We stop outside the gated compound.  I take a deep breath and lock eyes with my fellow Man Whores. 

“She owes us money.  All of us.” 

Hemsworth and Gosling nod in agreement.  “Everyone thinks she’s a goddamn angel,” Pitt quavers.  He cups his mouth and yells, “Martha Stewart, YOU ARE NO FUCKING ANGEL!”

“Keep your voice down! Don’t escalate unless we absolutely have to!” Gosling hisses.  “All that shit she learned in prison—she can tear us apart limb from limb!  Who could have known she would channel her alpha-baker mindset into mastering streetfighting and telekinesis?”

“The last time I saw her, she widened my butthole with a month-old baguette.”  Hemsworth is speaking in a low monotone, but I can hear the fury in his voice.  “I don’t mind a tongue or the occasional finger, but a BAGUETTE???”  His fists clench by his sides.  “When my birthday rolled around, she sent me one of those framed nature pics that typically come with a cheesy motivational quote.  Instead of being motivational, mine said ‘If you’re brave enough, anything can be a dildo.’ ”

“What’s the play?”  Gosling glances at us.  “Tell you right now, I’m not going in there by myself. She might go apeshit. What if she—”

“We’ll take her like cowards,” Pitt’s eyes steel with resolution.  “Four on one.” 

Hemsworth pushes the intercom.  “Martha!  You owe us money!”

There’s a hanging moment of nerve-jangling silence.  Then the gate clicks open.

“All right.”  I blow out hard.  “Let’s do this.”

As we walk up the road, Martha’s recorded laughter booms from hidden speakers, fucking with our minds from dozens of angles.  I resist the urge to jump into Hemsworth’s arms.  Gosling and Pitt startle several times, brushing fingers as they fight the compulsion to clasp hands.  Once we’re inside, it’s more of the same—empty networks of vaulted halls, booming with variants of her insanity-tinged chuckle. 

“Stick together.”  Brad’s eyes tick back and forth, unblinkingly wide from shit-your-pants terror.  “As long as we stick together, she won’t be able to—”

The lights cut off. 

Hemsworth manages a dread-weighted, “Oh SHI—” before it turns into a frenzied scream.  The speakers thunder with deafening metal, assaulting my hearing and equilibrium.  Lights begin strobing in sharp red flashes, flooding my sight with hellish imagery. 

Martha’s jumped onto Hemsworth’s back.  After she gulps down his ear and gouges his eyes, she somersaults away, landing neatly in front of him.  She grabs both wrists, rips off his arms, and savagely beats him with the bloody-ass stumps. 

“Game over, man, GAME OVER!” Pitt hollers.  As he takes off running, he pulls a dozen yards ahead of Ryan.

Martha snarls like an angry velociraptor, then chucks Hemsworth’s arm with ungodly strength.  Gosling stumbles at the exact wrong moment—as he bends over to push off the floor, the fisted arm rockets into his anus, explodes out through his gaping mouth, then connects with the back of Brad Pitt’s skull, burying itself to the wrist in his pulverized cranium.  The star falls on his face like he’s been dropped by a sniper. 

Fuck it.  No options left.  I open my eReader to a Kent Wayne novel, activating its mind-bending reality distortion powers.  Magic flash. 

The windows blow inward, followed by gun-toting commandos.  Their fire gives way to panicked full-auto, accompanied by phrases like, “Where is she?  WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE???” and “She tore Miller’s guts from his goddamn—AAAAHHH!!!” and “She’s in the walls!  SHE’S IN THE MOTHERFUCKING—”

I take off running, fleeing the massacre as fast as I can.  On the way out, I grab a Ming vase as compensation for my services.  It’s an empty victory—I blubber and sob as jets scream by, dropping bombs onto Martha’s compound.  When I chance a look back, I glimpse her bicycling her arms and legs, holding a shoulder-fired missile launcher, flying through the air in an epic flame jump from an 80s action movie.  As soon as she lands, she fires at a trio of jets, marking the sky with a contrail of smoke before the one in the center explodes into a glaring fireball.

Yes, I got paid for my services.  But at what cost?

AT.  WHAT.  COST????

*cue the up-tempo part of the theme from Requiem for a Dream*

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