The Compound

by Aisling Rawle

When she was back on the ground, Susie smirked at her. “Big breakfast?” she asked. Vanessa turned to her coolly. “Wasn’t that you last night, shitting in the yard like an animal?”

GAGGED. Still can't believe Suzie did that. Hope it was worth the reward.

But it felt different, now, living it. I was no longer sure about what I would and wouldn’t do.

it wasn’t that I admired his killing of innocent creatures, but I was fascinated by the easy, clinical way he did it before handing the carcasses to me so gently. I found myself examining him closely, the way he twisted his mouth while making a quick jerk of his wrist. I was unable to look away.

Sam might be a soldier too.

Although Mia and Seb, judgmental and mean, were practically the same person, neither of them liked the other.

The other big difference was that in the final five, all rules were off: you could talk about your personal lives, talk about your Personal Tasks, and there was no penalty for harming other residents.

Once Seb had limped away into the desert plains, we went out back to get our reward.

Looks like voting people off is getting quite a bit easier for them!

put it in the cupboard, thinking gleefully about how drab the other mugs looked beside mine.

She had other mugs but still did the task anyways? C'mon now.

“There’s still things we need,” I said, gesturing to the space behind me. I wanted better shampoo, and tea towels, and a lamp for the bedroom, and more food, and more clothes.

Sounds like they already have what they need. Just more consumerism.

Better to leave with your dignity than stay to the end and make a fool of yourself. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

I could see the ring of gray in her blue eyes,

I have that too.

“It’s not that. I guess I can’t think of a system to replace what we have. Pointing out that something is broken doesn’t count as a solution.”

shed talking

Shed talking!

A second before I rounded the corner I knew what I would see, and yet still it shocked me: Ryan and Vanessa, wrapped around each other, her naked back pressed against the wall, her face tilted toward the sky. Her mouth open, catching drops of water.

Fuckers. He's just a basic boy.

Because Andrew made a joke of it, it was easy for him and for the boys he kissed; but every other boy was visibly nervous, and when they kissed each other, it was an awkward, clumsy affair. In a way, it made me feel sorry for them.

Men are so scared to show anything considered not masculine it's sad. Even if you love someone platonically, why can't they kiss each other tenderly but not romantically? Ugh.

I stayed in bed until I was sure that the sun had risen, and when I stepped outside the house with my coffee I could see bushfires burning in the distance, raging and writhing, miles away from us, but moving closer, inch by inch.

Tensions rising!

The girls were looking at me expectantly, and I knew that they were right. If someone had to go, let it be Vanessa.

Bingo. That was the final common thread that I was thinking.

“I think that you have this idea that I don’t like you. But I was one of the six who voted to get rid of Ryan. I kept you in.”

That means Becca voted her out.

He picked up his cigarette and went inside. I saw him pause outside the door to put his cigarette in the bin.

Considerate to not start a fire.

When the others came in and closed the door the light was gone, and it was with great trepidation and terrible loneliness that I went to my bed, now empty.

Do the boys always have to go to bed aftee the girls?

I tried to imagine what it would be like to go home. The endless talk of the wars, and the masks that we wore in the cities and big towns, and the dreary gray skies, and evenings in front of the television.

Seems like global warming is a bigger problem in the future.

What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or a tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute? Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an acceptable place to live.

knew from watching the show that when a person was banished at dawn they were woken by a vibration in the mattress; if you didn’t rise immediately, the mattress heated to the point of burning.

WTF

When I thought of all of the hours of work I would have had to do at home to earn enough for a high-quality white linen dress, I wanted to laugh. Two days’ work, it would have cost me. In the compound, I only had to drink a mouthful of expired milk, and it was in my postbox within minutes.

I don’t know why they don’t give us a clock, or a pen and paper. It’s cruel. Don’t you think it’s cruel?” “We don’t need those things. Just like we don’t need phones or televisions. We’re better off without them. And besides, we have so many other nice things.”

She looked at me for a long time, her eyes scanning my face. “This is not our home, Lily.”

Jacintha has always been rooted in reality.

I wondered, not for the first time, if Becca had watched the show before.

How are contestants even chosen for the show?

Andrew said, “I don’t know about this one, guys. It’s late; we could just go to bed, and there’ll be a new task in the morning. We’ve had a nice evening. Why ruin it. Right?” Candice nodded thoughtfully and said, “I mean, the more people there are, the longer we all get to stay here.” “How great would it be to have a hot tub though?” I said, and laughed. The others looked at me, considering.

Lily is losing her humanity.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, and her eyes were wet but she wasn’t crying. “I’ll find you after, on the outside, all right? I promise.” Before I knew what was happening, the others said their goodbyes, and Sam held me as I continued to weep.

Wow. True martyrs.

For the first time I felt frightened of the producers. What else could they do?

Have they been plotting against tom this whole time? Or was this his punishment?

I didn’t see the blow coming. Before I registered the sting of the slap, I felt the heat of his hand. I staggered, clutching my cheek.

Wtf is wrong with him. Just give up already.

“Look at Lily. Does that make you feel good—seeing the blood on her face, you sick fuck?”

YES CANDICE!!!

I think they had only meant to set the shed ablaze, but the grass was so dry and caught fire quickly, spreading faster than I had thought possible.

What idiots.

“There are sandbags,” Candice shouted. “Out the back, they just delivered them!” It was the only time that we had something delivered that we didn’t earn. They knew they had done wrong: the fire had burned beyond what the producers had intended. Or maybe it was their intention, but they still worried that we would die.

Beyond the house, it was no longer clear what land was our own, and what belonged to the desert.

Does it even matter? None of it was there's to begin with. Jacintha was right.

I was entirely aware that it was my own fault. I didn’t, and wouldn’t, excuse Tom’s violence, but he had hit me because I had broken his prized possession.

Stop. Blaming. Yourself. For. Men's. Actions.

It was as if by letting the kitchen go to ruin, we had dropped the facade of civility:

There was something sort of thrilling about it, actually: you spend so much of your life adhering to all of these rules and ideas—keep everything orderly, keep busy, look presentable. When we stopped following these basic tenets, I realized how meaningless they had been. We got on fine as we were.

At some point, you stopped waiting for something to happen. The dullness almost became the point: the monotony was soothing, even, like watching livestock drifting across a plain.

whenever I had any money, I spent it immediately, mostly on the fast-fashion brands that Sam despised.

Very common problem for a lot of people. A feeling of control.

“Did you think that everyone here was straight, Lily? We’re all here living the perfect, hetero life?”

What's with the attitude? I suspected becca was asexual or gay.

Somewhere along the way I had let myself forget the most obvious thing—that it was a game.

Becca,

Shocked but kind of proud my namesake has made it this far.

there are some people who are so compulsively watchable that you feel yourself surrender some small bit of your personality to them.

I was now as I always had been.

How can you go on living like this? Pretending that everything is okay?” “Isn’t that what we were doing before, on the outside?”

“They died in the war,” he said. “My father was a veteran, and when the war broke out, he encouraged us to enlist. My brothers died within a year, two months apart. My father still wanted me to join up, even after we’d buried them both. I wouldn’t. We fought about it—we never agreed on politics—and eventually I moved to a different city, and we cut ties.

Insane.

“Do you really want to live here, in this…wasteland?” “It’s no worse than what’s out there! Is that what you want to go back to? Constantly living on the periphery of disaster, just waiting and waiting and waiting for it to finally reach us, doing stupid, dull work to pass the days until then? We’re safe here—we’re removed from all of it.”

“It’s still there, Lily. It’s still happening. You think that because we can’t see it, it’s not going on?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.

Seems to be their favorite line at this point.

“You know,” he said, “all of this, all of these rewards—they’re just…stuff. The house, the Personal Rewards—having them doesn’t make a difference.”