp Goth waitresses. They put wood in my shorts." Then he raised his hand, signaled the girl who'd waited on them. "Hey, toots? When you get a chance?"
She shuffled over like a corpse on tranquilizers. Her nose ring swung like a doorknocker. "My name's not
toots,
" she informed him.
toots,
" she informed him.
"Aw, gee, I'm sorry," Ajax apologized. "Just a figure of speech, you know? So what
is
your name?"
is
your name?"
"Vermillia."
Ajax bit his lip in order to stifle an outburst. "Another round, please... Vermillia."
She shuffled away. The back of her PIERCE ME! T-shirt read I HAD MY CLIT SPLIT AT THE DEVIL DAN'S TATTOO AND PIERCING PARLOR!
"Jeeeeesus
Christ,
" Ajax murmured. "That fruitcake bitch? I'd stick my head all the way up her gash and suck her cervix."
Christ,
" Ajax murmured. "That fruitcake bitch? I'd stick my head all the way up her gash and suck her cervix."
Dean shook his head.
"Oh, and speaking of hardcore," Ajax tacked on. "What was that other thing you did back on the ranch, the thing you won the statewide championship for?"
Did Dean's eyes actually sparkle for a moment?
"Horn-cranking," he answered more to himself. "And I wasn't just the state champ. I was the best horn-cranker in the world... "
CHAPTER TWO
W
hen most seventeen-year-olds were playing sandlot baseball, contemplating their futures, driving their first car, Dean Lohan was inserting his arm up cow "coozes" all the way to the shoulder, to properly place the frozen semen pellet. But actually it wasn't just one arm, it was both. His other arm, also to the shoulder, slid up the rectal tract, to dilate the spermatic inlet through the intestinal wall. This meant that young Dean's right cheek was firmly placed against the ungainly area of space that existed between the cow's anus and vagina. And Dean performed this less than eloquent procedure
thousands
of times.
hen most seventeen-year-olds were playing sandlot baseball, contemplating their futures, driving their first car, Dean Lohan was inserting his arm up cow "coozes" all the way to the shoulder, to properly place the frozen semen pellet. But actually it wasn't just one arm, it was both. His other arm, also to the shoulder, slid up the rectal tract, to dilate the spermatic inlet through the intestinal wall. This meant that young Dean's right cheek was firmly placed against the ungainly area of space that existed between the cow's anus and vagina. And Dean performed this less than eloquent procedure
thousands
of times.
Pretty hardcore.
And so too: When most fifteen-year-olds were delivering newspapers or mowing yards, Dean Lohan was, without an official work-permit, employed at the Johnson Meat-Packing Plant: gutting cattle summarily, often when they weren't quite dead; hauling out bovine innards like loops of rope and then squeezing out the grassy cream of excrement with his bare hands; and hosing out the rendering gutters flowing deep with offal, blood, and skin. Young Dean never so much as flinched. And when batches of ground beef went bad, it was Dean's job wash off the slime and then mix it with the good ground beef, which was later sold to local fast-food restaurants and retirement homes at a cut rate that provided a kick-back to the plant manager.
And when most twelve-year-olds were watching
Scooby Doo
and playing with army men, Dean Lohan, was squirting his first seminal drops into the mouth of a rather precocious honey-haired girl named Marthie, who was two years his senior. Marthie, who had evidently learned well from a number of relatives including her father, swallowed without so much as a frown. Dean's young penis, too, delved deep the depths of Marthie's vaginal barrel on
many
an occasion.
Scooby Doo
and playing with army men, Dean Lohan, was squirting his first seminal drops into the mouth of a rather precocious honey-haired girl named Marthie, who was two years his senior. Marthie, who had evidently learned well from a number of relatives including her father, swallowed without so much as a frown. Dean's young penis, too, delved deep the depths of Marthie's vaginal barrel on
many
an occasion.
And little Marthie came like a fucking freight train each and every time.
Even when he was too young to really know was sex was, Dean Lohan was a sex
machine.
machine.
He was also the school-yard bully, sending many a classmate home crying through black eyes. Why? For the hell of it.
He'd partaken in his first "titty-fuck" at age thirteen, his first act of sodomy at fourteen (which had left a young lass with bloody stool for a week), and at sixteen he was copulating with two girls at a time, then three, then four.
Handsome, endowed, and tough as the earth he'd stomped on his father's ranch, Dean Lohan became the man every woman wanted in DeSmet, South Dakota, even before he was legally a man at all.
Whatever it was that lit a fire under a girl's ass, Dean did it right. And there was something else he did right—something, in fact, he did better than anyone else not only in South Dakota but in the entire world.
Dean Lohan could crank a horn out of a steer's head faster than other men could spit. And he performed this act—with no remorse and with no hesitation whatever—on not hundreds but on
thousands
of farm-raised steers.
thousands
of farm-raised steers.
The strange sound was as familiar to him as the sound of summer rain to normal boys...
kreeeee-CRUNCH!
—and out that horn came, like pulling a sweet potato from moist earth.
Dean didn't care. Not about the animal, not about the pain, not about the torment nor the objective cruelty of the act. He just
did it
. He cranked those horns out of those steer heads a mile a minute. It was his job, and Dean Lohan quailed at no task.
did it
. He cranked those horns out of those steer heads a mile a minute. It was his job, and Dean Lohan quailed at no task.
He was a horn-cranker.
Some towns had oyster-shucking contests, or pie eating contests, but DeSmet, South Dakota, had something far more unique. In 1988, at the age of eighteen, Dean entered the annual state horn-cranking contest, not only competing against the best in the land but against the very man who'd come in First Place in this esteemed competition for
nine years in a row.
nine years in a row.
His very own father.
Muscles bulging, mind set, and torque-plier in hand, Dean had embarked on this gladiatorial event. The most horns cranked fully out of their seats within a one-minute time-limit would be declared the victor. The previous record was forty-three.
That's a lot of horns to crank.
The sun blazed and the crowd cheered, and the day was split open by the hellish howls of the steers being de-horned.
Spittle-speckled and arms gorged with blood, the end of the day found Dean the easy winner. The coveted trophy—two genuine gold-plated horns—was passed to him by a teary-eyed woman in a red, white, and blue swimsuit and a MISS HORN-CRANKER banner as the audience went mad in their applause.
Dean not only won this year's state contest, he also set a
world record.
In sixty seconds he had expertly divorced an even fifty horns from the steer-heads they'd naturally grown in.
world record.
In sixty seconds he had expertly divorced an even fifty horns from the steer-heads they'd naturally grown in.
Hence, Dean would have his name in
Guinness
for some time to come—decades, in fact. His father, teary-eyed himself, embraced Dean after the match. "Boy," he sobbed. "Would you
lookit
that pile of horns? My God, you've made me the proudest father to ever walk the earth."
Guinness
for some time to come—decades, in fact. His father, teary-eyed himself, embraced Dean after the match. "Boy," he sobbed. "Would you
lookit
that pile of horns? My God, you've made me the proudest father to ever walk the earth."
Exuberance surged through Dean's chest. He shed a tear or two himself, seeing his father so happy, and when he turned to the crowd and waved, their applause threatened to rock the entire county.
I'm the best horn-cranker... in the world,
he realized.
he realized.
Later, he fucked the dog-shit out of MISS HORN-CRANKER. Indeed, he fucked her so hard she fully lost consciousness in the backseat of Dean's finely rebuilt '72 Mustang Fastback. Then he swigged a beer, pinched some Skoal, and fucked her again.
For the hell of it.
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