St. Peter's Asylum discussion
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♤Name:♤ Garnet Wren Richmond ♡Age:♡ 15
○DOB○ January 15, 2000
♢Appearance:♢
Garnet is very pretty with deep brown hair and chocolate eyes. She stands and a petite 5'0 and weighs 93 lbs. She usually wears skirts like a good little school girl and always wears a braid laced with a flowered ribbon.
¤Face Claim¤ Dakota Blue Richards
♧Orientation:♧ Straight
☆Gender:☆ Female
♤Personality:♤
{Sadistic} Inflicting pain is one of her past times that she enjoys immensely. She likes making who ever "wronged" her suffer.
{Smart} Garnet is incredibly smart for her age. She evaded detection by the police for 3 years and managed to escape from their custody more than once. Garnet also doesn't have any problem playing the "scared little girl" in front of a jury. She always plays it off like "the voices in my head told me to" or "I didn't mean to"
{Over Confident} The major downfall of Garnet is her confidence. The whole reason she was caught is that she tried to take a person down that was ready for any sort of attack. He escaped her grasps and told the police who she was.
{Self Preservationist} With all that she is, Garnet is above all going to watch out for her self because she cares about only herself.
♡History:♡
Born on January 15, 2000 in Crucible, Pennsylvania to Nathan and Katherine Richmond, Garnet was the perfect child that every parent wants. Garnet was a quiet child who was never in the way and never asked for anything. They never noticed the barbie dolls with missing limbs scattered in her closet. When Garnet was around 9 is when she started "playing" with animals. First it was small animals like birds and frogs but when she got a little older it was bigger animals like dogs and cats. Of course Garnet was careful enough to not get it on her school uniform. When Garnet was 11 she was always getting made fun of by her class mates for being so quiet and different. Garnet didn't target her abusers though, she targeted their families. Leading them off to ask them for help or something of the sort, she always slit their wrists and throat. She wasn't caught until very recently and managed to get sentenced to a mental hospital instead of a juvie or prison.
♧Current Placement:♧ Patient
□Security□ High
☆Obsessions:☆ One thing is her hair, Garnet keeps it braided and no other way, it has always been like that and she won't change now. Another thing is the way she kills, all of her kills, animal or human have certain qualities that don't change.
Other:♤ Will try to escape.
Mod
Aliases: Josie, Pien, Jo, Jopie (Dutch pronunciation observed in all cases)
Age: Fourteen (14)
Date of Birth: December 14th
Appearance:
It’s the eyes—you can tell she’s had a rough night.
A school portrait.
Josephine has never been what one might call a classic beauty, but she doesn’t mind—her mother has always called her beautiful, spring, summer, winter or fall, and that has always been enough for her. Indeed, on most days, the young girl is very well put-together, sporting a simple but charming appearance, an almost plain-Jane kind of look set off by just a hint of childlike innocence, a doeish, tender beauty: wide, chocolate-colored eyes, full lips, a high forehead and gentle brow, frequent smiles and small dimples at the corners of her mouth. Her nose is even snub-tipped, though firm and straight and proportioned in such a way it’s clear she’s at least past puberty.
Of course, not everything about Josephine is sweet and simple. Her cheekbones, for instance, are angular and fine, and on a bad day can make her appear almost gaunt. Dark brown hair, while rich and mostly well-maintained, retains an ever-so-slightly coarse texture and is prone to breakage, hinting to years of abuse by combing anxious fingers and long periods spent without a proper wash. Too, it is often pulled back or styled sternly, rarely allowed to fall forward and frame humble features, hardly ever reaching its true length at petite, birdlike clavicle. In fact, days when it does often mean Josie is in the middle of an unpleasant spell, too preoccupied by the tricks her mind plays with reality to worry about fixing her hair for the day; and this is often accompanied by chapped lips, roughened nail-marked skin, and too-wide eyes backlit with panic. Anyone who knows her well is aware that these are never, ever good signs.
Josephine is smaller than most patients in the asylum, standing at 5’3, but she fairs much better than average in the weight department; she is healthy given her size, a modest 105 pounds, and her skin, though pale, is not stretched tightly over her bones in a way that would indicate malnourishment (something many St. Peter’s patients are not able to boast). Light freckles dot her cheeks and arms here and there, and if you look closely you may be able to see pale pink-white marks where self-imposed scratches have scarred, but other than that, Josephine sports a fairly even complexion. She doesn’t choose to show it off most days—a good half of her wardrobe looks like it came straight out of a school uniform catalog—but when the day is warm and her mood pleasant, you can find her in anything from dresses to lacy skirts to shorts and t-shirts, buttons, collared blouses and dark pants forgotten.
Fairly flighty in her movements, in the manner of a child or a curious bird, Josie cannot exactly be called graceful—but her balance is good, and while she doesn’t have a dancer’s quick poise or a worker’s sure stride, she isn’t as clumsy and awkward on her feet as some might believe. She’s even prone to twirl or dance when the mood strikes her, light and tip-toed as any fairy; though converse moods will see her wary, alarmed and quick to start as a rabbit in an open field—and on her worst days, she’ll be frozen like a deer caught in headlights, made nearly catatonic by terror, and when she can bring herself to move, bolting is usually the only thing on her mind. Unfortunately, only time will tell which creature—so to speak—will get to her first on any given day.
Orientation: Undetermined
Gender: Female
Personality: St. Peter’s Asylum hasn’t seen a new arrival as all-around pleasant as Josephine in a long time—and unlike many of the so-called “good patients” who make their homes within the walls, she does not have a particularly young age or certain fragility to attribute to her sweetness. No, it would seem that this girl is simply a good egg; she is friendly and compassionate, curious but soft-spoken, kind and patient and eager to please, and she always has been. She laughs frequently and smiles more, and her presence is often warm and infectiously pleasant, as though she holds a miniature golden sun in her chest, right next to her heart. In many ways, she is a foil to her older sister—indeed, on some days the two can behave like complete opposites—and just occasionally, they will operate as each other’s damage control. Josephine will find herself trailing into rooms Cerise has left in a huff, assessing any and all harm done and patching wounds where she needs to, offering anything from apologies to explanations to tension-breaking jokes to make sure animosity levels remain low and no one has any hard feelings. Over the years, she has excelled at taking this role, as well as many others: friend, diplomat, helper, morality pet, stress-reliever. The young girl is simply a good-hearted soul, and there just doesn’t seem to be a mean bone in her body. Now, does this make her a little naïve? Perhaps, ever-so-slightly; but Josie prefers to think of herself as optimistic and tolerant rather than positive to a fault.
Though naturally, she has her bad sides, as everyone does. The nature of her condition has left Josephine easy to distress, and she can be driven to tears as easily as to shouting, if not moreso. Her heart, while large, is fragile, and it has never been a difficult thing to hurt her, physically or emotionally. She is not a stranger to the more negative side of the human condition—she has felt poorly or foully just as often as anyone else, has surrendered to selfish whims and bad impulses just like your average Jane—but she for the most part unused to it, and as such she remains a girl around which you sometimes must walk on eggshells.
And all this is overlooking her mental instability, her true reason for being in the asylum—you see, Josephine is the victim of a particularly nasty psychotic disorder, one that leaves her almost completely unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is not in the midst of an episode. With the adequate trigger—and sometimes even without—her perception of reality will become extremely unstable. A thunderclap could become the crash of a bomb on impact in a land already scarred by countless craters and endless warfare. The sight of something dead or dying could transform the world around her into a horror novel, where everything is at once dead and alive, animals sloughing their way through grass that blackens under their feet, people rotting down to bone even as they speak and move. The sound of a heated argument could distort into tortured screaming were she to find it upsetting enough, the room in which it takes place transforming into a dark, featureless cell in the blink of an eye. Indeed, what environment she flashes into is entirely dependent on what triggered her, and she can “disappear” into other “worlds” anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to a few days, in the worst of cases.
When the ground you stand on is more brittle than glass beneath your feet, you will find yourself with a very delicate mind indeed.
Mod
Cerise came first, and four years later Josephine; two lovely daughters of two lovely parents. Mutual agreement found the Lyon-Beaumont family in the Netherlands when Cerise was four and Josephine barely a year old so they could complete grade school (the Dutch, after all, are well-known for their excellent education system) and for nine years, Rotterdam remained their home. The girls grew up speaking Dutch, learned English throughout primary school and at the house, and for a while, that was that. Both children led healthy, active lives, strong senses of curiosity and confidence nurtured by their parents. Cerise, despite being blind from birth, led her younger sister on all sorts of adventures, and Josephine, despite being shy and initially hesitant about trying new things (especially seemingly dangerous things, which Cerise had a knack for getting her into) followed faithfully with a smile on her face and childhood wonder alive and well.
Things began to go downhill when the family moved back to the United States, the year Josephine turned ten years old—the year the absent-mindedness started, the year the complaints began to trickle in from fourth-grade teachers about young Josephine “spacing out” and being “uncooperative during lessons”. The year the marriage Adelheid and Maurice had worked so hard to maintain began to strain. Fights were more frequent among the young couple; they argued about money, each other’s jobs, house bills, friends, Cerise’s enrollment into an all-blind school when she began the eighth grade—but most of all, they argued about Josephine. Whether or not she was all right, whether the long hours she would spend curled up in some obscure corner of the house or on her bed were due to an overactive imagination, stress, or overwork; whether she was just trying to get attention when she began to panic during thunderstorms or fireworks shows, something she had never done before. Whether or not it was normal for her to be reporting seeing strange creatures, often with claws or multiple heads or mouths, perched on her bed and dresser after she woke up sweating from nightmares, which were becoming more and more frequent as time went on despite her never having much of a history with them. Maurice said it was serious and insisted they take their little girl to see a doctor; Adelheid said she was fine, just overzealous. But when the sightings of monsters became yet more frequent—when they were joined by complaints of seeing people that weren’t really there, new paths appearing in the road when no construction had been done on it in years, blood that wasn’t real, sometimes, when particularly stressful or frightening situations took their toll—even she began to get worried.
Josephine began to see a doctor. Cerise did not end up being sent to a school out-of-state. And Adelheid and Maurice got a divorce. Not on paper, never made a legal matter—it was only a personal thing. A mutually beneficial decision, they decided; they just needed some time apart. Josephine was twelve at the time, a quarter of the way through sixth grade and doing her best to manage and cope with her periods in nonreality. Cerise was sixteen, angry and ever-so-slightly bitter about the whole affair, especially the part where her father suggested she move back to France with him and spend some time in Europe again; but in the end, she relented. She and Maurice packed bags and moved across the Atlantic to Lourmarin, France, and it was there they stayed. For the next two years the family was separated, civil but distant, half living in the French countryside and half back in the States, keeping the old house in Brunswick, Maine ready for the moment when everyone was ready to reunite. Life went on. School, friends, chores, psychotic episodes and all. Josephine was heartbroken by the split in her family, but she did her best to get by—Cerise called her almost every day, making the weight of the loss a little bit lighter, and her mother remained a kind and well-knowing figure in her life. Even Maurice kept in touch, when he was not tending to Cerise’s schooling or his own home.
And then there came that fateful November night, the night that Josephine is hesitant to even mention lest it birth an even remotely similar occurrence. When it began, it was such an innocent thing. Adelheid had decided to take a graveyard shift for a sick coworker, leaving her thirteen-year-old daughter alone for the night. Pizza was in the fridge, she said, the house was all locked up—and she’d picked up a new movie from Redbox that looked interesting if Josephine wanted to watch it. The movie? Contagion. And Josephine, ever the curious girl, decided it would be an excellent way to spend her evening. She prepared her pizza dinner, turned off all the lights, and settled down to watch the film.
Adelheid came home to an all-dark house and not a sound coming from the living room. When she hurried in to check on Josephine, she found the movie—credits rolling—on mute, and not a sign of her little girl. Concerned (she knew very well how easily triggered poor Josephine was getting) she busied herself searching the rest of the house. She was not expecting to find her daughter hiding behind the shower curtain in their bathroom, a makeshift mask over her mouth and nose, eyes bugging with terror and scouring her hands with water so hot they were already growing red and raw—and she was certainly not expecting the psychotic episode that followed, and carried the poor girl all the way through the rest of the week. It was by far the worst one ever to strike her. Josephine spent her days quarantined—quite literally—in her bedroom, her nights pacing the house with the mask on and the strongest antibacterial solution she could make, scrubbing obsessively at every inch of the place. Her mother couldn’t get her outside no matter what she tried—pleas, coaxing, rewards, even threats. The one time Josephine did leave the house willingly, she covered herself head to toe in layers and refused to go anywhere near crowded places; as soon as a day after that, she had to be dragged to the car kicking and screaming if she had somewhere to go. ”We can’t go!” she would shriek, tears pouring, clawing at Adelheid’s arms with nails that had been cut mercifully short. (The neighbors would see, worse, the neighbors would stare and watch, but it got to the point where they couldn’t afford to care). ”Ma, we can’t! We’ll die out here! We’ll die out here! The whole world is sick, everyone is sick please Ma, please Ma, PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME GO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” Nothing would calm her except returning to the house, and then she would spend hours in the shower, scrubbing herself down with water scalding hot, and she wouldn’t come out until she stopped feeling bacteria trying to work its way under her skin.
Five days in, Adelheid called her husband and begged him to return home, and to bring Cerise in tow—Josie was in the middle of one of the worst fits she had ever had, it had been nearly a week, she was frantic and panicking and scared all the time, she didn’t sleep, she wouldn’t eat, nothing could keep her calm. She needed her father and older sister; more than that, she needed help. She wasn’t going to come back on her own. That was all it took. In a day and a half Cerise and her father were all but barging into the house, pounding up the stairs and calling out to Josephine. Maurice swept her tightly into his arms and cradled her even as she screamed, out of her mind with fear; Cerise knelt by her side and took her hands and spoke endlessly to her in Dutch, talking about everything from the weather to what she had chosen to wear that morning and how she had gotten ready to her time in France. She talked about how much she had missed her, how good it was to see her, how she was back after two long years and how they were going to spend the rest of their days together as sisters, playing together and arguing over silly things and helping each other out just as they’d done before she left.
And somehow, that worked. It calmed Josephine down. Just a few hours later she came to, flighty and terrified still but no longer rushing about trying to board up windows, quailing from fires and stumbling sick men and the rows and rows of dead that lined the streets, all things only she could see. Shaky calm settled over the Lyon-Beaumont household. Josephine’s doctor visits increased from once a month to a few times a week. Cerise stayed by her side almost constantly, even accompanying her to school on some days, to make sure there was no residual traces of the episode that were going to plunge her suddenly back into her nightmarish, plague-stricken world. Adelheid removed all potentially triggering material from their house, especially anything that dealt with worldwide epidemics or other apocalyptic scenes. Three short weeks passed, and before the family knew what hit them, Josephine’s psychiatrist was recommending she be sent to a nearby facility for more around-the-clock treatment, in hopes the staff there would be better able to aid her in the event of a psychotic episode and keep them, if they did occur, from lasting for as long as the previous had. After much deliberation, Adelheid and Maurice consented, and off their youngest daughter went. Cerise followed her in without question, stalwart in her desire to keep her little sister safe.
Current Placement: Patient—Low security
Obsessions: None, not really, though Josephine is particularly careful—verging on paranoid—about not getting in any situations which may be too stressful, lest they trigger an episode of some kind. Medications rarely help her out of them, after all; sometimes even Cerise can do nothing. The last thing she wants is to be stuck, all alone and ultimately helpless, in some fresh hell she has no idea how to get out of. As it stands, she's also in the habit of journaling the occurrences, trying to keep track of all the different "worlds" she's been in. It's also a great strategy for keeping up-to-date on the people, places, and situations she would be better off avoiding--for her own good, if not sanity.
Other: Josephine speaks fluent Dutch as well as English, but seeing as most of the asylum’s residents are English-speakers, she keeps her quasi-mother tongue on the back burner unless she feels particularly uncertain, upset, or shy.
Mod
Age: Eighteen (18)
Date of Birth: October 26th
Appearance:
Do we have a problem?
I’m blind, not stupid.
Oh, je suis désolé. Ai-je te faire peur? (view spoiler)
At first glance, it would be hard to tell that Josephine Lyon-Beaumont’s older sister was blind. She has a startling gaze, a captivating gaze; her eyes are catlike, perfectly shaped, the irises a severe shade of jade green that catches the light in just the right way, such that it almost—almost—makes it seem as though she is looking right at you. But appearances can be deceiving, and those in the right mind will know: she is not. Is not and never will; indeed, she cannot. Cerise Lyon-Beaumont, no matter what show her eyes might put on for you, is completely blind, and has been from birth. Her world has always been and always will be made of sound, touch, taste, smell and darkness; but she’s gotten used to that fact over the years, used to the way people describe the world with colors and images, light and pictures. Entirely oblivious to the fact they might be excluding others in the process, and not even paying them any mind. Yes, Cerise is used to all of this—and she’s not apt to let it stop her.
Despite not being able to see, Cerise puts a lot of effort into her appearance. She knows she’s got a bit going for her, and she isn’t afraid to show it off. Her face is all delicate bone and smooth angles; a bit of blush on either cheek will show off her cheekbones. Her brow is stern and curved, designed for movement and expression; so she never thickens her brows, sparse though they may seem to others, and keeps her lashes for the most part free of cosmetics, mascara or otherwise. But her nose is just slightly crooked at the base, so attention must be drawn away from it; this is done via lipstick or gloss, any luscious shade will do, as long as its coating her lips just so. And of course, all of this is to be framed by her hair on any given day. Light brown-blonde tresses are almost always kept unbound, and will fall in gentle waves all the way down to her hips if she lets them; rather unlike her younger sister, Cerise takes great joy in working with her hair, and spends a great amount of time keeping it washed, brushed and conditioned so it will retain its silky, soft feel no matter the weather—or her mood.
She’s not lacking in the height department either, nor that of body. Cerise rises above the head of many of the patients at an intimidating 5’10, and weighs about 150, every pound of it distributed evenly over her figure to give her a full, graceful look. She has a fine bone structure (again rather reminiscent of a cat’s) and is very fair and smooth-skinned on top of it—moreso than her younger sister, despite spending more time outside under the sun—making her the envy of many a high school classroom. Similarly, she used to turn jealous heads with her wardrobe, not that she ever noticed; it’s a classy, chic affair full of everything from gowns to skinny jean-and-blouse combos that flatter her figure to large, bulky sweatshirts and yoga pants meant for casual, comfortable wear.
And as for poise, well, she has that in some supply too—one might think that as a blind girl in unfamiliar surroundings she would be quite careful, if not hesitant or even awkward when making her way around; but this is simply not so. Cerise walks with elegance and confidence wherever she goes, even when making her way through strange new hallways or rooms full of God-knows-what. It isn’t all-natural, of course—she’s had to build her good looks, gait and all, through years of practice, advice, and trial-and-error—but by now she’s become a veritable master at projecting what she’s always wanted everyone to see, even when she doesn’t quite feel up to it, and she is, all and all, very proud of that fact.
Orientation: Straight
Gender: Female
Personality: In many ways, Cerise and Josephine are opposites—one is tall where the other is slight, one has dark eyes, the other light, one has long hair, the other short. Et cetera, et cetera. But by far, the most noticeable differences between the two sisters are in their personalities. Young Josephine is gentle and kind, all shy smiles and polite manners, with the mildest of tempers; but her older sister is fierce, with an absolutely barbed tongue and no fear to hide behind severe, sightless green gaze, almost ever. Truly, Cerise (keeping with her projected image of elegance tempered with a slight touch of wildness) is something of a wildcat. Her temper is rather like a smoldering ember: it doesn’t take much to get it going, and it tends to flare in stops and starts rather than burn. It will die out quickly—most of the time—but then the cycle is prepped to begin again, and trouble is welcome to start anew.
And yes, in truth, the girl is something of a troublemaker. One might expect her to be meek or at least uncertain, deprived of a central sense as she is; but this could not be further from reality. She is filled head to toe with fire and brimstone, and whether the fact makes itself known through tough, stony exteriors or fits of temper or an infinite number of sarcastic remarks depends entirely on the company she keeps—but it is a fact nonetheless, and it is not often willing to slip away or hide its face. Indeed, the way she talks sometimes, it isn’t hard to perceive Cerise as outright vicious, even brutal; it all depends on her mood, and whether or not you’re on her good side. She’s known to hold a rock-solid grudge, as well, so when it comes to such, you might do well to tread carefully.
Now, she isn’t all spice and sass—whoever is? She, just like anyone else, has her good traits as well as bad. While she is fierce, she is also very protective of the people she loves; while sarcastic, too endearingly witty, often to the point of being able to draw a laugh from the most reluctant of people. Yes, she can be fiery; but that same off-brand spunk can make her appear charming and enjoyably risqué as easily as mean. And while she tends to hold on to grudges more tightly than a toddler their favorite toy, so too is she reluctant to part with good impressions, fun experiences, and friendships. She has not allowed her temper and sharp personality to make her jaded; rather, she keeps it them in fine check and pulls them out when necessary, like a pair of well-honed blades.
On most days, the young woman is quite approachable, even amiable; as open as the next girl to conversation, ready and willing to make friends, share stories, make light of silly tribulations and reflect upon the serious ones. She is all for learning from her mistakes and allowing them to make her a better person—and that, in and of itself, is more than enough to set her apart from many young firecrackers her age. All and all, Cerise has a good heart; a good heart, a refreshingly level head, an unbroken spirit. Sometimes, it can just take a minute—or a day, or a week, or a month—for the better of her parts to peek through. Give her time. Be patient with her. If you spend enough time watching—watching and waiting—you will find this girl to be more like a geode than anything else: rough and even unpolished on the outside, but on the inside, absolutely bursting to brim with beauty.
Mod
And soon enough, they got to thinking. “What’s a wonderful family without a child or two?” Adelheid would ask Maurice over breakfast, teasing more than anything, but his eyes would light up all the same and he would say “Nothing at all, ma chérie.”—and that would be that, until it was brought up again the next day (or night, if one of them was feeling particularly cheeky). But it would seem that something, at least, had heard all their jesting, for eight months later, there came Cerise. The pregnancy had been a difficult one, and when Adelheid’s water broke just short of five weeks early she was not surprised; but she was concerned. Maurice rushed her to the hospital as quickly as time allowed, and the baby was delivered by emergency Cesarean section late on a crisp October afternoon. Once the initial worry and life-or-death dilemma had passed, the newly-made parents were absolutely delighted. Finally, they had a daughter to share the house with, a newborn little girl to raise and show the world! When that same newborn little girl was reported to have dual retinal detachment—a medical emergency that, unfortunately, the poor thing was too small and weak to undergo operation for—that delight did not waver in the slightest. Adelheid and Maurice were disappointed, certainly, saddened that their first daughter would make her way in life completely blind, never to know the joy of sight; but they were happy, too, happy that the baby had been blessed with life and born otherwise healthy, when it would have been so easy for her to die before ever having lived.
Four years saw the Lyon-Beaumont family utterly, blithely content in their North Carolina home—there was not a foul spot to be found. Young Cerise was a bright and happy child, sightless but completely unaware that she was missing a single thing in life. By three she was more proficient walking with a cane than most sighted children were on their own two feet, and she swept through preschool without a hitch, learning her alphabet and numbers both spoken and written in braille. By four she was beginning to write and use a computer, and a quarter-way through that year her mother and father came home with a surprise: little baby Josephine, shrieking and squirming and healthy. Shortly after her little sister’s birth—and much to Cerise’s delight—Adelheid was proposing a move and helping everyone pack for the Netherlands, which, she assured, was an absolutely beautiful, wonderful place that was just as nice—if not nicer—than the little Appalachian home they would be leaving behind. Nine years in Rotterdam would pass by quickly, and Cerise and Josephine would in that time become like glue, always together, getting into all kinds of mischief and adventures both in school and out, whether they were speaking Dutch or English, whether Cerise was out leading with her cane or Josephine eagerly taking her hand, guiding her to some quaint little place she had found while out walking with Ma or Papa.
Shortly before Cerise turned fourteen, she and her family swapped homes again. Back across the ocean they went, this time to Brunswick, Maine, and she and Josie settled there like a pair of migrant-weary bluebirds, allowing themselves to get comfortable enough but poised and ready to move again. Their parents were much more relaxed after the move, of course, used to it as they were; but Cerise was not so sure Brunswick was to remain their home for a little while, as they said. Something was going on with her lovely, perfect family—she couldn’t exactly tell what, but she knew it was there. She knew it wasn’t normal for Josephine to be waking up shrieking every night, cries of “Monster! Monster!” flying from her lips like some horrible, hysterical hymn. She knew it wasn’t normal for her mother and father to be fighting in the mornings when she came down the stairs to fix breakfast, only to become strangely silent when they heard her approach. She knew it wasn’t normal for the phone to ring during dinnertime, with one of her sister’s teachers on the line, admonishing a student who had never been anything less than stellar for being “unresponsive” and “absent-minded”, to the degree that it interfered with the rest of the class. She was blind, not stupid—she knew trouble when she smelled it, and the stink was all over the house, night and day.
In the end, Cerise’s suspicions were confirmed—something was definitely wrong, and what was worse, it was beginning to split her family apart. Her younger sister, only eleven, began to see a doctor for a condition her parents refuse to speak to her about, no matter how much she pleaded, shouted, bullied, or cried. All the fighting she’d heard over the past year or so had been about her, whether or not she needed specific accommodations in school that the public education system could not provide. And her parents (this was the worst news of all, the straw that broke the camel’s back ten times over) were going to split up. They needed some time away from each other, they said. It was nothing against either party—things were just strained right now. They needed space to think about things, to loosen up and let out held breaths, to figure things out, as Maurice had phrased it, just a few days before Cerise turned sixteen. Cerise herself was appalled and infuriated by the proclamation. Her father was going back to France?! He was going to leave Josephine, when she so obviously needed help—so obviously that even a blind girl could see it! She blew a fuse right then and there. “Je vreselijke man, wat is er mis met jou?!” she screamed at her father, and screamed, and screamed, until Adelheid came pounding up the stairs, the door to her room was tightly shut, and the suggestions began. Perhaps it would be a good idea for Cerise to go with her father, to take a breath of fresh air and get away from all the stress and the trouble for a little while. Perhaps she could spend some time in Europe again, in the French countryside, relax, unwind, take some time to get used to all the new changes and plights.
None of it made Cerise happy; not one bit. Still, after nearly three straight hours of coaxing, she relented. She would go, she snapped, if she would be kept in contact with Josephine as often as possible and only if it would get everyone off her back for once, good God, wasn’t it already enough that she was blind and her little sister was sick? Didn’t she have enough to worry about? Her parents confirmed that yes, there was; and so the decision was all but made, and the next morning, she and her father were on their way to Lourmarin, France, to a small corner home just big enough for two. Two years passed, and through some resentment remained in Cerise and fermented to contribute to the fiery personality she displays today, she will admit it really did do wonders for her. Lourmarin was a gorgeous little town, small enough that she could memorize the place without getting lost and big enough to lose herself in when she felt the need. The cobbled streets had a rough-smooth quality to them that she learned to love, and lavender (of which the streets always smelled) remains to this day one of her favorite scents. She spent her time in a variety of ways: on long walks with her father, talking to Josephine and her mother back in the States, learning French, heading out to the square to meet new people or just sit for a while, soaking in the sounds and smells of rural France. Her father took care of her schooling at home, and all and all, it was a quaint life she had fallen into—certainly enough to prepare her for Adelheid’s fateful call, when it came.
Her worry and haste were immediate, her transition back into the United States and the buzz of fierce, protective concern in her head hardly noticed. She and Maurice made it back to Brunswick in record time, and before she knew it Cerise was in the house and up the stairs, listening to Josephine scream and her father do his level best to soothe her, quiet her, let her know that everything was, in fact, all right. Cerise joined him almost immediately; she knelt by her little sister’s side, enfolded hands that felt far too rough and mistreated in hers, and talked. Endlessly, almost babbling; of her time in France, her morning, school with her father, how much she’d missed her and Ma and Maine. She spoke of good days past and better days to come, how she and Josephine would be just as they had been back in Rotterdam: inseparable, making trouble and good memories together, and sisters through it all. When that worked—when Josephine found herself mercifully calm and everyone was able to let out the breaths they’d been holding—unsteady peace took root inside the Brunswick house that had seen so much, and Cerise sank into relieved, grateful stupor right along with it. When Josie began to see a doctor more and more often for what Cerise now knew to be periods of horrible psychosis, she didn’t object. When her mother asked her to accompany Josephine whenever she went outside—to comfort her and watch her, to make sure she stayed okay—she did so readily, even fervently. And when the day finally came when her sweet little sister was to move in to St. Peter’s Asylum, several hours away, for long-term treatment…Cerise led the way inside, cane in hand, head held high, and eyes flashing with warning and pride.
Current Placement: Patient—Low security
Obsessions: Not so much an obsession, but a necessity—Cerise is hardly ever to be seen without her long white cane, which she uses to make her way around when she isn’t in need of a sighted guide. Take it from her, and you remove her sight; and when she manages to get it back, she’ll be absolutely spoiling to remove a few things of yours, too—as savagely and painfully as possible.
Other: Like her sister, Cerise speaks fluent Dutch and English, but unlike her, she has a third language under her belt: French. She keeps it to English for politeness’s sake, most of the time, as aware as anyone else that it’s the lingua franca of the asylum—but it’s not uncommon to hear a swear or muttered (sometimes even shouted) insult come from her in either of the other tongues, and if you push her far enough, she’ll go into whole spiels in one or the other, sometimes swapping between them at a seemingly random whim before she calms enough to remember she’s supposed to be speaking a language you can understand and switches back.
message 107:
by
Annie, Have no fear of perfection-- you'll never reach it.
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Mod
Aliases: None
Age: 25
Date of Birth: 11th of March
Gender: Female
Orientation: Straight
Current Position: Therapist
Appearance:
Please don’t start...not now.
Aww, you’re funny when you’re angry.
Gorgeous is not a word used often, especially not to describe oneself, but for her whole life, Zoya grew up with a family telling her that she was absolutely stunning, and so she tends to think so herself as consequence. Her hair is the purest of honey blondes, darkening ever so slightly at the roots, and falls down in waves past her shoulders. She is most often seen with her hair let loose, but occasionally, and especially during the hot summers, she puts it up in a ponytail behind her head. Eyes of cloudy grey nestle in her porcelain palate, and are almost almond shaped, and are surrounded by thick, dark lashes—something that runs on her father’s side of the family. The Volkov family has always been graced with good looks, but Zoya was always such an outlier compared to the rest of her siblings.
Her stature is not intimidating. She stands at a mere 5’3 and weighs a healthy 120 pounds, and has rather nicely developed hips and curves, but nothing about that is intimidating at all. How then, is it possible for her to force even the darkest, the cruelest, the meanest of patients to sit down and talk with her? In all reality, it is her tone of voice. Zoya grew up with four siblings, she grew up in Russia, and though she, a child of near perfection, had never been on the receiving end of an argument from her parents, her sisters had many times, and over the years she mastered that tone—commanding. Intimidating. Downright scary.
Her lips are pale pink and full, her skin is pale white and porcelain in appearance, often giving her the look of a doll. She does not wear much makeup, if any at all, and despite her challenging job she always seems to have a smile on her face, and those pale pink lips part to reveal rows of beautiful, pearly white teeth and a laugh that sounds like the twitter of a bird.
Personality: As previously stated, little about Zoya is intimidating. On any normal day, with any normal patient, Zoya is nothing but sweet. She smiles. She nods. She listens to what the patients want to tell her, she asks questions, she pretends to be interested in their lives, and she actually is. To her, these patients are like children, like her children, little broken humans that she knows how to take care of and that she can fix. And why would one be mean to her children? She laughs with them, she jokes around with them, and most patients leave a session with Zoya with a smile on their face because her enthusiasm and joy is just that infectious.
With the more difficult patients, Zoya isn’t much different. She presses for questions more. She is a little less forgiving, a little more sardonic, with them, but she is not mean in the slightest. She is just a little more careful, a little harder, a little more curious. But even the hardest of patients softens up to Zoya and her sweet smile and caring words.
Zoya does not have bad days. She is not a sad human being by nature, and so all of the time she walks around with a smile and a joyous attitude. Sure, she gets tired sometimes, and after a long day of difficult patients it is evident that she is worn out and strung apart, but she never lets that interfere with her work, because working here is one thing she truly loves to do.
message 108:
by
Annie, Have no fear of perfection-- you'll never reach it.
(new)
Mod
Agnessa was married off to Sasha at the age of fifteen, and Sasha was ten years her elder, and less than a year after their marriage a beautiful boy was brought into the world, a boy they named Andrei. That would have been more than enough for Sasha, who’s own mother had died thanks to bring too many children into this world, but Agnessa had the same frets of her mother, as Andrei was a sickly child, and so not too long afterwards she convinced Sasha to try again, to bring another child into the world. And for seven years, Agnessa and Sasha tried for another child diligently, but to no avail. Andrei grew up meek and sickly, and many were convinced he wouldn’t survive, and doom was spelled out for the Volkov family.
But miraculously, when Andrei was nine, Agnessa was graced with a beautiful daughter, one she named Zoya, and after Zoya came Evgeniya, Katya, and Milena, all girls, but all beautiful and strong and perfect. Any attempts for children after Milena, who was four years Zoya’s younger, failed. Despite the lack of many males to carry on her family’s name, Agnessa grew less and less worried, because Andrei grew stronger as he grew older, became very handsome, and there were families all around that wanted nothing more than to carry along the Volkov family line with Andrei.
Zoya had the average childhood that a child growing up under the Soviet Union could be expected to have; her father had attained a rather well paying job at her grandfather’s business, and her mother still had a steady flow of support from her family as well, and so the Volkov family grew up in a rather nice portion of Moscow—which was not saying much. The houses were still small and clustered together and no bigger than two rooms, the air was still full of smoke and fumes, and for most of her life Zoya knew little of beautiful green grass or fresh air; she knew little more than the damp, dank musk of her little hovel in Moscow.
All of the children grew up learning to play musical instruments—that was something Sasha’s father had taught him, and something he knew he wanted to pass down to his children. As Andrei strengthened he began to excel at the violin, and while most of the girls did nothing with the piano and violin skills they had learned, Andrei went on to study violin in college, and when he was nineteen he attained a spot in the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, which paid decently and brought in just enough money to help his family. Just a year after attaining this position, he was married to a girl of average looks and average stature but with an incredible dowry named Selena.
Andrei was married when Zoya was eleven, and when she was fourteen he snuck them out.
When you live in Soviet Russia, you do not get to leave Soviet Russia, and even in the year 2004 it was nearly impossible to get out of Russia, something that had never even crossed Zoya’s mind. But in 2004 Andrei went on tour with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra to America, purchased tickets for his wife and his family to come see him perform, and they never came back. It was truly that easy, or at least it had seemed so. Even to this day, Zoya has seen no repercussions for this risky action.
In America, life was very different for the Volkov family. Andrei of course lost his job with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra when he didn’t return, and he has had to avoid them himself for years, but he did receive a position with the Sarasota Symphony Orchestra, and so he and Selena moved to Florida, while Agnessa and Sasha and the girls stayed and created a life in North Carolina, in a city called Raleigh. Zoya, Evgeniya, Katya, and Milena struggled to learn English, perhaps Zoya the most, when they enrolled in a public school. Agnessa no longer had access to her parent’s money, and so she began working in retail, and Sasha found a job with a business similar to the one he had worked at in Russia.
There wasn’t really a lightbulb event that told Zoya she wanted to become a therapist; it simply seemed that psychology was the major you took when you didn’t know what you wanted to be, and so when Zoya graduated high school she went to a state college and majored in psychology. When she tried to get a job, it was required that she do an internship, and that was how she ended up at St. Peter’s; for two years, Zoya interned at St. Peter’s as something they called a therapist. She had access to all of the patients’ files, she had to schedule meetings with each and every one of them quite regularly, and before long she became a trusted confident to many of the patients.
When she finished her internship and got her degree, she came back to work at St. Peter’s full time—the pay was good, she could send home a fairly decent check to her parents each month, and she already knew and liked most of the kids. She bought a little apartment not too far from the asylum, and for a while, which each of her younger sisters were getting their degrees, they lived with her. But now it is just her, in the rural part of a town that she doesn’t even know the name to, traveling back and forth to an insane asylum every day.
Relationships:
Name: Sienna WintersAge: 19
Appearance: http://www.mixedplateblog.com/wp-cont...
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 120lbs
Orientation: Open
Gender: Female
Personality: The most notable personality trait of Senna is her ridiculous optimism regardless of the circumstances that befall her. No matter what, she always believes in the good that is coming. She is quite in tune to her emotions and has no shame in feeling them, though that's not to say she isn't terribly stable-minded and calm. Regardless of how she feels she can handle those emotions on her own without trying to snuff them out. She is polite and courteous, though she will say what's on her mind without filter and it at times may get her into trouble.
She has a slight mothering quality, however it is in no way overbearing or nagging; you only get the sense that she wants what is best. A flaw of hers may be that she always thinks she knows what's best for everyone, though she has learned to put her thoughts away until someone asks of her opinion. She doesn't speak much of herself and doesn't speak really unless she feels what she has to say is important or helpful. As a girl with peculiar habits and thought-patterns, others may see her as being distant or "not all there". She is very observant and cautious, though with the welcoming smile and warmth you might not realize how closed off her inner self really is. You may get the feeling you know her at times, though you are aware you don't quite know her at all. She can be a bit unexpected.
Lastly, her view of the world, and life, and death, and the afterlife and what have you, are shaped on her own experiences and observations. She holds no religious views but is very in-tune with her spirituality, and you may find her gaze off as she ponders all that is and could be. She chooses to believe in many outlandish things, but knows that she may very well be wrong and most likely is. She'll entertain any thought or theory, though. She considers all to be a friend until proven an enemy and loves with a fire all she calls friend.
History: She was raised humbly by a mother who had little but made the most of it always. Her father was present all her life and was the foundation she built herself on. As she grew older, however, her father began to deteriorate mentally and began first by lashing out at her and her mother here and there, til he began lashing out every night and beating her younger brothers and shouting wildly at her sister. One night her mother told her it was time they all left that god-forsaken house, but Senna could not stand the thought of leaving him heartbroken and alone and stayed behind. When he returned and found only her left, he beat her violently til she fell unconscious. When she awoke he was gone and she gathered herself, washed her hair and body of the blood, and packed a small bag and left. Very quickly her father had tracked her down and formulated some awful story about her attacking him. He appeared with officers and authority and his own face seemed to be bruised and beaten, his clothes torn, his face wild with rage and sorrow. Her mother and the other kids were afraid of her father and afraid of what he'd do and although her mother loved Sienna, she knew the girl was always quite self-sacrificial and wanted to protect the others any way she could, so felt little remorse in backing up the father's story when it was investigated. She was dragged away to the Asylum and had been there ever since.
Current Placement: Patient of three years
Obsessions: Clocks, watches, hourglasses, and time in general. She always says there just isn't enough time.
Other: She has a hum of a voice. It almost sounds as though she were singing. It fits with the optimism of her personality. She seems strong yet tender. She walks either in a glide or a happy sort of trot, but lightly so. You get the feeling she just wants to tend to you and make sure you're okay, whoever you are.
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Aliases: Perse (pronounced like the given name Percy)
Age: Sixteen (16)
Date of Birth: August 20th
Appearance:
Do you want to wake the little god?
Problem, cutie?
Perse likes to think she drew the long straw of the genetic lot, and it’s not something she’s eager to let anyone forget—be they pretty stranger on the street or her own five siblings. Red hair (a Raskova family trademark) tumbles in thick waves down to her shoulders, framing an oval-shaped face set off by an attractively strong jaw and firm cheekbones; traits for which she has her father and mother to thank, respectively. The pale, ivory-accented look so common among natural redheads, meanwhile, is a gift from both, accentuated by no small amount of freckles all over her body (though they’re especially prominent on her face, where they create a veritable mask from one side to the other and make her cheeky smiles and shit-eating grins somehow appear even more so).
Perse decided long ago on some proud, selfish impulse to claim one of her most striking features—her eyes—as all her own. They’re wide-spaced and deep-set beneath angled, hornlike brows, and gray in a way that looks almost purple the longer you stare. You’re likely to find them just as if not more expressive than the girl herself—they seem to have a mind of their own, sometimes, whether they’re blazing like new coins at a compliment or darkening to stormy with mischief. Perse will tell you without a second of hesitation that they’re her favorite feature, distracting enough to make up for her nose (which she thinks is unbearably ugly despite its smattering of much-adored freckles, wide and flat as it is) and pretty enough to rival her hair, which she holds in almost-as-favored second place. Her mouth gets third, fond as she is of its full, crooked shape and rugged red color, and were she judging all on a basis of how many hungry looks she ends up netting when posturing just right, it would certainly have the leading score.
Past her face, however, Perse doesn’t consider anything particularly noteworthy—she’s not particularly tall or short at 5’5, and her figure is full only in the way that suggests she’s of a healthy weight (she tends to fluctuate around 120 pounds checkup to checkup). She’s a bit of a flaunter, so it’s hard to tell she’s displeased with what she has, but her bust isn’t as big as she’d like it to be and the surgery scars on her right hip and knee are too often covered to be of any interest. Thus, the tattoos.
She has ten in all, and only one (a brightly-colored seadragon that takes up about half her left forearm) is professionally done—the others she did on her own with nothing but good ink and a sterilized needle. Across her left hand she’s stenciled her name in the Greek alphabet—Περςε—each letter sitting between the first and second knuckles of every digit, starting with the pi on her thumb and the last epsilon on her pinky. The other hand has a bit more variation: a seashell, a skull and crossbones, her zodiac symbol (Leo), and finally a fishhook on her right pinky. Each of the nine are small and done in black except for the seashell, which is red, and her zodiac sign, which is sea-green. None of them are colored in—she didn’t have the tools, let alone the endurance, for that—but each is bold and surprisingly neat and steady, considering they were made with a juvenile hand.
Orientation: Pansexual
Gender: Female
Personality: Had Perse been born in the Raskova family’s ancestral home of Romania, her red hair and gray eyes would have been seen as deeply unfortunate if not troubling by the superstitious—gray eyes have a reputation for being associated with vampirism, red hair with the supernatural, pale skin with an unpleasant and untrustworthy personality. She might have even been considered by the most folksy of the lot to be a monster child, destined to trail misfortune in her wake, and she may have been kept home more often than not so that the rest of her family could keep a steady eye on her. American-born Perse was told all this when she was but a few years old bouncing on her whimsical father’s knee—and the notions to this day tickle her to no end. Had they a hand in contributing to the unique firebrand of a personality she’s now so famous for? Who can say? All Sebastian Raskova knows is that old superstition or not, there’s certainly something about Perse that tends to catch people’s attention.
She was a wild girl from the start—it’s just gotten worse with age, ripening under her skin the way fine wine ripens in a cellar. These days, Perse is most easily defined by a rambunctious, troublemaking brand of seize-the-day enthusiasm—her one goal is to make her life as fast-paced and interesting as possible, and the more eyebrows she can raise doing it, the better. She can’t quite be called an adrenaline junkie (though she does have a tendency to get reckless, sometimes very reckless, courtesy of the occasional bout of hypermania) but she definitely has a love for all things exciting, unusual, or forbidden. Throw her in a room with something or someone that is all of those things, and she’ll be completely infatuated before the day is out; that’s how she picked up her soft spot for homemade tattoos, to use just one example.
Her diagnosis of bipolar I disorder came early, just the second time she met with a therapist; Perse’s unusual propensity for high moods became a cause for concern for her family the day she decided to get into a drag race down US-1 with a Subaru, coming out of the resulting crash with both her right hip and knee shattered and a concussion that took her weeks to shake off. She’s a fascinating case in that she’s never had a depressive mood, only manic ones that pop up every couple of weeks (during good stretches) or every few days (during bad). Her impulse-control tends to get worse with them, as do her lying skills no matter how carefully she tries to fib her way out of trouble, and during the most severe of moods her appetites for other people—romantic, sexual and otherwise—cross the line from healthily voracious to distracting; still, despite all of this Perse herself is a firm believer that all the medical mumbo-jumbo is just a way for doctors and other such unenlightened souls to wrap their heads around her. She prefers to think of herself as nothing more than a connoisseur of all things thrilling. She does have her periods of calm, of course—she’d likely be dead by now if she didn’t—but even then, she keeps her zeal for life stoked gently in the back of her mind in case anything interesting comes along.
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Even from the start, Perse never knew what it was like to be alone. She was the fourth child (and third girl) born to military couple Nerissa and Sebastian Raskova, two officers in the United States Navy, and she was brought home as soon as time allowed to meet her older siblings: fourteen-year-old Ronan, four-year-old Calypso (Callie unless she was in trouble), and three-year-old Amber. She was as rowdy as a baby as she is now as a teen; fond of late nights, early risings, and screaming whenever things didn’t go her way. Luckily, the temper tantrums began to mellow out some as she grew old enough to start school, and though the little girl had an uncanny knack for getting into places she wasn’t supposed to go and knowing about things she wasn’t supposed to know about, she was a smart enough child to keep her escapades spaced out (if only slightly) so that she wouldn’t be under constant scrutiny by all those older than she.
Things began to take a bit of a turn when Perse entered third grade. Her keenness for excitement and adventure was getting her into more and more trouble as time went on; rather than go out with her sisters on long beach walks or host a lizard-catching contest with herself in the yard, she went climbing on the roof without a ladder. Instead of coming home to practice her spelling in the afternoons, she went solo-diving for treasure after school. When she was twelve she hitchhiked the short way out to Sarasota on her own and spent the whole day in the city, not once thinking to call her parents and let them know where she was, let alone ask them to accompany her. (She arrived home to find two police cruisers parked in front of her house, and that night marked the first and last time her mother ever hit her). Her parents’ amusement at her antics waned steadily into displeasure, then to anxiety, and by the time her hitchhiking incident came around even twenty-six-year-old Ronan—out of the house for eight years and not exactly known for making fantastic life choices himself—was expressing concern.
But Perse’s worst years by far were yet to come: fourteen and fifteen. She had already expressed a healthy amount of curiosity regarding sexuality and things of the like by her freshman year in high school, and her parents, practical and open-minded as they were, encouraged her to ask questions, learn new information, and even experiment (within boundaries) with others her age to see what she liked. They thought perhaps that would be enough for their youngest daughter, thought perhaps she would be content to be occupied looking after her little brothers (twins, Ozzy and Leo, born not long after the Hitchhiking Incident). With so much to keep her busy, from school to the twins to that very carefully-administered freedom, they certainly didn’t expect their little girl to lose her virginity to a junior three years her elder; but lose she did, at the tender young age of fourteen. It was completely consensual and as safe as they could make it, so on that count at least her parents had nothing to fear, but they were still rather floored when Perse came home one evening and cheerfully announced that she’d had her first girl behind the bleachers in the gym. They didn’t forbid her from excursing any further—they hadn’t done anything of the kind to Calypso or Amber, and didn’t want to seem as though they were playing favorites or uncomfortable with the fact that Perse was gay—but they did start to keep a closer eye on her from that point on, no matter who she was courting.
Time passed. Perse went to school, took lovers (about an equal number of boys and girls, some older, some not) and continued to display almost troublingly energetic behavior, all too often heedless of both danger and consequences. By the time she was in her sophomore year she wasn’t sleeping like she used to—hardly sleeping at all, some nights—and frequently complained of restlessness, despite how active she was during the day. She played soccer, ran track, and swam for Sarasota High on top of regular academics, entertaining her younger brothers, and practicing for her driver’s license, but when she burnt out it was only long enough for her parents to take a breath—then she would be clamoring for the car keys, begging to be allowed out. It got to the point where Nerissa and Sebastian had to ground her to keep her inside, and that itself seemed to make Perse’s wanderlust worse, not better.
One day, that wanderlust cost Perse dearly. It was a lazy summer afternoon when she took her parents ancient white suburban and decided to go driving; her mother, father and both brothers were all napping, and she was going absolutely stir-crazy for something to do. Technically she didn’t yet have her license and wasn’t allowed to be driving without an adult in the car, but she was well in the midst of a particularly nasty hypermanic episode, and she’d thrown caution to the wind just a few days after it took her. She went out, restless—and crashed on the highway, completely shattering her right hip and knee and almost killing the other driver, not to mention the two other passengers he had in his car. In the end, everyone recovered, but Perse needed both her hip and knee replaced before all was through and to this day retains a limp that she can hide only on the good days. The injuries brought an end to her participation in competitive sports as well as to her time in Florida—as soon as she recovered from her surgeries Nerissa and Sebastian packed the house and the three children still living there and headed off for Maine, the hope being that a change of scenery would soothe Perse’s overactive mind long enough for them to figure out what they were going to do with her.
By the time Perse turned sixteen, visits to a psychiatrist were a bimonthly occurrence. She’d recovered well from her accident but had grown incredibly angry with the loss of her easy mobility; she was bitter, resentful, and more restless than ever, all the more so now that she was living somewhere new. Quiet, woodsy rural Maine was nothing like her wide-open home on the Gulf Coast, the thick solitude of the woods so horribly different from the rush of her beloved ocean it often made her cry. She responded poorly to every medication her therapist tried with her, and eventually she could think of nothing else except fighting back, lashing out. She wasn’t one for self-harm—the ambient pains of her bad leg were plenty to keep self-destructive behaviors far from her mind—and so she did the next best thing: she threw herself into as many activities as she could that would keep her parents on their toes. Homemade tattooing sessions came first, followed by fistfights at school, then a string of rapid-fire relationships with types her parents wouldn’t approve of, each burning brightly before ultimately dying young.
Her parents tried their best to accommodate and work with her as best they could, tried their hardest to be understanding—but even they had a limit, and in the end they decided not without deliberation to commit Perse to a nearby institution, hoping around-the-clock care and supervision would benefit their daughter more than what she was getting at home. They visit fairly often to check on her, bringing Ozzy and Leo in tow, and Amber and Callie (nineteen and twenty now) fly up to make sure their baby sister is okay whenever they can afford it. Ronan’s come by a time or two, as well, though he finds himself fairly busy these days running a cyber-security firm in California.
Current Placement: Patient—Low security
Obsessions: Anything and everything associated with the sea. Perhaps it’s because her parents are both sailors; Perse has always an insatiable fascination with all things oceanic, from ships to marine animals. When she was little it was nothing more than a hobby—these days she draws and paints seaworthy scenes (most often of stylized ships) whenever she needs a distraction that won’t get her into trouble. She’s also quite fond of finding attractive people to kiss, and necessity leads her to run her bad leg through various PT exercises and stretching routines fairly often, lest it get stiff and weak.
Other: Perse can be found with her purpleheart cane—occasionally and affectionately referred to as Ione, after both the sea nymph and its lovely color—close at hand more often than not, though she doesn’t always need it to walk. She did also tell her parents she was done inking herself…but how closely she keeps to that promise depends on whether she can get her hands on quality ink and needles again.
Blood still stains when the sheets are washed -Melanie MartinazName: Mint Blumen
Nickname: She demands that everyone calls her Rabbit. Her closest friends call her Mins.
Goddamn. She murdered everybody and I was her witness. -Beyoncè
Age: 27
Appearance: http://m.imgur.com/BUaKkyuwidth (she has one blind eye covered by a scar.)
Orientation: Lesbian
Gender: Female
I've got problems, now everyone on my block's got them. -Eminem
Personality: Some people have referred to Mint as the incarnate of malice. She disagrees. Mint, before the death of her sister, was good-meaning but slightly dumb. But after Tyme's death, she turned into a beast. She was withdrawan, and completely controlled by the voices in her head, and addiction. Nowadays , she's violent, disturbed and strange. Weirdly enough, it seemed her IQ has also risen.
History: Mint was born in a trailer park off of 8 Mile Road in Detroit. Her father was a alcoholic who beat her mother. He eventually walked out on them. Her mother suffered from Bipolar Disorder and Muanchaussens by Proxy. She took her disorders out on Mint by crushing painkillers in her and her little sister’s food. When Mint was ten, and her sister Tyme was five, their mother dropped them off outside a 7/11 and left. The two had each other’s back and protected each other for years.
Mint began to dabble in drugs, espically meth. She became violent and unpredictable like her mother. Tyme tried to leave her, afraid of what her sister was becoming. This escalated into a fight. Tyme grabbed a knife and sliced Mint’s eye out to defend herself. Mint, in pain, wrestled the knife from Tyme, panicked and sliced her throat. Tyme died, and Mint passed out. When she awoke, she remembered the fight and weirdly enough, didn't feel guilty. She hated herself due to this, and as she tried to distance herself from this crime, she started to shoot meth, and her mental and physical health declined. She withdrew and soon began obsessed with gore. And after she went on a killing spree at a rehabilitation centre at midnight, she was finally captured, and sentenced to life in prison. But after her public defender refiled, she was instead sent to the hospital after he claimed the insane for her.
I admire the persistence of the Mint, really just a weed. Ragged, spicy, alive. To grow towards the sun as if it's listening. And who doesn't want to asire? -Allan Micheal Parker
Current Placement: High-security patient
Obsessions: Gore and music
Other: She competed in rap battles back home, and worked her way to the top of the underground circuit
Aimée Duchamps was sixteen years old when she met and fell in love with James Dubois, who was then a twenty-two year old business man who had graduated high-school early and finished college in four difficult years. By the time he met Aimée he already had a job with some big company that Yvonne never bothered to learn the name of, and Aimée was so infatuated with him that she took the necessary summer courses to graduate early, never bothered to go to college, and eloped with James by the time she was eighteen. Christophe was born once the pair had been married for a year and a half, and Yvonne came two years later. Aimée was all but estranged from her family, and so throughout their entire lives Christophe and Yvonne never had grandparents, or any sort of family, really; Aimée was refused any familial contact until she left James, which Aimée promised would never happen, and James’ family didn’t exactly approve either, and gave him the same sort of ultimatum.
Yvonne and Christophe grew up in Lille, a rather rural city in the country of France, and for all of Yvonne’s life up until her admission to St. Peter’s she grew up with ten-acres to roam around and horses to maintain. It was never work to her, though; Yvonne always had a soft spot for the creatures that her family raised. After Aimée and James were married, they moved to Lille because Aimée always wanted to live on a big piece of property with horses. James commuted daily to Paris, a two hour drive, for his job, and so as Yvonne and Christophe grew up they hardly had a father figure in their life. He left for work before they woke up, and returned after they had gone to sleep, and yet he still managed to make it to every school play, every dance recital, etcetera, etcetera.
Yvonne was always a petite girl, and her brother was a petite boy, but it was much more beseeming on her than it was on him. Yvonne grew up with her hair in buns and her feet in pointe shoes, dainty and petite and flat-chested and yet despite all of this, she had a fiery personality, and she had the tenacity to stand up for her brother. Christophe was bullied in elementary school for being “girly”, and when he came out as gay in his eighth year of schooling he was bullied for that too. Despite the fact that Yvonne was two years younger than him, she began to follow him around as the bullying got worse and worse, and Yvonne was eleven when she began to develop her... less than preferred qualities.
The perfection that was Yvette began to dwindle, and she went from being sweet and sincere to snarky and quite honestly rude. Yes, she continued her dancing, and that seemed to be the only part of her that remained dainty. She grew brutally honest, confident, and instead of receiving phone calls for awards, her parents began to receive phone calls to pick her up from the principal’s office. Even to this day, the best psychologists in France have no idea what exactly it was that set off Yvonne’s sudden personality change.
Her parents sent her to the United States for help after an incident with one of the boys who had bullied her brother since childhood. The previous day, Christophe had come home with a bloody nose and a black eye, and refused to talk about what had happened, and as always Yvonne had to step up for her darling brother. That very day, her parents went to her school where she was sitting outside the nurse’s office, with a large purple nose, but a look inside the office showed the claw marks on the bully’s face and announced who exactly it was who had won that fight. Yvonne was expelled that day, and she and her parents got in a huge fight that night, and the next day her brother was grabbing onto her as she was dragged out the door and into a car that took her to the airport and then led her to a facility in the United States, somewhere in New England, where she spent a few days under the probing eyes of doctors.
An MRI revealed the issue—her brain had begun to swell, namely, her frontal lobes, which is where the personality is housed within the brain. As her brain swelled, the frontal lobes began to change, one shrinking as the other grew, which accounted for her sudden personality change. Unfortunately, this sort of swelling in the brain was not something that is necessarily easy to repair, and so, as the doctors reached out to the Dubois family in France to consult about the best course of action for their daughter, Yvonne was sent to the nearby institution of St. Peter’s Asylum, as there was still the issue of her rapidly changing personality, and she couldn’t exactly be sent home.
Obsessions: None.
Relationships: None.
Other: As Yvonne lived in France up until the beginning of this year, she has a heavy French accent, and though her English is as perfect as her French, thanks to many years of excellent schooling, she often prefers to speak in her native tongue, or interject French words into her conversation.
Though she has not managed to make a name for herself yet, Yvonne is considered fairly dangerous among the nurses, because she does not have a preferred weapon as many of the bullies of the asylum does, well, aside from the same nails that she used to claw up her brother’s bully’s face, but which the asylum has not to think of making her trim.
As the doctors still do not know what exactly they should be doing for Yvonne, she is on close surveillance from the staff of St. Peter’s, and is advised to keep her heart rate from going up, which means little to no dancing (though it’s not as if Yvonne has to listen to this advice, of course; what would the nurses do if she did it anyways?)