Chapters Where am I? It was the first thought that came to Aloe Vera blossom's mind. The young spa girl looked down at her self, she wore a pure white nightgown with yellow spa sandals, the kind customers to her and her sister's spa were given. She looked around and could hardly believe where she was; the floor was solid black tar, no tiles, no hardwood, just disgusting black ooze that had solidified, the walls were ugly grey stone slabs, and she wasn't too keen on the chains hanging down from the walls. That coupled with the constant drip, drip, drip, of water from out of the dank and dark of her surroundings, and the girl only wanted nothing more to get out of this place. Aloe placed her hands on her chest to steady the beating of her excited heart, she tried using her thoughts to calm herself.
'Easy there Aloe girl, you must be having a bad dream, yeah that's it this is all a dream.' She realized that and it seemed to calm her some, Aloe was a very skilled lucid dreamer, years of meditation and reading guides written by both the spiritual and scientific side on the subject. being in charge of a spa that included such 'treatment options' will do that, but some things didn't make sense to the girl. For as good a dreamer she is, how and why was she dreaming of a place like this? What did she do to dream herself into a Gothic dungeon complete with chains and water running and flooding the halls? Maybe it was that bad batch of brown sugar mochi she had for a late night snack, or maybe it was letting her friend Cecil Mineral, Bath take her to see that midnight screening of that Dr. Jekyll movie. She told herself again and again that it was all just a bad dream, but no matter how hard she did, she couldn't wake herself up.
The hallway was bathed in harsh red light, it was hard on her eyes as she made her way to a door at the end, it was a bamboo reed door like the one's at the spa. Aloe reached out to the handle cautiously wrapping her fingers over the cold metal, and then opened it with a long loud CREEK! She found herself in her spa's receptionist room, the same white desk with the wax tropical fruit bowl on it and scented candles, and that tacky pineapple phone. Aloe had once made fun of Lotus for buying that phone, now if she would wake up, she'd tell her that phone really livens up the spa. The receptionist room was deathly silent, the usual hustle of the guests waiting to be serviced had a rather...chilling effect on the girl. Almost as if a place like this was never meant to be so...silent. She couldn't see anything but darkness beyond the glass doors of the entrance, but she cautiously took a step by step over to the desk, maybe it would her wake up, maybe not. As Aloe passed the reception desk, the pineapple phone began to ring. The loudness of the ringer rattled every bone in her body and racked her nerves, sending icy chill up her spine.
Aloe calmed herself down and slowly reached out taking the top of the ''pineapple'' detaching the earpiece, she lifted the phone to her ear and took a deep breath before softly saying...''Hello?'
''We're sorry, your call has reached a dead phone...please hang up.'' The operator voice sounded so...sad and almost apathetic at having to say the words...but it was just a recording...wasn't it? Just before she hung up Aloe heard another voice.
''Don't hang up!'' followed by loud scratching static.
''Hello?! who is this!?'' Aloe shouted into the receiver in a mix of desperation and fear.
''Al...*buzzt* oe, listen to me!'' some poor voice was calling to her, ''don't...*buzz* open spa at....*buzz* for ladies...*hiss beep! beep!* everyone will...*hiss* I see them al dea....'' and then it was just a busy signal, no voice, no cries, nothing. She hung the phone up as again tried to wake herself up.
''It's alright darling Aloe, you'll wake up very soon.'' a faint but familiar voice said prompting Aloe to forget her fear as she opened her eyes.
''Rarity?'' She asked smiling at the idea her best friend and number one customer was there. ''Oh Rarity it's so nice to finally...'' She was stopped mid sentence by the sight before her, Rarity was not her usual ivory white shade with violet hair. Instead a good portion of her skin was a red color of blood; Rarity's skin was crackled and even peeling in some places, clearly Rarity had been scalded with extremely hot water. The girl had blobs of yellow where her skin had boiled her. Worst of all, she looked at Aloe with dead cloudy white eyes and her lower jaw just hanging by sticky, sickly strands of red and yellow cheek tissue.
''You know Aloe darling, you really should have someone fix that steam room controls, someone's liable to get.'' Before she could finish, her jaw fell off and hit the floor! her tongue loped and flopped against the roof of her mouth still forming the words...''hurt.'' That was the last straw, Aloe opened her mouth wide...and screamed.
The sun went down over the outer limits of Canterlot City, Darkness of the evening slowly creeping over the houses as children were called in for dinner, last second workers pulled into their driveways to their homes, and a line of females had gathered outside the Blossom Sister's Spa. Normally at this hour the the Blossom family would be closing up the shop for the night, as a general rule the place closed at sunset, after all it was a "day" spa. Tonight however was a special night for the first few customers that could be at the door by six o'clock. It was the idea of the two sister Aloe and Lotus who had pitched to their parents a few weeks ago, and after proving they could handle it by spending every extra hour at the place to show dedication (and test scores from school that showed all A's) the elder Blossoms felt they where ready to let their daughters do what they had planned.
The glass front double doors of the spa had a special sign tapped up to it, in big block letters with clip art of spa amenities it read:
Canterlot City Day Spa presents:
Ladies Night!
This Friday be the first eight customers at our door for a special "Ladies Night" all night treatment with Aloe and Lotus, all services provided on full service package charge. Hurry! only the first eight guests will be admitted! Ladies only!
So now while there was a line by the doors as the day quests where shown out, Aloe stood by the door with her clipboard in hand, almost like a bouncer admitting guests to a nightclub. The quests from the door that were going to be admitted where as follows: Rarity, Fluttershy, (A very reluctantly in attendance) Rainbow Dash, Fluer De Lis, Cadence "Mi Amore" Cadenza, Laurie Lemongrass, Sydney Sapphire, and Nancy Night. Aloe took the eight girl's names down on her clipboard, and after promising the others that couldn't join them, that if this first night went off without a hitch, then more guests would be allowed next time. The eight girls entered the spa and went off in their own directions to take advantage of everything the place offered. While the elder Blossoms sat their daughters down in the reception area, Cherry Blossom looked from one daughter to the next, before clearing her throat and turning to her husband Almond Milk.
"Are you sure the girls are ready to handle this kind of responsibility dearie?" The light pink woman asked her almond brown hubby.
"Now now Cherry, we agreed a week ago if the girls held up their end of the bargain they could do this on their own." He said throwing his brown coat on over his white pressed uniform.
"It's just...with the guests who arrived being their friends from school, I can't help but feel we're just letting them use our spa to throw a slumber party." Cherry said as she got her own coat off the rack and checking her purse to make sure she had everything she needed. The two sisters shifted a bit in the chairs behind the desk they'd been seated at. Truth be told, though they had their friends pay for the services all the same, that's more or less exactly what the girls had in mind. They only smiled as Lotus helped her mother to the door as Aloe gave her father a hug.
''Oh daddy, you and mum worry to much, Just let Lotus and I handle everything okay.'' Aloe said showing her folks the door.
''Okay but remember, If you need us for anything, we're just a phone call away.'' The Blossoms left, Lotus turned to her sister and clapped her hands together squeeing happily.
''Oh Aloe! What shall we do first?'' Lotus said hugging her sister close. Aloe wanted only to go off with her friends and sister and get the full on treatment to relax and get her mind off that bad dream, but she decided to wait a little while in reception area. If only to make sure everything she saw last night was just that, only a dream.
''Actually sis, if it's all the same with you, I've got some papers to finish up before I join the girls, I'll be along as soon as I can okay?'' she said taking a few of said papers onto her desk.
''Okay sis, whatever floats your boat, just don't take too long working okay?'' Lotus said opening her uniform shirt up and making her way to the door labelled ''steam room.'' Aloe sat watching the glass doors and taking in every detail on the outside she could. Watching the dark streets for anything that looked out ordinary. It seemed like ages had gone by before finally the mundane silence was broken by the ringing of the spa phone.
"Hello?"She said into the receiver and waited on baited breath for a reply, because baring the lack of red light, this was like major deja vu of last night's dream.
"Are you still open?" A voice, as cold and icy as the grave said on the other line. It was as if the caller had razor blades slithering like snakes put his mouth with every word he spoke.
"I'm sorry sir but we're only accepting female clients this evening, and our capacity quota is full...so technically...we're closed." Aloe said into the pineapple phone.
"Oh, I see. That's how you want to run your business than fine." He said coldly his voice dripping with contempt and spite at the girl.
"I..can set up an appointment for you to come in tomorrow and..."
"That won't be necessary, I understand perfectly what kinda spa you run...really fitting you're talking into a fruit phone!" He snarled back at her through the earpiece, but his words being dead on that the phone aloe was using was shaped like a pineapple made her blood freeze cold.
"How do you know what my phone looks like?" She said hoping to every deity she knew that this was someone's idea of a sick joke.
"I know a lot of things about your place, like how you really should get someone to fix the thermometer on your Steam room." Aloe slammed the phone down on the receiver, ran to the front doors and checked to be damn sure they where locked tight. Before making a dash down the white tiles of the spa halls to the steam room her sister had gone into. She faced the door and banged on it hard screaming,
"LOTUS! ARE YOU OK IN THERE?!" Hoping and praying desperately she wouldn't have to Jimmie the lock only to find her poor sister boiled alive in the over heated steam.
"Damn aloe! If you want to use the steam room so badly there's more than enough room for the both of us you know." Lotus said opening the steel door, she had changed into a light pink bikini to sit in the steam and relax, only for her sister to come banging on the door as if there was an accident. Aloe despite not being dressed for it, entered the steam room and checked the temperature . It was on the dot at 100 degrees, not hot enough to cause burns but only 20 more degrees and the skin would start to peel and the skin would register a pain sensation.
"Sis? are you...uhhh...I was just making sure the water and steam wasn't too hot." Aloe said blushing hard. Lotus scoffed but then chuckled softly and even though she was very sweaty and damp from the steam she wrapped her arms around her sister and gave her a big hug. She softly patted her back and made a little coo, the way she did when they where little.
"I know you're shaken up from that dream last night, but that's all it was Aloe, a dream. I'm not about to let anything happen to you or any of our friends, and most of all. It's my job to be concerned about you, not the vice versa...I'm the older sister after all." She said giving her sister a little kiss on the forehead. Aloe Chuckled relived a bit.
"Only by a day sis..only by a day, just...promise me you'll be careful in here?" She said checking the door making sure the lock wasn't busted, couldn't get blocked by something on the outside, and the room could be vented if it got too hot inside.
"I promise." Lotus replied stroking her hair softly before giving her one last little hug, "now go enjoy yourself okay? WE and our friends have the whole spa to ourselves all night."
"I'll try." Aloe said before making her way back to the desk, she checked the lock on the doors one last time and, making sure no one could see (though really she wasn't so self conscious she'd care if her friends did) she stripped down to her bra and panties and opened a door to the room marked, "Mineral baths." Not minding the fact that her undergarments would have to get sopping wet so she could have a nice soak.
She didn't she out into the darkness of the empty street, couldn't see the pair of sickly yellow eyes hidden by a long blood red scarf wrapped around the figure's face, and the black fedora hat that he wore low over his eyes. The man watching inhumanely intent on the spa building itself, like a thousand yard stare seeing past the walls to what he planned to do. A wraith in the darkness, he silently seemed to float on air as the shapeless yellow eyes and flowing red of his scarf moved across the ground. It was time.
Laurie "Lemon grass" stretched her arms put in front of her, the high dive of the pool had never frightened her. The girl was know among her peers to be one that looked at almost every situation her life threw at her and faced it all without fear. She placed her toes over the side of the board and took a long drawn out breath. With one graceful motion, she dived.
HE watched her from the glass of the sliding door into the spa pool, his red bloodshot eyes following her as his long ebony coat and blood red scarf fluttered in the chilly autumn breeze. He'd wait until she stayed under the water for a deep dive then he'd make his move.
The air rushed in her ears, her organs shifted as she took the plunge into the icy pool water. There was a heater built in for the winter months, but she found the bitter cold, bracing. The water sent icy electric shocks through every nerve and pore of her body, the deep end of the pool at least twelve feet to the bottom. Her long brown hair billowed behind her as she swam down and over the dark floor of the pool. The silence granting her peace unlike any ever felt before.
He slide the glass door to the pool open slowly as he saw her disappear under the water, his big black boots splashing the puddles of pool water as he took cover in the near darkness of the pool. Foolish girl, she was making this almost too easy. He ducked behind the bleachers as she surfaced and looked around, the lights had been kept off save for the flood lights in the pool itself, her splashing and another dive made it so she didn't hear the rescue hook being lifted off the shelf it was kept on. When Lemongrass broke the surface again, she was greeted with a metal loop smacking her on the skull, the loop wasn't solid enough to cause much pain, but the shock of being hit and the tip made her see flashes of light as she went under and he nose filled with water from not taking a proper breath before going under. In spite of the pain and daze of the blow. She struggled to the surface.
She felt the metal bars of the ladder to climb out, and desperately tried to do so while ignoring the searing pain in her skull. when she got the water from her eyes and could see better, the last thing she saw was a large leather boot kicking her square in the face. The boot had a steel toe in the tip, which made her taste the metallic, salty taste of blood in her mouth before feeling two hard loose bits spit from her mouth into the water. The attacker's kick made her lose four four teeth. Meanwhile he circled around the pool surface side trying to see where she'd break the surface again. Before drawing from the depths of his ebony garb a long shard of broken glass mirror. The shard cast the reflection of the pools lights as he reached down and grabbed Laurie by the long hair. He pulled her from the surface and she coughed up more blood and water still blinded by the chlorinated water and her pain.
"No...Help! let me GO! ALOE LOTUSSSS!" her last words came out as raspy huffs of escaping air as he ran the glass shard across her throat. There are two the things movies get wrong when someone dies like this, if they aren't screaming for mercy, than there's always a thin trail of blood slowly weeping down a slit throat. Well you see, such isn't how it works to really die this way. First off, the broken Trachea cuts off any sounds escaping save for a horn like gasp and wheeze, second, as evidenced by what was happening now. There is always a gush of thick DARK red blood. The spray that spurt from Laurie Lemongrass' neck was like the nozzle on a sink getting turned up to high. The jets of hot red sprayed and floated on the surface of the pool water as it turned bright orange red from mixing with her blood. Jugular vein and carotid artery spewing the vital carrier of nutrients and oxygen as her body shut down in panic from the loss of everything her precious blood provided.
When he was certain she was dead, he lifted her body out of the water and held her in the air by her still dripping neck. His almost faceless form gazing into her cold, dead eyes. It would be a while before this one would be found, and when the other girls did, there would be a few more lost at his cruel and sadistic hands.
Sisterly love...and protection.
''Aloe!'' Lotus screamed at the top of her lungs as she opened the door to her bedroom, The ocean blue girl flung the door open and ran in the dark to her sister's bedside. The pink slightly younger sister was hysterical and in tears when she felt her slightly older sister place her arms around her, the way she did when she was a little girl and had a bad dream. Only those dreams never involved best friends having been boiled alive in the sister day spa sauna from hell. ''shhhh, It's okay Aloe, big sister is here now.'' Big sister was a bit of a misnomer, both the Blossom Sisters where twins technically, as they had the same mother over the course of the same pregnancy, but the thing is, not only was Lotus born first, on November 30th, Aloe was born a full twenty four hours later on December 1st. Big sister, twin sister, to them it didn't matter, all that mattered was they were sisters who had a deep and tangential love for each other.
''Oh Lotus!'' She said crying as she held her sister tightly as if she was afraid the nightmare would come back to her if she let her go. '' I had the most horrible dream!'' She said as Lotus lovingly stroked her sister's hair.
''Do you want to tell me about it?'' She said as she dried the tears in her eyes.
''I...I can't, it's too upsetting, just...just do what you used to do when I had bad dreams...if you don't think I've grown too big for it.''
''You're my sister Aloe, you'll never be too big too be safe in big sister Lotus's bed.'' She didn't mean it ''that'' way. Just that they'd comfort each other to make sure the bad dreams wouldn't come back. ''Do you still have?'' She asked as her sister reached under her pillow and pulled up a green stuffed pony toy with a lime green mane. She didn't understand why, but she felt a strange and yet...familiar connection to the toy.
''Still got Seaweed wrap after so long.'' Aloe said smiling as she got out of her bed and her sister lead her down the hall to her bedroom.
''You are so lucky you didn't wake mom and dad up sis.'' Lotus said as she crawled into bed, her sister cuddling beside her, seaweed wrap tucked under one arm.
''Let's just go back to sleep okay?'' was all Aloe could reply with. Aloe wrapped her sister and herself up in the blanket and they held each other in a tight embrace. Seaweed Wrap was nice and snug between them, just as he had been all the other times Aloe had a bad dream. The bad dream faded as her warm bigger sister held the (slightly) younger one close to her, her companion and Seaweed acting as guardians that keep the bad dreams away. So what if they where of age with part time jobs at their parents Spa? The sisterly love they had was sacred, no matter the girl's ages. Aloe relaxed and before a much better sleep came to her; she said, ''it's over.''
No it isn't Aloe; the terror, has only just begun.
