Put a finger down if...
you’ve ever signed up for something that you thought was going to be super amazing, even life changing, and you’re so excited about it because right now your life totally sucks and this feels like the lucky break you’ve been waiting for, only you get there and realize something is wrong, things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to, and the person who greets you is a freaking asshole who starts bossing you around like you’re their servant, and the more you poke around and ask questions the more you start to realize maybe this isn’t what you thought it would be because you have to live on-site at this place and then they take your phone from you because it’s against the rules, and there's a lock on the door to the room you’re staying in but the lock is on the outside so someone else can keep you shut in, and from what you can tell your door is the only one with a lock, and then you’re told you can't talk to anyone outside of the walled compound you’re being forced to stay in, and the other people there aren’t very nice to you but that doesn’t really matter because suddenly the thing you thought you were going to learn isn’t what they’re actually teaching, it’s completely different, and if you complain you get punched, and then they assign you chores to clean the facility and you get bathroom duty, and like that isn’t what you signed up for but to make matters worse one of the people there is your ex and he’s a total douchebag and he starts turning the others against you until people hate you even more, and then it gets worse because people start having these terrible accidents and getting hurt and there’s blood and missing limbs and all kinds of shit, and then people start disappearing from the program and no one knows why or even asks what happened, and you’re thinking they probably died but no one wants to admit it, their rooms just get cleared out and stay empty, and every few days someone else is gone, and now you’re wondering if you’ll even make it through the six-week program you signed up for or if you’ll be one of the ones who just disappear and no one talks about after and your room gets cleared out too, but then you tell yourself you’re overreacting and everything is fine and maybe you imagined that one person didn’t really get their hand chopped off and the huge flamethrowers are perfectly safe when you think about it.
(Big breath)
And if you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, that could never happen to me,” you might want to read The Little Sushi Chef, because that’s exactly what Akiko thought too, right up until the moment she realized she’d signed up for something she might not survive. So yeah…