The Compound

by Aisling Rawle

“I’ll fix the window,” he said. “I’ll fix it, and then I’ll go.”

As if that will make a difference from the fire + how trashed they've left the place?

People would think back on the show, this year, this iteration of the house, and say, “Wasn’t that the one with Lily?” That was worth something. Even Sam would have to think so.

“I don’t care about winning. I just need Tom to lose.” I thought he might be running his hands across his face. “Oh God,” he said. “What am I thinking, leaving you and Lily here with Tom!”

“My first Personal Reward was a notebook. I’ve been using Susie’s lip liner as a pencil.” “You’re incredible, Becca.”

The quiet ones are always scheming!

He pulled away first and looked at me like I was still beautiful.

Hm... Lily has resigned to her ugly personality I guess.

He kept talking about the dog, the attack, how he had killed it. He had broken its neck, he said, and then broke all four of its legs for good measure.

Jesus fucking christ. They let a psychopath on the show.

But I knew that if he had asked me one more time to go I would have gone, without a fuss. Ask me, I thought. Ask me again.

“The thing is…if the water isn’t working, it might be best if we don’t use the toilet. I can dig you a hole outside, if you like?”

Wait, is he suggesting they may have to drink toilet water?!?!

“Do you think I could take a small bottle of it with me?” “Absolutely not. If they see it they’ll have questions. They might follow you here. Did you bring me food?” “Oh. Shit. I forgot. I’m sorry, Becca. It honestly slipped my mind.” She looked at me, clearly deliberating whether I had intentionally decided not to bring the food in an attempt to weaken her, or if I was genuinely that empty-headed.

I clearly think Lily is playing dirty now. Ruthless.

When I returned to the house that night, the kitchen was clean, the counters gleaming, the food all put away, the floor swept and washed.

How did they wash the floor without water?

Andrew still believed, I think, that if you played by the rules and worked hard then you’d be rewarded. I don’t know what I believed at that point; I could only think in the short term.

“No one has ever died on the sh—in here,” Andrew said. He was right. It had never happened. People did die after the show though—there was a long list now of people who’d taken their lives after they returned home—but that was a separate issue.

Yet he looked strong enough as he walked across the terrain.

Becca must have gace him water. I'm convinced she's playing all of them.

“I used to make fun of the people who came on the show. My friends and I, we’d laugh at how vapid everyone was. The things that people will do for the sake of something pretty. I guess I came on as a joke. I thought I could go home and do an exposé, maybe start a career in journalism or something. I suppose it was just as vain to think that I could gain attention by getting cast and then criticizing the show as it would be to come here looking for genuine fame.

Behind me, Andrew suddenly fell to the ground. It shocked me to see: there was something horrifying about it, the limp way that he fell, the fact that it was Andrew. Curiously, no one moved to help him.

Andrew might symbolize the last rational/moral person on the compound.

She took the silk belt of my dressing gown and moved across the room. She stood over Tom’s sleeping form, slipped the belt around his neck, and pulled. He woke instantly, arms thrown out, but Becca was beyond his reach, and he was confused, pulling at the silk at his throat, his fingers scrabbling but finding no purchase. His eyes were bulging, and he was making terrible noises, his hands now flailing behind him to grab at Becca. His elbow caught her in the ribs, but she kept pulling.

I stayed here, would I always be under the threat of their strength, the end to every argument, the solution to any problem? Even dehydrated and weak, Tom had knocked me about like I was nothing. Andrew, too, hadn’t hesitated to become a brute when he needed to. But hadn’t I done the same, by helping Becca to keep the water hidden? If I had their strength, would I not use it?

But why was Tom still here? There was likely a group of viewers who disliked him—but there must have been another group of people who wanted him to stay; people who agreed with him, who saw something in him that they liked.

Yeah, fucking incels.

“And then she filed a restraining order. Then I applied to be on the show. I was here a month later.”

Wow. Sounds a lot like how love is blind casts bad eggs.

The task catered to him—but hadn’t the last one, the race, been suited to him as well?

continued to struggle to think of what to ask for. It wasn’t that my desire for things had faded, but rather that I felt overwhelmed by choice, panicked that I was forgetting something that I really wanted, worrying that there was always something better that I just hadn’t thought of yet. I was frequently anxious, feeling as though whenever I wasn’t requesting something I was wasting my opportunity.

That's how influencing and consumerism works.

I found it hard to plan for the future. I kept thinking, why bother when we’ll probably be dead in twenty years, maybe fifteen.