In the Grip of Despondency

The first thing Maxine did was yell. Loud as she could into her mic, she let out a shriek of “encouragement” that sent her camel into a frenzy as soon as it left the gates.

“GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Batal was already far, far ahead of Fadhi in the circular track below. The racecamel was a top earner, after all, and just about twice the size of the green-sporting newbie Frankie had chosen.

“That should be enough for now.” Max set her controller on the table and blew a bubble, knowing she was about to infuriate the hell out of her opponents.

“F-Fadhi! Go, go! Run! Run faster!”

No matter what Katie said or how Frankie operated the whip, they couldn’t seem to make any progress with their partner. He was hardly jogging in comparison to the living thunderbolt on the other side. Maxine smirked. Actually, this was going even better than she thought. Katie was panicked. She could tell she had a lot riding on this bet. At this rate, they’d give up before she even had to break a sweat.

But Frankie, on the other hand, was laughing.

“Frankie? What now?” Her older sister blinked repeatedly but everytime she looked back at the track they were still losing- meanwhile, the resident downer was cackling like a madwoman.

“This is… ridiculous.”

She didn’t have a darkness in her eyes when she said it- Frankie was just plain having fun for once at the insanity of the situation. A degree of fun that kept her calm. A degree of fun that, little by little, let her keep going. A degree of fun that, in time, helped her manage her usage of the whip. And that alone was enough to make their scrawny greenhorn start to catch up to Batal as his partner failed to control him.

As such, it was a degree of fun Maxine could not allow.

She popped her left pinky, and next came the bubble.

Pop!

Nobody saw it, but the instant that air-filled candy sphere extending from her lips popped, choice pheromones were spread throughout the room, reaching everyone there. The scent went unnoticed when, as soon as it grazed your nose, the feelings carried by it hit you like a truck.

All of a sudden, Salman started remembering his dog back at home who had been refusing to eat for the past three days. Katie began to understand that her sister’s laughter didn’t matter, and they weren’t going to win, and she was never going to see all the parks before she died, which would hopefully be soon. Frankie dropped her whip controls as her own cravings and instincts rushed back into her- danger. She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t be anywhere. She didn’t want to be.

Willow wasn’t so easily swayed. Though saddened by an abrupt memory of a world without so many theme parks in it, she just glared at the girl. She was doing exactly what she’d expected she’d do when faced with the slightest challenge.

“How dare you call yourself a competitor.”

Maxine ignored the frowning old bat as she was the only one in the room still smiling, the despondent shells around her unable to stop her unbeatable manipulation tactic. Chewing her gum again, she cheered her partner on all the way to the start of the second lap.

“Frankie… we’re going to lose, aren’t we?”

Katie’s eyes were glass. The girl looked just like she did on the first day they started this terrible journey.

“I… I don’t know- why does that matter?” Her shaking pupils spoke for her more than her quivering lips.

“Because we’ll lose this, and then we’ll lose the Kidney game. Then I’ll die without having seen everything I was supposed to see. And you’ll die without seeing the ocean.”

“The… ocean?” Her cloudy brain floated aimlessly inside her skull. “I don’t care about the ocean…”

Willow was forced to watch the sisters fall into depression instantaneously, unwilling to help. It wasn’t fair that they were being treated this way- anyone would’ve considered Maxine’s inhumane actions as cheating. But Willow had made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t influence the contestants in any way, even if it meant becoming an audience to an existential crisis.

Maybe it was Maxine’s trickery, but it was at this point that Willow started to wonder if she was a bad person.