FICTION

Jannine
Luna Strix

We were the same species of sadness. Outcasts who spoke the same love language.
Hand in hand, we saw the same ‘half-empty cup’ world. She was symbiotic energy,
pessimism united.
She was music, my muse. She was my sexual awakening, my perversion, my
window into a whole other world. She was punk-fucking-rock, metal spikes
and fire. She was chaos, life, electric heartbeats. She was danger, in the very best
way. She travelled the world and found her gods. She became wise, knowing,
and experienced. She became strong, even more beautiful, somehow. She made
everything she touched better.
But she was just like me. She had the emptiness in her heart that would never
leave. The forever abyss, the void; the cut that never, ever heals. She took her
life, and I was no longer whole, no longer attached. Shredded, picked apart and
discarded. Severed, unable to rejuvenate. A husk.
No more music, no more life. No more sex, no more fire, no more heartbeats.
No more late-night conversations with my best friend lover. A window permanently
closed. The world beat her like she said it never would, and grief is the husk. Life
goes on, shedding people like her, like me. We add to the discard pile, blend into
it and decay into memories.
Life is precious, time is short. Do what you want to do before you become a
husk too.

9