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Challenge of the Week CCXXVI
You wake up in what looks to be a barn, sore & confused. You remember scattered details leading up to this moment, vaguely. What you do remember is seeing your (newly- married) mother or father’s significant other approach the vehicle that you were thrown into, as you were blind folded & injected with something that instantly put you to sleep. Panicking, you have no idea if your Mother/ father is facing the same fate. Now what? How did you escape? What was the significant other’s involvement & reason behind their actions? Is this driven by a serious motive in their eyes or are they just psychotic & doing it for the thrill? Happy ending, tragic ending or everything in between… the choice is yours. The more detail, the better! Short stories, please. Let’s see what everyone comes up with… And go! Prose. will stuff $25 in the digital pocket of the winner. Challenge idea is from Amanda B. Jaworski. Thanks, Amanda!
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Afer
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Wendy’s House

A bright but distant light seeps through the cracks of the wooden barn. I look around,my thoughts oscillating between my new mother-in-law's betrayal and whether it's possible for a barn to have no tools at all and smell of nothing but wood.

Mother-in-laws typically either play nice or standoffish with their new daughter-in-laws and barns tyipcally have a "barnyard" smell,you know,cow dung and chicken poop and horse piss if the area is not being used as a tool shed. Neither of these have been true in this case,it's weird,too weird.

Even this hay I'm laying on is weird. As I try to get off the floor,I find myself slithering desperately like an earthworm. My movements start exposing cement beneath the sparsely placed hay. What the actual hell is going on here? Where is my dad?

I feel tears cloud my gaze for the first time since the ordeal. Imagine being kidnapped in a parking lot on your way to your friend's house after the little dinner families after a wedding,not to mention the fact that one of the newly weds is in on it. It's a crazy betrayal. I did fight as hard as I could,I did scream too. Someone heard me,surely,someone heard me. There's not need to cry I'll be okay,my dad is on his way right now and-...

Just then the barn begins to creak loudly and falls apart before my very eyes. It opens outwards like a box and there I am,a silk worm on some hay in on a stage!

How could she do this to me? What is happening and is my dad going through the same thing?

I'm finally able to sit up (thanks to the fear coursing once again through my veins) and realise that the bright light I've been seeing came from a stage light. There are cameras in all corners,hungrily lurking around me as they move on their cranes like hawks ready to pounce on my ignorance. What is happening here? Where is my dad?

I stare at the audience through sharp,white stage light. I can't make out faces at first, then my eyes begin to settle and I see her.

There she is. Wendy is in the front row and stands,then begins to clap. More and more smartly dressed individuals follow her and clap,some even whistle and shout. I feel tears stream and look away in humiliation and confusion. Why are they laughing and clapping and cheering and whistling with her? She's the bad guy. She and her friends kidnapped me.

I turn back and start to feel the betrayal deepen as I see more familiar faces. There is Uncle Matthew who is Wendy's brother, and that old bat,Linda,who is her mother. I never cared for her family much,especially Linda who thought anybody who couldn't afford Armani was a peasant or worse,her personal jester.

They were the stuck-up-country-club bunch fitted with those jumpers disgustingly rich people tie around their necks. I never cared for them but now,for the first time as Wendy got out of her place and made her way to the stage,I hate to say that I do3 care. They are the only people I can confidently say I know and here they are,cackling at my expense.

If my dad had not met this woman who now appeared with a mic,ready to address her posh crowd,I would not have been here. Where was he? Where is my dad?

"Where is my dad you cow? Where is my dad? How dare you kidnap me? Where is he?",I try to shout in her direction but it comes out as the whiny pleadings of a child. These questioning pleads fall on deaf ears and she continues to stare at her audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen,boys and girls...",she says into the mic with that annoying giddiness she has had from the very first day I met her, "Presenting,the latest and greatest most bestest thingiest thing I have ever laid my eyes on...",she bellows (in that excitement she has when one of her stupid inventions works) and points behind me, I have to turn. I have turn to see what this psychotic lady is going on about.

Why did I turn back? Why did I turn back? Fresh tears sting my eyes and the scratches on my face as they fall on their own.

"...my beautiful husband",Wendy says with a thrill in her voice that seems to cut me from the inside as I lay my eyes on my father. There he is,big and towering over me as he always has but he gleams as he has never gleamed before, "I spent the night at Wendy's house,I spent the night at Wendy's house,I spent the night at Wendy's house...",he keeps repeating in the coldest tone I had ever heard escape his now part-machine lips. What is happening? What the actual hell is happening?!

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