The Purple Patch - Missouri Valley College

toe, “Let’s make our way to make-up where Jack will coach you on
your character.”
In the make-up room, we were given strange backgrounds including
being raised by wolves, cannibalistic tendencies and that Flit
and I were biological siblings. We took it all in as Jack smeared makeup
on our faces giving us the appearance of bloody teeth, dirt smudges
and sunken in cheeks. After all was said and done, we looked like two
different people. David and Jack sent us on our way. We were escorted
to a holding room, where we were told to wait for our big debut. By
this time we had figured out where we were.
A few months prior Flit and I had applied to be on Confidential
Tactics, a show where the goal is to “kill” the other contestants. You
are put in an abandoned mall located in the studio with seven other
teams. You are free to make alliances or enemies, but you are only allowed
to kill once per hour in an allotted time period. The fame of the
show comes from its horrible acting, bad special effects and the fact
that all of the “killed” people were spotted alive weeks afterwards.
We had been waiting for a few hours when we heard footsteps
coming down the hall. An armed man, much like the ones that had escorted
us everywhere on this trip appeared at the door. He motioned
for us to follow; and we did. He led us down the longest hallway yet,
but this one was dank, dimly lit and wreaked of mildew.
Applause penetrated the walls, and I glanced at Flit to see her
reaction. I caught her looking at me with a large grin on her face, and
then felt her hand squeeze mine. The armed guard led us through a
door where we found over five hundred screaming people in an arena.
We smiled and waved at them as a camera documented our entrance.
The guard led us to a pedestal in the middle where the host of Confidential
Tactics waited.
“Hello!” he shouted, “And I’m Gabriel Roth, host of Confidential
Tactics!”
I began to open my mouth and reply, but soon shut it realizing
we were on air.
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