Lone Wolf

Chapter 16

There were fourteen rice and water meals between episodes of Redemption Isle. When the show wasn't on, the screen continuously played the grey static. Addison trained herself to eliminate the white noise, but that only made the ringing in her ears even worse.

Every week, she would watch the show, getting to relive the trauma that she experienced while also witnessing what exactly happened when everyone else was voted out.

After the second week, Sarah had fifty pencils sharpened by King and individually placed into her mouth before Max took a rubber mallet and impaled her by smashing the pencils into her skull.

During week three, she watched Mike's eliminator, and to an extent, she didn't feel much remorse for his death after rewatching the episode. Max led commentary as King slowly injected embalming fluids into Mike's body. His screams were agonizing to listen to.

Juwon's eliminator was the hardest for Addison to endure. It was the first elimination that she watched feeling actually well-rested despite still being malnourished. King slathered multiple jars of honey over Juwon's body, stripping him completely naked beforehand, and then putting him into a giant glass container with what Max described as, "At least a hundred-thousand ants." The devoured the honey, crawling in through his mouth, urethra, ears, nose, and even anus, to consume him both inside and out.

Just one day after Juwon's elimination, the television woke Addison from a nap to show an ad promoting the finale of Redemption Isle. The most disgusting part of the ad was that Max was wearing someone else's skin over his. The ad said that there was going to be a live stream for the grand finale with multiple eliminators, and it was going to be on the upcoming Friday. It ended when he held up a severed hand and waved to the camera with it. It was Kamal's hand.

Addison sat through the static crackling for the rest of the week, simply staring at the wall. No thoughts ran through her head as she constantly faded in and out of consciousness. For the last two days, every time she tasted the rice, she gagged.

There wasn't even a toilet in her small cell. For the month that she was trapped, she chose the corner that was farthest away from the bed to do her business...what little business there was.

She could feel herself going insane. When she was awake, there was nothing going through her mind. When she was asleep, it was the same dream over and over.

It always started at Holland's. She was wearing red. She asked for a drink and turned to the band. She turned back around and saw the man with the scarred lip. She was transported to the bedroom. She woke up. It never changed.

She was sitting on the bed when the screen changed to what looked like security camera footage. A red light began blinking from over top of the television. The footage was of her. She stood slowly and walked up to the screen, getting a look at herself for the first time in months. Her face was scarred, she assumed from the snakes, though her wounds didn't hurt anymore. She had also lost a lot of weight, but she figured that was in part to the lack of hearty meals they had been feeding her. She knew that she was being held somewhere in the studio, but she didn't know that she was constantly being watched.

The screen started to cycle slowly into other cells. Raul was sitting on his bed, holding his knees and rocking back and forth. He seemed to have noticed when his feed popped up because he buried his face in his mattress in a failed attempt to hide himself.

When it switched again, Byron was shown sitting in the corner, staring angrily at the camera. His bed had been overturned. Addison heard a commotion about a week prior, so she figured that he did it himself.

The next time the feed switched, it cut to Max O'Healey now in full color wearing his usual purple suit. He was standing outside of one of the holding cells.