A Series Of Different Events

Chapter 18 - Search for sugar

"So, what does The Sugar Bowl even look like?" Violet queried Adrianna as they
stepped into the horrible hospital. The walls were just as grimy as the outside, a thick layer of dust and mould and faint red stains. The stake, stuffy smell of rot and sickness hung in the air, creeping into anyone's head like a evil fog.

After raking her eyes around the front room, Adrianna responded thoughtfully. "Blue, I think, with ornate patterns of gold. Fits in both hands well."
Violet nodded. The other Firestarters still hadn't reached the building, and Adrianna walked over to the receptionist.

She was a small, timid-looking woman, who took one look at Adrianna's dark robes, her charming, sinister smile and those blank, void-like gray eyes, and grabbed a plastic bag and started, much to the pairs confused amusement, hyperventilating. The woman held up a spindly hand.

"Aha, I'm sorry about that. My name is Babs, head of paperwork, hospital administration and.. party planning. What are your names?" She clutched a clipboard to her chest as previously as Violet held Sunny.

"I doubt we'd be on the list," Adrianna said, leaning forward. She glanced at the clipboard and Babs laughed nervously again.
"Ahhhaaahaha.. well, no paperwork record no entry, I'm sorry.."
"Oh. Well, it sound like a terrible paperwork mistake, don't you think?" Adrianna smiled, as her eyes burnt into Babs.

"I-I don't think s- eek!" Babs let out a squeaky, high pitched noise of terror as Adrianna took her clipboard from her. She took the plastic bag and started hyperventilating.

"Of course, just a typing error. That's all. A typing error." Adrianna told Babs slowly, and Violet saw her subtly slice the phone cord with a pocket knife under the table. A spike of concern hummed through Violet. Surely Adrianna wouldn't hurt Babs?!

Babs nodded as she lowered the bag.
"Yeah, yeah..t-that checks out..!" She laughed nervously, and paled as the rest of the Firestarters walked through the double doors with a dramatic bang and creak of hinges.

"Well, I-I'll just be in the other room!" Babs cried as she rushed through a door into a storage room and peeked through anxiously. The Man with a beard but no hair smiled.
"Thankyou, Adrianna."

She lit up at the praise. The Woman with hair but no beard looked around at the signs.
"Everyone, form groups. Or go alone. I really don't care, just find. The. Sugar. Bowl." She looked around the group, everyone nodding. A few of the Firestarters hovered towards eachother, not wanting to face the terrifying hospital alone.

Violet looked at Adrianna, neither of them keen to split up either. Adrianna gave her a nod and they started to go in the direction of one of the doors. Violet opened it slowly, craning her head around the icy metal. The dank atmosphere seemed to increase as they entered the narrow, stuffy corridor.

"Right.. well, where would we find a sugar bowl?" Adrianna smiled, as she looked at the signs. Violet shrugged.
"I suppose we just look in each room and hope for the best."
Or the worst. Violet was still suspicious about the situation.

The pair walked through the corridor, sticking close together as the fuzzy, flickering lights didn't make any favours on the green-tinged shadows and figures that danced around the edges of their vision, and Violet wondered if it was haunted.
It probably was.

They opened all the doors in that corridor, looking around the cluttered storage and rummaging around the boxes of paperwork, or a few sorry beds with lonely, ailing patients fading in the little, ugly rooms.

There was no luck in that corridor.

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Kit, Klaus and Sunny drove for what seemed to the youngest Baudelaires as days. But the sun has hardly shifted position in the sky, as he rested his head on the shaking window.

"How did you get to know my parents?" Klaus smiled at Kit, feeling a warm sense of comfort he had lacked in weeks.
She sighed, and Klaus wondered if he had asked the wrong questions. But she answered it.

"Me and my brothers, aswell as your parents were all in an organisation together. It was noble, until the schism. It spilt into two halves, of noble and wicked, people who wanted to extinguish fires and those who started them," Kit explained, the car definetly speeding as they raced down the empty roads, "My youngest brother got on very well with your mother. They quickly became friends through their love for poetry and reading."

Klaus smiled at the thought, imagining his mother as a child, reading with Kit's brother.
"What is your brother called?"
"Lemony. He was called Lemony." There was a bittersweet loneliness in her tone, and Klaus felt like those series of questions were over. His fingers traced unknowingly over the L.S on the spyglass.

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"Ughhh, I thought this would be easyyyy.." Adrianna complained as she and Violet walked through corridor after corridor, searching for The Sugar Bowl. But there was no trace of it.

They kept walking, jumping at the flickering lights and spooky shadows until they reached two large, rusty doors. Violet pushed through them, and they were met with the sight of large, metal pillars in organised rows with labels on each section.

"It's.. like a library," Violet said, as she admired the neat, simple organisation. She walked over to the nearest, her shoes creaking on the floor and her footsteps echoing around the spacious room. She opened it, and was surprised by the paperwork, the files in each, with everything from balloons to bones, bombs and bachelorhood. That was only B.

"Maybe we can find The Sugar Bowl in S?" Violet looked up at Adrianna as she shut the door, who nodded.
"That might be worth a try."

Together, they searched for the S cabinets, and knelt down by it. Ruffling through there was nothing sugary except a recipe for shortbread, but something did catch Violet's eye.

She did a little double take, flicking back to that file. The Snicket file. Why did that seem so familiar? Violet started to pull it out, dusty with age, her fingerprints leaving clean marks from where all the fluffy was pressed off. Adrianna rolled her eyes.
"We don't have time to read things. Come on, I want to win!"

Violet frowned, but put the file back. It wasn't important. (Oh how wrong she was).
"But it's not a competition?"
"Sweet, dearest Violet," Adrianna said, her dark eyes looking straight through Violet, "It is Always. A competition."

Somewhat unnerved as Adrianna just smiled and kept walking, Violet followed quickly behind.
Little did she know, her younger siblings were headed straight towards them, to "save" her.