Shannon, one of the long-term zero levelers, was really struggling. She was consistently running three casitas a day for low points and received swats every week for refusing to work. She was severely depressed, and things started to get weird with her.
One night we discovered a lizard had been killed by someone pushing it through the wringer we used to wash our clothes. Shannon had been the last person out back that night.
The next day she was found trying to cut her arms in the shower with a shampoo bottle cap. One of the highrankers had to wrestle the plastic from her hands as she screamed and kicked. She received five swats for that, and the rest of us got docked points and 40 pushups because team showers ran two minutes late.
It got scarier when she started to have seizures. They usually happened after Derrick yelled at her for some infraction. Her eyes would roll back and she’d fall to the floor, staring up at the ceiling while her body thrashed around. Derrick ignored her while the highrankers protected her head until she stopped seizing.
One night as we were cleaning up after dinner, she yelled out that she’d lost her retainer. “I think I put it in my napkin and threw it away!” she told Derrick. We collectively groaned. Clam had just run the garbage out to The Pit. That meant her retainer was wrapped in a napkin now living inside the ten-foot-deep, ten-foot-wide garbage hole that was filled with our unflushable used toilet paper, pads, tampons and other garbage, not to mention hundreds of cockroaches and other beasts.
“Meaghan, come!” Derrick yelled from the living room. I ran to stand at attention before him. “Shannon’s retainer is in The Pit. Help her find it.” My face fell. I started to plead that someone else go, but he held his hand up. “I don’t want to hear it. Let’s go.”
Derrick led Shannon and I out the back porch, into the darkness of a cloudy night. He grabbed a ladder and we grabbed hard hats with lights and followed him.
The Pit lived next to a grove of banana trees that teemed with tarantulas, banana spiders and Hispaniola boas, a snake that reached up to thirteen feet. They were mostly nocturnal, so they were probably out there hunting alongside us.
We reached The Pit and Derrick lowered the ladder onto its uneven floor, which was stacked at least two feet deep with ashes of burned garbage, plus another half-foot of our most recent garbage on top, the majority of it being used toilet paper.
I was ordered first in. Derrick held the ladder as I made my way down each rung, internally begging my brain to let me leave my body with each step. As I reached the last rung, I saw rats the size of my forearm fleeing into tunnels on the side of the walls. I froze, looking up at Derrick with pleading eyes to call this off. “Wait a minute. Shannon, hold the ladder,” he said as he disappeared. He returned a few seconds later with a handful of rocks. “Stay still,” he whispered to me as he threw some rocks over my back. As rocks landed, some kind of thick long snake was startled and somehow lifted itself 8-10 feet up in the air to scurry over the edge. “OK, should be good now,” Derrick chirped.
I let my feet drop, caught in my own little horrific version of the moon landing. I wobbled and almost fell before my feet settled. After a few fits with Derrick, Shannon made her way down to me and we grabbed folded-up napkins, careful to not mistake them for toilet paper, and crunched them to see if a retainer was inside.
The Pit was active. Roaches and other leggy bugs crawled up my bare calves. Banana spiders, salamanders, mice and rats scurried around my feet. Something bit my ankle. There wasn’t much actual food in there because we put food leftovers into a compost bin, but that didn’t deter the scavengers. Shit-stained toilet paper seemed to be their favorite snack.
Derrick looked on from above, shining his flashlight to direct the next area we were to search. After half an hour, Derrick had no more places to point to. “Get out ladies,” he barked. Shannon ran to the ladder and got out first. I was half an inch behind her. As I emerged, Derrick slapped my back. I looked at him for comforting words, but all he said was “There was a bug on you.”
Just as I was gaining my stomach back, Derrick ordered “Compost bin next. Let’s go.” I wasn’t sure if I could take any more bug trauma, but like everything else here, I had no choice. I followed him deeper into snake territory to the compost bin.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think we composted food correctly because there was always at least four-inches of maggots covering the top.
“Get to it,” he ordered. Our work gloves only covered us up to our lower wrists, meaning maggots fell into our gloves as we dug. “Can I just take them off?” I asked.
“No, that’s not sanitary,” he replied flatly. He had just ordered me to get knee deep in literal shit and now he had the nerve to talk about sanitary? I resisted the urge to physically attack him. I could take the physical labor, stress positions, and being whipped with a leather belt, but this snake/bug torture was about to break me.
After getting down into the barrel as far as our arms would allow without our heads hitting the maggot pile, Derrick was satisfied and told us we’re done for the night. He made sure to add “but this isn’t over”. We yanked our arms out, shaking the maggots off of us as we walked back to the house. “Don’t throw them on me!” Derrick screeched. “Here’s, pour this over your arms,” he said as he handed me a bottle of bleach.
We entered the house to join the girls for Bible verse memorization time. “Did you find it?” Clam asked as we rolled in. I tried to burn my eyes through her as she burst into laughter. “At least you didn’t lose any fingers to those big ol’ rats!” she howled, which caused me to crack a smile. I ran up to her and wiped my bleached hands all over her neck saying “Here, have some Parfume de Pit!”
The next day we were macheting the tall grass near the patio when Richey squealed “I found it!” We all came running. Perched on top of a clump of grass was Shannon’s fucking retainer. It was a fifteen-foot throw from the back porch.
“WHAT?!” I screamed as I threw down my machete. I stood there fuming at Shannon, who had gathered around the retainer with the others, her head hanging down.
My eyes teared with rage, my fists clenched and my knuckles were methodically rubbing so tight against each other that you could hear the skin rubbing together, ready to lay into Shannon’s retainer hole of a mouth. I was getting very close to violence, something the Program liked to whip up in its students. Clam ran to my side. “Dude, she ain’t worth it. They’ll drop you to zero level and give you a buzz cut. Don’t do it dude.”
Before I had a chance to actually do anything, Derrick came running up. “What is this Shannon? Get down and give me thirty. Everyone: back to work!”
After extensive rounds of pushup punishment, Shannon was sent down to the director’s office for swats. She reappeared later at shower time with a large collection of fresh welts across her butt and thighs.
As angry as I was, my heart stung for her. I only had a couple swats. The kids that got more than six or seven at a time were never really the same.
The next day she was back on suicide watch.
Example of leather whip/paddle they used for swats:
