It’s a cliché to wake up suddenly in a place that is unknown to you. So I won’t start like that. But I am in a bed. Just an ordinary creaky metal framed bed with other humans around me. Humans of course I do not know for reasons unbeknownst to me. So, some clichés do persist.

“Look, I didn’t ask to be picked. None of us did.”

A tween in green scrubs prodded and screeched at another tween, who wore yellow scrubs. It caught the whole room’s attention. Yet it was not the nature of the remark, or the tone in which it was proclaimed which intrigued me.

I sat up and eyed the yellow scrubbed tween. With the only ridiculous thought that rattled my brain, like change in a piggy bank: “are they yellow scrubs or discouloured white scrubs?” I was so inquired to ask the tweens their opinion, until sense slapped me from senseless to sensorily sound.

Was this why I was here? Because I think outside the box in some kind of ludicrous neurotic trail of thought. That is the expression isn’t it? Or is it train of thought? Clearly, this is why this peak of human intellect has been selected.

The tweens erupted into violent blows at this point. But no one was getting involved save an old dear who repeatedly told them to stop being children and grow up. I just rolled over and hoped I could Dorothy my way home. Attempting a little click of the heels was tempting but honestly I was too exhausted by this point. Instead, my eye drifted (as it had in the last hour) to the black screen that unabashedly buzzed it’s headline to the whole room:

LAST HUMAN STANDING.

HINT: THE LESS YOU DO THE BETTER.

Nothing else. 10 words. 13 syllables. 42 letters. 53 characters (including spaces). One easily deduced declarative. One perplexing clue that I have taken as literally as possible. Currently in hedgehog mode - balled up in one of the 100 single beds adorned with clinically clean white sheets.

So that’s it. How did I get here? No idea. Why am I here? Clearly a horrid misunderstanding. Everyone wants a high school dropout for a Battle of the Gladitorial Sloths.

The yellow/discouloured tween was dead by this point. Green tween dragged his body to the collection of 5 already dead.

In the rest of the room, most of us hid and stayed still like a boulder trapped in a crater of Gorilla glue. It seemed the best option. Don’t aggravate others and wait out this game/competition/hell. Except one moment where I fought another human for my bed and bedsheet, who I preceeded to kick right in the nose, I was undisturbed. For now.

A high pitched squeal sliced our ear canals. It came from the speakers next to the screen. I simply winced and darted my eyes in the screen’s direction. The animated text seemed to collapse, like a digital reader board, and re-appear with a new addition.

LAST HUMAN STANDING.

HINT: THE LESS YOU DO THE BETTER.

PRIZE: $100,000,000

A sea of humans raised from white sheets like some synchronised zombie movie. This was the first time some of us made eye contact with one another.

Heavy breathing.

Visible globules of perspiration.

This cash incentive had changed the status-quo. Here we go!