Upcoming/In-progress Ideas

The Beautiful People

Misery loved company, and it always came in threes. It was supposed to be a happy occasion, his foster sister was getting married! Instead, the wedding favors sat unopened in the box on the table. His first love wasn’t unrequited and he’d apparently run like a coward for no reason. Somehow, both of those things meant that he’d be dead soon.

It all began the day he’d coughed up the first fully formed flower head. It fit in his palm, a mess of wet petals. His throat burned the entire day afterwards. He supposed that wasn’t accurate. At first it was only a cough, then small petals, itchy and tickling his throat. The real beginning had been the day of the funeral. Luca clutched today’s flower, blood dripping between his fingers. This one had thorns.
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The Beautiful People is a body-horror romance. Showcasing love’s darker aspects, melded together with body horror, makes it akin to Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty, without the mushrooms and gender role allegory. Instead it reflects on childhood trauma’s lingering effects.

(Another more amusing summary, because I said so.)

Realizing you’re gay because your best friend is delicious? Naturally. Deciding to hide it until the end of eternity for fear of what would happen? A reasonable decision. Using university as an excuse to run away when your relationship crumbles anyway? Of course!

Wait, what?

That wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

Luca Vitalis sighed at himself. Why was he like this? It wasn’t that hard. All he had to do was visit home, celebrate his foster sister’s wedding, see his ex-best friend/foster brother… No big deal. It wouldn’t be awkward at all! What could go wrong?

Maybe he should have knocked on wood. His sister was now gone, and her fiancé — widower, fiancé-er? — had become a useless drunkard. The police had been equally unhelpful and the whole town was suspiciously hush hush about it. Had things always been this way and he’d just never noticed? To top off this spoiled cake of a travesty, his foster brother, Jellal, had been warming up to him. He supposed shared pain did that, but that wasn’t the real problem. The soured icing to everything was the nightmares. They increased in intensity as he and Jellal grew closer, twisting his insides until they were gnarled and knotted. Literally.

And of course, all of the posted but incomplete stories. You guys know. As one of my favorite "oldie but a goodie" fanfic authors once said, "flick pennies and throw wads of paper at me."

About ZeroTwo

Zero Two writes short stories and flash fiction in their downtime for fun. While they have no officially published works, or any in the process of being published, they’ve written thirty-one pieces in the past two years, not including academic papers. They’ve initiated three separate writing circles and often participate in writing exchanges.

Aided by three cats who recommend breaks by pulling books off shelves while yowling dramatically, Zero Two graduated from Southern New Hampshire University in 2021 with a BA in creative writing and English with a concentration in fiction. Currently, they are working on a novel for their master’s degree thesis.

Zero Two has been in multiple fandom circles since the Jurassic Period (AKA the GeoCities era) including: Gundam Wing, Inuyasha, Bleach, The Legend of Zelda, Forgotten Realms, Dragon Age, Harry Potter, Mo Dao Zu Shi and more.