Her Boss Had Another Guest Round. The Sort That Appreciates Her Special Cooking. The Sort That Was Polite

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.