Fortnightly Writing Contest: Outlandish! (Open until April 18th)

[Mandle]

OUTLANDISH!

The theme of this round is somebody suddenly doing something so inappropriate, and possibly so unlike them, that it would be considered outrageous! Perhaps even they themselves are shocked at what they have done, or maybe it's part of a carefully orchestrated plan.

Anything goes, as long as it's outlandish!

Open until April 18th. Shock us!

[Baron]

Spoiler

I am shocked by this theme.  Simply shocked. 

[close]

[Durinde]

Working on something, hopefully will have it polished by the end of the weekend.

[Mandle]

Awesome! I wasn't going to write anything this time, as a non-entry I mean, but an idea came out of the blue, so I probably will.

[Sinitrena]

Warning: Death of children, none graphic but brutal.

Spoiler

Twelve Beads

Every day, she woke up at six. Every day, she showered and brushed her teeth. The water boiled while she put on her clothes, and dripped through the filter while she checked her e-mails. And every day, the coffee still stood on the kitchen table when she returned in the evening, untouched, cold, forgotten.

Every day, she rushed to the bus stop and every day, she missed the bus. But it drove in a wide circle to the next stop, and a hidden footpath through the gardens brought her right there, just in time. Coins were exchanged for a slip of paper and she slid into the seat right behind the driver. Every day. For twenty years.

Her head leaned against the glass of the window, red, tired eyes staring back at her from the pane. Trees and houses trickled past, then a river rushed as the bus drove quicker. And then it stopped, as it stopped every day, right at the next halt, right next to the house that had burned down so long ago.

The first day she took this bus, it had stood tall and proud in the morning sun. But that night it burned and the next morning blackened walls, wet still from the firemen's efforts, stared back at her. They had dried, over the days and over weeks, the soot had washed away some in the rain. Over months, a demolition crew had torn it down and over years, a new house was built in its stead. But she still saw the ruin when she looked through the window every morning, while more and more passengers filled the bus, until it started to move again with a heavy groan, as if it, too, remembered. When the bus turned at the next corner, her eyes stayed on the house, watching the children leave its front door to wait for another line.

Only when the last corner of the house had left her sight did she turn away. Twelve children died in the children's home that night, twelve beads on her necklace glided through her fingers, each one a name, a face, a story, a life.

Three stops more and she got up from her seat, standing at the door, waiting for the fourth. There was a coffee shop at the corner and if she walked fast, she just managed to get her coffee before it was time to clock in. Every morning, for twenty years, she rushed to the counter. For many years now, her usual was ready when it was her turn to order, and still every morning she ordered. The faces changed, the voices, even the standard greeting, but her order stayed the same. And then her steps slowed down. With the coffee in her hand, she could tell herself that she couldn't, shouldn't run, that it would spill, that it would stain. But the truth was that a different stain slowed her steps, one that could never be washed away, not with soap, not with bleach. Never. And nor should it.

The smile was genuine when she greeted her colleagues, the laughter real. Some days, the jokes were forced, the smiles more muted, when the day before had been stressful, when the day to come promised trouble, but so was life. So was life.

And life was her daily routine. The lives of children, broken, destroyed, hopeful, rescued. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

There were always notes from the night shift to go through, emergencies to follow up on, children and parents to interview, police reports to read, standard check-ups in foster homes. Her days were always different, and always the same. She preferred order, routine, but it was not always possible. Hardly ever. Never, really.

Over the years, the cases blurred in her mind, the stories mixed and intertwined. She had to take the sons of fathers she had taken away before, to place them in a better home. In a better home than she had placed their fathers in. She lost many, she saved a few.

After a couple of years, she had started a list, a list of successes, of failures, though many cases never made it to the list, the children disappearing to a new life as adults she never heard about, or to a new case-worker, or back to their families. After a while, she stopped adding new names to the list. But it still lay there, after twenty years, the paper wrinkled and discoloured, but still there. And sometimes she looked at it, at the first name, the very first name she added, even though the case was years old when she did.

She still remembered it, her first day, her first case. The little boy with the burned hand and the innocent smile. She remembered the black eye, the father yelling that the boy deserved it, that he was a little demon, that he needed to be stopped, that this was the only way. The mother had stood in the corner, looking from father to son, looking to her, pleading. To this day, she did not know what she pleaded for, what she wanted her to do.

They had come themselves, all three of them. And the father told her to take the boy away, that he was a monster, that he needed help. That he would kill, that the father didn't know how to stop him, how to stop him if not by hurting him, punishing him, screaming, hitting.

He screamed then, in her office, while the mother cried and the boy just smiled. She took him away, first to a different room, then to a temporary home, just for the night. And she called the police. She informed doctors to look at the boy's eye, psychologists to talk to him more in-depth than she could. She did what she had to do, what was expected of her. What was right.

And still she had to write his name in the failure column once she started her list. It was the only name written with shaking hands.

The memories always returned when she sat down at her desk in the morning. So often, she thought about throwing away the list, moved her manicured fingers to drag it from the table. But she never did. She sighed and took the next file. There was always one more, one more case, one more fate. For twenty years, the number never seemed to reduce.

She seldom ate lunch. And still every day for twenty years she went to the cafeteria and sat down next to her collogues. Every day she watched them eat, every day she talked with them about this and that, every day she drank her fourth or sixth coffee. Every day. Except today.

Except today.

Today, she couldn't move.

She had become so used to her routine that even the mistakes in it were part of it. But today she sat frozen at her desk, her heavy purse next to her.

Every day. But not today. Twenty years, but not today.

Today, this morning, she never woke, because she never slept. And the coffee burned her tongue when she drank. And she could have reached the bus if she wanted to. Just this once, just today. But today she took the footpath nonetheless, today she followed it through the fences between the backyards.

She was early and she knew she would catch her bus even if she didn't rush. And so she didn't. Her steps almost crawled to a stop. She got slower and slower the closer she came to one of the houses in the neighbourhood. The house of a new neighbour, one who had moved here less than a month ago. Children laughed there in the garden, running to the halt she tried to use every morning and never quite reached in time. There were two of them, brother and sister, none older than nine. The girl's arm had burned once. It was easy to notice in the summer.

She had seen the father a couple of times when she sprinted to her bus. He still had the same boyish face, the same innocent smile, the same burn marks on his hand. Others had been added over the years, one prominent at his ear. She still remembered the burned-out house where it occurred. If he turned his head just right, he looked disfigured, but usually he wore his hair over the ear and a baseball cap over his face.

Three houses had burned in the city in the last month, two cars suddenly burst into flames.

This morning, he was not there, and so her steps hastened again, and so she reached her bus just as out of breath as she always did. And so she looked at the once burned down house as she always did and the beads glided through her fingers as they always did.

But her purse felt heavy, too heavy, and her tongue hurt from the coffee burn. And so she did not go to the coffee shop and her usual waited for her on the counter, unclaimed, for the first time in twenty years.

Later, people would say that she acted different that day. That she threw away a piece of paper, that she charged her phone at her desk. That she didn't come to lunch.

And that she got off the bus a stop early this afternoon.

For the first time in twenty years, she took the footpath in the afternoon, clutching the purse to her chest. School had not let out yet, but the father was working in the garden, burning leaves in a small pit.

He looked up and nodded when she came closer and for a moment she kept walking. She walked past the garden. And then she stopped. And then she turned around.

Twelve children died in the fire, twelve beads dropped from her necklace now. Once, they were chained to her by the murderer she had sent to their home. Now, she let go of the chain as she slowly pulled the gun from her purse.

She was as methodical as in her daily routine. She pulled the trigger without hesitation. Then she got her phone from her purse, the phone she had made sure to charge. And she called the police herself. And then she waited.

Tomorrow, no coffee cools on the kitchen table and a seat on the bus stays empty. Forever.

[close]

[Baron]

Spoiler

I'd just like to say that I'm not working on anything yet, but...

Spoiler

...but I also didn't want to spoil that fact for you if you didn't really want to know.  

[close]

[close]

[Mandle]

If using spoiler tags for a story, I think it's a good idea to put the story title outside the tags to make finding it easier and make getting Baroned harder.

[Baron]

Spoiler

...and make getting Baroned harder.

You're getting Baroned harder. 

[close]

Spoiler

...But not anytime soon, as I've completely run out of runway on this competition.  Any chance of an extension?

[close]

[Stupot]

I think it's a good idea to put the story title outside the tags.

Spoiler

...But not anytime soon, as I've completely run out of runway on this competition.  Any chance of an extension?

[close]

Reply to Baron
by Stupot

Spoiler

I might benefit from an extension too. I have actually written a 2500-word draft but it is unpublishable at this point in time, and I'm not exactly sure if I'm gonna have a chance to bring it to a readable state.

[close]

[Mandle]

If you utter children stop with the unnecessary spoiler tags, then yes... let's say until the end of Monday the 22nd?

[Baron]

If you utter children stop with the unnecessary spoiler tags, then yes... let's say until the end of Monday the 22nd?

Spoiler

Uh.... what if we just can't stop? 

[close]

[Baron]

Tall Tales & Details

Spoiler

Selena rubbed her temples.  It had been a long day, and the strain of keeping it together was beginning to take its toll.  Her work was constantly texting, her three-year old son was running wild, and her grandmother's house was still a complete mess despite the looming sale deadline.

Bzzzzt-Bzzzzt!  Her phone notifications piled up.

"It's a fire truck!" her son shouted at the top of his lungs, running through the room.

A pile of old documents collapsed from one of the piles, nearly burying Selena in the family's history.

"Cael, stop running this instant!" she called, although the boy was long gone.  She looked despairingly at the pile of papers on the floor, and then decided to deal with the work text first.

"It is not!" Cael shouted again, running back into the room.  "Mom, tell him!"

Selena finished up her text explaining the account details for the umpteenth time.  "What was that, Sweetie?  Is Georgie not playing fair again?"

"Georgie says his name is McGarr now."

Selena tried very hard not to roll her eyes.  Her son's imaginary friend was often more trouble than he was, which was quite a feat indeed.  "Fine.  Is McGarr not playing nicely?"

"He says my fire truck looks like a tractor!"

Selena squinted her eyes, trying to remember if her son even owned a fire truck toy.

Bzzzzt-Bzzzzt!

Selena sighed.  "Did you show him all the sides?  Did you show him the ladder?"

"It's just a drawing, Mom."

Selena tried not to imagine all the possible surfaces that her darling little angel might have drawn on.  "Well, if he knows better, you get McGarr to teach you to draw a better one."

Cael shook his head emphatically.  "McGarr can't draw!  He's a cat!"

Bzzzzt-Bzzzzt!

"Of course he is, Sweetie."  Selena wondered how her grandmother had ever survived the Depression as a single mom with twelve children—just one was running her into the ground.

"He says it's jello-y at the back of the fridge. "

"Cael, Dear.  Mommy has to—"

"—And there's a parent in the jello that makes plants go boom!"

"Sweetie, that's... that's such an exciting story!  Do you think you could be a big boy and see if there's anything in the fridge?  Don't eat it mind, just peek inside and tell me if you see anything."

"OK, Mom.  Wait.  No, McGarr says there are monsters and it stinks too much in there."

Selena nodded along, absently.

Bzzzzt-Bzzzzt!

"And he says be careful with the police or they'll gobble you up."

"How... dreadful!" she mock-exclaimed.

"But if you're careful they make you join at the marker."

"Mmm-hmmmm...."

"I am too saying it right!"

"Listen," Selena said, drawing her darling bundle of energy into a loving embrace.  "Mommy has a lot of work to do here.  She's got her job that keeps pestering her, you to look out for, and all of grandma's house to tidy up before the big sale, or I'm afraid we might run out of money.  It's not going to be easy, but I think I can get it all done if you help me."

"OK, Mom."

"Let's start with your drawing.  Can you bring it here to show me what Geor—uh, McGarr was complaining about?"

"No.  McGarr used it to wipe mud off the steps so that the shade dogs don't get any ideas."

Selena shook her head.  "That McGarr gets into everything, doesn't he?  But wait, how did a cat wipe up a mess with a piece of paper?"

Her son looked at her like a finger had just grown out from between her eyebrows.

"McGarr is magic, Mom."

Selena sighed to herself.  "Well then, perhaps you can get McGarr to clean up something else for me, since he's good at it.  Maybe we can start with the stinky fridge?"

"Yeah, he says he could try."

"Thanks."

Bzzzzt-Bzzzzt!

Selena ignored her phone, turning instead to gather up the documents all over the floor.  There was a certificate for winning first place in the county fair for largest pumpkin, a membership card for the Occultist Society of America, and a picture of her grandmother as a 30 year old woman holding a big black cat and surrounded by twelve smiling children.  My, they did look well fed given the time and circumstances.  Selena shrugged and stuffed all the papers back onto the pile they had come from.

Next an old crinkled bit of newspaper came into her hand.  It was a clipping about her grandfather's disappearance back in the 1920s.  A mystery for another time, perhaps.

The old crinkled paper was back on the pile when a nagging bit of self-doubt made Selena pull it out again.  In the clipping there was a picture of her grandfather staring stoically at the camera, but there was something in his expression that seemed eerily familiar.  She took out the picture of the twelve children again, scanning the faces to see if one had an uncanny likeness to their father, but the only one in the picture with even a passing resemblance to the man was the fat black cat.

Selena crinkled her brow like the old newspaper clipping.  She scanned the text of the article, then gasped.  The body had never been found.  And her grandfather had been named McGarr.

"Cale, Dear!" she called, a hint of concern in her voice.  "What was jello-y in the fridge?"

"You know, Mom.  Jello-y.  Like your rings," her son called back from the other room.

"And what about the parent in the jewellery?"

"A pedrant.  No?  It's like a Nicholas."

"A necklace?"

"That's right."

"And what does it do to plants?"

"Makes them boom!  Like, grow real fast.  McGarr said watch out for the police, remember?"

"Do you mean it makes them bloom?  And to watch out for the pole beans?"

"Sure."

"But what if I'm careful?"

"McGarr says they'll make you join at the marker!"

Selena closed her eyes, trying to parse her son's misunderstanding.  "Do you mean they'll make me coin at the market?"

"That's it!"

Selena couldn't believe it.  Her grandfather had not forsaken the family at all, but had rather been helping out in his own way the whole time. 

"Wait, what did you say about the monsters?!?"

"I can't remember, Mom.  But we're about to open the fridge door right now."

Selena dashed to her feet quicker than her phone could buzz.

[close]

[Stupot]

Paul Party: A life inside and out
A memoir

Spoiler

Chapter 13 - The Brown House

Well, this is it. The reason you bought this memoir in the first place. I'm going to keep it short though, if that's okay. It's the one thing everybody knows me for, and the one thing I didn't want to ever think about again, but always knew I would need to at some point. Everything I ever have to say about the so-called "Schwarzkopf Incident" will be contained in this chapter.

In 2013 Claire Dickens at Guffaw Productions approached me to collaborate on a rival to Big Brother. The concept she had in mind was summed up in four words: "Big Brother but boring". She needed no more words. I knew exactly where she was coming from. Big Brother had long forgotten the beauty of its own format – watching a group of relatable people just living in a house.  Very quickly, they started introducing all the self-described "characters", the crazy outfits and the sassy attitudes and the hunger to be noticed. And as the years went by, the tasks got more elaborate and manipulative. The producers just wanted to make these people cry, to traumatize them. It wasn't fun; it was a shameless, tragic freakshow.

The first series was fun. Of course, it had the novelty factor. But the housemates were, for the most part, normal people. They could have been any of us or our friends. And we got the amazing opportunity to live in the Big Brother house with them, through them. Of course, even season 1 was not without its fair share of scandal. Everyone remembers Nasty Nick, who did something so devious as to smuggle a pen into the house and use it to manipulative effect, playing all the other housemates off against each other.

So, when Claire came to me and said, "Big Brother but Boring." and I immediately said "yes". We spent the next year developing the show, building the house and holding auditions for housemates.

We had a strict set of audition guidelines, which basically boiled down to this: anyone with any personality, any drive to be famous, any sign of life behind the eyes, was swiftly rejected. When we had a shortlist of 50 candidates, we interviewed their families and colleagues exhaustively to make sure they weren't secretly interesting in some way or other. Hours and hours of recorded interviews about their average jobs, and their half-hearted hobbies. We then had physical and mental evaluations conducted, so that there might be no surprises. And finally, we found our 8 housemates: Nigel, Eric, Chandra, Leo, Marigold, Soo, Brenda, and Olivia; each decidedly uninteresting.

On July 25th, 2015, we opened the doors and welcomed our guests to The Brown House. There would be no big opening ceremony or fanfare. Just a chess set, some books, and some basic supplies. We debated long and hard about whether to even allow them alcohol. A young intern suggested they should have to earn the booze through a series of games, and Claire fired him on the spot. In the end, we decided that a small amount of alcohol would only be allowed on eviction nights.

Now, I should add a note here about our intentions. If it is not already clear, we did not set out to create a "boring" show. We set out to create a show that would be "interesting" to perhaps a different audience than Big Brother – an audience who would appreciate the social science experiment that Big Brother always should have been, as opposed to the mindless funny farm that it became.

So, no booze for the first night in The Brown House. It was going to be a thoroughly awkward and dull evening watching these pleasant but plain-dressed normies getting to know each other, and it was going to be great; a return to what nearly made Big Brother so genuinely interesting in the first place.

If you're reading this, then I presume you already know what happened in the days that followed – and how I ended up in prison. But let me take you through events from my point-of-view, and explain why I did what I did.

Day 1. The entrance sequence went without a hitch. We watched as the housemates shared pleasantries for the first hour. The most exciting thing that happened in that time was when Nigel invited someone to play a game of chess with him, but no one accepted. Brenda and Soo seemed to get on well and found that they were both owners of Jack Russel dogs. While they were comparing notes, Eric and Nigel went round the house inspecting the quality of the set design. Chandra, Olivia, and Marigold stood in the kitchen area talking about their favourite biscuits. Leo sat awkwardly alone for a while and seemed to be muttering something to himself.

Behind the scenes, there were some slightly panicked faces. We didn't need a nutter talking to himself on the first night. Far too interesting. I, too, felt a nervous stirring in my belly. It didn't help that I was running on caffeine and meat pies from Greggs. As a distraction from Leo's mutterings, I made the decision to roll some of the pre-recorded family-and-friend videos. Leo's father talked about how Leo was a quiet man, kept himself to himself but always visited most weekends but usually had no gossip, and that he had recently broken up (amicably) with a woman he had met at church the year before.

We also played the interview with Olivia's best friend, Sarah. According to Sarah, Olivia, who was 35 at the time, had never had a proper boyfriend and was still a virgin. In hindsight, perhaps virgins are not the best fodder for a "boring" TV show. Turns out they are actually gagging for it, and putting them together on live TV lowers their inhibitions, even without booze.

It was about 03:38 am when my phone rang and woke me up. It was Claire. Twitter was on fire. We were trending, but for all the wrong reasons. Olivia and Eric (also a virgin until that day, by all accounts) were fucking each other's brains out live on camera and Leo had carved "¡ᗡO⅁ ƜⱯ I" into his own chest with a razor blade... barely 8 hours after the Brown Door had closed behind them.

Day 2. Leo was swiftly removed from the house. He was taken care of and is now, thankfully, doing fine (you will have seen his successful mindfulness videos on social media, I'm sure). We were ordered to stop the cameras until further notice. We had to break the rules and let the police in to talk to the housemates. We also decided to let the housemates each have a family member come in and offer some comfort for one hour. None of the housemates were smokers but Olivia's mum needed a cigarette and we let her have one in the garden before ushering all the non-housemates out again. So, Leo was out. Soo was too shaken up by it all and opted to leave at this point, and we didn't stop her. Chandra, Nigel, Eric, Marigold, Olivia and Brenda remained.

Claire and I agreed we had made one big mistake. We hadn't informed the housemates that they were supposed to be normal. We'd just assumed that they would be, based on their usual characters. But Eric and Olivia were already favourites on Twitter and the cameras weren't even rolling. Eric's sister later said that she had never known him do anything so out of character. She was both disgusted by, and proud of, her brother's outlandish on-screen behaviour.

Day 3. I woke up with the most terrible gut-ache from the caffeine and stress. But there was good news. I don't know what Channel 4's lawyers did, but they managed to get us back on the air on Day 3. It came with a caveat, though: we had to agree to a 30-minute delay in broadcast. And the kill-switch was to be manned at all times, which we all agreed was common sense.

Viewing figures went through the roof. Word had got out about all the self-mutilation and the hanky-panky. Our experiment seemed to have failed, but I was determined to bring things back to some level of normalcy.

So, I decided to go into the house myself. After all, I'm the dullest person I know.

I pressed the green button and addressed the six remaining housemates.

"Housemates. This is Producer Paul speaking. After the events of the last two days, we have decided we need a reset. As of 2pm, I will personally be entering the house as your new housemate."

The six  of them all looked at each other with surprise and confusion. Claire shook her head. "We've failed, Paul. Let's just pull the plug."

But I was a man possessed. I honestly thought going into The Brown House myself was a stroke of genius. God knows why. It was a terrible idea... as you know.

I gathered a few changes of clothes and gave some instructions to the team, and then, despite my worsening bowel condition, I entered the house through a secret door in the Diary Room.

An unintended consequence of being a producer of the show and a housemate, is that I immediately became the "leader". It was quite something. The others were sucking up to me from the minute I showed my face, wanting to know behind the scenes details, trying to better me up in case I might have some sway over the results of eviction nights. I was the patriarch of the family.

But I had to keep things boring. This was my job now. I suggested we talk about dreams. Everyone hates listening to other people talk about dreams.

Brenda's eyes lit up. "My dream is to try dogging," a mischievous glint sparkled in the 62-year-old's eye. "Just once."

"No, no! Not that kind of dream." I said quickly. "I mean, any dreams you can remember, like, night time ones?"

They all shook their heads, "Not really," Eric said, and they all nodded agreement.

That's the spirit. I thought to myself. But then that cheeky glint returned to Brenda's eye.

"Well, there was one I had once," said Brenda, lowering her voice, as though her husband might be in the next room. "I was having an orgy in a car park with some strangers. One man was whipping his Wotsit against my face. But when I woke up, it was just my Jack Russell was licking my mouth."

Why now, Brenda? I despaired.

I suggested we all get a thoroughly early night, and nobody fought me on that. I arranged it so that Eric and Olivia could sleep in a separate room with the cameras off. Not so much for their privacy, but to avoid it becoming a spectacle.

Day 4. At five o'clock in the morning there was a terrible scream. It was Brenda. I turned on the light and Chandra was sat over her head, whipping his Wotsit against her lips.

"What?" he said. "I thought she liked it."

I actually thanked God for the 30-minute delay and shouted to the camera in the corner of the room to cut the broadcast and roll another interview. I don't know which one they played. I flashed back to the interview with Chandra's father. "A good little Hindu boy," he had called him. And until this moment, I had no doubt that he had made his father very proud. But now, in a moment of madness, he was a sex-offender. We had no choice but to evict him from The Brown House and let the police handle it.

Brenda walked out as well, too. Who's to blame her?

So, by lunchtime on Day 4, we'd already lost four housemates. With myself included, we were five. I locked myself in the diary room and took the secret door into the behind-the-scenes area. Claire's hair had turned white overnight and she burst into tears. "What the fuck have we done?"

I hugged her and assured her that things were going to get better (which, of course, they didn't). Channel 4 told us we could turn the cameras back on to record, but that there would no longer be a live stream at all. They would put out a measly 20-minute digest every evening and that was final. We were told in no uncertain terms that if anything else happened, they would pull the plug. Claire and I both knew that our careers in TV were already over.

When I returned to the communal area, the mood was heavy. I decided to challenge Nigel to a game of chess. He thrashed me and I didn't want to keep playing. It was Marigold who suggested we play a game of cards, and for a few quiet hours we did a good job of pretending to enjoy a game of Texas Hold'em, using dried lentils as betting chips. Marigold proved to have quite the poker face, and did very well out of us.

Eric and Olivia were still inseparable, but they made a sweet couple and after the past few days, it seemed crazy that I'd been upset about them getting together on the first night. I wished them luck.

After the poker, Marigold made a point of giving us all our exact number of lentils back, saying that she felt guilty about taking them from us, as if it had been our life-savings. We humoured her and gratefully pocketed our lentils.

Then, at around 4pm, a voice I didn't recognize came over the speaker system. "Housemates. It's time to make your first eviction nominations. Eric, please come to the Diary Room." I had completely forgotten that today was nomination day. The other four looked at me as if I had been secretly keeping that information from them, but I had genuinely forgotten. It occurred to me that they might start to distrust me once they realised that I could just ask my producer colleagues to tell me the results, or even fudge them myself. So, I promised them that I would forfeit my own vote, and that I wouldn't go anywhere near the Diary Room until the eviction announcement the following day. They accepted my word.

One by one, Eric, Marigold, Olivia and Nigel went into the Diary Room and returned, avoiding eye-contact with everyone else.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to be going by with a remarkable lack of hitches and the dust was settling on the shitstorm of the past few days. The nominations also seemed to have put a downer on the proceedings, which hopefully meant an end to the outlandish nonsense we'd had to endure.

I was wrong, of course. Marigold suddenly pulled one of the pastel pink drapes from the window, wrapped it around her like a dress, stuck her bare leg out of it and decided to start singing some sultry number to Eric. She could sing as well, which she'd managed to keep quiet during auditions. We'd made a point of rejecting anyone who looked like they had ever been anywhere near a microphone. Indeed, her husband, Ralph AND her best friend Phoebe, had both told us in interviews that Marigold was categorically not the type of person to ever burst into song.

And then she burst into flames.

Olivia was standing there with a flamethrower made from a can of Schwarzkopf hairspray and a lighter, which I recognized as the one Olivia's mum had used on Day 2, and was torching Marigold's face and hair.

"HE'S MINE!!!" Olivia shouted, like something out of the Jerry Springer Show. We tried to calm her down, but she was a woman possessed. The smell of Marigold's burning flesh flooded my nose and lungs as I tried to position myself to grab the weapon safely, but none of us could get anywhere near her.

Then... I felt the familiar pang of IBS in my gut. The one that says "now or now". I chose "now", and shook my trousers off, my poker lentils sprawling every which way.  Then, I released everything I had in an almighty bubbling torrent of diarrhoea, gushing to the backdrop of Marigold's piercing howls and the whoof-whoof of Olivia's Schwarzkopf flamethrower. Half of it sprayed onto the sofa behind me, the rest cascaded down the inside of my legs, soaking my socks and forming a puddle beneath me.

Quickly, the flame stopped. It was the smell that had done it. Olivia turned to face me and immediately started retching. I felt a second wave coming on. I held my belly melodramatically and stepped towards the woman.

"Don't come any closer," she said, holding up her hairspray flamethrower. But I stepped forward again, and sharted one final shart. Olivia dropped her weapon and turned to run. But she didn't get far. I kicked some of the lentils towards her. Nigel and Eric took my cue, reached into their pockets and threw their own lentils to the floor around Olivia. She slipped, stumbled and cracked her head on the corner of the kitchen counter.

At that moment, the doors burst open and members of the backstage crew burst in with the medical team behind them. Oliva was pronounced dead at the scene. Marigold was left with burns so disfiguring that they had to blur out her head during the live broadcast of her testimony against myself and the channel, to avoid upsetting the viewers.

As expected, the show was pulled off air immediately and Claire and I were both arrested, along with the director of the channel and members of the production team.

I won't go into the whole court case, since the Amazon Prime dramatization is surprisingly true to the reality, and you've probably already watched it.

Eric is doing all right for himself, now. He was approached by Schwarzkopf to become a brand ambassador in a deal worth a reported 15 million Euros.

Nigel has since become a close friend of mine. He came to play chess with me a few times during my 3-and-a-half years in prison. He won every single game.

This is all I will ever say on The Brown House.

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