DiapOut: Chapter 48
“Greed…Lust…Betrayal. The drama never stops here on DiapOut–Ugh, this reads like ass,” muttered Cassi, her frustration mounting as she reviewed her script through the teleprompter. No doubt, Jackson had written her another stinker; a trend that had become disturbingly consistent as of late. Looking past the cameras, she glared across the bustling studio for someone to complain to. “Keelee, hey! Can you tell Jackson to get his butt back in the writer’s room? I’m not saying this generic crap on camera–”
“Not now, Cassi,” said Keelee, too preoccupied with getting the players into position for the Final Round to deal with Cassi’s incessant barking. Moreover, considering she was standing adjacent to a large, circular pit, it was safe to say her acrophobia wasn’t doing so hot. It was so deep and dimly lit that she couldn’t even see the bottom. Sweat dripped from her forehead as she placed a wooden plank down, creating a bridge from the pit's edge to the last of eight pedestals organized in a circular formation. “A-Alright, Mia, same as the others. Walk across the platform, step onto the pedestal, and grab onto the rope hanging overhead.”
The lack of confidence in Keelee’s voice did nothing to soothe Mia’s nerves as she approached the plank, planting her left foot on the unsteady surface. Mercifully, the weight of her body allowed the plank to settle atop the pedestal’s matted surface, though that didn’t keep her legs from buckling as she waddled across the lengthy platform. Dropping to her knees to keep from falling completely, she refused to be the only person not to make it across. Her fresh diaper crinkled obnoxiously as she crawled the rest of the way to her pedestal, which was only a mere two feet in diameter.
“Any day, Mia! We haven’t even started and my arms are tired!” shouted Ayaya, mocking Mia for taking so long. “Also, this room somehow smells even more like shit than it did twenty minutes ago. I swear to Goddess, my eyebrows are gonna sizzle off if you take any longer.”
Biting her tongue, Mia chose to ignore Ayaya in favor of focusing on her objective. Her butt was now seated on the edge of the plank as she lined both feet up with the pedestal and eased herself into a crouched position. Relief was instantaneous as she swung her arm awkwardly overhead and located the rope on the first try, giving her something stable to support her weight. “Aha! I-I did it!” she said almost in disbelief of herself. However, her repose was short-lived as the utterly atrocious smell that Ayaya had been complaining about wafted into her nostrils. “Goddess, that’s reeks. What the heck is down there?” She removed one hand from the rope to plug her nose.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Keelee said ominously as she removed the plank. With all eight contestants in place on their pedestals, the Final Round was ready to start. “Let’s move-move-move, people. It’s only a matter of time before someone falls, and we better be rolling when it happens.”
“Ahem!”
Tapping her foot behind Keelee while donning an irritated scowl, Cassi’s patience had run thin regarding Keelee’s attention. “Excuse me, now that you’re not doing anything, can we FINALLY address the problem with the script?” she said, her question sounding more like a command than a request. Dismally, the cold shoulder Keelee gave her in response only served to infuriate her further. “Are you even listening to me?! I’m trying to–Oh!”
Red overtook Keelee’s vision as she abruptly turned around and grabbed Cassi by the collar. “No, you listen to me!” she snapped, lifting Cassi up to her tip-toes. “We have minutes at most. I don’t care if I have to drag you up there by the hair myself. You are going to get your pampered ass up on that stage. Got it?”
“Got it,” Cassi squeaked, nodding her head frantically as Keelee slowly released her grip. No one had ever spoken so brazenly to her before. She wanted to fire Keelee on the spot but between the terror she felt and the consequences it would have on an episode this far into production, she had no choice but to obey for now. A rageful fury soon began to well up inside her as she shamefully rushed to her marker like a scared puppy with its tail between its legs.
FLASH!
Light rose as a fleet of stationary and shoulder-rig camera operators rotated around the pit's edge, giving the players a better view of their surroundings. Centered between the eight pedestals was a wide, mechanical beam with two hot pink, padded arms jutting out from its sides. Tragically, the added illumination did little to brighten the pit they were standing above.
“I don wike da wooks of dis,” said Misa, staring anxiously at the arm stationed between her and Mia. The avid gamer played enough Fall Guys in her life to know where the Final Round was heading.
Unfortunately, Misa and her fellow contestants had little time to ruminate over the layout of the game as Keelee's booming voice began to count Cassi in. “Quiet on set! We are rolling in 5, 4, 3…” she said, a haunting silence washing over the sound stage as she counted in the final two seconds with her fingers.
“Greed! Lust! Betrayal! The drama never stops here on DiapOut!” read Cassi with as much vigor as her dull script would allow. At least the audience appeared to be eating it up, though their enthusiasm was definitely more tepid than her previous re-introductions…or was she just being paranoid? Brushing it off as her mind playing tricks on her, she fought through the butterflies in her stomach to continue her monologue. “Welcome back, dear viewers. If you’re just tuning in, you’ve missed one heck of a show! To quickly recap, at the end of our third round, Cade elected to press the red button that would turn DiapOut into an individual game for the final round.”
A chorus of boos rang out across the audience, displaying their disapproval over Cade’s actions. Unfit to be the villain that Cassi and the show were making him out to be, the aloof pothead’s solemn expression soured further as he hid his face behind his raised arms. “I’m so sorry, you guys. I-I don’t know what came over me,” he said, still in disbelief over his own actions.
“Drop it, Cade. You’ve apologized enough. Just focus on winning,” Kyoko snapped back with a less-than-forgiving tone; an unsurprising development considering how explicit she was in warning Cade to avoid marijuana. Tempering her aggression to the best of her abilities, she knew this wasn’t the time to lambast her spacy teammate. So long as someone from their team won, they could choose to invest in the WET Diaper Lovers Club. Nothing else mattered.
“Will Cade come to regret such a selfish decision? We’ll find out as the Final Round starts right now!” Cassi announced, utilizing the crowd’s distaste for Cade as a lead into the main event. After all, nothing had the power to hold a watcher’s attention quite like a good enemy to root against. “Currently, all eight contestants are perched atop individual platforms with only a strand of rope overhead to hang onto. Once the Final Round begins, the pink arms attached to each side of the central beam will rotate, forcing the players to leap over the spinning arm or suffer a squishy demise.”
FLASH!
Cued in time with Cassi saying “squishy demise,” the lights positioned under the rim of the pit burst to life, permitting the contestants to finally see what waited for them at the bottom. Diapers…lots and lots of messy diapers; enough to fill several dumpsters. “Ew! You couldn’t just use leftover pudding or something?” remarked Zeke, his grip tightening around the rope as he gazed upon the blanket of dirty pampers that covered the pit’s base. All of a sudden, the idea of wearing the floofy Betsy Wetsy dress to the Final Round felt incredibly foolish.
“Well, we ran out of pudding during Round 3, so this was the next best thing. Sorry, Betsy,” Cassi quipped, approaching the pit and peering over the edge before playfully plugging her nose for the audience. “Woof! I love me some muddy undies but that’s an extreme stench. In case anyone was curious, these are all the diapers used by our contestants throughout the show’s runtime, along with the diapers of our production staffers. That means the lot of you have no one to blame but yourselves.”
Glancing down at the oversized diaper pail, it didn’t take long for Ayaya to locate her ridiculously bulbous nappy from Round 2. “That’s so not cool,” she muttered, continuing to study her surroundings before the game actually kicked off.
“To win, all you have to do is be the last diaper bab standing! Simple enough, yeah?” said Cassi, having fully shrugged off her soddy intro now that her audience was going bananas over the Final Round. That said, she needed to finish her introduction pronto. The stink of the padding pit was so strong that her eyes were starting to water, and she did not need her makeup to start running. “Which of these diaper-loving competitors will be crowned DiapOut champion? Let the Final Round…cum-mence!”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Red and orange siren lights flared up as an alarm bell blared throughout the studio, giving the space a very industrial feel to it. Seconds later, the double-sided arm began to spin clockwise, forcing Kyoko and Misa to hop over the slow-moving appendage at a moment's notice. Regrettably, the arm did not maintain its leisurely pace, picking up steam as it reached Zeke and Mia, followed swiftly by Cade and Ayaya. By the time it reached Rupert and Lelaya, the arm was moving at full speed. There was no longer any room for error and each player knew it. The Final Round was officially underway.
TO BE CONTINUED…