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Hello, my name is Josephine Liddel. I'm not entirely sure where to start with this; the whole thing is kind of hard to explain, so I feel it is best to start at the beginning. Better to overexplain than underexplain, right? Thats what my brother said anyway.
I met Ophelia in high school originally. We weren’t close but we had a few mutual friends, so we at the very least new each other. She was always somewhat intimidating to me, though I'm pretty sure that was only because I was very attracted to her. She had this long curly hair that reached her hips and wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket, it was quite the spectacle really. She always wore layers of silver jewellery that jingled when she moved. She walked with a cane; it was a dark purple foldable thing with a black rope on the handle that went around her wrist. A lot of people were weird about it, they asked a lot of questions; trying to prove she didn’t need it, or something like that. I never focused on it much, never felt the need to,
A few weeks after graduation, I ended up at a party at her place. I didn't really want to go at first, to be honest; but a friend of mine dragged me there and I thought it could be fun. I spent most of my time in the corner of her living room - that that I minded this, of course. It tended to be my routine at parties. I preferred to watch. This time, however, I was approached by Ophelia. She was clearly stoned, not that I had any problem with that it was just very obvious; her eyes were red, and she held onto my arm when she spoke, I didn't really know what to do, like I said we weren't that close. I noticed she didn't have her cane, and her ankle was bent slightly outwards making her stand on the side of her foot. I don't think that’s supposed to happen?
I don't remember what she said, but I remember the way the lights reflected in her eyes, made it look like they were spinning in their sockets. It was beautiful. After talking to her for a while, I asked her to show me to her bedroom. Not to have sex with her, of course. It's not that I didn't want to I just wasn't the type to fuck someone I barely knew at a party. I just wanted to get her to bed, seemed like she needed it. When we were walking down the hall, I noticed this one room she had, the door had a pastel sign with cats on it that said "Raphie". I stopped and tapped her arm, "Who's Raphie?" I asked, I think i was expecting a pet or something, she seemed like the type to give a pet cat their own bedroom. when I asked, she paused for a second, as if she was confused where i got the name from. I gestured to the door, and she nodded "Oh right, that’s my daughter, Raphaella. She's staying with my brother tonight."
I had never seen her pregnant, but I remember her being absent for a while, didn’t think it was any more than a few weeks, but my memory was never all that good. We kept walking to her bedroom, about halfway there she rolled her ankle and collapsed to the floor. I had seen her fall over before; she would usually just laugh and pull herself back up. She didn’t this time. She froze and just started crying, it started as silent tears rolling down her face, turning to soft gasps until she was sobbing. I figured she was just high and/or drunk, I helped her up and half carried her to her bed, getting directions via weak pointing. I remember tucking her in and noticing that her tears had made part of her hair stick to her face in the shape of a spiral. It was strangely neat; at the time I thought it was just cute. I never questioned it.
I slept sat up on the floor next to her bed that night. I wanted to watch over her and it felt intrusive to get in bed with her, so I sat next to the bed and eventually passed out. I woke up before her the next morning and left her a note with my phone number and a drawing of a bunch of spirals forming a love heart. I guess she liked it because almost as soon as I got home, she called me. We started talking, became friends and I would babysit for her from time to time, I got quite close with Raphaella. She was around 3 when I first met her. I came over to Ophelia's house to watch movies, her head was in my lap, and she was close to falling asleep, but around midnight Raphaella had climbed out of bed and come into the living room. Ophelia sighed, picked her up and carried her back to bed, returning to the couch about 30 minutes later, saying something along the lines of "Sorry about that just, have you ever tried to get a 3-year-old to bed when they've just discovered you watching movies with a friend before? not easy." I smiled and nodded "I have actually, I've got a younger sister I used to take care of, I've told you how my parents were." she nodded.
After that we put the movie back on, but we weren't really paying attention. we had drunk a little more than intended and we ended up in her bed together. I'm sure you can guess how that played out. Several very awkward "What are we?" conversations followed by several not at all awkward hook ups. Eventually she asked me to be her girlfriend during the credits of the bee movie while she was stoned, and we moved in together after I proposed 3 years later when Raphaella was around 7. It was amazing. We had a nice house, nothing massive but we preferred it that way, it was what i had imagined and hoped my life would since I was around 14, I think. I thought it would be perfect forever; it should have been perfect forever.
About 5 years into our marriage, she started having these... episodes? she would grab random notebooks off the shelf and start scribbling in them violently, covered the pages with nonsensical writing and spirals before ripping them out. she wouldn't look up, wouldn’t talk, she would become completely unresponsive until every page was gone. Afterwards she seemed would just move on, like nothing happened. When asked about it she couldn’t remember a thing. it was like she was being put into some kind of trance. I eventually convinced her to see a therapist; she ended up on medication that seemed to help at first. She didn't have an episode like that for months, but eventually they came back. I came home from the store to find her sat on the living room floor scribbling in a book again. I could hear Raphie crying in her bedroom and I thought I should handle that first as there wasn't much I could do with Ophelia.
I slipped into her room and found her hidden in her closet. I helped her out and held her for a while. She told me Ophelia had stopped halfway through making her lunch while they were talking and grabbed a book and a pen, walked to the living room and collapsed to the ground. She said she had tried to pull the book away but touching it hurt. Made it feel "like her brain was being tore apart". I didn't know what to do. I was staring at this terrified child, and I couldn't fix it. I couldn't tell her its not real or that i can make it go away, it was real and there was nothing I could do to make it better. I didn't know what to say, I could've told her everything would be okay but even that felt like a lie. I helped her into bed and sat with her until she fell asleep.
I stayed in her bedroom until I heard Ophelia walking around the kitchen. I stood up and walked out of Raphaella's bedroom and up to Ophelia. She was cooking, like nothing happened. She smiled when I walked in, wrapped her arms around my waist and kissed me, just like any other day. I couldn't look her in the eye, she asked me if I was alright, I stared down the ground (There was a crack in the shape of a spiral on one of the tiles, had that always been there?) while I told her what had happened. She froze; her arms dropped away from my waist to her sides. "Is Raph okay?" she asked. She sounded more terrified than any time this had happened before. I nodded "She's alright, she's reading I think" She relaxed, just slightly but I could still see her shaking. My poor girl. "Can I speak with her? Do you- Do you think that would be alright?" A sad smile spread across my face, I nodded "I'm sure it would be fine." She walked to Raphaella's bedroom; I waited in the kitchen. thought it would be best to give them some space.
She kept having the episodes. we tried every medication, every therapy, every treatment. Nothing stopped them. We just learned to manage. It became a part of life. That was until a few months later. Raphaella was at a friend’s house, just across the road. I was home with Ophelia. We were watching movies on the couch. She laid with her head in my lap, just like the night I met Raphaella. She had grown a lot since then, she was nearly my height now, and she could no longer be carried on my hip. She was forming into her own beautiful person. She loved unicorns, could tell you all about their history and symbolism and whatever else you could possibly want to know. Her room was covered in them, posters and drawings, stuffed animals and figurines. It was a part of her that would be impossible to hide. She first called me Mum on her 11th birthday. She kept apologising, saying she didn't mean to. I told her it was fine and eventually it was just what she called me.
Ophelia got up to go to the bathroom, I sat and waited for a while, eventually she had been gone for 20 minutes. I began to get worried and went to search for her. I was expecting to find her scribbling in a notebook, I wish I had found her scribbling in a notebook. Instead, when I walked into the bathroom, I found her collapsed on the floor, sat up in a puddle of blood. She had a lade in her hand, and she had carved spirals all over her body, covering every centimetre of skin with them. the smell of blood was so strong I nearly threw up, I ran to her side, pulling the blade from her hand. I grabbed my phone from my pocket, dialling an emergency number. I held her close to my chest, her blood soaked into my clothes as I sobbed into her hair, trying to force myself into coherence to let me explain my situation into the phone. I managed to get enough out to tell them my address and beg for an ambulance.
I pulled myself and her to the wall so I could lean against it, keeping her clutched to my chest. Her scars were hard to look at, they were deep enough that they dripped blood and gaped open, I could see the distance between layers of skin, you never realise how deep you could cut into your skin until you see it. It makes me nauseous even now to think about. I wondered her she could’ve stayed strong enough to keep cutting while losing that much blood. It was the type of injury you see in cheap nonsensical horror movies, but this wasn’t bad VFX, this was real and gory and for some reason I could not look away.
While I was waiting for the ambulance something very strange happened. Ophelia looked up at me, and it was like a light had been returned to her eyes. She whispered, "It is so beautiful, Josepine." just then, the bleeding spirals that covered her body stopped bleeding, all at once. they instead started glowing, like a light was breaking through her skin, trying to escape. I panicked, I screamed and flinched, making me drop her. The second I did the scars stopped glowing and began to bleed again, and her heart stopped beating. I started begging for her life. I don’t know who I was begging for it, God maybe? I was never really religious, but I suppose then would’ve been a good time to start. I sobbed into her body, blood coating my face. It was a lot of "Please I still need her" and "I still need this bitch she doesn't get to leave us now." and "I still need my Ophelia" It did nothing though, of course.
The ambulance arrived too late. it always does. I knew my Ophelia was gone the moment she had whispered that to me. My Ophelia had never once called me Josephine, only ever Josie. I truly believe that was the first time I had ever heard her say it. They still took her body, but I knew there was no chance. I sat on the bathroom floor for hours, covered in my wife's blood with the knowledge I would soon have to tell a 12-year-old of her mother’s sudden (and very disturbing) death. She's just a kid; she shouldn't have had to hear that news. When I finally told her she screamed, screamed for hours and hours until she had lost her voice and could only sob. I don't blame her. I could never blame a child for screaming at news like that, I wouldn't blame anyone for that.
The next morning, I got a call saying her body had vanished from the hospital. I knew she wasn't coming home. I don't know how I knew, something inside me told me she was truly dead, and it shouldn’t matter where her body is as it is no longer hers.