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Thick strands of what look like wire covered the door, glistening in the light that seeped through the mud-caked ground level windows. Seann Willam Scott eyed them warily, keeping his distance. He remembered with a mixture of embarrassment and disgust what happened the last time he touched them. Three and a half hours of fruitless struggle and he had remained trapped, howling in pain as the viscous fluid in which they were covered slowly ate through first his clothing then the soft tissues beneath. He would not repeat his mistake.

The deadbolt turned and the door swung inward. He recoiled involuntarily. A monstrous malformation, all thick black hairs and mandibles between dual rows of jet black eyes wearing a simple white polo shirt and khaki shorts strode forward, touching the filaments with the cruel, malicious hooks of its hands. The web fell away in tatters, hissing as it dissolved.

There was a sickening crunch and a sound like leather being scraped with a knife. He watched the eyes and hairs recede, the bones shifting beneath blossoming patches of skin, as the camera-friendly face of Matthew Fox emerged from the tumult. When his metamorphosis was complete he grinned broadly, extending a now-human hand in greeting.

“Seann. Sorry about the web. Can’t be too careful. Come on in. Have a Corona.”

Seann William Scott returned the handshake and the smile, silently berating himself for flinching at the sight of one his own kind. After all, what must it be like to watch his own segmented torso and thick plating snap and warp, to listen to the rasp of his antennae as they withered and changed, becoming pathetic, frail strands of mammalian hair?

“Hi, Matt. I’d love a Corona. Those things are delicious.”

They laughed in unison and entered the safehouse. Seann knew that if one were to walk through its hallways and dank corridors, past the small piles of cracked bones and the oozing future meals dangling in their cocoons of webbing from the ceiling, through the media room with its 52” flat screen currently showing I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and through a service entrance on the north wall of the sub basement, one would find themselves in a makeshift tunnel, which after several miles would lead them to the basement of Matthew Fox’s house in Sonoma Valley. This abandoned water treatment facility, owned by a development company owned by Keanu Reeves, was one of many in the area. A gathering place. Other tunnels lead to other places, other large homes or small mansions, where the harbingers of Darkness did their entertaining and cocaine, hidden inside soft, weak skin and well-tailored clothing.

“What do you have to report?” asked Fox, pressing a thin wedge of lime into the mouth of a bottle and handing it to him.

“He’s here,” Seann replied, “With her. They’re in Portland.”

Matthew fox spat and a thick coil of webbing struck the floor.

“He must be stopped. Events are progressing beyond our control. Even with Ledger out of the picture their forces are growing stronger, their projects being greenlit more and more. And the humans … the humans are-“

“Waking up,” Scott concluded, “Opening themselves to brighter possibilities.”

“Nolan has begun principal filming on his vanity project.”

“Inception?”

“They’re gathering their forces. They think they can win.”

Seann William Scott’s hand clenched in anger, shattering the bottle. Thick rivulets of blood joined the Corona as it foamed on the cold stone floor. He spred his fingers and the two men peered at the shards of glass protruding from his skin. He closed his eyes. The bones of his face cracked and shifted. The skin of his back grew taut, then split along unseen seams, hardening as it went. The glass shards slowly emerged as his hand shrank and grew dark. Beside him, vicious black mandibles stretched and distorted Matthew Fox’s mouth, forcing their way out. In moments they were eye to row of eyes, a spider the size of a bear cub and a slick black cockroach only slightly smaller.

“Are you hungry?” the spider chittered, craning its head toward the ceiling.

Seann Williams Scott twisted his thorax in the direction of one of Fox’s tightly wrapped meals. From between two strands of the shimmering wire a young woman’s hand dangled, limp, oozing where the webbing met her wrist. A class ring glinted in the glow from the TV.

Matthew Fox clambered up with a soft rustling sound, efficiently severing the strands that secured her to the ceiling. She struck the ground with a wet crunch and the webbing fell away and began to dissolve.

“I’m starving,” Scott replied, and tore the hand from the corpse in one deft motion.

On the television, Lance Bass, in his cameo role, began to croon.

“I love this movie,” Matthew Fox whispered around a length of femur.

“Me too,” Seann Scott replied, and continued to feed.

Megan Fox lifted the grate covering the access shaft with ease, despite its weight. The barbed tips of her fingers found easy purchase in the small grid. Where her blood touched the metal it hissed and warped. One of her wings hung in tatters. The wound in her side pulsed with heat. She had been hiding in the bell tower of Holy Name Cathedral for hours, waiting for the street to clear. The wood and brick of the belfry were pitted and burnt from her slow bleeding. The clergymen wouldn’t know what to make of it in the morning. Her fur was matted and glistening, her breathing short and sharp. Cradling her mangled appendage tight to her lacerated midsection she descended, dragging the grate behind her, yanking it forcefully into place. The noise would likely wake the nearby homeless, hidden as she had been hidden, under benches and behind decorative foliage, but she was unconcerned. Nobody really listens to the mud-caked human flotsam of modern commerce, even when they’re being overly polite and begging for a little charity. At 4am, raving of monsters, they’d be locked up for the night, cursed as drunkards, their words completely unheeded. Face first she descended, using the long, curved nails of her feet and the cruel hooks of her teeth to cling tight to the rungs. Into the tunnels. Into the darkness, where she wouldn’t be disturbed. A late night red line train rumbled past, shaking loose dust and small insects. Her long tongue uncoiled as something bigger moved in the darkness. A large mouse or a small rat, it made no difference. She stretched her neck forward and down, snatching the creature into her glistening maw with a speed that would have been shocking had anyone been around to witness it. Splaying the long fingers of her good arm out across the cold stone floor of the tunnel she maneuvered her bulk carefully off the ladder and into the subterranean gloom. The membrane of her wing collected a slick, wet film. The tail lights of the train winked at her from a distance, speeding south. Her wounds were fire, each breath a struggle. LaBeouf was stronger than any of them had anticipated. Faster. More lethal. She would not be returning to the Transformers franchise for the third film. It would take her months if not years to regain her strength. Josh Duhamel had fared better, but not well enough. They had been so confident. So assured in their purpose. What safer place for the harbingers of darkness to strike than on the set of a Michael Bay film! Her ravaged wing snagged briefly on a loose stone and she let out a terse scream, just at the upper threshold of human hearing. In the blackness rodents scurried in panic.

A few miles south there was a small access door, abandoned and partially hidden by piles of ancient sawhorses and warning cones. It led to a smaller, winding tunnel and a rusted, useless overflow pump, forgotten since the ‘60s. Behind that decaying machine was a thick stone door and behind that door was one of the lower chambers of the building John Travolta maintained on Chicago’s south side, a meeting place of sorts for their kind. A safe house. Underfoot the filthy stone walkway bubbled and warped. She would have to change forms before too long. Already her trail was evident. The thought of transformation grieved her. She was so tired. Maintaining her human appearance had never been particularly easy. Photos of her half finished thumbs had circulated, necessitating a cover story about brachydactyly and earning her a thorough reprimand at the hands of Nicolas Cage. Thinking about it she shuddered in the dark and a low moan escaped her. Up ahead something moved. Something large. Her long, curved nostrils flared. Her black eyes swiveled in their sockets. Opening her throat she emitted a sound no others could hear. Interpreting the echoes she snapped her neck forward, then back, trying to pinpoint their source. From one of the small doorways that bridged the two sets of tracks a flashlight beam emerged and found her, illuminated her in all her comingled glory and disrepair. The serviceman’s screams reverberated through the tunnel and the flashlight clattered to the floor, its light dying suddenly as some internal spring or circuit gave out. She wanted to give chase but she was too weak, too wounded. Already she feared losing strength before reaching shelter. The man’s footsteps came to her in the dark, receding. She had to move quicker. Even if he reached the surface with relative ease and speed, who would he tell? Who would believe a man in the dead of night trying to describe something akin to a bat the size of a Shetland pony making its way through the subterranean network of transit tunnels under the streets of Chicago?

Nonetheless, she hurried. Where she could she snatched the long pink tails of the tunnels’ primary inhabitants and dropped them squealing into her open mouth. Little by little she made the transformation, the bones of her neck and face shifting and rearranging themselves, the cruel barbs of her feet becoming soft and pathetically human toenails. The wing that hung in ragged strips became a simple compound fracture on a too-thin forearm, and the fur between her ears nothing more than a slightly mussed tangle of long black hair, spilling down to cover her breasts.

Naked and shivering she traversed the last mile in silence as the Megan Fox the world recognized, for better or worse.

Cradling her broken arm she maneuvered over the sawhorses, down the collapsing length of tunnel, behind the rusted remains of the overflow pump, and used the heavy iron knocker to beat the cold, unforgiving stone of the door.

After an excruciating pause it swung inward. John Travolta stood bathed in torchlight, his skin alive with insects.

“I see you have failed,” he said through a mouthful of beetles.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, tears of shame and fear escaping her eyelids and making thin mascara trails on her already muddy cheeks.

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” he said, helping her to her feet. “At least you finished filming. I saw some of the rough cuts and that movie looks fucking great.”

Together, beneath the sleeping city, they both began to laugh.

Vin Diesel is driving his souped up 1998 Nissan Maxima SE east on Interstate 70 with the radio turned all the way up. On 103.7 Sugar Ray’s smash hit ‘Fly’ transitions into ‘Butterfly’ by Crazytown and a smile splits his face. His teeth are like a wall of needles. The nails of his fingers are thick and yellow, and sharp enough to split the soft leather that covers the shifter knob. Maintaining his human form is tiring. When he is alone these small amenities make him happy. He longs for the day he can walk the earth unburdened by his human skin. On the passenger seat sits a blade of greenish metal, its handle tipped with a tapering, curved spike. It is his favorite. Next to the knife is a portable DVD player and a box set of Michael Bay movies, the equivalent of a bible or holy text for his kind, proof of their ascension. He can be in Illinois by morning. He does not need sleep, only gasoline and something to eat.

In Colorado, under a sky the color of old bruises, to a symphony of thunder, he feeds on the attendant at Sunoco. Carefully wiping the blood from his lips, he returns the nozzle to the pump and starts the car. “Let’s get retarded!” the Black Eyed Peas shout from the speakers and his deep, inhuman chuckle fills the air. He checks his Blackberry again, and his laughter deepens. ‘HURRY’ is the entirety of John Travolta’s email, followed by a ;) emoticon.

He hits Reply To All and types ‘ON MY WAY.’

“Let’s get retarded in here!” he sings loudly, speeding toward Chicago.