𝒔𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚, 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒗𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒎𝒐𝒐𝒅... [ 01. cleo - edit by shygirl / 02. slow like honey by fiona apple / 03. me and the devil by soap&skin / 04. special death by mirah / 05. young and beautiful by lana del rey / 06. dance and angela by franz waxman / 07. gods & monsters by lana del rey / 08. criminal by fiona apple / 09. seven devils by florence + the machine / 10. misery is a butterfly by blonde redhead / 11. nothing breaks like a heart by ten fé / 12. girl, you’ll be a woman soon by urge overkill ]
WRITTEN BY SAY, 25, she/her, est. your resident subverted hitchcock blonde, AVELINE.
aveline is an exercise in imagining how cruel, neglected girls grow into heartless, cold women. by all accounts, she has taken her barren childhood and created something out of it, yet she has nothing to show for it. she denies what she passionately wants for what she thinks she should have — and what results is a young girl lost in a woman’s body. while she can be petulant and unforgiving in her words, at her core, she desperately craves to be loved and desired, and to love and desire back.
in short —
formerly from a wealthy family, her mother rewrote her late father’s will to ensure that she would not receive anything. too prideful to return back to the belly of the beast, she sold her apartment in nyc and married a man from parton whom loves her but she doesn’t love back to save herself from destitution. while her husband is well-aware of her nature, he hopes that she will come around to his affection.
her secret —
when she was thirteen, she pushed a girl that was bullying her down the two flights of stairs in a fit of rage. the girl broke two ribs and her right arm. aveline’s parents were able to cover it up with a sizable bribe to the boarding school and the girl’s family. the next year, she attended a different school, and the memory is mostly a part of her past that she suppressed.
headcanons —
i. aveline has never worked a day in her life. after graduating from columbia university with a degree in art history, she sold her apartment in nyc and rented a run-down place in deep brooklyn. she spent three years wandering around soho smoking cigarettes and eating croissants.
ii. she has a nasty habit of sticking her gum in places where she wants to be remembered, for better or for worse — underneath the shelves of her favorite bookstore, on the menus of her favorite restaurant, on the underside of her husband’s boots.
iii. for the first twelve years of her life, aveline was subjected to her mother’s munchausen syndrome by proxy. it was only after her father intervened that she was able to live a normal life.
iv. she was a vegetarian from birth, mostly because her mother forbade her from eating meat because she claimed she had an allergy to it. though she still refrains from eating most meat, she has gained a taste for good steak and venison.
v. she frequently throws her wedding band away to test whether her husband will buy her another one. she’s done it about three times already, flushing her ring down the toilet twice and burying it parton park.
vi. a raging kleptomaniac. she doesn’t take anything of monetary value, just whatever she can get her hands on.
as inspired by —
india stoker in stoker, amma crellin in sharp objects, amanda in thoroughbreds, justine in raw (2016), shauna shipman in yellowjackets, betty draper in mad men, unnamed narrator in my year of rest and relaxation, titane (2021), and elena ferrante.
wanted connections —
idk yet bestie we’re going to do a separate post for that bc this is unbelievably long ❤️
when his friend asked if cal could watch his kid for a few hours, cal didn’t have it in him to say no. it’s not like he was doing anything important anyway and there was still a lot of time until he had to be at the hospital so he just went why not and agreed. cal spends an hour at his place playing with the little guy and then he decides to take the kid to the park—the weather’s nice enough so there’s no point in keeping the five-year-old cooped up inside like that.
the playground isn’t very crowded so cal’s free to occupy half the sandbox while he and jake build a very ugly sand village. an hour laterthe playground starts to crowd a little so cal gets the two of them relatively sand-free and out of the sandbox. they head for the closest bench to have some lunch; there’s someone already there but it’s also the only one that’s still semi-free. “mind if we join?” he flashes a grin at the other. even though he asks, he’s setting his bag down before he gets the answer. “jake’s going to start screaming at me if i don’t get him his juice box immediately. okay, kidding, he’d never scream at me, he loves me,” he rambles on as he searches through the bag for the lunch he packed. “how’s it going?”
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sitting in the park, aveline is greeted by the presence of an affable man sliding in next to her on the bench. though he asks if he can sit in the seat next to her, he slides in anyways without waiting for an answer. not like she was going to give it to him anyways, but he seems tolerable enough, if not a bit chatty.
“um, fine,” she replies, still gauging his presence. he seemed vaguely familiar, which bothered aveline, and part of the reason why she didn’t immediately attempt to leave after he’d sat down. was it the corner convenience store she recognized him from? — or no, the food bank? the topic of her charity work (if she could even call it that) gets her brain going, and she finally places him as the guy who’d been popular with the seniors at the community center. she’d gone a few times, though she quickly dropped it from her repertoire, as she sensed that the senior attendees hadn’t liked her. but who did, really?
but it was always children that made her more uncomfortable. it had something to do with their innocence that terrified aveline, and she covertly slides a few inches away from them, biting her lip. “if i’m interrupting your lunch, i can leave,” she says, more matter-of-fact than awkward.
FOR : @hosealaurie ／ TIME : thursday, 8:30am ／ LOCATION : some random elevator
aveline does not know what possesses her to pick up a call at eight in the morning from her mother — she chalks it up to sleep deprivation and the fact that she’d thought she’d blocked her number — but as soon as she picks up the phone, it’s clear that she hadn’t.
as soon as she puts her ear to her cell, élise blanchet is already ready with a standoffish greeting before diving into the reason she’d called — whether she was attending dinner with the ainsworths next saturday night. “the ainsworths? i - mother, who are…” she doesn’t get to finish the sentence before the name registers in her head — the same tiffany ainsworth that she’d pushed down the stairs and seriously hurt. stomach turning, aveline squeezes the phone, knuckles turning white. “no, mother. is that all?” but she doesn’t allow for a pause for élise’s answer before aveline ends the call.
it’s only then that she spots another person in the elevator and throws him a pointed look teeming with guilt. “what are you looking at?” she asks him, even though she isn’t even sure if he’d even bothered to eavesdrop in on her brief conversation. of course, the motor takes advantage of her frayed nerves and decides to come to a quaking stop, before it falls silent. aveline looks around. “are you serious?” she whispers to herself.
FOR : @lawson--theo ／ TIME : wednesday, 1pm ／ LOCATION : outside of heart + sleeve
once a week, aveline went to the north side of town to help sort coats and other donated clothing items for the homeless shelters around town. it was a residual habit picked up from her years of being raised wealthy, and while she’d done away with the pointless galas and dinners, doing things like this filled the endless void of time in her life. they’d finished early that day sorting into piles of donate and trash and aveline had called her husband to pick her up. he’d promised to drive her into the city to her doctor’s appointment, but when she’d called him to tell him that she was done, he’d apologized and said he wouldn’t be done by 2.
that had pissed her off. she was stuck in the north side without anything else to do, and all of the other volunteers had driven home already. sighing, she walks to the front of the building, wondering if an uber would make a difference.
the uber was eighty-six dollars and some change, twenty minutes away. sighing, she pockets her phone, looking around her surroundings. across the street was heart + sleeve, where someone stood outside the shop. she strides over, feeling her nerves tick up a notch. “do you have a cigarette that i can bum off of you?” she didn’t smoke — or at least she told her husband she didn’t — but on days like these where her nerves felt impossible to deal with, it was almost inevitable that she would.
FOR : @lennonduffy ／ TIME : tuesday, 11am ／ LOCATION : buzzcut cafe
for the most part, aveline mostly avoided buzzcut cafe, if only because she never really cared for the self-indulgent nature of coffee and its culture. call her strange, but she much preferred her coffee watery and a bit burnt.
but the cafe was on her way back from bringing angel, her persian cat, from the vet’s. it’d taken much longer than she’d expected and having not had breakfast, she stopped by the cafe, browsing the bakery case with a watchful eye when she spots lennon. aveline’s seen her more than a few times over the last few years she’s been in parton, though it seemed as if every time she spotted the up-and-coming singer, she’d been working in a different place.
she orders a black coffee and a croissant, her signature order, before looking up to address the barista. “by the way, you guys were good last week,” she says, shrugging. she’s not good at compliments, but a part of her has seen her devotion to fatal attraction.
FOR : @mayahirsch ／ TIME : monday, 7pm ／ LOCATION : six thirty
aveline has never considered herself unlucky, though the washer-dryer in her unit breaking down right as she had a massive pile of laundry to do didn’t seem fortuitous. it takes her three-and-a-half hours of procrastination before she gets up to load two full bags of dirty clothes into her mini cooper and makes her way down to the local laundromat in parton.
getting out of her car, she drags the two bags into the laundromat, tumbling through the door, a haggard, platinum blonde santa claus, heaving the bags to the nearest folding table and washer.
sighing, she puts a twenty through the coin machine — a rookie mistake, and aveline watches in horror as 80 quarters crash through the machine like a slot machine jackpot, though none of it seemed joyous as the other patrons turned to watch her collect the pile of coins. aveline stuffs them into her jacket pockets, huffing as she walks over to the industrial-sized washer and its endless dials and buttons. “you’d think they’d automate all this now…” she mutters to herself, throwing clothes into the washer without looking. she tosses a tide pod into the machine, feeds it quarters, and starts fiddling with the settings before she realizes: she has no fucking clue what she is supposed to do. a few minutes pass before she turns to the nearest person and calls out. “hey,” she starts, “um, do you know how to... uh, start this thing?”
FOR : @lookingfcralaska ／ TIME : saturday, 10am ／ LOCATION : willow sweets
maybe she should’ve checked her pockets for her wallet before she left the house today, but the litany of errands on her mind had distracted her from it. there was dry cleaning to be picked up, groceries to be delivered, contractors to be called. aveline told herself she liked the boring, picket-fence life she’d led in parton, though she had to admit that it got boring very easily.
she’d stopped by willow sweets on her way back from the dry cleaners, delicates in hand when she saw the croissants in the case from the window — it’d reminded her of her days spent in new york, expensive, buttery, flaky croissants and a pack of cigarettes, and she walks in, ordering one with the cashier.
“ugh,” she mutters, patting her pockets. she sighs, turning to catch the eye of the patron behind her. “go ahead,” she says, stepping back. “i think i forgot my wallet,” she mutters to herself under her breath. there’s no way that her wallet was in her jacket, but she figures it’s worth a try to paw through her pockets for loose change.
FOR : @sagecarsons ／ TIME : sunday, 10am ／ LOCATION : groove diner
even if aveline wasn’t a parton native, she’d spent a good amount of time over the summers in the town whenever her parents pawned her off to her aunt and cousins. her cousin around her age often dragged her around to all of the parties in town, much to aveline’s chagrin.
aveline thinks she’s met sage before, if only because she’d always recognized the other as the type of girl her mother had always wanted her to be — beautiful, sweet, and popular instead of the sullen little bite of a person she’d always been. aveline had taken painstaking care to avoid becoming her, though she supposes a small part of her has always wondered what it was like to be liked by so many others.
sitting up at the counter, she peeks up over her book — frankenstein, her third re-read — at the waitress. “can i get a refill on my coffee?” it’s her fifth coffee of the hour. she hopes that she won’t comment on it, though five coffees in one sitting seemed pretty ridiculous.
FOR : @jacobhartland ／ TIME : wednesday, 2pm ／ LOCATION : parton general
aveline herself didn’t care for doctors. unlike her mother, she neither wanted their attention nor pity. she’d spent too much time seeing a variety of medical professionals in her childhood: pediatricians, radiologists, neurologists, allergists. a series of men and women in white coats poking and prodding without abandon. she’d felt like a bug underneath a microscope.
but even so, a fever of 105 warranted a trip to the hospital, so rosy-cheeked and head ringing, she dragged herself to parton general.
sitting in the waiting room with a pounding head, aveline looks up as someone calls out her name. they say it ave-line instead of ave-leen, and she rolls her eyes, standing to meet the doctor. it’s a woman, which doesn’t bother her so much as the fact that she reminds her of her mother, and her stomach turns in her stomach. “no,” she says to herself, taking a step back. “is there anyone else i can see? someone that’s… not you?” aveline looks over the doctor’s shoulder, feeling her cheeks heat up. “what about him?”
FOR : @ingridsolbergs ／ TIME : feb 19th, 8pm ／ LOCATION : dustland spirits
it was entirely stupid, utterly ridiculous that aveline would even be frantic about this sort of thing, but sprinting back towards dustland spirits, where she’d been an hour earlier, all she could think was run. her weekly alcohol run consisted of purchasing two bottles of tanqueray and some muddy, soft limes from the front counter. the little chain must have fallen out of her pocket when pulling out her wallet to pay, though even that was her own conjecture. who knew where the piece of jewelry was, whether it’d been washed away by the dreary weather that plagued new york. air replete with february depression, the skies were too tired to bless the streets of parton with snow. what came was a sad bout of sleet and freezing rain, slushy particles sticking and leaving dark gray marks all over her woolen coat.
pushing the door open, face hit with the sour stench of alcohol and cardboard, aveline makes a beeline towards the cashier, attempting to compose her expression. strands of white-blonde hair fell in stringy wet tracks over her forehead and temples, and her uncovered knuckles were red and shiny from the temperature. “i…” she starts, out of breath, uncharacteristically nervous. “i lost - dropped something here.” she looks around the store. “did anyone turn anything in?”
Small-town sincerity is unnerving. Miriam would rather find herself in silent auctions exponentially more lavish and opulent, where bids are met with a proverbial, and at times literal, tipping of the hat. Regardless, it’s a territory far more familiar than others—and so she walks towards the auction tables, her interest not quite borne out of altruism. For a lack of a better term, she’s loitering, surveying the gift baskets that she does not find particularly appealing and casting judgment with vague condescendence.
When the woman in front of her turns, only to cast her with a peculiar, guilt-ridden expression, Miriam’s rendered confused. Had she done something? It’s almost embarrassing to think that she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings, having being preoccupied on debating the merits of gift baskets, of all fucking things. Yet another symptom of her mind falling victim to suburban decay.
It’s also a couple of more seconds before she recognizes the other, at which point her defenses kick in. Having no time for a discreet maneuver, Miriam chooses to maintain her farce of cluelessness, and curls her mouth into a slight smile. She walks forward, glancing at the clipboard where Aveline has presumably placed her bid. The juvenile nickname doesn’t faze her—she’s more concerned about the strange amount, the ten dollars as loose change. “If you were gonna bid that much, you should’ve rounded up to the nearest—” 69. “Ah.” As belated realization hits her, her lips draw back into a line. She doesn’t really know what to make of it, this exercise that almost resembles a kind of petty, juvenile delinquence. “Well, kudos to you for committing to the bit.”
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miriam rosenbaum was never so much a friend as she was a co-conspirator of her mother. all her friends were, back in the day, the way they’d adorn aveline with compliments strung of rocks and steel — heavy, uncouth things that were more to express their passive-aggressive urges against the young woman than to uplift her. she couldn’t remember if miriam had been one of the participants (or if she even had children), but to aveline, it was all the same.
what she did remember about the other was how much miriam unsettled her. there was... something about her that aveline couldn’t read properly. like there was a concrete barrier between her eyes and brain. tit wasn’t as if the blonde was a remarkable judge of character, but most of the women that milled about greenwich were flimsy, two-dimensional shells with makeup and a spritz of chanel no. 5.
aveline liked to play at being a wolf with these women. drop little morsels of untruths about how she’d seen their husbands with a pretty young thing not much older than her, or how their teenage children’s hands had been caught with a joint or down someone’s pants. yet, she had always failed to provoke miriam.
swallowing the spit pooled in her mouth, she pretends not to hear the other woman’s judgment. “miriam,” she greets, the smallest morsel of terror sneaking into her voice. “i didn’t know you lived in parton — or have you come to spy on me?” a self-centered, silly notion of a woman who never grew out of being a girl.
There’s a wooden bedside table capturing Maya’s eye. It’s a dark wood, lined with a flowery pattern at the top, just carved into the wood. It looks like something she’d scroll past on Pinterest, convinced one day she’ll be able to buy it but not confident enough within that thought to actually save the photo. And so, here she was, staring at the thing with furrowed brows and an ache in her stomach. It wasn’t often that Maya allowed herself to have things. In truth, she wasn’t a material person. She didn’t desire shiny things or expensive versions of items she could find at a decent, more affordable price. Though, the thought was nice. The prospect of having nice things, something she didn’t grow up having, was more pleasing than she imagined.
With that, she releases a sigh to herself, reaching for one of the little bidding cards and begins filling it out with her information. There’s a younger woman at her side, eyeing a gift basket that Maya had no interest in. Still, she nosily turns her head, curious as to how much she was willing to put forth for a gift basket. But before she can snoop further, she spots the name, BIG BIRD’S FAT YELLOW ASS, and Maya’s dark eyes widen a tad. Her lips purse into a tight line, trying to hold back the laugh that threatens to burst through. Continuing to mind her business, she places her bid for the table, which was a decent but not exactly impressive $200. Someone would bid higher, mostly likely, but the fact that Maya even tries is enough for her.
That’s when the next gimmick arrives, a wad of bubblegum being shoved just under the gift basket, courtesy of the younger smart-ass at her side. Maya straightens her spine, putting in her bidding card and turning to the blonde. If there was anything you needed to know about Maya Hirsch, it was that she wasn’t a confrontational person. No, she cared too much about what people thought to be that way. And yet, she can’t quite turn away from this. Maybe it just grossed her out too much to ignore. She turns to the side, stepping in front of her before she can move any further. “Clean that up, Big Bird. What the hell is wrong with you?” Maya questions with a confused gaze, mentally blaming the drinks she’s downed tonight for her sudden impulsivity.
there was no doubt in aveline’s mind that she’d been caught red-handed. a woman, a decent half-foot shorter than her with a head of beautiful, dark curly locks stares at aveline with confusion, evidently by her little sliver of rebellion in the form of her pink, chewed-up gum.
what the hell was wrong with her? it was a question she entertained quite often in the comfort of her own delusion, weaving anecdote after anecdote to create a story of who she was today. some days, she blamed her father, perpetually absent and devoid of emotion. other days, it was her high school classmates, sticking gum and stealing her uniform during p.e. class. most days, it was her mother, erratic and drunk, looming over her life like a ominous black cloud.
remembering this, she resented the woman for shooting her with that phrase. she turns and stops in her tracks, teeth grazing the inside of her lip. “what are you accusing me of?” eyebrows knitting, she crosses her arm tightly across her chest. but she admits to it anyways, maybe because there wasn’t any worth in ignoring what she had delighted in moments earlier. “it’s a stupid basket.” she says, hand reaching underneath the handle and pinching the sticky mess in between her fingers. most of it comes off and tearing off the corner of the paper on the table, she wraps her gum in it and flicks it into the trashcan. she attempts to walk off, before she stops again, in front of the piece of furniture the woman had stood in front of. “and the table you bid for is ugly.” it definitely wasn’t — in fact, it was actually quite nice, but aveline had a sick need to feel as if she came out of this encounter on the top.
