Relative stories- Tuesday’s child is full of hate.

I think I was about five when I figured out that I was just my sister’s replacement.

Mom had not been happy when her eldest defied her and ran off to go to college on her own. Unhappy wasn’t enough to describe her mood when said daughter had returned in a panic. Pregnant with a child of some guy that she had known for less then a year.

Angry. Full of wrath, but not at her daughter. She only felt disappointment toward Brianna. It was the guy she was ready to kill.

Someone had defiled her daughter. Her finest creation. Someone was going to pay.

I’m not sure how Bree had talked her down, but I do know she didn’t go back to college. Instead she had to take care of me.

The replacement. The one mom was going to get right this time. Me. Rosaria Caine. Mom’s second chance.

Put a bit of pressure on me. Thanks a lot Bree.

Having already raised one child, mom assumed that I wasn't going to be of any use to try to teach until I was at least five. Having raised a child once, she wasn’t about to deal with changing diapers or any of the other messy bits that came with the first few years of a child’s life.

So at least at the start I didn’t grow up like my older sister. I wasn’t being raised alone by a cranky old witch and driven to resent her with every fiber of my being. Instead I had advise on how to suffer her demands and punishments.

I also had a brother, or rather a nephew. He should have been older, but mom grew me in a womb outside of her body in a third of the normal time just so I would be older. It was made of witchcraft and some major organs from a she goat.

Gross, I know. Mom had keep notes and used a spell that captured images of it like a camera onto paper. Pretty good quality picture too. You could see the sunlight shining on it as it hung in the corner above a washtub to catch the occasional dripping.

It would have made for some awkward jokes on mother’s day, if mom had welcome such things.

Father’s day wasn’t much of a thing either. Their was a reason me, Bree and our mom all looked so similar. No dad involved. Our family tree was a single branch and two clipping. That’s why we were supposed to be prefect, just like mom.

So I a chance to play with another child, watch TV, and get taken on a few trips outside my mom’s valley. Right up until mom decided I was old enough to start training.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I still got to see Bree and John every now and then when they were summoned and the rarer times they just came to visit.

I later learned it was all my mother could do not to kill John everytime she saw. But she did take every chance to punish him as an example to me.

She so approved of me when I bullied him. I showed her a male was beneath me, just as she had taught me. Something less then a person only there to amuse myself with. I think John figured out pretty quick that what I was doing to him was saving him from something worse. That’s why he never took it personally, no matter what he claimed.

I learned that lesson like all the others. Mother couldn’t use anyone to control me if I never cared about anyone.

For twenty years she taught me before she began sending me out on errands. John, she had begun sending out as soon as he turned fifteen. But those were just errands, work suitable for a male. Me, I represented her.

Out there I had to deal with people, new people other then my own family or the few witches Mom trusted enough to visit her in her home. I even had to deal with men for the first time in my life.

I didn’t know how to talk to them, or how to bargain with anyone. I fell back on just commanding them as if I was my mother. Making her so proud as she gazed in on me from afar.

In time I no longer felt her spying on me. Her time was too valuable to keep an eye on me all the time, and it was easy to subvert her deamons. After all they were locked into obedience by blood, and ours were too similar for the poor elementals to tell the difference.

Then, and only then, did I begin to command all the boys I had ever wanted to my bed.

Unlike my idiot sister, I had learned every form of magical birth control I could find, trade for, or buy. Protection against diseases as well. Mom would be pissed when she figured out I was letting men touch me, lay with me, and do all the many, many thing I had dreamt of them doing. But I think, know, that she would have killed me if I got knocked up.

After all, she had wanted a spare to do the all the work Bree had used to do, and it would only take her another three month to make a replacement. Endora Caine had been walking this earth since the fifteen hundreds, another twenty years and three months so get a new errand girl was nothing.

She was also a perfectionist, and had plenty of room in her valley to bury as many daughters as it took to get one right.

So play with all the boys, but never come back to the same one. Enjoy them, but never care. Not about them, or anyone else.

Then one day John knocked up the horrid little Asian girl he had married. He got the daughter I would never have unless I decided to slaughter a goat and fill it up with another copy.

Sara was tiny, and looked nothing like me, my mom, or Bree. A new girl in our sorority, and one I had to be the wicked godmother to. I had to be horrible to that little girl so that, if my mother every tried to hold her hostage to make Bree or John obey her whims. I could blindside the bitch. Maybe even take her down.

So, if you are reading this. I tried and failed, and you are sister number three, or worst, further down the line.

My sympathies, and my apologies. After my attempt at matricide it was probably even worse for you.

But I made some arrangements, earned a few favors. You will be contacted, and trained without having to seek out our mother’s enemies on your own. You will be given tools and wealth that I spend many a year earning, and get a head start so that when you have to face off against mother. You will be even further ahead then I was. You’ll have a better shot.

If find it in yourself to do me a small favor, please tell her Rosaria said “Hi” before you sent her to hell.

You can also make the same preparations for the next one on the chance that you fail, maybe they can take her down for all of us.

But maybe no one will ever read this. Maybe.

Sara took mom by surprise, Ami really made her chill the hell out. To the point she didn’t even suggest leaving Aran out to die of exposure like she tried to do with John. She even held the boy once.

Now Ami is showing signs of high magic, a new witch in the bloodline, and Mom is practically drooling. Any disappointments in the girl won’t be a failure of her or her copies. Just a weakness from John’s father and his wife’s weak blood.

If Ami proves to be a decent witch. Then one day I might even be able to have a child of my own.

If she proves to be more then decent, Mom might even let Aran live if he’s proves to have the higher magic as well. If Ami is a disappointment, then I guess I will finally have to make my move should the boy breed true.

No one hurts my family except me.