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The handle turns in the rusty-framed door, which swings open into the nautically themed library. Crazed, fluffy, grey hair enters first, quickly followed by its receding owner, clad in knitted white cricket jumper. He looks into the room, straightening, and his barely-there eyebrows shoot up.
“Oh, good lord!” Andy Zaltzman exclaims.
We cut to the library door swinging open wide, confidently, as Babatunde Aléshé amiably ambles in. He’s all smiles, casual in his dark hoodie. “Alright, Alex— Oh shit!” he flinches at the sight that greets him off camera.
Emma Sidi is standing at the table in the library in her hard-boiled-detective-core trench-coat, neat shirt, and tie. In one leather-gloved hand, she picks up the task, averting her eyes from whatever’s off to the right – in her other hand, her soft, brown, felt trilby hat – held up to hide the horror.
“No, thank you,” she says primly, as Alex somewhere off screen, hums.
Jack Dee drops into the chair, apparently unimpressed, and slices open the task with the edge of his hand – not even glancing as the red wax pops open. Instead, Jack’s looking up and to camera right. Wryly, he asks, “Done something to your hair, have you?”
“Ah, n— No, not quite,” Alex mumbles, somewhat muffled as we cut to see he’s wearing a huge, rubbery, ‘werewolf’ mask. It crinkles and buckles as Alex speaks, making a mockery of the moulded, dark ‘fur’, the painted white bendy fangs, and the tiny holes that Alex is trying to adjust to see out of. He stands prim and stiff in his cheap, poorly-sized, Assistant’s uniform of black suit and crumpled white shirt.
Jack doesn’t look like he cares either way.
We cut to Rosie Jones, already seated and looking delighted by the state of Alex. She’s beaming, almost as brightly as her yellow-green, rainbow-badge-bedecked jumpsuit.
“Gimp mask?” she asks.
Alex hums, turning to look at the camera and back again – his body language screaming his discomfort. “No.”
“Shame!” she yells, before looking at the task.
Babatunde reads, “Hunt a monstah!”
Rosie laughs out loud, once.
“Best monster hunt wins.” Andy looks at Alex, then back at the task. He mutters, shaking his head. “Well that could mean anything…”
Emma puts her hat back on, scowling and looking every inch the noir gum-shoe. She taps the corner of her mouth with her gloved hand and ponders, reading, “You have thirty minutes…”
Rosie has the task on the desk in front of her, where she’s been reading it. “Your time s— Starts n—” She tics for a moment and then puts her hand back on the task. “Your time— Time starts… N…”
Alex doesn’t move – his ridiculous, cheap mask folded in all the wrong places. The ticking of the room’s clock is barely audible.
Rosie looks up at him with a smile, and then back at the task, hiding a wicked grin. “Y— Your time sta— Starts… Now!” she finally yells with enthusiasm!
Back in the studio, the audience cheers and whoops! Andy, Babatunde, Emma, Jack, and Rosie all clap as Greg turns away from the big screen and regards them all, cards in hand. “Hunt a monster, eh?”
“Yes,” Alex replies breathlessly at his side. “Best monster hunt, as judged by you, Greg, will get a ‘monstrous’ five points.” Alex gestures to Greg, deferential as always. Or almost always. “I thought we might—”
“—Before we see what these maniacs have chosen to interpret this as… Rosie.” Greg shifts in his throne to regard possibly the most maniacal contestant of the bunch.
She tilts her head, a picture of innocence in her pink t-shirt and flowery dungarees. “Wot?”
Greg tries to hide his smirk. “I feel like I’m putting my career in danger, asking this, but… did you intentionally hold up the last line there? Either to make Alex incredibly uncomfortable, or to give yourself some thinking time?”
The audience gasps and laughs in equal measure.
Rosie looks horrified. Perhaps a little too horrified. “Of course not!” she exclaims.
Emma shakes her head. “Oh, Greg…” she says quietly.
A Cheshire-cat-like grin bursts onto Rosie’s face. “It was both reasons!” she laughs, specifically directing her triumph at the glum looking Alex.
He rubs a finger down the side of his cheek and hums. “Hmmm. Yes this was— Uh, well, the first time Rosie did this, ah, ‘to me’ when we were recording the tasks, but, well, it definitely wasn’t the last. Or even the worst, I’ll say.”
Rosie wiggles in her chair, absolutely bursting with how pleased with herself she is – and getting more so with every discomfited Alex hum.
Greg looks both amused, and impressed, making notes on his card.
“When did you re… alise?” she asks Alex.
Looking caught out, even if he’s hiding how impressed he is, Alex fidgets with his iPad in his lap. “Not, ah, not until editing. When we saw you were grinning at the camera. You— You winked at the camera.” Alex twists in his chair, tapping the screen of his device – his lips pursed.
On the big screen, Rosie appears again, sitting at the table, the task in front of her with Alex almost out of shot to the side. He looks away, towards the crew, and Rosie gives a quick wink down the camera on the side he couldn’t see, even if he wasn’t wearing a rubber werewolf mask.
The audience laughs – shocked and delighted at her audacity. The clip repeats, this time in slow motion – there’s no doubt; Rosie is yakking it up. More laughs, Greg chuckles too – only Alex seems pained by how effectively he’s been had.
“Yeah, you make him pay, Rosie!” Babatunde calls out, leaning over, his hand reaching almost across the two intervening contestants to cheer her on. The crowd joins in with, “yeah!” and whoops.
Rosie preens.
“Well, I have to apologise, Rosie, for my awful Assistant underestimating you. Thank you for teaching him the error of his ways.” Greg turns to Alex. “Well? What do you have to say?”
Alex deflates, eyes widening at Greg as he stutters. “Uh, um, s— Sorry, Rosi—”
“No, you idiot! Who are we seeing first?” Greg smacks Alex, lightly, with his cards – they make a satisfying slap sound – far more bark than bite. “Who’s hunting my monster?”
“Oh!” Alex sits up straight, immediately back on surer footing. “Well, Greg, if they were on a sinking ship, these two would be a-DOOR-able! It’s Jack and Rose…ie. Jack and Rose…ie? Like Titanic, it’s…”
Greg shakes his head, ignoring the groans of laughter from the studio audience.
“...It’s Rosie Jones and Jack Dee!” With a flourish, Alex taps the iPad, and we cut to the task.
Jack and Alex are in the caravan, sitting across from each other at the table – an old, battered suitcase that may have once held forks and marbles between them. Jack is frowning – though that is hardly unusual – as he flips open the lid.
“I don’t have my usual monster hunting equipment with me, so I’ve had to make do…”
The case is stuffed full of Taskmaster style junk scavenged from the shed or kitchen. We see the items packed into the case with a vague sense of organisation – Jack sweeps his hands across, pointing out items of note. “We’ve got a net, rope, candles – well, LED tea-lights – and I think these are birthday candles?”
“Mm, yes,” Alex nods. “Greg let me have a birthday three years ago.”
“Alright – no need to gloat about it.” Jack shakes his head. “Got a bell…” Which he rings once for demonstration. “Garlic, of course. All the salt you have…”
“It’s low sodium, I hope that’s okay,” Alex apologetically adds.
Jack ignores him. “Red wool, and a mirror for seeing things.” He picks up the pale-blue cylindrical container of ‘lo’ salt, its brand name covered with a bit of tape in one hand, and the book-sized bathroom mirror in the other.
He sprinkles the salt onto the surface of the mirror – and then looks up at Alex. “Don’t get excited, it’s not that kind of party,” he says, as he draws his finger through the lines of white granules. Alex frowns, flustered, and again – Jack ignores him, instead making shapes in the salt, one of which looks a lot like a smiley face.
Then he stands – suddenly – and Alex scrambles to follow as he walks to the open caravan door. He hefts the mirror so that the salt is thrown outside, over his left shoulder, and then with a remarkable intensity, holds the mirror up to look into its surface showing the reflection of the rest of the space.
“I sensed it, you know. The moment I arrived here. An evil presence, Alex.” Jack nods to himself as he moves and turns and stares into the glassy portal. “This is delicate work.”
“Uhh. Twenty one minutes left, Jack.”
“Really?” Jack asks, exasperated. “Fine. But you get what you pay for!” he yells over his shoulder as he dashes out of the caravan, sending it rocking and Alex racing behind.
Several cuts – a montage – of images from the Taskmaster house shown in the blurry, smeared, reflection of the still salt-dusted surface of the mirror. An illuminated baby head with a succulent stuck in the top. A mangy cat toy partially fallen on its side on a shelf in the shed. A photo of Josh Widdecombe with a gold and red rosette stuck to it in the hall. Then the view flickers and turns dark. We see the reflection – mirrored – of a black and white Photoshopped image of Alex and Greg as bride and groom, respectively. The scene twitches, and something has moved. Then a shot of the tiny, thumb-sized crocheted dolls of contestants of the past in the bronze hanging bird-cage. Another flicker, and suddenly they’re under-lit – ominous even when fluffy – and the tiny doll of Greg is suddenly facing us. Interspersed are Dutch angled shots of Jack dashing out of a room, or down a corridor, Alex trailing behind with his clipboard as the lighting gets darker and darker, music played atop turning more and more sinister.
We smash cut to the library, where we see in the wooden framed mirror, the flipped version of Greg’s portrait – bi-corn hat and admiral’s uniform – and the portrait blinks.
The camera pans up from the mirror and finds Alex and Jack, huddled next to each other in a close-up. Their eyes wide and scared.
Suddenly we’re in the library where Rosie is in charge. She’s sitting at the table, a cluster of young, strong, black-clad Production crew crowd around her and hanging on her every word. She’s found a WW2 helmet from somewhere, and she slams her fist onto the map-covered table.
She has an eyepatch on, but it’s been flicked up so as not to cover her eye. “Listen up! You know your tasks....” She waves a pointing finger at the map in front of her – a hastily drawn rendering of the grounds of the Taskmaster house, with thick red swooping arrows and circles more reminiscent of football strategies drawn on it. “I know I said it’s dangerous…” she starts, but if any of her crew were hoping for more, they’re not getting it. “Engage Operation Big…ish Foot!”
We cut to the lab where a time-lapse shows more and more and more stuff being piled up in a heap on the floor – Alex and Jack mere black and navy blue blurs against the stark, plastic covered room. More and more – the camera jinks around the place until it shows us a close-up of a tilted picture frame of a grinning baby Alex in his pram, a scowling Photoshopped Greg as the ‘happy mother’. Greg’s face blurs – looking like his head is twisting and thrashing too fast for the camera to show – and the suspenseful, creepy music peaks.
Suddenly, we’re above and behind Alex and Jack in the garden as they stare ahead. The sun’s low in the sky, and they’re oddly illuminated by the cold floodlight and the amber pinpricks of the hedge’s fairy lights.
Alex sighs – his shoulders shrugging heavily with it. “You’re sure we need every version of the Taskmaster?” he asks, a pathetic whine in his voice.
Jack nods once. “Every one,” he confirms. He takes a step towards the giant, battered, and quite heavy, white statue of Greg, while rolling up a sleeve.
The camera changes – we’ve gone full shaky-cam as someone’s hand comes into shot, pushing a tree branch out of the PoV person’s way. The view is green tinted and grainy with ‘HUNTER 04’ printed in the bottom corner, and we see the Taskmaster house come into view through the bushes. The light bleeding from the Library window blows out the night-vision, until the camera turns and our camera person jogs towards the hedge and ducks down behind it. There’s heavy breathing.
Rosie is at her table in the Library using a spatula to push a salt-shaker across her map-strewn table. She throws her head back, and orders, “Report!”
A collection of muffled voices, ostensibly through Rosie’s walkie-talkie call out:
“Hunter One, no sighting.”
“Hunter Two, nothing.”
“Hunter Three, I thought I had something but when I—”
Rosie slams the table. “I want facts!”
Hunter three apologises. “Sorry, Ma’am. Nothing to report.”
“Better. Four?”
There’s no response, and Rosie looks at the walkie talkie, worried. The camera cuts, close-up, showing the speaker and a distinct lack of little red flashing light. Just static.
“Four! Re— Report!”
There’s nothing.
Then suddenly…
We’re shown the ‘body-cam’ footage of HUNTER 02 as she skids to a halt on the gravel path next to the spruce tree by the Library’s French doors. We see her gloved hands on the ground from her viewpoint as she then cautiously sticks her head out from behind the shrub. There are branches stuck in the ground, bits of plastic-ivy strewn free-standing walls, and the archway jammed into the grass – turning the garden by the Greg statue into a haphazard pseudo ‘forest’.
The view flicks from spot to spot – the view of someone searching. Someone scared. There’s a boot sticking out from behind a wall.
She ducks back behind the potted tree – camera moving with her heavy breathing. “Hunter Two here – Ma’am there’s something here. I think it might be Four. I’m going to—”
There’s movement. Darkness and shadow. The merest suggestion of a limb. The camera cuts out. Hunter Two’s voice is cut off. The static is deafening.
Rosie stares at the walkie-talkie from her command in the Library and scowls. Her mouth forms a shape, ready to ask after Two.
Suddenly, yelling. Cries and panic. The little red light on the walkie-talkie blinks and flickers like crazy.
“F— Fall back!” Rosie orders, twisting in her chair so fast the helmet takes a moment to catch up. “I said, fall back. S’an order!”
The yelling stops. Deathly silence.
Rosie tears off the helmet and throws it across the room. “God… Dammit!”
In the lab, Alex is standing stiffly in the corner – which is not unusual, but there’s barely any other space to stand now. The room is dominated by the huge Greg statue – off-white and slightly lichen-stained compared to the dull white of the room. Every vaguely horizontal surface of the statue is covered with paintings and photos and dolls and toys – all with Greg’s face on it. The hall painting leans against statue Greg’s shins, and glares up at the camera – literally glaring, the face morphing and twisting to stare at the camera. Shadows flicker madly – cast by dozens of LED tea-lights dotted everywhere that Alex and Jack aren’t currently standing – adding more crazy movement to the twitching, staring, flickering shrine to Greg’s magnificence.
Jack is under-lit and has found a cape from somewhere. He holds up his hand like he’s waiting for silence to speak, and in his other he holds the tube of lo-salt as he sprinkles it onto everything.
“Salvete ad nerds!” he intones, his Latin pronunciation setting Alex’s eye twitching. “In nomine exactoris, derelinquas faciem suam.”
Smoke starts billowing into the room from somewhere within the heap of Greg paraphernalia. Alex brings his clipboard to his face, eyes wide. Lights flicker and a low rumble rises – it sounds like Greg roaring from so very far away.
Wind from an unseen source buffets Jack, sending his cape flapping behind him, dramatically. He pulls out his phone from his pocket, scans it, and nods – relieved.
As he speaks, the smoke and the lights and the wind intensifies. “Praemium meum veniet,” he all but shouts into the room as the pile of Greg shakes and pictures and figures tumble and tremble. “Quinque praemiorum!”
At the last syllable, the lights go out with a slam.
Scritching scratching sounds – sudden and sharp – and then a scream!
The lights blast on – bright white and blinding – and Jack is standing by Alex who is wincing, crouched down and clutching his ankle. We zoom in, and find Alex’s leg exposed – his cheap trousers ragged and torn – with tiny red gashes on the skin.
Something in the hallway falls, and both Alex and Jack snap their attention towards it – then look at each other.
“Shit! It’s getting away!” Jack sprints out of the lab after ‘it’.
Rosie is in the modified, overgrown, confusing and confounding garden – she has a lime-green to match her jumpsuit super-soaker hanging from a strap across her shoulder, and we see her casually drop a packet of mini sausage-rolls on top of a spread out net. She is baiting the trap.
She turns to the camera. “Fucking catnip,” she assures us, as she starts to walk away.
It’s moments later and Rosie is standing behind Ollie, re-located to next to a potted plant a mere two metres away from the trap. She’s holding the water pistol – though perhaps ‘water assault rifle’ would be a more accurate descriptor – two handed, her back to the metal statue, ready to pounce.
There’s the unmistakable crinkling of plastic being pulled off the top of the sausage roll packet.
Rosie gasps, silently – we see her determined, dangerous expression. She whispers – to herself, or the camera, “Wait for iiiit…”
The rustling gets louder. There’s the sound of someone, or something, scarfing down a sausage roll, Cookie Monster style.
“Wait… F— For it…” The camera zooms, showing us in slow motion the rustling of branches behind Rosie. The drops of water falling from the barrel of the mid-range super soaker. Rosie’s expression turns harder as her eyes squint as she readies to pounce.
Another ‘crunch’ of pastry and grey meat, and Rosie leaps! She pivots from her rubbish hiding spot and faces the monster – hairy, filthy, and covered in flakes of savoury baked goods, and an absolute dead-ringer for the classic ‘Bigfoot’ blurry photo.
Alex, naked but for copious amounts of glued on or otherwise attached twigs, scraps of fake fur, tastefully positioned – if not tastefully conceived – wigs to preserve his modesty, leaves and smears of mud, stands shocked and stunned by Rosie’s appearance.
“Aaaah!” he yells, rubbishly – bits of sausage roll falling off his beard.
“AARRGGHHHH!” she roars, deafeningly, as she pulls the trigger and blasts him with a squirt of slightly-pressurised water.
Alex flinches and cowers, but doesn’t flee. He makes quieter and quieter yells and squeaks of dismay as Rosie advances – pulling the trigger over and over and making sure to get a few good shots in on his dopey face.
Eventually, she’s triumphantly standing over him, punching the air and cheering for herself.
Alex looks like a very miserable dog; hairy, wet and curled at her feet.
Back with Jack, we find him dashing into rooms, camera cuts trying and failing to keep up, as off camera crashes and smashes suggest a running battle. Jack yells, curses, and at one point, Patatas is thrown through a doorway and into the hall.
Alex catches him.
The front door slams open, and Jack darts into the hallway where Alex is still clutching the traumatised looking stuffed cat toy.
“What way did it go?” Jack demands.
Alex points at the door, and Jack’s shoes squeak on the floor as he changes direction on the black and white patterned vinyl. He stops only to grab a salt-filled hula hoop from the hall, and then dashes out into the night.
The camera cuts, and Jack is sprinting – hell for leather – at the hedges by the caravan. He throws the hula hoop with a mighty effort and it lands just behind the violently shaking topiary.
Something yells – a high pitched, “Yeeeaaaahhghhh!”
“Got you, you bastard!” Jack yells, diving behind the hedge and out of our sight – the crash mat he lands on, barely visible.
More off camera fighting. Twigs and dust and at least one rubber duck flies out from the hidden melee.
Jack yells, “Alex! The wool!”
Alex appears – Patatas now apparently a permanent fixture under his arm – with the ball of red yarn in his other hand.
Jack pops up from behind the hedge – looking like he’s been pulled through it backwards – and catches it in his hand when Alex throws it. For being a fluffy ball of super soft material, the editing team really do need to be commended for how cool they make the catch look.
Then Jack’s eyes widen for the instant before he’s ‘hauled’ back down behind the hedge. Then he rises up again, and back down – like a sinking ship heaving beneath green leafy waves. Then up once more – and the monster is revealed – eyes glinting, mouth open in a terrible grin, and its teeny tiny hands wrapped around Jack’s neck – it is the Greg puppet from Mae Martin’s prize task.
Little Greg fights Jack, and Jack fights back – seconds of frantic fighting that is definitely not a grown man pantomiming a doll punching him in the face.
Then they go down, hidden, and all is silent.
Alex takes a step forward, hugging Patatas for comfort. “Jack?” he calls, plaintively.
A beat.
Then with a roar, Jack surges out from behind the bushes to stand – the doll dangling upside down, held by its feet. The camera zooms to show it – the face grumpy but inverted, and one of the dolls arms hangs with a very distinctive red piece of wool tied around the wrist.
“Got it! The talisman has neutralised the evil!” Jack declares. He dusts himself off – almost smearing the red liquid slowly running down from half a dozen little scrapes and scratches.
“Oh good. I’ll stop the clock?” Asks Alex, pulling his phone timer from his pocket and almost dropping the cat.
As Jack pants with exhaustion, the camera cuts to show the caravan step, where the doll is unceremoniously flopped – its wrist still with the red yarn tied around it, the ball of red yarn next to it, and a bottle of definitely-not-Heinz ketchup with the lid flipped open to the side.
“Yes,” Jack says, exhausted and off camera. “Thank you, Alex. Stop the clock.”
Suddenly; brightness. Cheerful sunshine and Rosie laughing as she pulls the trigger on her super soaker again – shooting at Alex who is in the bath, up to his shoulders in bubbles. Much of the muck, twigs, and glued on hair, is already or is in the process of being washed off and he’s pouting and wet as he gets another face-full of Rosie’s water pistol. All around, the very wet but black clad Hunters One to Five are patting Alex with wash-cloths, shoving long handled brushes under the bubble covered surface, or approaching with a huge fluffy faded-red towel that reminds Alex far too much of cake.
“Don’t give me that look, Alex!” Rosie demands, as he spits out a mouthful of water from her latest attack. “This is… what you get when you miss your… bath time.”
“You tricked me with the sausage rolls. Greg doesn’t do that.”
“No, Greg is too soft on you, yucky man!” she says, shooting him in the ear with a squirt. “Who’s your Daddy now?”
Alex looks pole-axed.
The VT ends.
Everyone applauds – cheering and laughing, some of it rather naughty sounding, echoes through the studio as Greg turns back with a grin.
The instant it dies down a little, Greg is on Rosie like a hawk. “Rosie – you know what? I am too soft on Alex…”
Alex looks from Greg to Rosie and back again – seemingly quite concerned where this might lead for him.
“...But I’m glad you’ve exposed what a disgusting little freak he is when he hasn’t had his monthly bath.” Greg gestures at Alex with his pen, without even looking at him.
Alex does that purse of his lips when he’s not entirely convinced. He might even hum.
“You need to… Take him in hand, Greg,” Rosie advises him with a nod. As if they’re discussing a particularly obstinate dog.
“I frequently do, Rosie,” Greg says, only realising once the words have started coming out of his mouth how they might be misinterpreted. So he leans into it – his face twisting into a smirk as he repeats the phrase – now dripping with innuendo. “I frequently do!”
Rosie seems delighted.
“Right. Alex was – or, sorry, is a monster – and you hunted him well!” Greg jots something in his notes, and then looks up at Jack. “Jack… What was that?”
Jack is surprised – his baffled blink the only change to his usually stern countenance. “What do you mean, ‘What was that’ – that was a monster hunt!”
Greg tilts his head for just a second, and his lips thin. “Was it though?”
Spluttering with disbelief, Jack is almost lost for words. “Of course it was. Me and Alex—”
“—Alex and I,” Alex corrects.
“Quite right, thank you, Alex,” Greg says, patting Alex on the arm.
Jack boggles. He’s not the only one. Then Greg looks at Jack again with such smugness, and Jack knows he’s not winning this one.
“Alex and I found the evil spirit, cast it into one ‘vessel’ and then neutralised it. Textbook hunt,” he says, shifting in his red velvet chair.
Greg looks at his cards. “Right. Cast it. What was that – Latin?”
“Something like that.”
“Alex. Tell everyone what that so-called spell actually said?”
Alex hums and rubs a finger down his cheek. “Well, the grammar isn’t at all correct, and the pronounciatio—”
“Alex!”
“Yes, sorry.” Alex taps the iPad and a clip showing Jack reciting his mystical words appears. Alex translates. “He said ‘Greetings you nerds. In the name of the Taskmaster, get out of his face. Here comes my reward – five prizes.’ I have to assume he meant to say five points, Greg.”
“Mmm, yes. That was probably his intention, yes, but I don’t think that’s what he’ll get.”
“Oh come on!” Jack pleads – hands outstretched.
“In fact, I put it to you, Jack, that you’ll be lucky to get one point – do you know why?”
“Because you’re a miserable git who probably needs an exorcism himself?”
Greg’s eyebrows go up. “No… Because an ‘evil spirit’ isn’t a ‘monster’, Jack, and we asked for a monster hunt.”
Jack huffs and grumbles, throwing his hands down and tossing his head like a frustrated horse.
“I may be inclined to be generous, however…” Greg dangles a crumb of hope for Jack.
Okay, Jack is a little bit interested in a ‘however’ – no matter how cynical he plays it.
“...If you dig into what the red string was supposed to do.”
“Oh!” Jack says. “Well – the red wool protects the wearer from evil, and makes sure no harm can come to them again.” He shrugs. “Standard metaphysical stuff.”
“Is that right? Hmm. Alright, I’ll take that into consideration.” Greg scratches the side of his nose with his pen hand and his sleeve rides up a little – exposing the woven woollen bracelet that’s tied around his wrist.
Alex leans over to see, and seems to sigh with relief. Then he shifts a little in his smaller throne, pulling the ball of red wool from down by the arm, and bending over to shove the hank of fibre into the drawer in the base of his throne.
There’s a moment as Greg reads his cards, and the few eagle-eyed audience members who connected the dots make “Aww” noises.
“Right!” Greg barks, shattering the softness. “Who do we have next, my fuzzy little monster?”
Alex beams, his gappy teeth on full display. “Well, Daddy, up next we have…”
The show goes on, three more monsters hunted, and points are assigned and despaired of, but Greg wears the bracelet all episode long. As the winner takes to the stage, Greg claims that today, we’ve learned that monsters aren’t always what you think. That sometimes a soft-touch is exactly what you need in a world full of evil and ugliness. And sometimes you just need to squirt Alex in the face.
Good night!