Revisited: Part Three

      "I'm going with you!" yelled the Blumaroo.

      As soon as they were out of the room, the Aisha moaned, "They're going to leave us all here to starve, alone." The pet broke into tears. Although the pet did seem to be genuinely scared, Jenny couldn't help but be overly amused by the pet's statement. Starve? They were in the kitchen! And besides that, there were 7 of them, so they most certainly weren't alone!

      The Gelert leaned over to Jenny and whispered in a gruff voice, "Seems like a bit of a scaredy cat, eh?"

      Jenny laughed and whispered a response of agreement.

      "Like," spoke up the Usul, "I think we should, like, get out of the kitchen. Maybe we should all, like, try to make our way to the, like, front door." Even though no one could see each other due to the dark, Jenny was still 75% sure that she was still trying to look at herself in the mirror. Proving this, she next said in a very frustrated voice, "I can't see my mirror! ARGH!"

      "I agree," the Aisha said nervously, sounding like she was still across the room in the corner. "I sensed something very wrong about this house from the moment I entered."

      "That's because you can't even keep yourself together when the lights go out!" scoffed the Gelert.

      "Yes, we should try to go to the front door. But, in order to do that, we'll need some light. Does anyone have matches on them?"

      "No," everyone issued in unison.

      "Of course not," sighed the Kyrii. "No matter, I've got an idea. Does anyone remember seeing any wooden spoons in any of the closets?"

      "I do," replied Jenny.

      "Great! Jenny, if you can, feel around in the closet until you find one!" he commanded.

      "Ok!" she yelled, moving slowly toward the closets, arms outstretched to avoid bumping into anything. Before she could get to the closet, she heard several rattling sounds coming from them, but she simply assumed that one of the other pets was also looking for a spoon. Once reaching the closet, it was only a matter of a minute or two before she found what she had been looking for. "Eureka!" she shouted as she pulled it out. She shuffled slowly back to the group, her eyes now more adjusted to the dim light.

      "Thank you," said the Kyrii. Even through the darkness, Jenny could see him moving toward one of the stoves. He turned one on and lit the spoon over the open flame, creating a torch. The group sighed with relief...at least until they looked over and saw the Xweetok sneaking up on all of them, carrying a fork! As soon as he noticed that he had spotted them, he tried to hide the utensil behind his back and quickly dropped it, trying to look nonchalant.

      Quickly dismissing the event, everyone came back together in a group and silently snuck out of the kitchen, intending to look for the front door. "Shh," warned the Gelert as they entered the hallway.

      "Which way?" whispered the Usul, finally taking a spilt second remove her attention from her compact and look at the group. The Gnorbu shrugged in response.

      "Let's go this way," suggested Jenny. "I think I remember walking from this direction to get to the kitchen." They tiptoed in the suggested direction, making the smallest amount of noise possible. Now they were walking past a small study, and they all froze in their tracks as they heard a wooden board creak the way wooden boards typically creak when someone's walking on them.

      "AHHH!" screamed the Aisha before one of the others in the group finally clamped their hand over her mouth to silence her.

      "Quiet!" the Kyrii whispered harshly. "You don't want them to catch us, do you? For all we know, that could have been one of us that made that board creak!"

      "But it wasn't," protested the Aisha, sounding on the verge of crying. "The sound came from inside that room," she wailed, again being quickly reminded to quiet down. By this time, however, the rest of the group was ignoring her and had started walking again.

      After perhaps five more minutes of walking, the group finally found themselves back in the foyer. Unfortunately for Jenny, her hooves still clicked against the wooden floor, and she had to slow down to minimize the sound, falling slightly behind the rest of the group. Eventually, they all managed to reach the front door, arriving just in time to see lightning streak across the sky. It was beginning to storm. The Aisha whimpered and whined, "I don't like stormssss." By this point, the rest of the group was getting extremely tired of her.

      The Gelert tried the doorknob, but just as they had all been half-expecting, it was locked.

      "Isn't there a way to unlock it?" asked Jenny, straining her eyes to try to see the doorknob more closely. Thankfully, the candles that had been lit in the chandelier were still burning, giving some extra light to the room.

      "I can't see one," said the Gelert worriedly. Then, suddenly, the doorknob yanked itself back into the door, and the empty space was filled with a steel covering. Everyone stared in shock. "We've gotta get outta here," the Gelert said once he found his voice again.

      The pets all nodded slowly and nervously, wide eyed. Jenny was about to suggest that they check all the windows, but the Kyrii was already doing just that.

      "They're all locked!" he yelled back.

      "Quiet! You, like, don't want them to find us, do you?!" returned the Usul in a voiced whisper.

      "What difference does it make? They obviously already know we're trying to escape. If the Kougra and Blumaroo were going to return to the kitchen, they most certainly would have done it by now and found us gone."

      "Let's check the other rooms, then," spoke up the Xweetok for the first time that night.

      "Yes, but on the second floor," said the Gelert, who was clearly becoming the leader of the group.

      "Second floor? Why?"

      "Well, my assumption would be that the owners of this house are on the ground floor. If we go upstairs, we've probably got a better chance of not running into them. Come on."

      Jenny gulped but followed him toward the staircase in the corner of the room. Somehow, this wasn't exactly what she had expected when her sister had handed her the address to the house.

      On either side of the vast foyer was a curved staircase leading up to the second floor, each a mirror image of the other. Both were made of a dark wood, and a soft dark red carpet ran down them, which thankfully minimized the sound made when the seven went up the stairs. The staircases led to a sort of balcony on the second floor. A banister ran the entire way around, and one could look down into the foyer from the second floor while standing on the balcony. All of the pets darted into the nearest room they could find, hoping that it had windows.

      The closest room happened to be a bedroom, complete with a queen sized four-post bed covered with white sheets and no comforter. A U-shaped rug ran around three sides of the bed. On the other side of the room was a large wardrobe. Standing there, Jenny could almost imagine...

      ...a young female Lupe standing next to the wardrobe in the dim light of a lit candle sitting on her bedside table. She was looking for something in the wardrobe, but Jenny wasn't sure what it was. It wasn't nightclothes, Jenny knew. The Lupe was already wearing a long, lacy nightgown and looked ready for bed. After digging through nearly all the clothes hanging in the closet, she turned to walk toward the bed. As she turned, the candlelight glinted off something around her neck - a locket. A servant then entered the room, carrying a hot water bottle.

      "Thank goodness you got rid of that horrible Blumaroo! I do wish he'd stop bothering you,"

      "Oh, me too," sighed the Lupe, climbing into the large bed.

      "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll leave you alone soon enough."

      "He'd better... Hey, what's that at the window?"

      "At the window? ..."

      Interrupting the daydream, the Aisha wailed, "Noooo!" The group had made their way over to the windows and pulled back the heavy red velvet drapes, only to find that the windows were covered with thick iron bars.

      "We need to check the other rooms," said the Gelert, walking toward a door on the opposite end of the room. "Hey!" he yelled back. "It looks like a hallway! There aren't any windows in here, but it looks like it's connected to another room!"

To be continued...