She Was Supposed to Be the Crazy One

"We've decided you'll be the crazy one."

The producer said that as he pushed the contract across the desk for her to sign. She signed. She knew what it said. She would be stuck in a house with 5 strangers, subjected to whatever behaviors her housemates and the crew chose to display, and forced to participate in treacherous athletic competition or something vile and unthinkable on nearly a daily basis. She would be given a personality type to play to which would be an exaggerated extrapolation of her real one.

She was the crazy one. They told her so. Later, she would be so insistent of this fact. They told her she was the crazy one. She was just trying to do her best. She had to win. If she got that $5 million, she could get her mother that stem cell treatment they'd developed. She'd be able to walk again, and breathe on her own. For her mother, she would be the crazy one.

But she was shy. She'd never been crazy in her life. She told the producer this.

"Yeah," he said, glancing at his watch. "Well, we already had a shy one, and there weren't any 'workable' crazy applicants this time around, so... you're the crazy one." He began tidying up his papers and putting them in his briefcase. "So, those are your copies, keep them somewhere safe, and if there aren't anymore questions I'll--"

"How am I supposed to be crazy? How do I be the crazy one?" She asked him grabbing his arm before he could walk away.

He extricated his arm from her grip and shrugged, smoothing his sleeve. "From what I've seen, being drunk as often as possible helps. Stoned would also work, though I can't officially condone drug use. If you'll excuse me."

She sat back down at the table, rejected applicants filing out and workers beginning to pack everything up around her. With a sigh, she slumped her shoulders as the table she'd been sitting at was taken away. She finally decided to leave when they came to take the chair. She folded her contracts and stuffed them into her jacket as she walked out.

The first night in the house, she got blind drunk. She remembered little of the night, but watching footage the next day she discovered she had slept with all three male roommates and had hit on the other girl. She called the producers.

"But now I'm the slut," she complained.

"It's fine, we need one of those too," the producers assured her. "The crazy one usually ends up the slut, which is why we prefer crazy girls to crazy guys."

She hung up the phone and sighed. For her mother, she'd be the slut.

Later that afternoon, she was forced to eat a bowl of live spiders or risk being thrown off the show. She was still nursing a wicked hangover, and she vomited the spiders back up all over herself. She'd managed to keep them down long enough to pass the challenge. She could do it. She'd do this for her mom.

That night she got drunk again, this time stripping for an entire street full of tourists in the downtown area. She was arrested, and woke up in the drunk tank. Her housemates came to bail her out, and she picked a fight with one of them. It seemed crazy, and therefore something she should do. But when she got home she cooked everyone omelets, to thank them for bailing her out, and everyone was friends again. That night, they all drank at home, and she ended up sleeping with two of the housemates that night. The next day, she started drinking at breakfast, and went out to get a tattoo. She got one a week while on the show, hoping all this was satisfying the need for crazy.

Apparently it was. Ratings were high, and she was listed as most people's main reason for watching. The producers locked her into a new contract. It promised double the offered prize money to stay on through the season, with a third of that offered up-front. She signed gleefully, not bothering to read it all that thoroughly. With the money she'd get immediately, she could get her mother's therapy started.

Everyone was jealous of her then, and the housemates treated her cruelly. They'd take her out to the clubs, and when she'd had too much to drink, hire cabs to drive her aimlessly around the city and finally dump her in an alley. They trashed her room on a regular basis and harassed her day and night. She responded by becoming more outrageous. She started doing her drinking at home, and would usually rail drunkenly at the housemates for hours after they came home. But ratings were up, people loved her, so she kept it going. Think of Mom's treatment, she thought to herself. It's only one more month.

Then the news came. The producers called. Her mother had died. She was devastated. So much so that even her hateful roommates showed some manner of sympathy. She decided to leave the show then and there. With her mother gone, there was no more reason to do this.

But the producers weren't having it. Part of the new contract she'd signed had said that receipt of the advance money implied her agreement to remain on the show for the full season. Furthermore, it turned over all proprietary and broadcast rights for her mother's funeral and wake, meaning the entire cast was going to come with her to the funeral.

It was a disaster. Half of them were drunk, and one even urinated into the open grave. She was mortified. Her family would not speak with her, and forbade her from staying with them after the funeral. She went back to the house she shared with 5 monsters. She didn't know what to do.

Then the producers called.

"We're thinking the whole thing with your mother's funeral should probably call for some pretty crazy behavior. Sweeps is coming up, and there's a bonus in it for you if you can drink yourself into a temporary coma. Heh heh. I'm kidding. I never said that. Anyway, sorry for everything and all that. Back at it."

She stared at the phone, the dial tone a pleasant hum in her ear. Then she hung it up.

She killed the crew first, while her housemates were partying in the hot tub. No one caught it on camera. She left one camera operator alive to film everything she did next. She tore down the stationary cameras positioned around the house and then made her way to the hot tub room.

When they found her, hours later, she was sitting fully-dressed in the hot tub, the dismembered corpses of her housemates strewn about the room, the traumatized cameraman still running film on her. She was covered in blood and the water in the hot tub churned a red froth. She carved a random forearm absently with the cleaver she'd done the killing with.

"No no, it's okay," she said to the police as they pulled her out of the tub and handcuffed her.

"I'm the crazy one."