Amnesia From The Shadows!

Chapter Four: Crowgrove Mansion, 2023.

When I opened my eyes and saw the butterfly woman and the bird man standing on both besides of me they each had an arm of mine in their hands. I was supposed to go home with Cho, but now it seems I’m caught up in a struggle between those three. Again I was too caught up in my own thoughts that I didn’t hear them both talking to each another. I finally snapped back to the situation at hand when they decided to leave this hill and go to some hideout. We left in a rush but not at supersonic speed. I was glad that wasn’t the case because that was frightening. We flew for about an hour when we landed in front of this big house. It looked like a mini mansion painted white with a brown roof. There were no shutters, so it’s modern and as I stared at the house I realized that I started to remember all these things and I wished they were with Cho. I am so scared that she is in trouble and I can not help her I begin to panic so I managed to blurt out “Hey! We gotta go back! My friend Cho was supposed to pick me up from the hospital and could be in trouble after all that happened!” They looked at me and then at each other when the bird guy spoke, “I’m sorry but we can’t go back. I’m positive they’ll be fine though. This Cho person may come looking for you at that hospital but she’s an unwanted target and they never go missing. The people that want us would tail them to find 'their' escaped targets of interests but would still leave the…” he trailed off for a bit as if he remembered something that haunts him even now. His voice was average and he stood about five foot and eleven inches tall. His hair was black with red tip dye. His outfit was like something out if an anime with red and yellow as the main two colors and a harness like thing that was ash grey. He had on black combat boots which I am sure are steel toed and his pants has like two or four extra pockets like cargo pants. Then he continues as if he never went silent. “…innocent ones alone. It’s best if they do that anyways. It helps keep them a low profile. What they are doing isn't really legal anymore.” immediately after h finished a hard knocking sound filled the silence of the awkwardness that was going tension so thick you might’ve been able to cut a donut out of it. I looked over at the butterfly woman and she was holding her balled up fist with an annoyed look on her face. “Is that really how you try to calm someone down?!” Her voice sounding familiar with every word she spoke. She looked at me and had a different expression on her face. She looked like she was about to take her other hand and smack herself. She instead smacked the bird guys arm and motioned him to continue with comforting me. Because that's what he was apparently doing. He placed his arm around my shoulders and motioned me to fallow. His words didn’t really give me comfort however but I had to take him at his word since I'm now their new captured person. We walked towards the mansion and up the five steps. The steps and railing were made from white marble so they felt smooth and soft in my hands, the door is made from a dark brown wood and the door knob is made from what I would say is fools gold. The mini mansion, as it is, has four pillars standing in front of the building holding up a mini roof. I’m just now remembering the outer design of an old library that was once a temple of Artemis and that is what this mini-mansion looks like. I walked through the doors to go inside the building and the inside was amazing. The wall decor was this fancy looking flower pattern and the floor had this octagram star in every tile with smaller octagram stars in each of the four corners. The windows had red velvet drapes tied with golden ropes at the mid range to the ends of the windows to let the sun light in. After admiring the glistening shine of the inside from the sun's rays I noticed that there were other people standing at the foot of the steps that leads to the second floor. The butterfly woman was talking with all seriousness in her posture. They seemed to be discussing something about how the doctor was acting and how the group that came in to rescue me made a big scene. One of the newer people that is standing with the others stepped forward and said something that made the butterfly woman's posture change from seriousness to aggressive and that’s when the woman that reminds me of Cho got loud and defensive so I walked over to get a good look at her when someone came up from behind me and grabbed my shoulder. It was a new guy that had on body armor and a reptilian suit. He stood about six feet tall with an athletic build. When I looked up at his face I turned fully around and stumbled back a couple steps when I noticed he wasn’t wearing a reptilian body suit under his armor. He was a lizard humanoid creature! With my right arm leveled to my stomach and my left arm leveled to my head and shock on my face and throughout my body causing me to be unable to move or speak he held up one of his clawed fingers to his lips, if you can call them those things lips, and winked at me asking me to keep quite. He then walked a little to my right passing me as I stumbled a bit more to my left as he approached me out of the uncertainty of what was going on in his mind. He walked up to the group and cleared his throat and presented his hand towards me saying something quietly where I couldn’t hear and everyone nodded and split up in different directions. The woman who reminds me of Cho said something to the bird guy who shook his head and came up to me alone and stood in front of me. “So hey, I'm sorry if my reassurance didn’t help calm you down. I wasn’t trying to make you feel more worried for your friend. So, um, you must be tired after all you’ve went through. We have a room ready and set up for you. It has a shower and bed, got a TV so you can surf the channels to find what you would like to watch. If you would like to fallow me and get the key to your room I'd be glad to show you where it is.” He said this with so much sincerity that I believed him. Hoping that he wasn’t using some sort of power to manipulate me I followed behind him a little ways off in case I needed to run if I felt unsafe. We walked to the other side of the stairs where there were keys hanging in a tin box that was on the wall under the stairs. He grabbed a set of keys and closed the box. Handing me the keys he motioned up the stairs. “Here you go. This set will let go in and out if the front door as you please and the other key with it goes to your room. Now I know you have the urge to run out of the doors right now but I would like to explain that while you are here you’ll be safe but no one will stop you from running. If you do decide to run you can also keep those keys with you as they are yours from here on. So if you need somewhere to go in your time of need you’ll always have this place here to call home.” In awe I stood there puzzled on how he knew that. I couldn’t figure that out while still have that lizard man on my mind. I looked at the door and back at the keys in my hand and thought, if I were to leave where would I go? As far as I can remember I dont have a place to ran to and if I did the doctor that was acting strange and who creeped me out so much and could be looking for me there if I did run there made me question where would I be the safest. Especially since after what this bird guy had said when we arrived outside about Cho. I am still very concerned and worried about her. It doesn’t help that the woman with anger issues who also seem to not want anything to do with me sound like her. I pondered everything for a bit and realized that if I were to go out on my own I would definitely be in worse trouble with that psychotic doctor rather if I were here I'd have a greater chance to survive. So instead of leaving I looked back at the bird guy and nodded my head to let him know I am staying. He looked puzzled for a bit but then motioned me to fallow him up the stairs. The stairs and floor were covered with a basic red carpet that felt good on my feet even with shoes on. The hallway walls was a brown wood that had photos of strange beings on them as if they were actual pictures from a fantasy world. Humanoid creatures and goblin like people, as well as dwarf looking people that gave me a strange feeling of belonging that made this all too freaky. I haven’t thought about where I should go before all this craziness happened. I was hoping that Cho would let me crash at her place unless I would be intruding of corse. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel about all this though. A tiny bit of relief that I might not have to worry about that Doctor again did rush over me however. After a couple of minutes of walking down the hallway the room I was given the keys to was wide open. There was all the things the bird guy said. The tv the bed, the door to the bathroom in my room was open. The only things concerning my room that were on my mind was is that my personal bathroom or is it joint to another room and is the kitchen somewhere else? As if he could seince my thoughts the bird guy turned to me and motioned me to go in while saying, “You probably have some questions about your room but all I can say is that 'yes' that is your personal bathroom. There are rules to it though and once you get settled into your room you can come down to the kitchen at dinner time which is six o’clock we can explain them to you.” The last thing he said as I walked into my room was “I'll close the door for you so you can have some privacy. Your lock is on your side of the door so don't worry about anything or anyone getting in if you don't want them to.” He then shut my door an I heard his footsteps fade off into the distance. I walked over to the bathroom and saw that the TV that was placed on the dresser was big. Like so big I could be in the living room big. Then I noticed that the TV wasn't “placed” on the dresser it was hanging on the wall. That blew my mind! Now that I think about it, I thought to myself out loud. I walked back over to my new dresser and saw that it was huge itself! It had about ten or more drawers! I know I can't remember everything just yet but to me right now I am blown away. I left the room to go to the bathroom as originally planned and saw that the bathroom was a white tile walls, the floors were white square tiles with grey X's connecting corner to corner and a black diamond in the middle. The sink was also white with a silver faucet and a a nice light grey counter. The shower walls were the same but what I assumed a typical shower bottom would be if it’s different than the out side floor. there was a rack on the side of the shower with grey towels of two different kinds where one was larger than the other. the smaller one was closer to the sink and the lager one was closer to the shower, so I'm guessing that means the larger one would be to dry my body after a shower and the smaller one would be to dry my hands after I wash them. Now looking at the sink and the shower I realized there's no areas to “use” the bathroom. I looked and felt stupid immediately after slightly closing the bathroom door to find the toilet behind the door in an area separated from view by more tiled wall from the sink. Then my stupidity I see in myself grew when I also realized that the door didn’t have to be mostly closed to see the toilet. I trned on my shower head adjusted the water temperature to how my body liked it. It came to find out I like my showers to be steamy. I looked around inside the shower and saw shampoo that said it works in elves and half-elves too. I thought it was some kind of theme or something that the owner of this mansion is doing until I went to undress and found out the truth…

*****

Walking over to the toilet putting the lid down I lifted the pretty pink sweater dress i was wearing over my head to place there so I dont get it wet or ruined it by any other means when I roughly brushed my ears by accident and felt a small tinge of pressure shooting from the tip that felt elongated to the lob of my ears. In shock from the sudden feeling I turned around and walked over to the mirror. With my arms still in the sleeves of my dress to hold it in place so nothing changes by me walking a couple steps as I looked at my reflection and was completely paralyzed. For just a moment, though brief to others but felt like hours to me, I could not move. I couldn’t even find my voice when I saw the creature that stared back at me from my reflection. I stood there not knowing if I was scared or shocked over the person that started back at me with the same expression as me. When my stiff trembling lips, clinched jaw and fast beating heart was slowly preforming back to almost it’s regular functions I was capable of performing both movement and vocal skills as I once had. Instead of throwing on my dress again and running to someone for help to understand what I had just witnessed I shouted in a squeal that even I didnt know I could do. I fell down and all the light and color started to fade into black.