Bridie couldn't wait to see what these girls looked like after a few days in the jungle. Emaciated. Clothing torn...and then she didn't want to see it, because eventually the girls would strip to just their panties and bras. And even though they'd be covered with Amazonian muck and filth, or perhaps because of that, they would be alluring and almost naked.
The two tribes slipped on their buffs, some on their heads, some around their wrists, one on her ankle. The stupid bitch. Each tribe shook hands and smacked and hugged their mates, though it looked like Damien was just standing there by himself, trying to get a hand in but the other six arsehole's hands were always in another arsehole's hands. It wasn't looking good. Bridie bit her lower lip. The men were ostracizing him already! Because he was smaller than they were! She boiled with rage. She gulped her cup dry, then poured more.
“D—”
“Silence, I said!” Damien roared.
“And, just a heads-up,” Jeremy said from the screen; he always spoke as if he were a Yank, “In each camp we've hidden a You Can't Vote Me Out trinket.”
As they all clapped and whooped on the screen, so did Bridie. Damien eyed her, but clapping and whooping wasn't talking. And she was supporting him, after all. Bridie now understood what was going to happen: Damien would find the You Can't Vote Me Out trinket, so no matter how much his tribe mates didn't like him, he would tell a few of them he had it, get to make secret alliances that way, and move along further in the game. Bridie had seen it season after season. Someone nobody much liked, indeed, someone everyone loathed, could end up willing the million pounds. Because of the power of the You Can't Vote Me Out trinket, the YCVMOT. She had always loved those trinkets. Now she loved them even more!
Jeremy tugged away a bulging tarpaulin that had been standing beside him, and which everybody, contestants and viewers alike, knew hid the tribes' supplies. There were boxes of shelter-building material, pots and pans to cook with, bags of rice and beans, machetes, hammers and Bridie didn't know what else. Flint for the fire, she hoped.
“You can carry all this back to your camp. It'll be difficult in this wild terrain, but you've got to do it. Or you'll die out here. You must keep a fire burning at all times. This year, we're in one of the most dangerous areas in the world. There are anacondas, tarantulas, the urubu,” he pointed up at the sky, “flesh-eating birds, and many others.” He turned to the camera. “Our contestants, as you know, viewers, have signed away all their rights. If they are killed or dismembered out here, there's nothing their families can do legally.” He turned back to the tribe mates. “So make sure you survive.”
The camera went down the row of contestants, and Damien's eyes were bulging out of his head in horror. Again, Bridie had to stifle a giggle. His face on the screen was no longer alabaster. It looked like the sun beating down on him when he'd been in the canoe had burnt his face to a crisp. Blisters already seemed to be forming.
“And now...” Jeremy said, holding up two burlap bags. “The first surprise!” Jeremy always had surprises for the contestants, and they were never pleasant. “I want you all to put your hands into this bag and pull out a pebble. Six are blue. One is pink. The person on each tribe who pulls out the pink pebble must move to the other tribe.”
The contestants were shocked, except Damien. He was staring upwards, as if either thanking the Lord or looking in fear at a flesh-eating bird.
They put their hands into the bags, first the men, then the women. Then they held out their hands and revealed.
Damien and one of the blonde girls got the pink pebbles. As Damien whipped off his buff and skipped happily over to the woman's tribe, Bridie's aching stomach clenched with fear and disgust.
And then, just as Damien was wrapping his arms around their nubile bodies, and the girls seemed to be squealing and trying to push him away, he suddenly groaned and wobbled back and forth, then his legs crumpled. He collapsed on the jungle floor. The girls shrieked and ran from his body. The camera zoomed in on his death-like face. What had caused it? The relief? The excitement? The heat? Dehydration? The exertion of rowing the canoe?
“Medic! Medic!” called Jeremy. The men's tribe was roaring with laughter. Bridie wanted to jump into the screen and smack them all.
A doctor climbed over some gigantic tree roots, rushed forward and bent over Damien's body.
“A first!” Jeremy called out. “Nobody has ever passed out five minutes into the game before.”
Bridie wanted to smack him also.
After a few tests, the doctor said to Jeremy, who was hovering over his shoulder, “He's just passed out. I'll give him some smelling salts, and he'll be fine.”
Although Jeremy looked relieved and the men were cheering—suddenly Bridie loved them all—the camera zoomed in on several of the girls' faces. Disappointment. Disgust. Revulsion.
“Cunts! Cunts! Cunts!” Damien yelled at the screen. Bridie couldn't help but agree. Though silently, of course.
There were about five minutes of the men and the one blonde girl clambering through the jungle, staring in confusion at the map, but finally reaching their camp. Bridie didn't find any of this interesting, and Damien leaped up. Bridie shirked back into the sofa for a second, but he was only racing to the bathroom. The men leered all the time at their one girl tribe mate as they were building the shelter, and she giggled and cooed and tried to light the fire.
Several men spoke directly into the camera, which was also of no interest to Bridie, as they were talking about what they thought of others on their tribe. It seemed they all wanted to capture the blonde for some Safari Millionaire romance. Bridie rolled her eyes. As the contestants spoke, their names were flashed at the bottom of the screen, along with their occupation. These 'confessionals' to the camera were when the contestants revealed what they thought of what was happening in the game that far.
Just as Damien came back in and sat down, revealing to her he had taken a 'massive shite,' they moved to Damien's tribe trying to find their way through the jungle towards the camp site. With Damien on the tribe, Bridie couldn't really call it the 'girls' tribe.' There were a few confessionals, and Bridie read the professions: fitness instructor, model, exotic dancer... Bridie felt the disgust and fear swell through her, and she stole little glances at Damien. But she couldn't read anything on his face, couldn't tell if he had...paired up in the middle of the sweltering heat with any of them while the others were all sleeping in the shelter.
These were the types of girls whose voices rose at the end of everything they said, turning every sentence into a question. Bridie couldn't stand that. She couldn't remember their names, and, anyway, it was difficult to distinguish one from the other. They were all, except the Asian, the same 'type,' stupid man-hungry cows. Bridie couldn't be dealing with their horrid names, Jacqui and Tiffanii and so on. Bridie rechristened them Bitch, Slag, Tart, Cunt, Whore. And Paki. Maybe that name wasn't PC, and Bridie had nothing against Asians, per se, but why waste time saying the four syllables Pakistani in her mind when two syllables sufficed?
And, with Paki there on Damien's tribe, she felt secure. He'd make an alliance with Paki. He and she were obviously the two outsiders. They would surely rise against their oppressors and, against all odds, one of them would grab the million pound prize. It wouldn't be Paki. Damien just had to make them hate him less than they hated her. That seemed, to Bridie, quite elementary. And easy for her Damien to do.
They arrived at the camp. Damien collapsed with exhaustion the moment they got there, and Bridie was angry at the girls laughing at him. They had made him carry the heaviest box through the jungle! No wonder he was exhausted.
To Bridie's surprise, Damien jumped up from the jungle floor and trilled, “Ladies, youse jammy, jammy ladies! I'm here for you! Young, single and free! Enjoy...!” He motioned to his loins, then smacked away a monstrous mosquito-locust type thing from his beet-red face.
He wasn't finished. “Look, ladies!” Damien said, wrenching up his shirt. “Just for you!”
Squeals of unbridled horror rang out from their withered lips. They scattered, pointing at him in repulsion. Here Bridie felt a pang of hatred towards them. Damien's stomach was marvelous. Well, it had been, before those insects had gotten to it.
Now the girls were suddenly building the shelter, taking a machete to the trees, sawing branches, banging in nails, plaiting palm fronds together for the roof. Bridie scanned the screen for any sight of Damien. She couldn't see him.
Then the scene changed. Damien was floating in the river, kicking back the water, laughing into the air. At Bridie's side, Damien had been gulping down and giggling to himself and clapping and roaring every time he came on the screen. This was another of those times.
Then it showed the girls working again. Then Damien, and now he was swimming. Then the girls working. The shelter was almost built by now, and darkness was falling. Paki lit the fire and all the girls clapped. Then Damien again, still swimming.
There were a few more confessionals, and they all seemed to be about Damien. How horrible he was. How he disappeared when they had the shelter to build. How they wanted rid.
Bridie watched Damien, not a care in the world, splashing away in the Amazon, a tropical paradise thousands of miles away from Derry, a free holiday. She stared at the screen and noticed her nails were digging into the cushion pressed against her aching stomach. She was realizing, or maybe trying not to realize, that that was exactly what Damien did to her. She slaved away at the Kebabalicious six days out of seven, nine, ten or eleven hour shifts, while he drank and danced and went to concerts with her money.
When the camera followed him as he gave a girly shriek that turned into howls of pain, and he leaped out of the water and scrambled up the bank, and it showed close ups of the leeches plastered all over his body, and him trying to pull them off, Bridie couldn't help but stifle a very secret giggle into the cushion. It served him right!
As the show continued, Bridie remembered when her father had once won the football pools. She'd been eight. He had spent the windfall on taking the family to Blackpool. They had gotten there on the ferry. They went to the boardwalk on the beach. It had been spitting with rain, but they had taken the roller coaster. The Hair Raiser, it had been called. Bridie had never been on a ride like it before. That was what she felt like watching this first episode. Like she was on a roller coaster ride.
They always showed Damien being attacked by the microscopic bitey things. The girls seemed immune. And over on the men's tribe, so were all of them. Though, perhaps the men were lucky, and their camp was in a part of the jungle where the bitey things didn't live.
“Why are they focusing on me?” Damien whined. His insistence on silence didn't extend, she saw, or heard rather, to himself. He rattled off comment after comment. “ On all the difficulties I had out there me first night? Sure, I wasn't the only one who got bitten!”
But as the show got to the half-way point, it seemed to Bridie he was. The only one bitten by wildlife and attacked by his tribe mates. There was much whispering among the vines about how much the girls hated him, how they had to band up against him. The camera panned to the sky, and six of the giant flesh-eating vultures were circling overhead in the approaching dusk. Just like Damien's six tribe mates. After his flesh. Ready to dig their claws into him and rip him to shreds.
There was another commercial break. But Damien had grown moody and taciturn, glowering at the television. Bridie knew, according to the rules, she was allowed to speak now. But she didn't dare. She knew what Damien was like when he was in this mood. It was like tiptoeing through a mindfield, the most innocent, innocuous comment causing him to blow up in a rage.
Does he get sent back to the boys' tribe somehow? Bridie wondered. He must do!
Though, in some secret compartment of her brain, a niggling little thought told her he would fare no better over there. How on earth did he hold on? On Safari Millionaire, though, you never knew what might happen from one week to the next. That was why the show was so exciting. It was unpredictable. One week, everybody voted to kick one person out, somehow they were saved, and then the next week nobody voted for them. It was a social game, and if you could pit the others against someone else, you saved yourself and got rid of another person who was standing in your way of a million pounds.
Then it came to the You Can't Vote Us Out competition. The losing team would have to go to the Showdown Arena with Jeremy and vote one of their tribemates out.
Bridie was still confident. They are going to have the challenge, and he will be marvelous at it. They will win. The men will have to go to the Showdown Arena and vote one of their tribe mates out. Bridie thought it would probably be your man with the mustache. And the girls will all have realized they will have to keep Damien around to continue winning the You Can't Vote Us Out competitions.
The first You Can't Vote Us Out competition involved the two teams filling coconut husks with water, and maneuvering through a maze with a tray of five balanced on each of their heads. No water could be spilled. Then, each contestant had to attach a pole to the bottom of the tray and balance it for ten minutes. After ten minutes, they had to attach another pole to the bottom of the first pole, and so on. If too much water splashed out, or if a husk rolled off the tray, that person was out. The team with the last tribe mate standing won.
Bridie clapped her excitement. Everyone knew girls were better at balancing than men. That was probably why the producers had made this the first competition. The men were all too strong; they had to get rid of a few of them at the beginning to make the tribes more equal. With a tribe of six girls and only one Damien, his team was sure to win. Her thought that girls were better at balancing was proved correct when, at the beginning of the maze, Damien tripped and dropped all his coconut husks.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Damien roared at himself on the screen.
That was fine, Bridie thought, less enraged. He was a man, and couldn't be expected to balance. There were still six girls against the six men and the blonde girl. Now the show was getting exciting. Her heart was racing. Damien's team would win. Bridie knew they would. She could feel it in her soul.
They lost.
Bridie moaned. Damien looked at her sharply. She held up her hands, and curled in her lips, as if to say, “I didn't speak.” As she did this, in the back of her mind, Bridie wondered, How does he turn this around, hi?
How she wanted to speak to him, to ask him. But she didn't dare. Her stomach still hurt too much.
But she'd forgotten about the YCVMOT. Somebody on the men's tribe had found one ten minutes before, but the girls had been too busy building their shelter without Damien's help to go searching for theirs. It had taken them two days to build that shelter. Bridie was comforted. There was still the YCVMOT at Damien's camp to find.
Just as Bridie was wondering when they would show Damien finding it, the camera followed Slag as she went to fetch some water from the well. But that had been, apparently, only a ruse. Bridie should have realized. She mistrusted all the girls, but she mistrusted Slag most of all. Slag put down the empty water canister and began digging through roots and matted ancient leaves and clumps of muck and Bridie didn't know what...until she squealed with triumph, tugged something out of ground and waved it excitedly in front of the camera.
“I've found it?! I've found the You Can't Vote Me Out Trinket? Result?!!!”
Damien punched the back of the sofa as if it were her face. “She found it? She found it? That bitch found it!” Bridie longed to tell him that that bitch hadn't found it; Slag had.
And suddenly it was the Showdown Arena. Bridie couldn't believe it. She checked her watch. The time had flown by! The show was almost over. She hadn't heard much of what had been going on; it had just been various groups of the girls discussing voting strategy next to the fire, lounging in the shelter, down by the bank of the river. She couldn't bare to look at them any longer, let alone be interested in their whiny, rising-at-the end voices.
; As Jeremy came into the Showdown Arena and addressed the losing tribe, who were all sitting on top of a log next to each other, Damien was snickering at Bridie's side. He always snickered, and it annoyed her slightly, but this snicker seemed almost...sinister?
“Okay,” Jeremy said. “It's time for you all to walk to the Voting Machine, and pull a level to choose who you want to vote out of your tribe. Jacqui, you go first.”
Jacqui jumped up. She walked through the curtain of vines that hid the Voting Machine, and the camera closed in on her face as she grappled a lever and said, “You have your head so far up your own arsehole, you'll never see this coming!”
One by one they went in, though it didn't show what each person said as they voted. As Damien pulled the lever, a fly the size of a baseball zoomed into his face. He screamed and ran through the vines into the safety of the Showdown Arena.
Jeremy spoke,“I'll get the printout from the Voting Machine.”
Bridie had bitten all her fingernails, and didn't know what to bite next. Her heart was racing, though she didn't know why. Of course Damien wouldn't get voted out the very first show! In fact, he didn't get voted out at all. He had told her. Or...had he? Had she just assumed it...?
Jeremy started to read out the votes.
“First vote...Jacqui. Next, Damien.”
Bridie felt anger swell in her. Who voted for her Damien? Slag? Bitch? Whore? Certainly not Paki.
“Damien.”
Bridie stared in shock at the screen. A second vote? But then...breathe deeply, she told herself. The next vote was sure to be for Jacqui Slag. And the next. And the one after that.
Damien whipped around and she couldn't read the bizarre expression on his face. Triumph? Excitement? He said to her, “Here it comes, girl. Here...it...comes!”
Bridie should have been relieved. He was telling her there was some secret alliance they hadn't shown on the screen. So...he had hooked up with Paki and...who else...? She sat there with a silly grin plastered on her face. But deep inside, she was starting to get anxious.
Static Cling (The Irish Lottery Series Book 5) Page 30
