Liana Hartman, Agape. 
Sally flung herself onto the uncomfortably small couch like an aggressive cannonball hitting the ocean’s surface. The cushions were like heavy sandbags. She reached for the remote like a macguffin and gripped it like a precious family heirloom. This was her key to the only good thing she knew, T.V shows. She pressed the bright red button on the tippy top left of the black matte rectangle. That familiar hopeful beam of the light blasted through the box T.V and she made herself sink into the couch as her fluffy blanket formed a nest around her.
“Hey howdy hey!” I’m Clarence Carington and this is The Question Show!” The man on the T.V spoke as he stood in a checkered soundstage. Sally always felt that he resembled a banana that had only been peeled halfway. His pale white skin contrasted with the aggressively bright yellow suit that he wore. His wide grin stretched from one ear to the other, taking over his face like the black that forms on a banana when it begins to rot. The audience roared and applauded at the sight of him.
“It’s absolutely fantastic to see you all again! I was just so hungry for that applause!”
The audience continued to cheer for him. Their enthusiasm growing more chaotic with every passing moment. Maybe it was just her imagination playing tricks on her, but Sally couldn’t help but notice that with every cheer, every holler, every clap, the host’s teeth would grow. They would expand in length and sharpness.
“You all flatter me! I could just eat you up!” The host laughed “Let’s meet our first contestant shall we?”
Never losing his Cheshire Cat smile, The host turned to a woman whose neon green eyeshadow adorned shark-like eyes rested above her mouth. Said mouth was chewing gum but never attempting to pop it. Her mouth kept up with a movement that reminded Sally of a ferris wheel. Up and down. Circling and never reaching an end point. The kind of dreadful carnival ride that would lead Sally to hurling in the grass . The contestant’s slim body draped in a skin tight cheetah print dress leaned against one of the bright pink podiums that contestants were ordered to stand by.
“Now tell us,” the host asked “what made you join us here at The Question Show today?”
“Why else?” The cheetah print woman croaked out “I want the money. The moolah.”
Her bony arms rested on the podium as the microphone in front of her picked up the sound of the squishing and slamming of the gum against her teeth and placed the repetitive noise at the center of all sound coming from the television. Sally felt the sound surrounding her from every possible angle. The chewing grew more rapid. As if the contestant wasn’t trying to chew the gum at all. She was trying to tear it apart, like some spoiled child ripping the lovingly constructed wrapping paper away from a coveted present. The sound of the chewing only grew. Swallowing the rest of the noise born from the T.V and even engulfing the sounds from the rest of the home.
Then.
Silence.
Clarence Carington moved on to the next contestant. He smiled at a man dressed in overalls. The overalls had a particular accessory that was a true mark of country life: mud. Mud all over the denim of his pants and his straps. There was something off about the mud, Sally thought. There was a red tint to it. She paid no mind to her observation and then noticed that it looked as if he pulled a blade of straw from his comically large straw hat and placed it in his mouth.
“I’m gonna get that money. Get myself a bigger barn and a new truck.”
Half of the straw jutted out of his mouth as if it was reaching out into the great wide beautiful world, basking in its freedom. The other half was not so lucky. The poor piece of straw grinded in between the farmer’s teeth. The sound somehow managed to be more obnoxious this time around. It was like if the pesky dirt under Sally nails could talk, like if her teacher’s nails on a chalkboard could sing a song. growing louder and louder. Taking over the sound waves and claiming each and everyone of them as its own.
Then
Silence.
“How about you, little lady?” The host said to a woman in a frizzy sweater and purple high heels that were clearly 2 sizes too big. She has about as much tranquil and cohesive energy as a grandmother’s pristine floral wallpaper after the precious grandkid has taken colorful markers and scribbled all over it. This woman reminded Sally of every tired nanny she had ever crossed paths with but she had something different about her. This woman in the frizzy sweater held herself with a level of desperation that Sally had never witnessed. The kind of desperation of the exhausted and the starving.
“Oh? Who? Me?” The woman in the frizzy sweater said after she took the fingernails that she was chewing on out of her mouth. She looked out into the audience and tried to quickly straighten her unkempt hair, but she wasn’t successful. She looked like the kind of person who not only wasn’t very successful at most things but was very nervous about that fact. “I’d like to be able to go on vacation. Somewhere relaxing, like the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Oh! That’s where I had my honeymoon!” The host responded. “Lots of humans get lost there! Makes for a buffet!