Green-Eyed Lady

The Midnight Ad "Green-Eyed Lady, Lovely Lady" was written by u/Thakgor and posted in r/MidnightPaper.

The text of the post and Ad was as follows:

I’m so glad I’ve found a place to talk about this because it was starting to feel like I was going insane. See, I got my first delivery of The Midnight Paper last month, and I honestly have no idea what to do. They keep piling up and I’m almost at my wits end. I’ve even thought about moving away, trying to escape, but if what’s in the papers is true then there may be no escape for me. I sincerely hope this isn’t the case.

I only read the first two, but I’ve opened every one. I’ve snatched it off the porch and rushed it down into the basement every Friday and Saturday night when it arrives. I’ve cut those black strings in the same corner of blobby incandescence, under the same naked bulb. Once confirming its contents I’ve stacked each one with the rest behind a wall of old paint cans next to the furnace. I’ve made very sure that only I have seen them.

I’ll tell you what they say, what they’ve all said, as every edition I’ve received of the paper so far has been identical in content. It is a personal ad, someone looking for a long lost love. Hopefully one of you can help, for I fear their singular message may have grave consequences for me. Here is what it says:

**Green Eyed Lady, Lovely Lady**

*I hope you are out there my sweet, as I have spent some time trying to find you. I am desperate, and have turned to this as my last resort. I yearn for you, have cried out for you on my knees each day since you disappeared from my life, and if any gods dwell within the swollen host of heaven, I pray now upon these same knees to them. I pray that this message will reach you and that you will remember me. I pray you will return.*

*I was the loner you waited on at the coffee shop, the one wet from drowning in cold, Monday rain. You were a ray of sunshine warming the air with your glow, and the deliverance you offered to me that day was more than just a single cup of coffee. I remember thinking that I could write and sell a thousand stories to the pulps and still never conjure a creature of such stark immaculation. That I waited for you the rest of the day seemed no surprise to you at all. As you took my hand and led me out the door, I trembled. Your giggle was intoxicating.*

*You insisted on going to your place and our love was honest and severe. You guided me through vistas whose like I could never have dreamed of, and whose beautiful variance is equaled by nothing ever encountered in the stale, rigid world in which you left me. Since then, nothing can taste as rich as anything we did on that evening, there is no note as pure in tone as the ones I heard in your dark, green eyes. There is nothing so soft as your lips, or as sharp as your quick, supple bites. You left upon my riddled skin a thousand cuts of promise, and a thirst inside my throat the depth of which I still have not discovered. No matter the many ways I’ve tried to slake it, it goes unquenched. I fear you to be the only philter that can confer upon me a cure.*

*Since stumbling from your empty apartment on the morning after our tryst, I have spent my life these last eighty years searching for you everywhere. I have traveled near and far, only just managing to keep everything from falling apart each day. No one knows you, not the manager at the cafe where we met, not the beat cop regular who was there when I attacked the manager for insisting you never worked there to begin with. No one remembers your smile, your laugh, your dimples, the waves of your shining red hair. No one remembers your small pointed teeth, or your emerald eyes. But I do. I remember it all. I remember it through to my atoms and they reverberate with the frequency of you.*

*I hope this message finds you, at any rate this queer publication seems my best chance that it will. The editor assures me that his paper’s reach is vast and that, if you are out there, only to you will it be delivered. I hope so much that this is true. I haven’t changed a bit since we last saw each other. I drink every night to make sure, just the way you taught me. Return to me my darling so that we may spend this eternity together, as you promised. Please, don’t make me face this forever alone.*

You may be wondering why this strange, poetic message would give me such anxiety, why it would spur me to such surreptitious behavior. The reason is this. I have been paired for some time now with a fiery woman with blazing hair to match, one with eyes of emerald mesmerization.

Like this person I am also an author by trade. She came to work at my publishing house and enraptured me from the moment I laid eyes on her, sitting behind a desk outside the office of my editor. She took my coat, my hat, and my heart in a bundle and her smile seared the passion I still have for her upon my soul.

The sender of this woeful plea has a great many things in common with me, not the least of which, I fear, is her offer of eternity. She has chosen me, you see, is what she tells me, what she promises. It is we who shall never be parted, who will stalk the night until such time as all reality is swallowed by the great nothingness at its end. We will drink of life until none of it is left, and then we will drink each other.

Who is this person, and what of their affair? What if this love were to find her? What if I miss a delivery? Will she read that declaration and fly to them, bestow the gift of her wonder there instead? I will not have it. It is with desperate hope that I turn to one of you for aid.

If I leave will the paper find me? Now that the deliveries have started, is there any way to make them stop? She is sharp eyed and ancient and I worry my deception has already been noticed. I don’t think I can fool her much longer. I can keep no secrets from her gaze should she ever seek to find them. She must not suspect a thing, or I am doomed.

Any help in this regard would be appreciated. These deliveries must stop. The dread of next Friday night has already begun to mount. I can’t bear the thought of doing this alone.

Description:

The "Green-Eyed Lady" is most likely an Undead-Type Oddity. She possesses several of the traits commonly associated with vampires, namely the ability to mesmerize their prey, having sharp teeth, being immortal and unchanging, and passing on immortality and thirst that can only be quenched by blood to their victims.

Writer of the Ad:

It can be easily surmised, from the writer's diction and writing style, that he is not from our current time. Indeed, he confirms this in his personal ad, "I have spent my life these past eighty years searching for you everywhere." Given the fact that the writer sounds like a middle aged man, it was likely that he was in his 30s or 40s when he first met the Green-Eyed Lady. 80 years ago would be 1940, and the man speaks like someone used to living in the 1800s. It is possible that the man was 30 or 40 in around 1890, and spent around 50 years in a daze, fighting the undying thirst. Then spent the remaining 80 years searching for his lost love. Vampirism may alter one's perception of time, so in reality he may have spent over 100 years looking for her, when he believed it was only 80.

Selection of Lovers/Victims:

The Green-Eyed Lady seems to favor authors or writers in general. The writer of the Ad implied that he sold stories to 'the pulps.' The writer of the online post confirmed that he was a writer as well, and that the Green-Eyed Lady came to work at the publishing house where he himself worked.

Like the writer of the personal Ad, the Green-Eyed Lady offered the online poster immortality. However, given the fact that the woman abandoned the writer of the Ad to wander throughout the decades, searching for her and dealing with his new condition without her help...it is likely that this 'promise' is simply a ruse. It's possible that the Green-Eyed Lady takes several lovers, promising them eternal life and turning them into vampires, then abandoning them.

It's unknown exactly why she abandons them, whether she does it because she grows bored or because she starts to realize that living with a lover for all of eternity is simply too restricting for her. Either way, a pattern of her leaving immortal, broken-hearted lovers abandoned throughout the decades can be easily surmised. If any of these jilted lovers would find her, she may find herself in a bit of a pinch.

Origin:

The Green-Eyed Lady's origin is entirely unknown. However, given the way that the Ad and the post describe her, she appears to be a stunningly beautiful woman who happens to be an experienced vampire. She is aware of her condition, knows when she's turning her victims into vampires (she doesn't do this accidentally), and knows how to move through the world avoiding detection (an obsessed ex-lover searched for her for 80 years and could not find her). This all points to the fact that the Green-Eyed Lady is a very old, very powerful, and very intelligent vampire. She knows how to navigate the ever-changing world throughout the decades, even procuring jobs in what is clearly her passion (literature). Given her high-class demeanor, intelligence, interest in the arts and artists, and vast experience, it is likely that she was an aristocrat or simply a wealthy socialite.