Message-ID: <37801asstr$1028956208@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: <news@google.com> X-Original-Path: not-for-mail From: Max_Wojtylak@yahoo.com (theGreatxIam) X-Original-Message-ID: <527ece6d.0208091517.2f84f1ec@posting.google.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Aug 2002 23:17:35 GMT X-ASSTR-Original-Date: 9 Aug 2002 16:17:35 -0700 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 X-Archived-At: <URL:http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2002/37801> X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com> X-Moderator-ID: kelly, gill-bates 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> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+