STUFFED

The End

Someone is banging loudly on the front door of the house.

It alarms Bradyn's parents who were sitting in the livingroom drinking tea and listening to vinyl.

Bradyn's mom gets up and starts walking to the door but her husband quickly gets up, "Stay here, I'll get it."

He walks over to the front door and just as he's putting his eye up to the peep hole, there's another few bangs on the door. It startles him but only for a second before his mood turns to anger. He's pissed. Who's banging on their door at eleven at night? For a second he half expects it to be the police. They're the only people who would have the audacity to create such havoc at someone's home.

But why are the police here? Immediately his mind turns to his son. Not that Bradyn is a bad kid, but even when he was Bradyn's age he used to get mixed up in some goofy shit. The way Bradyn looked, tall, kind of lanky, dark hair, dark eyes, even the way he dressed, it wouldn't be hard for him to attract the wrong group.

Finally, he swings open the door and standing in front of him is not the police.

A middle aged couple are stood in from of him looking equally pissed off. Immediately the yelling starts.

"Where the fuck is our daughter!?"

_______________________________________

Bradyn leans over, reaching for the remote, and turns the volume on the tv all the way down.

Both of them freeze, sensing the sudden commotion going on upstairs.

"What's going on?" Courtney whispers.

Bradyn pauses.

"I don't know." He responds, tentatively.

He scooches his body away from Courtney and walks over to the door. From here, he can pick up the voices a little better but can't quite figure out who they belong to. He opens the door a crack and then slowly walks out.

"Bradyn!" Courtney whisper yells after him.

Bradyn hears her but continues to leave the room anyway. He makes it to the bottom of the stairs and stops to listen again.

The yelling overlaps each other and Bradyn can only make out the voices of his mom and dad.

"It says that she's here!--" "Why would she be here!? We're not keeping children locked up in our basement-" "We don't know what you're-" "I'm getting my daughter!-"

Fuck.

He's only ever heard the sound of Courtney's parents once and even then he was so focussed on not getting caught in their daughter's bedroom that he didn't pay much attention to what their voices sounded like. But now, without a doubt, he can tell that it's definitely Courtney's parents upstairs arguing with his parents. Guess his luck of sneaking around with their daughter has run out.

Bradyn has to think quickly.

They could escape out of his bedroom windo-... nevermind. Maybe a couple years ago when Courtney was an agile competitive cheerleader but good luck trying to get her out of his window now. There aren't many other exits down here; just a couple other windows. And she's too big to hide virtually anywhere else... Bradyn is wracking his brain trying to come up with options on the fly but everything he thinks of just leads to a dead end.

The weight of their situation sinks in and he's immediately disappointed in himself for not planning ahead of time for this exact situation. He promised to keep her safe and now, if he didn't think of a miracle quickly, he was going to break that promise.