ROOM 211

PART THIRTY SIX

42.

Two uniformed police officers enter the Open House Coffee House and order themselves a drink and a snack in the same moment when Mandy was paying a visit to her place of employment ensuring all was and is well. She, of course, has been granted time off to deal with the situation she finds herself in. The act of being a Good Samaritan has drawn her into something most peculiar.

She had woken an apparent customer who clearly was having himself a moment of difficulty and she offered him aid. Sometimes some things just are meant to be, and Mandy quickly found herself becoming attached to this fellow who could only go by a name handwritten on a takeaway coffee cup which had been resting on a table he was sitting or rather sleeping by.

A hospital visit came, he would be admitted, and she would come back to visit with him. In the time since, this coffee cup named fellow not only has been operated on but has also disastrously lost his life and his body too has since gone missing.

Sander is or was one of nine people who woke in various places within the same town on the same day all with the exact same affliction and it is growing ever more likely that their combined affliction came from the same ... same what? ... place of origin ... yeah that looks increasingly likely ... beyond that ... well that's the thing.

Mandy may not be afflicted like Sander was or as the others he was, and she is grouped with, are but she is in on this one hundred percent, and she wants to see it through until a conclusion comes if indeed a conclusion is at all attainable. Over the past few days, she has met with those others, those other eight afflicted partners, doing what she can to aid them in any way. In her own way she really is a partner too albeit and as we do know not an afflicted partner. So, when she sees something noteworthy, she will be both concerned and panicked and will report to the rest of the group, her group, to the best of her ability.

It was the police officers who took her attention and brought it to the outside of the store. Each officer had managed to take a bite out of the snacks they bought but they could not stay long enough to receive their coffees for as those coffees were being made a call came through their radio. The call stated to be on the lookout for twin males seen in the town center, twins wanted in connection with a robbery a number of months back, and at that orders are not to engage.

She watched as the officers left the store and she kept watching. The twins referred to in the radio transmission are members of said afflicted group, she has of course met them, conversed with them and has been adopted by them and each other group member into the group. With Henry, Archer, Bonnie, and Sue all out investigating, the other group members were free to do their own thing.

Flyers around town state that William is missing, he knows this as do the others so since as it would appear that he is just sixteen years of age, the best thing to do he feels is to remain in room 211 not wanting to risk unwanted attention and Maggie keeps him company and with what is about to be observed, Mandy will shortly be with both William and Maggie.

The twins had gone wandering with no idea that they would become the center of their own unwanted attention. They did take part in a robbery a few short months before their loss of memory would come and take them, and with that, their memory of that robbery vanished. They had no idea that they would be best served by laying low themselves. Misfortune is inevitable. It is not all so long into their wandering when a brief moment of mayhem would ensue.

An unmarked white police van pulled up alongside the twins and before they could react, a number of guns would be pointed right at them and both Red and Blue would be handcuffed and placed into the back of that van.

Maggie, having followed the police officers from her place of employment and having come close to the center of that moment of mayhem, attempted to get information but none was forthcoming so there was nothing other for her to do than head back to room 211 at The Mulberry Hotel where she would find more drama. Maggie would have herself a moment which would lead her to leave room 211 in somewhat of a daze and Mandy would have to go after her.

Red and Blue would be man-handled into a holding cell and left there for ninety minutes without so much as an iota as to why this was happening. For them, any kind of information was also not at all forthcoming.

The one pleasantry they were allowed while they had their stay in a cell was the removal of the handcuffs though once the ninety minutes passed, the handcuffs would once again go on and they would be escourted to an interrogation room, the same interrogation room Henry so happened to have visited the day previously.

On top of that, the two detectives who questioned Henry, both have come to this room on this occasion to confront the twins, as if somehow, they are also connected to what has been occurring over the previous number of days. Other than the twins initially questioning as to why they are here, a silence would descend and remain in this room for at least a couple of minutes, silence that is until a television and DVD combo player unit is brought into the room.

Both twins are seated with their hands cuffed onto the table before them, ensuring a certain degree of calm and play is soon pressed on the DVD player. What is shown on the television is that bank robbery in all of its glory along with the sight of each twin becoming recipients of more or less the same injury. The want to protest innocents would come naturally but how could either twin do that with the evidence presented to them and a lack of memory to attempt to deny anything both being so ... overwhelming.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for them, an opportunity to protest anything would not come for each twin would suffer a nosebleed at the same time. They would no more than get to look at one another before an equally overwhelming head pain would grip them both. With pain intensifying by the second, it wasn't long they each pass out.

There is no deception here. No attempt being made to escape the current circumstance. What is happening is very real. Brief mayhem once again ensues, and it is only a matter of minutes before both twins are carted out of the local precinct and into the back of an ambulance. An assumed destination would be that of the local hospital; however, neither twin would make it to the local hospital.

Mandy would witness something very similar, for her pursuit of Maggie after having returned to room 211 took her to the local town park. Weary of being followed but not of anything else Maggie would speak out.

'Who are you? What do you want with me?'

'Maggie, listen to me, I need you to come back with me to that room we both were in, you will be safe there, I promise.'

'Who is Maggie? I do not know that name.'

Her eyes, her voice, Maggie's fear could not be any clearer. In essence, she knows nothing in this moment; everything gives her cause to be afraid. Before another word can be spoken, she grabs her head with both her hands and falls to her knees. A pain has hit her not unlike a pain that has hit her once before only this time it is more intense and longer lasting to the point where it forces her to pass out.

Mandy cries out for help and pretty soon she is separated from Maggie as Maggie is taken into care or so Mandy assumes. Once again, a return to room 211 is made and that return is met with worry, dismay, and panic. The return is sluggish up to the moment panic sets in. From about fifteen or so feet down along the corridor Mandy can see that the door to room 211 is slightly ajar.

It is a shoe which prevents the door to room 211 from fully closing over. Upon seeing the shoe Mandy immediately thinks of William, and shock hits her when she finds him lying on the floor just beyond the door. Aid is once again called for and it isn't long before Mandy is sitting alone in room 211 with her head in her hands and tears flowing from her eyes.

She waits and waits for the other four to return and as day turns to night no return is made. Where are they? Why have they not returned? Has the same fate fallen upon them as what occurred to Maggie and William? And what of the twins?

Mandy has nothing, she has no answers, and she has now found herself in a position where she feels as alone as she has ever felt in her life. She has friends and family of course but could she really discuss anything of what she knows? Would anyone understand her? Would or could it be understood as to why this is as important to her as anything else she has ever had in her life?