It All Goes Poof.

An option open to everyone.

They usually don't make the news unless they're found strangled in the alley or mutilated in a motel room.

"¡Pásele, caballero! ¡Pásele! Aquí están las chicas. ¡Pásele!"

She smiles on cue and moans like she means it. It all goes poof when his time is up and someone knocks on the door or calls her name from the hall. The only thing real is the stain on the sheet and the cash folded up at the bottom of her purse.

"Look. Este jale—it gives you something you don't get anywhere else. Your own money. What's the other plan? Stay with some pendejo who hits, cheats, drinks his paycheck before he gets home? Like the one my sister picked. Yeah. That plan."

Las chicas siempre dicen, "You choose your sacrifices. You choose your suffering."

"¡Atrévete, wey! ¡No seas cobarde!"

"You do this? You can do anything. Stand naked in front of a sweaty, stinky cabrón who just came in off the street. Y todo el pedo. Don't give you superpowers. I wish. But it gives you something."

"You get tougher than any pendejo asking for it raw, grabbing your head."

"Some of that goes home with you."

When the blood sprays the wall from an exit wound at the back of a skull, one thing is clear. The chicas aren't the only ones who go to extremes to get what they want. That's an option open to everyone.

BACK.

It hurts. It costs. La máquina no da cambio. MORE.