The King's Castle

Leah and Jake walked in an uncomfortable silence after his declaration, the former straight and confident with the normal sway in her step, the latter looking back over his shoulder to where all these women from his life were dispersing.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why won’t you let me see them?”

“You’ll get to see them,” Leah said patiently. “Tomorrow, as a matter of fact. We’ll turn you loose and let you visit to your heart’s content.”

Jake’s temper flared again.

“You know what I mean, Leah,” he said. “They’re freaking out now! I want to go see them.”

They passed through a series of double doors that led to a beautifully decorated hotel lobby, complete with black marble, fine wood furnishings and just enough tropical plants and fine bamboo trimmings to remind anyone passing through of the paradise they’d found themselves.

Closing the doors behind her, she turned to him. Insomuch as he was beginning to hate Leah, the way she looked now, with her red dress hugging against her slender-yet-full-chested form, he couldn’t deny that she was stunning.

“Who would you have gone to first?” she asked, “You can answer freely. There aren’t any cameras on us at the moment.”

Jake stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out why she wanted to know.

“Emily, probably,” he said cautiously. “Megan, too. And I need to talk to Ryan and Farra. I can’t imagine what those two are going through right now.”

“No. You can’t,” Leah agreed. “And I can tell you want to avoid Hannah. You probably haven’t even thought much about Lindsey, Exe, or Loretta yet.”

Jake sighed.

“What’s your point, Leah?”

“That everything you’re thinking about doing, from rushing into the arms of your current girlfriend to palling around with your best friend, to ignoring your ex or the strangers puts them in danger,” she said.

It was too much.

“I’m putting them in danger?” he asked. “You have a LOT of nerve to call me out for…”

She raised a hand to silence him.

“I’m telling this to you as the host, and someone who’s worked in this world’s entertainment industry for longer than you can imagine,” she said. “You’re all performers for an audience now, like it or not. And an audience develops favorites, heels and rooting interests. Every player you refuse to show any interest in, or treat like your favorite risks falling into one camp or the other.”

His heart sank. Jake didn’t really do reality TV, but he was familiar enough with it to know that she was right.

“I can’t just treat them all like they’re the same,” he said, “I mean, I’m only human.”

“No. And the fact that you can’t is part of the drama,” Leah admitted. “All those old attractions, new faces you can forge relationships with. It’s all very fun, but you can go too far in one direction or another if you’re not careful.”

Jake again felt a spike in his irritation. Fun? Drama? These were their lives these people were playing with.

“I’m not here to ‘forge relationships’, Leah,” he said. “And if you think for one fucking second that I’m going to cheat on my girlfriend, then you clearly don’t have me figured out as much as you think you do.”

She gave him a little smirk at that. God, even malice looked pretty on her.

“Of course not. A good, upstanding little paragon like you would never even dream of touching another woman. Even surrounded by the women of those dreams,” she said. “Nonetheless, it’s in all their interests and yours to spend some time with them, and to think really hard about what you’ll say when you do see them again.”

She was right, he knew. He didn’t want to be responsible for anyone losing or transformed into something horrifying because of him. To that end, he supposed he could probably even detonate the whole show by refusing to play along if he wanted, but all 11 remaining women would likely just find themselves in situations similar to Amelia’s or worse if he did. That he couldn’t allow, no matter how disgusting this all was.

He let out a sigh.

“Thanks for the advice, I guess,” he said. “But if you don’t want me to see anyone today, what the hell am I supposed to do with myself?”

This time Leah’s smile was warmer, and even prettier for it.

“Well, that’s the other thing I pulled you aside for,” she said, motioning to the large elevator in the back of the room, “Follow me.”

He did, and she swiped a keycard on a panel, and the glass doors of the elevator slid open. She led him inside before they shut themselves. The elevator, he could see, had only one button for its controls; a simple one that read “M”. Leah pushed it, and the box they stood in hummed to life and began to detach from the hotel’s main building.

Jake gasped as he realized what was happening. The elevator’s only solid wall was the black granite one in the back. The other three, along with the floor and ceiling, were made of glass. What he’d taken for four black granite walls were actually just the sides of a port of sorts, which the box had slid out of and was now gliding away from.

As soon as they were free, he could see the world around him shrinking as it moved on a track up the side of the volcano. It rose through densely packed jungle, the resort ground and its various suites spreading out beneath them. He could see that although the suites for the guests all had distinctive styles, they were all connected to the main building, along with the various facilities they had access to. There was even a train station built into it and, as they rose higher and higher, a track that led to the beach and village before disappearing around the curve of the mountain.

The view was incredible, but soon began to be obscured by a steel floor propped up on stilts. It entered their line of sight slowly, but eventually obscured the rest of the view, before the elevator slid into a similar dock to the one they’d left. The glass doors slid open, along with two metal elevator doors that obscured his view. And as they did, Jake’s breath went out of him for the second time.

“Welcome to the Master’s Suite.” Leah said.

They were standing before a large, open air hotel room. A pool lay at the front, seemingly dropping off into space. A deck built into it would allow him to look over the entire island. The bed looked large enough for two people to sleep comfortably, but only just. And as he passed one of the sectional couches, he saw that it was nowhere near long enough for anyone to lie on, and that each was firmly bolted into the floor.

“This is a really incredible view,” he said, walking up to the railing. For the time being, the malicious show had been forgotten. “But what happens if it rains?”

“It only rains when we want it to,” Leah answered, “And we can deploy a screen to keep it out. There’s also a controller for the pool available to you. The press of a button and it can be converted into a hot tub.”

She gestured to a closet.

“You’ll find we brought an assortment of your favorite clothes with you. And you can request anything else you’d like from our store. The contestants have to pay for it from their Monopoly money, but you don’t,” she said. “Just drop anything dirty in the shoot here, and we’ll have it washed and returned within the hour.”

She waved him over to a stairwell on the far side of the room that descended downward.

“Come on.”

This, as it turned out, led to a dining room and kitchen combo. Like the room above, it was open air and provided a fantastic view. A small table sat on its balcony that could seat two, though he noted it was capable of expanding outward. The kitchen was fully equipped and stocked with what looked like the most modern kitchenware.

“You can request meals, of course,” Leah said. “And we can make most anything for you. But some of the contestants do like to cook, so we thought we’d provide them with that chance, were they so inclined.”

Most of the space was taken up by a bar, loaded with a few basic spirits and some wines.

“There’s bar equipment to mix drinks as well, along with some mixers and beer to your tastes in the cooler,” Leah explained. “If you want anything fancy, you can order it.”

“Very cool,” Jake admitted, already looking forward to having a beer on this balcony as he watched the sun set.

“And if you’ll follow me one more time, I saved the best for last.”

The best, as it turned out, was a built in man cave on the lowest level of the suite. It was much larger than the other rooms, and built into the cliffside. There were no windows, just an open space that included a pool table, dart board, beer fridge and a home theater system rigged up to a complex sound system, a very high end gaming PC and every modern gaming console he could care to play. A sound system had a vinyl record player, as well as a port for his phone, both linked to the theater sound system. The centerpiece was a huge widescreen that the rest of the room seemed to funnel itself toward.

Jake let out an impressed whistle.

“This really is something else,” he said.

She gave him a proud little smile.

“Thank you, love. I curated it myself,” she said. “Think of it as a little sanctuary within your keep.”

She handed the keycard to him.

“That’s yours to keep. Even I can’t get up here without your permission,” she said. “You’ll still need to attend any scheduled events, but otherwise, you’re free to come and go as you please.”

He nodded, taking it. Still, something was off. He’d been struggling to put his finger on it, but looking around the basement and its furnishings, a few nice looking chairs and the same sectional sort of armless loveseat the other couches were, it finally hit him.

“Not much in the way of furniture, though,” he said. “Fine for sitting on, but nothing you could lay down on. Why do I get the feeling that’s intentional?”

Leah smirked.

“It seems our psychological profiles didn’t sell you short. I was warned you’d be perceptive,” she said. “You are correct, of course. While you have the run of the island, you are required to take a guest every night. We allow you to exempt yourself up to one night per week, but otherwise, you’ll be sharing the place with a contestant.”

“And there’s no comfortable place for them to sleep but the bed.” he finished for her, shaking his head. “Honestly, Leah. It’s a cheap trick.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders, “but any two people who want to sleep comfortably up here will have to get very cozy in order to do it.”

That sly grin reappeared on her face.

“Of course, you have an option to upgrade the bed. As you get more and more used to having… multiple guests at a time. If you take my meaning.”

He frowned. He took it alright. Unbidden, he had a vision of Emily, Hannah, Exe and Farra all in bed with him at once, and was faintly disgusted with himself at the extent to which that prospect aroused him.

“I see… when does that start?” he asked.

“After the first challenge. We want to give everyone a couple nights to settle in and get comfortable.”

She reached out a hand to touch his face. The gesture was so sudden, and so unexpectedly kind, that he wasn’t even able to flinch away.

“I know you didn’t want this. And that you’re probably very conflicted,” she said. “but there are perks to all this. I hope you can learn to enjoy yourself if you can open your mind. Even the girls’ changes won’t be all bad. They’ll get rewards, boosts….”

Now, Jake did recoil.

“Look, I get what you’re doing. Spoiling me now so I won’t be so pissed about the whole thing,” he said. “But it’s not going to work. I’m still pretty mad about all this.”

But not as mad as I should be, he thought, Goddamnit.

She seemed to sense his thought, as her only response was a coy wink.

“Of course. Still… if you need anything, you can give me a call on the phone upstairs. You can summon anyone up here, at least starting tomorrow. In the meantime, relax a bit. You’re far too bloody uptight.”

“Sure,” he said, turning away from her, “whatever.”

She departed up the stairs she’d come from, and a few minutes later, he heard the sound of the elevator departing. He was alone and, despite his earlier protests about visiting the women, he was glad of that. The morning’s events had been exhausting, and he was torn between a number of conflicting instincts.

Leah was right, of course. The audience would pick its favorites, and his actions had an impact on that. More to the point, if the women brought here to compete for his affections had to actually win them in order to stave off the worst of their changes, was his commitment to monogamy effectively condemning all of them but his girlfriend from a fate like Amelia’s? Or was that just something he was telling himself; an excuse to lapse into the sort of behavior they wanted from him?

Jake decided that while there would be a lot of time to worry about all that, he didn’t need to do it now. For the moment, shutting his brain off was all he wanted and, luckily, the basement of the suite provided him with all the opportunity he needed to do that. He stretched, yawned, and began firing up the computer.