Atlantian

Becoming Atlantian [6]

Chapter 6

To say the cleaning part of the day was simple would be an understatement. Aubrey had never been through anything so invasive, well besides the cervical smear test she had a few months back. This was a whole new kind of invasive for her though. Every inch of her body was scrubbed raw before she was told to jump into the first of three pools.  The room was big enough for a large swimming pool but had instead been divided up so that there were three round pools each shining in the sunlight filtering through a hole in the roof. A stream passed into each of the pools, topping them up with clean water while a hole visible in the bottom of the pool no doubt drained away the excess.

Dipping into the first pool, Aubrey felt her face flush in an instant and her hair become a frizzy mess. The pool was stiflingly hot and made her head swim at the sudden heat but she didn’t get a chance to protest before a huge brush was being scrubbed over her body, a fragrant soap soon filling the pool with bubbles. By the time she was allowed to get out, Aubrey’s skin had finally managed to achieve the same colour as her hair for she was now decidedly red and resembled a very cooked lobster.

An arm tugged her to the second pool which didn’t even have a wisp of steam rising from the glassy blue surface. She turned to ask the stern looking woman behind her if it was hot or cold but chubby hands just pushed her into the water. Kicking to the surface, Aubrey spluttered and took deep gasping breaths as she tried to recover from the freezing temperatures all around her. It had soothed her red raw skin and left her entire body tingling but, at the same time, she could feel her fingers going numb.

Teeth chattering against each other, Aubrey glared up at the short, stout woman with a eyes that could burn through metal. The woman was unaffected; she curled her lips up in a sickly sweet smile though her eyes told Aubrey that she was enjoying this more than she should.

It was another two minutes before Aubrey was pulled from that pool and allowed to get into the final pool. The water was tepid, barely at room temperature but against her frozen skin it felt like it was steaming hot and she let out a sigh of relief. She did wonder briefly if it would kill her with the cold blood rushing to her heart but then she remembered that she was already dead and something like that was hardly going to affect her.

The water swirling around her smelt like her favourite things, vanilla, rose petals and freshly cut grass. For a geek she loved the scents of outdoors though she was never one to spend a lot of time out there because of her fair skin and the chance that she would burn or worse get skin cancer from over exposure. Besides she never wanted to look like those old people with leathery skin, it was gross and was definitely not worth looking tanned over.

“Out,” The horrible woman’s voice barked at her. Aubrey was momentarily astounded by how gravelly it was and wondered briefly if the woman was a 40 a day kind of woman. She didn’t get to mull over it too much because to iterate her words, the woman wrapped her fingers around Aubrey’s arm so tight that it would probably leave bruises and then proceeded to pull her from the water. Trying not to blush at being exposed to the world, Aubrey took the offered robe and quickly covered herself up from the searing glare of the woman.

The pile of clothes that the matriarch had given her, were then tossed in her direction and without being told what to do, she quickly slipped into the clothing. It was strange because there was no bra or panties in a manner of speaking, the support she needed was sewn into the clothing but she had never felt so exposed because of it.

The top was a weird black tunic with red leather sewn over top to create a low cut but extremely comfortable sleeveless top. Aubrey desperately tried to pull the top upwards to cover her cleavage which looked fuller than ever but, because of the way that the top had been designed, it fit snugly to her body like a second skin and barely moved an inch. The bottom was no better; she had the choice between weird warrior skirts or some trousers. Not liking the idea of going commando and giving everyone a free show, she opted for the black and red skin tight leather trousers. These two were made up of two layers of clothing; the red leather attached to the bottoms was made up of panels so that they were easy to manoeuvre in and wouldn’t split at the slightest movement. Aubrey still wished for a pair of panties though, even granny pants sounded good to her at that moment.