ROOM 211

PART SIXTEEN

20.

In a silver-coloured car, a vehicle which at one point in time perhaps was worth quite an amount of money, two men awake, one about fifteen or so seconds prior to the other. The vehicle is off-road and within a slight ditch. One of these two men is in the driver's seat with his head resting upon an expanded air bag. The other fellow is in the passenger side seat and has no air bag cushioning him.

The fellow on the passenger side is slumped forward a little despite the fact he has a seat belt on and the right side of his forehead has been cut. The apparent vehicle driver awakes first and right away is hit with an almighty headache, a pain which emanates from the center of his brain moving outwards to hurt the whole head.

He obviously is the first of the two to groan and it indeed is not long before the second groan comes for both men are feeling the exact same kind of pain, well same kind of inner head pain at least. The driver notices the air bag first then notices his companion. 'Who are you?' he asks when his brain pain begins to let up.

'I can ask you the same thing' comes the reply in the same groggy pain filled voice.

'Where the hell are we?'

There is something in the speech of both men, but they continue a moment or so before referencing such a thing.

'Some sort of ditch by the looks of it ... my friggen head ...' the fellow in the passenger seat says while trying to attain what is outside of the car. He sits back into the seat and clutches his head with both his hands as his headache flares up.

'Did we crash?'

'No ... you crashed. You are the one in the driver's seat.'

The driver reaches for the in-car mirror. 'The crash, if there was one, is not our only problem.'

And such comes the reason why the conversation sounds as if one man is doing all the speaking despite the fact there are two men.

'Yeah? And why is that?'

'You and I ... we are the same.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'I just got a look at myself. You and I look the same. We have the same face. I do not know who you are ... hell I do not know who I am. If you are feeling the same way ... I'd say we have quite a few problems.'

'Ah hell ... I'm sure you hear it too, the way we sound ...'

'Can you move? I feel like crap, and I have an air bag to deal with. No air bag for you, and your head and nose are bleeding.'

The fellow in the passenger seat touches the space between his nose and upper lip. The nosebleed is only a trickle though the head wound may be a little bit more.

'I think I can though I am unsure' he opens the passenger side door and falls out onto the ground.

'Hey' says the other fellow as he opens the driver's side door and moves on to exit the car. He stumbles a little but doesn't fall completely and soon finds himself capable of making it all the way around the car to aid his ... twin ... up off the ground. 'Anything broken or damaged?'

'No' he says patting himself down. 'I'm good ... I guess ... so what the hell do you think is going on here? Where are we?'

'Your guess is as good as mine. Do you remember anything, anything at all?'

'We both are capable of speaking, we have that much. Should we call for help, an ambulance or police or something?'

'And tell them what? We have crashed a car, maybe not crashed but I can't tell if we have hit anything or not. Whatever happened we could have been stoned for all either of us know. If neither of us need immediate aid, maybe, we should leave things be for the moment. Maybe something will come back to us. Besides I don't seem to have a phone, do you?'

'No. there might be something in the car. We should see what we can see before deciding what to do next.'

'Sure.'

'You've got yourself a bit of a nosebleed now too.'

'Ah hell ...'

This initial search yields nothing, no phones, no identification, no personal belongings. There is money but not very much and what money there is so happens to be on their persons. Between the two of them, their finances will not take them very far and there are no clear signs of ability to be able to attain more cash. The car itself is right side up and indeed by look alone does not appear to have hit anything.

It is well off-road though and possibly has moved through quite a bit of shrubbery and has come across some rough-ish terrain and down somewhat into a fore mentioned and slight ditch so maybe it hasn't taken all so much damage.

Before making any attempt to get the car up out of the ditch, something in any circumstance would not be so easy, he who had been in the driver seat moves back into such a position that he might see about possibly starting the car. No luck, engine chokes, car quite possibly will not be going anywhere for a while.

'What now?' one asks the other. 'Back to the road and hitch a ride?'

'To where? And who would take us looking like this. We both are groggy and messy, and there is some blood too. We could ne murderers for all anyone can tell.'

'I sure hope we aren't though for sure we can't even tell that much.'

'Yeah, you said it. C'mon, we'll give the car another once over in case we have missed anything.'

Yeah, it would soon appear that they had missed something on that first search. In the glove box compartment there is a gun, a revolver and it is loaded. The twin with the cut on the forehead vomits, possibly out as much as an emotional reaction as a physical one. There is something else too, a white envelope with The Mulberry Hotel ROOM 211 handwritten upon it. Inside the envelope there is a passport and apparently it does not belong to either brother.

***

A knock comes to the door of room 211 at The Mulberry Hotel.

'Who is it?' Henry calls out.

'Archer ... open up.'

Henry does open the door and is right away taken aback. Archer has companions, two of them, and they are identical to one another, almost, one has a gun, and the gun is pointed at Archer's back. All three enter the room and Henry is directed to move close to the others as too is Bonnie who initially is shocked into quiet though as she sits at the side of the double bed with her back to everyone else, apart from the newcomer twins, she begins to talk quietly to herself.

'What's wrong with her?' asks the twin with the gun.

'She doesn't like crowds, or people much in general and she doesn't like confrontation' says Henry.

What happens next takes everyone aback. Bonnie stares at the wall and begins to sing.

'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.'

The twins look at one another.

'We know that song' speaks the one with the gun.

'It is quite popular' says Sue.

'No, it's more something familiar, as if it relates to what is going on' says the other twin and Sue knows exactly what he means.

'As if I have heard her sing this before ...' Sue says.

The gun is put down. These people in this hotel room, along with at least one other, are all involved in the same thing or at least something very similar and this becomes clearer all the more as time moves on. If they are connected prior to memory loss, then how is it that they manage to reconnect so quickly within their combined loss? This is no time for any of these people to be held hostage by any of their counterparts. It is a time to work together and find answers if this is at all possible.

Despite the white envelope and its contents which one twin currently possesses, there is that bit of familiarity with the fellow going by the name Archer. Why is he going by that name? The contents of the envelope are not going to be revealed, not right now at least.