by A. Anders
Along with those two, twelve other guys received roses. Kurt and I were two of the eleven guys left. I hoped Kurt would get the final one.
This show really wasn’t my scene. Sure, it had been interesting getting a peek behind the curtain of a TV show, but I didn’t want to be a part of this.
Kurt was the guy who deserved to be here. Hell, even if I got a rose, I was going to give it to him. He was the type of guy who deserved to find love. Me, on the other hand? Well, let’s just say that I deserved what I got.
“Ford. Would you consider spending the rest of your life with me?” Rose asked holding the final rose.
Well, damn if that wasn’t unexpected. I froze. I saw my pawn blink indicating for me to step forward. I didn’t. After a minute, the other guys turned to me. Confused, Rose spoke up.
“Your name is Ford, right?” she asked, looking straight at me.
“Yeah.”
“Are you doin’ this?” she asked, giving me a sly smile.
“Can I ask a question?” I said to everyone’s surprise.
Everyone looked at each other because there was no one there to ask. As my pawn continued to blink, the silence grew.
“I guess,” Rose eventually conceded with a chuckle.
“Why me? Because there are other really cool guys here.”
Rose smiled, but her shoulders drooped as if she had been hurt. “Don’t you like me?”
“Ahh… yeah. But we didn’t talk.”
“Sure we did. At the dock.”
I could have called her out for repeating the exact same thing to everyone else, but I didn’t. Although she was trying to appear strong, her vulnerability reflected in her eyes.
I had embarrassed her. I hadn’t considered that possibility. It was nothing I ever wanted to do. She seemed like a cool person. I had to put an end to this little scene.
I slipped out of the back row and approached Rose. “Yes, I would love to consider spending the rest of my life with you.”
Rose flashed a brilliant smile. “You sure now? I don’t wanna pressure you or anything.”
I laughed. She was funny. “Yes. I’m sure.”
Rose wiped her brow with mock relief. “Phewww.” She looked back at the guys, getting a collective chuckle from the group.
I stepped back, feeling a little embarrassed but ultimately glad that I had decided to stay. It had helped to know that she actually wanted me here and that I wasn’t just one of the masses.
The downside of me staying was that Kurt couldn’t. Kurt deserved to be here much more than I did. Kurt was a real catch. How he could still be single was beyond me.
But Rose was the bachelorette. For whatever reason, she had chosen me over him. I wouldn’t have, though of course, I knew myself and she didn’t. Now that I had taken his spot, maybe I owned it to Kurt to give the game a chance.
The pawns quickly led us away after that. My pawn took me to a cabin on the far end of the right wing. The cabin was very bare inside. It had three beds and three dressers, along with my two roommates.
The uptight, dark-haired guy was an attorney named Adam, and the shaggy-haired scattered guy was an internet entrepreneur named Ian. Since I was horrible at names, I called them Adam the Attorney and Internet Ian.
I chatted with Internet Ian for a while and then remembered Kurt, the kindergarten teacher. I realized that I should have gotten his number. We lived within a short hyperloop of each other and could hang out when we got back home.
I left Pete, my pawn, and Internet Ian in the cabin as I rushed back to the pool. One of the great things about having no human supervision was that you could do whatever you wanted. So when I didn’t find Kurt there, I hurried down to the dock.
I found Kurt standing alone under the furthest dock lamp. I slowed when the squeak from the wet planks disturbed the silence. Kurt saw me and smiled.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked catching my breath.
“Don’t know. The pawns took us away one at a time. I was the last one. What are you doing here?”
“I thought I should grab your number. Maybe we could hit up a bar when we get back home. I’m not going to be here very long.”
“Yeah, sure. That’ll be cool. But, you know what? You should try to win this thing. You deserve it, man. You’re an awesome dude.”
Kurt was a great guy. He was a horrible judge of character, but still, a great guy.
“Thanks, man.” I paused and stared at Kurt for a second. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why do you ask?” Kurt replied.
“Your eyes,” I explained. “They’re really red.”
“Are they?”
I wondered if Kurt was crying because that would not have been cool. But the thought quickly left me when Kurt coughed. “You okay, man?” I asked again.
This time, he didn’t answer. He fought to catch his breath. Coughing into his hand, he bent over.
I wasn’t sure what I should do. Did he need water? Should I pat his back?
Things progressed quickly after that. Kurt fell to his knees practically coughing up a lung. A chill rushed through my body. He was choking. But on what? Could he spit it out? He hadn’t been eating anything.
“Kurt!” I yelled, my heart racing. I didn’t panic. I never panicked. But I wasn’t sure what I could do, and I was losing him fast.
Kurt fell onto his side unable to breathe. I got down next to him and stuck my finger into his mouth. He had nothing in his throat and no gag reflex.
Withdrawing my hand, I watched helplessly as his fair skin turned a putrid red. I had never seen anything like it before. He was dying, and I had no idea why.
My thoughts spiraled. ‘What do I do?’
I raced through every option from my field manual. None of his symptoms fit. Out of time, I chose one. Before I could touch him, though, everything stopped. I was too late. Kurt was lying motionless, offering only a dead stare.
I flipped him onto his back and compressed his chest, one, two, three times, and then I filled him with my breath. I repeated this again and again. Had a minute gone by? Was it two?
However long it was, it hadn’t done any good. I stopped compressing his chest, and Kurt’s muscular frame released the familiar death rattle. I knew a dead body when I saw one. My friend was gone.
I sank onto my knees staring at him. What the hell had just happened? Kurt had died and I couldn’t do anything to save him. I had tried, right? I had done everything I could, hadn’t I?
My mind spiraled. How could this happen? I didn’t know, but I knew I needed help. I ran up the dock and followed the path back to the resort. A minute later, I was standing between the two rows of cabins.
“Help! Someone, I need some help,” I yelled unsure of what else I could say.
Half-dressed and startled, the guys poured out of their rooms.
“Kurt. He’s collapsed at the dock. I need help. I think he’s dead.”
Everyone followed me into the woods. What could any of them do now? It had been up to me, and I had failed.
When the trees gave way to the dock, I was filled with dread by what I saw. Continuing to the pool of light where I had left him, Kurt was gone.
“Where is he?” one of the guys behind me asked.
I looked around, confused. I tried to answer him, but suddenly my muscles wrenched from a jolt of doubt.
I did watch Kurt die, didn’t I? I mean, it wasn’t just in my head or some type of hallucination or something, was it? It wasn’t just some projection from my past or…
No! I decided.
He had been here. I had watched as he choked. I had heard his last breath rattle his lungs. I saw him die. And now he was gone.
What the hell was going on?
Chapter 2
“ K urt! His name was Kurt. I hung out with him all night. He was standing next to me during elimination.”
“You’re the guy that asked that question during the rose ceremony,” the guy with the mustache said.
&nbs
p; “Yeah. And Kurt was standing right next to me.”
I looked at all of their faces. They stared blankly back at me. Did they think that I was making it up?
“We’re on a TV show. You really think they would let someone die on a TV show?” mustache man asked.
“And don’t you think they would stop the show and tell us what happened if someone did?” the palest guy on the island added.
I paused and thought about it. I had agreed to participate in a game show. It was TV. Nothing was real. So, could everything I saw have been an act?
Kurt, though. I could not have met a more genuine guy. Was he just an actor?
But the death rattle? That sound as the last bit of oxygen leaves your lungs. You can’t fake that. No, I watched someone die.
But the pale dude had made a good point. This whole setup was just TV. If someone had died, the producers would probably stop the show or something. The police would probably want to investigate.
As sure as I was about what I saw, I had to be open to the possibility that I didn’t see it. Or maybe, and it hurt me to even consider this thought, but maybe Kurt was just a memory from long ago.
“Ah, I can see it in his face now. This is just some mind fuck,” the mustache man decided. “He’s just fuckin’ with us.”
“He had me going for a while there,” said Buck-Naked Billy, who was still naked.
“I guess the games are starting early?” the mustached man concluded before he and the group turned around and walked away.
Well, damn. How do you like that? I didn’t know what to say. Had I spent the night talking to a kindergarten teacher named Kurt? I’m absolutely sure I did. You know who could back me up on that? Brad the bartender.
I scanned the men. Brad wasn’t in the group. That was a little worrisome. Could I have made up Brad as well? No. Clearly Buck-Naked Billy was real, and someone had gotten him drunk. So the question was, where was Brad? Everyone else was here.
I spent a few more minutes looking around the dock and found nothing. Everything about this situation was disturbing.
I took my time going back to my room. Adam the Attorney was in bed when I got there, but Ian was still up.
“So you saw Kurt die, huh?” he asked casually.
“Do you remember, Kurt?” I asked hopefully.
“Nah. There were a lot of people here. But why would you make that up, right?”
I remembered seeing Ian at the cocktail party before the elimination. He had hung back like Kurt and I had, but he had talked to a few more of the guys. I didn’t remember seeing him talk to Rose, though.
The next morning Ian woke me up, encouraging me to shower before the hordes got there. I was still tired, but I took his advice. My luggage had arrived in the three hours that I had slept, so I gathered my toiletries and walked to the communal bathroom.
Although I thought the place was resort-like when I arrived, I realized that we weren’t staying at an actual resort. One thing that gave it away was that the rooms didn’t have their own bathrooms. Another thing was the buffet-style meals. This place was more of a fancy campsite.
Though I thought I had gotten up early, half of the guys were already at breakfast when I got there. If they didn’t know who I was after my rose ceremony question, everyone knew after the thing with Kurt. So once Ian found us a table, we had the pleasure of enjoying the table by ourselves. Small talk ensued.
Ian made apps for a living. You know when you walk by a store and your contact lenses suddenly project an advertisement in front of you? Ian created that app. He’s the one you can thank for that.
As I watched him eat his scrambled eggs, I did what anyone would have done; I fantasized about his death. I mostly thought about him choking in a commercial for the eggs, but I ended my fantasy when I remembered that he was the only one talking to me.
Honestly, besides that one horrible life decision, he wasn’t that bad of a guy. He was a friendly salesman type. Fortunately, he had seen more of these types of game shows than I had, so he began giving me the lay of the land.
He hadn’t gotten far when our fleet of pawns entered the wall-less commissary. Each of them found their designated person and herded us into a circle. Seeing Pete coming for me, I scooped the last of my eggs into my mouth and joined the group.
We all stood there for a moment wondering what was going on. Looking around, I realized that Brad was missing. When he scurried in to join us, his pawn opened a side slot displaying a blue three-by-five card. Brad retrieved it and theatrically read it aloud.
“The one who bears the ring is the one who will win my heart. Brad, Ford, Freddy, Ian and Victor, you all will be the first to join me on a group date.”
“What’s a group date?” I asked Ian as the pawns lead us back to our room to get ready.
“Usually, they’re some type of challenge.”
“So, it’s an opportunity to win the heart of the princess, that sort of thing?”
“Something like that.”
“And the thing about bearing the ring?”
“It’s like a clue to what we’ll be doing.”
Okay, I was getting it. The show was like a modern version of a medieval contest to win the lady’s heart. If you won the challenge, you stayed. If you lost, you got eliminated. That seemed simple enough—all I had to do was bare the ring.
Bearing the ring turned out to be a little more difficult than I had imagined. The ring was a forty-by-forty-foot octagon. Inside was a live grizzly bear.
“Hello, my fair bear baiters,” Rose began from a wooden platform overlooking the octagon. She was dressed in a nineteenth-century English maiden costume and spoke with an accent that switched between English, Irish, and pirate. She was not good at accents.
“Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to retrieve my mother’s ring for me. It has been placed around this gentle bear’s neck to ensure that I could only be won by the bravest among you.”
As if on cue, the bear stood on its back paws and roared. That monster had to be eight feet tall. Its claws were three inches each, and the thousand pound beast was foaming at the mouth like a rabid raccoon.
Looking closer, I noticed a bit of twine around its neck with a gold wedding ring hanging from it. So, of course, my first thought was: Are these people crazy?
“But,” she continued. “Whatever you do, don’t hurt the bear. For it is my favorite pet. And to lose the teddy bear I grew up with would break my heart and turn me sour against the man who kills it. Who shall take up this challenge and retrieve my mother’s ring?”
Yeah, they were nuts. I was out. I did not want to take on this challenge. No way was I putting myself in a cage with a wild bear for some crazy woman’s amusement.
“I do,” Brad said without hesitation.
“I do,” both Freddy and Victor said in succession.
Rose looked at Ian and me. When we didn’t reply, she continued. “Then prepare,” she said gleefully.
Apparently, only Ian and I had sense enough to not get into a cage with a thousand-pound killing machine. Wondering who would be that crazy, I examined each of the guys who agreed to it.
Freddy was the youngest of us at about twenty-three years old. He was on the shorter side and was sculpted like a bodybuilder. His constant smile and hairless face made him look naïve but friendly. I would describe him as a classic lovable dumb guy.
Victor was leaner with more of a normal-guy look. He wasn’t bulked up or overly good-looking. He had dark, wavy hair and a three-day stubble, an unhappy waiter type.
And Brad was… I had no clue what Brad was. I guess I would describe him as the guy in a toothpaste commercial.
In preparation, the pawns gave their three men a seven-inch hunting knife each. Since they weren’t supposed to kill the bear, I assumed it was to dig their own grave. And while a pawn within the cage distracted the bear with electric shocks, the guys unlatched the cage and entered.
Once the electric shocks stopped, the bear tu
rned to the men with a blood-thirsty look in its eyes. I think it was then that they realized that they could die. Perhaps until then, they had assumed it was a bear trained to foam at the mouth. They soon realized, though, that it was a predator looking for lunch, and they scattered.
A chill ripped through my body when I realized what would happen next. I was about to see three men get eaten alive by a bear. I didn’t want to feel sorry for these idiots. These Darwinian rejects had put themselves in this situation. Still, they were human beings.
Victor and Brad were wiry. Freddy was not. Within seconds, the bear had caught him with a swipe. The force tossed Freddy’s body. The beast then ran to the fallen man and batted him between his claws like a tennis ball.
It was horrible. How could anyone just stand around watching this?
“Hey! I’m over here,” Brad screamed to my surprise.
Was he being heroic? Was Brad trying to rescue Freddy?
If he was, it worked. The bear released the limp body, looked at Brad, and then charged Victor. Why Victor? Who knows?
Victor also had no chance. It was gruesome. The vicious animal mauled him. Victor, blinded by fur, slashed the air frantically. His swipes grew weaker.
I watched, not believing what I was seeing. Why wasn’t the bear’s shock pawn doing anything to stop it? Why weren’t the producers? Had the entire world gone mad?
I next thought of Rose perched above like a Roman emperor. I wondered if she was pleased with her horror show and turned to her. To my relief, she wasn’t. She looked more tortured by it than I was.
Resolved, I looked back at the spectacle in front of me. I didn’t know the rules of this challenge or this show. Frankly, I didn’t care. However, the last thing I was going to do was sit back and watch as someone was killed as entertainment. I would rather die than do that.
I left Ian’s side at a full sprint. Pete had placed us on the far side of the gate, but it didn’t matter. I launched myself onto the twelve-foot chain-link fence and scaled it in no time.
Balancing at the top, my heart raced. A voice in my head was screaming at me, telling me I was insane. It succumbed to the blood-curdling screams from the men below. This wasn’t a time for sanity.