Something Changed: Day 8

Word Count: 48,068

Summary of Events:

Luke and Ella got separated during the first game, but reunited during the devotional time, where Luke was too occupied with Ella to know what was even said. Following the devotional came the main game, where the kids were divided into teams that had to complete disgusting food-related challenges, their only choice being between which of the two things they were given to eat was less disgusting. When Luke's turn came he had the choice to eat a tarantula or lick peanut butter out of the armpit of an adult volunteer who'd deliberately gone and sweated himself up in advance. Luke — and five of the other kids facing the challenge, including one who had an allergy to peanut butter — chose the tarantula. Arsenio and a kid who called himself Brawny chose to eat the peanut butter . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Vance declared that Seni and Brawny would battle it out for supremacy first, and Luke kept his back to them, too revolted by the idea of eating anything out of anyone’s armpits — sweaty, hairy, or neither — to bring himself to look.

Instead, he looked at the tarantula before him, which he wagered had a diameter of around 15cm and looked as lifelike as ever within its package. He and Finn had watched a YouTube video once of a guy — who dressed in Halloween costumes for the entire month of October — who’d eaten a tarantula while in a nun costume.

The guy wasn’t very athletic — although he was a pretty good comedian — and didn’t strike Luke as being the bravest of men either, but despite his cowardice and the amount of screaming he’d done throughout the video, the YouTuber had, in fact, eaten the tarantula.

If that guy had been able to eat a tarantula, Luke felt that he could too. He certainly felt that he was less cowardly, after all.

He shuddered at the sound of vomiting behind him and saw both Rocky and Boney look a little troubled. Luke chanced a look over his shoulder and saw Seni was the one vomiting, while Brawny wasn’t eating any more either, but was holding a glass of water.

“Alright,” Vance said. “So if anyone can eat their tarantula in less than two minutes, or get closer to eating their tarantula than Seni got to cleaning out his armpit, without vomiting, gagging, or otherwise chickening out, we’ll have a winner!”

Luke looked at the tarantula. He could do this.

“Three! Two! One! Go!” Vance shouted, blasting the air horn.

Immediately Luke tore his package open and broke each of the legs off of the tarantula — which proved to him it was deader than it looked — before shoving the entire body into his mouth.

He made a face, but forced himself to chew and swallow the whole thing before eating each of the eight legs in as rapid of succession as he possibly could. He found the legs somewhat easier to eat than the body, as he could imagine them to be slightly fuzzy French fries owing to their size and crunch.

Once he’d put the last leg into his mouth Luke put both his hands over his mouth and closed his eyes, desperate to suppress the urge to vomit up all he had consumed. Once the desire had been sufficiently squelched, he looked toward Rocky and Boney, and saw they both looked warier than he’d expected, and still weren’t done, while only one of the girls had opened her package so far, and had immediately pounded her fist into the spider’s body to ensure it was dead before she hemmed and hawed over eating it.

Rocky and Boney were both able to eat their spiders in five minutes, but none of the girls did — although two of them did actually nibble a bit off their spiders, the other one never opened the package at all.

“Alright!” Vance shouted. “Our winner is Luke from the Six!”

He grabbed Luke’s wrist and raised his arm in the air while Luke’s teammates cheered. Luke saw a look of admiration on Ella’s face that made him feel like what he’d just done was worth the revulsion and turmoil within his stomach.