[Founders] - Trapped

It’s 7:12am by the time Remy finished doing Dawn’s make-up. The pair can already hear Joel talking outside to one of the other Founders, making sure they’re up and ready. Dawn found nothing more tiring than an early-bird. So did Remy, but she wasn’t about to admit that.

When Remy used the setting spray, Dawn flinched like she’d been shot with a pellet gun. Remy gives a soft huff of a laugh and gently slapped Dawn’s knee. “It’s not going to kill you.” She said passively, putting the cap back on the spray bottle. Dawn doesn’t reply but instead gets up to go look at herself in the bathroom mirror.
	She’d been expecting some kind of severe look, maybe a lot of blacks and purples like what Remy usually wore, but on first glance it didn’t even look like she was wearing anything until she looked a bit harder. It was all warm neutral colors, subtle, ‘light’ and natural looking. Dawn supposed that Remy’s ‘severe’ make-up was more of an intentional choice now and less her old assumption that she didn’t know how to do make-up any other way.

“Well?” Remy asked, stepping up adjacent to Dawn to look her in the eyes via her reflection.

“It’s great, thank--”

Her words are interrupted by a rhythmic knock on the door, followed by a break, and another short almost musical knock. Remy stepped off to answer it, flipping the lock and twisting the handle. When she yanked, however, it didn’t _budge_. Remy’s brows furrowed and she gave it another sharp tug. *Nothing.* Her perfectly manicured nails flipped the lock in the other direction, thinking maybe it’d been unlocked and she locked it trying to open the door. Yank. *Nothing.*

“Uhh, Joel? That’s you out there, right?” Remy called loudly through the door. The hints of monotonous distress pulled Dawn from examining her make-up and her outfit in the mirror to looking back towards the door.

“Yup! You almost ready to head out?” He called back.

“Uhh, yeah, I’m ready. Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure!”

“Can you, like... try to open the door from your side??” Remy was talking loudly, but trying not to alarm Dawn. *Dawn was already very alarmed.*

“Uhh.... yeah. Here,” Joel seized the door handle from the outside and started to turn it, attempting to push the door inward to open it. It didn’t yield and his shoulder just kind of crashed into it. “--I think it’s locked?”

“Nope, it’s not.” Remy called out from the inside, fiddling with the lock once more. The switch could move freely back and forth but there was no ‘click’, no audible sign that the mechanism inside was moving along with the lever. Though panic was setting in fairly quickly, Remy was staying level-headed. “Can you try to, like, shoulder-check it open or something???”

“Let me go get June,” Joel called through the door. “--don’t worry! I’ll be right back!”

Remy didn’t have time to say anything before she saw his silhouette pass by the cream-colored slats of her bedroom window. She was just about to tell Dawn what was happening when she saw her round the foot of the bed and move over towards the desk. Carefully, she started lifting the suitcases and setting them on the bed behind her to clear off the desk top. Remy helped.

“Door’s stuck?” Dawn asked, attempting to push the desk out of the way. It didn’t give, either, having been bolted to the floor. She hissed in the strain of her leg muscles from going too hard against an immovable object.
	“...yup.” Remy replied flatly. Her hands wrapped around the cord for the blinds, yanking them up in a zipping whoosh to expose the window. It had a separation in the center that, on first glance, made it look like it would open but a thorough examination of the seams showed that no, no it did not open. Great. The pair stared out of the streaky glass like fish in an undersized and animal-cruel fishbowl. The clock above the television read 7:21.

---

June was dressed in something that could only be described as ‘sporty business’, a sharp-cut dress shirt and some high-waisted above-the-knee shorts. It would probably have looked goofy on anyone else, but on June it looked somewhat charming. She waved to the captives as she walked up to the door.

Joel, for good measure, showed her that the door wasn’t working. June already knew this. This was the reason she was here. She rolled up her sleeves and grinned.

“Alright! I’m going to do my best to bust right on through! Stay out of the way!” June’s voice carried through the door much clearer than Joel’s did, but it may have just been that she was speaking louder. Dawn tensed up and cringed, holding her hands over her ears to block the incoming racket. Remy looked nonplussed and exhausted.

June’s shoulder met the door in a loud ‘BANG’ and the entire thing shook but didn’t budge. Though they couldn’t hear her words clearly, they could hear June hissing and cursing, probably rubbing her shoulder frantically like Dawn could so clearly see her doing in her mind’s eye. June psyched herself up again, shaking out her hands, and did another shoulder-check. This time, the cheap materials the door was made out of buckled, letting the wet heat from outside trickle in at the points that broke the seal between Inside and Outside, but it didn’t budge.
	Dawn and Remy could clear hear June saying things like ‘Golly gee willikers, that fucking smarts!’ and ‘Blast, shoot, damn, okay!’ before she told Joel to wait there while she went to go get someone else. Who that someone else was, Remy and Joel didn’t know. Dawn assumed it was going to be Jude.

“So...” Dawn says, anxiously picking at the skin beside her nails.

“I don’t think we’re making that meeting.” Remy says with exasperated disinterest, looking at the clock. 7:42.

---

Dawn called it. Jude is the next person to come up to the beaten door.

“Don’t worry!” He calls out to the trapped *damsels* inside, waving a crowbar he has for *some damn reason* so that they could see it through the window. “Help has arrived. You should have called for me sooner, this isn’t the first door I’ve had to jimmy open.”

That was a horrifying thought for Dawn and Joel. Remy seems to have already known this information, or simply doesn’t care.

The fork of the crowbar was placed right where the door latch should have been. It was hard to *tell* because of the damage June’s shoulder had already done, but Jude was fairly sure he knew what he was doing. He counted down, probably more for Joel and June’s sake than Dawn or Remy’s, but at ‘One’ he heaved and pried on the door with his full strength and weight.
It let out a loud ‘snap’ as *part* of it gave, bending the thin metal out around the door latch and popping the doorknob straight off. It shot pathetically, rolled, and dropped off of the third floor walkway and down into the ill-attended swimming pool beneath with a comical ‘sploosh’. Dawn and Remy could see the indignant expression on Jude’s face through the gaps in the door. Dawn smiled. *Jude did not.*

“Alright, once more!” He hissed as he buried the end of the crowbar into the door. He didn’t count down this time, he just *went* for it and pried as hard as he could. The mechanism busted, popping off internally and falling into the interior of the door. Jude gives a false, winning laugh as he hooks the curve of the crowbar into the open hole of where the doorknob used to be and casually tries to push the door open. It moves slightly before its warped shape catches the door frame and it doesn’t open. *All of the cold air is sucked from the room* and the heat of the morning replaces it. Remy just lays backwards on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Dawn’s heart breaks.

“Okay, this isn’t fucking working guys.” Dawn calls, immediately feeling even more uncomfortable in her alien clothes due to the incoming belches of hot summer humidity. “Can someone call the Front Desk? Or something??”

“Why don’t you do it?” Jude snaps indignantly, scored at the failure of the Door. He continues to try to pull and push it before it wedges so tightly that he can no longer even do *that*.

“There’s no phone in this room. Real high-quality Motel you picked, Joel.” Remy calls out flatly, gesturing around with a tired hand.

“I’m on it! Be back in a flash, just hold onto your knickers in the meantime.” June desperately wants to make a joke of ‘your own, not eachother’s’ but she knows it would only serve to upset Jude more and she didn’t want to leave Joel and the Girls to deal with that while she was gone. Peppily, she half-jogs off towards the stairs.

“I’m so sorry about this guys, it’s my fault.” Joel sounds defeated, his back is against the wall beside the door. The clock reads 8:05.

“It’s not your fault, you didn’t break the lock.” Dawn’s hands come up to unbutton her blouse, a thin layer of sweat already forming on her chest. “I shouldn’t have locked it in the first place, my bad.”

“It’s neither of your faults, it’s the Motel’s.” Remy, voice of reason, says with a slight hint of scorn in her tone. Dawn and Joel don’t speak again for a good, solid minute or two. The only reason either of them *do* start to speak is because Jude brings up his foot and kicks the door as hard as he can, which only serves to make him stumble-backwards and smash his ass into the balcony railing.

"Be careful!!" Joel shouts.

"Oh my god," Dawn exclaims.

"It's *fine*." Jude dusts himself off as he stands up straight again, glowering at the half-chewed door as though the look in his eyes alone could melt its metal.

“What’s going on here?” Another voice calls out from the stairwell. It’s Jean, dressed in full-on business wear in a nice-fitting business suit, their hair pulled back neatly. Their face is flushed red from the heat of waiting downstairs for Joel and the others near the ride.

“The fucking door is stuck.” Jude snaps, gesturing sharply with his hands. As Jean walks up, she waves to Dawn through the window. Dawn waves back. Remy doesn’t notice as she’s too busy counting the peaks of the stucco on the ceiling.

“Did you try removing the bolts?” Jean says as they pick up the crowbar, thumbing the end that Jude had ruined by stabbing it into the sheet metal of the door itself.

“The what?” Joel asks.

“The bolts, the hinge bolts. They’re usually on the inside of doors on public buildings like this. Dawn?” Jean feeds the crowbar through the broken seal of the door, raising their brows and giving it a slight ‘shake’ to indicate that they wanted Dawn to grab it.

*The bolts.* Of course it would take someone with more than two braincells to think of that. Dawn gets up from the bed and takes the crowbar, turning it over to get a better grip on it before she feeds the V of it’s end over the bolts of the door.

“Of course I did, I just wasn’t sure if Dawn or Remy were strong enough to pop them out.” Jude says as he adjusts his tie. *He hadn’t thought of that.* He fools nobody.

Within a minute, Dawn has the bolts out and *to the surprise of everyone but Jean*, the door manages to open outward with only a LITTLE bit of effort from the inside. Shortly after it swings, it falls over completely on its side on the walkway between the door and the railing. Dawn and Remy pour out just as June, Dell, Rich, and the lady from the Front Desk come winding up the stairs.

The Founders all make eye contact. After a tense and pregnant pause, fingers begin to shoot up to the tips of their nose in silent ‘Not It’ solidarity. Jude catches on far too late and he’s the last one to do it, something that makes his pale, freckled cheeks flush red.

“Fine!” He hisses, throwing his hands up.

He moves over towards the receptionist, pulling out the leather wallet from his back pocket and opening it in angry, sharp movements while glaring daggers at the other Founders around him. He’s on top of her in an instant, and her wide-eyed stare locks onto his cool blue eyes.

“*How much is the damage for the door?*”

The clock above the television reads 8:23.