Scars on Fire

I have three rules that I, June Saltzman, have to abide by during my readings. Number one: Don't leave the spiritual plane door open. Number two: Never let them see even a glimpse of your fears. And finally, seek your spirit guide when you break rule number one and two.

Although most people despised their ex-boyfriends, and threw their memories into the incinerator we all kept in the back of our minds, I had the luxury of being tethered to Tavis Montgomery, my last lover and my recent spirit guide into the spiritual plane. Our bond might've been challenged when he was alive due to my trust issues, but we'd grown so attached to each other since his passing five years ago, I couldn't fathom the thought of letting him go, even in death. I was certain he felt the same.

"What do you have for me, Tavis?" I spoke into the Nothing, a resting stop between the spirit realm and the human realm, where spirit guides like Tavis gathered their information for us Mediums before we head to a location. There were a variety of Mediums out there. Some were full of shit, who did nothing but scam money out of desperate and solemn people. Some of them had more than just the occasional premonition or message from the other side in their dreams. Some of them, like myself for example, had the misfortune of feeling and experiencing just about everything from the deceased and their living connections to the human realm, including their looping painful memories and their most pleasurable ones as well.

Clairsentience, a blessing and a curse passed down to me by my parents, who I've never met, in the spirit realm or otherwise. I knew they were still alive out there, pondering on about their impulsive life decisions that led up to them giving me up for adoption, forcing me to enter the foster care system. Kids were mean to the girl who talked to ghosts, of course. But the adults who did nothing to deter them and joined them instead, were worse.

"Ava Rose," Tavis' presence entered the human realm in a translucent mist, mixing within the thick fog plaguing us on this Halloween night, then took on his former human form, as we lingered behind the gates of the unkempt Rosemary Cemetery in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. We both grew up here, but never crossed paths until senior year of high school, when I transferred over and became the shiny new target for bullying. I'd gotten thicker skin by then, so their cruelty didn't have their desired affect.

Tavis had been the only kind soul to accept me, a freak who barely stood at five feet tall, with frizzy curls, oily skin and the uncanny ability to see and feel the dead who walked passed us every day on the spiritual plane, which was parallel to ours, only more on the gloomy side. The veil between both worlds was thin but effective. The only problem was, when people like myself tried to purposely contact the dead more often than they should, they tended to accidentally open the flood gates and let other creatures from parallel dimensions into the human realm.

That's why I was here, at Rosemary's Cemetery, to plug a whole back into the veil before all Hallow's Eve ended. It was the only night of the year where all my abilities were heightened to their maximum potential and I had to take the opportunity to help the restless spirits I had accidentally let loose on this plane during my last conjuring session with a client.

I'd broken the rules again, and this time, Tavis hadn't been around to help me reign in my abilities before they got out of hand. I had no idea where he'd been that night when I called for him through all dimensions. To be honest, things had been a bit strained between us since the incident, but he was here now. He stood proudly beside me at six feet tall, his haunting electric blue gaze illuminated by the moonlight, sporting the same shaggy brown hair I'd grown used to dipping my fingers into while his head lingered in between my thighs, spreading pleasure throughout my body with his skillful tongue. He smirked in response to reading my thoughts and I quickly cleared my throat as I tried to focus on the task at hand. I needed to find Ava Rose's spirit and get her to cross over before midnight, or she'd be stuck on this realm until the next All Hallow's Eve.

Tavis guided me through the eerie and quiet cemetery, while I cursed at every branch I managed to trip on on our way to Ava. Spirits could take on any form they choose depending on how much energy they sucked up from their surroundings. Mediums were like batteries to the residents on the spirit lane, and it just so happened I had the kind of juice she needed to appear in the state she was in at the time of her death. Judging from the cuts on her wrists and the way her aura dulled in color, I'd say this girl had killed herself and was stuck regretting it on the spirit plane.

The tombstone she was hovering over held the name Johnny Masterson. He was thirty-four when he died of an alcohol overdose, but I suspected he had lost his way long before the reaper had taken him. Ava Rose had a lot to do with that according to the mental pictures lingering about in her memories. It didn't take me long to figure out what exactly happened between them but I wanted all the facts. I didn't want to step into this with my eyes closed. Not again.

"Ava," I called for her and she turned abruptly, her eyes hollowed and glossed over in white as most earth bound spirits did in this state. I should've been used to it by now, but the truth was it still gave me the chills.

"Where is he? Where's my Johnny?" her sobbing voice screeched inside my head and I shivered slightly as I took on her essence, downloading every memory, and every feeling she's ever had concerning this Johnny Masterson. He'd been her high school sweetheart, but there was a deeper connection there. He believed they were soulmates according to her, believed they'd be together forever, get married, have kids, grow old together. The typical promises young and irrational love forced us to swallow. Ava's fear had gotten the best of her, which was understandable considering she'd had a horrible abusive father to pull an example from. She stewed in her sadness until it consumed her and her thoughts grew dark enough to force her into suicide.

Johnny was the one who found her lying in a pool of her own blood and he had never recovered from it. He lost his football scholarship due to him slacking off on his academics, but it was to be expected considering his girlfriend had killed herself right before senior year was over.

Ava spent every moment she could trying to talk to him from the spirit realm until the day of his death. And even then, he still wouldn't acknowledge her. I looked over at Tavis and he nodded, already knowing what his next task was, and that was to find Johnny's spirit on his realm and bring him back to Ava, so she could say her peace and cross over.

"Will you be okay here?" Tavis blew into my thoughts and I nodded towards him. Ava wasn't one of the malevolent spirits I'd had a hard time with in the past. Her sadness was the only thing overwhelming me at the moment, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle on my own. Tavis placed a chilling kiss against my forehead before he wandered off to find Johnny and I exhaled deeply, trying to shake off the feeling of empty longing his energy always left me with.

"Did Johnny not love you enough for you to stick around, Ava?" I asked the withering young spirit as she crouched down and sat by Johnny's tombstone. I sat beside her as she rocked back and forth, like a scared decaying little girl who had no one but herself to keep her safe from the world.

"You tell me," she countered, and decided to slither herself inside me, until I saw the pitch black cemetery through her eyes and her memories transported me back to a moment in time where her presence was overseeing Johnny on one of his drinking binges. Picking up a random blonde from the bar and taking her back to his apartment came next. He looked older, months prior to his untimely death. He had gained a bit more weight, but he'd already been of husky build during his football days in high school, so he didn't look that different. The only thing that had really changed was how his bright and ambitious green gaze had dulled down and held nothing but desolation and contempt after Ava's death.

He picked up a nasty habit of drinking his pain away, and topped it off by fucking the women he brought home from the bars he often visited. He did just about everything he could with them, trying to fill the void Ava had left him with, to the point where he said her name every time he climaxed inside of them, while he imagined they were her in his drunken state.

Johnny's love for her remained in tact, even after her death. Had Ava known just how much truth his words had held when they were still young and had the entire world ahead of them, she wouldn't have gone through with her decision to put an end to the somber thoughts that constantly plagued her back then.

I knew exactly how it felt to be so intertwined with someone, you felt a sense of chaos without their presence keeping you from falling apart. It was unhealthy to be so attached to them that you couldn't imagine what life would be like without them in it, the thought of it restricting your ability to breathe to the point of tears. This was the only time where I was glad my abilities had kept Tavis with me, even after death had taken him away from me in such a gruesome manner.

I could feel his energy trying to push through this realm now, right along with Johnny's and it forced me to form a smile. I took comfort in knowing at least one of us was going to get their happy ending.

"If you could tell Johnny one thing right now, what would it be?" I asked the girl as she began to look around the graveyard, probably sensing the same shift in energy I was once she slipped out of my physical body and manifested back to her previous form.

"I'm sorry I couldn't love him the way he deserved. I couldn't. I... I didn't know how," Ava explained solemnly, the heaviness of uncluttered sadness washing over me as Tavis brought Johnny through the veil and he and Ava locked eyes for the first time since they were teenagers. Johnny had chosen to show himself in his younger form, the same baby-faced blonde haired jock Ava had gone nuts for all those years ago. Her sadness dissipated slowly as he approached her and ripped some fabric off the shirt he was wearing and covered the scars on her wrists, tying them so the bleeding would stop. With this gesture, he managed to heal her from the deteriorating soul she ended up with from all the nights her father had taken it upon himself to show her just how mean and nasty a man like him could get.

Johnny finally got to save her, to heal her spirit, just like he wanted to do all those years ago.

"We should go," Tavis warned as his words echoed in my mind, forcing me to close the door I'd had to open in order to let Ava in. I nodded and gave Ava and Johnny my best smile and watched them enter the glowing light forming before them as they stepped into it.

"What'd you say to convince him to come to her?" I asked my beloved spirit guide as we walked back down the path towards the entrance of the cemetery.

"I promised him peace. She just happened to be his," Tavis' answer combined with a chilly breeze sprinkling my skin, made me shiver as I felt him slither into me from head to toe. I'd dabbed a bit into spectrophilia before, enjoying the sexual essence from a deceased person flowing through me as they manifested sensations and sexual arousal within me. None of them compared to the high I reached when Tavis had buried himself inside me while he still had air in his lungs, filling me with not just his desire, but of his warmth and love and compassion.

This was all I had now. Just the memory of his fingers rubbing and circling my clit, his lips hovering over mine while he held my gaze, daring me to close them before I fell apart for him, how my body used to writhe and bend at his will with every thrust, my breasts aching for his palms, my nipples for his eager lips. God, I was close to cumming right here, in the middle of the deserted sidewalk, before he cruelly pulled himself out of my body and left me to bask in the sexual frustration he often left me with when we played this game.

"James Price. He's our next stop. Let's go."