lord, it's a storm in my head and i fall. these sins are mine and i've done wrong, oh babe. come on down. come on down , my babe. wrong time, i know.
long gone day !
i. “southern comfort” - envy on the coast // ii. agnes of god (1979), john pielmeier // iii. who’s afraid of virginia woolf? (1962), edward albee
sophie thatcher / 24 / cis woman —have you noticed that ALICE AARONS is back in town? the CEMETERY GROUNDSKEEPER is apparently pretty INTUITIVE, but SHE can also be a little ALOOF. SHE is always blasting LONG GONE DAY by MAD SEASON, as it makes them think of something from their past. i hope the SCORPIO has a better time here than most.
hi y’all hi y’all!! i’m may ( 23 // est // she/her ) and i am Super Stoked™ to be here!! it’s been a while since i’ve written with a brand new crew so this will be!! very fun!! and also!! jesus christ i hope i can figure out the beta editor.
OK LITTLE PREFACE: writing this little preface after three hours of working on the intro bc i did get in the zone 🤨 anyway, this’ll be deleted, but for rn! i am busy all day tomorrow (my lil haunt is doing its second training of the season and then our first ever halfway-to-halloween event which will! probably suck! but fuck it we ball!) so if this is liked and i do not get back to u soon.... that is why! furthermore, i will be joining the disco either tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow night after the haunt for ppl who prefer plotting there (i feel u!) and for the general ooc vibez~ -- would join rn but.... cant risk getting caught up in conversation when i have to sleep 😔
quick stats !
FULL NAME: Alice Abigail Aarons
DOB: October 24th, 1998
ZODIAC BIG THREE: Scorpio sun, Virgo moon, Capricorn rising
GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis woman & she/her
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual
EDUCATION: High-school diploma
ENNEAGRAM: 5w4
MBTI: ISFJ
TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic-Sanguine
MORAL ALIGNMENT: True Neutral
JOB: Cemetery Groundskeeper
backstory !
triggers: religious fuckery (pentecostal version!): death, snakes, ‘hehe fuck doctors god is on my side uwu’
SQUIRE, WEST VIRGINIA, USA, 1993: she has fallen to the floor, arms limp by her side, as she cries to the heavens. words known only by the angels, the holy spirit has traveled through her and now travels through the church. it is beautiful and jovial and cacophonous. she has finally allowed the spirit to use her as a vessel. she has a community.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 1995: she has married mark aarons, and mark aarons has taken up his father’s mantle. the minister of the church, the charismatic neighbor to all, the friend who had tasted the strychnine and lived to tell of it where so many had failed. his faith was strong, outsmarting rattlesnakes for nearly five years now, and his first son would be stronger. mark aarons iv. not an arbitrary name to pass down when his life would be shaped, more or less, by the conversion of his mother and the faith of his father.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 1998: she has given birth to two more: alice, named after her own mother, and eve. the family will be large. she and mark iii only ever mate. never have they, nor will they ever, ‘made love’ -- copulation will always be reserved for keeping the aarons bloodline strong in His heart.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 2000: mark aarons iv is old enough to be baptized with the holy spirit. he falls, he speaks a language known only to the angels, and he mirrors what his mother had done and felt nearly a decade ago. the spirit flows through his young body and through the parish.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 2004: all of her oldest children have now been baptized with the holy spirit and have the ability to be effective members of the church. mark iv has begun playing along with the band, eve has begun speaking in tongues during all services, and alice has become enchanted by the snakes. mark iii beams with pride.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 2005: mark iv is no longer content to take a backseat and play with the band. as he sees it, he is bound to become the next minister. and, at a whole eleven years old ? he should’ve had his chance to begin testing the true waters by now. he insists upon handling one of the rattlers. his father understands. but the snake bites the hand that feeds.
they say that it was his time. they say that the Lord had planned for him to go out like that. it was not that his faith was not strong enough -- perhaps, some would say, it had simply been too strong. nonetheless, after two long and painful days, the aarons family lost their eldest son as his father sat beside his twin bed, praying that the Lord accept him into His arms, should he have to pass at such a young age.
and he did not go gentle into that good night. he rage - raged against the dying of the light, spirit leaving his body after one final stroke as parents, siblings, cousins, and neighbors stood to witness.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 2006: they have been in the thoughts and prayers of the community nonstop, but they must keep going. mark iii’s faith is still strong, though she has confided that she fears she will lose her way. but they are strong, mark has reminded her. their son is safe now. their son is happy. it was his destiny. and it is all he tells the rest of his children, too. and it’s enough to keep them, the eldest of whom being barely ten, content. their brother is in eternal paradise with their one true Savior.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 2007: after mark iv’s brutal death, nobody expects any aarons children to handle any serpents again for years to come. but a nine-year-old alice found that it did not take much to convince mark iii to allow her to handle one. his beliefs were strong, and once his children were old enough to understand what the rattlers could do, it was all in God’s hands. ( and the aarons children knew better than most ! )
the serpent struck her, just as it had struck mark iv. only she did not die. it sank its fangs into flesh, something many witnessed firsthand. but God had not chosen her to return home yet. or, rather, the rattlesnake had not injected any venom.
SQUIRE, west virginia, 2008: mark aarons iii’s biggest show had always been his ability to drink an entire mason jar’s worth of strychnine without any sign of poisoning. two jars sit within the walls. one at his pulpit, one on a communal table. he drinks the glass dry and tells his parishioners that they may share from the jar on the table if they so choose.
but mark aarons was not a complete fool. his mason jar was filled to the brim with regular water, only keeping the truth alive by using the smallest drop of strychnine possible. and, to some degree, the parishioners all understood this. it was the very reason that the ritual was far less common than serpent handlings, baptisms of fire, or general celebrations. it was the very reason that nary a soul ever drank from the other mason jar -- and, if they did, why what they took could barely even be counted as a sip. whether it was filled with water and a tiny drop of strychnine, filled to the brim with water, or filled to the brim with strychnine was a mystery only mark aarons iii knew. they put their faith in God, not man.
but, for all his children understood of the serpentine dangers, they were still strangers to the danger of strychnine. all they knew was that it was harder to combat than a bite. it was a scarier test of faith. to this day, even mark was uncertain if he would make it out.
which is what made it the perfect further test of how far alice could take her faith. if she could survive the rattlesnake bite, fully believing that it had spread its venom throughout her body, could she survive the poison ? it was uncertain. it was frightening. it was the next test.
and if mark had taken thirty seconds longer to motion to the communal table, if mark had taken thirty seconds longer to register that his daughter had ingested the strychnine while he ingested his water, there would be no story to tell.
it all happened within less than three minutes: simple fear to agitation to complete rigidity to muscle spasms to convulsions. all while completely conscious. all while completely cognizant.
there was little time to think. mark, despite his great despair and regret, wanted to let it ride out. because it was her time. but his wife, ‘she,’ would not lose another child to a pointless ritual in a religion she questioned more by the minute.
perhaps the real miracle, she would one day say, was that alice’s brain had not gone completely dead within the five minutes it took to make the decision for mark. the real miracle, she would one day say, was that alice had not died on the way to the hospital. the real miracle, she would one day say, was that alice had lived for over twenty-five minutes while her body was processing one of the fastest acting poisons known and accessible to man.
she only beat brain death only by a hair. by the time she was at the janky hospital, liver failure and respiratory arrest had set in, resulting in total respiratory failure.
only twenty-five minutes. conscious and cognizant up to the very last breath of it.
WELCH, west virginia, 2008: they did their best for an understaffed and underfunded hospital in the middle of nowhere, and their best was saving alice’s life. no small feat, but there was still a mountain to climb.
with time and energy, enough money was funneled through to pay for the base bill -- the base being ‘save the life, as doctors are meant to do.’ the added fees for mostly repaired liver function, room and board, and prescription ? after many fights ( that mark would call ‘disagreements’ ), mark aarons iii relinquished every cent he had. and mark aarons iii prayed in the deep dark for God’s forgiveness -- not because he had taken so long to do the objectively right thing, rather because he had put his faith in the hands of man.
meanwhile, she would show a pencil to alice. alice would say it was a pencil. she would ask what you do with it. alice would say write and draw. she would ask her to hold the pencil. alice would hold the pencil like a spoon. she would ask her to write her name. alice wouldn’t know how.
mark aarons iii would never leave squire -- could never leave squire. she knew this well. so, as soon as all had been settled, she did with all children in tow.
KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA, 2010: she is home again, living with the mother that had driven her to mark aarons iii. but the mother is safe as a grandmother, and that’s all she can ask for. she spend the next year scraping up as much money as she can to live on her own with her six children. she cannot take a second more of the inescapable evangelism, and she hopes her children never have to hear it again.
HAIL, ontario, 2011: she moves to a nearby town, smaller in size and population, cheaper in rent, and takes the eldest three, leaving the youngest three with her mother, as they can still hardly register a word she says. all their grandmother has to do is feed, comfort, and bathe them.
HAIL, ontario, 2012: after the process of re-learning, the long-term effects of the strychnine poisoning had been surprisingly easy to ignore and write off up until alice began high-school. as it turned out, brain damage did not discriminate ! and brain damage certainly did not disappear !
with low marks and the inability to truly understand any of the new material as it was introduced, just barely catching up to what ‘x’ in ‘x+9=13’ could possibly be when ‘3x+4=?′ came into the picture ( and then having to graph it !? ), it was all hopeless ! frustrated, isolated, agitated -- the first kid to act out. or maybe that was because of the frontal lobe... who was to say !
HAIL, ontario, 2013: held back a year, alice found slow academic improvement when she was moved into the special ed program, but fast social deterioration. meanwhile, her mother continued laboring away to provide for the three kids, hoping to send back for the younger three, and was unable to pay any mind.
HAIL, ontario, 2016: alice and eve had both picked up jobs to aid their mother. it was mind-numbing work that alice was good at and customer service where eve shined bright. pooling all the money together, they were finally able to send back to remove the three youngest from their grandmother while still having a roof over their heads and food on the table.
HAIL, ontario, 2017: between the financial hardships, the poor marks, and the tarnished permanent record, alice made the executive decision to not even try for college. instead, she picked up full-time work and began setting money on the side to move out. the less mouths her mother had to feed, the better.
HAIL, ontario, 2018: with a history in landscaping jobs, as well as an intense history with christianity, alice picked up work as a cemetery groundskeeper. good work if you can get it.
she moved out halfway through the year into an even cheaper flat. it was dirty and moldy and grimy and it was hers.
HAIL, ontatio, 2022: everyone was beginning to go their own way. the youngest were in high-school, the eldest had gone off to do one great thing or another. alice was as she always would be: in limbo.
but the flames ignited. ash fell like rain. fire burned bright.
the long sought-after pentecost was at hand.
and, as the town worked hard to rebuild itself, so, too, did the aarons -- alice not exempt. be it the burn scar the youngest now dealt with or the ruins of her mother’s job, their burning bush did just that: it burned.
HAIL, ontario, 2023: alice’s mother returned to kingston with the three youngest, and alice had one extra grave to tend to.
timeline !
BORN -- in squire, wv, to a pentecostal minister and his lovely wife. she is the youngest of three children, two girls and a boy.
AGE 5 -- she is baptized with the holy spirit, the first -- and most innocent, however foreign -- ritual she will endure.
AGE 7 -- she is now firmly the middle child with two younger siblings. she and her older siblings have become effective members of the church, pitching in in their own little ways.
her brother, mark iv, will likely be the next minister. as such, he has requested getting to handle a snake ( he is a whole 11 years old now.! ). their father, mark iii, submits to this request.
the rattlesnake bites mark iv and injects its venom. they are not meant to intervene -- if he lives, he lives. if he dies, it was his time.
he dies a slow, painful death at home. over the course of two days, his organs slowly shut down and he strokes out.
mark iii recovers with relative ease, strength still found in God. his wife has a more difficult time, but stays by his side.
AGE 9 -- there has been very little learning from this. keeping in mind that it was all chalked up to it ‘being his time’ and God ‘welcoming him home’ ( etc etc ), the aarons children know the dangers of the serpents, but are too brain-washed to fully comprehend... hm... how it really works !
that said, alice has always been interested in the snakes -- even before her brother’s untimely death. it didn’t take much effort to convince her father to let her handle one ! and it bit her, just as it had bitten him... only, unbeknownst to her, it hadn’t injected any venom. it just drew blood. so there she was, thinking she might be like her dad who’s survived drinking whole mason jars of straight strychnine !
AGE 10 -- mark is holding one of his rarer, more festive, much more dangerous services. at the end, he drinks an entire jar of strychnine and invites the parishioners to take a drink from the communal jar. ( now... what everyone kinda knew in the back of their minds was that mark was not actually drinking a full glass of strychnine, but to keep it ‘honest’ enough, he added the smallest drop possible after years of building up the slightest tolerance. the communal mason jar of strychnine seldom saw any action just in case it wasn’t just water or just as-lightly-as-humanly-possible laced with strychnine -- and when it did, it was the tiniest sips ever ! so you can see where i’m heading... )
but the communal jar was empty and the poison was already taking effect inside alice’s body.
awake and aware through convulsions, seizures, liver failure, respiratory arrest, and more ! -- it was sheer luck that she lived through the 25mins it took her mother to convince mark to put it in the hands of a doctor and proceed to get her to one.
she was saved -- and that was the real miracle. but she had been left with some serious brain damage (.mp3). as she relearned how to use a comb, use a pencil, use a straw, etc., her mother began scraping together as much money as possible.
her mother took her and the rest of the children away from squire.
AGES 11 - 13 -- she moves first to her grandmother’s house in kingston, ontario. her grandmother is an evangelical christian, not too unlike mark aarons iii, but just unlike enough that she’s a source of safety. she then moves with her mother and eldest sister to hail.
AGES 14 - 15 -- turns out that brain damage affected all locations as she has a very hard time trying to comprehend anything they say in her lessons. frustrated, agitated, hopeless, etc - the best crew she can hang out with is the burnout crew. and it doesn’t help when she’s held back and moved to special ed classes. are her grades improving ? slightly. is her sociability ? nope ! is it *marie kondo vc* sparking joy ? nope !
AGES 16 - 19 -- somewhere along the way, she and her sister help scrape enough money to get all of the kids in hail. is it hell ? yes ! but would it be hell anywhere ? also yes ! so might as well get them out of mark lite™’s home.
with no real future prospects and ongoing financial struggles, alice forgoes the idea of college altogether. instead, she moves into a cheaper flat ( leaving room in her mother’s for more kids ) and picks up a job as a cemetery groundskeeper.
AGES 20 - 22 -- is life a little bitch ? sure. but should there come a day that you accept the hand you were dealt ? yeah :\ to say she has entirely would be an absolute lie ! but she’s stable enough, financially speaking, to partake in a little hedonism when things are just a little tew much.
AGES 23 - 24 -- you spend your entire youth being taught that the pentecost could come tomorrow, and you’re still disappointed when it does ! because you actually lived through it and now you have to rebuild :\
aka, the fire happened. with her workplace charred to a crisp and too many hands to feed, her mother moved back to kingston with the kids. guess i’ll die .meme !
personality + headcanons !
spends most of any disposable income she gets on various vices... now see i’m telling you she has the mind of a master- master - she has the mind of a mastermind - what’s that? i don’t know, but, y’know, she’s so creative like that!
"t shirt that says YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD and the back says NEITHER DO I”
vegetarian, BUT.... it’s only because she saw that chipotle ad with the scarecrow and the cows... that changed her forever.... the most traumatizing thing she has ever gone through....
still not great at writing -- and i mean that literally, not as in ‘she writes nothing like william faulkner or zora neale hurston 😤!’ (i mean... she doesn’t... who does...), but as in like... still not great at holding a pencil and writing legibly and actually getting her thoughts down on paper.
so obviously welch is actually super close to squire. totally not artistic license in the name of ‘hm well people usually die within 30mins of ingesting this...’
MORE TO COME ! i must go to sleep <3
connection ideas !
!! siblings ( 0/2 ) -- this will be... fleshed out more... but one younger, one older. the older one has gone by ‘eve’ throughout this intro, but the name can be changed -- just preferably keeping something biblical ! would be ~25-26. the younger has been given no name, but would’ve gone through all that up until the move to hail, during which they would’ve been left with their evangelical grandmother for about six years i think it is??? and would be ~20-22 ! also preferably a biblical name ! listen... i had a different plan for alice when i came in... then this idea trampled over that one... so if i could turn back time, i’d go with something biblical, but she’s got a biblical middle name at least!
high-school friends -- be they from the burnout crew or some special ed classes <3
dealer.mp3 -- when miles kane said “please don’t try to find me through my dealer he won’t pick up his phone :\ please don’t try my father either he ain’t been home for years :\” and when lana del rey yelled “i don’t wanna liiiiiivvvvvve i don’t wanna give you nothinnnnnng” -- she felt that!
I LOVE WCs SO I HAVE A FEW MORE IDEAS BUT I AM TOO TIRED TO WRITE THEM OUT SO. THEY WILL BE ADDED TOMORROW!
the basics ! -- you know, the fwb, the ons, the super basic friends, the frenemies, etc etc
i will absolutely come up with more when i am not part of sleepy tired society but ! i am also always up for brainstorming ! so, in any case, like this or hmu if u wld like to plot !
people who are like "noooooo don't do psychedelics just to have fun and get high, you have to take them to experience deep spiritual insights" are completely wrong, just the absolute opposite of correct, if you take acid to get high and have fun you'll have a great time, if you take acid to experience Spiritual Insight you will go insane and try to start a cult
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