Pick Your Poison

Pick Your Poison

By

Jamey O’Donnell

“You have three minutes to make your selection!” said Rick Harley, emcee of the hit game show Pick Your Poison.

Mandy Patterson was running out of time, and by the looks of the studio audience, anything bad that could possibly happen probably would.

In front of her were three prizes she would have to choose from, its contents unknown.

To her left was a gigantic door, in front of her was an envelope wrapped in red ribbon on a table, and to her right was a plain brown paper cardboard box, big enough to hold a basketball, also on a table.

The odds of picking a good prize was 66%, meaning the odds were 33% in play for picking a prize that would end her life in a horrific way, her execution to be shown to millions of viewers in the ether, with a bird’s eye view for the studio audience.

They had not come to the studio to see her jump for joy at winning some fantastic prize that no normal person could earn in their lifetime.

They came for blood, and nothing else would appease them.

The person before her, a middle-aged man from Kentucky, chose poorly and paid the price. After choosing the wrong prize, he was immediately wrestled to the ground and duct taped to a wooden chair, where he was gratuitously piecemealed digit by digit on his hands, then his feet, followed by pieces of his face, and finally his legs, which proved to be the master stroke to his demise. His heart stopped either from the pain or from bleeding out, as his dissection was performed with tin snips and a chain saw.

Though his screams were deafening throughout the procedure, they were drowned out by the cheers from the audience.

They would not be denied, and to their delight, they were not.

The first question any sane person would ask themselves would be “What in God’s name would possess anyone to enter a contest that could result in something like this happening?”

The simple answer is two words. Greed and arrogance.

Greed because the prizes were so fantastic. One woman had won 500 billion dollars, putting her as one of the top 100 richest people in the world. Another had won half of the country of England, making her royalty, sharing half of Buckingham Palace with the Queen.

Arrogance because delusions of grandeur had taken hold. Some people in life always seem to land on their feet and avoid the consequences of their mistakes, always winning and never losing. The question of them picking the wrong prize never comes into their minds.

They only win. They never lose.

And such was the case for Mandy Patterson.

The show began airing 2 years prior in 2033 and climbed into the top 5 shows of all time, according to the Nielson ratings.

Most people, if they were asked, would tell you they watched the show to see what wonderful prize would be won and to see how someone’s life would be changed forever, but that contradicted the audiences that were being attended live. There was a 6-month waiting list for those wanting to attend in person, and as far as studio audience size went, it was the biggest by far in comparison to other shows. Each show accommodated over 1000 people, a size unheard of in live studio audiences, and all of them wanted to witness a murder.

If most in television land really wanted to see a happy ending, tv’s would be turned off or channels would be changed once the contestant lost and was about to meet their fate, but such was not the case. The overwhelming majority of televisions tuned into the show remained on the program until the very end.

“You have two minutes remaining to make your selection” announced the Emcee.

The night, unbeknownst to Mandy, had an auspicious beginning, as two of the prizes would have changed her life.

One prize was the ownership of the McDonald’s hamburger chain.

The other was a bank account of 200 billion dollars and the ownership of a 2 square mile island in Barbados, complete with large home, servants’ quarters, and a 40-foot yacht moored at the island’s marina, along with a 30-room mansion in Upstate New York, and a 5000 square foot oceanfront beach house in Malibu.

Her odds of winning were 66% in her favor.

The contestant and audience always knew what the winning prizes were upfront, but the losing prize was never revealed until the prize had been picked. The horror of the prize could be so horrific, that the contestant might decide the risk was too great and bail on the show at the last minute, leaving them in a lurch.

Another thing in Mandy’s favor was the percentage of good prizes that had been picked over the last 3 months of the show’s airing. Other than the man in Kentucky, only 2 other people had picked the wrong prize, leaving most as winners, so it felt like a good time to be a contestant on Pick Your Poison.

Mandy could see her husband in the audience sitting in the front row, cheering her on, next to her two teenage daughters holding each other as tightly as they could. They were highly optimistic, feeling a win was in their favor, if for no other reason, because their wife and mother was one of the good people and deserved to win.

Mandy was also studying an escape route should she lose. She had discussed this at length with her husband. Their plan was for her to jump off the stage and head straight for him, then they would both run as fast as they could to the closest studio exit door to safety.

In the clause of the contract she signed before entering the contest, if she were to make it outside of the studio if such a losing scenario were to happen, she would not be required to re-enter to meet her fate.

Up to that point, no one had ever escaped the studio, but they had a plan.

Her husband had brought in a small derringer, wrapped in a Ziplock bag, and had it keestered, meaning the weapon was inserted deep into his anus, avoiding detection from security upon entering the studio. Once inside, he went to the men’s room and retrieved it, and it would be used if necessary to make their escape.

Neither her or her husband had thought it out much after that, because both of them were sure Mandy would pick a good prize, and the only price to be paid for their plan was a very sore anus belonging to her husband.

“You have one minute remaining to make your selection,” said Rick Harley.

One of the buttons would have to be pushed before time ran out, because failure to do so would be an immediate losing prize, and Mandy was starting to feel the heat.

Poor Mandy didn’t know that the deck had been stacked against her.

The show’s producers were running into financial problems that would soon bankrupt the television station if the contestants winning streak continued. The financial projections of the show were based on the odds of winning and losing, losing being 50% of the overall odds. In the last 3 months, winners had gone 91.7%, where losers had gone a measly 8.3%, costing the studio trillions of dollars thus far.

Not only would the trend have to reverse itself, but the loser would have to die in such a way that would cause viewership to skyrocket.

The winning prizes were behind the door to the left and the envelope in front of her, with the losing prize to her right in the box.

She had a choice of 3 buttons in front of her to push, being left, center, and right.

With 30 seconds left on the clock, she pushed the center button, but it was the right button that flashed above the stage.

It took her a second to notice it, and when she did, she didn’t know exactly what to do.

What if she were able to get them to correct the mistake, but it lead to her choosing the wrong prize, possibly circumventing God protecting her from herself?

What to do. What to do.

After the Emcee had run immediately to the cardboard box to disclose what she had won, out from the floor at her feet were two leg clamps that came out from below and wrapped her legs tightly, preventing her from moving from the spot she was standing.

“Unfortunately, you have picked the losing prize,” said the Emcee.

And up rose the stage curtain in front of her, revealing a 2 story cage with 3 Silverback Gorillas, all holding very sharp butcher knives, causing her to almost faint, but she instead screamed, along with her husband and two daughters, which could barely be heard over the screams of delight from the audience.

The show had just taken it up a notch, making a quantum leap in entertainment value.

“Tonight, you will be put inside the cage with 3 Silverback Gorillas, ranging in weight from 900 to 1100 pounds. Each Gorilla has been trained to use knives in combat. To make it more interesting, these Gorillas have not eaten for 7 days, and instead been given a steady diet of methamphetamine through their water supply, so not only have they not eaten for 7 days, they have not slept as well, creating a severe psychosis among them.” said the Emcee. He then turned away from the stage.

Two large men then approached her from each side of the stage, with one holding a taser, and he tasered her just as the shackles around her legs were released, causing her to fall to the stage floor, leaving her completely immobilized.

They both then drug her to a very small door on the side of the massive cage, only big enough for a body to go through, and they slid her inside of the cage and immediately locked the door behind her.

Just as she was beginning to regain movement, the largest of the gorillas named Morty perched above her, jumped down to her and immediately grabbed her by the hair and lifted her up above him, holding her up to the other gorillas as if he were showing off one of his trophies, with Mandy screaming and crying at the top of her lungs as he walked the cage, seeming to relish the studio audience reaction to him.

The other gorillas began to gingerly climb down from their perches but stayed at a distance until they would be allowed to partake in her dismemberment.

These gorillas were more than psychotic. They had a bloodlust never before seen among them. These were whacked out starving meth monkeys and they took out their thirst and hunger on her.

Thousand pound gorillas with knives would have been enough to top anything they had done in the past, but depriving them of food, and instead, feeding them speed for a week added a twisted horror only Satan himself could have imagined, leading some to wonder who was really behind these horrific murder prizes being imagined and handed out.

The gorillas looked as though they had stepped straight out of hell, and the looks in their eyes was enough to make grown men whimper.

After the Silverback threw her down to the floor, he scalped her and threw her hair-filled scalp out of the cage and on to the audience, barely missing her husband, which was followed by the other two, one of which took a gigantic bite out of one of her thighs, nearly taking off her leg, while the other sawed off her head.

The next day, the station’s CEO, CFO, five of the studio’s attorneys, several top shareholders, along with others in charge of the show, called an emergency board meeting.

The ratings went through the roof, as no one anticipated the effects of taking the show to this new level. The most concerned were the shareholders.

Two questions arose, such as, how would they ever be able to top this losing prize?

Would the latest losing prize cause a significant drop in potential contestants because of its terrifying outcome?

Though advertising profits would be whatever they decided to charge their advertisers, it would not do much good if they had no contestants to play the game.

The shareholders were happy that they had avoided financial ruin for the time being.

The show’s producer was tight lipped throughout, as he, his assistant, and a stage technician were the only ones that knew of the crossed wiring on the buttons, all because Mandy Patterson never screamed out their error.

Mandy picked her poison by not making it clear the poison she picked.