FULL NAME › Effie Sutton
AGE › twenty three
GENDER › Cis female (She/Her/Hers)
FROM › Baton Rouge, Louisiana
RESIDENCE › Miracle Mine Mobile Home Park (Outskirts)
OCCUPATION › Bartender at the Bucking Horse Saloon
NOW PLAYING › Freak by Lana Del Rey
trigger warnings: abuse, prostitution, death, poverty, cancer
There are some people who are sadly, not destined to have an easy go of it from the very beginning. Effie Sutton was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a single mom who just managed to get by and put enough food on the table for herself and her only child, but luxuries were always scarce. In pre-school, Effie would be the subject of judging glares from kids and other parents alike, wondering how someone could send their kid to school with only two pairs of clothes and looking like they hadn’t even been properly washed. This was nothing unusual to her mom who had only experienced a similar upbringing herself. Even the little girl didn’t understand how she was different from anyone else until she began to get a little older, eventually seeing the contrasts between herself and her peers. Even so, in her earlier years she was a pleasant person, always polite to anyone she met and careful to use manners. She was loved by her mother, truly, and was sad that she couldn’t provide more for her little girl and so she was out of the house most of the time, working hard to keep their lives as stable as they could be. God knows the father wasn’t reaching out to help. It was only when Effie started to get a little more world-weary that she began to understand just how far her mother was going to help them get by.
One early evening, a ten year old Effie wandered into the bathroom to ask her mother something while the older woman was getting ready for a shower. It was then where she spotted the strange marks on her mother’s body and began to cry, believing she was terribly hurt. Her mother then sat her down and told her what she had to do with men to make some money; not sugar-coating it too much because she was going to learn one way or another. She admitted that one of the men had gotten a bit aggressive with her but it was okay – it rarely ever happened and there was nothing to worry about. Afterwards, they shared a hug and everything seemed fine. It was only unconsciously that Effie began to change, suddenly feeling different about the world around her. She was an average student, doing only as much as she was expected to and never more. During high school, she was picked on now and again by the more popular students who were a whole lot wealthier than herself, but it didn’t affect her too much. As soon as she was old enough, she took up as many jobs as she could handle at once to help her mother pay the bills – from babysitting gigs to working in any diner that would take her. It was during one of these jobs that she met who she then believed to be the love of her life, a handsome young man who was the older brother of a little girl she frequently looked after.
Only being seventeen at the time, it was quite easy for the boy to completely whisk her off her feet. Some would say the time in which he confessed his love was far too early, and what did kids know about love anyway? But Effie was blinded by this person who seemingly would do anything for her and treated her like a princess. It was the first time in her life where she truly felt special. It was a few months into the relationship where things started to go a little awry; her boyfriend seemed to be getting overly suspicious of her whereabouts when she wasn’t with him and convinced that his ‘love’ was hiding something from him. Gradually this morphed into him believing she was cheating and doing constant check-ups of her phone and who she was texting. Of course, Effie was nothing more than innocent and thought he was just being dramatic because he loved her so much. That was… until the hitting started. She would come home nights bruised, running up to her room before mother could see, and slowly worked out the similarities between her now and her mom all those years ago. Men would do anything to gain control of women, that was all the world had shown her this far. She understood then that she had to distance herself from the relationship before things got worse.
One rainy night she uttered the words ‘I’m breaking up with you’, just to be faced with the most terrifying situation in her life. She tried to reason with him, but there was no use. Her boyfriend turned into a monster and began beating her until eventually, Effie passed out. She was found where she had earlier been dumped in the park later that night by a stranger, badly beaten. She was hospitalized where eventually her mother was called and Effie told her everything, lapsing into tears. Everything started to get a little calmer after that generally, even if Effie had visibly changed for the worse. She began doing things that once would have been unlike her, staying late at parties, drinking and smoking and messing around with a lot of boys. Her mindset was if the world was going to treat her badly anyway, why couldn’t she play it against its own game? It made her feel more in control of what was going on; that she could almost choose what bad things happened to her.
She and her mother were planning to move away, start someplace fresh with the money they had saved when the bad news came in. Her mom had cancer, and it was terminal. During this time Effie only seemed to lash out more, drinking herself into oblivion and some nights not even coming home. This was the reason why she missed being with her mother when she died, something she would regret for the rest of her life. Alone in the world and feeling incredibly bitter, Effie took to the road, no preset destination in mind. She just wanted out from this life, to be free. She drove through countless states, never staying for too long until she was back on the road again – searching for someplace that felt right. Even to this day, Effie swears Boot Hill came to her in a dream. Drawing her in with the promise of living a new life, of making something of herself. She found the mobile home park and settled in quite quickly, seeing as it was the only place she could really afford to stay. It wasn’t anything special, but she soon made it feel like home. Along with a job at the saloon, the young woman leads a more or less decent life. She is still more than a little troubled by her past, which often shows in how she interacts and treats others, but she is a survivor. She is someone who tries to ignore the strange rumours about the town, but can’t deny that there has been something pulling her into staying there ever since she arrived.
❝ The girl who signed her papers in lipstick leans against the drugstore, smoking, brushing her hair like a machine. ❞
FACECLAIM › Margaret Qualley
AUTHOR › Robyn
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2087
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