Roses Are Not Red

APOLLO III

Natalie walked into the room carefully and slowly. It looked like a regular office with a mahogany desk and a leather chair. There was a small shelf by the side that contained multiple books placed neatly in chromatic order.

The office was empty and as silent as a graveyard. Not wanting to make any noise, Natalie tiptoed further into the room. It was strange that sister Lily wasn’t in her office and the door was left unlock. Maybe she had forgotten to lock up when she went to bed. That was the conclusion Natalie had drawn in her mind. But where could Natalie find her? No one knew where her room was situated in the building, not even Natalie.

Natalie felt a heavy weight on her, like she had committed a grave sin by entering sister Lily’s office. She swallowed hard as fear creeped up her spine. But with the anxiety, came a little bit of excitement. She had to urge to look around and explore even though she should be scurrying out of the office. Natalie decided to indulge her excitement and walked towards her desk.

The smooth surfaced desk had piles and piles of documents on it. Despite that it was rather tidy. Natalie walked over to the chair and plopped down on it. It was soft and comfortable. Natalie could feel her bottoms sinking into it. She twirled the chair around slowly and her eyes fell on a cabinet at the end of the room. The first cabinet was open and a manila file was sticking out of it.

Inquisitively, Natalie got out of the chair and took long strides towards the cabinet. Her breathing got heavier as she took the file in her hand. The word “Apollo III” was written in bold fonts at the front of the file. Natalie opened it up slowly and gazed at the contents.

Her beating heart suddenly began to thump faster as her eyes fell on the picture of a young girl, a familiar face.

“Dawn?” Natalie blinked at the picture in disbelief.

It was indeed Dawn. Her name was written at the top of the picture with the number 46 written beside it, like a label. She was a part of the orphanage but left when she had turned eighteen. What was her picture doing here? She looked below the picture and saw a couple of written words. It was basic information about dawn, like her age blood type, birthday and whatnot.

“Clients: director Lu, director Chang....” Natalie said as she read the last line out.

Clients? Nothing was making any sense to her. She flipped the page and another familiar face came into view. This picture was a bit different from the first. The words deceased was stamped on her picture in red. Natalie’s hands began to tremble as the meaning of the word deceased rang through her head. She looked at the small writing below the picture and read it out loud.

“Time of death: 10:44pm. Cause of death: Opium overdose...”

Natalie exhaled, her breath unstable as she tried to piece together what she was reading.

The girl in this picture, with the deceased stamp on her face was Renee. She also grew up in the orphanage and she was friends with Natalie. Renee had gone to college, so what was all this about? Deceased? Renee couldn’t be dead.

Natalie flipped through the pages and all the faces she saw were all girls that grew up in the orphanage and had left when they had come of age. Each picture had different numbers beside the names. 54, 78, 32, the numbers went on. Natalie kept flipping through the pages as her heart kept beating faster. Some pictures had the same deceased stamp on it while some didn’t.

“STD infection, death by strangulation, death by abuse, death by suicide.”

Natalie’s eyes burned with hot tears. This couldn’t be all true. She had so many questions floating through her mind. Why did sister Lily own these documents? Were they true? Were all the girls in these photos dead?

A sense of foreboding began to crawl up Natalie’s spine. And then something clicked on her head. She had never thought to question it, nor did she find it weird. Every girl that left the orphanage never contacted them in any way. It felt like once they were gone, they disappeared into thin air. A question was probing in Natalie’s head, a question she didn’t want to ask.

Did all the girls really leave for college? Natalie pushed the question aside. She didn’t want to doubt the orphanage, furthermore doubt sister Lily after how much she had taken care of them. Natalie grimaced and kept flipping the pages.

On the last page was a paper filled with words. “Contract with Brentwood orphanage.” Was written at the top. Natalie skimmed through it, not comprehending every word that was written there. Her eyes stopped when it fell on a particular clause.

“Party B agrees to supply party A with merchandise to work as service woman in party A’s establishment.”

Natalie felt all the blood drain in her face as she went pale. She looked down and saw sister Lily’s signature at the bottom next to a red stamp.

“What...is this?” Natalie muttered as her voice trembled. She closed the document abruptly and placed it back into the cabinet shelf when she noticed a small flash drive inside the shelf. Acting on impulse, Natalie grabbed the drive and placed the file into the shelf properly, shutting it quietly.

Natalie’s ears perked up when she heard low mutters coming from the left side of the office. She followed the voices and tiptoed behind the bookshelf. To her surprise, there was a slim corridor and a door was at the very end.

Natalie kept walking on the tip of her toes until she was finally in front of the door. The door was slightly ajar, giving her enough room to peer in. With quivering lips, Natalie peered into the small slit.

The room appeared empty. She could see a messy bed, with clothes piled below the bed and a beside table. She could still hear the voices but they were farther away. A soft chuckle, low footsteps. A whisper, quiet chuckling and louder footsteps.

Natalie’s eyes went wide as sister Lily walked into her range of vision, naked.