#straitjacket sisters

[missvalerietanner]

She lifted her eyes to his, and he stumbled when he saw the tears in her eyes. “Marriage changes people, Nash. It makes them complacent and lazy and greedy. Suddenly, what we have won’t be good enough any more. All the little things we don’t let bother us will nag at us. We'll fight over shit that we don’t even care about just to hear the sound of our own voices, just to yell, to have something new to do. We’ll be bored, and we’ll grow apart. And I don’t want to wake up one day and not recognize you when you’re lying next to me.”

Caroline to Nash, Straitjacket Sisters (doing some rewriting, hoo-ah!)

[straitjacketsisters]

[missvalerietanner]

"This path will destroy you." His voice was hoarse with honesty, grating against her raw nerves.

She leaned into him and snarled, baring her canine teeth in a hiss. "Then I burn happy."

--Straitjacket Sisters, Caroline and Michael

[missvalerietanner]

I could feel that he was a toxin eating away at the inside of my heart, but I learned to love the burn. Even as my skin melted to his touch and was left charred and black beneath his fingertips, I begged for more, always eager to see him again.

Edith, Straitjacket Sisters

[missvalerietanner]

Straitjacket Sisters | Original Character Aesthetics: Edith Davis [ x ]

"He promised everything would be better this way. And look what destruction he has caused. He truly was a fool, and he has broken my heart for the last time.”

The woman in the woods, the vagrant on the street, the exiled child: Edith is known by many names around Baxton, and most of the citizens know of her past and offer her sympathy.

She became pregnant at sixteen, lost her child, and was chased from the town by embarrassment and hate. Ten years past before she dared to return to her hometown, and when she did, she was barely recognizable. During her time away, she had gotten sick, nearly fatally so, but she fought the illness with powerful, crippling drugs: both of which left her infertile.

When Edith returned to the only home she’d ever known, she was thin, frail, and her once striking blonde hair was gone, replaced by a deep, brown wig that laid curls against her chest. Back in Baxton, she wanted only peace, until the injustice of her past returned to haunt her once more. 

[missvalerietanner]

Straitjacket Sisters | Story Aesthetics: The Coming of the Mother

“We do not wish you harm,” the gray-haired woman confessed while her hands twisted around themselves with an impatient greed.

“And attempting to drown Nash was what?” Caroline screamed.

“A warning,” the woman replied in a bland voice. “If we wished either of you dead, you would be dead. We’ve patiently awaited your return, Miss Caroline, and we’ll await the arrival of the baby you carry even more so.”

A strange group of women wearing all black and lore hats hover around the Alodia property. They’ve been watching the home for six months now since Lorane’s passing, but they didn’t approach until Caroline’s return to Baxton. And her return signals a movement in the women, a call to action, and when they learn of Caroline’s pregnancy, they inch even closer, closing in like vultures around the sisters. But they’ll be patient; they’ll see to it that the child is born properly in their ceremony for The Mother.  

(still working out the details of all this ;p but for now, I’m happy.)

[straitjacketsisters]

Straitjacket Sisters | Character Aesthetics: The Three Sisters

“Everyone in the town knew--they knew how much Peter loved those girls. He never would’ve hurt them. Never, n--not in a hundred years. He loved being a dad, loved those girls. Lorane, now, the same couldn’t be said for her.” 

[missvalerietanner]

She shut her eyes tight and felt the sting of tears drip off her lashes. These tears weren’t born of pain but rather fear as the truth of her sickness settled into her mind. She counted back the weeks, lying to herself that she had been careful--that they had been careful. But when the count was clear, she pinched her lips together to suppress a panicked sob as a wave of suffocation emptied her lungs. She wouldn’t dare speak the admission aloud, certainly not here--not after what Sandra had said.

Straitjacket Sisters, an unplanned pregnancy