I Love When Characters Lie To Themselves In The Complete Privacy Of Their Own Minds

She presses a cup full of tea into the hands of the woman - no, the girl, she’s far younger than she is - who sits across from her. She expresses the appropriate amount of worry and concern.

‘What on earth were you doing in the garden at such a time of night?’

‘Is there anything particularly bad that led to this? I might be able to help.’

‘No, no. I insist that you remain here. It’s just good manners.’

‘Well, nothing’s more important to me than being polite and courteous.’

The girl glances at her, perturbed by her words. Nevertheless, she accepts the comfort they offer.

It changes nothing. If she wanted help, she should have done it properly, knocked at the door and asked politely. Maybe then Ophelia would have done something more. She could have given her some money, or a room for a few nights, or snuck out and killed her terrible partner or whoever, or solved any and all of her problems.

She doesn’t know or particularly care. If the girl wanted her to pay attention, she should have asked nicely.

As things stand, regardless of the cup of tea she sips from, or the borrowed coat she has draped across her shoulders to keep out the cold, or the reassuring words Ophelia smothers her in, she has been rude.

She is a trespasser, and none of the kindnesses of guesthood apply to her.

Ophelia asks her to stand and follow her. Leads her to one of the many guest rooms. This one is centrally located and well-appointed. Despite the regular use the room finds itself in, it is clean and spotless. No stains or marks on any of the carpet or bedding or upholstery.

The girl thanks her. She is praised for her humanity, for her kindness, for her politeness.

She is self-aware enough to know she only has one of those qualities.

She closes the door as she leaves. She turns and checks it. She shuts and closes and secures every one of the deadbolts and locks and mechanisms that will keep the trespasser confined.

She walks briskly to her boss and informs him of their new guest for the night.

The next evening, there are new flowers in the vases that line the hallway.

The next evening, there are new flowers in Ophelia’s hair.

The next evening, that guest room is empty once more.

princegirls are for having their tendons severed and being forced to crawl around on the ground

this manga understands the nature of being a 6'2 girlthing like literally no other

If you are a vampire NEVER feed from someone named Richard. 400 fucking years and everyone still calls me Dick Sucker

awesome beach near me

‘May I have your name?’ I enquire.

‘                 '

It rings hollow. It disgusts me. It is a lie, and there is nothing we detest more than lies.

But it proves that he is a fool. So I demand more.

‘May I have your assistance?’

‘Of course. Anything you want me to do.’

So his fate is sealed.

I ask him back to mine. To tidy up and arrange the place. To help in my work. Of course, he is inept at first. He was not raised to place flowers in vases, or use a broom, or organise a library.

So I make him adept. For each of his failures - each mote of dust out of place, every fallen petal in the garden, all the slight imperfections - I change him. He is the first thing to go. The mind follows shortly after, with the body trailing behind.

She is now hollower than ever, yet no longer hollow at all. She is adept, her porcelain fingers better at the housework than ever, her new shiny joints no longer complaining from long hours working in the garden, her unblinking eyes finding every little detail to correct and make proper.

Her new voice, light and musical, no longer elicits such disgust in me, for it cannot tell the same lies that the old voice, so coarse and grating, could.

After a certain amount of time, which I do not care to describe for time means little to us, she tells me this:

‘I’m happy, miss.’

He jumped off the balcony, says Nicolas. The beast overtook him, maybe he saw a particularly delicious looking Kine and the last vestiges of his hunger, for he does not seem the type to finish his meals, reared their ugly head.

Shade himself seems shaken by this suggestion. At the very least she fixed his legs after the fall. Of course it hurt more than natural healing ever would have, but he has not been as good a guest as he could be, so clearly it is deserved.

Of all of them, he seems to cling to his humanity the most. He rejects her work and her vicissitude out of fear or hatred, yet seems to try to empathise with Nicolas, as though such a thing is even possible.

If she could remember how to, she would laugh.

She remembers how Nicolas talked about Elizabeth, her Elizabeth, as though she were no different from the blood bags the Camarilla driver had graciously given them. He thinks of her as an object, but is so crude about it. Would one take a bite out of a particularly useful vacuum cleaner, or drink from a lovely painting? No, Elizabeth may be hers, but her purpose is not to be consumed.

She resolves to keep a close eye on Elizabeth when she next comes for work.

She resolves to keep a close eye on Nicolas, lest he prove himself to be less polite than she thinks.

But, back to the matter of Shade. He seemed to wish to present her with some overwhelming truth about her own existence. He reacted with shock to the news that she had barely left the premises - indeed that she was actually incapable of it - as well as the revelation that she had never been paid a wage, and that she simply worked because she had been told to.

None of this seems particularly odd to her. Is there any particular reason it should?

For Maria he seemed to show great disdain, acting as though she had abandoned her in the house of a stranger, when she was clearly busy with work or preoccupied by some other matters.

She would never abandon Ophelia, right?

These matters have been gnawing on her since she invited the coterie to stay at hers - one of the many reasons for which she made Shade’s legs hurt so very badly. She resolves to dispel her concerns for now, and focus on the task at hand.

Shade fell victim to the beast, and jumped.

Dear Nicolas told her this, and she has no reason to distrust him. He may arouse her suspicion in some regards, but he has yet to lie to her.

But poor Shade. She could spend hours listing the reasons for which she is coming to dislike him. His barely disguised fear, his constant oscillating between treating her and Nicolas as pitiful victims and dreadful monsters, his anger leading him to threaten one of her guests under her roof, his unending infantilising insistence on calling her ‘kid’ out of some deluded paternal affection towards the unfortunate misguided girl he sees her as.

To know that this is the case could well and truly break him. As one of her guests, she has a responsibility to avoid that.

So she lies. It does not matter if all can see that she is lying. The purpose is not to be believed, it is instead to plant seeds of doubt.

‘The balcony is in some disrepair, and I have been meaning to fix it for a while.’

None of this is true.

But, just maybe, it could delay Shade’s inevitable descent towards the savage and violent clutches of the beast until he is out of her house and far away from her Elizabeth.

And if that is not the case, and he is moved to damage what belongs to her, she will tear him apart and rebuild him in the image of the monster that he tries so desperately to avoid being.

Nicolas seems to dislike him as well. Maybe after his limbs are made useless, she should hand him over to Baudelaire for a while before she reshapes him. He has, after all, wronged him.

It would be the polite thing to do, would it not?

She has been here for some time now. Maybe two and a half years? She hasn’t paid too much attention to it.

In her role as head maid, she is proud to say that she has established a strong rapport with those working under her. She is polite and proper, but they also know her to be kind and fair. She will help out where she can, they know.

She has grown rather fond of some of them.

One of them in particular has grown rather fond of her.

This one steals longing glances at her when she thinks she isn’t looking. This one tries to work with her wherever she can. This one’s hand brushes against her dress for a second too long when they pass each other in a corridor.

But Ophelia keeps things professional.

At least, until she cannot any longer.

One day, she sees her talking to one of her colleagues. He is giving her the same glances and looks and eyes that Ophelia normally receives from her. He is talking, and empathising and reassuring and making offers of assistance.

He moves closer, hand stretching out slightly.

Something within Ophelia snaps.

A sudden rush of possessiveness flows through her. She must have her. She must make her hers. She simply must.

She swiftly glides between the two of them, and snaps at him to get on with his work.

She turns slowly, and enquires as to her wellbeing. She praises her for her excellent work. She compliments her.

All of it is sincere. She has no need to lie here.

She notes the slight blush in her face. The way her pupils dilate slightly. The way the look into her eyes shifts from one of timidity and hesitation into a predatory one that rather reminds Ophelia of herself.

Ophelia asks her if she would like to take a break, and takes her upstairs, and invites her into her room.

The second the door swings closed behind them, Ophelia is near tackled off of her feet and carried to the bed.

She is placed on her lap, and they stare greedily at each other, drinking each other in.

Her hand deftly moves to Ophelia’s face, caressing her cheek before descending to her chest.

They kiss.

Ophelia, through practice and effort, is just about able to warm her lips when they touch.

Her other hand slides beneath Ophelia’s skirt.

It moves up her thigh.

Her hand pulls back suddenly. She pushes herself away from Ophelia, and Ophelia falls from on her lap. She stands, and stares at Ophelia, sprawled and discarded across the bed. She raises her hand to her face, and it is covered in blood. There is far more than there would be under any other circumstances. It is not blood, she realises. It is vitae.

She had let herself forget these things. She let herself forget that Ophelia was nothing like her. She is a human woman and Ophelia is nothing more than a corpse, brought to a semblance of life by whatever foul substance flows through her veins. Whatever Ophelia pretends to be, they are nothing alike.

Look at her, staring up from the bed, eyes wide and mouth agape. She’s not even crying. Is that even possible? Maybe she isn’t even human enough for that.

She runs from the room.

Ophelia tries and fails to pick herself up from on the bed.

She lies there for a while.

She rolls over, and sees vitae leaking out from around her eyes. It seems she is cursed to never be able to truly hide her emotions.

She sits up, and stands in her room for a few minutes, collecting her thoughts and composing herself.

She walks downstairs to find the other servant from earlier.

She finds him, and in her sadness and rage and inhumanity she eviscerates him and disembowels him and twists him into all kinds of painful and beautiful shapes and drains him of his blood and takes him apart and puts him back together again.

When all of this is done, she deigns to kill him.

She leaves him as flowers in the entryway.

She returns to her room, and feeling just a bit less human than she did when the day started, she lets the daysleep take her.

Xavier Olivette moodboard

trying to make unlikable characters