by Matt Shaw
N O W
D A Y T E N
Kate was in the kitchen. She was staring down at the sink which was filling with soapy hot water ready for her to do the washing up. Ten days in the house and the first time she had volunteered to wash up - an act, on this occasion, used to try and distract herself from her thoughts and current situation. An act, on this occasion, which wasn’t working.
Chris approached her and turned the taps off when he realised she wasn’t going to and that the water was close to over-flowing. “You okay?” he asked.
She smiled at him. The smile didn’t hide the truth, though. She wasn’t okay. Her thoughts firmly fixed on the boy she had left behind. The wasted wish of wanting to turn the clock back and take Michael’s first refusal at looking after their son as the end of the conversation. She would be at home now, still struggling, but she’d be alive. She’d be able to watch her son grow up and live his life. Now she wasn’t even sure she would see him again. Not unless she killed a house full of people.
“How did we end up here?” she asked.
Chris shrugged, “Desperation? A longing for adventure? I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand how a show like this can even exist. What television channel would even air it? It’s ridiculous.”
“You really think it’s part of a television show?” Chris pointed out. “It’s just a sick game. This isn’t going on television. No way. It’s just a sick game devised by people who have the money to carry it through.”
“You think there’s even a prize for the last person standing?” she asked. She already knew the answer, she just wanted him to say it.
He shook his head solemnly. “I don’t think anyone will be left standing.”
Kate changed the subject before she got even more upset, “How’s Jack and Jordy?”
Chris shrugged again. “I don’t know. Not good. I’m not sure what The Controller called Jack into The Control Room for but - whatever it was - I’m pretty sure it was bad. And Jordy hasn’t been herself since coming down from the other room. But can you blame either of them?”
“No.” Kate sighed, “Jesus. What’s next? I just wish they’d fucking get it over with.”
A female scream from the bathroom made both Chris and Kate jump.
“That sounds like Karen…”
In a couple of seconds all the housemates rushed over to investigate. Karen came running out of the room, her hands covering her face and visibly shaking. Paul stopped her and cradled her in his arms as Stuart disappeared into the bathroom.
Kate and Chris ran over to the door. Chris opened it so they could both see what had caused Karen’s reaction. Fiona was hanging from the rafters, her dressing gown cord wrapped round her neck, her head drooping down - eyes fixed on the floor.
“Here,” Paul gently pushed Karen over to Chris who took her in his arms, “look after her.” He hurried into the bathroom and helped Stuart get Fiona down from where she was hanging.
Chris, Kate - and by now - the other housemates watched from the doorway as Stuart started performing mouth to mouth.
“I just went in there and she was there,” Karen was crying. Chris kept her tight against his own body, offering comfort as best as he could given the circumstances. “She was just hanging there…”
“It’s okay,” Chris tried to reassure her despite it being the stupidest thing he could have said. Nothing was going to be okay. Nothing. This was further proof of that. Another dead body. Four dead, eight left.
“She’s dead. You’re wasting your time,” Paul stopped Stuart from performing the CPR. They both knelt there a moment, next to her body, unsure of what to say. Chris pulled Karen away from the doorway to hide her from the body. She didn’t struggle. The others - Jack, Jordy, Georgia and Kate - followed; all seemingly sick of seeing death.
“All Housemates are to go to the bedroom immediately,” The Controller’s voice barked through the intercom system. The order didn’t need repeating. They knew the procedure now; someone dies, they go to the room so the production crew could clean away the corpse.
Paul and Stuart were the last into the bedroom. The door clicked shut behind them as the light switched from green to red.
“Did she seem strange to anyone?” Kate asked.
“Is anyone themselves at the moment? I know I’m not,” Georgia said.
“I can’t believe she hung herself,” Kate continued, more or less ignoring what Georgia said.
“Look on the plus side - one less person one of us has to murder,” Paul said.
“What did you just say?” Chris spat at him. He was still holding onto Karen who was still crying. It didn’t matter how many times they’d seen a dead body - it never got any easier.
“Just what everyone else was thinking,” Paul retorted.
“Just shut your fucking mouth,” Jack hissed.
“Fuck you!”
“Please don’t start this again!” Kate moaned. “We have enough to deal with without everyone going for each other.
“She was upset when I came downstairs,” Jordy said. “She was worried that she might have been put in the same position I was…”
Jack shifted uncomfortably where he was standing.
“Don’t think she would have had anything to worry about. I wouldn’t have touched her with someone else’s,” Paul muttered under his breath - suggesting she wasn’t good enough to lie with.
“Are you purposefully trying to wind us up? Are you playing some sort of fucking game?” Jack snapped. He clenched his right hand into a tight little ball as though wanting to hit Paul in the face.
“Just ignore him,” Chris stepped between the two of them.
“Yeah - it’s not like you’re going to do anything about it anyway.”
Jack pushed Chris out of the way and faced up to Paul, “Fuck you!” With no warning he swung a punch at Paul who easily side stepped it whilst laughing at his efforts. Using Jack’s own weight against him, he gave him a shove - toppling him to the floor in a crumpled heap.
“Stop it!” Karen shouted, to everyone’s surprise she started hitting Paul. Paul responded by putting her in a vice-like grip until she had calmed down.
“Calm it!” he shouted at her. She struggled for a while before she gave up. As soon as she did, Paul released his grip. She pulled away. “Considering no one wants to play the games we’re expected to play,” he said with a calmer tone, “you should all be thankful she took her own life. One less person to worry about.”
“You’re so cold,” Kate muttered. She was watching Paul. He had changed so much since coming into the house. The nice warm-hearted father figure had been replaced with someone a lot more hostile, someone a lot more dangerous and it wasn’t just Kate who’d spotted it.
“It’s called survival,” Paul replied. They held eye contact for a while before Kate broke off her gaze.
B E F O R E
Fiona was sitting on a sofa in her comfortable looking home. The living room, to be precise. A large sofa, an armchair, coffee table and sensibly sized television. Nothing out of the ordinary. She was going through pages and pages of paperwork; a smile on her face as she read what was listed. A man walked into the room and sat opposite her; her husband, Pete. He sat there a while waiting to see if she was going to acknowledge him but she didn’t say a word. It was always the same when she had stuff to go through; she got completely absorbed in it so that there was no one else in her world.
He coughed, “Is it good?” he asked. Fiona didn’t look up. She had a shocked expression on her face as she nervously turned the paper over. Pete raised his voice slightly to try and get her attention, “Honey?”
She looked up, “Sorry… What is it?”
“Just wondered if it was any good? You’ve been going through it for hours,” he said. “I wondered if I was going to see my wife tonight at all.”
“Sorry I lost track of time.” She put the paperwork down on the coffee table. “What did you want to do?”
; He hesitated a moment before leaning forward. He put his hand on the paperwork, “Can I?”
Fiona didn’t look sure, “I’m not supposed to show anyone.”
“Come on, I’m your husband, who am I going to tell?” he asked.
“Okay, fine, but you can’t say a word.”
“I won’t.” He lifted the paperwork and started to read it. Within a couple of paragraphs he was frowning. He flipped the page and his eyes went wide, “Jesus - what the hell is this?”
“Rent.”
N O W
D A Y E L E V E N
The house once again awoke to a subdued atmosphere. Paul was sitting in the garden by himself whilst the other housemates were congregating in the living area. They kept looking out of the window towards Paul. Conversations were about how much he had changed in the house and his attitude towards Fiona’s death - a conversation lead by Jack.
“You realise it’s getting close to Friday again? I think we need to watch him - and I mean watch him closely. He’s cracking up,” Jack was saying.
“Aren’t we all?” Georgia asked. She nodded towards Karen who was staring out of the window at Paul. Her complexion hadn’t gone back to its proper colour since she had seen Fiona hanging by her neck and her eyes were red raw from where she’d spent a restless night crying.
“What he was saying yesterday, I honestly think he might try something on Friday. Not just Friday - I think he might try and win,” said Jack.
“I think he’s right,” Chris agreed, “he was just sitting up in his bed last night - after the lights went out. Just sitting up and - I guess - watching the rest of us. Made me nervous.”
“So what are we supposed to do about it?” Jordy drove the conversation forward.
“It’s what he said about Philip all over again - kill be or killed,” Jack continued. He didn’t say anything else, he waited to see the reaction from his statement. This was a popularity contest and - before the killings started - Jack would have put good money on Paul being able to walk away with the prize but not anymore, not since the killings. He only hoped the others thought the same.
“But where do we go from there?” Stuart asked. He wasn’t disagreeing what with Jack was saying but he did raise a valid point. He continued, “He did what he thought was right at the time. Had he not done so - Philip might have killed one of us. But now we’re turning on him because we know he has it in him to kill someone. Won’t that make us as bad as he is?”
“It’s called survival,” Jack argued.
“Which is exactly what Paul called it back when he shot Philip - and then again when we spoke about what happened to Fiona.”
There was silence in the room as Stuart’s words sunk in.
“What’s he doing?” Kate asked.
Paul was looking directly into the room. He waited for the rest of the group to look at him. Once he had their undivided attention he raised his hand and gave them a little wave with a smile on his face.
Stuart turned back to Jack, “And who is going to kill him, if that’s what everyone agrees, are you going to do it seeing as it’s your idea or you going to expect someone else to do your dirty work?”
“My dirty work? It’s not my dirty work. It’s for the good of all of us.”
“You sound like him,” Stuart pointed out.
“I’m not doing this for the money,” Jack argued.
“Neither was he,” Stuart said.
“This is bullshit,” Chris muttered, “I don’t even need the money. I’m not here for that. I’m here for the experience. That’s what I wanted. The experience.” He started to laugh as he turned to the rest of the group, “I wanted this. This.”
Jack hadn’t taken his eyes off Stuart. His words had annoyed him; comparing him to Paul. He was nothing like Paul. At least, in his head, he was nothing like him. To the rest of the group, it was easy to see the resemblance between the two. Other than their age - right from day one they had always been similar, which is why they’d managed to strike such an early bond before the first killing destroyed it. “So what do you suggest we all do come Friday’s elimination then? It’s obvious they won’t let us get away with not having someone eliminated so - yeah - who do you think we should eliminate? Go for one of the weaker of the group? Eliminate one of them?”
Stuart didn’t know what to say.
“Maybe every week you’d have us draw straws? The person with the shortest straw gets eliminated? Is that fair? Or maybe you’d have us all state our case for why we deserve the one hundred thousand pounds more than the others? Eliminate in the order of those who deserve it the least?”
“I have a son,” Kate said. “That’s why I am here…”
Jack turned to Chris, “You don’t need the money. You said it yourself. So - sorry - you’re dead on Friday. Don’t blame me, not my fault. All down to him,” he pointed to Stuart.
“Maybe we should play the game out the way it is supposed to be played out?” Paul was standing in the doorway staring at the group; a crazed look in his eyes. “People are clearly not prepared to kill for the money but maybe it’ll be a different story if people are killing for their own lives? Fuck it - why wait until Friday? We could just all grab a knife from the kitchen and just got for it right now…”
“You really think they’re going to let anyone leave this house? And even if they do - you really think they’re going to reward them with money? They’re going to kill us all. We were talking about it the other day - it’s just the games of a sick fuck curious to see what would happen in these circumstances. Nothing more and nothing less,” Chris said. There was an anger in his voice - driven by Jack’s suggestion that he should be eliminated on Friday.
“And for the record,” Paul continued ignoring him completely, “I’m pretty sure it is against the rules to talk about eliminations. You want to be careful, Jack, or you’re going to get the house punished again. Good way to make enemies,” he finished.
B E F O R E
Jack was sitting in front of the camera in the make-shift Control Room. The black sheet behind the camera hiding the people interviewing him just as had been the case with Kate when she reached this stage of the audition process.
“Do you think you’ll make friends in the house?” the interviewer asked; the same man who had been asking Kate her questions.
“I think so,” said Jack. “I’m pretty easy to live with. It’s a fair assumption that not everyone will get on in the house but it’s pretty unlikely that they’ll all turn against me.” He laughed. “That being said, though, if people are quick to start a fight with me then I’m not the sort to forgive and forget very easily. I tend to hold grudges quite easily. I’ve been told it’s a serious flaw in my character but I like to think it keeps me protected from assholes.” He grabbed his mouth, “Sorry, can I say that?” he asked.
“Jack, at this stage The Controller doesn’t mind foul language,” the interviewer said.
Jack laughed again, “Well I’ll try not to,” he said.
“If there was to be conflict how would you resolve it?” the interviewer asked.
N O W
D A Y E L E V E N
“Kill him,” said Jack.
He was sitting in the bedroom with Chris. The two of them had gone in there to get away from the rest of the house for a little peace and quiet and the conversation had soon turned to who they’d kill and in which order. The first person he decided to kill being Paul.
“That was the easy one,” Chris replied. “But who would you get rid of next?” he asked. “And what would your reasons be?”
“I think I’d kill Stuart next,” said Jack.
“Yeah, I’m not sure about him.”
“The guy is an asshole. You hear what he was saying earlier?”
“Who next?”
“Jordy.”
“Jordy? After you saved her?”
“They called me into The Control Room. You know we did those medicals before we came in? She is HIV positive. They
made me fuck her. You realise I might have it now too?”
“Fuck. And you didn’t kill her?”
“No sense worrying about it. Not like I’m going to get out of here, is it? But - knowing she has that - makes little sense to let her out of the house to carry on living. Sure there is medication to prolong her life but - even so - she’s a time-bomb. If I have it, so am I.”
“I would have throttled her to death as soon as I found out…”
“She didn’t ask for what happened to her. It’s not Jordy who needs to be punished. It’s the fucks who put me in the same room as her for that to happen.”
Chris shuddered at the thought of it and changed the subject back to what they had been discussing, “Okay. That leaves Georgia, Karen, Kate, me and you.”
“Here’s where it gets hard. I like all of them. I mean - if you took the reward thing as gospel - if the winner gets the pay day and their freedom when they’re the last man standing… You said yourself, you don’t need the money. Kate is a mother. She needs the money and her son needs her. Karen has her whole life ahead of her…”
“You can’t say that,” Chris butt in. “She isn’t that much younger than us.”
“I suppose.”
“Georgia seems like a nice person. I wouldn’t begrudge her winning. But, same as with Jordy, there’s little point in me living over someone such as Kate. Not if I am infected.”
“But you might not be.”
“There’s a chance.”
“Twice you’ve mentioned her name though.”
“Who?”
“Kate. I take it she is your winner?”
Jack nodded. “As long as she can kill me by suffocation,” he laughed. “Sit that pretty ass on my face until I’m dead.” He laughed again, as did Chris. The smiles faded from their faces as they realised there really was nothing to laugh about. After all, what they were talking about was killing people. “I need to get a drink.”
Jack left the bedroom and walked to the kitchen. Chris watched his movements for a while before turning his attention to Kate. He could see her clearly from the bedroom window which gave full access to the rest of the house. She was sitting in the living room with the others. None of them were talking. They were just sitting there lost in their own thoughts. All of them simply waiting for the next torturous task or waiting to die. Chris couldn’t help but think about what Jack had said about Kate deserving to win because she had a child in the outside world and needed the money. Well they all had someone waiting for them outside, whether it was partners or family or even both, so that wasn’t a good enough reason. And what, she deserved to live because the money would come in handy? Chris might not have needed the cash but he was pretty sure there were others in the house who could have benefited from it too. The thought of Kate getting a pass to the end of the game because of those two factors rubbed Chris up the wrong way. In his mind - if he were to play the game - he’d start with Kate.