LeShawna watched as the Screaming Bass returned from the elimination ceremony, and felt a small cut on her soul when she realized that Tyler wasn't coming back with them. She had been counting in his edeitic memory to make perfect sketches of all the contestants after they had said their goodbyes.
Sure, Tyler was lazy. No one was going to argue to the contrary, and he may have been a little smarmy, but he was a good man. At his core, he was good.
Eva looked at LeShawna with a disheartened gaze. There was only so much they could do, and so much they could risk their necks doing. Just because Tyler was an observant person that saw LeShwana as who she was, doesn't mean he was an asset to the Screaming Bass. In another world, Tyler and LeShawna would've been close friends. Maybe even a little more. But in this world, their friendship was kneecapped, destroyed before it became.
"They got the slacker, huh?" asked Cody.
"What was his name again?" asked Beth. Cody gave Beth a sideways glance, almost as if to tell her she wasn't allowed to banter off his quips.
"Trent?" asked Trent, before blinking and then chuckling a bit, "No wait, I'm Trent."
"It started with a T," said Owen, "I'm sure of it."
Gwen and Heather look at each other with puzzled looks on their faces. After a few moments, Gwen said, "No, I feel like it started with an R."
"Randy?" guessed Cody, "No, that doesn't sound right."
"His name was Tyler," barked LeShawna, and then she corrected herself "His name is Tyler."
The Screaming Bass looked at LeShawna. Some of them looked concerned, some of them looked like they were stifling laughter. Lindsay, like always, didn't really look like she cared one way or the other.
LeShawna felt duty bound to defend Tyler's legacy, even if he didn't really leave a big one behind. After all, when was the last time someone offered to do something kind for her and ask for nothing in return? That was a rare thing in this world.
xXx xXx
Over the next three days, construction crews came in and out of the camp, heading to the north of the camp.
Zeke, Heather and Gwen often tried sneaking to the place the construction crews were setting up…well, whatever they were setting up. Every time, without fail, they were booted from the area by a hefty bald man with a handlebar mustchache and a Southern United States accent. At first, he was harsh with the contestants, telling them to 'fuck off back to camp', but later, after he realized they weren't going to stop sneaking around, he started lightening up.
His name was Otis, and this was his first time outside of the United States in fifteen years. He took his job in order to get a Canadian work permit, and he eventually wanted to move out in Canada now that his youngest son had graduated college and was starting his adult life.
Soon, Zeke, Heather and Gwen weren't even sneaking to get a peek at what the crew was building. They just wanted to talk to their buddy Jeremy.
For three days, the only thing that Zeke, Heather, and Gwen spoke of was what they thought Jeremy's story was. It was the only thing they could do to avoid talking about the strange romantic tension that was building between all three of them.
Jeremy was fifty two years old, born in the United States. They couldn't agree on where. Zeke and Heather said California, but Gwen insisted on Ohio. He was an American football star in high school, probably a linebacker based on the size of him. He wanted to go to college for football but he couldn't for some reason. Probably a kid he didn't mean to have so early in life. But he put his nose to the grindstone. At first waiting tables, then managing waiters, then managing a restaurant.
Gwen had been around some men in the restaurant industry, they all lost their hair tragically young. That explained why Jeremy was bald.
Before the trio could concoct what Jeremy was like in his thirties, the three days between challenges passed far too quickly, as time always does. Soon, the crew was gone, and with them, Jeremy disappeared, too. The trio held a mock funeral for him the night before the challenge. To Jeremy. On Earth, he was just a security guard watching a construction crew on a pretty cut and dry ripoff of Survivor. But he had a throne of fire waiting for him in hell.
The morning before the challenge, Gwen and Heather were startled awake by Lindsay, who was repeatedly saying, almost chanting "What the hell? What the hell?" She was looking through her phone, which apparently incurred her wrath somehow.
Beth immediately threw her pillow at Lindsay, but it sailed right past her shoulder and out the door. Beth thought about her actions for longer than a second and realized that she now needed to get out of bed to get her pillow back. She flopped down and sighed.
"What is it?" asked Katherine.
"My Notes app reset somehow. All my notes about the ecology of this island are gone!" bellowed Lindsay, "I'll have to start from scratch! Do you know how many species of lichen are on this island?"
Nobody answered, as no one other than the ecology major had any idea what lichen was, much less how to tell the species apart. Lindsay realized this, threw her hands up in exasperation, and started typing in her notes "Several species of lichen near mountaintop, potential of.."
Gwen tuned her out before the sciency words gave her a migraine before breakfast.
Chris's now infamous voice rang out through the primitive PA speakers, "Alright campers, enough beauty sleep. Time to show us what you're made of."
xXx xXx
Duncan usually did not like to think negative thoughts. Of course, they came through from time to time, and he did his best to acknowledge them and move on. There came no reward from negativity.
No reward came in denying negativity, either. In high school, when Duncan was a moron and internalized everything, he wound up storing all the rage that came with his father's arrest and stored it in the pit of his stomach. Of course, all too predictably in hindsight, the rage grew inside of him and grabbed his tongue and he lambasted everyone he loved. And then he-
"This amphitheater fucking sucks" grumbled Courtney, sitting next to Duncan and scratching the back of her head.
Ah, yes, back to the issue at hand. This amphitheater was very poorly made.
The benches weren't that bad, honestly. They were a darker wood, maybe mahogany of some kind, but that was probably a little too expensive for this clearly amatuer show. The wood was rigid to sit on, and there was no lumbar support, but there weren't any splinters to find either.
But the amphitheater was clearly just thrown together, all different colors of wood, and a giant, patchworked curtain that smelled strongly of mildew. It was very unpleasant to look at or smell.
"Tonight, we have a summer camp classic!" announced Chris, with bags under his eyes and no enthusiasm, "A talent show! Pick your three most talented campers, and come up with an act in eight hours!"
Chris sounded like he wanted to jump off Mount Wawanakwa and let the sturgeons get him. If Duncan was in his position, he wouldn't blame him one bit.
"The acts will be judged by me, Chef, and one of our securtiy guards, Jeremy."
Duncan and Courtney both flinched when Zeke rocketed to his feet and started clapping and cheering his voice raw. They looked at each other, confused, but both came to the nonverbal agreement that they would not be asking Zeke to elaborate.
"Alright, get started!" yelled Chris, before starting to look around and realized that there weren't any cameras running on him. Duncan overheard Chris mutter some words he didn't care to repeat, and walked off stage.
The Screaming Bass looked at each other, trying to scout out any potential talent the others may have had. Duncan decided he should be the one to break the silence, "Does anyone here have any talents we could use?"
"I definitely don't" said Harold. Duncan gave Harold a quizzical look, but Harold's eyes were more focused on Bridgette. Harold was hard to get a read on, or at least more difficult than most people. Everyone was here for a reason, but Duncan couldn't figure out why Harold was. Curiouser and curiouser.
"I could squat something." said Eva, "Does anyone have any unreasonably heavy objects?"
Duncan thought for a moment, "There's some ten gallon jugs of water Chef uses for pasta nights. How heavy are those?"
"Like thirty eight kilos" answered Bridgette.
Thirty eight kilograms was a decent amount, especially if Eva was going to be squatting two of them. It wasn't an insane amount, but if Eva was doing several reps of that weight, that could get them a good score from the judges.
"Alright, so we have Eva. Bridgette, do you have anything?"
Bridgette sighed and shook her head, "Any real talents I have would require Mount Wawankwa, and I don't think we're allowed to leave the amphiteater."
"Chris never said that," Courtney pointed out.
"No he didn't!" said Duncan, with an excited grin on his face, "Bridgette, what were you thinking you could do?"
"So, you know how we jumped DOWN the cliff face, right?"