The Sweetbriar Slayer

Chapter Seventeen: An Apple a Day

Aurelia shudders.

She sees the street number she is looking for on a nicely kept, whitewashed building: 1312, and quickens her steps a little. She steps within a door painted Physician's White emblazoned with two winding snakes, and is met by surprisingly cool air- the kind that only comes with very, very thick walls, this time of year.

She steps up to the front desk and gives her assumed name to the receptionist yawning at her post. The woman hands her a stack of papers- more papers Aurelia has to sign without reading to keep up the pretense.

"Do you need help with that, Sugar?" the woman asks, and Aurelia nods. She sits with the stranger and invents a medical history. Once the receptionist has finished jotting down all of her information, she hands Aurelia a pen. Aurelia signs Sera Baliem's name on the dotted line, unsure of what exactly it is she's signing for.

"The doctor will meet you in the exam room," the receptionist says, leading Aurelia to the back of the office.

The walls are as thick as ever, the air still blessedly cool. The receptionist hands her slim file over to a nurse wearing Physician's White. Aurelia strips her dress and underwear off when the nurse instructs her to, and dons the standard paper medical gown she is perfunctorily handed.

The nurse offers her a tight, polite smile, and vanishes, closing the door to the room behind her as she goes.

It clicks.

Aurelia frowns, hops off of the exam bed, the paper gown she wears crackling and rustling as she does. She crosses to the door, and finds that it is locked from the outside.

There are no windows here, no way out save for the door. Why would the nurse lock her in?

Aurelia paces the room, holding the gown together at the small of her back as she feels the air brush against the bare skin there. Beside the examination bed, there is a metal tray laden with instruments she hadn't paid much attention to when she arrived. They flash silver in the light- hooks and blades. A full syringe sits beside them, ready and waiting to be used.

Aurelia reaches out, picks up the syringe, twirls it between her fingers. She presses the needle against her fingertip, and then barely- just barely- depresses the syringe. If it is an ordinary shot she will feel nothing except perhaps a slight burn; if they mean to kill her with poison, the amount will be just enough to feel a fraction of its effects.

She flexes her fingers, shakes her hand, but nothing happens.

She shrugs a little, sets the syringe down, thinking that she has, indeed, cracked beneath the strain of the week.

Maybe this office simply locks the doors because they don't want patients to wander around the building?

She moves further around the room, opens a few of the cabinets, finds them filled with standard physician's supplies: gauze, tape, cotton balls, bandages, glass thermometers, jars of pre-ground herbs to be used in capsules and poultices.

There is a glass sink in the counter below the cabinets, a bottle of soap and rubbing alcohol sitting on its edge.

Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to indicate any sinister reason for being locked in.

Frowning, Aurelia turns back to the exam table, hops back up. The paper of her gown bunches and crinkles as she does.

Something catches her eye, and she glances downwards, and finds that the exam bed has foldable arms, which are currently locked in the down position. Odd. She leans over the bed, runs her fingers down along the arm, feels the grainy texture of leather, the smooth slide of steel, beneath her fingertips.