Lay yourself languid along my lap, marble hand on my hot thigh. I arch myself for you, Theseus, so you may mount yourself triumphant. So you may mount your bull. Exsanguinate me. Then catch your breath in the moments after our duel. Feel your heart pumping thick blood under your tightly wound muscles. Let it cool from rapid hooves thundering to butterfly wings fluttering in your chest. Press your toes to my neck, crush my veins beneath your mighty foot. The white fur trails from my abdomen to my crown and tickles your sweaty calf as you revel in pride at my stillness. You have carried me to a world beyond my labyrinthine suffering. Lay down my weary taurine head, my heavy horns. Render me breathless. Our bodies in harmony, above and below, a hero and his beast. You slay me Theseus, I was made for you.
The boy is beautiful, the artists piteously inscribed for me at birth, but my bovine beauty overwhelmed them in its obscenity. Banishment and torture my punishment, though the true offenders live on in their royal wealth. Pasiphaë, my cursed, delirious mother, who commissioned a suit of cowhide from the great inventor Daedalus. She was a fertile thing trapped inside fate’s manipulation to become one capable of passion with the white bull. Her breath fogged, dewy sweat beading on her lips and dripping salt into her gaping mouth in that insulated feat of carpentry and lust. Did my mother think forward to me in those quiet moments on hands and toes before the bull came? In that black interior, staring into carved wood grain, senses overwhelmed of oak and leather, did she wish for eyes to see beyond the moment of heat? And where is that artist who, in his hubris, would deign solve the riddle of lust for a prized bull? I saw his aged form once when I stood as but a two legged calf, and he as the man who raised my prison walls. Put that mason before me now and I would defenestrate him as he did his own apprentice-nephew, and in his misfortune I would ensure that he not be saved by those fickle gods who had put out a hand to catch that kin of his. I would put him in the raging sea to be greeted by the bloated, grasping hands of his once golden son Icarus.
Here is my rage. In all its blasphemous existence, here is my rage. The gift of Poseidon to be used by my father against the Athenians. To be used against you, Theseus, new King of Athens. I crushed the lives of the sacrifices he sent into my labyrinth, your people who could not hope to best me. My youthful fear turned to rage, turned to rage, to rage, as through the years I understood my role. Who cares for the bastard child of King Minos? He is a beast. Let him eat blood. Fourteen bodies poured into my mouth, sloshed warm and metallic against my tongue, hot down my throat, and settled in my starved belly. You will only pry in vain, Theseus, you cannot beat them from me. You may knock me with your rod till I am down, straddle my hips, push your fingers through my flesh, seek under my ribs, untie my wet guts – Theseus. My body will not expel those I killed. Will not melt the animal fur on my face to reveal regal jaw and curled beard, no matter how you pull at me. My horns will not forget the way their backs snapped against my power. I will forever be the disappointing end to their stories. So do what you must, show your living Athenians your bloodied weapon, so that they might not discover how your hands felt in mine when you threw me to the ground. How I shuddered against your strength, your determined fist the only caress I have known. My cow’s-bellow breath echoed in the sharp twists of my labyrinth as you took me. Listeners hearing pain from my howls. Had they only known the ecstasy of those moments - Theseus, oh, Theseus. Slay me such that you might lay yourself languid along my lap as my blood pools cold. Give me those final soft moments as I shiver into oblivion. If I had been a beast worthy of my true name, you might have whispered it to me then. Yet I can only project into a world beyond this where perhaps, Asterion and Theseus were more to each other than a single violent caress