Chapter 8Bullshit Sandwich3 February 2022The past few days have been a bit of a blur. Since Thursday st week, every day has seen Ace woken up rather early in the morning when the collective arms of the three maids-in-training went off in unison, causing her to silence her arm and struggle to sleep through five more rounds of arms designed to make Aoife specifically get out of bed, something which has become quite the favourite topic of fights between Gwen and Aoife recently.

  Both of them are supposed to leave their rooms after thirty minutes or so to prepare dinner, but Aoife’s stayed to ‘keep Ace company’ at times, with the girl using the moment to ensure she gets more than one hour of sleep per night as Ace tries to catch up on some sleep of her own.

  Ace had really underestimated just how precious a thing sleep is in a manor filled with a combination of sponsors trying to make them do things, best friends trying to spend time with them and a roommate from hell hell-bent on staying up until half five in the morning.

  Gwen, to her credit, has actually been doing a rge chunk of the work she is supposed to be doing. Ace isn’t sure what got through to her — it could equally be the conclusion that she is not going to be punished in a fun way, no matter how annoying she is or the realisation that doing her work is a good argument to get away from Aoife — but she’s gd that someone is taking up her work now that she’s been given a bit of time-off for recovery.

  The scalding of her leg was rather nasty, Rose had said, though it was second degree still. The fact that a stretch of her lower leg to her foot is now covered in second-degree burns does mean that she isn’t allowed to do much whilst she recovers. Ace hadn’t known that Rose was qualified to make such diagnoses though it isn’t entirely unsurprising either: they are in the middle of nowhere, and it’s good to have someone on staff who has had some medical training.

  Having it be the second most competent person in the building definitely helps. There are some sponsors she wouldn’t trust to pick up some takeaway food at the front door. And yes, Ace is starting to rather like Kelynen, but given she saw her struggle with a pair of keys yesterday she is happy that her sponsor isn’t in charge of anything important.

  The fact that she has been in recovery doesn’t mean that she can ze about in bed all day though, at least not anymore. The sponsors want her to slowly get back into some more walking, without the crutches she was given earlier to limit the pain she’d get when putting too much pressure on her feet.

  Today’s mission? Walk the perilous 40 metres from her bed to the common area, where she can have lunch with some of the other girls.

  With some effort, and only a middling amount of pain, she does manage to get herself to the door — Aoife’s soft snore decreasing to an awkward silence as she does so, which she isn’t too sorry about — and after closing the door on the girl, she continues to make her way to the common area. It would feel rude not to bring Aoife with her, at least, were it not that the girl is currently barred from attending all meals but dinner for her insubordination. Not that she would be awake for those meals anyways.

  As Ace opens the door to the common area, Ace has to stop her audible gasp and visible flinch turning into something much more dramatic. The scene is probably the st thing she would have expected.

  First of all, Amy is wearing the same french maid uniform that the first years are made to wear, something she’s not mandated to do and thus, generally doesn’t do. She’s wearing it much better than Ace, though, because she has such things as a shape and probably a tailor to use her measurements in making something that shows her body in fttering ways (and, Ace must admit, rather tempting ways). The second thing she notices is that she’s standing with her back against Fey’s whilst both are holding the same style of hunting rifle, and god only knows why they have guns now. The third thing she notices is that the two girls are making silly faces towards a camera pced on a rickety-looking tri-pad, awkwardly banced with a pile of books on the main table.

  “Ay!” Amy calls out with only a minor squeal. “Come here!”

  “I would rather not—” Ace tries to expin, but is quickly talked over.

  “Come on! It’s not that scary.” Fey interjects. “She won’t shoot and kill you. Probably. She’s a terrible shot.”

  “Fey, I’ve had firearm training.” Amy stage-whispers, rifle aimed at the floor with her finger off the trigger. “Loonie taught me—”

  “DUCK!” Fey yells, dramatically jumping behind a wooden chair for cover. “It’s the vice-president with a gun!”

  Ace is so confused by the situation that it takes her an embarrassing moment to realise that it is, in fact, a joke about her clumsy sponsor. Not that she can duck anyways, with her foot as it is, and the joke about the vice-president — Kama Harris? Another VP? — goes entirely over her head.

  “May I ask what you are doing with those guns?” It takes her a few seconds, but she eventually brings up enough confidence to ask the rather obvious question.

  “No!” Fey yells from behind a chair.

  “No?”

  “No, you may not ask.” Ace can’t quite see Fey’s face, so she just assumes that it’s the most smug mug imaginable.

  “We just got back from collecting some ingredients for dinner.” Amy carefully walks up to Fey and takes away the girl’s rifle, if only because she isn’t capable of aiming it at the floor like Amy is.

  “Lulu decided she wanted some duck for dinner tonight.” Fey adds, standing up from behind the wooden chair and putting it back in pce. “So she sent us out to bring her some of the green bastards.”

  “Jen and I managed to actually hit a duck each. Fey managed tohit a tree.” Amy walks out into the corridor and fishes a key from her pocket, opening up the locked storage room. Apparently, that’s where they keep actual, live weaponry. Because of course they do.

  “Yeah. I got a tree. That’s much bigger, and thus, more impressive. All they got was some fucking birds. Eventually.” Fey closes her eyes, cocks her head slightly and grins like she pulled off the biggest heist in history.

  “You sure did, darling.” Amy calls out from the storage room. “Those trees were riddled with holes.”

  “And because she was so proud of her…” Fey pauses for dramatic effect. “Minor success in hunting, she wanted to take some pictures of us with the guns. Apparently she wanted to take them for Elle. to enjoy.”

  “Just because I wanted to put them in the pictures channel, doesn’t mean I wanted to share them with Elle specifically.” Amy rolls her eyes as she returns to the common area.

  “She likes the idea of Elle— Hey!” Fey is hit in the head with the nearest cushion Amy could find.

  “I wanted to take pictures because they’re fun.” Amy crosses her arms, gring at Fey from the other side of the couch. “You’re the one who made it horny when you suggested we do the ahegao face—”

  Ace, for her part, decides to sit down on the couch and watch the two from a safe distance, which feels a little creepy when they do not end up in a fight. Rather, Fey just kisses Amy on the lips to make the girl shut up.

  She’s just happy the guns are out of the room, at this point. Perhaps the fourth years are much more used to being around weapons like that than Ace has ever been, but just seeing a rifle — especially one as rge as the ones the girls had been carrying, they are longer than their arms! — makes her fundamentally uncomfortable. Yes, the pictures of the two are probably quite cute and fun, given that they were making silly faces in the stupid sexual fantasy uniforms Ace and the others are made to wear, but she really wishes they did so elsewhere.

  Ace wonders why they would have firearms training in the first pce, though. Sure, apparently they go hunting for some small prey every now and again, and sure, apparently Ms. Lambert owns some kind of private security contractor, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the critical duties of a maid. She was told they would learn to be a quite broadly useful maid, able to perform both her cleaning duties, as well as private services and other work, but… this seems a bit much.

  Perhaps it makes more sense from the point of view of a noble who wants to take along one of her maids on some hunting trip with some posh friends, and then show off with the fact that she can not only clean, but also kill — thus setting up an incredible detective story, involving an anxious but bright trans woman teaming up with a total baddie who has deep knowledge of the darkest parts of the criminal underworld, trying to solve the mystery of a murder that takes them across the United Kingdom just to conclude that the real murder was the corpses they made along the way. But it’s fine, because the total baddie is a total baddie. And she rocks that maid uniform.

  Or maybe, just maybe, Ace has been reading too many silly lesbian novels whilst she was in bed for nearly a week.

  “Alice!” Fey takes Ace’s hand and helps pull her up to her feet. “It’s lunchtime. Gwen’s made some lovely sandwiches, and I can’t wait to try them.”

  ***

  “Try it out!” Gwen awkwardly stands behind Ace, holding her hands together in front of her chest in a notably anime-esque position — it might also just be normal anxious behaviour, don’t overthink it Ace — whilst blushing off into the distance. “I made it with love, and uh, things.”

  Ace takes a bite from one of the sandwiches, consisting of some cucumber with a creamy cheese. It’s pretty good. Nothing too fancy, though she supposes it doesn’t have to be fancy yet, and Gwen made a few other kinds of sandwich alongside it: something with salmon, one with guacamole and some other vegetables, and one which seems to have used egg sad.

  “I like it.” Ace eventually admits. “Tastes a little different, though. In a good way.”

  “Aha!” Gwen grins smugly. “I knew adding a little something extra to the cream would work. It’s made with 100% organically-produced and ethically-harvested girlcum.”

  “Um?” Ace isn’t sure how to respond to that revetion, other than that it probably breaks some of the rules of consent to put semen into a dish without informing people prior to consumption.

  Fey shakes her head and repeats Gwen’s name a few times, disappointed. “You can’t just say that. She’ll actually believe it!”

  “Oh.” Gwen looks rather embarrassed from that realisation. “Just to be clear— I did not cream… in the cream.”

  Amy giggles at that stupid comment.

  Ace puts the sandwich down, not feeling very hungry anymore after that comment. She doesn’t care if it’s factually accurate, though it would not be surprising if it were, the implication in itself is enough to ruin the slight extra fvour that Gwen added to the meal.

  “I’m just happy she didn’t put any futa cheese in.” Amy adds, trying to lighten the mood with a pun.

  “I should’ve thought of that.” Gwen whispers to herself, finally getting out of Ace’s neck and deciding to be mildly disgusting elsewhere. She sits down next to Fey, diagonally across from Ace.

  Every so often, Gwen looks guiltily towards Ace. She’s abstaining from eating too, and it takes a few gres her way for her to eventually break and say what should have been said long ago.

  “Look— I’m sorry. It wasn’t funny. Okay? Just— don’t act all angry.” Gwen says, struggling to make eye contact. “You can be angry at me, but…”

  “Yeah.” Ace crosses her arms, leaning back in her chair. “It really wasn’t funny. I don’t know why you would even think that is funny. You know, that could have been really serious if it really had happened, right? And you like, make fun of it.”

  “Stop it.” Fey orders from the other side of the table. “She’s stopped and she’s apologised. You can just move on from the conversation now.”

  “No, I can’t—”

  “Ay…” Amy whispers, not wanting to let Ace say what she has to say about such an important topic.

  “—implying that food was made with semen is just not okay. Imagine if I said your food was stained with something? That wouldn’t be funny, you’d feel pretty annoyed because the idea keeps eating away in the back of your mind and—”

  “Ace.” Amy tries again. “You really don’t have to…”

  “—frankly, it’s worse because it was about cum in particur because that’s sexual and I would have been made part of a sexual act against both my knowledge and my will. Isn’t that just—”

  “ALICE!” Amy shouts. “You will stop that right now.”

  There’s an awkward silence for a moment, only interrupted by a muffled sobbing at the other end of the table. Fey is taking Gwen into her arms, whispering her all kinds of words of support and denials of her guilt of everything Ace said.

  “Are you done?” Amy stands up from her seat at the table.

  “No—” Ace tries to say to little avail.

  “Are you done, Alice?” Amy repeats, standing next to Fey and putting a hand on Gwen’s shoulder.

  “Yeah.” Ace stands up as well. “Yeah, I’m fucking done.”

  After a few more seconds of silence, during which Amy eyes her expectantly, Ace just walks off as quickly as she can despite the pain she can feel in her foot, retreating somewhere she won’t have to deal with people like this.

  ***

  The cold, smooth ground of the dungeons is quite nice, really. Not that she ever would have noticed that if she hadn’t come all the way down here to get away from it all. And she truly is away from it all: the st time people searched for her, it took them hours to find her in this cell. Here, she can rest her feet on the cobbles, which are less prominent near the centre of the floor than around the edges, py with the keys in her hands, and just regret the many mistakes that have led her here.

  She impulsively said yes to some woman promising her the world and got stuck with some people she truly can’t stand, who need to behave better than they are doing right now, and when Ace says something about it suddenly she is the bad one? She’s the one ruining the vibe by being so unreasonable?

  It’s bullshit. Amy, of all people, should see that it is bullshit to think that she is the bad one! Gwen’s the one to make the disgusting fucking joke! She’s the one to then give a half-apology, not even acknowledging the real, genuine harm done in the situation.

  Ace wonders why those two even got chosen for the programme, given neither of them seem particurly happy to go along with its tenets. Gwen had to be actively convinced to do the bare minimum whilst Aoife can’t even do that. The fourth years barely seem any better in that regard, even Amy is a bit zy at times. Ace is the only one actually willing to do some bloody work around here! The only one trying to be respectful, the only one being moral in what seems to increasingly be a den of depravity. One of the girls here — or one of the guests they invited over, at least — put her into a cell st week! And she’s supposed to just be fine with everything? Fuck no.

  All this because she was offered a chance to reach a level of beauty that would be impossible to make from the mold – or mould – of her ugly fucking mug? She was sold on false promises, made to fake her death and now is trapped in some bloody Welsh castle for the next five years. She’s been so stupid about everything.

  Ace takes the keys out of her left hand, getting annoyed with its jingling, and angrily tosses it through the bars of the cell door. She doesn’t even look where it’s going: she doesn’t care. It smashes against the wall with an even worse screech than before, intensifying her headache. Not that she wanted those stupid fucking things anyways. It serves her purposes incredibly well if they forget she exists and allow her to rot away in the confinement of her own making.

  “Woah.” A woman says. “Calm down.”

  Ace looks up from the floor and sees Kelynen, frowning down at her from the other side of the bars. Her sponsor takes the keys chucked in her general direction and opens the door wide.

  “Alice— We need to talk.” Kelynen says, and for a second it feels like Ace’s world crumbles beneath her.