Somewhere in the South Pacific, where the water is calm and the deep blue sea stretches seamlessly from one horizon to the other, there is a tiny, uncharted island that cannot be found on any map. Lush green forests, white sandy beaches, a ring of cascading waterfalls, and an active volcano at the very heart of the island have made it one of Polynesia's best kept secrets for centuries. Today, as the human population skyrockets past seven billion, the natural glory of Nāmaka’s Island remains untouched, frozen in the hourglass of time.

Which is precisely why Hollywood has decided to turn this paradise into its hottest new reality TV show! Yes, for the past eight months, camera crews have been feverishly installing surveillance equipment and listening devices in every tree, rock, and animal on the island, so that not one square inch is left uncovered.

The rules are simple. Twenty-eight strangers have volunteered (trust us on this) to live on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific and compete in some of the most grueling, disgusting, dangerous, and morally degrading challenges ever imagined. At the end of each day, one unlucky contestant will be voted off the island and can never, EVER return. This will continue until only one cast member remains, the ultimate champion of Nāmaka’s Island. Who will it be?

Who will be…the LAST ONE STANDING?


--------------------


The gigantic cruise liner docked on the shores of Nāmaka’s Island at sunset on the first day. Most of the twenty-eight contestants were already standing outside their cabin doors, waiting for the gangplank to be lowered. As they gathered their belongings and moved towards the rear of the ship, a few of them turned their heads to the side and stared at the island that would be their home for the next month. With colorful Tiki huts lined up on the beach, palm trees swaying in the breeze like half-naked hula dancers, and the sky a swirled mixture of pink and red, the island looked exactly like it did in the brochure.

“It’s…so…AWESOME!” said a jolly, hefty boy of about eighteen. He was a towering behemoth, wearing an XXXL t-shirt that was still about two sizes too small.

The brunette behind him sighed. “That’s a pamphlet, Wendell.” She snatched the flyer away from him, rolled it up, and pointed at the actual island. They really weren’t all that different, except for one very big, very noticeable detail.

“Hey… Where’d all those cameras come from?”

The entire island was covered in surveillance equipment.

“We’re going to be on a reality TV show,” the girl said, in her usual matter-of-fact tone that would be condescending to almost anyone.

“Awesome! Are you going to be on it too, Angie?”

“Yes, Wendell. We all are.” She put a hand on her hip and gently tapped him on the nose with the pamphlet a few times. “Isn’t that why you signed up for this?”

“I just came for the all-you-can-eat buffet…”

Angie shook her head and followed Wendell off the boat.

“There’s no longer any doubt,” muttered the balding guy in a Marlboro cap behind them. He never told anybody his real name, so the rest of the folks had just gotten accustomed to calling him Rusty. “Only the United States government would spend this much time and effort on island-wide surveillance. This whole ‘reality TV show’ is nothing more than a front for a psychological experiment involving extreme isolation.” He stopped for a moment, took a long drag on the cigarette in his hand, and flicked it over the ship’s railing.  “S'all part of NASA's plan to terraform Mars. Gotta know how often they'll need to send replacements once the colonists boil over and tear each other to pieces.”

“Well, I think this will be a truly enlightening experience,” said the white-haired girl named Butterfly, who was meditating on the railing next to Rusty. “Being this far away from industrialized society will allow us to get back to our true roots, as nature intended.”

“I just hope there are some new species of insects for me to collect,” said Naomi. She was an exceptionally short Japanese-American with red-rimmed glasses and black hair. Next to her was her good friend Misra, a quiet girl from the Philippines, who spoke in only broken English.

“I hope so too,” she said.

Naomi and Misra descended from the ship without noticing Luigi, one of the more shady fellows on the boat, who had casually positioned himself on the dock next to the ramp. From where he was standing, he had a perfect view up their skirts as they passed by overhead.

He snickered and nibbled at his fingertips.
   
Meanwhile, a lanky man with hair like a porcupine on steroids leapt onto the railing of the ship and struck an epic pose over the face of the island. He held the pose for a minute, while his enormous buckled trench coat whipped in the ocean breeze. As he surveyed the island overtop tiny wireframe lenses sitting too low on his nose to be useful, he expanded his chest and began a grand proclamation to all within earshot.

“Such splendor!” he remarked. “I shall make my mark upon this land and the name ‘Zero’ shall be uttered henceforth with awe and—GAH!”

“Nobody is impressed,” said Claudia, the bitch, as she walked by and pushed him into the water.

“No! My coat is dry-clean only!”

Still sitting cross-legged on the railing, Butterfly opened her eyes to the flailing man in the sea and rotated her head around.

“Your aura is very black today,” she said to Claudia.

“I just want off this stupid boat. Make way!” She pushed Naomi and Misra aside and jumped onto shore, leaving behind two footprints where her boots had landed.

Next, coming down from the ship’s upper deck was a freakishly tall girl named Bridgette. She had coffee-colored skin, braided red hair, and always wore a sleeveless jersey with the number ‘10’ on the back. For comparison, the guy next to her, Adam, was over six feet tall and built like a tank, but she could still see over his head.

Bridgette put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Look… All I’m saying is the Steelers are not a good team. I mean, you guys lost to Tim Tebow in the playoffs. Tebow, man. How does that even happen?”

 “…Don’t ask me,” Adam muttered. “Not even God knows how Tebow made it to the playoffs.”

There was a guy following closely behind them who was named “Mean” Joe after the first day, and for good reason. Upon hearing the topic of their conversation, his left eye began to twitch and the blood rushed to his face.

“The DEFENSE kept his team in the game!” he shouted. Even without the wifebeater shirt he was sporting, Mean Joe was obviously a troll, and a bad one at that. “I’m so sick of hearing about that Jesus-loving freak. ‘Tebow this,’ and ‘Tebow that’. Maybe if I routinely criticize him every chance I get, I might someday get to say, ‘I told you so!,’ despite being proven wrong week after week.”

“Yeah, that about sums up all Tebow haters,” Bridgette said.

“…Hey! You’re lucky you’re not my wife!”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

Mean Joe continued to rage on, so Bridgette and Adam hurried off the ship.

Mean Joe tried to give chase, but he was so out of shape that he didn’t make it very far. That made him a hypocrite too. Bending at the knees, he gasped for air and grabbed onto the closest thing next to him.

That ‘thing’ just happened to be Henri, the dapper gentleman with a Louisianan accent.

“Ah find sports to be most vulgar,” Henri said, fanning himself. “Why don’t we discuss more civilized matters?”

Behind them, the cabin door to the most expensive suite suddenly burst open, and a red carpet was rolled onto the ship’s deck. Literally, people. We can’t make this stuff up. Then, straight from a magazine shoot, the gorgeous Mercedes stepped out, silvery blonde hair done up like she had been primping it all night long, and she dropped her luggage at her feet and looked around.

“Where’s the bellhop?” she asked, sliding her orange-tinted sunglasses down the brim of her nose. She scanned the deck of the ship quickly, looking past Henri and Mean Joe, and waggled her fingers at the baby-faced, towheaded lad coming her way. “Oh, bellhop! Yoo-hoo, bellhop! Yoo-hoo!” Their eyes met. “That’s a good boy. Carry my bags, would you?”

The confused lad blinked.

“…Um, me?” he asked.

“Yes, you.”

“You want me to carry your bags?”

“Very clever, little boy, but I’m not tipping you to ask silly questions.” She pushed her sunglasses back into place and dismissed him with a casual flip of her wrist. “Hurry along now.”

“But…I’m not a bellhop. My name’s Pip.”

But Mercedes was too busy studying the ridges of her fingernails to even acknowledge him anymore.

“How could you not know that? We’ve been on this boat together for two days. We even sat next to each other at lunch…”

Mercedes yawned.

“Allow me, Corazón.” A tall, dark, handsome man with slick black hair scooped up the baggage in one fell swoop. He then began to juggle the suitcases on his biceps while the buttons on his silk shirt nearly burst from the power of his bulging muscles. When he was finished showing off, he threw the luggage over one arm and leaned his head onto Mercedes’ soft, dainty shoulder. “Buen dia, mi bonita. Shall we disembark from this ship hand in hand, so that we may leave adjacent footprints in the sand of this foreign beach for all the others to see?”

“Mm. Thank you, Alejandro, but just the bags will do for now.”

“As you wish, señorita.”

Pip continued staring at them.

“Why does everybody think I’m a bellhop…?” he asked.

“I think it’s becaaaause…” A girl crept up behind him and put her hands over his eyes. “You’re as cute as a button!” She leaned over his head and rested her chin on his forehead.

“Cut it out, Piper!”

His sister laughed and ruffled his hair with her face. “Sorry, little bro, but you’re just so adorable.”

“Well, I know, but…” He looked down at his feet and frowned. “Look, Piper. This is my chance to finally make something of myself. I know I can win this contest, but nobody is going to take me seriously if they see you treating me like a baby out there.”

“So what if people don’t take you seriously?”

“That’s easy for you to say! You’re captain of the cheerleading squad. You can get whatever you want.”

“I can’t get a cuter brother, though.” She bopped Pip on the nose and giggled as he tried to swat her finger away.

“Stop that!”

High above them, the curtains in one of the cabins opened ever so slightly and a pair of watchful eyes looked out. It was the mysterious Dizzy. He hadn’t left his cabin since they had boarded the ship. Not even to eat. Not even to say hello. Not even…to use the restroom.

Which was probably one of the reasons the others steered clear of his room.

The curtains closed and, suddenly, Dizzy was standing on the beach. He walked confidently up to the others and opened his mouth to speak. They had been waiting for this moment for two days. What kind of profound thing would he say? All eyes were upon him.

“…I like pizza.”

They moaned and looked away.

“Oh, look,” said Chloe, the resident goth, as she stepped off the boat and shielded her eyes from the waning sunlight. “The hermit decided to come out from hiding.”

“As if you’re to talk, dhampir,” said Travis (aka, Kidd Katt). He was a white punk dressed in baggy clothing, with ripped jeans around his knees and boxers with skulls on them exposed to the world. He moved with swagger, not swag, his hat was tipped at a perfect angle to the side, and he spoke with an ebonic tongue that was about as natural as his tan. “What up, Islanders? You brothas and sistas ready to rock this crib? AH-RHOO!”

“Hi, I’m Kathy!”

“Yo—what up, dawg!? Stop pushing!”

A horribly obnoxious girl forced her way past Travis and into the center of the crowd, to repeat what everybody already knew. “Hi, I’m Kathy! That’s Kathy with a ‘K’ Not a ‘C’. O-K? Ha, ha! Get it? Yeah, you get it. Nice to meet you all.” She then proceeded to shake everybody’s hand, whether they wanted to or not.

That little distraction allowed Lydia, the brown-haired artist, to lower the brim of the beret on her head and slip past the crowd unnoticed. When she found a spot she could be alone on the beach, she sat down with her sketch pad and began to draw the volcano’s peak at the center of Nāmaka’s Island while singing softly to herself.

Meanwhile, as the ship began to clear, one of the contestants still hadn’t left his cabin. And how could he? He was almost on the last level of Dragon Wars: Legend of the Black Dragon Warrior King IX—only the coolest game ever invented. Just a few more carefully timed jumps and he would be there. Finally. His lifelong dream was in reach.

“Soldier—you’re going to be late!”

“Leave me alone, Roger,” Dante said. “I’m almost to the boss.”

“It is 20:00 hours! It is time to disembark from this ship, or you will automatically be disqualified from the contest.”

“Whatever, dude. I’m busy.”

“Don’t make me carry you on my back, soldier.”

“You’re not going to do that.”

Thirty seconds later, Dante’s character was dead and he was getting dragged off the boat, kicking and screaming like a two-year-old.

“Your video game avatar is an acceptable loss, scrotum,” Roger said. “Now, get movin' or I'll have your ass with my corn flakes!"

But what true gamer could listen to such rubbish? Dante restarted his game and kept playing, even as he was carried away.

The next man…er, woman…to emerge from one of the cabin doors was Maxine. You might want to cover your eyes for this one. The butch woman stepped onto the ship’s deck in chain leather boots, camouflage cargo shorts, and a black, heavy metal band t-shirt with the sleeves missing.  She scratched under one arm and then the other and waited for her roommate.

“…I can’t believe I got stuck sharing a room with you,” her roomie said, dragging a heavy suitcase out the door. “You are the most disgusting person I have ever met.”

“Eh, whatever,” was Maxine’s charming response.

“And stop sniffing your armpits. It’s not sanitary.”

“You want to sniff them for me, Erica?” She shoved her hairy flabs forward.

Erica made it off the ship in record speed.

The last man on the boat (and arguably the last REAL man on the planet), Willie, tipped his hat to Penny from Oklahoma.

“After you, ma’am,” he said.

She blushed a rosy red and stepped onto the gangplank. From down below, Luigi had a very nice view of the inside of her jean skirt.

“Cowgirl legs,” he breathed. “Niiice…”

He was so engrossed in looking up her skirt that he didn’t look behind him, where Willie was now standing with a very stern expression on his face.

“Now, that’s not a very polite thing to do to a lady,” said Willie. “You should say you’re sorry.”

“Get out of here, cowboy! I’m trying to do something.”

“Come on, guys!” said Wendell, cheery as ever, burying them in a two-arm grab as he led them away from the ship. His jolly laughter was all that was needed to break the tension. “Let’s go meet our host!”

And so the twenty-eight contestants, each with their own reasons for being here, hurried towards the small village of Tiki huts, where a ‘WELCOME TO THE ISLAND’ banner and a roaring bonfire awaited them. There were tables full of delicious foods and they filled their plates and sat down to eat. As they did, the cruise liner raised the gangplank and shoved off, eventually disappearing beyond the horizon.

“Um…how are we supposed to get back?” Pip thought to ask, but Piper just patted him on the head and assured him that everything would be okay. “No, really. Guys. The captain just marooned us here. We don’t even know—”

“Ahh, what a charming cast of characters,” came a heavenly voice, and a woman stepped out from one of the Tiki huts in an elegant blue gown and elaborate headdress of flowers and feathers. She had a big smile on her lips and the longest, brownest, curliest, most EPIC hair ever. Did we mention it was epic? Well, it was. “My name is Cassandra, but you can call me Nāmaka, Goddess of the Sea! Now that you are all here, I would like to welcome each of you to my home.”

“Hi, I’m Kathy!” said you-know-who, as she grabbed Cassandra’s hand and shook it violently. “That’s Kathy with a ‘K’!”

“Obviously, because the ‘C’ is mine.” Cassandra pulled her hand away and clasped her fingers behind her back. “That aside, you are all here because you agreed to be contestants on the first season of ‘Last One Standing’… For that, you are all winners in my book. Each and every one of you.” She smiled, bigger than before, and moved to the head of the great table at which all twenty-eight contestants were seated. “But, of course, there can only be one winner. To determine who it will be, we will split you into two teams. Every day, we have a competition of some sort, and the losing team will have to vote one of their members off the island. Members who leave the island may NEVER RETURN. We will continue in this fashion until only one of you remains. Any questions?”

“Yeah, is there any more food?” Wendell asked, after finishing his plate and the two of those next to him.

“WENDELL!” they cried.

“…I can tell you’re not going to last long here,” Cassandra said with a sigh.

“Demon’s Souls reference!” Dante yelled, but his eyes were locked on the Gamepad Pro DS2 in his hands.

Cassandra waved her hand and food began to fall from the sky and land on the table. Their plates filled with a second helping of shrimp, roast, and tropical fruits, and everybody marveled, except for Dante, who was on level two of Super Macho Donkey Wrestler III.

“Pfft,” said Claudia. “I’ve seen cooler.”

Erica finished what was on her plate and pushed it aside. “So…um, what kinds of competitions will we be taking part in?” she asked.

“Each competition will be different,” Cassandra explained. “Some will be physical exercises; some mental. It will be your job to get to know your teammates and learn how to best utilize their individual talents.”

“Do we get to choose our own teams?” Naomi asked. She really hoped to be paired up with Misra. The others weren’t as nice. Or…normal.

“Can I get some pizza?” Dizzy asked, and a huge slice of pineapple pizza landed on his head.

“No,” Cassandra said. “The great Nāmaka will create the teams for you! But do not worry. She will be fair. For tonight, though, you may feast and partake in festivities. At sunrise tomorrow, we will meet here and I will announce the teams. Then, we will begin our first competition.”

The others nodded and agreed to the rules. Naomi and Misra weren’t too happy about being told they might be split up, but they shrugged and decided to enjoy the night anyway. After all, there was much to do, and it felt wonderful to be off that ship.

“Good!” Cassandra said gleefully, clapping her hands together when nobody else had any complaints. “I must get ready for tomorrow, so I will leave you all in the hands of my wonderful assistant, Rip the Zombie. Rip, would you come here?”

A horrific zombie with limbs like twigs and the top half of his head peeled away stepped out from the shadows. He had buckteeth and walked with a crick in his back, dragging his misshapen legs through the sand.

“Rip will carry your bags and show you to your sleeping quarters when you are ready,” Cassandra said, ignoring the zombie’s grumbling moans. “Each of the girls will have a room in my bungalow, while the guys will have their own…accommodations. I hope that’s okay.”

Luigi frowned.

“Do we have to have roommates?” Erica asked, glaring at Maxine.

“No roommates. There is more than enough space for all of you. Especially the guys.” She grinned when she said this.

“Well, I’d be more than happy to share my lodgings with any of the beautiful señoritas, should they see something that goes bump in the night,” Alejandro said, and at least half of the girls swooned.

“Oh, and ONE more thing…” Cassandra said, as if it was an afterthought. “To keep this show from being like the ten million other reality shows on television, we’ve come up with a little something-something to keep things interesting. Nothing big, I assure you! Just a little gimmick to increase the show’s ratings.”

“I knew it!” Rusty said, slamming his fist down. “There’s a catch. There’s alwaaays a catch.”

The others stopped eating and Dante even paused his game to hear what Cassandra had to say. She just kept on smiling and regarded them all with a twinkle in her eye.

“Beginning now, all of the men on the island will be shrunk and will remain that way until the contest is over. I wish you all the best of luck. Ta-ta!"

“NOT AGAIN!” Pip screamed, and there were suddenly fourteen empty chairs.

“Uh…guys?” Angie asked. “Guys?” She looked around and then peeked under the table. “Oh. There you are.”

"This isn't completely creepy or twisted at all,” Claudia said. “I'm going to bed. See you losers tomorrow. And quit looking up my skirt, sleaze.” Claudia gave Luigi's chair a swift bump with her hip, knocking him to the ground.  She didn’t even break stride and he had to dive out of the way as she followed Rip the Zombie towards the bungalow in the distance.

The rest of the girls looked at each other.

“Well…” Erica said slowly. “If it ends up being boys against girls, I think we got this in the bag.” And the others laughed.

Well, half of them anyway.

Somewhere in the South Pacific, where the water is calm and the deep blue sea stretches seamlessly from one horizon to the other, there is a tiny, uncharted island that cannot be found on any map. Lush green forests, white sandy beaches, a ring of cascading waterfalls, and an active volcano at the very heart of the island have made it one of Polynesia's best kept secrets for centuries. Today, as the human population skyrockets past seven billion, the natural glory of Nāmaka’s Island remains untouched, frozen in the hourglass of time.

Which is precisely why Hollywood has decided to turn this paradise into its hottest new reality TV show! Yes, for the past eight months, camera crews have been feverishly installing surveillance equipment and listening devices in every tree, rock, and animal on the island, so that not one square inch is left uncovered.

The rules are simple. Twenty-eight strangers have volunteered (trust us on this) to live on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific and compete in some of the most grueling, disgusting, dangerous, and morally degrading challenges ever imagined. At the end of each day, one unlucky contestant will be voted off the island and can never, EVER return. This will continue until only one cast member remains, the ultimate champion of Nāmaka’s Island. Who will it be?

Who will be…the LAST ONE STANDING?


--------------------


Well, it was an interesting night, to say the least. I mean, sure, the guys probably weren’t used to being the size of Polly Pocket dolls, but everybody has to get used to some changes when they go camping on a deserted island for a month. So, while the guys bitched and moaned about the dollhouse they had to stay in (SO ungrateful), the girls were all curled up in their warm beds and dreaming about the first day of competition. It couldn’t come soon enough.

“Sun up!” Cassandra called out, and the sun blasted out of the water like a great whale and covered the island in its radiant glow.

“Dammit…” Chloe muttered, covering her face with the blanket. “Nobody told me there’d be this much sun.”

“You should soak it in. It would be good for your complexion.”

Chloe pulled down her sheets to see Butterfly sitting in her open window, legs crossed and eyes closed.

“GET OUT OF MY ROOM!” Chloe chucked a pillow at her.


--------------------


Chloe: It’s not that I don’t like Butterfly. I don’t like anything cheery. Especially at six in the morning.

Butterfly: I think what she needs is one good friend. It’s not healthy to want to live your life in darkness all the time…

Chloe: Stop flashing that camera in my face! [pushes the camera away] Do I LOOK like Mercedes?

Mercedes: Please, darling. I look WAY better in black than Chloe.


--------------------


“Wake up, boys!” Angie said, shaking the dollhouse on the table in the common area of the bungalow. She was only the third girl to do it. By now, all fourteen guys had either fallen out of bed or fallen back onto it. Muttering, they changed their clothes—into exact replicas of what they were wearing the day before—and exited the front door. They were in a great den, with a high (VERY high for them) ceiling overhead and many rows of bedrooms on either side of them. Some of the girls were still changing—also into exact replicas of the clothes they were already wearing—while the others were in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.

“Uh…you don’t suppose they’re going to make us anything, do you?” Dante asked.

“Of COURSE not,” Rusty spat. “They want us to starve. Weaken your competition!”

“Um, excuse me!” Wendell said, looking up at Angie. She must have looked like a mountain to him. “We’re really hungry. Do you think you could bring us some food?”

“I’d love to, Wendell, but…” She frowned. “We don’t know the teams yet. I don’t want to be accused of helping the competition. I’m sure you understand.”

“Like I said!” Rusty declared.

“But Angiiiiie…”

“Sorry!” Angie said. “But I see you have a kitchen in your little house. Maybe you guys could rustle up something for yourselves!”

So she left them there, standing vulnerable and dumbfounded, and they took turns looking at each other, just about as clueless as can be.

“So…uh…who knows how to cook?” Adam asked.

Travis gawked at him. “Yo, that’s a gurl’s job, dawg.”

"Perhaps ah should give room service a’jangle and order up some étoufée,” said Henri, dusting his knuckles on the lapels of his club jacket.


--------------------


Pip: I think I’m the only guy here not completely surprised by what Cassandra did to us.

Piper: You know, I was wrong. My little bro is even MORE adorable now.

Pip: Seriously. This is like the eighteenth time this has happened.

Piper: We get along pretty well, the two of us, but he’s always getting into trouble. Like, last Halloween, for example. He broke into some girl’s house as a prank and claimed he got ‘stepped on’. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. [leans in closer and whispers] Do you think he was foreshadowing?

--------------------


“Well, I can see most of you guys will be completely useless when it comes to actual competition,” Alejandro said, flexing his muscles, “so, I, Alejandro, will prepare us a meal fit for a king!” He went into the kitchen and then shouted, “Everything here is plastic!”

Wendell slapped his hands over his cheeks. “We’re going to starve!”

“Maybe Cassandra will make it rain food again,” Adam said hopefully. He obviously hadn’t seen this show’s previews.

But an angel answered their call anyway.

“Hi, guys!” said Kathy with a ‘K.’ “I brought you a plate of food. I hope you—” She tripped over her shoe laces and the guys watched in slow motion as her arms flailed through the air and the tray flew from her hands, doing somersaults in the air, before crashing down on top of them.

“YOU BROUGHT US HOT OATMEAL!?” Roger screamed, as the men were forced to work together to tip the boulder-sized bowl over. When they did, those that ended up under the bowl were covered from head to toe in chunks of apple cinnamon oats. “What is your major malfunction, woman!?”

Alejandro came out of the dollhouse just in time to laugh at them.

“Do you want something to drink with that?” Kathy asked.

“NO!” they all shouted.

“I’ll go fetch you some coffee!”

“…We should probably get back in the dollhouse,” Adam suggested. “Somebody needs to wake up Mean Joe anyway.”

“He’s already up,” Zero said. “I saw him go into the bathroom with the sports page.”

“What?”

“You guys better hurry up!” Bridgette said. She was jogging towards the door but stopped long enough to shake the roof of their miniature home. “Don’t want to be late on your first day, do you?”

“Come on, anime boy. Help me get Mean Joe.”

Zero and Adam went back into the dollhouse while the others waited nervously for Kathy to return.

They came out a minute later, waving their hands in front of their faces.

“Dammit, Joe,” Adam said. “Courtesy flush!”

Mean Joe followed them out, laughing. “Whoa! Sorry, fellas. Plumbing ain’t real either. Do NOT go in there. ‘Less, you know, you wanna forget all about that breakfast we ain’t gettin’.”

“Somebody shut the door!” Travis said.

“You guys awake yet?” Lydia asked. She didn’t shake their house, but bent down at the knees and stared at them. The brim of her beret jutted out over their heads like a great big green awning. “Wow. That’s really something, isn’t it? I wonder why Cassandra would want to do that to you.”

“We have our theories,” Rusty said, eyeing her suspiciously. “The real question is: why didn’t YOU do anything to stop her?”

“Huh?”

“I’m onto you, lady! Oh-ho-ho, I’m onto you.”

“Um…okay. I just wanted to wish you guys luck. I hope you all don’t get stepped on before the day is over. Bye!”

Rusty reached for his fourth cigarette of the morning. “She’s right, you know,” he said calmly. “We’ll all be dead soon. S’all part of their plan to create a master race of women.”

“Here’s your coffee!”

The men braced themselves, but Kathy was careful not to step on her untied shoelaces this time. She set a mug in front of them and stood back, grinning from ear to ear, glad to be of service. She wasn’t the most attractive woman in the world, with stringy brown hair and a pink turtleneck sweater covering up the rather chunky parts of her body, but she wasn’t the worst Luigi had ever seen.

“Oh, dear me,” she said. “The mug is far too tall for you to climb. Let me help.” And so she scooped Luigi up and dumped him into the piping hot mug. It didn’t take him long to surface and let out a blood-curdling scream. “Oh, no!” Kathy tried to pluck him out, but her pudgy fingertips only succeeded in tipping over the mug, bringing a torrent of hot coffee pouring across the table, into the stoic faces of the men who were just standing there, waiting for the inevitable.

After the wave of scorching hot liquid had passed, Luigi stood up, soggy and dripping wet.

“Maybe you should just go…” he said.

“But…but how will you guys get to the bonfire?”

“I’m sure we’ll have better luck getting there in one piece without your help.”

Kathy was too much of a ditz to know she wasn’t wanted, so she waved to them and left them to dry off and change their clothes again.


--------------------


Willie: I think the guys were being a little hard on Kathy. I mean, she was just trying to help.

Travis: Bitch done got my hair all messed up!

Wendell: I like Kathy; she’s nice.

Luigi: Hottest time I've ever had with a chubby gal. Hehe.

Rusty: That woman will be the death of us all. [calm drag on cigarette]

--------------------


“You’re going to be late, boys,” Mercedes said. “Chop, chop!” She sauntered past the dollhouse, high heels clicking against the wooden floorboards, and never even glanced at them.

When the men had changed back into their old clothes, they peeked out the doorway to make sure Kathy was gone for good and cautiously stepped out. They left the spilled coffee mess for somebody else to clean up and tried to figure out how they were going to get off the table.

“Get a move on, boys!” Penny said, finishing her breakfast and dumping her plate in the sink.

The men watched her go, covering more ground in one step than they could cover in twenty, and frowned.

“Dude, let’s just ask the next girl to carry us there,” Travis said, and the others agreed.

The kitchen door opened and Maxine stepped out, shoving an armful of chocolate bars into her cargo shorts. When they all wouldn’t fit, she shrugged and stuffed the rest into her mouth, paper and all, and began chewing.

The men stared at her and didn’t say a word as she passed by.

“Did…THAT count as a girl?” Roger asked.

“Looked more like the hair-chested cavern hag boss from the 7th Circle of Hell level in Dragon Inferno IV,” Dante said.

Travis hushed them with his hand. “The next one,” he said.

Suddenly, one of the bedroom doors swung open and Chloe emerged, shrouded in her blanket. The only thing visible of her was her face, which was covered in black make-up, and she took a few steps before throwing her blanket to the floor.

“Next person to talk to me dies,” she said.

“We’re never going to get off this table!” Wendell screamed.

“You guys just going to stay here all day?” came a voice from behind and they all looked over the roof of the house to see Erica looking down at them. She was dressed in a white t-shirt with flowers and pink calligraphy across the front that didn’t spell anything legible but made for an interesting pattern. She flipped her chestnut-colored hair over her shoulder and held an open picnic basket against the side of the table.

“We’re not really looking to be your lunch, lady,” Rusty said.

Erica rolled her eyes. “Just get in.”

They did as she said—except for Dizzy, who was peeking out through the curtains in the hallway. She had to open the window and pluck him out. Then, keeping the lid of the basket open, she put the handle over her shoulder and started towards the door. Naomi and Misra finished their breakfast at the same time and were the last to leave, giggling the whole way to the bonfire on the other side of the beach. The others were already waiting when they got there, including Piper, who had awoken much earlier than sunrise to get a headstart on the day.

“I count fourteen,” Cassandra said. She looked at Maxine, who was still stuffing her face with chocolate. “Did somebody have a little more protein for breakfast than they were supposed to?”

“I got the men right here,” Erica said, setting down the picnic basket. She tipped it over with her heel and all the men came spilling out onto the sand.

“So, uh, what’s the point of the men being six inches tall?” Claudia asked, because apparently nobody else found that a little strange. “I mean, it’s cool and all, but…”

“I think they’re adorable!” Piper said.

“Ugh. Dial it back. Do you HAVE to be so goddamn chipper all the time?”

“Hey, don’t talk to my sister like that!” Pip said.

“Shut up, Pip-squeak.”

Kathy laughed so hard that she began to snort, which disgusted just about everybody there.

“All part of the game!” Cassandra said. “Unless anybody has any complaints…”

The men voiced their objections quite vocally, but the women simply took turns shaking their heads and shrugging.

“So, is this going to be boys against girls?” Claudia asked. “Can we just stomp on the men now and eliminate them?”

The men tried to object to this too, but nobody really cared.

“It won’t be boys against girls,” Cassandra said, acting completely shocked. “That would be most unfair. Shame on you for even suggesting it!” Her voice quickly went from surprised to perky again. “Now, I’ve spent a while studying all of you and I’ve decided to divide you up into what I consider to be the most balanced teams. Each team will consist of seven guys and seven girls, emphasizing a wide range of talents and skillsets.”

“What are the teams then?” Zero asked.

“Follow me to the Temple of Dreams and you will see!”


--------------------


Piper: That was SUCH a relief to hear that the guys won’t have to fend for themselves. Now I can either protect my brother or at least not feel so bad when I’m kicking his butt. Hooray for co-ed teams!

Chloe: So much for crushing the competition. …Oh, well.  I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities.

Bridgette: The guys really lucked out on this one. I don’t think they could beat the girls even if they were NORMAL sized. Way too much talent on the girls’ side, if you ask me.

Adam: [praying] Anybody but Maxine, anybody but Maxine…

Dante: I’m trying to think if getting Maxine would be awesome…or the worst thing ever…


--------------------


The Temple of Dreams was a sight to behold. Sure, they were all pretty sure there wasn’t a giant freakin’ temple at the top of the volcano yesterday, but there it was, all big, gold and Polynesian-y, overlooking the great fiery chasm.

“Watch your step,” Cassandra warned the women as they circled around the lip of the volcano. When they were clear of any cracks or crevices that the men might accidentally be pushed through, Erica dropped the basket and dumped the men out again.

At the foot of the temple, there were twenty-eight totems—fourteen big and fourteen small—each representing one of the show’s contestants. In some cases, the stone carvings were so alike that it was difficult to tell the totem from its owner.

“Yup,” Angie said, knocking on Dante’s totem. “Hollow inside.”

“Knock it off!” he said.

She knocked on his head as well. Just to be sure.

“This is where we will meet every night to determine who gets voted off the island,” Cassandra said, in a very serious tone. “If you are voted off the island, your totem will be cast into the volcano as a sacrifice for Pele, the Goddess of Fire, and you will be banished from Nāmaka’s Island FOREVER!” As if to give even more power to her words, the volcano spewed out a small gusher of lava and ash.  “However… You can gain temporary immunity by leading your team to victory. Only the losing team will be forced to vote a member off.”

Behind her, on either side of the temple door, there were two large signposts. They were each covered with a thick gray canvas and she stepped between them and spread out her arms.

“Nāmaka has been watching you closely and has decided your fate. Now, behold the ones on whom you must rely if you hope to be victorious!” Fire shot from the volcano and engulfed the canvases instantly. In a flash, they had burned to nothing more than cinders and thread.


Team Rabid Monkeys:
Piper, Lydia, Butterfly, Angie, Claudia, Chloe, Mercedes
Travis, Zero, Dizzy, Wendell, Rusty, Henri, Alejandro

Team Agitated Kangaroos:
Erica, Naomi, Misra, Penny, Bridgette, Kathy, Maxine
Roger, Pip, Adam, Dante, Mean Joe, Willie, Luigi


--------------------


Adam:  FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—

Piper: Little bro, you’re going down! [giggles] That wasn’t a size joke, I swear.

Roger: Never seen a sorrier pile’a puke in all my life. Slack-jawed, scrawny,and scatterbrained. I think there’s only one with chest hair in the whole bunch. Our guys look pretty pathetic too.

Erica: Maxine might slow us down some, but I’m sure she has her uses.

Alejandro: I was just given seven reasons to love this island. [blows a kiss to the audience]

Butterfly: Not really sure what a monkey and kangaroo have to do with any of this… And why do they both sound so angry? Why not ‘Purple Rainbows’ and ‘Happy Goldfish’? Isn’t there enough hostility around here?

Naomi: I am sooo glad they put me and Misra together. I don’t know what I would do without her! [thinks it over] …I hope we’re not the first voted off.

Misra: Yes. I am very pleased with the results.

Dante: +10 AWESOME to our team with Bridgette. We’re so OP’d.

Bridgette: I just hope they don’t expect me to carry the whole team.

Wendell: I love my teammates! We’re going to have a BLAST.

Angie: Am I the ONLY one who sees a problem with sticking Chloe and Butterfly on the same team? I mean, the two are like night and day. Literally.

Mercedes: Me, Angie, Claudia, and Lydia on the same team? Hell-ooooo! Talk about stacking the team with stylish dressers.

Kathy: I can’t wait to help my team in any way possible! Maybe I should prepare them coffee…

Travis: Yah, I’m white. So what? I’m black on the inside and that’s what matters. Brotha for life!

Rusty: I bet Maxine eats at LEAST four of us before somebody takes her down.

Chloe: Ugh. Why was I put on the same team as the cheerleader? I came to this island to get away from her kind. Somebody shoot me.

Piper: I don’t know what Chloe’s problem is. I haven’t said one word to her since we got off the boat. [stops and begins counting on fingertips] Oh, crap!

Henri: It’s pronounced ‘ON’REE.’


--------------------


The contestants lined themselves up on their respective teams and Cassandra was most pleased.

“Is everybody ready to begin the first event?” she asked.

They looked the part, so she motioned for them to follow her again and they started down the side of the volcano. Team Rabid Monkeys was right behind her, while Team Agitated Kangaroos…well, they got held up.

“Claudia stole my basket!” Erica yelled. Sure enough, halfway down the volcano, she could see the basket swinging back and forth in the hands of the bitch, with seven tiny heads popped out. Wendell and Zero waved to her, Alejandro blew her a kiss, and Travis flipped her the bird.

The men from Team Agitated Kangaroos frowned, upon seeing their only mode of transportation getting smaller and smaller and further away.

“You want me to get it from her?” Bridgette asked.

“No, it’s okay. Does anybody have any pockets?”

Penny, Naomi, and Misra were all wearing skirts—very appropriate camping wear—with no pockets to be found. Bridgette had on basketball shorts and Erica was wearing a tight pair of jean capris, but neither had enough pocket-space for all the men. And nobody cared what Kathy was wearing below the waist.

“I got this,” said Maxine, when all eyes fell on her and her oversized cargo shorts. She reached her chocolate-stained hands into her pockets and pulled out a glob of crinkled, smeary, somewhat melted chocolate bars, which had fused together in the heat from the volcano.

The men opted to walk.

The site of the first competition was a clearing in the jungle. There were white lines painted in the shape of a large rectangle around the border of the clearing and another line drawn across the middle of the field of play. On this line, there were a series of tropical fruits—including coconuts, mangos, melons, bananas, papayas, kiwis, and even a pineapple or two—spaced out equal distances from each other.

“The first competition will be Tropical Fruit Dodgeball,” Cassandra said, as if it was a totally normal thing. “You will each line up on opposite ends of the field. When I blow the whistle, you will begin play. If you get hit with a fruit, you are out. If you leave the field of play, you are out.”

“What if we catch the fruit?” Willie asked, and the girls laughed at the idea of ANY of the men being able to catch even the smallest fruit at their size.

“The point of the game is to dodge the fruit—not to catch it. If the fruit is thrown by an opponent and touches you in any way before hitting the ground, you are out. Last team with a member still standing is today’s winner. Everybody clear on the rules?”

--------------------


Dante: Okay, so yeah… Not really sure how we’re supposed to throw something bigger than us. Are we going to receive some sort of buff to increase our strength?

Lydia: Tropical Fruit…Dodgeball? [blinks]

Mean Joe: BRING IT ON! Oh, man. This reminds me a’dat time I threw a baked potato at Sanchez when he botched that turnover in the fourth against Tennessee.  It was beautiful. They showed a replay on the big screen and everything. ‘Ey, if ya gonna be a butterfingers, at least ya got a good es’cuse now, eh? Huhuhuh!


--------------------


The contestants lined up, the whistle was blown, and they were off.

Bridgette was the first to the line. She grabbed one of the coconuts and chucked it at Henri so hard and so fast that he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself, even IF he had been paying attention. The heavy fruit smashed into him and buried him into the ground like a tent stake.

“YOU’RE OUT!” shouted Cassandra.

Bridgette grabbed another coconut and tossed it between Dizzy and Zero, but they managed to jump out of the way in time.

On the Rabid Monkeys, Piper had done a series of spinning cartwheels to get to the middle line quickly and drew back slowly now with the melon in her hands. She bounced away a few kiwis that the men on the other team tried to throw at her and tossed the melon at Bridgette, who easily evaded.

“Oh, the cheerleader wants to go, does she?” Bridgette said. She grabbed a pineapple by the stalk and swung it around like a lasso before launching it towards Piper at full speed.

Piper ducked and the pineapple smashed into the face of Butterfly, who was…sitting on the ground, meditating.

“Ow!” she cried out, and then she was teleported to the sidelines along with Lydia and Mercedes, who had already been eliminated.

“Never was good at sports…” Lydia said. She took out her sketch pad and began to doodle.

“I totally think I chipped a nail out there,” Mercedes said. She shoved her hand in Butterfly’s face. “How does it look to you?”

As each girl was eliminated, they were magically transported to the sidelines next to Cassandra. The men, however, stayed on the field of play, whether they were still in the game, buried to their necks in the dirt like Henri, or flattened to a pancake,  like Mean Joe, who had just gotten stepped on by Kathy.

“Oh, excuse me!” she cried out, and didn’t even see Luigi, who was too busy looking up her pant leggings to notice her sneaker come crashing down on top of him.

“Focus on the game, Kathy,” Bridgette said to her, eyes forward. She blocked a few attacks with the melon and then hurled it at Angie, knocking her to the ground.

As the teams whittled down, Kathy continued to step on her own teammates by accident. She got Dante and Willie and eventually Mean Joe about six or seven more times.

“Would somebody tell Kathy she plays for OUR team!?” Roger yelled from the frontlines, as he quickly backpedaled to avoid the tandem of Piper and Claudia coming at him. He tried to make a run for it, but he was quickly sandwiched between two mangos, as they each threw a dart right at him. He landed with his face in the dirt, sputtering out fruit juice.

“I’ll help!” said Kathy, and she stomped on Roger as she picked up the two mangos and held them to her pudgy chest.

She tossed one of them to Bridgette—and then the other when she realized she couldn’t throw—and Bridgette easily took out Dizzy and Zero this time.

By now, the Rabid Monkeys were down to just three female players—Piper, Chloe, and Claudia—and four men—Alejandro, Rusty, Travis, and Wendell. On the other side, the Agitated Kangaroos were still fully stacked with women—Erica, Naomi, Misra, Penny, Bridgette, Maxine, and, yeah, Kathy, I guess, if you want to count her too—but had lost most of their men, with only Pip and Adam remaining.

The girls on the Rabid Monkeys began to retreat and huddle together in the back of the field like a small group of animals trying to fend off a much larger pack, while the guys…well, they were just trying not to get crushed.

“Get behind this wall with me!” Rusty shouted to the guys on his team, and they all ducked behind a pineapple barricade. “We’ll be safe here. We can wait out the fight and come out later to pick off the survivors.”

“We could use some help here, GUYS,” Claudia said. She reached down and seized the pineapple, giving no consideration to the men who were using it for shelter, and blocked another wave of fruit assault from the Bridgette-Penny tandem.

Piper rolled across the ground, picked up the banana, and swung it like a boomerang at her little brother. It missed him, but spiraled past him, gained some altitude, and struck Penny on the back of the head during the reverse swing. “One down!” Piper caught the banana and threw it a second time, but Bridgette was too far out of reach.

Maxine began to gather all the smashed fruit off the ground and moved towards the middle line when she had an armful of just about everything.

“Ha, ha—I’m going to make it rain fruit!” she snorted. She lowered her arms and got ready to toss everything over the heads of her opponents, when Kathy suddenly ran into her and knocked her down. Chloe was easily able to pick them both off.

“Way to go, Kathy,” Maxine said, shoving her from the sidelines.

Kathy smiled. “The important thing is that we all gave it our best!”

“You took out half of our team,” Penny muttered.

Well, in a sudden swing of events, the Agitated Kangaroos were down to just Erica, Naomi, Misra, and Bridgette on offense, while Adam and Pip were still doing their best not to end up flattened and humiliated like their brethren. Erica lobbed a slow-moving kiwi at Alejandro while Bridgette came through with the fatal blow, blasting Alejandro with a coconut that sent him flying backwards into the trunk of a tree.

“Love hurts,” he said, as the coconut broke in two and he spilled to the ground.

It was now six-on-six and the Rabid Monkeys seemed to be making a dramatic comeback. Still, there were four girls on the other team and only three on theirs. If they wanted to pull the upset, somebody was going to have to step up.

“Let’s get one of the men to sacrifice themselves,” Chloe said.

Claudia ducked under another overthrown melon. “I agree. We gotta take Bridgette out if we’re going to win this thing.”

“I’ll do it!” Wendell said.

“Go for it, little dude.”

Wendell warmed up his muscles by doing a few flexes and then lifted a kiwi over his head and charged the middle line. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Bridgette and the other girls watched him, wondering what the hell he was doing.

“UGH!” He threw the kiwi through the air. It soared and soared and soared some more. And then crashed down two feet in front of him.

And those weren’t the only two feet. Bridgette suddenly stood over him and dropped a coconut on his head.

“Sorry, girls!” Wendell said. “I tried.”

“EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!” Rusty screamed, and that kind of attitude only got him creamed by Misra, who jumped up and down excitedly and celebrated with Naomi.

Piper knocked both girls out with a single melon.

“Good sacrifice!” she yelled at Rusty. “I’m recommending you for MVP!”

“But that’s not what—”

Piper’s heel pressed down on his face as she moved back and dodged another citrus-filled bullet from Bridgette.

Now it was Piper, Claudia, Chloe, and Travis on the Rabid Monkeys, and Erica, Bridgette, Pip, and Adam on the Agitated Kangaroos.

“We can do this, guys!” Erica said, trying to revitalize her teammates. “We just need to—”

“Coffee?” Kathy asked, holding out a steaming mug of coffee and blocking Erica’s view of the other team.

“Kathy, what are you doing!?” Erica tried to look over the fuzzy pink sweater arm, but it was too late. Chloe hit her in the gut with a mango.

“Yes,” Chloe said, doing a small arm-pump. It was all the energy she could muster.

“It’s Tebow Time, bitches,” Adam said, grabbing a chunk of the mango that landed next to him. But instead, he pulled a Mark Sanchez, and ran into Bridgette’s ass as she squatted down to pick something up.

Piper nailed him with the next shot.

“Good shot, dawg!” Travis said.

“I wish you would really stop calling me a dog.”

Bridgette tossed the scattered pieces of fruit she had managed to pick off the ground, but she was outnumbered now. With Piper, Claudia, and Chloe coming at her with fruit swinging, she had no choice but to retreat. She managed to miss the first few papayas and kiwis, but took a shot in the thigh with a melon and was teleported to the sidelines with her teammates, who all threw up their arms in exasperation. Their only teammate on the field was Pip.

“Oooh, little brother,” Piper said, teasing him. “We’re coming for yooou.”

“No! No!” Pip covered his eyes. “I forfeit the game!”

“There is no forfeiting!” Cassandra snapped.

The other girls taunted Pip some more by purposely overshooting him with chunks of pineapple. All across the field of battle, the grass was covered in citrus juice and flattened men.

“Ahhhh!” Pip screamed and picked up a coconut shell to shield himself.

Piper grinned and tossed a heavy melon high into the air. Its shadow slowly moved towards Pip. As it descended, he looked up, saw the spiraling fruit hurdling towards him, and really wished Kathy had just crushed him, like the rest of the team.

The melon splattered all over him and he fell unconscious.

“WINNER: TEAM RABID MONKEYS!”


--------------------


Angie: That was a close one. I really thought they were going to crush us, but…well, I guess they did crush the men…

Mean Joe: Kathy is a retard. That’s RETARD with an ‘R.’

Bridgette: [covered in sweat] Next time. I just ran out of…juice.

Rusty: MVP, folks. You heard it from Piper. [takes a long drag of cigarette]

Misra: I got one! Did you see?

Penny: Bridgette, good. Kathy, bad.

Erica: Well, I can’t say I’m not disappointed. We should’ve won that. I guess we just get some sleep and prepare for tomorrow… But I know who’s getting my vote.

Travis: Only guy to survive! BOO-YEAH!


--------------------


Back at the Temple of Dreams that night, the torchlights were lit and the contestants were all gathered around Cassandra, reflecting on the day’s event.

“Team Agitated Kangaroos…” Cassandra said slowly. “That was a truly terrible performance. You had a significant lead and then blew it worse than the Chargers on a 4th-and-29. I really hope you take a good, long look in the mirror and ask yourselves if you even deserve to be here.” She began passing out slips of paper to each of the team’s members. “Fortunately, one of you won’t be much longer. I would like each of you to write down the name of one team member and submit your ballot in the box in front of the temple.”

The fourteen members of Agitated Kangaroos looked at each other and then down at their empty sheets of paper.

--------------------


Naomi: Everybody gave it their best shot! But, um…if I have to pick somebody…I guess Kathy. That was…really bad. [cringes]

Penny: Kathy.

Mean Joe: She@#$%in’ stepped on me! I’m on her team!

Roger: Do you even need to ask?

Dante: How can we win this if we’re stuck PLing a noob?

Erica: Kathy held us back. She needs to go.


--------------------


The ballots were submitted before long and Cassandra opened the box and counted up the votes. Thirteen for Kathy and one for ‘Kathy with a K.’

“You voted yourself off?” Penny asked.

Kathy put her hand over her mouth. “Whoops. Is that what we were voting for?” She laughed and snorted and everybody was very glad she was about to leave.

“Sorry, Kathy, but your time is up,” said Cassandra, and she walked over to the totems and picked the chunkiest one of all. She carefully lifted it and carried it over to the mouth of the volcano, where a puffing cloud of steam awaited her.

“It’s really been a pleasure meeting you all!” Kathy said, shaking hands with all the women and fingers with all the men. She got about halfway through them before Cassandra dropped the totem into the volcano. Suddenly, Kathy’s entire body melted away, until she was nothing more than a puddle of skin, clothes, and one big goofy smile.

“Watch it, dawg!” Travis said, bouncing away from the gooey puddle of Kathy’s remains.

“So that’s how we leave the island,” Chloe muttered. “…Cool.”


--------------------


Willie: Oi! Perth summers’ll make you feel like your meltin’…but I’ve never seen it happen for truth. Hope that’s not how we’re all goin’ out.

Misra: Um. Is this normal in America?

Wendell: Kathy was so nice. I hope she’s okay!

Mercedes: Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad we won today. But that…was really disgusting. I mean, hurling rotten fruit at each other? Grooooooss.

Somewhere in the South Pacific, where the water is calm and the deep blue sea stretches seamlessly from one horizon to the other, there is a tiny, uncharted island that cannot be found on any map. Lush green forests, white sandy beaches, a ring of cascading waterfalls, and an active volcano at the very heart of the island have made it one of Polynesia's best kept secrets for centuries. Today, as the human population skyrockets past seven billion, the natural glory of Nāmaka’s Island remains untouched, frozen in the hourglass of time.

Which is precisely why Hollywood has decided to turn this paradise into its hottest new reality TV show! Yes, for the past eight months, camera crews have been feverishly installing surveillance equipment and listening devices in every tree, rock, and animal on the island, so that not one square inch is left uncovered.

The rules are simple. Twenty-seven strangers have volunteered (trust us on this) to live on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific and compete in some of the most grueling, disgusting, dangerous, and morally degrading challenges ever imagined. At the end of each day, one unlucky contestant will be voted off the island and can never, EVER return. This will continue until only one cast member remains, the ultimate champion of Nāmaka’s Island. Who will it be?

Who will be…the LAST ONE STANDING?

Team Rabid Monkeys:
Piper, Lydia, Butterfly, Angie, Claudia, Chloe, Mercedes
Travis, Zero, Dizzy, Wendell, Rusty, Henri, Alejandro

Team Agitated Kangaroos:
Erica, Naomi, Misra, Penny, Bridgette, Maxine
Roger, Pip, Adam, Dante, Mean Joe, Willie, Luigi


--------------------


The guys were awake even earlier than Piper the next day. Under Roger’s rather brutal insistence, they began to gather in the lounge of their dollhouse, which was actually a replica scale-model of the girls’ bungalow—a one-floor cabin with high ceilings, a large common area in the middle, and bedrooms on either side. It was a cozy place with furnishings to match what the girls had, but they had some trouble with the amenities not being up to standard.

“Okay, who left the gigantic deuce in the toilet!?” Travis yelled from the bathroom.

Mean Joe didn’t even flinch. “That’d be me,” he openly volunteered.

“Dude… It’s plastic!”

“Your mom is plastic!”

“My girlfriend is plastic,” Luigi said, stroking the leg of an old Barbie doll he had found in one of the bedrooms of the dollhouse. The others looked away.

“You wormy little shits need to focus,” Roger snapped, slamming his fist on the table. His rippling muscles, bullet-like eyes, and horrible buzz-cut demanded respect. “Two days into the competition and you’re already going crazy. That performance I saw yesterday was PATHETIC. P-A-T-H-E-D-I-C-K. The girls kicked our asses and you let them. You want one of those hussies to win this thing? Because it sure the hell seems that way!”

“Uh, but this competition isn’t boys versus girls…” Pip started to say, but Roger bonked him upside the head.

“If we’re going to WIN, we need to take out the bitches. Understand?”

“I do declare,” said Henri, sipping out of a fake teacup with his pinky in the air. “You have quite the vulgar mouth.”

“I’m not even sure you COUNT as a man, HENRY. If you weren’t so utterly worthless, I’d say your team is cheating by having eight women.”

“It’s pronounced ‘On’ree.’”

Roger grabbed him by the collar of his club jacket and hoisted him into the air. Before he could do anything, though, Willie, the ever-calm bloke from Down Under, squeezed in between them and pushed them apart.

“Not sure what you have against the fine women of this island…or who put you in charge,” Willie said to Roger, “but fighting amongst ourselves ain’t gonna solve anything.”

“He’s right” said Pip. “We may be competitors on the field, but it’s obvious we have a disadvantage in size when it comes to the girls. I think we need to work together if we’re going to survive here.”

“Work together?” Travis echoed, coming out of the bathroom. “How are we going to do that? We can’t even take a dump in our own cabin without it stinking up the place.”

“Well… One thing we can do is agree to vote off the women who put us in the most immediate danger, regardless of who wins or is the most beneficial to our team.”

Rusty sat in the corner of the room, already on his second cigarette of the day. “Interesting idea,” he said. “You might be onto something….OR maybe you want our team to lower our guard because you’re secretly in a jealous rage knowing we have your sister and she's our best weapon!”

“What? No. Piper has nothing to do with this…”

“Liar!”

“Hey…do you think we’re getting even smaller?” Travis asked, as he walked over to the rest of the group with pants almost down to his knees. “Look how baggy my slacks are.”

“Uh…that’s how they always look,” Adam said.

“Oh, yeah. You’d know. I always see you staring at my ass. Swag, swag, swag!”

“Does he seriously know how stupid he looks?” Zero whispered to Dizzy, who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

Dizzy just nodded his head and was gone again.

“My idea can work,” Pip insisted, trying desperately to steer them back on track. “There are seven guys on each team. If we ALL vote for the same person, we can vote them off. Once the girls are gone, we can go back to being rivals. What do you say?”

Well, nobody was listening to him now, because the whole cabin started to shake. Before they could take shelter, the roof peeled back like the lid of a tin can and Piper stuck her bright, cheery, bushy-tailed face inside.

Travis’ pants slipped through his hand and he dropped a deuce right there on the cabin floor.

“Good morning, boys!” Piper said. “I heard you never had the chance to eat breakfast yesterday, so we decided to prepare you a little something. Enjoy!” She moved her head away to allow Claudia, with a Cheshire cat smirk, to come forward with a large green mixing bowl. They each took a side and tipped the bowl over, dumping a sea of raw eggs and milk into the dollhouse.


--------------------


Travis: First chance I get, I’m voting that bitch off. [glares as something is whispered off-camera] What do you mean: ‘which one?’

Pip: My sister isn’t really that bad… She’s just very happy to be here. You can’t blame her for that… Can you?

Luigi: Hehe… I like to pretend that milk didn’t come from the fridge…

Piper: [smiles innocently] How was I supposed to know they didn’t like scrambled eggs?

Adam: For the record, I have never looked at Travis’ butt.


--------------------


Later on, Cassandra and the islanders were gathered in the same clearing where the Tropical Fruit Dodgeball tournament had taken place just a day ago. It must have rained over the night because the painted white lines and fruit juice had been washed away and replaced with many shallow puddles of mud. In the center of the field, Rip the Zombie was digging a grave large enough for an elephant. One end of a rope was wrapped around his bony neck and the other was dangling loosely in Cassandra’s hand.

“Welcome to the second competition!” Cassandra said. “I trust you all had a good night’s sleep. I know Kathy with a ‘K’ did.”

“So, is she, like…dead?” Dante asked. “I mean, we only get one life here or what? Because I’m pretty sure some of us guys got stepped on yesterday and—”

“Today’s challenge will be a camp favorite: Tug-o’-War!” As she said this, she tugged on the rope, causing Rip to fall into the open grave. “For this competition, only the women will be participating. And before you try to tell me that the Agitated Kangaroos have less people, let me remind you that you have one player who could easily pass for two.” She didn’t look at Maxine, but everybody knew who she was talking about. And so did you.

“Only the women?” Wendell frowned. “What can we do?”

“Hmm… That’s an interesting question. What CAN you do?” Cassandra pretended to muse it over for a moment, when it was already pretty clear she had no intention of providing a straight answer, and then looked over her shoulder. “Rip—are you almost finished?”

Rip climbed out of the grave, covered in grime, and bobbed his rickety head up and down.

“Good.” Cassandra filled the hole with water with a simple wave of her hand. “Now, put all the dirt back in so it turns to mud.” Sure, she could have done it herself, but what fun would that have been? Cursing his eternal afterlife, Rip picked up his shovel and went back to work.


--------------------

Mercedes: Umm…there’s, like, MUD out here. I wouldn’t have worn high heels if somebody had told me there’d be mud. I wouldn’t have even signed up for this stupid contest if I had known there’d be mud… Is it too late for a refund?

Dante: I hate watching someone else play…

Adam: At least there’s no chance we can get killed watching from the sidelines. Right? [looks around] …Right?

Luigi: Maybe there will be some mud wrestling mixed in there… [nibbles on fingertips excitedly]


--------------------


A rope was laid down and the women lined up on opposite sides of the mud-filled pit.  On one side, Misra and Naomi took the front, Erica, Penny, and Bridgette took center, and Maxine was in the back, tying the rope around her flabby waist. On the other side of the pit, Butterfly stood in front, followed by Mercedes, Lydia, Angie, Chloe, Claudia, and finally Piper. Yes, a one-hundred--twenty-five pound cheerleader was their best option at the anchor position.

“We beat them yesterday and we can do it again!” Piper said, trying to encourage her teammates. But that was much harder to do without pom-poms in her hands.

“This should be fun to watch,” Cassandra whispered to Rip, and she blew the whistle right in his ear for them to begin. “Remember: if you land in the pit, you’re OUT and have to stay there until all the members of your team fall in too.”

The girls on both sides picked up the rope and immediately began to pull. Piper dug her heels into the ground and the other girls on her team followed suit, but it soon became obvious that no amount of force was going to budge Maxine, who was holding the rope with only one hand. Her other teammates were barely trying.

“You like my shoes?” Penny asked Erica, and Erica nodded and they began to chat.

“It’s like…trying to move…a tanker…on dry land,” Claudia grunted. She yelped as Bridgette, on the other side of the rope, began to put one arm over the other and reel in the Monkeys little by little. Butterfly slipped and fell to her knees and skidded across the grass.

“This is not good for my aura!” she cried, letting go of the rope and grabbing Lydia’s leg instead.

On the sidelines, the men on their team had to cover their eyes. Butterfly had just taken out Lydia, and Mercedes tripped over both of them, leading to a three-way pileup in front of the mud pit.

“We’re getting killed!” Wendell yelled.

“Correction,” Rusty said. “The girls are getting killed. We’re just fine.”

“Yeah, and we can just vote off whichever one is the most useless,” Travis said. “Right now, they all look equally useless…”

“I cannot believe I am hearing this!” came a booming voice.

Their eyes darted all around, wondering who had just spoken. They finally looked up to see Zero, a whole ten inches off the ground, doing a midair pose. His oddly muscular arms brought out the wrinkles in his trench coat.

“You would let our comrades fall at the hands of our enemies just to save your own skin!?” he asked. “That is not the way of a hero! We cannot stand here idly for a moment longer. Come with me! Don’t believe in yourself—believe in the me who believes in you!”

While they tried to figure that one out, Zero raised his fist and soared towards the other team, leaving behind a trail of smoke and bent grass blades in his wake. Never one to think matters over, Dizzy chased after him, zipping through the grass so fast that it never had the chance to spring back up.

“Wait for me, guys!” Wendell said.

They didn’t wait, but he chased after them anyway.

“Alas,” Alejandro said. “If anybody is going to save the ladies, it will be me.”

Rusty looked around at his dwindling team and then patted the front pocket of his shirt. “Eh…what the hell? I’m all out of smokes anyway.”

And so the heartthrob and the heart-attack-waiting-to-happen went after the others, leaving behind only Travis and Henri.

Travis looked at Henri. Henri looked at Travis. Travis looked at Henri. Henri looked at Travis.

“You gonna go?” Travis finally asked.

“Ah simply cannot participate in this tawdry affair. It would be a crime against civility to allow a velvet jacket to be soiled by muck and filth. That's real velvet, mind you. Not Velveteen.” He flashed his jacket at Travis. “A gentleman should know the difference." He continued flashing while Travis gawked at him, mouth agape.

“…Fuck dis shit,” the ghetto rapper said, and he was out of there faster than a Maserati.

Henri pulled out a file and began fiddling with his nails.

Somehow, Dizzy got to the girls before Zero. He didn’t waste any time strategizing. He went straight for Erica—the only girl wearing long pants—and jump-climbed her tight blue jeans in a matter of seconds. Every wrinkle was a handhold and every handhold was a boost that elevated him higher and higher up her body. Soon he was scampering up her t-shirt, over her breasts, and ascending her hair like he had done this a million times before.

“What are you doing?” Erica asked when she spotted him.

“I am Dizzy,” he said, mounting the top of her head. “And soon you will be too.”

“Huh?”

He dropped down onto a strand of hair that was dangling over her left eye and began swinging back and forth, using her nose as a platform for his feet.

“Stop that!”

He howled with laughter.

“Annoying pest…” She puffed her cheeks and tried to blow him off, but only succeeded in making him spin faster and laugh harder. After a few tries, she just gave up and tried to ignore him.

“You got a little something…” Penny said, pointing to her own eye.

“Yes, I know, Penny. Thank you.”

“Want me to get him?”

“No.”

“Really, I can just…” Penny released the rope for a second and Bridgette smacked into the back of her.

“Keep your head in the game!” Bridgette snapped. The whole team slid forward and Maxine had to grab onto the rope with both hands to keep them from losing ground.

“Sorry, boss!” Penny reached for the rope, but now Zero was standing on it, hands on his hips, chest thrust out like a cannon, and head titled nonchalantly to the side, not even looking at her.

She stared as him as he slowly…ever so slowly…rotated his head around and raised his left eyebrow when he finally locked onto her eyes.

“Impressed?” he asked.

Penny coiled her fingers around him and picked up the rope again.

“Isn’t sabotaging our team against the rules!?” Naomi yelled. She and Misra were so short that they weren’t even touching the ground, so none of the guys could get to them. Well, except for Dizzy, but he was too busy playing peek-a-boo with Erica. Every time he would pass by her eye, he would make a different face, taunting her relentlessly.

By now, Mercedes, Lydia, and Butterfly had gotten untangled, and they were back on their feet, pulling on the rope as hard as they could. The momentum finally began to shift in their direction, as Erica was distracted, Naomi and Misra were dangling from the rope, and Penny’s hands were suddenly very slippery, causing the rope to get away from her. It was pretty much just Bridgette and Maxine in the back, trying to keep their team from kissing mud.

But the guys on the Agitated Kangaroos had taken notice of Dizzy and, to a much lesser extent, Zero, and figured they would join in too, since Cassandra seemed to be letting anything fly.

“GO, GO, GO!” Roger yelled, commanding his troops forward. Mean Joe, Luigi, Willie, and Adam obliged, while Pip and Dante were a little more hesitant.

“I don’t think we should interfere,” Pip said. “The girls might get mad at us…”

“I just want to finish this level…” Dante said, playing with his Gamepad Pro DS2, as always.

“You little shit sacks are the first ones getting voted off!” Roger said. He didn’t waste any more time on them, though, and went to join up with the rest of his crew. Mean Joe had already made his way to the front of the line and stood in Butterfly’s muddy footprints, trying to tickle her bare feet.

“Noooo!” she cried, trying to dance away from him. She wouldn’t step on him, because she would never hurt a living creature, but he kept chasing after her feet, splashing through the mud on his hands and knees, and attacking her toes every chance he got.

Meanwhile, Adam saw the fun Mean Joe was having and decided he would try the same thing with Piper. And yeah, that might have worked, but he didn’t factor into account that Piper was neither in bare feet nor a pacifist. The moment he was in range, she raised her foot and smashed him into the dirt. He continued to get trampled by each girl in unison as the rope shifted more and more to their side, until Misra and Naomi were actually hanging over the pit of mud in the center.

“Hehe…” Luigi said, staring up their skirts. He had abandoned his own team and swam to the middle of the pit just to get in on the action.

They screamed and tried to cover up their legs, but it only caused them to lose their balance and land on top of him. The little freak didn’t even try to move out of the way.

And just like that, it was seven against four. Bridgette’s strength and Maxine’s weight were beginning to falter, and Erica and Penny couldn’t pull hard enough to keep from inching closer to that pit. Down on the ground, Travis, Wendell, and Rusty had gathered a small pile of pebbles and were looking up at Penny. They could see the remains of Zero on her palm and he gave them a thumbs-up and they returned the gesture. All except Travis, who laughed at him.

“Dumb ass,” he said.

“How are we going to get the pebbles in her boots?” Wendell asked.

Penny looked down at him. “Y'all better not even think about it!”

“SHA-SHA-SHA!” Rusty said, embracing the true spirit of his team as he clambered up the side of her leather boot. “Monkey style!”

“Nice moves,” Travis said. He picked up a pebble and tossed it to Rusty, who immediately stuffed it down the opening of Penny’s boots. “Alley-oop!”

Wendell tried to do the same and overshot Rusty by a mile. But they soon got into a rhythm and were filling Penny’s boots with tiny stones. Every time they got one in, Penny would flinch a little and have to adjust the position of her foot, causing the stones to roll under her arch. She muttered under her breath and tried to shake Rusty off, but to no avail.

“Keep it going, Monkeys!” Piper cheered. While their team lacked size, Claudia and Chloe could certainly pull their own weight (well, maybe not Maxine’s) and Angie was a pint-sized powerhouse. It wasn’t long until they had dragged Erica’s toes to the edge of the pit. She leaned back into Penny and closed her eyes.

“You Dizzy now!” Dizzy said, pushing off Erica’s forehead with his feet. He whipped around her head, swung up onto Penny’s hat, and scampered across it, sliding down the folds like he was on an invisible sled. When he reached the rim, he leapt off and landed on Bridgette’s head before shimmying down her braid, fully intending on doing the same thing to Bridgette that he did to Erica.

But Maxine wasn’t going to let him.

“Bug,” she said.

Bridgette felt him too, and she rocked her head to the side.

“You wanna swing?” she asked. “Fine. Swing this!” She whipped her head around and her braid shot out like a snake going after its prey. Dizzy didn’t have a prayer. He flew off her hair, somersaulted through the air, and landed perfectly in the middle of the pit of mud.

“Ugggh…” Erica’s sneaker began to slide forward and she nearly lost her balance, but Penny released the rope for a second to wrap her arm around Erica, grab back onto the rope, and yank her back. Together, they stood at the front of the pit, while Travis, Wendell, and Rusty continued to load Penny’s boots with pebbles.

“These guys are really getting on my nerves,” Penny muttered into Erica’s ear. She would have kicked them, but they were literally hanging onto the edge of the pit

“Tell me about it.”

Just as Travis was about to toss Rusty another stone, his pass was batted down by Willie, who had the true spring of a kangaroo in his step.

“What the f…?” Travis started to say, but Willie interrupted him.

“I believe the lady wants you to stop,” he said.

Travis glowered at him and reached into one of his ten thousand pants pockets and pulled out a switchblade. “Is that so, cowboy…?”

Willie grinned. “That’s not a knife.” He calmly pulled out a machete and turned it over in his hand. “THIS is a knife.”

Travis took off running and so did Wendell. Willie just watched them and then turned to Rusty, who found himself alone at the top of Penny’s boot.

“You want to get down from there?” Willie asked.

“N-N-NEVER!” Rusty screamed, and he scrambled into Penny’s boot, which….well, probably wasn’t a good idea, as he wound up with all the other tiny paper weights under Penny’s foot. But he probably thought he was safe until her arch pressed down on him.

On the other side of the pit, Mean Joe was still belly-crawling after Butterfly’s feet and Roger was moving up and down the line, shouting insults at every woman he passed, but staying far enough away that he wasn’t in stomp-range.

“How tall are you!?” he yelled up at Butterfly. “What’s that? 5’4? I didn’t know they stacked shit that high!”

Butterfly’s eyes began to water.

“You’re so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece!”

Butterfly suddenly stopped pulling and Mean Joe plowed into her foot.

“Don’t listen to that jerk,” Mercedes said. “You’re beautiful, darling. Not as beautiful as me, of course, but you certainly aren’t the ugliest thing on this island.”

“And you,” Roger said, moving down the line to Mercedes. “You are a disgusting fatbody! You think you belong in Hollywood, but I think you belong on a can of dog food. WOOF, WOOF.”

“Why, I never!”

But he just kept hurling insults at them until they both broke into tears and landed in the mud pit, taking Mean Joe with them. At that point, Mercedes really WAS crying. Not for Mean Joe, but because she had just ruined a perfectly good $3000 mink coat.

Roger moved onto Lydia, but she simply ignored him, no matter how much he screamed or how loud he was or how big the veins in his throat and forehead grew from throbbing. It was almost like she had tuned out everything in the world. As if her mind was a blank canvas and she was preparing to paint a vision from another world.

“Fuckin’ space case,” Roger cursed, moving on down the line.

Claudia looked over her shoulder at Piper. “We need to shut this little twerp up before he distracts anybody else.”

Piper nodded her head in agreement. “But how?” she asked.

“Pull on the rope as hard as you can. When I count to three, everybody let up on the rope so that it starts to go slack. Got it?” She didn’t wait for an answer because she could already feel her teammates pulling harder. “1… 2… 3!”

They loosened their grip on the rope. That caused Erica and the other girls to stumble. It was only for a second, but it gave their team enough time to shift towards Roger, and shift towards Roger they did, with Claudia raising her foot much higher than was necessary and stamping his face into the ground. She was even able to do it a second time before the other team regained their balance and started pulling again.

“Much better!” Piper said, and the others had to agree. Except for Lydia. She didn’t know what was going on.

At this point, it was a five-on-four battle, and the two teams had just about equilibrated. Even though the Kangaroos were still down one member, Bridgette and Maxine were able to carry the load, and Penny was much more focused now that she wasn’t being triple-teamed by stoners. With Travis and Wendell in hiding, and Henri as useless as ever on the sidelines, it was up to Alejandro to save the day for the Monkeys.

“Hellooooo, ladies,” he said. He had spent all this time climbing onto the rope and now stood exactly halfway between the two teams, flexing his muscles in every pose imaginable. He was, of course, directed towards the girls on the side of the Kangaroos, but he was doing his best not to look at Maxine.

“What is he doing?” Penny asked, and Erica just shrugged. Bridgette was too competitive to care and Alejandro couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong.

“But the women always fall for my rippling biceps,” he said aloud, because he felt that information needed to be shared.

Suddenly, he heard some deep sighs coming from behind, and he looked over his shoulder to see five pairs of eyes with red hearts in them. Piper, Claudia, Chloe, and Angie were in a trance, and whatever trance Lydia had been in was instantly broken because she was instantly smitten with the short, dark, and handsome man on the tightrope. It didn’t take her long to slip and fall into the mud pit and the others followed, one by one, until Piper faceplanted on top of them all. The rope fell and Alejandro fell with it, and he was quickly buried in the mud under a mesh of groping hands and pleated skirts as the girls wrestled to get ahold of him.

Wide-eyed, Erica and Penny dropped the rope.

“We won…?” Erica asked. “We won!” She gave Penny a high-five, but Cassandra shook her head and reminded them all of the rules.

“The contest isn’t over until EVERY member of the other team is in the mud pit,” she said.

It didn’t long for it to register in their heads what that meant. Slowly, a smile crept to their lips, and they looked across the field at Travis and Wendell, who were still running away from Willie.

“Shall we?” Erica asked.

“Let’s shall.” Penny and Erica skipped after them. The guys tried to run faster, but it really didn’t matter, because Travis soon tripped over his pants and Wendell tumbled down on top of him. That probably hurt enough, but probably not as bad as Erica’s sneaker, which crashed down next to them. Her other sneaker crashed down on the opposite side.

“…This was totally not my idea,” Travis said.

“Let’s see how they like it,” Erica said, picking up Wendell, who was close to the size and shape of an apple. She raised her arm and threw him like she was throwing a basketball. He soared towards the mud pit and landed on Butterfly’s head, then bounced over to Mercedes’ head, then Chloe’s, then Angie’s, and finally belly-flopped on top of Luigi, burying him back under the mud.

“I’ll…just help myself into the pit…” Travis said, scampering away from Erica. She snickered and shuffled her feet after him, keeping him pinned inside, until he kicked off his pants and jumped into the mud puddle in his boxers.

Bridgette and Maxine shared a brief—very brief exchange—and moved away from the rope. Maxine plopped down on the ground to recover while Bridgette headed straight for Henri, who was polishing his club jacket, having paid almost no attention to the competition in front of him.

“You’re missing out on all the fun,” Bridgette said, plucking him up by the collar of his jacket. She carried him this way over to the pit.

“I do declare—you are getting wrinkles on my clothes!” he whined.

“That’s not all I’m getting on them,” she said, and she released him. He was immediately pushed under by his own teammates for being so utterly useless.

“You’re worried about YOUR clothes?” Mercedes said, sitting on him. “What about MINE?”

Erica looked around. Pip and Dante were still on the sidelines. They weren’t on the other team, but she went over and booted them both in for not helping at all.

“Is that everybody?” she asked.

“Not quite,” Penny said. She joined the others by the mud puddle, dusted Zero off her hands, and then slowly removed her boot. She held it over the pit and turned it over, causing a shower of pebbles—and one very flat Rusty—to tumble out. When she was finished, she smiled and slipped her boot back on.

Cassandra clapped her hands. “And, with that, we have a winner! Congratulations, Agitated Kangaroos! You somehow pulled this out, despite being one woman down. I’ll see you all at the ceremony tonight.”


--------------------


Adam: NEXT TIME, I GET THE LIGHTWEIGHTS.

Mercedes: I’m going to SUE this show if these stains don’t come out of my clothes!

Luigi: Getting buried by Naomi and Misra? Priceless. Getting buried by Wendell? Not so much…

Butterfly: Well… At least a mud bath is good for the skin…

Lydia: Can’t talk. Drawing Alejandro. Do you think he’ll give me a nude pose to work with?

Piper: That Alejandro is sooo fine. [giggles]

Claudia: Yeah. He’s cute. What of it?

Chloe: I suppose I should be mad at Alejandro…but did you see those pecs? I could fry an egg on those AND eat it.

Angie: Meh. Can’t feel like a loser after a show like that.


--------------------


“Once again, it’s time to vote someone off the island,” Cassandra said at that night’s ceremony.

“I think we all know who THAT should be,” Travis said, glaring at Alejandro, who was in a five-girl-and-one-man ogling session. Even Misra and Naomi were starting to fall for him, as they started giggling and poking him with their pinky fingers. “You don’t be steppin’ in my crib and takin’ my bitches, yo.”

Travis wasn’t the only one to write down Alejandro’s name. All the guys did. Well, all the guys except for Alejandro, who was so busy being fawned over that he forgot to vote.

“Well, I think that’s everybody,” Cassandra said, once the girls had cast their ballots. Without giving Alejandro a chance to save himself, she opened the ballot box and began tallying the slips inside. About halfway through, she stopped and looked up. “Wow, Alejandro. It seems your teammates really hate you for almost single-handedly costing them the competition. We just might have another unanimous vote here.” She went back to counting and a slow smile crept up her face.

“…Well, who is leaving?” Zero asked when she finished.

“Well, that’s six votes for Alejandro…” Cassandra started to say. “…And seven for someone else.”

“What!?”

“I’m sorry, but it’s time for you to go, …Henri.”

Henri looked up from the lapel of his muddy club jacket, a bit surprised. “I beg your pardon?”

 “Bullshit!” Travis jumped to his feet and his pants fell down. “None of the girls voted for Alejandro because they want him in their pants!”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Chloe said, and the others giggled. “I think I know where he’ll be sleeping tonight…”

Piper pushed her away. “No way!  I’m getting him!”

“Nuh-uh! I am. You’ll probably sit on him by accident or something, you big ditzy ginger.”

“That sooo wouldn’t be an accident.”

“Now, now, ladies,” Alejandro was saying. “Even at my minute size, there’s more than enough of me to share.”

Cassandra picked up the totem that looked like the dapper gentleman and carried it over to the mouth of the volcano. Henri could only stammer incomprehensible excuses of why he didn’t deserve to be voted off this early, but even Travis stopped caring.

“Well, I guess you were pretty worthless too,” Travis said, taking a seat again.

Cassandra dropped the totem into the volcano and those closest to Henri moved away, waiting for him to melt. But nothing happened. He just stood there, still stammering excuses, until it became obvious that he wasn’t going to turn to goo.

“I think your voodoo spell is broken,” Mean Joe said.

“Hm.” Cassandra put a finger to her lips and pretended to be puzzled. “I guess we’ll have to dispose of him manually.”

“Manually?” Henri echoed. “Surely no one here would actually—”

Claudia’s boot came down on top of him with a horrific crash. She held it there for a few seconds and then lifted her foot slowly, turning the bottom of the sole towards her.

“I sure hope Henry stains wash out as easily as mud stains,” she said.

“It’s pronounced ‘On’ree’!” Wendell said.

Claudia put her foot back down. “Now it’s Mud.” And the others laughed.

Somewhere in the South Pacific, where the water is calm and the deep blue sea stretches seamlessly from one horizon to the other, there is a tiny, uncharted island that cannot be found on any map. Lush green forests, white sandy beaches, a ring of cascading waterfalls, and an active volcano at the very heart of the island have made it one of Polynesia's best kept secrets for centuries. Today, as the human population skyrockets past seven billion, the natural glory of Nāmaka’s Island remains untouched, frozen in the hourglass of time.

Which is precisely why Hollywood has decided to turn this paradise into its hottest new reality TV show! Yes, for the past eight months, camera crews have been feverishly installing surveillance equipment and listening devices in every tree, rock, and animal on the island, so that not one square inch is left uncovered.

The rules are simple. Twenty-six strangers have volunteered (trust us on this) to live on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific and compete in some of the most grueling, disgusting, dangerous, and morally degrading challenges ever imagined. At the end of each day, one unlucky contestant will be voted off the island and can never, EVER return. This will continue until only one cast member remains, the ultimate champion of Nāmaka’s Island. Who will it be?

Who will be…the LAST ONE STANDING?

Team Rabid Monkeys:
Piper, Lydia, Butterfly, Angie, Claudia, Chloe, Mercedes
Travis, Zero, Dizzy, Wendell, Rusty, Alejandro

Team Agitated Kangaroos:
Erica, Naomi, Misra, Penny, Bridgette, Maxine
Roger, Pip, Adam, Dante, Mean Joe, Willie, Luigi


--------------------


In the morning, the guys were surprised to find buttered toast, scrambled eggs, sausage links, two blueberry muffins, and a short glass of orange juice waiting for them outside of their tabletop cabin. Propped up against the plate on which this king’s feast sat was a note:


Morning, sleepyheads!

Went for an early morning jog. Thought I would be nice and make you breakfast today instead of dumping it all over you. Enjoy! Smiley smiley, wink face.

Love,
Piper

P.S. MONKEYS RULE! ;)


“She actually…wrote out ‘smiley smiley, wink face…” Dante said. “You sure she’s not a closet nerd?”

Travis slapped Pip on the back. “Dude, your sister is BOSS. She keeps this up and I might hafta start callin’ her ‘sista’ too.”

The guys climbed onto the plate and began to dig into the mountain of food like ravenous little piggies.

“Gentlemen,” Alejandro said, “I have given our...situation a great deal of reflexión, and I would like to be the first one to bury the hatchet. We have found ourselves caught up in the heat of the moment, fighting each other when we should be amigos in arms against our beautiful female opresores—this morning's feisty angel of mercy notwithstanding, of course. Shall we then bury the hatchet and put last night's incident behind us once and for all?"

Wendell’s face was covered in blueberries as he responded, oh so elegantly, “Okay!”

“Whatever,” Travis said. “The important thing is…did you get any of that ass?”

A wink from Alejandro told him all he needed to know. Maybe more than he wanted to hear. Travis seemed a little upset that he wasn’t the first guy on the island to get laid.

But that’s not the story he’d tell his friends when he got back home.

Meanwhile, Pip remained in the doorway of the cabin. He was the only one not enjoying the delicious meal that had been prepared—and it wasn’t just because he knew his sister better than the rest of them.

“Um, guys, I thought we had come to an agreement yesterday,” he was saying. “We need to vote the WOMEN off, remember? As long as they’re here, we’re all in danger.”

“Dude, your sister made us breakfast,” Travis said. “How we gonna cash in on that if all the bitches are gone?”

The blood rushed to Pip’s face. “Hey! D-don’t call Piper that!”

“What?”

“That word!”

“Bitch?”

“Yes.”

“Ha, ha! You can’t even say it. You’re SUCH a sister’s boy.”

“I am not!”

Sensing the frustration in Pip’s voice, Mean Joe stood on top of one of the muffins and cupped his hands over his mouth. “Hey, Pip! This is me doing your sister!” He pulled down his pants and started doing…things to the muffin. Awful things. Like, I don’t even know.

“Oh, yeah!” he began shouting. “Yeah, Pip’s sister! Yeeeeah!”

“S-she has a name, you know…”

“YEEEEEEEEEAH!”

Luigi and Travis laughed and joined in and…well, this whole thing just got a little weird. So let’s just stop there. Don’t we have some interviews to do or something?


--------------------


Pip: I came here to get away from my usual life, but it’s high school all over again. The bullies, the drama, the ridicule, the getting shrunk down to the size of an insect… This can’t be normal.

Wendell: [wide-eyed] I’ll never look at a muffin the same again…

Piper: A change of heart? I guess you can call it that. I mean, I did put a little something special into their meal. [holds up an unlabeled bottle and shakes it] Oh, relax! The guys can take a joke.


--------------------


“Come on, Adam! Let me in there!” Roger pounded on the bathroom door.

“I’m dropping the Cleveland Browns off at the Super Bowl right now,” the jock snapped. “Get your own room.”

Wendell collapsed to the floor, clutching the seat of his pants. “It burns, it burns!” He began kicking his legs and spinning in a circle, while Rusty scurried towards the stairs and tripped over him.

“Oh, God!” Rusty cried. “Why is there only one bathroom in this place!?”

Roger and Mean Joe began throwing their weight against the bathroom door, while the others began clutching their stomachs or hopping around in a panicked frenzy. Travis was perhaps the most embarrassing to watch, as he had to clutch his pants just to keep them from falling down every time he picked his feet up off the floor.

Pip watched the madness unfold around him and frowned.

“That’s how Piper’s cooking usually makes me feel too,” he said. “…I probably should’ve warned you.”


--------------------


Alejandro: Ay dios mio! That feisty angel of mercy has thrust a dagger right into my open…heart! Why do I still yearn for her, like a handsomely rugged butterfly yearns for a red-petaled flower!? [clenches fist]

Travis: Forget what I said! That skank ain’t no sista to me.

Pip: I’m sure Piper didn’t really mean to put laxatives in our breakfast. It was just an honest mistake.

Claudia: I don’t care what she told you. [folds arms] It was my idea.


--------------------


Four hours and nineteen bowel movements later, the islanders met Cassandra on the beach. She was fishing off the side of the dock, using Rip’s spare arm as bait and his body as a cushion, while a sea of baby-sized sharks circled the water beneath her feet.

“Oh, good,” she said when she saw them arrive. “You’re all here.” She laid the fishing pole down, rolled Rip’s body into the shark-infested water, and joined the others on the sand. “Well, I’m glad you guys got a lot of practice in, because today is going to be all about running! For this competition, you will be participating in a relay race around the island. There are thirteen legs of the race and each of you will run one leg. All of the legs are carefully marked, so just follow the red flags and you’ll be okay. Well, most of you anyway. The winner will be the first team to make it back to the dock.”

“Um, they have one more girl than us,” Pip pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be more fair if—”

“One more thing! As utterly hilarious as yesterday’s event was, I must ask you girls to stop deliberating sabotaging the guys on the other team. Cheating is actually bad for ratings—weird, I know—so hands off, okay?”
   
“What about feet?” Claudia sneered.

“Oh, that would be perfectly acc…” Cassandra stopped when the camera began to zoom in on her face. “Uh, I mean…no. If you are caught sabotaging a member of the other team, you will be sent back to the beginning of your leg of the race. AS SUCH, I strongly encourage you girls to think before you do something that may cost your team the race.” She tilted her head to the side and smiled innocently. “Everybody clear on the rules?”

They nodded—even if some (or all) of the guys didn’t agree with the rules—and Cassandra got her fishing pole and fished Rip’s arm out of the water. She broke off two fingers and tossed the rest to the sharks.

“We’ll use these as batons,” she said. “Now, the randomizer has already assigned each of you a leg of the race to run…so, unless there are any questions, I’ll teleport you all to your spots now.”

Dante raised his hand to say something and Cassandra zapped them all away.

Come on. You didn’t really want to hear what he had to say anyway.

All but two of the contestants were gone, magically transported to their designated leg of the race, where they would be unable to move until the baton reached their hand. Adam and Mercedes remained on the beach, standing behind a line in the sand that Cassandra carved out with the toe of her sandal.

“This will be the starting line,” she said, and she handed one finger to Mercedes and dropped the other on Adam’s head. “Can we get a sign up to show our viewers at home the position of the racers?”


Leg #1: Mercedes vs. Adam
Leg #2: Angie vs. Erica
Leg #3: Rusty vs. Pip
Leg #4: Travis vs. Maxine
Leg #5: Zero vs. Dante
Leg #6: Wendell vs. Luigi
Leg #7: Lydia vs. Penny
Leg #8: Dizzy vs. Mean Joe
Leg #9: Claudia vs. Misra
Leg #10: Alejandro vs. Naomi
Leg #11: Chloe vs. Willie
Leg #12: Butterfly vs. Roger
Leg #13: Piper vs. Bridgette


Adam peeked out from behind the sign that shot up out of the sand and almost impaled him. He glared at Cassandra, as if expecting an apology or something, but he was getting none of that.

“Make sure you get my good side,” Mercedes said to the camera. She grabbed the lens and began adjusting it, despite the machine’s attempt to move itself.

“…You can begin running now,” Cassandra said, pointing them towards the edge of the beach.

Adam didn’t need to be told twice. After a running start, he took an epic long jump over the starting line went rumbling, bumbling, and stumbling across the beach.

Mercedes let out an “Eep!” and released the camera. She took three steps, stopped on one heel, and planted the other one directly over Adam’s head.

“Hey!” he cried, turning around to see the sun blotted out by the heel over his head. “You heard Cassandra—no stepping on the guys! Isn’t that right, Cass?”

He tried to look at Cassandra, but all he got was a face full of heel and then sand. Mercedes stamped him deep into the sand, but was quickly transported all of three steps back. She stood there smugly, hands on her hips, and mocked Adam as he tried to crawl out of the hole in the ground.

“Oh-em-gee,” she said. “That really set me back. I don’t know how I’ll ever catch up!”

Adam watched her pumps crash down in front of him—and then behind him—as she hurried across the beach, a hundred fingers of hair waving good-bye at him.

“Later, scrub!” she yelled, giggling at how clever she had been.

Adam finally managed to get back on his feet and started running again. He had to weave his way around Mercedes’ footsteps, which were like potholes in the path to him, but he seemed to catch a lucky break. Up ahead, he could see Mercedes slowing down and occasionally stopping to tug on the strap of her pumps. No doubt she wasn’t used to running—certainly not in heels and certainly not on sand. A muscular jock and former high school linebacker like him should have no trouble catching up.

“Dammit, Adam!” Mercedes said, when he almost reached her. “You got sand in my shoe when I stepped on you!” She finally stopped to take off her heel and turned it upside down, shaking out the loose grains of sand.

Adam was about to give her a piece of his mind, but he soon found himself back at the starting line, with an angry Cassandra looking down on him.

“Shame on you,” she said. “Putting sand in a girl’s shoes… Do you have any clue how uncomfortable that is?”

Adam just gawked at her, muttered some curse words, and returned to the race just in time to see Mercedes slip her shoe back onto her foot, giggle, and take off running again. By the time he reached the spot where she had been, she was already passing the baton to Angie.

“Good job, Mercy!” Angie said, grabbing the finger.  The moment she did, the spell was broken from her feet, and she raced into the jungle, following the path of red flags. Like Mercedes, she was one of the shortest girls on the island, but her powerful legs made her a strong runner, and her sneakers were made for traction. All Erica could do was watch her disappear into the treetops while cheering on Adam, who was still wading through the white sand.

“I better not get any blisters from this,” Mercedes muttered, sitting down on a rock and removing her heels a second time.

“Come on, come on!” Erica said. “Gimme, gimme!” Her feet were still locked in place, but she was able to crouch down to get in a position where Adam could hand off the baton.

Adam slowed to a jog and almost a crawl as he lifted the baton over his head. He expected Erica to take it gently. She didn’t. Instead, she grabbed the finger—and him—and broke into an all-out sprint. Only when she was running full speed, hair whipping her face, did she peel open her hand, grab Adam by the head, and flick him into the brush.

“Sorry!” she said, not even looking over her shoulder. “Trying to make up for lost time!” He saw a little bit more of her before his head banged against the dirt and he was out cold. Mercedes quietly slipped back on her heels and walked away, whistling.

Angie was fast, but Erica was faster, and it wasn’t long before Angie was looking over her shoulder in a panic. Through the jungle, they raced, with sweat pouring down their skin and getting in their eyes and Erica inching closer with every passing step. The path they were following soon began winding through the trees and Angie had to take the inside cut to keep from being overtaken. Up ahead, there was a sharp turn around a thick net of brush and stone, and they took it so fast that they didn’t even see the next racers frozen in the middle of the path. Like deer in the headlights, all Rusty and Pip could do was scream as Angie’s orange sneaker crashed down on top of them, squashing them both with a single stomp. She stumbled forward for a few more steps, caught herself on a tree branch, and started gasping for air. She didn’t even warn Erica, who followed in her footsteps by running over the guys and coming to a screeching halt at the next tree.

“I think…we crushed…our teammates…” Angie panted.

Erica nodded, her face redder than the mess they had made of Rusty and Pip, and leaned against the tree. “I guess it’s not considered sabotage if they haven’t started running yet.”

“…You’re fast.”

“So are you.”

Angie smiled and Erica smiled back and they both agreed to keep this incident a secret, as Cassandra appeared out of the thicket and sighed, reviving Rusty and Pip.

“This was a very dangerous place to put the next leg of the race,” she said. “Somebody could’ve gotten hurt. Are you girls okay?”

Angie and Erica nodded. As soon as the guys were fully inflated, though, Erica pushed Angie out of the way and handed the baton to Pip. She then gave him a slight nudge with her heel—okay, more like a kick—and sent him flying forward.

“GO, PIP!” she yelled, and he did as she commanded, if only because he wanted to get the hell away from those shoes.

Angie passed her baton to Rusty, who began studying it intensely, as if looking for zombie DNA.

“Just…run,” she told him. “Or I’ll step on you again.”

He yelped, put the finger under his arm, and started running.  He got maybe six or seven steps before he was bent over, wheezing for breath. He took a long drag on his cigarette, finishing it all at once, and flicked it into the bushes before pronouncing, “Time to get serious! Cheetah style! Sha-sha-sha!”

He then proceeded to light a fresh cigarette and lunged ahead once more. He made it ten more seconds before he was doubled over, coughing and wheezing and sucking smoke as though it was somehow more precious than the oxygen he clearly wasn't getting. This process repeated itself so many times that he probably went through a carton before his leg of the race was over.

Meanwhile, Pip, who was already smaller than the rest of the guys to begin with, was having a terrible time holding onto Rip’s severed finger. Every time he thought he had a good grip, it would slip through his hands and he would have to stop, sigh, and pick it up again. Eventually, he just let it fall to the ground and started started dragging it along behind him.

Travis and Maxine were waiting for them outside of the jungle. When Rusty and Pip came into view, they witnessed what could only be described as a handicapped snail race, with neither competitor making any serious ground.

“Pick up the pace, smokestack!” Travis screamed at Rusty. “Gawd, whiteys can’t run fo’ shit.”

Rusty wheezed and fell to his knees, about twenty feet away from Travis. Pip, on the other hand, was already in arms-reach of Maxine, who plucked the finger out of his hands, turned around, and let out a fart in Travis’ direction. Then she started slowly lumbering up the volcano, where the next leg of the journey took place.

“Fuckin’ disgustin’,” Travis said, wafting his hand in front of his face. Then he turned back to Rusty and continued  to shout encouraging racist epithets until Rusty managed to crawl far enough forward that he could roll the finger to Travis. When he did, he finally face-planted in the dirt.

Maxine continued a slow but steady jog up the mountainside. She occasionally glanced behind her to see if Travis had caught up, but he was nowhere in sight. She grinned to herself. The walking heart attack had probably collapsed before handing off the baton. The race was in her pocket now.

Or maybe…something else was…

Travis made himself comfortable and tried to pretend he was in Piper’s skirt, or maybe Claudia’s, or Mercedes’. Yeah, Mercedes…  He put his hands behind his head and noticed he was lying in something gooey and brown. He slowly brought his hands over his face and grimaced.

“I sure hope that’s chocolate,” he muttered.

Maxine reached the top of the volcano without any sight of Travis. She marched over to Dante, scratched her armpit with the severed finger, and handed it over to him.

“Uh…thanks…” he said. He took it, somehow begrudgingly, and held it at a distance. “Um…didn’t this used to be longer?”

“I got hungry on my way up.”

He couldn’t tell by her blank expression whether she was serious or not. But, being that she still looked hungry, he decided to start running anyway.

“This could spell disaster,” Zero muttered, scanning the path Maxine had just followed with a strange electronic visor over his one eye. “No sign yet of my predecessor on any spectrum, visible or otherwise.” He turned to Maxine, as if he actually expected her to care enough to answer him, and screamed.  "Gah! The horror! It's over nine thousaaaand! SCOUTER OFF!"  He tore it from his face just in time to prevent having his retina permanently burned out.

It was around that time that Travis climbed out of Maxine’s pocket and tossed the baton to Zero.

“Catch, bro!” he said.

Zero caught the finger, spun on his heels, and gave an epic pose with one hand on his hip and the other giving a peace sign in the air. Behind him, the volcano bubbled and burst into a fireworks show.

“Jolly cooperation!” he cheered.

Maxine stared at them, dumbfounded, and could only utter a mere “wat” at the absurdity of it all.

Zero lowered his arm until it was parallel with the ground and began making motor sounds with his lips as he started running around the rim of the volcano. His legs were little more than a blur beneath his waist.

“Hax!” Dante yelled as Zero glitched his way to the front of the race and began zipping down the volcano, striking a pose on every rock he passed. One time he was standing on his hand. Another time he was in a seated position, holding his fist against his forehead. Another time he was stretched out like a French model in the need of painting.

That was probably the most disturbing one.

Dante ran through a mystery cube that was in the middle of the path. A glowing box appeared above his head and then out popped a green turtle shell.

“The hell…?” he said, staring at the object that had suddenly appeared in his hands. Then, shrugging, he threw it at Zero, watching it bounce off the rocks and sail down the side of the mountain.

Dante ran through another mystery cube and got a banana peel.

“Now you’re going to get it,” he said, tossing the fruit wrapper in Zero’s path.

“You suck at hacks!” Zero shouted, easily sidestepping the obstacle. He was almost to the end of the leg of the race. Dante had only one more row of mystery cubes. He pushed through it, watching the spinning box appear over his head, and prayed for the best.

It was a lightning bolt.

A cloud appeared over Zero’s head, as well as Dante’s—and the next two racers, Wendell and Luigi—and a lightning bolt shocked them, shrinking them all to less than an inch. The batons shrunk as well.

Zero shook off the attack and passed his baton to Wendell, who started running across the now ridiculously large path which rounded the base of the volcano. He was so small that he looked like a fat moving pebble to the cameras that were strapped to the birds in treetops.

“EVERYBODY LOOK OUT—I’M TINY AND I’M RUNNING!” Wendell screamed happily, flailing his arms about. Even at his size, his two ounce bulk allowed him to plow through anything in his way.

Meanwhile, Luigi was throwing a fit at Dante, who had just gotten taken out by his own green shell. Dante staggered towards him, still dazed and shrunk, and passed off the baton.

“You’re as useless as you look,” Luigi said, putting his long, lanky legs to work and starting after Wendell. Their leg of the race took more than twice as long as any of the legs yet, with Wendell slightly outrunning Luigi, despite their (even moreso) miniature size.

They were so small, in fact, that Lydia didn’t even notice Wendell reach her. He began pounding on her purple Ugg boots with the tip of Rip’s finger, but her eyes were glued to the sky and the soft melody she was humming drowned out his usually husky voice.

Penny watched the awkward attempts of Wendell trying to get Lydia’s attention and finally gave in, tapping Lydia on the shoulder.

“Huh…?” Lydia broke out of her trance. “Oh, hi, Penny. What’s up?”

Penny pointed down.

“Huh? What’s th…A BUG!” Lydia screamed and tried to move, but her feet were still locked in place. She swayed one way and then the other, but eventually lost her balance and fell, landing on her butt directly behind Wendell.

“Are you okay?” Penny asked. She intended the question for Wendell, who had almost been crushed, but it was Lydia who began nodding feverishly.

“I’m fine…” Lydia said slowly. She put her hands out to her sides to steady herself and started to rise. As she did, though, she accidentally brushed the finger, causing her feet to pop loose. Her legs sprung forward, her full weight came down, and Wendell was buried in an avalanche of skirt.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Lydia said, standing up and brushing herself off. “Please don’t tell anybody how much of a klutz I am.” She took the finger—which had returned to its normal size—and began looking around. “That’s strange. The baton is here, but no sign of Wendell. Do you think the bug scared him off?”

Penny opened her mouth to speak, but changed her mind.

“I saw him run that way,” she said, pointing to where the next leg of the race took place. “You should go after him and thank him for delivering that finger.”

“I will do that! Thank you, Penny.”

And, with that, Lydia took off running, leaving Penny behind to hate on herself for being such a good and honest person.

She folded her arms across her chest and waited impatiently for Luigi to appear. When he did, he wasn’t running at all. In fact, he was walking slowly, edging closer and closer to Penny, as if he was trying to be invisible or something.

“…I can see you, you know,” Penny said, looking right at him. He probably would have known she had been watching him the whole time, but his eyes were somewhere else completely. Penny tugged on the edge of her skirt to try to cover herself up, but she couldn’t bring her legs any closer together, and that brought a big, slimy grin to Luigi’s face.

 “You’re stuck there until I give you the baton…aren’t you?” he asked. He stopped just outside of Penny’s arm-length, dropped the baton, and began to nibble on his fingertips. “Oh, this is too good…”

“You don’t want to do this,” Penny said. Most girls would probably be creeped out right now. Actually, most guys would too. But Penny just sounded ticked.  “We’re in the middle of a race here.”

Luigi inched a little closer and took a whiff of the air, trying to get a scent of Penny’s perfume.

“…Okay,” Penny said, giving her best friendly-but-you’re-about-to-get-my-boot-up-your-ass smile. “Why don’t you bring that baton over here and we'll forget this whole incident ever took place?”

When Luigi didn’t give any indication of moving, Penny reached into her back pocket, pulled out some string, and began to tie it into a lasso. Luigi was too busy perving to even notice. By the time she had the knot made and was crouching down, he barely had time to grab the baton and take off towards the brush. Not that it would have mattered. With a flick of her wrist, Penny easily snared them both and brought the two disgusting, pale, green objects dangling over her eyes.  She slipped the finger out of the loop, pocketed it, and tightened the string around Luigi's waist. Then she wrapped the other end around a tree branch and batted Luigi so hard that he began spinning around in circles until he puked. By then, Penny was long gone.

She was fast—very fact, in fact—but the only person waiting for her at the next handoff was Mean Joe, and he had nothing encouraging to say.

“Ey yo, how'da heck are we losin' dis thing!?” he shouted. “It better not be ‘cause’a you, Daisy Duke. Honest to God, none'a you dames are dressed for a race at all!”

Penny stuffed the baton into his shirt and then punted him into the jungle.

“Goal,” Penny said sarcastically as he flew between two trees and collided with another.

Mean Joe landed on the ground and spit out dirt, blood, and a few teeth that were rotting anyway, and tried to find the nearest red flag.

“Now where’d dat freak I got paired up wit’ get off ta?” he mumbled aloud. He took a step forward and heard a twig snap behind him. He spun around and saw a shadow rush by. It came around again—this time, from the other side—and he whirled around to face it.

But there was nothing there.

“I know dat’s you, freak!” he yelled, shaking his fist in the air.

“Who? Me?” Dizzy’s head poked out from a toadstool on the ground. “Couldn’t be.” He disappeared and reappeared on the treetops over Mean Joe’s head. “Could it? I don’t know.” He disappeared again and reappeared behind Mean Joe. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ma deck you one,” Mean Joe said, throwing a blind punch. But, of course, Dizzy was no longer behind him.

Just then, Mean Joe felt something moving in his shirt, as the baton shifted and Dizzy poked his head out of the collar of the shirt and tweaked Joe on the nose. Then Dizzy burst into laughter, jumped out of the shirt, and raced into the thicket on all fours like some kind of crazed animal.

Mean Joe chased after him, but spent the entire leg of the race getting mocked, as Dizzy continued to appear and reappear—first behind him and then ahead of him—until Mean Joe was so confused that he had to sit down and rest his head.

“CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPTREE!”

“Huh?” Mean Joe turned around just in time to see Dizzy wallop him across the head with a small branch.

“Epic stop, epic stop!” Dizzy snickered, hopping around in circles and then hopping away as quickly as he could. “Fat man can’t catch me.”

“Would you stop fooling around and just bring me the baton!?” Claudia snapped from where she and Misra were waiting. “Not everything has to be a big production.”

Dizzy appeared on Claudia’s shoulder and held out the baton. But the moment she tried to take it, he disappeared and laughed, reappearing on her other shoulder.

“Epic stop!” he cried.

She reached for the baton again, but he once again switched shoulders.

Finally, heaving an irritated sigh, Claudia reached up and slapped both of her shoulders at the same time. Dizzy tried his disappearing act—only to be met with Claudia’s palm coming down on him like a hammer of flesh. He was snuffed out in an instant and she grabbed the baton and brushed him off.

“Later,” she said to Misra, starting down the path towards the next racers.

Misra frowned and looked at Mean Joe.

“You are doing very good!” she said, clapping her hands while he huffed and puffed just to keep moving at a sluggish pace. It made one wonder how a man who was so in love with sports could be so utterly out of shape. “Just a little farther.”

Mean Joe’s shirt was drenched with sweat as he reached Misra and lifted the finger over his head.

“You…take…finger!” he said, speaking very slowly and very loudly. “FING-ER. See?” He used the finger to point in the direction of Claudia. “You…run…thataway. Real fast. Fast! Got it? RUUUUUUN. Picture you’re bein’ chased by…uh…I dunno…an elephant or whatever they got in your country. DO…YOU…UNDERSTAND?”

“…There is no need to yell,” Misra said quietly, taking the baton. “I have been speaking English for five years.”

“Aright, whatever. Stop yammerin' already. Damn brown people, always got sumthin'a say 'bout everythin’ even when no one can undastand 'em.” He panted some more and plopped down on the ground, dismissing her with a wave of his fat, sweaty hand. “Just get movin' aready. Whaddya standin' around for? You tryin'a get a tan or somethin'?  Lemme tell you, it ain't happenin'. Huhu!” He tried to mumble his words, thinking she still wouldn’t understand, but she wasn’t dumb. She ran away with tears in her eyes.

The next leg of the race took Claudia and Misra around the outskirts of the jungle. Claudia jogged at a reasonable pace—enough to keep her lead, but not so much that she would actually sweat—while Misra cried all the way up until she reached Naomi. By then, Claudia had already passed the baton to Alejandro, who was out of sight.

“Misra!” Naomi cried, as Misra finished running, removed her thin-rimmed glasses, and began to dry her eyes. “What’s wrong!?”

“N-nothing…” Misra said, choking on her own tears. “Please, take the baton. I have cost our team enough.”

“No! You did great, Misra!”

Misra tried to smile, but her eyes were still puffy and bloodshot.

“I’m going to finish my leg of the race and then I’m going to come back here,” Naomi said gently. “Will you be okay until then?”

“Yes. Yes…I think so…”

“Good. I won’t be long. These men are slower than insects, aren’t they?” She smiled and Misra smiled back and let out a small giggle.

Alejandro was far enough ahead that he didn’t notice Misra crying, or he might have stopped to comfort her. Instead, he was too busy admiring himself in the mirror as he ran, giving little thought to the girls over his shoulder and the growing image of Naomi coming closer and closer and closer until she had overtaken him.

“Objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear—heehee!” Naomi shouted at him as she rounded the next corner and kicked up dirt in his face.

Still, he didn’t notice.

Naomi passed the baton to Willie, who carried it back into the jungle, down a steep and winding path. Meanwhile, Chloe was forced to wait for Alejandro, who every now and then would bump into a tree or fall into a hole because he wasn’t looking where he was going. Even then, he almost ran right past her.

“Ah, señorita!” he said, when Chloe picked the finger—and him—up. “I have brought you a gift of love. Let this finger sever the rift that—”

Chloe dropped him into her back pocket, patted it twice, and started down the jungle path.

 “This time, you’re all mine…” she whispered, listening to his muffled cries of affection.

She wasn’t the fastest runner, but she was quick, and her big leather boots sounded like a stampede of cattle coming up on Willie. He had to dive off the path just to keep from being run over. As he did, he rolled into the brush and went somersaulting down a steep hillside, losing sight of the red flags.

Butterfly and Roger were waiting at the bottom of the hill.

“We have the lead,” Chloe told Butterfly, shoving the finger into her hand. She spun Butterfly around and pushed her forward. “Don’t blow it now, sunshine.”

Butterfly squealed and took off running. She got maybe two or three steps before she slipped out of her sandal and landed face-first on the ground. She got back up, slipped on her Rapunzel-length hair, and fell again.

“There you are!” Roger said, as Willie came rolling towards him, battered and bruised from the long fall. “Pick yourself up, you maggot fucker. You’re making a disgrace of yourself, your team, and—most importantly—me!”

“Just take it,” Willie said, handing off the baton.

Of all the guys, Roger may have been in the best shape, and he broke into an all-out sprint that had him catching up to Butterfly, racing over her body, and leaping off her head before she even stood back up. When she did, she saw the G.I. Jerk land in front of her and chased after him, holding up her hair to keep from tripping again.

The path they were on led to a ravine, with the only way across being a log that stretched from one end to the other. Waiting for them on the opposite end of the ravine were Piper and Bridgette—the anchors of the race and the two most athletic girls on either team.

Roger reached the log first, racing into the hollowed-out opening and following the light to the other side. He ran through muck and grime and ants the size of housecats to him, but nothing would slow him down. That is, until Butterfly climbed onto the log and it began to shake, causing him to lose his balance and fall into a pool of slime. Wiping it off, he crawled the rest of the way on his hands and knees, and he handed the baton to Bridgette before Butterfly was halfway across.

“See you at the finish line,” Bridgette said to Piper, racing off towards the beach at breakneck speeds. With the last leg of the race being the longest, there was still a chance for Piper to catch up. She put her hands to her mouth and began cheering on Butterfly, who was desperately trying to keep her balance on the log.

“Come oooon, Butterfly!” Piper cheered. She waved her imaginary pom-poms in the air. “GIMME A ‘B’! GIMME A ‘U’! GIMME A ‘T’! GIMME ANOTHER ‘T’! GI—”

“Ha!” Roger said. “You can stop it right there, sister. That spells it all for this hippie shitsack.”

Piper ignored him and continued on with her cheer. While she did that, Roger crawled back onto the log—this time, on top of it—and moved towards Butterfly, who was almost to the other side.

“Oh, that's right, buttfly—don't make any fucking effort to get to the other side of the fucking obstacle,” he taunted her. “If your unshaven hippie goddess wanted you over there, she would have miracled your ass across by now, wouldn't she? Give it up already! Just quit, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit! Get the fuck off of my obstacle! Get the fuck down off of my obstacle! NOW! MOVE IT!”

Butterfly inched forward a little more, but stopped when she got to Roger. She nervously tried to step around him, but the log wasn’t wide enough to permit that and began to creak. She planted her heel back behind her and continued standing there, looking for a way around the belligerent toy soldier.

“What’s wrong with you!?” Roger barked. “I’m only one man! Can’t you get around me!?”

“I don’t…I don’t want to hurt you,” she said softly. “You’re one of Nature’s creatures.”

“The FUCK? Turn your rainbow candy ass around and go home! You don’t belong here!” He raced towards her feet and began jumping around, causing her to shriek and hop around fanatically.

It was around this time that some of the other racers were making their way to the finish line to watch the end of the race. Finding themselves log-jammed behind Butterfly's dilemma, though, they could only watch from the far side of the ravine.

“What are you DOING!?” Chloe screamed. Her voice caused all the birds in the trees to scatter. “PIPER IS RIGHT THERE! Give her the baton!”

“I-I-I can’t…” Butterfly stammered. “There’s a man standing in my way.”

“He’s the size of a New York cockroach! JUST STEP ON HIM!”

“I’m not a murderer…”

“NO, BUT I AM.” Chloe placed her heel on the log. “STEP ON HIM OR I’LL MURDER YOU.”

“It’s okay, Butterfly!” Piper chipped in. “Just step on him. He won’t really die!”

Butterfly shook her head and began to back up. Step by step, she edged closer to Chloe, who had now mounted the log and was plodding towards her. The thunderous booms of her boots shut down Roger's foul tirade as he sprawled on the log to avoid being tossed over the edge.

“If I have to pick you up and carry you across, so help me…” Chloe grumbled as she stepped up and placed her hands on Butterfly's shoulders. “Grow a spine already and get your ass in gear! We are LOSING!” And, with that, she gave Butterfly a hard shove forward. Unfortunately, this only served to knock the uncoordinated hippie right off her feet. Butterfly landed on top of Roger, smashing him flat beneath her, and then rolled off the log, careening into the deep ravine below.

The others let out a serious of “Oohs!” and “Ows!” as she hit every branch, tree, and rock on her way down.

“Way to go, Chloe,” Travis muttered.

“I’m not the one who was fooling around the whole time,” Chloe snapped.

It took Butterfly a few minutes to climb out of the ravine, now standing on the other side. She walked up to Piper, with her hair covered in twigs and leaves and dirt, and handed off the baton. Then she adjusted her blouse, brushing the remains of the broken army man off, and took a seat in the grass to meditate away all the negativity the day had brought her.

Piper didn’t waste a moment. She sprinted towards the beach as fast as she could. She was a natural runner and probably could have closed the gap with a little more time. Unfortunately for her and her team, though, Bridgette had already crossed the finish line and was leaning against the docks to catch her breath.  Piper finished the race at full speed and joined Bridgette, congratulating her on winning.

Cassandra, meanwhile, was seated in a lounge chair on the beach, sipping a cold glass of lemonade. She waited for the others to arrive. When they did, she looked at them—all covered in sweat, blood, bruises, dirt, and tears—and finished her drink with a refreshing sigh.

“Isn’t it so much better when we actually follow the rules?” she asked.

The islanders collapsed in the sand from exhaustion.


--------------------


Travis: We LOST? How did we LOSE? After all that cheating I did to ensure we’d win…

Mercedes: It’s not, like, MY fault. *I* had the lead. *I* didn’t do anything wrong.

Rusty: [raises a finger to say something and faints again] …

Lydia: Has anybody seen Wendell?

Wendell: [still stuck to Lydia’s skirt] I dunno why Chloe had to be so mean. Butterfly was only doing what she thought was right!

Lydia: [spins around] I swear, I keep hearing his voice… Hey! Get that camera away from my butt. [sits down] What’s wrong with you?

Wendell: MMMPHMPPPHHH!!!

Chloe: I don’t care what the others say. I did my part. You know who’s getting my vote.

Butterfly: I hope Roger is okay…

Roger: STUPID CLUMSY BITCH!

Luigi: Um, guys…? I’m still up in this tree. [still dangling] Hello? …Anybody…?


--------------------


“Well, it’s that time again,” Cassandra said, at the ceremony that night. “You’ve all watched the tape of the race. (I know how painful and embarrassing that was for some of you, but this is a live TV show.) Now it’s time for the Rabid Monkeys to vote one of their remaining members off the island. Who will it be this time?”

“BUTTERFLY,” Chloe coughed, rather loudly, and Butterfly shot her an angry glare.

Meanwhile, the guys on the Rabid Monkeys were huddled in a small circle.

“Then we’re all in agreement,” Rusty said, rubbing his paws together. “We’ll vote a woman off this time!” They put their hands together in the middle of the circle and cheered, causing the girls sitting around them to raise a couple eyebrows.

The girls, however, had no intention of voting one of their own off. Well, except for Butterfly and Chloe, who each casted a vote for the other. But the other five girls didn’t hesitate to write down Rusty’s name. Angie even scribbled his name down multiple times on both sides of the slip of paper, but Cassandra insisted it still only counted as one vote.

Angie was not happy.

Of course, the men weren’t surprised by this at all. They had already anticipated how the girls would vote; five for Rusty, one for Butterfly, one for Chloe. That’s why they all agreed to vote for the same woman.

Cassandra began tallying the results.

“Well, that’s five votes for Rusty,” she said aloud, as if she could read their minds. “And seven votes fooor…”

The guys leaned forward. The girls did too.

“…Chloe.”

The guys cheered.

“What the hell!?” Chloe jumped to her feet. “Which of you betrayed me?” She stared down each of the girls—all of whom who looked away quickly—and finally her eyes landed on the small circle of guys at her feet. “Was it you, assholes? Too busy worrying about a few scrapes and bruises to see you just ‘saved’ the biggest sandbag on our team?”

None of the guys said a word. They were bound by honor to stick to the plan and admit nothing, no matter the consequences.

It only took five seconds to break Rusty.

“…They made me do it,” he cried, bolting from the circle. “Every man for himself!”

Chloe stamped him out with a flying leap and then proceeded to do the same to Dizzy, Travis, Zero, and Wendell. “How’s that working out? You feel safer now!?” She continued stomping on the men on her team. When she reached Alejandro, though, she stopped with her heel just above his head. Then, heaving a sigh of frustration, she slammed the boot down next to him. “…Et tu, Al?”

He beamed his biggest, brownest eyes up at her. “Corazón, please understand...”

She didn't even let him get started. “...Go screw yourself. I can’t believe I let you in my pants.” She smeared him across the rocky ground along with his comrades. “I hope you all enjoy your Little Miss Sunshine.” She stepped closer to the mouth of the volcano, where Cassandra was waiting for her, and folded her arms across her chest, flipping the bird with both hands. “See you all in hell, losers.” She leaned back and dropped into the volcano headfirst.

“Like a BOSS,” Dante said.

Cassandra watched her disappear into the pool of magma. “Well…I guess that’s one way of doing it. What a drama queen.” She shrugged and tossed Chloe’s idol into the volcano.

“NOOOOOOO, CHLOE!” Adam shouted. He ran towards the spot where she had jumped off and fell his knees. “WHY!? Why couldn’t you take Travis instead?”


--------------------


Angie: What were the guys thinking…? Chloe was one of our best runners.

Mercedes: Um, so, like, I’m thinking the guys’ brains shrunk with the rest of their bodies.

Rusty: It wasn’t my idea, I swear! Gaaaah!

Zero: I know Butterfly was probably the weaker link of the two, but we’re looking out for our own survival here.

Dizzy: EPIC STOP!

Butterfly: I’m very grateful for my teammates giving me another chance. I will overcome my fears and make them proud!

Travis: [comes up behind Butterfly] Boo!

Butterfly: Ack! [stamps Travis out]


--------------------


The islanders continued with their dinner and noisy conversation, but they began to clear the campsite long before midnight. The day’s relay race had left them all tired and weary. Eventually, only Mean Joe was left, still eating like the pig he was.

“Yeah, I still got it,” he said to himself, wiping the barbeque sauce from his hands onto his faded green jersey. He got up to refill his plate, but was stopped by a rubbery black wall that crashed down in front of him.

“…I heard what you said to Misra,” came a voice from above, and he craned his neck to look up at one angry, very pissed off Naomi.

“Uh...hey, yeah, about that...” he started. “You see, I was just tryin'a give the girl a little, you know, motivation. Girls need that from time to time, eh? ‘Specially that one.  She's so damn quiet, you wouldn't know she existed if you didn't step on 'er toes once in a while. Huhu!"

When Naomi was finished with him, he had to wipe a lot more than sauce from his clothes.

Somewhere in the South Pacific, where the water is calm and the deep blue sea stretches seamlessly from one horizon to the other, there is a tiny, uncharted island that cannot be found on any map. Lush green forests, white sandy beaches, a ring of cascading waterfalls, and an active volcano at the very heart of the island have made it one of Polynesia's best kept secrets for centuries. Today, as the human population skyrockets past seven billion, the natural glory of Nāmaka’s Island remains untouched, frozen in the hourglass of time.

Which is precisely why Hollywood has decided to turn this paradise into its hottest new reality TV show! Yes, for the past eight months, camera crews have been feverishly installing surveillance equipment and listening devices in every tree, rock, and animal on the island, so that not one square inch is left uncovered.

The rules are simple. Twenty-five strangers have volunteered (trust us on this) to live on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific and compete in some of the most grueling, disgusting, dangerous, and morally degrading challenges ever imagined. At the end of each day, one unlucky contestant will be voted off the island and can never, EVER return. This will continue until only one cast member remains, the ultimate champion of Nāmaka’s Island. Who will it be?

Who will be…the LAST ONE STANDING?

Team Rabid Monkeys:
Piper, Lydia, Butterfly, Angie, Claudia, Mercedes
Travis, Zero, Dizzy, Wendell, Rusty, Alejandro

Team Agitated Kangaroos:
Erica, Naomi, Misra, Penny, Bridgette, Maxine
Roger, Pip, Adam, Dante, Mean Joe, Willie, Luigi


--------------------


It was four in the morning. The time normal people are asleep. Which meant, of course, about half of the guys were wide awake. Using the dark to their advantage, the tiny Monkeys slipped out of their dollhouse windows and gathered behind the couch in the girls’ cabin. For some stupid reason, they had decided to cover their faces in black paint, except for Wendell, who had removed his shirt and smeared his whole body with the stuff.

“What are we doing, guys?” Wendell asked. He kept his voice down to a whisper, even though everybody else in the cabin was passed out.

“Something those cowards on the other team won’t even consider,” Travis said. “They want to vote off the women? Fine. Let’s make them vote off THEIR women.”

Alejandro gasped. “Do my ears deceive me? Why would we want less ladies on the island?”

“How about so we don’t get eaten by a fuckin’ volcano? That sound good to you, pretty boy?”

“Sounds good to me!” Wendell cheered, wrapping his chubby arms around Travis and Alejandro. “I’m just so excited we get to spend some time together outside of the competitions! Just us DUDES.”

“Get off me, dawg,” Travis said, pushing the behemoth away. “Look. If we’re gonna beat these girls, we need to find out more about them. Get inside their heads, ya know? There are six of them and six of us, so let’s split up, sneak into their rooms, and find out whatever we can.”

“What exactly are we searching for?” Rusty asked.

“Anything we can use against them. Allergies, medications, fears, whatever.”

“Of course! It’s so obvious. But I still have a question… Why are we doing this again?”

Travis sighed. “Maybe you should be writing this down, dawg.”

“Not a bad idea…” Rusty said, grabbing a notepad and pen from his back pocket. He began snickering to himself as he scribbled across the pages.


--------------------


Wendell: I’m glad Travis is on our team! He thinks up all sorts of fun activities to do together.

Zero: I don’t know. I like the strategy, but this just doesn’t seem very honorable…

Alejandro: This will be the SECOND time I raid a woman’s bedroom this week!

Dizzy: …
 
Rusty: [continues to scribble and laugh, looking very suspicious, but completely oblivious to the fact that the cameras are watching him]

Travis: OK, so I’m stuck with a bunch of idiots. Whatever. It just means I’ll have an easier time winning this thing once all the girls are gone.


--------------------


Naomi and Misra were sharing a room. In fact, most of the girls had to bunk with somebody else because of the show’s ridiculously low budget, which was mostly spent on Cassandra’s wardrobe and lawsuits. So, when Zero and Dizzy decided to break into their room in the middle of the night like a couple of perverted panty raiders, they weren’t too shocked to find it full of some really nerdy stuff. On Naomi’s side, the floor was scattered with comic books, insect identification guides, laboratory equipment, and a butterfly net. On Misra’s side, there was only a neat stack of books—each thicker than the guys were tall—but it was pushed up against the side of her bed to make a nice staircase. Both of the girls were sound asleep, with their blankets crumpled up by their feet and their glasses on the shared nightstand.

 “Let’s have a look around,” Zero whispered to Dizzy, who got down on all fours and began sniffing and slinking across the wooden floorboards like some kind of stupid animal. While he did that, Zero made his way to Naomi’s side of the room, climbing over and under comic books, while occasionally stopping to admire caricatures of guys in tights with hair as outlandish as his own.

Meanwhile, in another room, Alejandro had discovered Erica’s backpack. It was white and faded, as if she had owned it for many years, and yet it was the only thing she had brought with her to the island. It obviously meant a lot to her.

“Ah, what secrets lie in here, that I might use to discover the key to this señorita’s heart?” Alejandro said aloud, climbing to the top of the bag and grabbing hold of the zipper. He jumped forward, letting gravity do the work as the bag quickly became unzipped. It wouldn’t be the first time he had unzipped something that belonged to a girl in the dark, but it was probably the first time he had gotten his foot stuck in the zipper and found himself dangling upside down.

“Not good,” he cried, flailing his arms about, just inches above the floor.

Wendell was slightly more successful. Whereas nobody else would even go near Maxine’s room (she had been bunking by herself since they had arrived on the island), Wendell marched right through the open door and screamed “Woohoo!” as loudly as he could without waking any of the girls. He found Maxine sleeping in an upright position, hand on her bare belly and a steady stream of drool dribbling down her chin like some kind of magnificent waterfall of leftover lunch meat and bad body odor.

“That reminds me,” murmured Wendell. “I’m hungry. I wonder if Maxine has any food left in her pockets.”

How Wendell knew what Maxine kept in her pants was beyond anybody’s imagination, but he climbed right up on the mattress to check anyway.

“Oh, boy! CHOCOLATE!”

Moving on then…

Travis dropped to his stomach and slipped under the door into Bridgette’s room. She had been sharing a room with Cathy (Kathy?), but that was short-lived, just like Cathy. Still, like a good roommate, Bridgette had honored the memory of her friend by throwing all of Cathy’s belongings out the window and pushing their beds together so she had a little extra room for her feet.

“You are my greatest competition,” Travis said as he rose to his full size—all four-and-a-half inches—and looked at Bridgette.  She was passed out on the bed, snoring loudly, and he began scanning the area. Bridgette had only brought a single gym bag with her, but it was bigger than the guy’s cabin and was crammed full of sports equipment. Travis figured he was too short to break her kneecaps with a bat, but maybe there was something in there that would be useful.

The wannabe gangster hurried across the room to where Bridgette’s gym bag was sitting against the wall, already open, and jumped inside. He ended up with a faceful of dirty laundry. Because, you know, the producers of the show were too cheap to supply the contestants with washing machines. Or hampers. Or showers.

Hey, this is supposed to be camping, people.

“SICK, DAWG!” Travis cried as he struggled to climb out of the stink-ridden clothes. And, well, you would think Travis would be used to navigating his body through oversized articles of clothing, but he was pretty terrible at this. “Hey, who the FUCK is narrating this? Hey! Fuck you, Cass! I know you’re fuckin’ behind this!”

Yeah, so a mysterious force suddenly zipped up Bridgette’s gym bag and Travis was trapped in there for the rest of the night. Kinda sucks for him, but maybe he should have been a little nicer to the folks around him.

“When I win this game, I’m gonna use the prize money to buy this island and sink it into the ocean!”

Well, about the same time a zipper had doomed Travis, Alejandro had escaped his own careless zipper mishap. He landed on his head without misplacing a single lock of hair, stood upright, and folded down the flap of the bag to see what was inside.

“Ahhh…” he whispered. It was stocked full of health bars, vitamins, trail mix, water bottles, and a pocket calendar, open to the current month, with notes and numbers and doodles scribbled across each day. “I’ve seen one of these before. A girl who cares about her body, just as much as I care about her body!”

Alejandro decided he would respect her privacy by jumping into the bag and reading her innermost thoughts while laughing and eating her peanuts.

When he reached the first page of the calendar, his mouth dropped and so did his nuts.

Oh, and, speaking of food, Wendell was still munching away on whatever he had found in Maxine’s pockets. He stopped to belch a few times, but Maxine was such a deep sleeper that she wouldn’t have woken up if he climbed her body, dropped his trousers, and farted right in her face.

Which, of course, was the very next thing he did.

“Woohoo!” he cheered when she didn’t wake up and beat him to a bloody pulp.

He plopped down on her chest and continued stuffing his face with chocolate.

Around this time, Dizzy was making faces at himself in the reflection of Misra’s glasses and Zero had just finished the third issue of Another Loud-Mouthed Protagonist with a Really Inconveniently-Sized Sword and had done absolutely nothing to discover any of Naomi’s weaknesses. So, basically, they were about on par with the rest of their group.

“So far, all I’ve learned about Naomi is that she has good taste in light reading and has an unhealthy obsession with insects,” Zero said to Dizzy, pushing back the final page of the comic. “I don’t suppose we can use either of those against her. What have you found?”

Dizzy raced around Misra’s glasses and tackled his own reflection.

“Dizzy! Focus, man. We’re supposed to be looking for CLUES.”

Misra’s glasses fell to the floor and Dizzy went tumbling down with them. He landed without a sound, as could be expected, but the deafening roar of cheap plastic hitting hardboard caused Misra to sit upright in bed and look around. Her groggy eyes drifted to Zero on the other side of the room, but he was just a blur of skin and color—especially when he high-tailed it out of the room and left Dizzy to defend himself.

“My glasses,” Misra said, slapping helplessly at the nightstand. “Where are my glasses?” She slid her palm across the wooden plain until her thumb scraped the rim of Naomi’s glasses. She was about to grab them, thinking they were hers, but she was already stretched so far across the nightstand that she lost her balance and fell from bed. She landed on the floor with her chin inches away from Dizzy’s face, who looked up at her and did the only sensible thing he could think of. He screamed. And she screamed back. And he screamed louder. And she screamed louder still. And they continued to scream until everybody on the whole damn island was awake.

“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOM, FREAK!”

Wendell went soaring through the air. He flew out of Maxine’s room and waved to the fleeing Zero before he smashed into the back room. Bridgette began beating Travis’ head in with a tennis shoe and Erica punted Alejandro out of the window. It wasn’t long before all of the girls—even the ones who weren’t victims of the late night raid—had gathered in the common area and tipped over the guys’ dollhouse. The guys went spilling out in every direction and the girls began stomping on them as if they were ants that had just ruined a picnic. If Angie hadn’t had the common sense to grab the phone and alert Cassandra of the incident immediately, the girls might have torn the guys to pieces.

Cassandra showed up three hours later.

“So, what happened here?” she asked, licking an ice cream cone.

There was a bloody mess where the guys’ dollhouse once stood and thirteen tiny, twitching bodies crying out for help. The girls were sitting calmly at the breakfast table.

“They fell down the stairs,” Claudia said. She wiped the blood from her boots on the back of Piper’s skirt when she wasn’t looking.

“Works for me,” Cassandra said. “Anyway, today’s competition is a dance-off. It was supposed to happen this morning, but I think we’ll move it to tonight so SOME OF YOU can get ready…” She put a hand over the side of her mouth and whispered to the mangled corpses on the floor. “Really, boys. At least try to look presentable on camera. This is a G-rated show.”

“Why do you think they were in our rooms anyway?” Naomi asked.

“Same reason guys always do stupid things,” Claudia said. She checked the bottom of the boot to make sure all the blood was gone. Once she was satisfied, she slipped her foot back inside. “They may be smaller now, but that doesn’t mean every part of them shrunk, eh?” She nudged Piper.

“Because their heads are the right size for their brains now!” the cheerleader snickered.

“…Totally not what I meant.”

 
--------------------


Zero: That was an epic fail.

Travis: I like to think of this as a work in progress.

Misra: Can I have my glasses back now? [stumbles into the wall]

Penny: Those creeps went perving on every gal on my team…except me. Am I not pretty enough to perv on? [leans closer to the camera] I don’t think y’all get it. They went after Maxine over me.

Pip: Why did they step on us, too!?

Penny: [steps on Pip, grabs the camera, and presses her face to the lens] MAXINE!


--------------------


After a long day of nursing their wounds, the guys and girls congregated under a large wooden pavilion on the beach. It was just after sunset and there were tables and chairs wrapped in a semi-circle around the dance floor, with enough alcohol on them to get a whale drunk. There were kegs and margaritas and tequila and even a bottle of hard lemonade for Pip. Some of them were already buzzed, but none so much as Mean Joe, who had been drinking since noon and could be heard bellowing from all the way across the beach.

Rip the Disc Jockey Zombie was setting up the turntables when the main group arrived. He waved to them, but nobody really wants to make friends with the undead, so they just stood around awkwardly and waited for Cassandra to show up instead. She was, as always and predictably, fashionably late.

“Hey…” Pip said, in an attempt to break the awkward silence. “Can you guys keep a secret?”

He was standing near Adam and Dante and they both shrugged—Dante because he was too engrossed in whatever game he was playing at the time and Adam because he just genuinely didn’t care.

“…I don’t know how to dance.”

Adam snorted. “Are you even related to Piper at all?”

“Oh, I hear Pip and Piper are reeeeeal close,” came a taunting voice from behind, followed by the sound of two lips smacking together. Pip and Adam turned their heads to see Travis strutting up to them with his hands buried deep in his pockets and Zero and Rusty on either side of him. “Pip and Piper in the bedroom with the wooden pipe—am I right, boys?”

His posse giggled at his stupid joke.

“Why don’t you losers save yourself the embarrassment and go home now before I breakdance all over your face?” Travis asked.

Always one to face adversity head-on, Pip tried to change the subject.

“You guys weren’t at the council meeting this morning,” he said. “I’m not sure you—”

“Oh, no! We weren’t at the council meeting, guys!” Travis slapped his cheeks with both hands and pretended to be in a state of shock. Zero and Rusty joined in when they thought it would make them cool. “…Get real, Pip-squeak. We’re not joining your stupid ‘council meetings’ anymore. On this island, it’s every man for himself.”

“Looks like you found a couple of other men to keep you company, though,” Adam said.

Travis stopped laughing long enough to make a scowl. “Don’t start with me, hick. You might be strong, but that won’t stop my team from wrecking you in this competition. You see that?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where Piper was already on the dance floor, kicking her legs high into the air and shaking her pom-poms everywhere. Her short skirt could barely keep up with her movements. “That’s what my team brings to the table. You poses don’t stand a chance.”

He turned back to the guys, but Adam’s mouth was agape and Dante’s jaw had gone through the floorboards.

“Oh, God, she’s been drinking again,” Pip said, covering his face.

Piper winked at them and shimmied her shoulders. Adam and Dante stared at Piper’s movements until their eyes were as big as the jiggling mounds in front of them.

Pip covered their faces instead. “Come on, guys! That’s my sister.”

“You are so not related…” Adam managed to utter.

“I guess we’ll see you losers after the dance,” Travis said, scoffing at their dumbfounded expressions. “And don’t forget your little plan of voting off the girls when you lose. Might I suggest the ogre? I think we’d all benefit from that being off the island.”   

“Maxine’s twice the man you’ll ever be!” Pip muttered.

His words only made Travis laugh louder. “Come on, boys. Let’s get Red some more crunk juice.”

“…This is a game over, guys,” Dante said. “We’re not going to be able to beat a cheerleader in a dance-off.”

“We have to try,” Pip said. “We just have to…”


--------------------


Travis: Do I feel sorry for them? Hellz naw! Nobody’s here to make friends. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and we just happen to have the champion pooch on our team.

Piper: I love puppies! [squeals]

Zero: Sure, Travis is a jerk, but he gets results. You can’t argue with that.

Mercedes: Why do all these competitions have to involve physical exercise? Couldn’t we just have a fashion show?

Wendell: My tummy hurts… [falls over from eating too much chocolate]

Maxine: Ogre? Yeah. I heard about that. …Do I care? Do I look like I care?

Penny: [shakes the camera] I’m prettier than Maxine, ain’t I?


--------------------


“Good evening, everyone!” Cassandra said, tapping her shot glass with a spoon. She was looking even more extraordinarily beautiful than usual, and only a few people were drunk. “Tonight’s competition is a dance-off. You will all enter the dance floor at the same time and put on your best moves. I will be joining you shortly. If I tap you on the shoulder, that means you’re out and you have to sit down. We’ll continue like that until only one team remains!”

Zero raised his hand. “Is it really safe for the guys to be on the dance floor at the same time as the girls?”

Cassandra laughed and laughed and laughed.

“…What? It was a serious question.”

“Of course it was.” Cassandra pointed to Rip the Disc Jockey Zombie, who was standing ready by the turntable. “Let’s get this party started! Everybody to the dance floor.”

There was a mad rush for the center stage and it wasn’t at all long before the music was playing and everybody was dancing. Of course, the stage wasn’t very big at all, and there were twenty-five bodies on it, so it was pretty much pure chaos, with shoulder-bumping and foot-dodging.

“Well, this will be entertaining,” Cassandra said quietly as she stood next to Rip and took another shot.

“I thought you said you didn’t know how to dance!” Dante yelled at Pip over the booming sounds coming from the speakers.

“I don’t!”

“Then what are you doing!?”

“Trying not to get stepped on!” he cried as Claudia’s boot crashed where he had been standing moments ago. He rolled to the side and nearly avoided Misra’s penny loafer, which came swinging down from the other direction. “Hey, we’re on the same team!”

“Are we supposed to be trying to step on the guys?” Butterfly asked, and Claudia just shrugged and put both feet together before jumping onto Mean Joe, ending his wicked air guitar solo. She splattered him all across the dance floor, but he was too drunk to notice anyway.

“Hey, you can’t do that,” Erica said, pushing Claudia. She stumbled back, nearly stepping on her own teammate this time. “How would you like if I did that to you?” She lifted her sneaker and brought it down on Wendell, who was spinning around and swinging a long twig like an imaginary double-sided lightsaber.

“I’m squishy!” he giggled.

Claudia shoved her back. “Bitch.” She looked around for another guy, but they had wisely rushed for the other side of the dance floor, just in time for Cassandra to get in on the fun. She didn’t murder anyone, but she did have to tap out Claudia and Erica before they broke into a cat fight, and it wasn’t long after that she tapped out Luigi because the dance he was doing next to Lydia was illegal in at least eighteen states.

“You’re such a whore,” Erica said to Claudia as they exited the stage.

They weaved their way past Maxine, who was doing the Frankenstein, and Bridgette, who was booty-shaking like a Vegas showgirl and plopped down on the line of chairs set up just offstage. Rusty was sitting on the chair between them, casually smoking a cigarette.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dancing?” Claudia asked him.

“I, uhhh….stopped to have a smoke break.”

“…Get out there now or that won’t be the only break you have.”

“Gaaah!” Rusty dropped the cigarette and plummeted back onto the stage, doing some kind of crazy spider monkey moves that got him tapped out right away. He came back, mood unreadable behind his glasses, and picked up his cigarette before scrambling back onto his spot on the chair.

“Just as well,” he panted between long, desperate drags, as though the cigarette would actually help with his breathing. “They can tell 93% of what you’re thinking based on your body language. Dancing on camera might as well be a deep-tissue brain scan.”

Claudia waited for him to sit back down before she switched seats and settled down right on top of him.

Erica stared at her.

“What? He’s not on your team.”

With less people on stage now, the contestants were able to spread out a little more, and that gave the guys a little more breathing room. Unfortunately for Pip, it also made them easier to see, and Cassandra was forced to tap him before the show’s ratings tanked. Like, really. It was embarrassing to see. But if you really want to check it out, it will probably be appearing shortly as a gif on tumblr.

Surprisingly, though, the rest of the guys were doing quite well. Alejandro had slipped into a sexy Latin salsa routine and Dante was either assisting or dodging for his life from Naomi and Misra’s flawless run on a DDR machine that had mysteriously appeared on the side of the stage. Willie and Penny were square-dancing, Zero was doing Johnny Bravo posers, and Roger was…doing some kind of rigid military dance that made him look like a nutcracker, so Cassandra tapped him out just because it was disturbing to watch. She got Adam too, who was trying his best to stay hidden, but was too big (even for a little guy) to stay unnoticed forever.

Dizzy was tearing across the stage like a Tasmanian devil, breaking out moves the world had never seen before. His body was twisting and contorting in ways that shouldn’t be physically possible and every pose he struck made Zero jealous with rage.

“Stop trying to outdo me!” Zero eventually roared, and he tackled his own teammate. They rolled across the stage and ended up right under Lydia, who was doing some kind of interpretive dance. Unfortunately for them, the only thing they were able to interpret was the bottom of her Ugg boots pressing them into the floorboards. Then she slipped, because they had turned into a gooey mess, and Cassandra had to tap them all out.

“I thought you were great!” Butterfly said to her as Lydia walked off the stage.

“Crank up the volume,” Cassandra motioned to Rip and the music became louder and faster and so did the dancing. She worked her way over to Maxine and began doing the Monster Mash with her.

“You’re quite good at this,” she said to Maxine.

“Whatever.”

As they danced, Rip came onto the stage and began doing the mash with Cassandra and Maxine. Never one to be outdone, though, Cassandra did a quick hip-thrust to send Rip soaring through the air, over the turntable, and into the snack bar.

While that was happening, Travis, who must have been at least part black from the way he could move, danced his way over to Alejandro.

“We gotta do something,” he said. “The other team is ahead.”

Alejandro gave him a wink. “I know just what to do.” With a grin so shiny that it could have been seen from space, he put his hands behind his head and began doing hip-thrusts until the shirt burst from his chest.

Almost instinctively, the girls lost their concentration. Bridgette stopped twerking to watch him and Naomi and Misra got tangled up in each other’s legs and landed on top of Dante, who wasn’t all too disappointed by this turn of events. One by one, Cassandra tapped them each out. And just like that, it was down to Penny, Maxine, and Willie for the Kangaroos, while the Monkeys still had four girls, and one of them was Piper, who had been shaking her skirt and pom-poms nonstop for hours now.

“We got this!” Travis said to Alejandro, giving him a high-five without missing a beat in his own dance routine. They crossed their arms over their chests and began boogying back to back.

Cassandra danced her way over to Angie and Mercedes, who appeared to be throwing down in a head-to-head dance-off, and then to Penny and Willie, who were doing a hoedown for the ages. Butterfly was lost in some kind of tai chi, drug-induced trance, and Piper had just downed another bottle of booze.

“I’ve got spirit, how about you!” she cheered, holding up the spirit bottle over her head as she did splits. “Wooooo!” She popped back up and, in one less-than-fluid motion, attempted a somersault, a move she had already proven more than capable of performing several times since arriving on the island. Unfortunately, she forgot to let go of her bottle and flubbed the hand-spring entirely, careening face-first across the dance floor as the bottle spun through the air.

“No!” Travis and Alejandro screamed. They held up their hands, but they didn’t stop Piper from crashing into them and then into Butterfly. Cassandra casually danced her way over to them and knocked them each out with her pointer finger. None of them seem to really care, though—Piper because she was wasted, Butterfly because she was high, and Travis and Alejandro because they were just streaks across the floor. 

“My shoes!” Mercedes cried, stepping in the remains left by the guys just as the bottle flew overhead, dousing her in fruit-flavored alcohol. “My hair, my dress! That’s it! I’ve had it with this competition. I’m sweaty and sticky and…ugh! I’m done.” She threw up her hands and stormed off the stage, leaving Angie to face off against Penny, Willie, and Maxine alone.

Luckily for Angie, she was the only contestant not completely drunk by this point. She continued to dance alongside Cassandra, matching her step by step, and waited for Maxine to start puking her guts out from all the alcohol and candy bars she had consumed. Cassandra had to tap her out after that.

Penny and Willie continued their square dance, with Willie weaving in and out from the heel of Penny’s tapping boots. They shuffled their way across the stage, each dancing with the other like they had known each other all their lives, and soon began to win over the drunken crowd. It wasn’t long at all before even the other team was cheering for them to win.

“We have our winners,” Cassandra said, grabbing Penny’s hand and lifting it for the crowd. She would’ve done the same for Willie, but his arm likely would have come detached from its socket.

Angie finally stopped dancing and frowned, turning to look at her own teammates, who were so tanked by this point that they didn’t even know what was going on.


--------------------


Angie: Disappointed? I guess you could say I’m disappointed. I mean, I thought the goal here was to win, but it seems some people are too busy having a good time to even try.

Claudia: I have nothing against Erica. She wants to play dirty? Fine by me. I just hope she knows I’ll fight back.

Penny: Yee-haw!

Piper: [is still passed out on the floor] …I like puppies…

Pip: I wasn’t that bad…was I?


--------------------


The islanders met at the Temple of Dreams at two in the morning in high spirits. Sure, one of them was going to be voted off the island and die in some horrible, grotesque way that only Cassandra would enjoy, but alcohol made everything okay. Let that be a lesson, folks.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I really enjoyed this competition,” Cassandra said, slurring her words to the point where she almost could have said anything. “I almost hate to see one of you have to go, but let’s be honest… Some of you were REALLY terrible at this.” They all laughed and pointed at the ones who stood out, who were the worst at dancing, who would likely never see another sunrise again. Were they drunk or what?

“Well, Rabid Monkeys… You lost. Again.” Cassandra got up, a bit unsteadily, and began to pass out the usual slips of paper. “I’m glad you’re not under the influence of anything that might affect your judgment this time.”

They laughed again. Mean Joe laughed so hard that he rolled down the volcano and landed in some bushes. Maybe somebody should have told the men they can’t hold their liquor.

Cassandra waited until everybody had submitted a vote and then tallied them up.

“Guys…” she said. “You can’t ALL vote Pip off. He’s not even on your team.”

Pip threw his arms up in the air. “Oh, come on!”

“Oh, wait.” Cassandra found one extra slip of paper at the bottom of the box. “…Well. It seems ONE of you was sober enough to vote somebody off on your own team. Thank you, whoever did this.”

“No problem,” Angie said, and then she turned red when she realized her vote would be the deciding factor. But no matter. The others were so inebriated that they wouldn’t remember this night anyway.

“Well…with one vote from someone who must really hate you, it’s time for you to go, …Rusty. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you saw this coming. I mean, you did sell your whole team out to Roger.”

The cigarette fell from Rusty’s lips. “W-what!? That’s not true! That’s not true at all!” He raised his arms, as if to show his innocence, and the notepad he had been keeping in his pocket spilled out onto the ground and opened up to a page with “TOP SECRET INFORMATION TO SELL TO THE OTHER TEAM” written across the top in gigantic bold letters.

“…You suck so much, dawg,” Travis said.

“I was framed! Framed, I swear!” Rusty cried out, but it was no use. Cassandra had already picked up his totem and heaved it into the mouth of the volcano. It gave a gentle burp, as if approving of the night’s selection, and then twelve pairs of legs surrounded Rusty. He looked up at the faces of the girls—not just the ones from the other team, but the ones from his team as well—that were all disgusted by his actions.

He gulped and reached for his cigarette. Pressing it to his lips, he took a long, slow, and deliberate inhale and then opened his mouth as if to speak his final words, which just happened to be…

“Pocket sand!” He launched a vicious barrage of about fourteen grains of sand that bounced harmlessly off Mercedes’ ankle and then turned to run.

“Ugh, and now I’ve got sand in my shoe!” Mercedes said. “This is like the worst day ever.”

Rusty clothes-lined himself beneath the arch of her pump as she planted it squarely in his path to block his escape, which was pretty pointless, considering he had only gotten about six paces. He landed flat on his back, unable to do anything else before the other shoes dropped. First came a boot, then another boot, then a sneaker, a loafer, a sandal, and back to a boot again. They all got their turn, all twelve girls, stomping on Rusty again and again until his name might as well have been changed to ‘Dusty’ because that was all that was left of him.

While the girls were distracted, Roger sneaked over to where Rusty had been sitting and pocketed the notepad on the ground…