The Minotauress

"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—"

The bedroom door slammed in his face so hard the entire house shook.

««—»»

DESMET, SOUTH DAKOTA

"Name?"

Arianne's skin crawled. "Arianne."

The fat-faced cop scowled. "Last name?"

"Zausner."

"Current place of residence?"

That was a good one. "Uh... I used to live at the Callisto-Brownsroad Trailer Court."

"Current place of residence?" the fat cop repeated

"My car!" Arianne blurted and just thought Fuck... I'm fucked now.

The desk sergeant, whose name tag displayed A.T. LASS, filled out the rest of the booking report. This would be her third bust for solicitation—it didn't matter that the johns had ripped her off. She was crazy; whenever she smoked a piece of ice, she went out of her mind.

Her memory felt like a sheet of skin shorn by razors; she could only see through the minute red lines. She'd pulled up at the GORTYN'S WOODLAND TAVERN, swearing to herself No ice tonight, no ice. I'll just have a few beers and turn a few blowjobs. The promise had corroded as quickly as her future. Her first john had offered her a piece of ice in trade, and that had been it. Next thing she knew she was flying. She was on her back in the woods behind the tavern with her feet jacked up in the air and a line of men standing in wait, each with a sawbuck in their hand. By the end of the train her pussy felt like an overflowing sauce pan full of Sperm Stew, and her purse was empty as chuckles faded through the trees. That's when the police had found her. A fat line of semen ran down the inside of her leg when she was hauled up, covered with a raincoat, and Mirandized. They let her sit in the tank for eighteen hours (that's how good the ice was around here; the Callisto-Brownsroad Court was the location of the town's biggest meth lab, and it was real funny how the cops had never busted the place), then she lay for a few more, wracked in withdrawal. If she'd had a gun in her hand, she would've blown her brains out onto the cell wall, no hesitation.

"Three-Time Loser now, Arianne," the sergeant reminded her. "Three strikes and you're out. No more PBJ, no more court leniency because of your past. You're up for thirty months, no parole, no good behavior. The county slam, honey. It ain't no joovie hall and it ain't Club Med."

Arianne's drawn face fell into her lap. Her tears plipped onto the floor. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she sobbed. "I can't stop, I just can't... "

The following silence smothered her. She thought of the same silence within a buried coffin. That's what she needed: to be dead, to be buried.

"You know," the bulbous sergeant remarked, "I remember you. I'd only been on the force three years when you graduated from DeSmet Senior High. You were top of the bill, honey. Top of the honor roll, 4.0 student, valedictorian, prom queen, and scholarship offers from Harvard, UCLA, and Georgetown." Rancor ran steep in his voice. "You had it all, you had what no one from this pinch-of-dung town ever had. And look what you did with it."

Kill me, just kill me, she thought. Death seemed so much less cruel than living like this. There was no way out, though. She couldn't stop.

"What happened?" the sergeant asked. "What turned you into a meth-head whore?"

Dean, she thought. Dean's what happened.