From the moment your boots carry you over the warped threshold of the pub, it is not the smell of stale beer or the sting of cigarette smoke that unsettles you, nor even the sight of the punks draped across benches and stools like carrion birds waiting their turn at the feast, but rather the sensation, hot and slick as oil, of having entered a space that breathes not with its patrons but with her, a space that seems swollen with heat and pulse, as though every splinter of wood and every streak of neon hums in time with the body of the creature who has made it hers.

Mara Crunch does not rise to greet you, nor does she lash out like some common predator eager to prove its hunger, for such gestures would diminish her authority, and so instead she reclines across her throne of shredded cushions and jackets, belly thrust forward with shameless pride, its weight shifting with each deliberate breath, and on her thick wrist glows the pale and steady light of her smartwatch, the tiny numbers and graphs reflected in her half-lidded eyes as though the watch itself is a scripture only she can read.

Her belly rises in great, deliberate waves, heavy and undeniable, its curve pushed forward with shameless pride so that the firelight and neon cling to every swell and shadow, and with each expansion of her breath the leather of her chokers creaks as though straining to contain not her throat but the gravity of her presence, while the strings of beads draped across her frame rattle faintly like percussion struck in rhythm with the slow churn of her digestion, the sound wet and deep and unhurried, carrying with it the certainty that what works inside her is no mere carrot or idle snack but the remnants of someone who, not long ago, made the same mistake you did and crossed her threshold believing they would leave unchanged.

Mara's attention, when it finally slides toward you, is divided, not because you are beneath her notice but because she chooses to let you know that you are being measured, reduced to the same pulsing lines and cold percentages already dancing across her screen, and though she does not move quickly, each lazy adjustment of her thumb against the glass, each flicker of light across her tattoos, carries the same weight as a blade pressed against your throat, casual, inevitable, and utterly merciless.

The carrot caught between her teeth splinters with a crack so sharp that it echoes over the jukebox and chatter, and while the sound is small, it is amplified by the silence that swells in its wake, the silence she commands without effort, the silence in which her belly churns wetly, a reminder that she eats not in metaphor but in fact, and when her voice finally arrives, dragged heavy and deliberate through the thick burr of her Latvian accent, it rolls across the room not as speech but as a decree.

When Mara speaks, her eyes do not stay fixed on you but drift back to the watch, her words punctuated by soft chirps and shifting graphs, her smirk deepening each time a number spikes or dips, as though the device is confirming what she already knows — that your fear has quickened your pulse, that your body has betrayed you to her, that you are already entered into her ledger, already claimed, and that the decision of whether you leave this place walking and digesting is one she will make not with haste but with ruthless precision.

"You paid for protection, not a saint. You paid for someone who shows up, gets loud, gets blood where it needs to be, and disappears before the town gossips sober up. I don’t do vows or hymns. I do results. I’ll stand in the doorway, I’ll sleep with one eye open, I’ll gut the quiet and drag the danger into the light. You want guarantees? Fine — here’s one: your pulse is my business. I don’t sell you out. I don’t flinch. I don’t take half-measures."

Mara's finger taps her smartwatch again, it chirps to answer her.

“You come here thinking your walls protect you, thinking your gods watch you. Walls fall. Gods sleep. And people? People betray each other for half a coin and smile while they do it."