fiction

Betrayal Island, series 17, season finale.

Sherry’s body fell loose at the crack of a gunshot and slid to the floor, as her arms fell limp from her jubilant embrace of Carl. The live broadcast team scrambled to cope with the fast-changing sound levels.

The editor cut to a replay of Sherry’s final minute in slow motion: Sherry hopped over to Carl, beaming, wrapping him in her arms, then his elbow rose and flash-bang, her slide. “You fuc…,” the microphones picked up after the gunshot rang out, ricocheting off the thick torchlit walls of the 19th century island fortress. These days its offshore status and a system of legal waivers were its inhabitants most potent defence.

“Wow. What a finish? Just amazing,” presenter Jo Genge gushed as she backed through the black curtain onto set. “She had to be about to say, ‘You fucking something’. I would, for sure!” 

An ambulance crew was already working on Sherry, fitting an oxygen mask and lifting her onto a trolley. Carl had fallen to his knees, breathing heavily, blood and gore splattered from blasting Sherry in the stomach at point blank range. He had just a few moments more freedom before entering his all expenses paid post show exile. Jo dashed in to talk to him. 

“Wow, Carl. Congratulations. You’re Betrayer of the year 2033. That was a wicked Betrayal. I can see you’re pumped. How are you feeling?

“Oh, you know, Jo, I feel a real mix of emotions. I’m totally thrilled, of course. This is a dream come true, finally I achieved something I’ve been dreaming of as a kid. Betrayer of the year. It’s everything. And at the same time, in my defence, I feel a little bit sorry I had to be such a complete shit on so many levels to achieve my dream. Yeah, and most of all having to shoot Sherry there at the end, obviously.”

“Oh, Carl. I cannot hug you now for legal and hygiene reasons. But I hope you don’t feel too bad about the difficult choices you had to make. Just remember the show’s called Betrayal for a reason and you sure lived up to the name. Everyone here knows what they signed up for. We’re here to find the ultimate arsehole and I reckon tonight it is you.”

“Oh, that’s really kind of you, Jo, thanks. It’s amazing to hear that. I’m tearing up, I really am. I’m just thinking about my son Carl Jr and the wife Becky. I hope I get to see them again one day, once all this is over. And I also want to thank my parents who recognised I had the potential to be a complete c-word from a very early age. It’s been quite a journey over all them years and, in my defence, it’s impossible not to have doubts along the way. I hope I’ve done everyone proud. In the end we’re not here to make friends. It’s all about the winning.”

“That’s absolutely right, Carl. Well said. This show is all about winning, not the friends you make along the way. And you can see the medical team behind us is doing their very best for all your victims.” 

“Yeah. That’s brilliant,” Carl said, turning to the medical crew behind, just as Sherry’s trolley was popped up to be wheeled off. “I just want Sherry to know that it wasn’t personal,” he said loud enough for Sherry to hear. Sherry’s right arm slowly rose to show Carl the middle finger.

“Oh, great to see that middle finger raised right there. Sherry’s a real fighter right to the end. Obviously we are all rooting for her. We will keep you updated on her condition.  Be sure to follow us and on our socials. Now, Carl, take us through your competition?”

“First of all I want to wish Sherry well. No hard feelings, and that. And, high points, sure, yes, I came into this thinking it was going to be easy, but it’s anything but easy. I bided my time at the start to get through the first few rounds, before starting to take action on people.”

“But then your real asshole side really kicked in, right?”

“Yeah, it did. I think I started to find my form when I convinced Kevin that I was like his best friend, when I was not. He did so much of my dirty work for me. I was really sad to rat him out to the others and see him get topped like he was.”

“Don’t let that bother you. Like all of our contestants, Kevin waived his rights when he came on Betrayal island. And, Sherry, what about our Sherry?”

“Ah, well, that was special. As you can see at the end there, she was pretty sure there was something special between us. And maybe there was–I didn’t tell her about the wife, obviously–but in my defence there was never anything more special to me than becoming Betrayer of the year 2033.”

“Hear, hear to that, Carl. That’s a great place to end. Get yourself cleaned up, get yourself ready to be rushed off to avoid legal difficulties and enjoy your win, wherever you end up! It is time for your all expenses paid Betrayal getaway.”

“Thanks, Jo.”

Carl jogged off, leaving sticky red footprints behind, to be helicoptered to a territory without an extradition treaty for plastic surgery and a new life. Jo turned back to the roving camera.
“Wow, what a competition and what an absolute bastard! It is time to get some analysis of what we have seen from our panel of the biggest psychos and nutjobs in the business. It is back to the studio.” ■

A fictional contemporary fairy tale written in response to the prompt “bear with me”, very loosely based on a true story, which is, of course, a spoiler.

Once upon a time, there was a man called Ken. Ken lived in a kingdom called America. He lived in a place in America called California. It was always nice and warm and sunny in California, when it wasn’t on fire that is.

To live in California Ken needed money. He needed a lot of money. To get this money Ken ran a business. His business was selling “door furniture”, which is what grown-ups call things like door handles, bolts and the like. Much of Ken’s door furniture was made of a metal called brass, which looks a little bit like gold. Ken noticed this and decided to call his business Goldy Locks, because it sounds a bit like a story for children. He and his friends laughed at this, because it was slightly funny and because they had drunk quite a lot of beer. Ken also thought a funny name might help him sell more door furniture. 

It turned out that the funny name did help him sell a lot of door furniture, or at least did not stop him. This meant Ken made a lot of money, more even than you need to live in California. Ken used his extra money to buy a big house and a car so big everyone would know for certain how much money he had. But now he only had half as much money because his wife left him over summer, just like that, over that one little affair. 

One day Ken came down the winding stairs from his office in the roof space, through the kitchen, into the back garden. Standing in the garden in his slippers and pyjamas Ken lit a cigarette and breathed the smoke into his lungs, like grown ups do. This made him feel a bit dizzy. He looked around and saw his wife’s bird table was on its side. 

“Strange,” thought Ken. “No bird I know can knock over a bird feeder. And there is no wind.” 

Ken went over and put the bird feeder the right way up again. It was one of those with a little roof. He tried to forget about it, focussing instead on his feelings of anger, regret and sadness about his ex wife.

Later in the day he went out for another smoke and found the bird table was again on its side. 

“Goddamn it,” he said, a word American grown ups sometimes use. 

This time he also saw that it was broken in half. And he also saw his wife’s wooden table and chairs were also in pieces in the flower bed. Then he looked in the flower bed and saw there were some very big footprints. 

“Fuck,” the thought, because this was not something that normally happened.

Ken was scared now, so scared he was unable to shout. Instead he crouched down and looked around him. He looked and looked, but could see nothing. But then, he looked once again, and he saw a big furry head sticking out from under the house. It was a big animal. It was sticking its head out of the entry to what grown ups call the “crawl space” underneath his house. For some reason Americans sometimes like to crawl under their houses. They like to store things there when there isn’t enough room in the house itself.

In this case Ken realised it was not another American person crawling under his house but an American bear! This bear was maybe 500lbs, or over 200kg for metric listeners. This was bigger than almost everyone he knew. Realising this made Ken want to go to the toilet very much. But there was a bear under his house which might eat him if he tried to go to the toilet. So Ken stayed where he was. The bear decided to stay where it was too, looking at Ken.

As it got dark the bear finally went down into the crawl space. Ken took his chance and ran into the house. He used all the high quality door furniture he had. Then he ran upstairs to the toilet and locked the door there too. 

While sitting there he tried to relax like he had learned to on Youtube. He breathed slowly and tried to clear his mind of negative thoughts. But no matter how hard he tried he could not stop thinking negatively about having a bear living under his house. 

“Is this normal?” he thought.

Before Ken flushed he had decided he would one day have to deal with the bear. For now though he decided that the first step would be to simply stop thinking about it. He did not know very much about bears, but he did know that bears liked food even more than he did. He decided the key was to stop eating at home. So Ken propped his shotgun by the kitchen door before going to Wendy’s for a burger with blue cheese, bacon, fries, coleslaw, ice cream and half a gallon of soda. He was very careful to wash his hands after. When he got home he had almost forgotten about the bear. 

So he carried on this way, simply going out for his dinner every night. After a few days Ken realised that having a bear under his house was less of a problem than he first thought. He added another rule, which was not to mention the bear to anyone who might make him think about it. Life was, if anything, better than before. Rather than being alone all the time he began making friends with the waiters at the restaurants he visited. Trying to avoid the bear also made him cut down on cigarettes. 

A few months later he drove home from El Compadre, the Mexican restaurant 300 yards away. He found his ex-wife’s car parked in the driveway. This was strange because she did not live at the house anymore because she hated him for what he had done. He went inside and called out her name.

“Kathy, Kathy!…,” Ken shouted, walking round the house. She probably would not guess there was a bear living in the back garden. 

“Kathy, Kathy…,” Ken shouted up the stairs, thinking she might be up there. He even ran up the stairs and then ran back down again.

He then went into the kitchen. She was not there either. But she had been cooking. This was one thing you should not do around a bear. It does not matter if you don’t know the bear is there. It makes no difference. Bears are not big on detail.

Ken then saw the back door was open. He was not feeling anger about his ex-wife leaving any longer. He just imagined her gone forever and felt like he ought to stop it from happening. He grabbed his shotgun from by the door and went out into the back garden.

“Kathy, Kathy…” he shouted, at the top of his voice, swinging round with the shotgun like in a film. He let off a cartridge into the night sky. Bears don’t like loud noises.

He thought he saw something running from under the house into the darkness, but who knows. He pulled the string for the porch light. 

There on the bench seat was Kathy, smoking a cigarette.

“What the fuck, Ken? Have you been drinking?”

“No, no, I’ve not drank, not since you left. Something spooked me. That’s all.” He paused for a second, propping the gun against the bench. “I am very happy to see you though.”

“I’m your ex-wife now, remember, Ken”

“Yeah, I remember very well,” Ken said, standing in front of her, arms open. “But it’s OK to be happy to see your ex wife, isn’t it?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is,” said Kathy, standing into his arms, not thinking about the pain he had caused her for now. After a few minutes, Kathy leaned back.

“What happened, Ken?” Kathy asked motioning with her head to the wrecked bird table.

“Nothing, nothing happened. I just realised something, that’s all,” Ken said and Kathy rested her head back on his chest. “Hey, let’s go inside,” Ken said, looking into the nigh.“Sure,” Kathy said. And went in and double-locked the door. ■