Almsworth-worm - Normal Person Do Not Read My Mind.

Her boss had another guest round. The sort that appreciates her special cooking. The sort that was polite enough to thank her for her impeccable manners.

She wonders when these manners started.

Was she simply a child who looked for praise at every opportunity, and found politeness to be the best way of getting it? When she grew older, was it the way she acted when she distracted herself from everything going on? When she grew yet older, was it the best way to respond to the hatred and contempt of some horrible people while mitigating the risk of harm to herself? Was it a habit she learnt when she started working as a maidservant? Did she become polite as a result of exposure to her new family’s habits? Was she never polite at all?

She turns to the mirror she’s polishing.

She looks into her own eyes.

She makes herself forget this moment.

She’s further along with her work than she thought she would be. Time really does fly sometimes.

She finishes polishing the mirror, and moves to her next job. She is to take the bins out.

It’s beneath her, really, but some of the regular staff are ill, so she steps in.

She takes them out past the gates to the property, the rain barely bothering her.

She remembers the phone Elizabeth gave her, the one with her number already typed in under the contact name ‘Elizabeth :)’. She remembers checking it over to make sure it was free of tampering and tracking based on what she had learnt from the few other Kindred she had had conversations with. She remembers sharing recipes and advice about work and fashion tips and compliments. She remembers Elizabeth promising to take her clubbing. She remembers the excuses she made - ‘too much work’ or ‘I’m ill’ and so on. She remembers her sympathy and her care and her… love, not in the way all the stories she read as a little girl described it, but rather shown through the kind of affection she learnt about in the 80s, all there in the palm of her hand.

She remembers the day the order came from on high. Something about unacceptable security risks and compromised channels and unsafe technology. She remembers crushing the phone in her fist, watching the fragments of metal and glass and plastic dig into her dead skin and fall across the cold floor. She remembers the lies she told about getting into an altercation the next time Elizabeth came round.

She looks for a puddle nearby, one close to the lights on the outside of the building.

She stares into her own eyes, and makes herself forget this moment.

What on earth is she doing over here? She has bins to take out. So she does this.

When she enters inside, she goes to talk to her boss. She seems to be losing time at random, and this may make her less suitable for her role. As she explains, he looks on impassively, and tells her to get back to work. She’s only been here thirty-one years, and while he trusts her opinion on professional matters, he is unwilling to deal with this when she is so new.

She catches and prepares his meal, presenting it to him in accordance with proper protocol.

She deals with the aftermath, twisting the corpse into all kinds of flowers. She takes joy in this. She remembers doing this countless times over the past decades. So many moments, preserved perfectly in her unliving brain. She has honed a skill, and is proud of this.

Her flowers are so pretty.

She finishes her jobs for the day.

She retires to her room, and sits on the chair in front of her dresser, staring into the mirror at her own face.

Today has been a bad day. She’s had days like this from time to time, maybe once a decade.

She remembers the first time this happened, half a year into her work here, feeling alone and abandoned and scared. She can’t remember any of the other times, but she remembers her way of dealing with this, of getting back to her usual self so that she can work and keep up her manners.

She tries to remember it all. She lets the emotion overtake her. She loves her job and she loves her role and she loves her building and she loves her sire and she loves her skills and she loves her flowers and she doesn’t mind being a vampire and she feels something hard to describe for Elizabeth. She takes these, and sets them to one side in her own mind.

She remembers the rest. She feels lonely and scared and hateful and vindictive and spiteful and wounded and hurt and injured and tired and so many more things.

She gets the impression that this time it’ll stick.

She makes contact with her own eyes.

She makes herself forget this moment.

She is sat staring into her mirror. She knows what this means.

She makes herself forget this moment.

She makes herself forget this moment.

She makes herself forget this moment.

She makes herself forget this moment.

…

Her boss is having a guest round this evening. The sort that’ll appreciate her special cooking.

She goes downstairs to meet her boss. He looks like he has realised something profound.

His mouth says nothing beyond what is usual.

His face and eyes and movements say only these words: ‘Ophelia, I’m sorry.’

She doesn’t know what he would be apologising for.

It’ll soon be thirty-two years of this work.

She turns away, and politely starts her day’s tasks, quite content with her life.

Objective (i.e. highly subjective) best part of going to the club is getting to roll whatever absurd random encounter table fate cooked up for it.

'Butch who dances with you thrice and leaves with a kiss upon the hand' encounter happens within a solid three minutes of the 'sudden pull up contest' and 'impressively coherent singalong' and I would have it no other way.

Gundam is a show about hot evil women, actually

haven't done my work but i did draw myself not doing my work. and the specter. not sure how this helps

forcefem but it's just a tgirl who's a doormat going along with all the recommendations she gets from her very fem-presenting friend

after despair comes joy

She stands in the hallway, her boss in front of her.

She has stood here every day for the last year. She remembers it well. It is, after all, the anniversary of her arrival.

She has stood here for three hundred and sixty five (and a quarter) days.

She has taken the steps down from her room three hundred and sixty five times.

She has worn this uniform three hundred and sixty five times.

She has met her boss here three hundred and sixty five times.

He has told her what to expect three hundred and sixty five times.

She had gone about her day, sorting meals and making flowers and cleaning and dusting and repairing, three hundred and sixty five times.

It has been a year.

There will be so many more.

Maybe one day she will stand there, in three hundred and sixty five years, and look back on how three hundred and sixty five days seemed like so much.

Three hundred and sixty five sets of three hundred and sixty five.

The thought does something she thought impossible.

It breaks her composure.

Not all that much, but it certainly does.

Her movements, normally so precise and measured and perfect, fail her.

She stumbles slightly, despite standing still.

She keeps the same polite and impassive smile on her face as she rights herself.

She stands up straight and listens.

She feels something on her face. She does not move to wipe it off. Her movements would be unsteady, and even if not for that it would be rude to do so while listening to her boss.

She feels it move down her face. She does nothing.

She feels something fall onto her dress. She ignores it, waits for her boss to finish, then goes about her work.

Some of the other servants, particularly those ghouled, are looking strangely at her.

If she were anyone else, she would be able to interpret these glances and stares of pity and confusion and fear and - in some cases - hunger.

But she chooses not to care, for she has a job to do, and she must do it well.

The feeling on her face continues. Her dress seems to be getting heavier. She is getting hungry far faster than she typically would.

When she comes to her meal, she does not drink with her usual restraint and propriety.

She drains her meal of blood and throws its empty husk against the far wall of her workroom.

The strange sensation on her face persists even now. She does not know why and she does not want to know why. She wishes to not have to think about this. She wishes it were gone.

She finishes her work and climbs the stairs to get to her room.

She walks in, and catches herself in the mirror.

She is a mess.

Twin streams of blood pour out of her eyes and flow down her face, falling off of her chin onto the uniform below. They have started to dry and crack and scab and peel.  It is so very improper.

Her dress is ruined. What was previously white material has been indelibly stained by blood. Where material was previously black, it now appears a deep crimson. In some places, the vitae has settled and is turning a more rusty red in colour.

She shakes her hips slightly. Blood splatters over the floor, and thin sprays of it settle over the mirror.

This simply will not do.

It is rude and improper and impolite to show herself in such a state, let alone go about her daily work looking like this. To show this emotion compromises her role as caretaker and maidservant. She cannot allow this to happen again.

This will hurt, she knows, but she accepts it as her punishment for a job badly done.

She raises her right hand to her bloody face and holds it to her bloody right eye.

She screams in agony as a sharp pain pierces through her above her eye and close to her nose. Her lacrimal gland and lacrimal sac and lacrimal canals are either excised, falling out into her waiting hand, or they knit closed, torturously and irreversibly.

She repeats the process with her other eye. She screams much the same as last time, but she knows that she deserves it.

The flow of vitae from her tears is supplanted by the flow of vitae from her fresh wounds, before she excruciatingly closes them with her vicissitude.

She removes her outfit and steps into her shower, hoping to scrub all reminders of this day from her body as surely as she has erased her ability to cry and show sadness from her face.

Maybe this will make the next three hundred and sixty five more bearable.