Hot House Part 1

 20/25

Jared stopped scrubbing the floor momentarily to peer over his shoulder. At least five cameras gazed down at his position on the floor of the Hot House kitchen, and he blushed red from behind pounds of caked on makeup at the thought of the millions of pairs of eyes watching on gleefully from the other side of the lenses. Humiliated, he tugged feebly at the hem of his maid's uniform in a futile attempt to cover his pantyhosed ass and returned to his chore – hoping that by focussing on this part of his forfeit would distract from the other.

Hot House was the latest in a seemingly never-ending stream of hit reality tv shows. It was the tried and tested strangers turned housemates formula with a twist. Five male and five female social media influencers were recruited to take residence in the Hot House – a mansion cut off from the outside world and fitted with hundreds of cameras so that fans could drink in every waking and sleeping hour of the contestants' lives. The show followed the standard fare of challenges with rewards and forfeits dished out to the winning and losing housemates. Where Hot House differed from the reality tv template was the way in which the contestants were eliminated. There was no voting or nominations. Instead, upon entering the house, the influencers submitted their social media accounts to the show runners who in turn used them to post content from the house's goings on. If any of the influencers lost more than 50% of their followers on any of their platforms, they were instantly eliminated and evicted from the house. Viewers voted for their favourite housemates using likes and follows until only one remained.

Hot House was coming up to its second week and nine of the ten housemates remained. Only Sally a 32 year old cooking influencer had been evicted in a dull opening fortnight that had not lived up to the show's name. Things would take a turn when a boys vs girls game involving balloon animals ended with the guys on the losing side and the girls got to choose one of them for a forfeit. Jared had rolled his eyes as they selected him seemingly at random and the three cliquey younger girls, all seemingly interchangeable fashion/beauty Instagram types decided that he should clean the kitchen. Since Sally's departure, noone had really taken the mantle of keeping things tidy and it was clear they just wanted it done rather than to punish Jared. That was, however, only until Emi, an older, darker and frankly mysterious fourth remaining female housemate took the girls aside to explain what she had in mind for the unfortunate Jared's punishment.

Jared sweated into the satin of his uniform. Who the hell did Emi think she was? At least on his knees he didn't have to stand in those awful heels. Things could also be worse, he thought ironically. But little did he know just how much worse things could possibly be...