The Scourge of Destiny, part 1

I was in the break room playing a quick hand of flaschenteufel with Piker Gabble, Cole Stangle and Zbigniew Chanyeski when a sudden dread cacophony erupted from the office of Darren Truett. It sounded, to my ears, like a firecracker fight, or the flaying of an ox, and the four of us rushed to his door, where a gasp escaped us in unison.

Darren was crouched on the floor on all fours, head down between his shoulders, and over him stood Methéolina Sabrine, bare-breasted and wielding a belt. Methé was a blue-eyed starlet who by now had been auditioned so long and so thoroughly by Darren that she threatened to become something like a girlfriend, but that all seemed to have gone by the boards today. Naked to the waist, wearing only a purple skirt, wild yellow hair whirling around her in an angry halo, she towered over the producer like a bullfighter, the studded belt raised over her head; then, with a laser's snap she cracked the whip down on Darren's ears and ribs, the leather reports punctuated by the victim's shrieks and pleadings.

The four of us stared in astonishment at the beating in progress until finally the valkyrie spotted us gaping—me unfortunately in the lead—and her eyes narrowed into knives. The girl nurtured for me no particular affection, as she thought my screenplay asinine in the worst degree and so doomed to lead her producer/lover, and by extension herself, into a maelstrom of failure and stupidity. Before I could even bleat "I love you" to the apparition the belt cracked at me like a cobra and I was hit in the face by what felt like a savage velvet punch; one of my favorite teeth flew out of my head, sailed across the office in a graceful arc and was sunk into a shot glass of Irish whiskey that sat waiting on the desk. "Goaaaaal!" screamed Zbigniew as I crashed to the floor. The female terror lashed again at Darren and I, over and over; "darling! dearest! angel!" someone pleaded as we crawled beneath the desk; then the girl grabbed her shirt and shoes and started clearing a path through the doorway with the belt. We could hear the screams of our comrades and the gunshot lashes of the whip fading down the corridors.

Thunderstruck, Darren and I huddled beneath the desk, he wiping the blood from his face with his shirttails and I gingerly exploring the gap left by the missing tooth.

"Do you think we're safe?" whispered Darren. "Listen, she might come back. There's a gun on top of that bookcase, go run and get it."

"No way!" I hissed. "I'm not going back out there! You go get it!"

"Coward!" spat Darren. He fished around in his pockets. "Look, I have a half a bag of Pop Rocks. Maybe we can throw them in her face and stun her."

"Wow, they still make Pop Rocks?"

Just then a pair of threadbare khaki pants appeared, followed by deep amber sunglasses framed by two colossal sideburns. "Uh...what are you boys doing down there?"

"Good Lord, man! Are you crazy?" gulped Darren. "Get out of sight!" He reached up and hauled the hapless stranger under the desk. Between the three of us things were somewhat snug. I leaned across the newcomer to berate the producer.

"Darren, you idiot, this is Trent Tonhoe!"

"Who?"

"Trent Tonhoe."

Darren peered deep into the baffled director's face, and then, suddenly, dawn broke across his features. For once some flicker of intelligence seemed to illuminate his visage. Ardently he grasped the man by the shoulders, his eyes wide, his hair all but standing on end.

"Trent baby, quick, run over and get the gun from the top of that bookcase."