𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗼𝘄 ━━━━ roman kemp

━━━━ nine

"What the bloody hell is that?"

There is a banquet table setup with candles, a plethora of colourful, mouth watering fruits, and four silver platters which are each aligned with a photograph of one of the celebrities.

"I believe it is our reckoning," Andrew points out, trying to inject some humour into the terrifying experience.

Mathilda shakes her head, eyes still glued to the same spot as before. "I meant that picture," she says, nose wrinkling in disgust, "I look horrendous."

"Honey, you look fabulous," Caitlyn says but her snickering gives away the obvious lie.

Taking that as a sign that a distraction is in order, Andrew quickly begins to read the laminate with the instructions written on it. "Welcome to the Bad Banquet. In this feast, the dish of the day is you! Each of you will have your head served up on a platter and must endure your time at the banquet. At various points during the reckoning, a service bell will ring. When it does, you must rest your chin on the red button in front of you until the bell sounds again. If you do not keep the button pressed down, the light will come on and you will incur a fail. The two celebrities who have incurred the fewest fails at the end of the challenge will free themselves from the curse and will eat tonight. The others will remain cursed. Celebrities will have to complete the challenge to free themselves from the curse."

"I suspect we'll have some extra guests for dinner," notes Kate, nervous.

"Well, I hope beyond hope that they bring in super famous, super attractive celebrities to distract us instead of gross critters," Mathilda jokes.

They all know that this will most certainly not be the case. After all, it wouldn't be a challenge on this show without an insane amount of jungle creatures, or other similarly torturous items.

Almost as soon as the trial begins, Mathilda realises that Kate probably isn't her strongest competition - the woman screams constantly and her light seems to flash on every single round for one reason or another. She had assumed that Caitlyn would be her main competition, but the older woman seems to lose her touch after a while, gaining several consecutive fails. On the contrary, Andrew has a rocky start but he somehow turns it around and finishes with a grin, clearly proud of himself.

Privately, Mathilda is proud of herself, too. She may have emitted a few strange sounds and shrill shrieks during the challenge, but she thinks her score is respectable enough to have claimed one of the two wins.

"How did you do it?" Kate asks, flabbergasted.

Mathilda shrugs, deciding to divulge her secret tactic with the distressed lady. "I just let my mind wander to some crazy places," she reveals, "like, I spent a good few minutes just listing all of the foods I want to eat once I'm out of here. Chicken tikka, kebabs, meat feast pizza, chocolate fudge cake, garlic bread, breadsticks..." she trails off, stomach rumbling and a dreamy expression on her face. "I think I thought too much about the garlic bread because my chin moved off the buzzer in the last round..."

"You still won," Kate points out, smiling.

"We're still friends, right?" Her tone conveys playfulness, but the question is genuine. Having to win at the expense of Kate and Caitlyn is not something she had wanted to do, but at the end of the day, there wasn't much of a choice. Guilt gnaws away at her, but there's enough pride, relief, and happiness to almost balance it out.

"Of course we are." Kate pulls her into a hug as Caitlyn pretends to contemplate her answer before pulling her into an embrace of her own, grinning.

"Awesome."

They make their way back to camp after she and Andrew change into clean, non-cursed shirts. Everybody is pottering around and trying to entertain themselves whilst they have been away, and it just reminds Mathilda of the crushing boredom which could easily consume you in here if you let it. Luckily for her, the other celebrities seem unwilling to allow her to succumb to it, always having some conversation or another.