Lush ✵ Luke Castellan

𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙪𝙚, ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵘˢʰ ⁱⁿᵗᵉʳⁱᵒʳ ⁱˢ ᵈᵉᶜᵒᵐᵖᵒˢⁱⁿᵍ

S Y N O P S I S i

PERSEPHONE JACKSON FELT AS THOUGH HER LIFE WAS A METAPHOR. She was a perfectly ripe Pomegranate, treated and taken so carefully. Loved and wanted. You could gently pry her open, and carefully extract her - or you could rip her to shreds and claw her from the inside out. Both with the intent of removal, both with the intent of taking what wasn't yours. Both left a bloody mess, red splattered all over the scene.

Most people at least had the decency to ruin her gently, slowly, behind her fragile back.

Others didn't.

Persephone Jackson learnt that from a young age. People will take what they wanted, not caring what broken pieces they left behind.

It's what they'd done to her, all her life.

Before she'd even been born, she was unwanted, yet still clawed and ripped apart - shattered to pieces.

With her unborn body still carrying the weight of being a grave mistake, Persephone managed to claw her way out of the womb with bloody hands and a barely beating heart.

With the burden of being created against a forged pact upon the river Styx, Persephone continued to claw her way through life with bloody hands, her barely beating heart staying the same.

Even with the knowledge that the damnation that was named Persephone Jackson had been born, a stupid, selfish god went crawling back to a woman whose warm arms kept him sheltered from his burdens for a night. A single night.

The single night gave life to another forbidden child.

With two, the god was sure he was dammed.

He never turned back after walking out the next morning.

Persephone came to correlate people leaving her life to a tree in the fall. Leaves kept falling, just when you thought you'd seen the last leaf fall, another did. As if appearing out of thin air. The ground below was coated in leafs of the fallen, or the left souls, that was her heart, still foolishly holding on to the souls that were never coming back.

Hope was a stupid thing.

But Persephone held it close to her weak heart as if it were gold. It was all she had, all she had to keep her stable and comforted as leaf's kept falling, stripping her bare and vulnerable.

Persephone was still waiting, still yearning. The hunger inside her never subsided.

Her mind couldn't even fathom the need until it was replenished by a stupid, sword wielding, blabbering boy from her dreams that was at a place she never would've thought to exist.

And just like spring, new leafs appeared after the last fell.

S Y N O P S I S ii

LUKE CASTELLAN KNEW HE WAS DAMMED. His plagued mind always constant. He put on a good act, though.

The 'Golden boy', was what they called him at camp.

He didn't feel golden. He felt anything but.

But if it kept people around him, a constant distraction from his own monstrous mind, he allowed people to think just that.

Luke still felt... smothered, though. Smothered by a transparent coat of fog that subsided in his lungs and clouded his mind. It forced him to plead to forces he knew weren't listening.

The weight in his chest, and the cloud on his mind was a constant reminder something was wrong with him. He was broken.

It caused a replaying loop every day, waking up - instant suffering. Training children - continuous suffering. Eating dinner - torturous suffering. Going to bed - the sweet release of his never ending sickness that was his own mind.

Luke was sure he was doing it to himself.

He didn't know how else to respond to the sickness he owned.

But when he dreamt at night, sometimes, once in a while, he'd see a figure. The closer he got, the more the sickening fog released it's calloused grasp on him. It was like a drug, so addicting you can't help but run for the high to end your own thoughts and mind. That's what he felt for the mystery figure from his dreams.

And sometimes, he'd hear the figure laugh, or smile, or even talk. And it was something sweeter than honey. It did more than completely end his mind, it silenced it. No pain, or suffering, or a dark thought about anything at all. In fact, he felt warm, like a blanked was thrown over his shoulders that heated him from the toes to the top of his curly hair.

It was a gratifying release.

But when he actually met the mystery figure in real life, he can't help but be instantaneously addicted to the drug she hadn't even known she'd emitted.

in which...

The sun meets the sea

or...

A damaged girl meets a broken boy, and they both become addicted to the sensation they feel when they're together