The Lie Detector Show

I woke up and couldn’t stop thinking about the nightmare I had; I wasstrapped up to an electric lie detector chair with a blindfold on. I heard a crowd cheer loudly while applauding. I took the blindfold off and saw a huge crowd and a host. He had a big smile, squinting at the crowd, while laughing charmingly, almost teasing.

Then, I woke up by the alarm clock, 8 am. I mustconfess, it wasn’t my mostterrifyingnightmare, I’ve hadmuchworse. But it was something that felt more real than inanyof my other nightmares. Anddreams.

I went down to the kitchen, put together a sandwich with mayonnaise, ham and cheese and filled up a water bottle. I was eating and drinking while walking to school because I was in a hurry.

Someone seemed to follow me but I couldn’t see who it was. I got a sedative injection needle in my neck before I had the chance to turn around. Everything went black.

I woke up in a cell in a big basement. I looked around. There were more cells than mine there and the people in them lookedterrified.Some of them were crying. A man with a black suit walked down the stairs, with a big grin plastered all over his face.

“Do you know whoIam?”

I didn’t recognize him. The other prisoners looked wondering at him.

“That’s understandable. It’s anewshow called “The Lie Detector Show” up there. I’m thehost. And we already have acontestant.The show starts in 30 seconds, I’d better hurry up.”

The host went up the stairs and closed the basement door. The crowd applauded while he went to the stage, waving to each one of them, with a big smile.

"Hello, everyone! Howareyou?”

The crowd cheered. Some of them shouted ”Great!”

“That’sawesome!”

The red velvet curtains opened and a woman that sat in an electric lie detector chair looked around at the crowd, shocked and scared.

The woman in the chair had blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail, like she hadn’t had time to fix it before she ended up here. Her hands were strapped down with thick leather cuffs, the same kind I remembered from my dream, except this wasn’t a dream. I pressed myself against the bars of my cell to see better. The other prisoners did the same. Nobody said anything. It felt like if we stayed quiet enough, none of this would be real.

There was a screen bolted to the wall of the basement, angled so all the cells could see it. It flickered on, showing the stage upstairs in full color, like someone had set up a live feed just for us. I guess that was the point. Watch and learn. Or watch and be afraid. Maybe both.

“Look at her,” the host said, gesturing at the woman like she was a prize on display. “Doesn’t she look nervous? Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s just a game. As long as you’re honest.”

The crowd laughed. Not a cruel laugh. A comfortable one, like they’d heard this joke before and knew the punchline was coming.

“Let’s start easy,” the host said. “What’s your name?”

“Rebecca,” she said. Her voice cracked on the single word.

Green light blinked on a panel next to the chair. Truth.

“Wonderful! And Rebecca, are you enjoying the show so far?”

She hesitated. I could see her deciding whether to lie, the way you’d hesitate before stepping on ice you weren’t sure would hold you.

“No,” she said.

Green light again. The crowd laughed harder this time, delighted by her honesty like it was the funniest thing they’d heard all week.

“Fair enough! Fair enough. Let’s raise the stakes a little, shall we?”

That was when I noticed the cell to my left. A boy, maybe sixteen, was gripping the bars so hard his knuckles had gone white. He wasn’t watching the screen. He was watching the stairs, like he expected the host to come back down any second and grab him next.

“Have you ever cheated on your husband?” the host asked.

The whole basement went quiet, even quieter than before, if that was possible. On screen, Rebecca’s face crumpled.

“No,” she whispered.

The light flashed red.

I don’t know exactly what I expected. Maybe nothing, maybe some kind of alarm bell, something theatrical and harmless. What actually happened was the chair itself seemed to hum, and Rebecca’s whole body locked up, arching against the restraints, a sound tearing out of her that didn’t sound human at first. It lasted maybe two seconds. When it stopped, she slumped forward as far as the cuffs allowed, gasping.

The crowd didn’t laugh at that. A few of them gasped too, but it sounded more excited than horrified. Like they were watching a rollercoaster drop.

“Ohhh,” the host said, wagging a finger at her, still smiling. “Now, now. We don’t lie on this show, Rebecca. I thought we went over the rules.”

“You didn’t,” she sobbed. “You didn’t go over any rules, you just grabbed me—”

“Details, details.” He waved a hand. “The rule is simple. Tell the truth, or face the consequences. Let’s try again, shall we? Have you ever cheated on your husband?”

I watched her shoulders shake. I watched her decide, the same way she’d decided before, except this time I could see the fear win out over whatever pride or shame had made her lie the first time.

“Yes,” she said, so quietly the microphone almost didn’t catch it.

Green light.

“See? Wasn’t that better?” The host clapped his hands together once, satisfied, like a teacher praising a student who’d finally gotten the right answer. “Told you it was just a game.”

I looked away from the screen. I couldn’t watch anymore, not because I didn’t want to know what happened to her, but because some part of my brain still hadn’t accepted this as real, and looking at the screen made it more real, second by second, the same way staring at a wound makes it hurt more.

The boy in the cell next to mine finally spoke. His voice was hoarse, like he hadn’t used it in a long time, though I doubted that was true. It felt like we’d all only been here a few hours.

“They shocked her,” he said. Just stating it. Like he needed to say it out loud to believe it too.

“I saw,” I said.

“That’s not — this isn’t allowed. This isn’t legal. You can’t just kidnap people and put them on TV and shock them for lying.”

“I don’t think the people running this show care much about what’s allowed,” I said.

He looked at me like I’d said something offensive, and I understood, in a distant way, that he wasn’t actually mad at me. He needed someone to be wrong. He needed this to be a misunderstanding, something with an appeals process, something reasonable people could sit down and fix. I didn’t have the heart to argue with him about it. I was busy trying to figure out how a chair could shock someone like that. Was it building up? Would the next lie hurt more?

Upstairas, the host had already moved on. He was walking along the edge of the stage now, microphone in hand, talking directly to the audience like a talk show host working a room.

“Isn’t this exciting? I love our first episode already. We’ve got so much more planned, don’t you worry. And speaking of planning — we’ve already got our second contestant lined up. In fact, we’ve got a whole basement full of them.”

He grinned toward the camera, and for a second I felt like he was looking directly into my cell, though I knew that wasn’t possible. It didn’t stop the feeling.

“But that’s for next time. For now, let’s give a round of applause to our brave first guest, Rebecca!”

The crowd applauded. Rebecca didn’t look like she felt very celebrated. She looked like she wanted to disappear into the chair and never come back out. Two men in black suits came from offstage, unstrapped her, and led her away through a door at the back. I didn’t see where it went. The feed cut to a commercial — an actual commercial, for some skincare product, cheerful music and everything, like this was a normal television broadcast and not whatever this actually was.

The screen went dark a few seconds later. The basement was left in near silence, except for someone crying two cells down from me, and the boy next to me breathing hard, like he was trying not to be the one crying instead.

I sat down on the cold floor of my cell and pulled my knees to my chest. I thought about the sandwich I hadn’t finished eating on the way to school. I thought about my mom, who probably wasn’t even worried yet, since I wasn’t due home for hours. I thought about the nightmare I’d had that morning, the crowd, the host, his squinting smile, and how it had felt more real than any dream I’d had before. I understood now why.

I don’t know how long I sat there before the boy spoke again.

“I’m Tobias,” he said.

“Laney,” I said.

“Do you think they’re going to make everyone go up there eventually?”

I looked at the empty stage on the dead screen, at the rows of cells stretching down the basement, each one holding someone who looked just as scared as I felt.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we should probably figure out how not to lie.”

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Easier said than done.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

---

Nobody came down for hours after that. No food, no water, no explanation. The cell had a small drain in the corner and nothing else, no bed, no blanket, just cold concrete and bars. I tried the bars anyway, out of some instinct that told me I should at least try, even though I could tell just by looking that they weren’t going to bend for me. Tobias watched me do it without saying anything, which I appreciated. I didn’t need him telling me it was useless. I already knew.

Across the aisle, an older woman sat very still, hands folded in her lap like she was praying, though her lips weren’t moving. Somewhere further down, a man kept saying “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening” under his breath, over and over, like a broken recording. I understood the impulse. Some small animal part of my brain wanted to do the same thing.

I tried to remember details about the host. Dark hair, slicked back. Suit that looked expensive, the kind of black that isn’t really black, more like a very deep navy that only shows in certain light. Straight white teeth. He’d looked directly at the camera at one point and I got the distinct sense that he enjoyed this — not just the power of it, but the performance. Like the fear in the basement was a necessary ingredient for whatever he was cooking up there on stage.

“Do you know anyone else here?” I asked Tobias, mostly to fill the silence, because the man’s chanting was starting to get to me.

“No,” he said. “I was walking home from soccer practice. Somebody grabbed me from behind. Next thing I know I’m waking up down here.”

“Same,” I said. “Well, not soccer practice. I was walking to school.”

“You go to school around here?”

“Lincoln High.”

“Huh. I go to Fairview. Guess they’re not picky about where they grab people from.”

It was a strange thing to bond over, but it was something. A shared detail in a place that otherwise felt designed to strip away anything familiar.

Eventually, footsteps came down the stairs. Not the host this time — two men in plain gray uniforms, expressions blank, the kind of blank that made me think they’d done this enough times that it no longer registered as strange to them. They pushed a cart between the cells, handing out small bottles of water and something wrapped in plastic that turned out to be a protein bar, passed through a slot at the bottom of each cell door. Nobody asked them questions. I got the feeling questions wouldn’t be answered, and might not be welcome.

When they got to Rebecca’s old spot — a cell near the end that I hadn’t noticed was empty until just then — one of the men paused, looked at the empty cell, then made a note on a clipboard and moved on without a word. I felt something cold settle in my stomach. Nobody had brought her back down. Wherever she’d gone after they led her offstage, it wasn’t back here.

I didn’t say anything about it to Tobias. I don’t think I needed to. He’d noticed too, and from the way his jaw tightened, I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was, and neither of us wanted to say it out loud, like saying it would make it true in a way it wasn’t yet.

I drank the water. I ate the protein bar in small bites, even though I wasn’t hungry, because some practical part of my brain insisted I needed to keep my strength up, whatever that meant in a situation like this. Around me, the other prisoners did the same, quiet and mechanical, like we were all trying to hold onto some scrap of normal routine.

The overhead lights dimmed after that, not off completely, just low enough to suggest it was supposed to be night. I didn’t know if it actually was. There were no windows down here, no clocks, nothing to tell time by except the rhythm of the show and whatever schedule they kept upstairs.

I lay down on the concrete, using my arm as a pillow, and closed my eyes even though I didn’t think I’d actually sleep. The image of Rebecca’s body locking up in that chair kept replaying behind my eyelids. I thought about the nightmare again — how similar the setup had felt, right down to the host’s expression, the squint, the charming laugh that didn’t quite reach something honest underneath it.

I must have dozed eventually, because I woke up to the sound of the basement door opening again, and this time, it wasn’t food carts. It was the host, and he was smiling the exact same smile from my dream.

“Rise and shine, everyone!” he called out, voice echoing off the concrete. “Today’s a big day. We’ve got episode two starting in a few hours, and I need to pick our next lucky contestant.”

He walked slowly down the row of cells, hands clasped behind his back, peering into each one like he was browsing a store display. Several prisoners shrank back against the far walls of their cells, trying to make themselves smaller, less noticeable. I understood the instinct even as I recognized it probably wouldn’t help.

He paused in front of the woman who’d been praying earlier. She flinched.

“Hmm,” he said, tilting his head, considering her the way you’d consider a piece of fruit at a market. “Interesting energy. But no, not today.”

He moved on. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it from outside the bars. He passed Tobias’s cell, glanced in, moved on without comment. I felt Tobias exhale beside me, a small, relieved breath.

Then the host stopped in front of my cell.

He looked at me for a long moment, head tilted slightly, that same squint from my nightmare settling over his features, like he was trying to read something written on my face that only he could see.

“You,” he said finally, smiling wider. “I like you. There’s something about your eyes. Very expressive. The audience is going to love you.”

My mouth went dry. I couldn’t make myself speak.

“Aw, don’t look so scared,” he said, laughing lightly, the same charming laugh, teasing and warm on the surface and utterly cold underneath, now that I’d seen what it led to. “It’s just a game. As long as you tell the truth.”

He turned and started back toward the stairs, still talking, mostly to himself now, or maybe to some assistant I couldn’t see, discussing lighting cues and timing like he was planning a birthday party instead of whatever this actually was.

“We’ll come get her in three hours,” he said over his shoulder to one of the gray-uniformed men. “Get her cleaned up a bit. Can’t have our star looking disheveled on camera.”

The door shut behind him. The basement was silent except for my own breathing, which had gone shallow and fast, like I’d been running.

“Laney,” Tobias said quietly.

I didn’t answer. I was staring at the spot where the host had stood, trying to process what had just happened, trying to figure out if there was some way out of this that I hadn’t thought of yet.

“Laney,” he said again. “Hey. Look at me.”

I turned my head. His face was pale, but there was something steady in his expression, like he was trying to hold himself together enough to help me hold myself together too.

“You just have to tell the truth,” he said. “That’s it. That’s all you have to do.”

“You saw what happened to Rebecca,” I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. “She told the truth eventually. It still hurt her.”

“Yeah, but she’s — I mean, she’s probably fine. Probably. They probably just took her somewhere else. A green room or something.”

I didn’t believe that, and from the way his voice wavered, I don’t think he believed it either. But I appreciated that he tried.

I spent the next three hours running through every uncomfortable truth I could think of about myself, trying to prepare, trying to imagine what kind of questions they might ask and whether I could actually answer them honestly without falling apart on live television in front of a studio audience that apparently thought human suffering was a fun Tuesday night activity.

I thought about my mom again. I thought about the fight we’d had two nights ago, the one where I’d said something cruel I didn’t entirely mean, and how I hadn’t apologized yet because I was too stubborn, and now I might never get the chance. I thought about small lies I told without thinking — telling my friend I loved a haircut I actually hated, telling teachers I’d done reading I hadn’t finished, telling myself things were fine when they weren’t. Small, harmless lies, the kind everyone tells, the kind that greased the wheels of everyday life without hurting anyone.

I wondered if the chair could tell the difference between those and the big ones. I wondered if it mattered.

When the two gray-uniformed men finally came for me, unlocking my cell and pulling me out by the arms, I looked back once at Tobias. He mouthed something at me I couldn’t quite make out over the sound of my own pulse in my ears. Something like “you’ll be okay” or maybe “good luck,” I couldn’t tell which, and it didn’t really matter, because neither of us knew if it was true.

They led me up a narrow staircase, through a door, down a hallway lined with equipment cases and coiled cables, past a woman with a headset who barely glanced at me as she checked something on a tablet. The air changed as we got closer to the stage — warmer, brighter, buzzing faintly with the electric hum of stage lights.

Someone dabbed powder on my face. Someone else fixed my hair without asking permission, tucking loose strands behind my ears like I was a doll being prepared for display. Nobody spoke to me directly except to give instructions. “Chin up.” “Stand here.” “Wait for the cue.”

And then the curtains in front of me stirred, and I heard the host’s voice, warm and booming, filling the space beyond.

“Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for our second contestant?”

The crowd roared.

“Then let’s bring her out! Please welcome — Laney!”

Hands pushed gently at my back, guiding me forward. The curtains parted, and the lights hit me full in the face, blinding and hot, and beneath them I could just make out the shape of the crowd, hundreds of faces, all turned toward me, all smiling the exact same eager smile.

The host stood beside the chair, gesturing at it with an open palm, his grin wide and warm and utterly without mercy.

“Right this way, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s get you settled in.”

I walked toward the chair because I didn’t see another option. My legs felt disconnected from the rest of me, moving on some kind of autopilot while my mind scrambled uselessly for an exit that didn’t exist. The stagehands strapped my wrists into the leather cuffs, the same ones I’d watched close around Rebecca’s wrists on the basement screen, still warm, maybe, from the last person who’d worn them.

The host crouched slightly to look me in the eyes, lowering his voice just enough that it felt almost intimate, like he was letting me in on a secret, even though the microphone clipped to his lapel meant the whole audience could hear every word.

“Now, Laney,” he said. “I want you to relax. Take a breath. This works best when you’re honest, and being honest is easy, isn’t it? Everyone knows how to do that.”

I stared at him. Up close, his eyes were a flat, pale gray, almost colorless under the stage lights, and there was something in them that didn’t match the warmth of his voice at all — something patient and hungry, like he was looking forward to whatever came next regardless of how it went for me.

“Let’s start with something simple,” he said, straightening up, turning back toward the audience with a flourish. “What’s your full name?”

“Laney Whitmore,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected.

The light blinked green.

“Perfect! See, that wasn’t so hard.” The crowd chuckled warmly, encouragingly, like they were rooting for me now, like we were all in on this together. “Let’s try another one. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Green.

“Wonderful. Do you have any siblings?”

“No. I’m an only child.”

Green again. I felt my shoulders loosen slightly, some small foolish hope rising in my chest that maybe this would stay easy, maybe he’d stick to harmless questions and let me off the hook.

The host smiled at me in a way that told me exactly how naive that hope had been.

“Now let’s have a little fun,” he said, turning fully to face me, hands clasped behind his back. “Laney. Have you ever stolen anything?”

The question landed like a stone dropped into still water. I felt my pulse spike. There was a moment — small, sixth grade, a lip gloss from the drugstore near my old house, something I’d never told anyone, not even my best friend — and some instinctive, cowardly part of me wanted to say no, wanted to protect that small shameful secret the way I always had.

I thought about Rebecca’s body locking up in the chair.

“Yes,” I said. “Once. When I was eleven.”

Green light.

The crowd made a soft, delighted sound, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, entertained by my small confession like it was the juiciest gossip they’d heard all week. The host beamed at me, genuinely pleased, like I’d just passed some kind of test.

“There we go! Honesty looks good on you, Laney.” He paced a slow circle around the chair, building momentum, feeding off the crowd’s energy. “Let’s raise the stakes a bit, shall we? That’s what the people want.”

The crowd cheered.