Doctor Miller’s patients
The sound of horse-drawn carriages filled the village streets, hooves striking brick in a rhythm as old as the town itself. Emily, a girl of nine, had once loved wandering these lanes, racing the river that split the city in two. On good days she would crouch on the banks, watching silver fish dart through the crystal water, leaping now and then to catch flies.
But today she was not outside for adventure. She was dying.
Weeks of illness had drained her small body, and no remedy had eased her decline. Still, she clung to hope, the doctor had promised this would be her final appointment.
The clinic door groaned as she entered. Inside, the wood was cracked, the air threaded with cobwebs like ghostly lace. She sat in the waiting chair, facing the small inner door. Moments later it opened.
“Welcome, Emily,” said Doctor Miller, his weathered face breaking into a smile beneath a long white beard. At barely one-and-a-half meters, his doctor’s coat dragged behind him like a cape.
“No trouble with the spiders, I hope?”
“No, Mister,” she said brightly. “I’m a big girl. I’m not afraid of spiders.”
He beckoned her into the back room. “Good news. After today, no more suffering. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Yes, Mister,” she whispered. “The pain… it’s almost too much.”
“Then let’s be rid of it.”
He had her lie on the table, the leather cool beneath her. From a drawer he produced a needle long enough to make her breath hitch.
“Are you sure I need that, Mister? I’m… scared.”
The doctor didn’t answer. His hand settled softly over her mouth, tightening until the air caught in her throat. Her eyes widened as he set the needle aside and strapped her wrists to the table.
“Don’t fight me, Emily,” he murmured. “This is destiny.”
He gagged her with a towel, bent low so his mouth brushed her ear.
“You must be sacrificed. The Lord wills it.”
The needle slid into her arm. Metal bit her vein; a hot burn raced up her neck, into her skull. Her panic dulled, the pain faded, and a strange lightness filled her limbs. She floated, and then she was gone, as all of Doctor Miller’s patients were.
