Steven Sherrill

As with his possessions and actions there is a conscious economy to the Minotaur’s speech. The mechanics of word making in his mouth do not differ so much from those of men. There are the larynx, the soft velum, the glottal structure. There are the folds of flesh that trap and manipulate the wind passing through his throat. More important, the codes of language exist in the Minotaur’s mind. His thought, his subvocal speech, is complex. He wants to say, I am tired of these horns and all that they mean. Not brilliant, but certainly not the sentiment of a complete fool. The problems lie in articulation and enunciation. No matter how sweetly worded or wise the Minotaur’s ideas may be, when he puts them to tongue, terrible things happen. In the clear field of his mind things are precise. But when filtered through the deep resonating chamber of his nostrils, pushed up the cavernous expanse of his throat and across the thick bovine tongue, his words come out tortured and mutilated—deep, nasal, almost whining. The Minotaur is painfully self-conscious of how he speaks. Over the years he’s come to depend on contextual grunts, which suffice most of the time.