"Please, I want to call my family, they'll be worried"
"Of course, of course, but first you rewrite the season." Brittany threw Ryan's notebook into the fire and cheerfully placed a fresh spiral bound pad onto his lap. "Rewrite it" she repeated with a desperate smile and a half-crazed look in her eye. At that moment, Ryan thought with a slight grimace, she reminded him of Rachel Berry. She patted his writing hand and skipped out of the room.
Quietly Ryan watched his ideas turn to ash in the fireplace and ruminated on how to proceed. He tried to move his legs. The right one was sore but would probably bear his weight, the left one jolted pain all the way up his spine as he shifted it under the sheets. He cried out, a small, surprised wail which prompted footsteps from the hall. There was no way he could walk on that leg, he wondered whether it was broken or just fractured. Brittany strode through the door.
"What's wrong? Have you finished?"
"It's been fifteen minutes."
"Yes, and? Have you finished?"
"No. I haven't even started. I will not rewrite the season. I won't do it."
Brittany pursed her lips and stormed out of the room. A minute later she reappeared wielding a sledgehammer.
"Write it or I will give you a matching set of legs." The hammer was slung high on her shoulder, she was swinging it slightly, testing the weight, judging the distance between its head and Ryan's shin. Ryan's eyes were wide with fear. He made an involuntary strangled noise in his throat.
"You wouldn't" he whispered, more to himself than to his captor. She raised her eyebrows and smiled before bearing down quickly with the hammer. Ryan screamed and the hammer's head missed his leg by an inch.
"Rewrite it!" Brittany straightened up and readied the hammer.
"Okay, okay! Please don't-"
"Fantastic!" she beamed and let the hammer rest on her shoulder "Would you like some tea?"
…
Ryan worked quickly throughout the afternoon writing a version of Glee that would please his maniacal captor, all the while knowing that he would revert to his original ideas once he was free from her clutches. To his surprise, the new storyline came easily; he found that after a while it practically wrote itself.
"Miss Santana?" he called as soon as he had finished. She appeared almost instantly, wearing a set of pyjamas adorned in a hundred tiny silhouettes of the object of her obsession. He held out the notebook to her and she clasped her hands together and squealed with delight before snatching away the notebook greedily. She read quickly, her eyes darting back and forth across the page. "Good, good, mmm hmm, yes…" she mumbled as she walked to the armchair and sat down.
A few minutes later she looked up with a serious expression. "Mr Murphy." Ryan could not read her face, his palms began to sweat. She continued, monotonously "May I call you Ryan?"
"Umm…"
"Ryan, you really pushed us Brittana fans to the limit. We waited years for one kiss, for Brittany and Santana to become an item. We waited patiently and then you snatched it all away faster than it had taken to arrive. It was cruel. And then there was nothing. And after a lot of nothing, Brittany married Sam." She cast a dark look towards the dartboard "A lot of us really lost our heads over that one."
"Hmm."
"And you know, there was more; more cruel plotlines and painful episodes but, you know, this," she shook the notebook in her hand "this," Ryan was nervous, was what he had written enough? A smile broke over her face like the sun appearing from behind a cloud "this makes up for all of that! Thank you. Thank you, thank you!" she skipped across the room and hugged him. As she stepped back she wiped a tear from her eye. "Now, who do we send this to?"
"I- excuse me?"
"You heard me, give me the email address! Oh, and obviously I'll need to send it from your account otherwise it'll look suspicious."
"But, it's not finished, I-"
"Do you think I am that stupid? I know you're planning to dismiss this version as soon as I let you go. So, just tell me where I need to send this beautiful script, okay? Or do I need to go get the sledgehammer again?"
That was when Ryan realised what had unnerved him so much, even before the sledgehammer incident, about the girl that stood before him: her smile. It was such an insincere, forced expression but somehow it reached her eyes, emphasising the frantic desperation twisting and knotting beneath the surface. It made him feel like he was teetering on the edge of a bottomless pit. 'A bottomless pit filled with loved-up cheerleaders,' he thought bitterly, 'she would probably love that'. "No sledgehammer" he managed thorough slightly gritted teeth. Resigned, he reached out for the pad "Here, I'll write it all down."
…
Brittany Santana sat in her armchair composing emails and drinking peach snaps. When she was done mailing out the improved draft she excused herself and went to make dinner. Ryan heard the first few bars of Songbird drift in from the kitchen and groaned.
"What did you say?"
"Oh, nothing!" Ryan said, startled that she had heard him "I think maybe your computer made a noise, maybe we got a reply?"
"No, it doesn't do that." She checked regardless. "Hey! We did get a reply! That was fast!" she silently moved her lips as she read the email. "Oh Ryan!" she turned to face him, her face glowing with glee. "Oh, Ryan, they love it! They really love it, they want the full script ASAP, isn't that wonderful!"
"Wonderful!" Ryan mimicked with about as much enthusiasm as the couch he was sat on. Overjoyed, Brittany Santana danced and sang her way back to the kitchen and Ryan heard the distinct thud of a dart hitting a board.
…
The next morning there was a fresh notebook on the table next to the couch. Ryan sighed and then called out to his captor.
"Good morning," she called back as she walked into the room "is everything okay?"
"Well, actually I was just wondering if I could write the script on my laptop, that's how I always do the final draft and that way you wouldn't have to type it all out again."
Brittany Santana narrowed her eyes slightly and began to hum "hmmm… no."
"No?"
"No. You'll send an email. Send for help. No." she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. Ryan picked up the biro with a prolonged sigh.
…
That night Brittany Santana gushed over the episode Ryan had written, crying ugly sobs as she read and reread it, whimpering a little as she typed it up and mailed it out. An hour later she received an email and gasped. "Ryan! You'll never believe this!"
"Mmm." He grumbled stoically. Brittany carried on as if she hadn't heard him.
"They loved the episode so much that they are restoring season 6 to a full 23 episodes! AND they want two more seasons! We did it, Ryan! We really did it!"
"Two more seasons?" Ryan repeated quietly with a thousand yard stare. He felt like he'd just lurched headfirst into that pit. He hardly even saw Brittany reach into the large bottom drawer of the desk, did not see the iron manacles in her hand. His mind spiralled down, deep into the earth, the room he was in was suddenly insignificant. "Two more seasons." his eyes burned with the threat of tears. He watched numbly as the manacle was fastened to his wrist, lifted his arm until the chain became taught and the other iron bracelet clanked against the metal support of the couch. His mouth fell open in shock, he raised his head and gazed upon the smiling face of his captor.
"Looks like you'll be staying with me for a little longer than expected!" she beamed.
The tears spilled down his face, silent tears of despair "Please let me go home."
"Oh, goodness, no, we've got three seasons to write! You're not going anywhere for quite some time."
Ryan's head span. As he looked up into the face of the crazed girl standing by his side he broke out in a cold sweat. His heart hammered in his chest, his face contorted and he screamed for all he was worth.
"Now, now, that won't do any good," Brittany Santana said quietly as Ryan thrashed and hollered "there's nobody around here for miles." She smiled and straightened his covers.
"We're completely alone."