Minotaur

It was Friday after school in the middle of winter. Report card day. The school liked to send them home so they could ruin Dave’s weekend, he suspected. But his news was good - A’s across the board. It was worse news for his older brother, Mark. He was struggling to keep himself above an F in every class. When they entered the house, their father had the report gripped in one hand. The other was white-knuckled. The shouting began immediately.

Dave had no desire to see his brother cowed, so he attempted to leave the room and go get himself something to eat from the kitchen.

His father collared him and said, “Get back in here. You need to hear this too. Now listen to me. This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. How can you explain this, Mark?” He waved the report in front of Mark’s face. “How much am I paying that tutor? I’ve seen lawyers get paid less than that brat does an hour, and you bring home a D in damned near every subject? What the hell is the matter with you?”

Mark did not remove his eyes from a particular spot in between two planks in the floorboard during the tirade. His father seemed exasperated for a moment, took another look at the paper to confirm his next action, and backhanded his son across the face. Mark, a large boy, staggered a step under the blow. His eyes left the floor then; they locked onto their father’s face with frightening intensity. Dave didn’t like that look at all - it looked too much like the madness that had held him on that summer day. Mark took a deep breath and removed his backpack, placing it on the chair. His calm movements belied the vise grip on the chair back and his uneven breathing.

His voice only wavered a little bit when he asked: “Dave, would you like to come throw the ball around with me a bit?” Dave nodded and followed his older brother out of the room. Their father marched up the stairs and back into his study. They wound their way through the kitchen, snagging their mitts and a ball, past their mother hard at work at the kitchen counter. She offered Mark a taste of the sauce she was cooking, but he knocked the spoon out of her hand and blew by. Only Dave saw her bite her lip.

Once they got out of the house, and the screen door had banged shut, did Mark finally explode. He cursed, loud and long in the cold air. Their had been no snow on the ground for the last few weeks - it was just frozen solid. Dave trotted out what they felt was about space between rubber and homeplate. He crouched down and pounded his fist into the mitt. Mark was still furious. As he took his stance, he pawed at the ground with his foot, a bull waiting to charge. The frosty air sent twin plumes of steam spiraling away from his face. He wound up, and unleashed. The ball hit Dave’s mitt so hard he nearly fell over. The next one was even harder. After five, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred pitches, Mark showed no signs of letting up on his velocity. Dave’s hand had gone numb long ago, around pitch forty, he thought. His throwing arm was sore from heaving the ball back. Thankfully, Mark soon stopped, his anger a little worked off. But he was still frustrated. He threw his glove down to the ground.

“It’s no good. Let’s go find something else to do.” Dave nodded and trotted after his brother, trying to massage some life back into his abused arms. They wandered the town aimlessly for a half-hour, not talking, just walking and thinking.

They both stopped simultaneously when they came across the haunted house. Nobody had any good reason to think it was haunted, but everyone had a suspicion that it was, all the same. During the summer the grass went up to your knees, and the broken windows on the garage winked at you in the sunlight. In the moonlight, they stared at you. Their father had waved them off when they told him of their suspicions, a long time ago. “It’s just some old man’s summer house. Maybe he went to Florida one winter, went senile, and forgot all about this town.” The boys had not liked that explanation.

“Want to check it out, Dave?” When his brother was in a mood like this, Dave had no say in the matter; he would go into that house if the Devil himself had taken residence, rather than face his brother’s rage. They went through a side window, though Dave suspected the screen door would have been unlocked - but if you’re going to do a break and enter, might as well do it right.

Mark went in first, Dave right after, and as soon as his feet touched the threadbare carpet, something instantly felt wrong. It smelled of mothballs and must, but below that assurance of vacancy an undercurrent of something else ran. Dave couldn’t place it, but it wasn’t right. The place had all the trappings of an haunted house, the ripped upholstery and creepy black and white photos, but even those seemed a little too dust-free. The first floor was singularly uninteresting, and the second much the same. Until they came across the thin, Gothic door ferretted down a long, half-hidden hallway.

They came into the room, and gaped at what lay before them. It was a circus-sideshow’s science wing, all glass bottles with unborn things suspended in viscous liquids, arcane instruments with inexplicable knobs and sharp metal bits, orreries and diagrams, models and artifacts. When Dave saw the lit candle, heard the footsteps and the door eased shut, he finally placed the smell. It was the smell of occupation.

The boys whirled about, to face the intruder. In his fright and confusion, all David could think of when he saw the man was Gomez Addams. But he might well have been a defanged Dracula, or a shuffling Victor Frankenstein. There was something about the man that made his likeness difficult to pin down. As the candled waned, at one moment he was short, positively dimunitive, but at the next flicker, he was huge, filling the room.

He cleared his throat like a teacher quieting a class. “Well, a pair of trespassers. I cannot say that this is a new development.” He paused then, and his gaze intensified on them. “But, this pair is… different. How are we different, gentlemen? Why have I seen your faces before? What lies behind those vacuous eyes?” He paused another long moment, and David took an involuntary step back. The brothers shared a quick glance at the word ’secret’. David was lucky the room was windowless, otherwise he would have flung himself from it already to avoid that gaze. It was like a hawk staring at a mouse, right before it ripped it open with its talons. The man finally placed them, in whatever context that might be - David had certainly never seen him before.

The man gave a rasping intake of breath. “You! I know you.” Yet another unsettling pause. He mentally dismissed David, and turned his focus to Mark. David was relieved. “Tell me, my boy… did she scream when you pushed yourself on her? Did she try to fight you? Did you hear her? You must have, or why would you have tried to silence her so… vigorously?” The man’s lips gave a morbid twist upward, a crypt smile. Mark gasped at this, and suddenly both boys were there.

In Mark’s head the memory was muddled, a haze of lust and emotion. David’s memory was clinical, his view of the atrocity distanced from the primal actions of his brother. The boys had stopped going about together that summer, two years ago. They both felt they were too old to do such a thing - their time was devoted to their own groups of friends, separate from each other. But both boys were drifting free of their groups that day - David was walking off the anger from some stupid spat he had had with his friend Chris - Mark was walking home from a pickup game of baseball, still flush with victory. They had converged at a glade in the local forest nearly simultaneously. Mark broke into the open a few steps earlier than David, who instinctively halted in the cover of the trees. For some reason, David did not want his brother to know he was there. How different things would have been had he shown himself earlier…

There was a third person. She was sitting cross-legged before the glade’s pool, a sketchbook and charcoal in hand. David always had a strong recollection of her demeanor - like a deer unsure of the safety at the water, throwing nervous glances about her as she scratched out tentative lines on her paper. She was beautiful too, this doe girl. Whenever David replayed the memory, he bitterly mused at how well the Doe title fit. She started as Mark thrashed his way through some reeds and into her space.

Mark was a large boy back then, too. He loomed over her, grinning an ugly smile at her as she craned her neck up to see just who had the gall to block her subject matter. He eased himself to her side, talking low and close. She iced over as he talked on, her eyes only on the pool and her paper. David could see that Mark was getting frustrated. After another few inneffectual lines, he grabbed her sketchbook and casually tossed it into the lake. She took notice of him then, gave him the same firey stare Mark had given his father that day.

She slapped him, or tried to, anyways. Mark caught it in his big paw and he was all over her, grabbing at her and forcing himself on her. She screamed and plead, weakly beat at him with her fists as he continued the assault. Her shouts grew louder, but as she screamed freely, all sound froze in David’s throat. Mark was angered by her shouts. “Stop it, stop shouting your whore!” She took no heed. David wished she had kept quiet. After another ear-piercer, Mark snatched up a nearby rock and raised it high above his head. David found his voice and his legs then, screaming out “No!” as he stumbled towards his brother.

Mark took no heed. He brought down the rock with unspeakable force - her screaming cut off abruptly as half of her face caved in. The hand came up again, the rock now soaked in crimson. David, weak little David, tried to stop his brother, he grabbed at the arm, but Mark knocked him aside easily. And he brought the rock down again - this time into her teeth, and the crunching sound would haunt David forever after. The arm was coming up again, and Mark’s hand and arm was drenched in her blood. David punched his brother in the temple then, all of his weight going into the blow. His brother barely felt it, but it was enough to bring his attention away from his fatal work. His eyes were wild and unfocused - they slowly recognized David.

“… Dave? What’s… what’s happened, Dave?” David was shrieking then, terrified for what the consequences of this summer day’s actions would be.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing that, Mark?”

Mark shook his head, throwing off the haziness. He pointed an accusing finger at her. “She tried to stop me, the bitch!”

David roared, “That doesn’t mean you can kill her!”

Mark was taken aback at the shout. “I have to kill her now, Dave… right? I can’t go to jail, I’m too young… we make her dissappear, I kill her and we bury her somewhere where nobod-” The girl mewed pitifully, the blood bubbling from her ruined lips.

One eye still seemed operational, on the side of her face that was not a ruin. It rolled upwards from the pain of the blows. “Shut up!” Mark screamed at her. David did not have time to react when his brother brought the final blow down, this time in the middle of her forehead. David started crying then, only stopping when his brother wheeled on him, the bloody rock still in hand. He was afraid Mark would do the same to him.

“Stop crying and help me with her.” They decided to lay Jane Doe to rest in the pool. They weighted her down with rocks, wrapped up in her clothing, and heaved her into the center of the water. It was deep - nobody would ever find her. Both boys went to sleep that night dreaming of her watery grave.

There, in the dark house, the man’s voice started picking up steam, the words lending their momentum to his bitter hate. “You took everything from me, you stole the only thing I had worth living for, plucked her right out of my arms, and for what? You ogre, you bull-headed excuse for a human being. You robbed from me everything I had.” He stopped himself, and the next words were coming from some kind of prophetic trance, distant and deliberate.

“…And you shall be the Minotaur, bellowing as he wanders the red labyrinth designed of his own madness, roaring as he searches the featureless walls, questing eternally for some clue, some sign to lead him to the heart of the darkness, that kernel at the lowest depths of his own madness. But you will find there is no center, there is no exit, there is no way out. Only hallways stretching forever into more hallways, turns leading to the same place you have been forever. No, Minotaur. For you the only escape will be into the cold arms of Death and a grave.”
His seer’s gaze locked onto David.
“And you, boy, you must be his Theseus. An avenger with a thirst for something that blood can never slake, a hunger for something that the world can never sate. You will adopt his labyrinth as your own, coat yourself in its stones and bends and kinks and you shall still be unfufilled. Even Death has no solace to offer you.”

He blinked a few times, coming back from whatever dark place he had entered. “Get out of here before I kill you myself.” He stepped aside from the door, and the boys bolted, their legs pumping fast as they could. They heard him sob “Her name was Gloria,” as they passed.

Weeks passed, and the boys finally remembered how it felt to sleep at night without waking up in a cold sweat. A few more weeks went by, and the boys went back to socializing with their friends, and the incident at the house only recurred for David when he was by himself at night. As a result, he spent a lot of night sleeping at friend’s houses, passed out drunk or otherwise.

After one such night, at the tail end of winter, David woke up, ready to scream. He felt foreign to himself, as if he had forgotten who he was except for one sound. The lowing of a cow on an open field - or was it the gurgling moan of Jane Doe? Whatever it was, he needed to go home, immediately. Something was wrong there. It took a few panicked moments to find the door - one friend sleepily inquired as to what he was doing. David only slammed the door and took off for home. Halfway there, with the asphalt biting into his feet, he wished he had remembered shoes, but the sense of something… awakening was too strong. He picked up his pace.

And just like that summer day two years before, David reached the spot that his destiny hinged on a few steps too late. The door to his home was ajar - David slipped through and stood in the threshold, waiting. He heard the wailing of his mother, the screams of bereavement. His father was silent. David trained his eyes at the top of the stair, waiting. Heavy clops echoed from upstairs, and a hoof appeared around the corner. A bent leg followed it, and a massive torso, followed by a great horned head. The beast stumbled down the stairs, the weight making the old wood groan. The creature was now before David. Mark had always been a large boy - now his horns, dripping with his father’s blood, tangled in the chandelier. He snorted and whipped his head to the side, ripping the chandelier from its anchor and extinguishing the light. In the darkness, the Minotaur’s eyes glinted red madness.

He pawed at the floor, and lunged for David. David moved fast, dodging the horns and vaulting the couch, moving to the the fireplace. He hefted the fire poker, felt its weight, and knew what he had to do. The Minotaur charged him again, and he turned and faced it. David wrapped two hands around the haft of his weapon and impaled the bull-man on it. Two feet of twisted steel sprouted out its back. It loosed a great roar then, thrashing its head blindly. One of the razor sharp horns gashed David, laying his collar bone open to the air. David screamed, his own agony mixing with the brute lowing of the Minotaur. It tugged at the steel in its belly, and found even an inch of movement too much to bear. It fled the house, pounding away into the night, its screams the only thing left behind. David was in no hurry to follow it. He knew where it was going. And he needed a gun. He mounted the stairs with the measured pace of a pall-bearer. His mother had stopped wailing, which made his trip into his parent’s room all the more eerie.

It was a grisly tableau - his father, eviscerated by the savage horns, mantled in blood and gore, his mother, arms wrapped around her legs, rocking back and forth as she stared at her dead husband. David’s bare feet nearly slipped in the blood as he went to the closet and removed the gun. He checked to make sure it was loaded, and exited without so much as a word for the two husks left. With one hand pressed over the grievous wound and another wrapped around the heavy pistol, David took off for the woods. For the glade.

What used to be his brother was indeed at the pool, stalking its edges, hands wrapped around the fire poker, looking for something. It could not find it. He uttered fretful moos as it glanced everywhere, looking for something lost. Tears were welling in David’s eyes as he saw the tremendous pain the fire poker was causing his brother. He slowly approached the pacing beast, and laid a steady hand on its side. The Minotaur staggered about and half-heartedly tried to gore him, but he took an easy step back and the horn passed harmlessly by him. With a target now before it, it lurched towards him, but David grabbed hold of a horn and forced the beast, weak as a newborn calf, to the ground. It was panting heavily, and when it turned its head and looked up at David with those black marble eyes, he knew then, with a sickening finality, what he had to do. He cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. It took three bullets to finally kill his brother. The deed done, David sat down in the mud and waited. He was not sure what for.

-May, 2005