Although this story mentions real persons, corporations, TV shows and places, it is purely a work of fiction for personal enjoyment. The story does NOT describe real events and should NOT be taken to accurately portray any real entity mentioned. In keeping with its fictional nature, the events and activities described in the story may not be legal, ethical or safe. This site does NOT endorse or recommend their enactment.
As the studio lights switched on and swept across the floor, the gathered audience of female celebs whooped and cheered; they were the lucky ones, the ones who had managed to technically lose, but much more arguably win the Gunge Grand Prix. Now they were here to enjoy the results of being less popular to the voting public, or possibly more popular… Either way, they were just glad to be avoiding the vast, slop-filled Gunk Dunk that now occupied the middle of the set!
And what a return it had made! Of course there had been numerous designs over the years, especially as the whole thing had gotten even more extravagant and messy with the modern reboots, but the show designers had made an extra special effort for this special event. It was the older one-ramp design with the wheeled chair currently sat at the bottom, although the whole thing seemed to extend upwards to far more nerve-wracking heights than ever before. The tank itself was much deeper too; clearly the show producers weren’t going to be satisfied with a celeb getting plunged into merely waist height slop, and so it was now deep enough for the gunge to reach neck height on even the lankiest victim. For safety reasons, of course… You couldn’t have someone getting thrown into a shallow tank of gunge at such speed, could you?~
Speaking of the gunge, it was a perfect display of why Get Your Own Back had remained on top of the mess game for so long; its surface oozed and bubbled ominously, a bewildering mixture of clashing colours that simultaneously looked bright and cheery yet terribly ominous and off-putting. Green, yellow, purple, blue, orange, green, and red all mixed together yet stayed clearly distinct, and on the surface of it all bobbed the words “GUNGE GRAND PRIX 2020” in bold white lettering.
Not only that, but the Gunk Dunk had a couple of extra physical additions; the rim of the tank was now lined with a two foot tall barrier of bright red inflated rubber, which already looked near impossible to grip or climb over even while spotlessly clean. There were also numerous mystery tubes dangling haphazardly above, not just aiming down at the pool itself, but also pointing at all kinds of angles around the ramp. It wasn’t clear how many of them were functional, but occasionally they’d let out an ominous rattle or gurgle.
That was how it looked, but the watching celebs could only imagine how it would feel. Most of them were trying not to think about it at all; the smell alone was enough to put them off, and there was an audible reaction of disgust from the front rows whenever some of the stink wafted in their direction.
One poor, unfortunate soul wouldn’t have to merely imagine what it would be like, though. The various entrants into the contest had been whittled down to a select four, who were now looking very nervous on stage, arrayed before the Gunk Dunk and dressed in the classic GYOB t-shirt and shorts combo… Although long time viewers might notice that the shorts seemed a fair bit clingier than they used to be. In addition to Scarlett Johansson and Sam Quek in the original blue and yellow outfits respectively, they were joined by Hayley Atwell and Emma Stone in red and green to round things out.
None of them were looking very happy about their current situation, although Emma Stone seemed to be by far the most worried. Hayley Atwell couldn’t stop nervously giggling, while Sam and Scarlett’s eyes just kept darting around the studio, as if looking for some way out.
Alas, there wasn’t going to be any escape for them. Well, technically three of them would get to escape, but even those odds didn’t feel very safe at the time.
But while they were worrying and squirming on the spot, there were four former contestants who were looking smuggest of all; Rachel Riley, Anna Kendrick, Felicity Jones, and Alexa Bliss. They had all made it right up to the final round of voting, and had been very pleased to see themselves avoiding this potential utter humiliation, clearly winning the vote in their minds! As such, they were effectively the hosts for the night, each of them dressed up in elegant evening gowns of their own choosing, to further underline their personal victory over the ladies who had apparently been deemed “most gungeable”.
“Well helloooooo, everyone!” Alexa Bliss announced as she stepped forward, taking the lead to further cheering from the audience. As a WWE wrestler, she knew better than most how to make the most of a magnificent victory over a humiliated foe like this. “Thank you for joining us tonight, not that you got a choice about it… But I think you can all agree that the voting went really well though! No one would argue that the voters didn’t make the right choice!”
Emma Stone looked particularly appalled at that last statement as she had personally lost/won (delete as appropriate based on personal preference) to Alexa in the last round. She could be seen shouting something from behind the wrestling star, but of course the potential gunge victims had been purposefully left without mics for now, so that they were only able to say their piece when one of the hosts deemed it necessary.
“Yes indeed!” Felicity Jones chimed in, clearly warming to her role as she followed Alexa’s excitement, her former fear about potentially going in to the slop giving way to sadistic glee at the idea of someone else taking the plunge. “We’re all very grateful to you at home for the way you voted, which is why we’re going to be following your lead all the way. As you can see, there’s only one seat on the Gunk Dunk… Unfortunately… Which means that only one of these Losers-”
“Technically they’re the winners…” Rachel Riley chimed in, always the voice of reason, causing Felicity to falter a little. Alexa shot Rachel a scowl, taking over as the leading host once more as this was natural territory for her.
“Only one of these Losers can go in, even though I’m sure you all agree they’re all pretty deserving.” There were more cheers of agreement from the audience, even as Sam Quek rolled her eyes behind the blonde wrestler. “But as we said, we’re going to follow the lead of the voters here, and so we’re sending in the one who lost the final vote by the widest margin, and with the most votes against her…”
Sam Quek’s expression swiftly changed from one of exasperation to stunned fear, as the other three celebs quickly cleared the space around her.
“…Which is of course, the one and only Sam Quek! Give her a round of applause, ladies, for managing to lose by a whopping one hundread and forty one votes to a mere one hundred and seven!” Alexa crowed, leering at the unfortunate hockey player as she advanced on her, clearly keen to start the humiliation. “And it seems fitting that to personally gunge her, we should get the one she lost to; help me out here, Anna!”
“Oh, with pleasure!” Anna Kendrick giggled, speaking for the first time as she stepped forward to flank the hapless Sam, who was now cringing and breaking into sheepish giggles, trying to hide her face as she was surrounded. “Anything to say for yourself, Sam…?” Anna smirked as she grabbed Sam’s left arm while Alexa went for the right, with Anna using her free hand to offer up her handheld mic to the condemned hockey player.
“A-Ahh, yeah, actually!” Sam managed to get out between anxious squirming. “I think Alexa here is just jealous to finally see a real athlete up on stage!”
“Ooooohhhhh!!!” the audience cried out as Alexa looked thrown-off for the first time in the show. She clearly hadn’t expected Sam to be prepared for any kind of trash-talking, but when you play competitive sports for a living you learned a thing or two… Her frustration got even worse when she gave Sam’s arm a sharp yank to try and pull her towards the Gunk Dunk, only to realise that the hockey player was a fair bit stronger than Alexa had given her credit for, making it quite hard to pull her along. It was only by Sam’s sense of fair play that she was going to allow herself to be gunged at all!
“Big talk from someone who’s going to be spending the next month trying to get her hair clean,” Alexa huffed, now towing the semi-willing Sam behind her up the steps to the dunking seat, with Anna following behind and doing a poor job of hiding her amusement. “That is, assuming you do actually wash your hair, I can’t really tell!”
“Oh yes, I do wash my hair, but I don’t dye it like you do, Alexa!” Sam laughed. Her face was still painted with trepidation about the dunking to come, but it was almost worth it to get to piss off the WWE diva like this. The audience cheered for her again, enjoying her attitude.
“Okay, that’s it!” Alexa yelled, throwing up her hands as Sam once again managed to get a bigger laugh from the crwod than she had. “Anna, you’re on your own! I shouldn’t have to put up with this when I won!”
“Well, you did get less votes, so generally that would mean that you lost, Alexa.” Rachel Riley ‘helpfully’ added from the sidelines, right before the wrestling star snarled in anger and stormed off the set in a huff, leaving Anna to deal with the would-be gunge victim. There was an awkward pause between them for a moment, as everyone tried to keep a straight face over Alexa’s dramatics.
“…Sam, could you kindly take your seat now? You know there’s no wriggling out of this,” Anna asked, almost politely, taking a different approach to the haughty diva who’d just left in a strop.
“Are you sure there isn’t…?” Sam asked nervously, as she very carefully clambered onto the dunking seat, painfully aware of just how close the gunge was below. She took care to get herself very well balanced on the seat, her bare feet pressed right down against the footrest mere inches over the surface of the slop while Anna Kendrick took to the controls on her right side. They looked very straightforward, with just two levers; one in simple blue, and the other in very intimidating red.
“Sitting comfortably there, Sam?” Anna cooed, taking a more relaxed but still rather mischievous approach to things. Sam was looking around nervously, apparently trying to double and triple check the chair for herself.
“Uuuh, not comfortable at all, Anna, but I’m pretty secure!”
“Excellent!” Anna beamed. “Normally we’d have some whole game deciding how far you get cranked up and how much extra gunge we use, but given that it’s already been a full month of voting to get to this point, I think we can ignore any further delays and just use everything, right?” She leaned forward and grabbed the blue lever, sharply yanking it back and causing the dunk seat that Sam was perched on to start rising up with a horrendous clanking noise! The audience gave another excited cheer as Sam gave a shy squeak, the reality of her situation really starting to dawn on her as she rose up and up, the seething surface of the Gunk Dunk getting further away but seeming all the more real and horrible because of it!
“Y-You didn’t even give them time to say ‘Crank her up!’” Sam protested, now really starting to panic as everyone was getting more keen than ever to see her covered. Even her once sympathetic fellow Losers had taken front row seats and were starting to enjoy the show.
“What? Oh, right, yeah, ‘Crank her up’, whatever, got that done,” Anna Kendrick said with a half-hearted handwave. “We didn’t list the reasons why you deserve this gunging either, or the charity we’re doing this for. Well I guess you can just sit there and think about how bad this is going to be while we go through the very important and worthy stuff…”
Sam had already stopped listening though, as she was busy peering down at the surprisingly ominous looking vat of garish goop below as Anna started talking about charity causes and Sam’s personal history. She winced at the sight of the muck dead ahead of her, her toes curling around the foot rest of the dunking seat as her fingers did the same to the sides of the chair. Her heart was pumping like crazy as she chewed on her bottom lip, and her chest was rising and falling as she grew both more excited and more nervous with each passing second. The horrible stench was really rising up to her now, smelling worse than her team’s locker room after even the most arduous, muddy, and sweaty training session.
With that horrendously sloppy fate looming below her, it took Sam a few moments to snap back to reality and realise that Anna Kendrick was speaking directly to her again.
“Huh? What?” Sam mumbled, as she looked up from the hypnotic surface of the Gunk Dunk to face Anna, who had apparently saved all her smugness for once Sam was really starting to squirm.
“As I was saying, Sam,” Anna tutted, to the amusement of the audience. “Are you ready to face the drop into the slop? For your time in the slime? To get, uhh… Dunked in the gunk?”
Sam couldn’t help but blurt out at Anna’s last comment. “But it’s already called the Gunk Dunk!” she snorted with nervous laughter, and once again the audience sounded like they were starting to take her side. “You can’t just use that joke again!”
Anna scowled, clearly annoyed at her own lack of creativity with gunge-based rhymes. Dave Benson-Philips had always made this look so easy.
“Whatever! The point is, you’re going down, and there’s absolutely no escape, least of all from any smart comments!” Anna’s leer widened as she reached towards the bright red dunking lever, causing Sam to somehow tense up even more. “Are you ready for this? Any last words?”
“U-Uuuhhh…!” Sam squeaked, her face apparently unable to decide if it should be flushed with embarrassment or pale with fear as she trembled on the seat, rubbing her legs together out of fear about just how bad this was going to be. “How about… P-Please don’t gunge me, Anna…? What if I’m not ready for this?!”
“Well, if you’re not ready for it,” Anna sighed, before suddenly flashing a truly wicked grin up at Sam. “Then it’s going to be even funnier! Bye!”
And with that, Anna yanked back the bright red lever, causing sparks to fly as the dunking seat started to hurtle down the ramp, rattling and creaking as Sam Quek started to shriek!
“Nooooooo…!” she wailed on the way down, although she was already being interrupted by the first blasts of gunge and slime from the tubes above; it was fairly watery stuff, stringy and yellow, a mere appetiser for the real slop to come in about a second. The only people that could truly appreciate the effect of that stuff before the dunking were the slow-mo camera operators, and Sam herself as she felt the sticky impact, stunning her and ensuring she wasn’t braced for the real gunging at the bottom of the ramp, as the chair came to a jolting stop, sending her flying forward towards the stinking, oozing vat of Gunk below…
SPLUUURRRTTTT!!!
A thick wave of horrible gunge slopped across the dunk tank, a testament to just how fast Sam Quek had plunged in, given the thickness of it. It oozed and sloshed back and forth for a few moments more, the audience now gasping and gagging as Sam’s impact had unsettled the muck and unleashed a whole new level of smell from within. The poor hockey player’s hands could just about be seen scrabbling at the surface, trying and failing to find anything to grip onto, before her feet finally managed to push down through the horrible gunge, propelling herself upright.
She broke the surface to howls of laughter from the audience, blindly fumbling around as the gunge mixed together, her head completely plastered with mess; to say that she was unrecognisable was an understatement, as even as she started to pull her sloppy hair out of her face there still wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t covered. The brightly coloured gunk was mixing now, turning darker and murkier tones with each movement Sam made.
And of course, that wasn’t enough; just as she was starting to get her bearings, more goo rained from above. Not that watery stuff from the ramp, but proper gunge, like she was fully drenched in now. It splattered down on her in a thick wave, knocking her backwards for another slimy splash that caused Anna Kendrick to double over with laughter.
“Oh! Oh my! That’s… Oh, this feels downright inhumane!” Anna cackled, her tone showing that she didn’t feel the slightest sympathy for her hockey player rival. “And that smell! Ugh, I think Alexa might have had the right idea about getting off the set!”
Down below, Sam had just about managed to get over her shock, and was standing fully upright in the Gunk Dunk even after getting knocked down by the mess from above. She had to, just to be able to keep her head clear of the gunge! Things seemed to have settled down a bit after that first downpour from above, giving her a chance to really take in the full extent of the mess sloshing around her. After a bit more time spent scraping clumps of muck from her face, her expression was just about readable to the audience, mostly due to how intense it was; shock, and humiliation, were written all over her features (even if the writing was looking pretty smudged right now).
“Feeling good down there, Sam?” Anna purred mockingly, as Sam made a futile attempt to shake her head clean.
“N-No! C-Couldn’t they have at least warmed this stuff up a bit?! I’ve h-had some cold showers before, but this takes the cake! Yuch!” Sam groaned, trying to breath only through her mouth. She started to move a little, but immediately regretted it as it caused her to really feel the mess all over again.
“You wanted them to warm up over a thousand litres of gunge, just for you? Wow, now who’s being the picky princess?! I thought you hockey players were made of tougher stuff!” Anna continued to jeer, while Sam was gradually starting to wade towards the side of the tank. Being a good sport was one thing, but she was rather keen to get clear of the tank and into a shower now. Of course, that meant confronting the inflatable rubber ring that encircled the tank… The audience’s laughter grew much louder as she awkwardly tried to lunge at the ring, her slippery hands desperately scrabbling over it.
“Oh come on!” Sam gasped, struggling at the side of the pool and flailing ineffectually at the rubber lining that was slippery even before she started to spread the gunge onto it. She was finding it absolutely insurmountable… Just as it was designed to be. To add insult to injury, they were starting to pour down more gunk from on high, and with each failed attempt to pull herself free from the gunk she just made her escape route even more mucky! “Can’t someone at least help pull me free now that I’ve been dunked?!” she demanded, reaching up to wipe some of her gooey, gunged hair our of her eyes, losing her grip in the process and sliding back into the ooze with an angry shriek!
“Sorry Sam!” Anna jeered from her podium, as the other runner-up celebs cheered her on. “I can’t get too close now, because this is such a nice dress. I’d hate to ruin it, as I’m sure all my fellow winners would. Maybe some of your fellow Losers can help you out…?”
Sam gasped and sputtered in the middle of the gunk dunk, still wallowing in the slop. It wasn’t at all easy to read her expression given how much gunge was oozing over her head, but you might guess that she looked a little… Peeved, about her current predicament, to say the least?
However, there was some small sign of hope on the horizon for her; Scarlett Johansson, Hayley Atwell, and Emma Stone were all being herded forward now to get them to help Sam out, but none of them looked keen to get even the slightest bit of mess on themselves. They were particularly worried that Sam might feel the urge to ‘share’ some of the mess on purpose, in order to draw a bit of focus away from herself.
“Well now, I think that about wraps things up, doesn’t it?” Anna turned to the camera, facing it directly as the three film stars below were starting to really struggle with extracting the smelly, slippery Sam Quek from the quagmire of gunge. “Thank you everyone who’s watching for your very charitable donations, and more importantly, for voting so that I didn’t have to get dunked in that.” Anna jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, her nose wrinkling as the three ‘Lucky Losers’ were doing a terrible job at getting the star hockey player free from the gunk. Scarlett Johansson pulled back suddenly, yelping in disgust as a tiny bit of the gunk from the tank sloshed over the rim and onto her chest, which meant that Sam only slid further back into the mess, with Hayley and Emma still holding onto an arm each and making a valiant attempt to pull her free.
It would take a long time yet for Sam to get free, especially if the three movie stars kept being so squeamish about the gunge.
“Right, until next year then!” Anna announced with a grin, waving to the camera before her expression turned more sour. “And for you at home, don’t you dare let me get as close to losing next time as I did this year!”