persephone. - Fiction winner of the Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers 2025
Congratulations to Abigail Koh (WA), winner of the Fiction category of the Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers in 2025!
Read Abigail’s winning piece below, followed by the 2025 prize showcase.
persephone.
by Abigail Koh
prologue.
Huntington’s disease is a rare, inherited neurodegenerative disorder that gradually breaks down nerve cells in the brain, causing involuntary movements, cognitive decline, and emotional changes. There is no cure, only a slow, relentless progression.
On the 24th of September, 2025, the world of Huntington’s disease care shifted. Scientists and clinicians announced that a one-time gene therapy, AMT-130, had slowed disease progression by 75%. For the first time, a treatment seemed capable not just of managing symptoms, but of altering a patient's fate.
~
act i.
The hospital waiting room smells like disinfectant and overripe fruit. The scent sears my sinuses, but I don't think it's a burning I'll be able to escape anytime soon. Plastic chairs line the walls in neat rows, radish-coloured underneath my thighs, and the clock ticks too loudly. Through the window, the trees are beginning to bloom — soft bursts of pink and white that press against the window like eager onlookers. Outside, everything is on the move, growing and bursting with life. Inside, everything feels still.
That’s when I see her for the first time.
She sits directly across from me, in the seat by the vending machine. Her hands flutter in the air, not with intention but with insistence, invisible strings tugging her joints in all directions. Her head jerks softly every now and then, like a puppet whose master has forgotten the choreography. An actor, on stage, who stutters as they forget their line.
I can’t stop watching her.
There’s something both terrifying and strangely beautiful about the rhythm of her movements — the way her fingers open and close like petals struggling against the wind. She stares somewhere past me, gaze bleary, as if the ceiling holds secrets she alone can hear. Her leg jerks forward, like the chair is uncomfortable. (Well, they are.) But I realise it's not the chair. It's her body.
I know what happens with people like her. I've seen it. In the way my mother's eyes flickered too fast to process her surroundings, the way she twitched every time I walked past her door, creaked open just enough to serve as a warning. Sometimes when I glance too far to my left, sitting in the cemetery, I see her headstone shake, too.
A nurse calls her name. She rises with effort, limbs negotiating with gravity. I don't help her. I don't know what it is — I'm usually a helpful person. I was a helpful person. But now it just seems easier to sit in my sadness and wallow.
For a brief moment before she waddles off, her eyes meet mine. It’s not a long look. Just enough, before her rapid blinking returns. A quiet acknowledgement, as though we share a language neither of us has chosen to learn. That language has a specific alphabet, a certain order of letters.
Your body moves without your permission. Your mind doesn't, either. And when, at last, you provide mercy for your limbs, they turn to stone against your will. You stop planning for the future, thinking ahead. You get irritated too easily to be completely there.
You become a marionette.
Am I a marionette?
When my name is called, I stand too quickly. I've grown more wary of every movement I make. My right hand shakes. A small tremor, barely there. Still, it’s enough to make me clench my fist and shove it into my pocket. The movement is intentional. But I don't know when the moment will come when it won't be.
The doctor’s office smells drearier than the waiting room. At least there's people, albeit a few, there. Here, it's only me, the doctor, and the elephant in the room with a trunk resting atop my head.
If I listen closely enough I can probably hear sobbing from the same bed I sit on, picture someone with their head buried in their hands, wailing. If I cried until the water left my body, would my tears carry the disease away?
There are charts on the wall with parts of the brain coloured in soft blues and pinks. Gentle, like the news every patient receives in this room is anything of the sort. I can tell the difference between each chart even without the gold, all-capitals labelling of HEALTHY BRAIN and AFFECTED BRAIN.
He talks about symptoms, progression, options. Words like caught late and genetic confirmation float around the room. I nod as if I’m listening. Like what he's saying changes anything.
Then I ask questions, one after another — how long, how fast, what now? The words rush between them like water down a drain. I just want to prove I heard him, not intending to actually find out how to prevent this.
I don't understand. I look healthy, I feel healthy. So why am I not healthy? The trees sway in the wind. Buds cling to their branches, not yet flowers but on their way. To bloom is their fate. To die is mine.
~
act ii.
The air is thick and gold, pressing down on the hospital like a heavy, warm hand. The waiting room remains: plastic chairs, white walls, the deafening clock. I pretend to bury my nose into a magazine like my heart doesn't palpitate loudly in my chest, like I want to be here. But when I give up on seeing the thin, tan, blonde, lively models showing off vivacious dresses on every glazed page, my eyes catch on someone.
She’s there again.
The woman in the seat by the vending machine.
Her movements are sharper now, less like petals and more like the fierce rush of summer wind through overgrown fields. Her head jerks from side to side, and her feet shuffle restlessly against the floor. A nurse places a cup of water in her hands, but her fingers spasm and spill half of it down her front. No one flinches; it’s routine.
I don't help her clean up. I haven't been helpful for a while.
By now, I've learnt the routine: arrive early, sit, wait for my name to be called. The same words are used every visit. Chorea. Progression. Neural degeneration. I'm beginning to wonder if the doctor's just playing a prank on me, repeating the same terms like a broken record until I look at the lamp across the room and realise it curves weirdly. It would be heaven if this is a dream. It's hell in reality.
I wonder if I would be happier to not know about my diagnosis at all. To die without knowing what was afflicting me. That was probably why I avoided treatment until now. Locked myself up at home and hoped that in the darkness I would be blind.
I stretch my fingers out in front of me. They twitch. My wrists feel loose, as if they’re not sure they want to listen to me anymore. My reaction time is slower, I was told last visit. I didn't panic then. I don't panic now. Maybe it's because I've already expected it.
In the doctor's office, the air conditioner hums, like soothing background noise. He speaks again. His words are meaningful but cautious, like he’s placing fragile glass on a table. I still don't listen. You can't cure the uncurable, so why is he trying?
“The symptoms are still mild,” he says. “But we’ll keep monitoring. Physical therapy will help with coordination. It’s important to stay active, keep moving.”
I stare at the charts on the wall again, the one with two images of the brain in soft pastel colours. I don't need the big labelled letters, nor do I need the text on the sides of the chart to identify several parts of the brain. Especially the one that swells with the appearance of the second chart. I trace the lines of the basal ganglia with my eyes and wonder which part of me is giving way first — and which parts are next.
I don't reach out for the charts, despite the way I eye them desperately. I'm scared I'll twitch or shiver the wrong way, and then I'll have something else to be afraid of just before I close my eyes at night.
When I leave, the sun hits me like a wave, reminding me that there's things I abandon in the doctor's office, and other things I can't run away from. The air smells of cut grass and warm pavement. Children run past, laughing, chasing each other with ice creams melting down their wrists. I see a mother hold her child close as they wail about a scraped knee. My mum never did that. She couldn't, just the same way I can't now.
I flex my fingers again. They don’t obey right away. So I shove them into the pockets of my shorts and hide behind the display of a normal person. Then I glance back at the hospital doors. Through the glass, I catch one last glimpse of the woman by the vending machine. Her head is tilted back, mouth open in a silent laugh or cry — I can’t tell which.
The sun is everywhere. Bright. Relentless.
~
act iii.
The trees outside have turned the colour of old embers. Reds, golds, oranges — all brilliant, but fragile. They fall too easily. A gust of wind sends a scatter of leaves tumbling past the hospital windows. They spiral before collapsing against the pavement.
I'm in the eye of the fire, where the flames burn so much they don't hurt at all. The waiting room is the same as always. Radish chairs. White walls. The clock that never stops but the one that I wish had a volume button to it. But something's missing, and when I tilt my head up, I realise what.
Her seat is empty.
The one by the vending machine.
I keep glancing at it, expecting to see her fluttering hands, the tapping feet, the soft chaos of her movements, a chaos that has grown both comforting and familiar to me over the months. But the chair stays vacant. The vending machine hums quietly, alone.There's no prolonged eye contact or spilling of water down shirts.
I sit down, my legs crossed, fingers curled into my sleeves to hide their constant fidgeting.
They don’t always listen anymore. Sometimes they jerk so suddenly that I hit myself in the chest. Once, I dropped a glass at home. It shattered across the kitchen tiles like ice breaking in a lake. I didn't clean it up at first - I stared in awe for what seemed like forever. Another time I hit my funny bone against the back of my bedroom door. I laughed at the sensation, before realising what caused it before sliding my back down the door and collapsing into a messy, sick, heap.
A nurse walks past and stares at the empty chair too. Just for a second. I recognise her as the same nurse who gave the woman water last time I visited. Her face softens. Then she keeps walking.
When they call me in, I hesitate. I'm not sure if it's because I want to or my body wants to.
I stand slowly. My balance wavers. The hallway feels longer than before, the white walls stretching on like a tunnel. They threaten to crush me, but I keep moving. Keep moving. That's what the doctor said.
And yet, his voice is quiet this time, when I enter the office and sit on the bed. He still speaks with a hint of hope, but the weight of his words has changed.
“The progression is more noticeable now,” he says. “We caught it when you were fully symptomatic. I... There are new drug trials overseas. Early results look promising, but nothing is confirmed. We can give you information if you’d like.”
I take a pamphlet. It's filled with images of smiling patients and needles, like whoever designed it got so desperate for the program to look more than hope than a life sentence, that they stole pictures off Stock Images. It looks like the type of thing you give someone when you want them to take a nice vacation at your ski resort. This time,it screams one-way trip - to the Reaper!
Outside the office, autumn air seeps through the automatic doors. It smells like wet leaves and rain that hasn’t fallen yet, but the way the pavement feels beneath my shoes makes me suspect it has drizzled before. Just a little. Not enough to be detected.
I walk slower now, careful. At the car, I glance back through the glass. The empty chair by the vending machine stares back at me.
I don't know her name. I never spoke to her. I didn't even want to help her. But her absence sits heavy in my chest, a stain on the corner of a page of a book I'm unwilling to see the end of.
I wonder if she’s still here. Somewhere deeper in the hospital. Or if she’s gone somewhere I'm going to follow.
The wind picks up, scattering more leaves across the pavement. They fall, one after another.
~
act iv.
One morning, the air outside the hospital is sharper, and the trees that once blushed red and gold stand bare against a pallid, colourless sky. Inside, the waiting room is exactly the same. Plastic chairs. White walls. The same clock ticking steadily on.
Everything feels different.
I used to wonder why hospitals were so unfriendly. Why the walls never had colour, why the lights were always so harsh, why no one ever thought to make it feel less like a place where bad news lived. But now, after so many visits, the strangeness has worn away. The chairs don’t bite my clothed thighs anymore, the smell of disinfectant clings to me like a bittersweet perfume, and I like the clock ticking so audibly, a metronome that beats in time with my heart.
It’s not comforting, or kind exactly - but it’s mine.
I tuck my fingers inside my sleeves. They twitch anyway. My movements have grown more unpredictable; sometimes I laugh at them, sometimes I cry. Today, I’m just quiet.
And then —
She’s there.
In her seat by the vending machine, covered in a thick coat, her hands fluttering softly in the cold air. She looks different than before - steadier, somehow. Her movements haven’t disappeared, but they’ve softened. There's a scarf in her hand, grey and old, and she attempts to wrap it around her neck to keep herself warm.
For the first time, she looks directly at me. Not the passing, fleeting glance from spring but a clear, deliberate gaze. Yet her hands still falter with the scarf. So instead of sitting there as I have done every other time, I get up, not noticing whether my legs lock up or obey, and make the distance between the chairs in two short strides. Gently, I assist her, looping the scarf - once, twice - until she's wrapped comfortably up in it.
“You’re here for it too, aren’t you?” she says. Her voice is thin, a little shaky, but it holds hope. And that's enough for me. “The trial,” she adds. “I've been doing treatment for a while.”
I blink. “You too?” My voice comes out smaller than I expect.
She smiles, the corners of her mouth trembling slightly.
“Yeah. They said… it’s not a cure. But it’s something. And I thought, why not?”
Her fingers twitch against the armrest, and mine mirror her almost unconsciously. For a moment, we sit there - two puppets in the same room, strings tangled, wondering if we'll ever unravel them.
A nurse calls my name. My legs are slower than they used to be, but I manage to pull away from the woman and turn towards the sound of my name.
“Good luck,” she says.
I glance back at her. “You too.”
The hallway to the trial room is bright, the kind of winter light that makes everything look sharper. A doctor greets me with a gentle smile. She explains everything, then talks about what the drug might do, how it could slow things down. No promises. Just hope.
But unlike every visit before, I tune into her words. I listen.
“We can’t turn back the seasons,” she says softly. “But sometimes, we can help the flowers hold on a little longer.”
I nod. The doctors' words used to sound empty. They were helping me just for a salary and enough money to get food on the table. But the look in her eyes tells me something different. She isn’t just doing a job. She wants me to stay. To fight.
Through the small window, I catch a glimpse of the courtyard outside. Frost rims the edges of the grass. The trees are bare, but at the base of one trunk, a tiny green shoot pushes through the frozen ground.
The doctor prepares the injection.
Somewhere down the hallway, I imagine the woman in her own room, doing the same.
The needle slips in. A sharp sting, then a slow warmth.
Maybe this trial will work. Maybe I'll become the same as everyone outside this hospital; their lives aren't haunted by the red circles around visit dates or the looming figure of death a couple of calendars away. Or maybe I'll get worse.
But there is beauty in deterioration, a subtle, mournful kind of beauty that ebbs and flows. When you see flowers wilt, you do not cry for their drooping petals and cradle their stalks. You tell yourself that spring will come again soon, and the buds, in all their former glory, will return.
Perhaps spring will return for me, one day. But for now, I am a seed beneath the frozen earth, holding on until the thaw
Watch the 2025 showcase video: