index


Message-ID: <37801asstr$1028956208@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Max_Wojtylak@yahoo.com (theGreatxIam)
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Aug 2002 23:17:35 GMT
Subject: {ASSM} Fish Tank Ch. 3 (no sex)
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 01:10:08 -0400
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

NOTE: I hereby grant permission for all archiving and other uses of
this work, public or private, free or paid, in any format whether
existing now or to be invented in the future, so long as a copy of
this note and credit to "theGreatxIam" is given and no alteration is
made to the body of the work. Copyright 2002, theGreatxIam

The Fish Tank
in honor of ASSD's FishTank
Chapter 3 (of 5)
By theGreatxIam

Champagne was flowing freely back at the studio as the producers
celebrated.

Jon would be a perfect winner, all set to step onto talk shows, sitcom
cameos, even -- dared they dream? -- movies. And every appearance,
every article would have to note that he got his start on "The Fish
Tank."

Janelle would lose in the finals, of course. She was even more vapid
than Jon. But she'd guarantee them two more weeks of sex appeal and
tons of diversity points.

One producer -- an androgynous being in a silver jumpsuit -- noted
cheerfully that they were even squeezing a little extra drama out of
Pete and Des. The others nodded politely and got refills.

---- ---- ----

Though the living room of the Tank was spacious, Jon and Janelle
cuddled together in one corner of the white leather couch.

Janelle had a special gleam whose source was no secret. Night-vision
binoculars were very popular with the crowd, so everyone knew the
couple had been celebrating their success every night with a sexual
display that looked like ghostly gymnastics in the greenish screens.

Pete perched on the edge of a small hassock, hands drumming on his
knees.

As far from him as possible, Des sprawled in a plaid recliner, feet
not touching the floor. She ignored the host during the intro, staring
only at Pete with naked fury.

As the floor director counted down to air, Pete bounced up. "It's too
damn hot in here with all those lights," he said, and he ran around
the room flinging windows open. He just got back to his seat when the
count reached zero.

Once the host's smarmy introduction was over, the cameras swung to
Jon. Before he could even open his mouth, though, Pete was talking.
When the cameras refused to seek him out, he marched over and planted
himself in front of them.

Up to that point all he had been saying was that he wanted to be
heard. But then Jon tugged on Pete's sleeve and quietly said it was
his turn first. "We drew lots, you know. Fair is fair."

Pete's hands flew out from his sides. "Fair? You're telling me about
fair? Ha! There was no 'we' drawing lots. The producers told us they
did. And we all believe them, don't we? Because the producers would
never lie.

"No, not them. Not the same producers who fixed every contest so
Pretty Boy would win. Not the producers who edit all the shows to make
the audience hate the people they want them to hate.

"And since when are you such a stickler for the rules, Pretty Boy? You
weren't so ethical when you told me you'd give me a free pass if I
made nice with the Ice Queen."

Des had been staring in shock like everyone else, but Pete's last
comment snapped her out of it.

"Ice Queen? You think any woman who doesn't fall all over you is
frigid? Then the whole world must be frozen, because I didn't see
anyone trying to jump your bones. Not even that airhead slut over
there!"

"Hey!" Janelle simpered. "That's not nice. Tell them, Jon."

"Yeah," Jon said, cuddling closer. "Be nice. Look, we're all friends,
right? It's been a long time in here, and the pressure and all. We're
all bound to be a little cranky. But there's no reason to be nasty.
I'm sure Pete's sorry he suggested those things about the producers --
right, Pete? You know the show's on the level."

Pete smacked Jon with the back of his hand. "Shut up, you obsequious
moron. A six-year-old could see the show's rigged. The whole thing's a
crooked game. Like those tours they sell. Jack up the prices for
fleabag hotels. Charge $25 for a T-shirt that fades in five days. It's
all a rook. Des knows. Ask her -- she was talking about it last week.
And is she getting a penny from those 'Des the Destroyer' nutcrackers?
Not a damn cent! It's all a rip-off!"

"Stop it," Jon said. "Stop it this instant!" As he said it while
cowering on the couch, it wasn't very impressive.

Des took a more forceful approach, leaping into the air and landing on
Pete's back. "You're a lunatic," she yelled, hands around his neck.
"Shut up or they'll throw us out and we won't get anything! You may
not care, but I need that money."

Pete pried her off and advanced on the cameras. He grabbed the lens of
the one with the glowing red light and stuck his face just inches
away.

"Hear me, America! The only thing more unbelievable than how phony
this is, is how you nitwits swallow it. Why are you watching this?
Don't you people have anything better to do? What, is wrestling too
real for you?"

In the background, Des had been tugging on Jon and then the host,
trying to get them to take on Pete. When they refused, she clouted
both of them on their heads and ran over to the cameras, desperately
unplugging cables while shrieking at Pete.

As the light above the camera he'd commandeered went dark, he
abandoned the lens and strode to the closest window.

Pete leaned out and shook his fist.

"You people are even bigger saps than the home audience," he said.
"What are you doing? Go home and get a life!"

As he turned away, the last of the glowing lights on the electronic
gear winked out. Des held up the last cable, wiping sweat from her
brow.

A noise made her turn. They all looked -- players, crew, the lot. The
noise sounded like a tornado, or a freight train. It grew and
smothered them. Everyone looked past the transparent walls.

As far as the eye could see, people were applauding.

The studio had cut off the live feed before Pete even began. No one
watching on TV saw any part of the melee.

That meant they could not understand what had happened when the final
live shot showed Jon and Janelle being voted out of the house almost
unanimously.

---- ---- ----

The studio conference room was just two eye gouges and a knuckle flick
away from a Three Stooges scene. Two producers were slugging it out
atop the table until one of them skinned his/her knuckles on the
other's chin. He/she fell back in pain while she/he staggered in the
opposite direction. They both fell off opposite ends of the table onto
pileups of other producers. There have been mosh pits with fewer
tumbles.

 From the tumult, occasional bits of coherent speech emerged: "How
could they do that?" "Who fucked up the polling?" "All the money we
got, couldn't we have gotten Janelle a damn personality implant?"

In time, they were able to discuss things calmly. The polling had been
accurate, as far as it went, said a producer who either had long
sideburns or a seriously bad beautician. What the survey had missed
was a last-minute stampede to Pete and Des based on a belief that they
would rip each other's guts out if caged up in the house for two more
weeks.

"And ours," someone in the back said.

"Huh?"

"Exit polls indicate the crowd bought Pete's accusations of us. In
short, they think we're cheating, and they wanted to shove it up our
ass."

The director groaned. "What's their problem? Did we get every
conspiracy nut in America? What else do they believe? That Oswald
didn't act alone and Elvis is alive?"

The room burst into laughter. One producer curled up a lip in a sneer.

---- ---- ----

It was traditional -- if anything can become traditional in four years
-- for the big glass house to get a thorough cleaning the morning
after the final two players were chosen. That part went according to
plan.

It was also traditional for the cleaning to be followed by a series of
photo shoots as every magazine and news service vied to be the
overkill straw which broke the smelly camel that is public fascination
with a celebrity.

That tradition, however, did not survive. Pete flew into a rage when
the photographers arrived. As it would have been impossible to hide
from them in the Tank, he didn't try. And as the shooters would have
been quite happy to get close-ups of him biffing a fellow
photographer, he didn't act out his anger. He simply sat. For hours.
Staring blankly, coldly. Most definitely unphotogenically.

This caused the frustrated legions to descend on Des. She wasn't
camera-shy -- no one could survive the Tank if they were -- but she
quickly grew tired of the attention. She had cameras following her
whatever she did, drawing them like a dead bird does flies. This
metaphor, in fact, was one she herself uttered when flashes greeted
the successful conclusion of a trip to the bathroom.

She begged Pete to loosen up, but he wouldn't even look at her. The
lenses, on the other hand, wouldn't look away. She scratched, and a
dozen cameras zoomed in on her butt. And no 63-year-old butt, she
said, no matter how well maintained, is going to look good in a zoom
lens.

Only the end of the evening brought some relief, as the photographers
packed up and left. The pros, that is. The shutterbugs in the crowd
outside kept the night twinkling with flashes. It was cold comfort
that the flashes, bouncing off the glass, would wash out the photos.
By 10 Des looked haggard and flinched with every flash.

She dragged herself to bed -- with everyone else gone, they got the
master suite at last. The first night she had slept in her own bed
anyway, apparently leery of sharing sheets with Pete. That second
night, it wasn't an option. The clean-up had included emptying the
other bedrooms.

Even if Des had an objection, she looked in no condition to battle.
With pronounced bags under her eyes and a stoop in her step, she
shuffled toward the big bed and settled blissfully under the covers.

Bliss lasted 15 seconds. Pete stormed into the room and ripped the
covers off.

"Cotton sheets?" He wadded them up and threw them into the hall. "Des
the Desirable deserves better than this!"

Des, who had been flung to the floor, sleepily protested that cotton
was good enough.

"Not even close," he shouted. "If the chiselers running this show
think they're going to give you cheapjack trash because they didn't
get their way with the vote, we'll show them. No cotton crap for my
Des. It's silk or nothing."

He raised a fist to the nearest camera. "Do you hear that, you lousy
bastards? If you know what's good for you, you'll get some decent
sheets in here first thing tomorrow!"

Des gathered her nightgown around her -- a flower-patterned cotton --
and crawled back into bed. As she curled up into a fetal position, she
sighed. "Fine," she said, "forget the sheets. Let's just get some
sleep. I'm going to be out 10 seconds after my head hits the pillow."

The accuracy of her prediction wasn't tested, for Pete yanked the
pillows away before she could put her head down.

"What are these?" He pounded the goose-down pillows. "Put your head on
these and they flatten out. That's not a pillow."

Again he addressed the unseen producers. "Can't you see how tired Des
is? And what do you give her? These pillows are flatter than Kelly
Ripa's chest. If you can't provided decent foam pillows with some
support, why give us anything at all?"

He threw the pillows after the sheets.

Des started to protest, but she looked like a beanbag with all the
sand running out. She sank back, cradling her head in her hands as she
closed her eyes.

A thump made her open them. Pete had slammed a fist onto the bed.

"You call this a mattress?"

Des groaned.

---- ---- ----

There is no need for alarm clocks in a glass house, because there is
no escaping the sun. It invades every inch, poking and prodding at
eyeballs until sleep is burned away.

Des blinked, stretched, and froze. Arms, not her own, were wrapped
around her. She wiggled a bit and her jaw dropped open. She pried the
arms off and scrambled to her feet as nimbly as she could after a
night spent sleeping on the floor. She looked down and shrieked.

Pete opened one eye lazily and looked up at her. "What is it?," he
drawled, scratching himself in various places. The scratching was easy
to accomplish since he was utterly naked.

Des backed up until her legs hit the empty bed frame. "You -- That --
Oh!" She shook her head.

Pete glanced down at his morning erection. "Oh, this. Sorry, did it
bother you? Gets that way sometimes. Especially when I've been
cuddling a sexy woman like yourself."

He eyed her lasciviously. She clutched at her nightgown and stomped to
the bathroom.

Curious feature of the Fish Tank: The pipes provided colored water.
Except for the supply to the washing machine, all the hot water ran
red, the cold blue. Made quite a spectacle as it coursed through the
clear plastic pipes.

The shower was running a darkish purple when Des let her nightgown
drop to the floor and stepped in. She closed her eyes and let the
water cascade off her skin.

When she opened them to find the soap, two brown eyes were staring
into her blue orbs. She backed away and shouted, almost slipping as
she slammed into the shower wall.

Pete, on the other side of the glass, just smiled and kept staring.

Des grabbed for the controls and twisted them savagely. The water
turned blood red. Clouds of steam filled the shower stall, coating the
walls with a vision-obscuring fog.

Pete laughed and walked away.

---- ---- ----

Wondrous smells filled the air: Bacon, maple syrup, hot coffee. As Des
toweled off, she sniffed and smiled.

Wriggling into jeans, pulling a T-shirt over her head, she almost
skipped as she approached the kitchen. A puzzled frown crept onto her
face, though. She broke into a trot, grabbed a wall to swing into the
kitchen.

The room was full of delicious aromas. What it lacked was food.

There was nothing on the table.

There was nothing on the stove.

Countertop: Nothing. Sink: Nothing. Fridge -- Plexiglas, of course:
Nothing.

She tracked Pete down in the living room, a feat accomplished simply
by looking through the wall. She stood in front of him, tapping her
sneaker-shod foot, for a full minute. (Try that sometime. It's a lot
longer than you think.)

Finally he looked up from his book.

"What?"

She glared at him. "Breakfast?"

"I threw it out."

"What?"

"Threw it out. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, the lot."

"Why?"

"No good for you. Damn producers. I told them. Give us granola, we can
talk. Wheat germ. Bran. Lots of bran. Skim milk, none of that 2
percent swill. My Des deserves healthy food."

"No. I don't. Let them kill me with cream cheese. I want breakfast!"

Pete rolled over and sat up straight. "Don't sell yourself short," he
said. "You should have only the best. And I'm going to make sure you
get just what you deserve."

Des started to turn away in disgust, then spun back. "Wait a minute.
You threw it out. But I smelled cooked food."

"That's right. I ate some first."

She tried to speak several times before she found words. "You son of a
bitch! What about that stuff not being good enough? I thought we
deserved better?"

"That's you," he said. "Me, I'm nothing. It's all about you, Des.".

---- ---- ----

Time was when Des was so feared by everyone that even the people on
the other side of the glass got nervous when she was near, as if her
eyes could shoot death rays. Then Pete pulverized her image and some
people put up hate signs. But after a few days of dealing with Pete
one on one, it got really bad.

She drew pity.

Signs saying "Chin Up, Buckaroo" sprouted everywhere. At night, when
dew condensed on the outside walls, little kids drew happy faces for
her. Fourteen old ladies tried to slip fudge past the guards, and when
Des burst into tears one day the entire crowd broke into a chorus of
"You'll Never Walk Alone." When that didn't cheer her up, they did the
Wave.

The sympathy seemed only to make her feel worse. She would rage at the
walls, stick her tongue out, give them the finger. All it got her was
a group "Awww."

Des took a running leap at the glass, but the crowd didn't even
flinch.

Pete had come up behind her; he saw the whole thing. As Des let her
fingers slide down the wall, he stepped around her and pulled open the
window.

"Stop it," he shouted. "She doesn't need your sympathy, you assholes.
Des doesn't want your pity. She's a cold, bitter old woman, not some
flighty girl you have to protect.

"She can protect herself! She's nastier than any one of you, and twice
as mean. It's an insult for you to treat her like a weakling.

"I've known plenty of women in my day, but none as vicious as Des. You
get on her nerves, she'll rip your guts off. And you people are
getting on her nerves. So back off!"

He slammed down the window and stalked away.

"Thanks," Des said to his back. "Thanks for ... Hey, you said ...
Hey!"


To be continued...

For the complete story and more, visit
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/theGreatxIam/www
For more about the FishTank, a place for writers to get feedback,
visit
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Desdmona/www/FishTank/base/index.html

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> |
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html>  Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}|
|Archive at <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org>   Hosted by <http://www.asstr-mirror.org>      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+