I Thought Jeff Probst Would Be Here?

The summer heat swells - the type of heat and humidity that eats you whole the second you step out.

Here, at a rented by the night camp ground, The Poor Whoresmen camp.

Empty beer bottles and cigarette butts litter their camp site. A stack of misshapen rocks cobble together to make a fire pit in the center.

“I’m gonna go hit the head. Y’all don’t fuck anything up while I’m gone, alright?”

There’s nostalgia when John gives them that look - the one John’s father honed over twenty years as the Principal of an inner city school.

Rob can taste Surge and smell Coke-can schwag weed.

“You bet’cha hoss,” Daytona calls out as John wheels away.

A devious grin plasters Daytona’s face as soon as John is out of earshot.

“You wanna fuck around?” Daytona asks Rob.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Alright, Robbie, we’re gonna make you a goddamn bonafide star here,” Daytona picks up the camera and starts fumbling with the controls.

Fred and Finn return just before Daytona finds the record button.

“And then they put Mountain Dew in your aceho.”

“I don’t think that’s what a semicolon is, Fred,” Finn shakes his head and hesitates for a hot second before tossing Rob a bottle of water.

“Thanks. It’s hotter than hell out here.”

Rob has enough time to chug the bottle before Daytona calls out, “And action. Now strip down.”

It’s Lake Lanier in the summertime. You know, children’s birthday parties and families cooling off from the sun in overchlorinated pee water.

“The fuck did you say?” Rob cocks an eyebrow at Daytona.

“You tryin’ to look like a cowboy or be a fuckin’ cowboy, Robbie? They ain’t got no clothes on Survivor.”

This is his audition tape.

Truth be told, it isn't really his bag. All this survivalist bullshit is for the birds. He’s never felt the need to rope and ride or chop wood and carry water. None of that bravado, pseudo-masculine bullshit makes you a man.

Kicking fucking ass makes you a man. Listening to Bob Seger makes you a goddamn man.

But still, he has seen the pay off of the small, quiet dedication lately.

And he has his reasons for this.

“I really don’t think that’s what they do, ‘Tone.”

“Well shitfire, Robbie. I forgot you’re the Universal Champion. You obviously know what the people want.”

“Aw fuck you,” Rob’s eyes take a peek inside his skull, but he cedes to what Daytona calls his natural charisma and charm. Rob refers to it as “being a fucking roided out bulldozer”.

Fred whistles as Rob strips down to his birthday suit.

“Here,” Daytona pulls a leopard print speedo from the pocket of his vest and tosses it to Rob. “We ain’t exactly got the budget to blur you out the whole video.”

“I don’t know about this, ‘Tone.”

The view jostles around like Rob’s manhood, barely contained in the tiny Speedo Daytona talked him into.

“C’mon, boy… make it sexy!.”

This must be what a few thousand women across the country feel like after meeting Daytona Diamonds.

With a sigh, Rob does a little hula dance.

“Yeah, good. Ok now introduce yourself.”

“You keep fucking talking, ‘Tone, and this video is going to be your application - not mine.”

“We’ll fix it in post, just fucking say the thing.”

Rob is awkward. Pained. Every word sounds like a fourteen year old nerd asking his crush to prom, “Uh, hey…, I’m Rob Williams and I am going to be the sole Survivor.”

It’s warm. Too warm.

Not just the Georgia heat, either - the blue of the water and the yellow of the sun. All of it.

“You good, Robbie?”

“I’m fucking golden. Let’s do this shit. Survivor!”

Daytona laughs like a pack of feral dogs in the distance. “Ok, Hoss. Calm Down.”

Down.

Rob sits cross legged.

“Fred, the supplies,” Daytona gestures vaguely. But there’s nothing and no one there?

“Yee.”

“What’s so funny?” Rob asks Finn. He doesn’t like Finn’s smile right now. It’s ugly. Unkind.

“Other than my mentor sitting cross legged in a speedo? Nothing.”

Fucking kid. He was going to show him next time they were in the ring.

“Here ye go.” Fred sets down a shoe box in front of Rob with a bunch of holes poked in it.

“What is this?” Rob asks, removing the lid.

Pure horror.

Creepy, crawly. Too many legs inside the box. The sun bounces something awful off the shell of a cockroach as it crawls over a tarantula.

“Those are the hariest fucking legs I ever saw. What is this shit, ‘Tone?” Rob asks, unable to keep the fear at bay.

“You gotta get your protein in, Robbie. We don’t know how long you’ll be out there. Gotta stay strong.”

“Pick your victim.”

He doesn’t know who said that. Maybe he did.

Rob holds his hand over the box ominously.

Everyone unconsciously shivers and extends their neck as the hairs of the tarantula brush against Rob’s fingers.

Pick your victim.

He hears screams as he gnashes the tarantula between his teeth. Is the tarantula screaming? Is it The Whoresmen?

His eyes meet Finn’s as he swallows the first bite of the spider’s soul.

Did the spider have a son?

Did he just end the bloodline?

“HOLY SHEEEET!” Fred whispers in his ear.

You know those dreams where you’re in a car and you can’t steer it?

Rob comes to.

Cooley’s 83 C10 rumbles down a road, headlights cutting their path through the dark. He thinks they’re in the mountains. Maybe it is the desert.

Packed in like sardines and still stinking from a full day of sweating in the sun. Rob is wedged between Fred and Finn like that one fry left in the onion rings.

His mouth is an alien planet devoid of water. No sign of spit or salvation here, friend.

“What the fuck?” Rob calls out in a raspy whisper.

Even that noise hurts his head.

Things still aren’t quite right.

The windows are down and the breeze is the only thing keeping Rob from retching on the floorboards. Finn is driving, arm out the window.

Fred sits in the passenger seat, staring blankly out into the night.

“Where the fuck are we?” Rob rattles, trying to put the mosaic of his mind back together.

“Taking you to the Air BnB.” Finn replies, never taking his eyes off the road.

They smell like a bonfire.

Air BnB?

No time for that.

“Water.”

“What?” Finn cocks an eyebrow.

“I need water.”

“Ah, there’s a Yeti on the floor.”

There’s a slight wince from Fred as Rob reaches for the Yeti. He’s too thirsty to care. The top can’t spin off fast enough.

He chugs the water until it spills from the corners of his mouth. The type of chugging that you know is going to cause a belly ache. But it still isn’t enough.

Once it’s empty he rattles it around.

“Either of you got a cigarette?”

“Fresh out.” Finn quips.

Fred doesn’t even respond.

“Guys what the fuck happened?”

“Well, you… you did your audition tape.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

Finn takes his eyes off the road and looks at Rob.

There’s something there, but Rob’s mind can’t decipher it. Things are still bending and bowing.

“That’s probably for the best.” Finn laughs awkwardly.

Oh god. What did I do?

The thing about being sober is you don’t have to feel like this anymore. It’s one of Rob’s favorite things about it.

There’s no more trying to decipher who you hurt and what you did by snarky replies and physical tells.

It was easy staying drunk before Finn… before Charlotte came back. Who was he going to hurt? Anna is near indestructible, or so he thought until recently. Him and Daytona are always in a Cold War to see who can ingest more.

Fred has three brain cells and two of them are echoes.

But this is real. This is his son.

“What?” Rob whispers.

“Luckily for all of us, Daytona recorded the entire thing. Luckier for you he doesn’t know what the fuck a computer is so it hasn’t been posted yet.”

Panic.

All that water sloshing in Rob’s stomach threatens to come back up his gullet.

“What happened?”

“Ask Fred,” Finn laughs awkwardly again.

Rob turns to Fred, who still refuses to acknowledge him. He’s got the face of a man pretending that he isn’t where his feet are.

“Fred?” Rob asks like he’s trying to talk a scolded child out of his room.

“No.”

“C’mon, man.” Rob pleads. “What the fuck happened?”

“You an aceho for real Rob Williams.”

They sit in silence.

Finally it’s too much for Rob to take and he turns on the tape deck - because of course Cooley had a fucking CD player installed.

More money than god and he wanted a tape deck.

“I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ ‘bout half past dead. I just need some place where I can lay my head..”

“Turn this shit off.” Finn demands.

Rob turns it down, but he ain’t turning it off.

He’s dying for a place to lay his head.

A connection.

“Wait - what Air BnB?” Rob asks, puzzled about their destination.

His mind is rushing rapids. Thoughts race through, but he cannot seem to grab any of them.

“With your teammates. Your tribe. You made it, Rob. You’re going to be on PRIME Survivor.”

Rob feels his heart racing.

He feels like he’s behind a pane of glass.

“Who the fuck are my teammates?”

“Henry Keyes. Scott Hunter. Tony Gamble.”

Literally couldn’t be a worse cast of characters.

Fucking Christ.

He ain’t winning any popularity contests in this tribe.

“You mean they put me on a goddamn team with two people I beat… and Tony Gamble?”

Not ALL bad, but not fucking great.

“Yep.”

“Well, I beat them before. I can beat them again.” Rob nods, half convincing himself here.

“Do you have any clue what you’ve signed up for?” Finn laughs.

“No, not really.”

“It’s a teamwork thing, Rob. They announced the first challenge: The Aggro Crag.” Finn announces like Rob would know what the fuck an Aggro Crag is.

“What the fuck is an Aggro Crag?”

“From Guts!”

“The card game?”

“Jesus, Rob. No. The show on Nickelodeon. It was a game show where kids competed to win. The final stage was always the Aggro Crag.” Finn remarks with warm nostalgia.

“I didn’t watch any Nickelodeon, man.”

“Shocker.”

Both men are too busy trying to hide their own feelings about that one that they miss the other.

Which pretty much sums up Rob and Finn.

“So you mean I gotta run some fucking kiddie challenge with Keyes, Hunter, and Gamble?”

“Yep. That’s the long and short of it. If y’all win, your tribe is safe. If not, everybody votes someone off the tribe. Vote someone off for multiple weeks until there’s just three people left - those three face off for a shot at Daytona for the Uni at Colossus."

He doesn’t want a shot at Daytona. He doesn’t want the Universal Title.

He just wants to be ok.

A few rays of reality peak through the fog.

“Am I ok?”

Fred perks up for once, “No.”

“You can say that again. Say, Rob, what did you think this was going to be?” Finn asks with a chuckle.

“Survivor! Like balancing a ball or throwing some shit into a net. Swim faster than other people. Rice and making fire.”

“So you signed up for this shit that is going to rip you away from your daily life without any clue what it was?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Charlotte loves the show Survivor. I always thought it would be so cool to go on and have her come for the loved ones episode. She’d love that, you know? Hell… maybe you could come, too.”

Finn can’t get it out fast enough: “We’re here.”

There was nothing extraordinary about the place the C10 idled in front of.

It was extra ordinary.

Fred pops open the passenger door and lets Rob out, still refusing to acknowledge his stablemate.

Rob stands outside, watching the taillights fade and basking in the smell of the Holley four barrel carburetor.

“Running a bit rich,” he remarks to himself as he begins inside the house.

The air conditioning blasts him the moment he opens the door and Rob immediately needs to retch. He beelines towards the bathroom, passing the little plaques beside each bedroom door.

Why the fuck does Gamble get the room closest to the bathroom?

It doesn’t matter… this isn’t going to wait for him to postulate and theorize.

The door latch barely clicks shut as Rob drops his shit and hits all fours in front of the porcelain throne.

All the water he chugged paints the inside of the bowl and then some. It keeps up until he’s at the point of dry heaving - snot coming from his nose.

“Please, make it stop.” Rob calls out during a brief respite, laying his head down on the cool porcelain.

Foxhole prayers.

Around the time Rob finds himself begging for the release of death the dry heaving finally stops.

Weakly, he pushes himself up to a stand.

This isn’t the bathroom at all.

Rob looks down into the mess of the laundry basket below him.

“Aw, fuck.”

Stealth. He needs to make a quiet escape.

Standing up too fast, he bounces off of a wall and into the door. He doesn’t remember the handle being so hard to open on the way in.

Finally he conquers the door handle and throws the door open, the handle bouncing and putting a hole in the wall behind him.

He looks one way down the hall and then back down the other.

No one. It’s quiet.

“Oh thank god.”

Before closing the door behind him, Rob looks at the placard: “Henry Keyes”

“At least it wasn’t Gamble’s room.”

Rob walks into the main living room to find all of the members of his tribe: Tony Gamble, who just arrived. Scott Hunter, who… seems to be wearing face paint? And Henry Keyes, whose knowing eyes seem to be burning a hole in Rob’s soul.

He can’t know. I was in there alone.

“Uh, hey.” Rob remarks.

He sits between Hunter and Gamble. It feels natural to create a semi-circle. Plus he cannot tell if he’s losing his fucking mind or if this idiot is actually wearing Lion-O face paint.

Sitting with Hunter in his line of vision would be too dicey.

Unfortunately, that puts him directly across from Keyes.

Keyes says something to the effect of, “Nice to see you.” to Rob with his charismatic nonchalantness.

“Yeah, it is nice to see me.”

Why the fuck did I say that?

“Right. Well, we obviously are…” Keyes takes the lead and Rob is grateful for it.

Trying to put out of his mind that he just emptied his guts all over this man’s laundry he nods and bites his bottom lip, feigning interest and understanding.

This is all too much.

Between Scott’s clown makeup, the rising tides of vomit in his belly, and the paranoia that Keyes might now… Rob just wants this to end.

“Yeah, great. I hate you and you hate me. We work together until it’s time to kill one another and then we do what we do best. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.”

Gamble agrees with something along the lines of, “Sounds about right to me.”

Keyes says something that Rob is sure adds immense value to the conversation as he stands to leave.

Gamble is a beat behind him.

Rob knows it’s not smart or strategic… leaving the VV boys in the living room to conspire alone in the living room, but his fragile mind can’t take any more of it. Besides, how dangerous could these two be? Scott Hunter is wearing a kid’s costume for Christ's sake.

“You know we have to get these two out, right?” Gamble asks Williams as they hit the hallway - likely out of earshot.

“Of course.”

He is beyond grateful to finally be alone in his room.

Solitude.

After dropping his bag and unpacking what little he brought with him, Rob FaceTimes Charlotte.

“Hey babe.”

He is genuinely glad to hear her voice, although it doesn’t transfer. Not in his state. Not on the phone.

“You good, babe?” Charlotte asks him.

“Golden. How are you doing? How was the audition?”

“Doing the best I can here. And honestly, I don’t know. Long story, but I have it here and figured we could watch it together.”

They chit chat about her day while he sets up the camera. It makes him pine for home.

“You ready?” He asks once it’s prepared.

She doesn’t say much during the opening. It never took a whole lot to get Rob naked.

About the time he eats the tarantula Charlotte points out that the PRIME Survivor isn’t the same thing as the TV show.

“Yeah, Finn told me.”

As Rob screams on camera about fire representing life and proceeds to make a fire with his bare hands, Charlotte questions his choice to be there.

“I mean, I support you no matter what, but we kind of have a lot going on right now.”

The fire begins to spread, but the boys on screen don’t notice.

Rob and Daytona are busy sharpening the tips of their makeshift spears. Finn keeps yelling at them to stop.

Somewhere off camera you can hear Fred crying.

“Is Fred crying?” Charlotte asks.

“Yeah. I.. uh… I don’t know what happened there. I thought you’d think it was cool if I won Survivor.”

“Hm?” She pushes him for a bit more.

“I… I don’t know. I thought Jeff Probst would be here.” He admits, defeated.

On screen Rob and Daytona are both naked now as the fire rages through the campground. Fred is squealing like a pig at their command as they chase him through the fire, poking him in the ass with their spears.

They keep calling him Piggy.

No wonder Fred wouldn’t talk to him. They almost eighty-sixed him. What the fuck came over him there?

Finn has given up on order. Chaos wins.

As it does with The Whoresmen.

“That’s sweet, babe.”

“I just thought, you know, you’d love it.”

Rob doesn’t have to say it for Charlotte to know that he had a grandiose vision in his head of her landing on the beach in a helicopter, pregnant as hell, and Jeff Probst holding out his hand.

They would cry.

And Rob would be the hero.

For once.

The fire has engulfed the entire camp site and everything in it.

There's a false end until the camera comes back to Rob sitting alone with the camera.

It's a confessional.

This can't be good.

"I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm working really fucking hard at it. And the honest truth is I'm scared." On camera Rob confesses.

Real life Rob snaps the camera shut before anything else can come out.

Uh oh.

What the fuck was that?

Silence.

Rob braces for the worst.

“I love it, babe.” Charlotte finally answers.

For the first time since he came to in the truck, Rob breathes a sigh of relief.

Maybe everything was going to be ok.

Or pretty fucking close to it, at least.

“Thanks, babe. I’m stuck here in this thing, now.”

“You might as well make the best of it.” Charlotte smiles. “I love you.”