Captive Inferno: Singles Inferno 3 x Reader Fic

Episode One

You can still go back, Aram, you think to yourself. You could leave this show and never look back.

You feel your temples pulse with nightmarish thoughts: how the world would ridicule this ugly girl for going on a reality show for hot people, how the preteens on twitter would find all of your past photos and tear you apart. You could already see the hate comments: plastic monster, she isn't even the same person as before, how superficial.

Your mind wanders to the people social media could reach, your childhood friends, your cousins back in Brooklyn, how they'd know about your face and what you've done to it. You imagine becoming a pariah of the world, a laughing stock for as long as you live. Every time you interact with someone, they will always know this secret of yours with judgment swirling behind smiling eyes.

But then you remember:

Your mother, how you saw the light flicker in her eyes again as she exclaimed to her friends: My daughter is going on Singles Inferno!

How she stroked you in her arms as she told you that you are the only remaining light in her life.

How she cradled your first manuscript in her arms that day you told her you were to be an author.

To be or not to be a famous author. To become a public figure in the mercy of the entire world— or to become forgotten, another crushed dream in the eyes of your mother.

The instructions of staff members pulse dully in your mind: move towards your left, you'll find a white staircase going down hill.

You emerge from the helicopter, planting your feet in the glistening sand.

That's where you'll meet the contestants.

You squint into the sky: a cerulean blue, orange sun blazing. You feel your hair buffeting in the wind, and something warm starts growing in your chest. Something like hope. Something like a cry.

You stare down at your sandaled feet, then down the ivory staircase. You take one step forward, and then another.

Bring it on.