heavenly | p.hockstetter

one

for most, a low-maintenance baby would be a new mother's dream. after 9 months of pregnancy, bloating and bizarre cravings, the relief one might feel to give birth to a quiet, un-fussy baby would be unimaginable. but to sonia, derry's resident narcissist and suspected munchausen sufferer, this was a very different situation.

there was nothing to complain of. no illnesses, no midnight cries, no throwing of food, spittle, gross bodily fluids. just a small, quiet lump of life and flesh that she had to care for the next 18 years of her life, with almost no qualities able to be complained about. after all that effort, sonia gained nothing in the way of sympathy or attention.

evangeline, she was dubbed.
evangeline angelica kaspbrak; chosen by her father. an angelic name for an angelic child.

these angelic qualities continued without fault up until her second year around the sun. not only was she silent with noises, but no words even dared to slip past her lips. her mother, being the hypochondriac she was, felt inner delight bubble at the notion of booking an appointment with a speech therapist. it wasn't until the fifth appointment that something clicked within the young girl. she entered the therapy session never uttering a word in her life, and left as though her brain had been bashed in with an oxford dictionary. her choice of words ever impressed her parents, even her mother, who was feeling a touch of melancholy at the fact her child was once again - normal.

on the 6th of march, 1976, evangeline's world was flipped upside down. her baby brother came careening out of the womb; screaming, crying, blue faced and wrapped in his umbilical cord. after the initial suffering, sonia knew this baby boy was her fastpass to attention. he was a colicky baby up until he could communicate a little better. he presented with asthma, allergies, eczema, all to sonia's delight. evangeline became the benchwarmer sibling.

her whole life was spent trying to impress her mother. make it to the top, become child number one. to evangeline's parents, this was nothing short of a blessing, to have an easy-going, respectful, clean little church-going girl. but what they failed to realise, is that this facade was nothing more than an empty shell, purely existing for manipulation. inside the young girl's mind, war was afoot. death, blood, torture, revenge. the only thing the young girl ever felt in her childhood was an exhilarating rush created by watching the murder and dismemberment of a springbok on a nature documentary. of course, she never expressed this to her parents. to them, she was their angel. their clean, church going, home-schooled, virginal little girl. in other words, evangeline had them exactly where she wanted them. everything was in line for evangeline to start her first ever year of real, in-person school.

let the blood and guts begin.

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a/n: WOW okay so excited for this book Damn. teenage evangeline is played by young liv tyler because look at that angelic face.