monday morning >> lukeia shortstory

monday mornings.

Trigger Warning: This story contains mentions of suicide, self harm, depression and abuse.

❝beautiful but out of reach, with eyes too distant to meet and skin, too pale to be real.❞

It was a fight.

Every morning was a fight.

For school was his punishment, but Luke could never figure out what crime he had committed.

On those days where he could get himself to move out of bed, he listened to empty words and wrote meaningless numbers.

Luke could feel his soul slowly fading away in the everyday cruelty that was his high school, and his mind lost itself in the whispers that filled the hallways and his head.

The voices were harsh and could only speak the mean words, the ones that ripped deep wounds into your heart, until you were left to slowly bleed out.

Luke had given up fighting them a long time ago - nowadays he was just counting the scars (on both his heart and his arms), questioning if they would ever fully fade away.

The days where he stayed home were even worse. His parents' screaming went through every wall and every blanket, straight into his heart and into his head, destroying every bit school hadn't already.

Every room he entered felt too small, like it was choking him; he couldn't move and there wasn't enough air to breathe. He was always on the verge of suffocating.

The whispers from the hallways seemed to follow him, surrounding and clouding his mind while he was staring at the plain white ceiling over his bed, questioning who he was, or rather, who he was becoming.

***

On a rainy day in September came the small ray of hope that Luke had always hoped for.

A petite, dark haired girl entered the bus, three stops after he had sat down in the last row with his headphones in his ears and his hands in his pockets.

With her came a whole new light, and a breeze of fresh air. She smelled of the sun and flowers and everything that shouldn't be there in the middle of autumn; maybe that was what made her so special to Luke.

When their gazes met just briefly, she smiled shyly, before finding a place to sit, pulling out a book and immediately losing herself in it.

Luke couldn't help staring at the way her eyes followed every line and widened in excitement. She would chuckle, and kept brushing the same strand of hair behind her ear.

There was something in her aura - it was like a spark, and it warmed Luke's heart, gave him this all to well known feeling of hope that he had missed for so long.

She was beautiful, and her beauty was so occupying that Luke almost missed his bus stop.

As the boy left the vehicle, his thoughts stayed behind with her, wandering off to an unknown destination, questioning if he would ever see her again.

***

One week later, Luke was almost excited to go to school. No, correction. He was excited to enter the bus and see the girl from last week.

He wanted to talk to her - if she was there.

And then, exactly three bus stops after him, she entered. She didn't notice him this time, didn't smile at him.