ROOM 211

PART ELEVEN

14.

It is the smell that gets her first. It comes before the brain pain, before a nosebleed occurs and even before she properly wakes. It is the smell that causes her to wake. This smell is a burning rust kind of smell. Fire, is there a fire? She wakes to this thought and sits right up and then it hits, a horrible brain pain emanating from its core, its center and expanding out.

Her hands go straight to her head as if this can somehow ease her pain. Then there are the drops of blood falling onto her clothing. One drop, two drops, three drops, all slowly descending and then a number more falling quickly. She pinches her nose and fairly soon the bleeding stops. Does she need medical attention? Maybe, but first she has other things to deal with.

Where the hell is she? She does not recognize what it is she can see though somehow; she feels as if she has been here for some time. It looks somewhat different than what it should, darker and way too quiet, how can she know this if it is an unknown place.

She cannot tell of where this place is, and she cannot tell of how she got here. Oh no, oh no this can't be happening, a sudden thought strikes. Her heart is racing. She has no idea what is happening here. She is sitting up in a single bed, one bed within a rather large room with seven other single beds all in close proximity to one another and all to one end of this room, an opposite end to where a double set of wooden doors with glass panels are situated.

Something bad happened here though the place as a whole wasn't all so bad at all. This is something she more feels than knows and why this may be so, she had no idea. It is almost like something good or intentionally good led to something which did not quite go to plan. No point in racking her brain for information, such a thing would only make her head hurt worse.

There is a sound ... outside this room. Is someone coming? Quite possibly there is someone else close by. For some reason, for which she knows not why, her instinct is to hide. With the nosebleed having subsided, she gets out of the bed and hides beneath it. Someone is at those double doors. A chain rattles and a door opens.

An older balding man casually but grubbily dressed, stands there for a moment taking in the sight and smell of the room though being silent and under a bed she can only see the ends of the trousers and the shoes to which he is wearing. Does she know this person? She cannot tell and she has no intention of attaining a view of what this person may look like.

This unidentified fellow steps into the room and drops what appears to be a heavy set of chains and fairly soon he moves on, though she waits a few minutes before coming out of hiding. When she has come out from under the bed, she sits atop of it for a moment. Her head still hurts of course but not quite as intensely as it first had, bleeding has not returned and when she tries to think she is troubled by an emptiness.

Nothing is coming, not even her own name, something like this is frightening enough on its own and it is compounded by the eeriness of where she is. But there is that glimmer of something about this place and at that it is hopeless to even try and bring something back. There is a sense of abandon here as if something happened, as if something went wrong and was left behind, abandoned instead of being aided, or rushed even. The right thing would have been to at least try to put things back together but what things? What was it that went wrong? What happened in this place?

With the fear she feels or maybe because of the fear she feels, there is a need to get out of here. She has to get away. Have others gotten away from here too? If so, then why hadn't she? The clothing she is currently wearing is a black vest like top with what once were white shorts. There is no footwear on her feet or by her bed, if it is her bed she currently exists by, there should be something near but there is no footwear, or much of anything else, in the immediate vicinity.

This place, this particular room is grubby, dull, and dirty, it hardly has always been this way. Thoughts return to that of a possible fire as there is a moment at this point to consider the thoughts of a fire. There is no evidence in the immediate vicinity of a fire nor is there evidence of there having been one. There is no smoke to be seen so the smell may for the moment be put down to some unknown quantity and what she can see of this place looks old and unkempt.

All things included or put aside, her need to get away is indeed strong but there is a sense too that she may feel guilty for leaving or maybe to a possibility that she may be punished for leaving, so has she been a prisoner or a willing resident of sorts? Is this why she felt the need to hide a moment ago? That her actions may be punished? Had she been kept here against her will?

A song begins to play in her head, a song which seems to fit this room as if it were emanating from a voice within this room. A song, vocals only, no music, words echoing out through a female voice, a voice perhaps not her own: -

My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
My Bonnie lies over the sea.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean.
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me.

What is going on here?

Time to make a move but to where? Is it even possible to get out? Whomever came to the room a moment or so ago, are they still here as in being somewhere close by? Are there others still here too? Slowly and quietly, she moves to those double doors. This room she is in is dark-ish though out in the hallway beyond is darker and the glass panels are so dirty it is difficult to see anything beyond those closed over double doors.

To get out of the building she first needs to get out of the room. What happens if and when she does get out? That can be worried about when the time comes, right now she cautiously opens the right-side door, having no idea what to expect.