This director needs to apologize

Chapter 170 Guessing Memory
Ashley directed her boyfriend to drive around the city. The two went to the school where Ashley attended and the pizza shop where she worked. Both places were very different from what Ashley described.

Her boyfriend couldn't help but advise Ashley, and Dr. Gro warned her to keep her mood calm. Being emotional is not conducive to the recovery of memory.

Ashley yelled hysterically, I don't need to restore my memory, I am Ashley, not Alice, the son of a bitch.

It was getting late and her boyfriend decided to drive home. Ashley insisted on going to another place and said that was her last request.

There is the secret base of the literary club that Ashley belongs to. It is actually a board game store. On the last Saturday of every month, the literary clubs hold gatherings there to share each other's newly created scripts.

The boyfriend parked the car in front of a store according to Ashley's instructions. After getting out of the car, the boyfriend looked at the shop with only half a broken sign in front of him and the surrounding neighborhoods that were almost deserted. He became even more suspicious of Ashley's words.

Ashley also looked surprised. This was obviously not the secret base in her memory, although the handwriting on the signboard was exactly the same as in her memory.

The boyfriend took out a flashlight from the glove box, and the two of them walked into the store one after another.

The cobweb-covered hall, the decaying stairs, and the dusty floor all showed that no one had been here for a long time.

Ashley followed her memory and went up to the third floor and entered a room at the end of the corridor. This was the fixed base of the literary club.

The inside was also dilapidated. Under the light of the flashlight pole, you could see dark stains and obvious hacking marks everywhere on the walls and floors.

The boyfriend said in disbelief, "Hou Li Crab, this is simply the crime scene of a chainsaw maniac."

The so-called Chainsaw is a famous B-level movie series from Nuts in the 70s. The villain in it who cannot die is a murderer who wears a mask and wields a chainsaw.

The familiar yet unfamiliar environment seemed to inspire more memories for Ashley, and she murmured names one after another.

"Monica, Joe, Guerrero, Ross Greene, Matt..."

Roar!
The sudden dull response startled the two of them.

Farke!The flashlight in her boyfriend's hand was frightened and fell to the ground. It flashed past the corner of the room away from the two of them, revealing a figure huddled there.

Ashley picked up the flashlight and shone it over, and found a rickety old man with disheveled and gray hair sitting there. He raised his head to face the beam of light, revealing a wrinkled face in front of the two of them.

Strangely, the eyelids of his two eyes, as well as his upper and lower lips, were sewn together.

The boyfriend held Ashley's hand and tried to run away, but the latter stood still and looked at the hunched figure in disbelief, or more specifically at the clothes he was wearing.

He is obviously an old man, but he is wearing a blue suit-style student uniform. There is a round school badge printed on the left chest. Below the school badge are eye-catching white letters, MATT (Matt).

It was through the clothes that Ashley confirmed that the old man was her classmate, Matt King, who was also a member of the literary club.

How did he become like this?
Ashley walked up to Matt step by step, knelt down and looked at him levelly, asking him if he still remembered her.

The boyfriend approached cautiously and told Ashley that this didn't seem to be the place to ask questions. It was best to send Matt to the hospital first.

Ashley agreed, and the two of them stepped forward to help Matt up, but found that he was chained to the wall pillar, making it impossible to even straighten up.

After the two discussed it, Ashley kept watch over Matt while her boyfriend went downstairs to get the toolbox from the car.

Not long after her boyfriend left, Ashley heard noisy voices, which seemed to be many people arguing fiercely.

A discernible call came from the corridor, and it was the name of the literary club member in Ashley's memory.

Ashley involuntarily walked out of the room and into the corridor. However, when she stepped on the corridor floor, the sounds in her ears became as erratic as they had been in the room just now.

She walked back and forth in the corridor several times, opening the doors to the rooms on both sides, but she still couldn't determine the source of the sound.

Suddenly, she was pulled out of a room by her arm. Ashley reflexively flicked the flashlight on her hand.

Someone came to use a tool box to set up the flashlight, and Ashley woke up from a dream. It turned out that the person who pulled her was her boyfriend.

The two reunited and walked into the private room of the literary club. When Ashley shined the flashlight into the corner again, she found that there was nothing there.

In disbelief, the two people ran to the corner and checked again and again. There was no Matt, no chain, or even any traces, just thick dust.

The boyfriend trembled and said, "There is something wrong with this place. How can there be empty neighborhoods in Los Angeles? There is not enough room for homeless people to live in tents."

The thick dust in the corner didn't lie, there was no one here, certainly not Matt.

Ashley was dragged out of the board game store by her boyfriend and put into a car. Then her boyfriend started the car and ran away quickly.

The boyfriend was thinking about it while driving. He felt that the two of them must have fallen into some kind of hallucination, which is why they saw the weird Matt at the same time. He suggested that they go to the psychiatrist Gro for consultation tomorrow.

But Ashley has been in a sluggish state, showing no reaction to her boyfriend's words. Her eyes keep flashing back to the scene of the previous literary club gathering.

After a cooperative adventure, Ashley gained initial trust in her boyfriend, so she revealed her confusion one by one, hoping that her boyfriend could help with the details.Ashley objectively analyzes the unexplainable situations that happened to her from a third-party perspective.

The only thing supporting the fact that she's Ashley is the rundown board game store, and Matt getting older.

Supporting the fact that she is Alice are the scars on the side of her thighs and her inexplicable ability to play the piano.

She used her imagination to make two guesses.

The first guess is memory implantation. Ashley's memory has actually been sealed for decades, and then implanted into the missing Alice's brain decades later.

This would explain why the neighborhood was run down and why Matt was an old man.

The second guess is that Ashley and Alice are two personalities of the same person. After Alice disappeared, due to some unknown reason, the second personality of Ashley was activated.

As for Ashley's background settings, they are all fictionalized by the alter ego, so whether it's home, school, or pizza shop, it's all different from what Ashley remembers.

As for the only board game store in Ashley's memory that is consistent with reality, it may be a place Alice once visited, where her personality was accidentally activated, and thus was fictionalized by Ashley.

Her boyfriend was also intrigued by Ashley's imaginative behavior. Not only did he listen with interest, but he also helped to check for omissions and fill in the gaps.

He pointed out that the first guess was to investigate the names of classmates in Ashley's memory. The neighborhood and board game store might be hallucinations, but the real people in other people's memories would definitely not be hallucinations.

The second guess is that you can go home and ask Alice's father if Alice has been to Los Angeles. He will definitely know.

The two returned home happily, only to find that their father, who was supposed to be home from get off work at this time, was not at home.

Her boyfriend said goodbye and went home. Ashley waited until late at night, but her father still didn't come back.

The next morning, her boyfriend drove to pick up Ashley to go to the doctor. Ashley told her boyfriend that her father had not returned home all night, and she was worried that something might happen to him.

But her boyfriend said with a strange face, "Ashley, didn't your father die long ago?"You have been an orphan since you came to town.

Ashley's expression changed drastically. Her boyfriend didn't look like he was faking it. He seemed to have really forgotten the conversation they had yesterday.

She rushed to the second floor and rummaged through her father's bedroom, but there was nothing belonging to men there.

Ashley had turned the whole house into a mess, and there was really no sign of a man's presence.

She remembered what her boyfriend said yesterday. People who really existed in other people's memories could not be hallucinations.

On the other hand, if it no longer exists in other people's memories, is this person's existence real or an illusion?

Ashley tried her best to calm down, pulled her boyfriend to sit down, and completely recounted yesterday's experience to him.

Only then did the boyfriend realize that he still had the memory of Alice's father yesterday, but when they met again this morning, he believed that Alice was an orphan.

He did not refute immediately, but took Ashley out and asked every neighbor and passing town citizen.

However, no one has the memory of Ashley's father, and it seems that this man has never appeared in the town.

The boyfriend looked at Ashley with a troubled expression. It was obvious who was real and who was an illusion.

Ashley yelled angrily, please use your brains to think about it, is it normal for an orphan to live alone in a big house?
The two got in the car and came to the police station, where they found Sergeant Joey for help.

Joey turned on the computer and asked Ashley for her father's name and Social Security number as usual.

Ashley was embarrassed because she had no memory of Alice and had no idea what her father's name was, let alone his Social Security number.

The former boyfriend and the townspeople knew about it, but now they have lost their memory of their father.

Ashley asked her boyfriend what Alice's last name was, and her boyfriend's answer was of course Graham.

After asking again, she confirmed that in her boyfriend's memory, Alice's last name was indeed Graham.

So, has Graham always been like this, or is he just like this this morning?
Unfortunately, this can no longer be verified.

Ashley asked Joey to search for Alice Graham. Police records showed that the name and address matched, and the family member was indeed blank.

After leaving the police station, the two people had no clue and decided to visit Dr. Gro as originally planned.

Entering Gro's office, there was no one inside, and the room was in a mess, as if it had been a fight.

(End of this chapter)