[ WP ] You walk into your basement . There are two people tied up down there you have never seen in your life .

Jeljy heard the crash in the basement. He opened the door that led into it, went two steps down the stairs, found the light switch, and flicked it on. 
 
 The remnants of all of his failed ambitions and to-do lists were laying mostly undisturbed on shelves and in corners. The window overlooking the rotting garden, however, had been completely shattered. And so had the fence beyond it. 
 
 There were two other people besides Jeljy in the basement. One was a man in a United States Marshal's uniform and hot pants, trying to cut through the chain of his handcuffs with a pair of garden shears. The other was a woman in a hoodie from the local university, screaming her head off as the bulldog wrapped the leash around her body, barking furiously at everything he could see until he was clotheslined by his own collar. He fell backward, growling and waving his paws in the air like a turtle on meth. 
 
 `` GET IT THE FUCK OFF OF ME! GET IT THE FUCK OFF!'' the woman was screaming at the marshal. 
 
 Jeljy could n't react. He did n't know if he should. The half-bottle worth of Jim Beam was settling nicely in his stomach, and those stairs looked so steep. 
 
 `` Excuse me,'' Jeljy said. 
 
 `` I am a United States federal marshal,'' said the man in the marshal uniform as he tried to cut the chain with shears. `` If you do n't leave right now, I'll have you arrested under the pretense of interfering with law enforcement.'' 
 
 `` Ooookay then,'' Jeljy said, and left. 
 
 Throughout the night, he could hear screaming and barking coming from the basement, and he slept uneasily.
