Treat them like prisoners and they'll behave like prisoners. Oakleaf Academy was a prison. No matter how you described it, no one would believe it was a boarding school. The kids were running wild, fighting, dealing and screwing their lives up beyond repair. It was for the roughest and toughest boys in the country, cooped up like animals. It wasn't a boarding school, it was a nightmare. And the boys weren't students, they were devils in disguise. Once you're in there, there's no turning back.

Mickey was a skater. River was too smart for his own good. But being polar opposites didn't stop them from being best friends. Ever since they were little, they would sit in the treehouse in Mickey's garden, and feel like they were on top of the whole world. But as they got older, they realised that the world was much bigger, and they needed to find a way to explore it.

"Have you come here to die?" The voice was a bare whisper against the enveloping dark. It sounded stark and cold, with nothing in offer linked to safety. Yet, it brought me comfort of great proportions. ♛ ♛ ♛ In the dark wintry recesses of Baneberry Lane where the sun seems to set earlier than the rest, troubled passion blankets the streets. Known as the Valley of The Shadow of Death by the commoners for the dangerous folk it harbors. There's a house at the corner of the street underneath the pavement where a lone mollyboy stays with his dying mother with no inclination to trouble, save the knife he carries for protection. Brinley knows people look at him when he walks the districts. He sees the disgust in their eyes, he understands. The same dysphoria follows him everytime he looks at his body. Being born a girl, with a girls body and a girls voice took nothing from him knowing he was a boy. So he carries on, deepening his voice and binding his chest. Hoping one day, the misgendered notions would drop and people see him. Finn was born into wealth. Yet, the one thing he wants is the one thing he can never have. It's the secret he keeps against his family. Being attracted to the same sex is seen as a passing moment or a hankering in one's life. Finn knows that sex in his world is never followed by anything as absurd as love. So he carries on, still he craves and late at night, his desires take over him and he imagines what his life would feel like if he dropped all the pretenses. They could only shatter each other's worlds. ♚ ♚ ♚ Note: This is a short story set before the timeline of "Arsenic." It is not necessary to read this before reading "Arsenic", it can also be read as a standalone. No Rest For The Wicked #0.5

Gage Cilleti has just begun his junior year of high school, and is becoming more and more involved in his school's activities, considering he'd been playing baseball since he was just seven-years-old. Elijah McCay has just dropped out of school, due to just having lost his mother. While becoming endorsed into an internalized depression, he sees the sweet and athletic sixteen-year-old, Gage Cilleti, who catches his sad eyes in an almost instant. 2020 - All Rights Reserved @LunaThinks