IDEA ON TUESDAY 634

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'dlike to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculativeand teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyeswhen I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..."Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) andthen a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant,nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you seefit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding horror,I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “We seek out…stories whichgive us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - notjust horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chordsomewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…”– Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Abduction = Love; a stranger kidnaps a totalstranger and never lets them go.

Current Event: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/08/cleveland-missing-women-berry-dejesus-knight-castro.html

They’d been locked in the basement for longer than eitherof them could remember. The windows – Natasha Reno-Pardo assumed that theboarded up, black painted rectangles near the ceiling of the basement were oncewindows – were impossible to open.

The permanent stairs had been removed and replaced by aheavy, steel drop-down stairs. Rudyard Bernal, her fellow captor had worked atgetting those to drop from the ceiling for a whole week. He’d tried to pry themfrom the ceiling seven times after they woke up. The eighth time, he’d gotten ashock so bad his hands were burned. Not enough to blister the skin, but verypainful.

Light came from two fluorescents set behind thick plastic.They never went out. Food and water came in bags dropped from a hole in theceiling whenever they were both asleep.

They were trapped.

In the dim silence, not long after both of them were awake,Rudyard said, “I think we’ve been here a month.” Then he burst out crying.Natasha looked up at the ceiling and into the corners. They knew they werebeing watched all the time. Once, when they’d tried to sleep together on thesame pile of blankets as far from the bathroom hole as they could get, Rudyardhad gotten very excited. Natasha was willing. Snakes had suddenly dropped downfrom the ceiling hole and the lights had gotten super bright.

They’d spent an hour sweeping the things into the hole.They’d spent most of the time fighting the rattlesnake. Neither one of them hadbeen bitten, but they threw the blanket covered in snake guts in another cornerafter stomping it to death.

This day was different. Natasha stepped over the immensered door in the center of the basement floor and sat down next to Rudyard. Atfirst he flinched and looked up at the feeding hole and muttered, “No. What arethey gonna throw at us next?”

Natasha said, “We’re not doing anything.”

He leaned against her, cried a while longer and finallyrested against her.

As if to curse their closeness a grinding sound came from the drag-down stairs. Real light leaked from a narrow crack that gradually widened, letting in more and more real light. When the stairs were half uncovered, they began to come down from the ceiling, making a sound like a descending castle drawbridge.

It thudded to the floor.

A shiny, black leather boot with a neatly cuffed pant leg dropped down on the top step…
Names: ♀ Russia, Mexico ; ♂ English, MexicoImage: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg