End

“Mom,” Tori asked, sliding into the kitchen on socked feet and slipping to a stop at the counter. “Can I go out? I’ll be back by midnight.”

Her mom pulled the phone from her ear and squinted at her through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “What? Oh, dammit, Tor, I don’t give a shit.”

Tori blinked once, nodded, then turned away. “Alrighty then.” As she left the kitchen, her eyes darted over to where I hung flickering in waves of cold fury. I wanted that woman to suffer so freaking much.

With a frustrated sigh, Tori’s mom slammed the phone onto the counter. “Tori!” she hollered. “Turn the heat up! It’s freezing in here! This is a house, not a cave! TORI! Answer me, goddammit!”

“WHAT THE FUCK, MOM?” she shouted from down the hall. “IT’S BAKING IN THIS CAVE!”

“Bitch,” the woman muttered, running to the thermostat and cranking the knob. Shivering, she picked a blanket from where it lay in a crumpled wad in the doorway that led into the living room. Wrapping it around her shoulders, she returned to her phone conversation.

Still quivering in anger, I left her and followed Tori where she had disappeared around the corner. I found her in her room, standing in the middle of her bedroom, staring blankly at a poster on her wall.

“Tori?” I started.

But she shook her head and collapsed onto her bed, curling tightly into herself. “Please, god,” she whispered. “Kill me now. I can’t do this anymore.”

“No,” I breathed. “Please, don’t say that.” I came nearer to her, reaching out to her. My light spilled over her, highlighting her hair, a flash of cheek. But the blackness of her clothes absorbed the rest, leaving much of her in shadow. I knelt next to her on her mattress, and my knees left no indention in the blankets. “Here…” I reached over to her, placing my fingertips in the hollow at the base of her skull, just under her hairline. I searched and it didn’t take me long. I found the thought that was hurting her so badly, the thought that she wasn’t worth anything, that what that woman had said was true. With a twitch of my finger, the thought came away from the barbs of her mind. When I pulled my hand from her neck, it floated at my fingertips, sparking like electricity in the darkened room.

Her sobs choked off, then returned with harsh gasps that slowed gradually into steady breathing. Her head turned. “What did you do?” Her eyes widened when she caught sight of the light in my hand.

“It was bothering you. Like a burr. It hurt you, so I removed it. That thought.”

“W-what thought?” she stammered, her eyes not breaking away from the thought-spark.

“What your mom had told you. She’d said that she didn’t care what you did. It was a mild statement, but it cut through you. You were repeating the sentence over and over in your mind and it was driving you crazy. So, I took it away.” I shook my hand and the spark faded away. I chewed on my lip. In life, I had been afraid to move to closer to her. There had been an awkwardness I was overly conscious of: the fear that she would’ve taken it the wrong way, of striking an awkwardness that would have been my fault. But in death, it didn’t matter. She could touch me; I could touch her. I came here to help her, and now that I was dead, stuff like that didn’t matter. There was no way we could get together, now, so that awkwardness couldn’t exist.

Brushing my fingertips along her cheek, I curled up next to her, laying my face alongside hers.

I would be there for her. I would be her guiding light.