Lyssa remembered the first day she gained her power. Sometimes, she wished she’d forget.

It had been raining at the time. The clouds were overcast, pouring their tears down into the earth, filling the air with the scent of earth and the ground with mud that clung to well-worn shoes. Lyssa had been young, very young, at the time, and was confused as to why she was put into the black dress she now wore. They had driven for a long while, silent. At the time, Lyssa hadn’t minded, she was more curious about following the pine trees flying by as they drove past, tracking the clouds ahead, or watching the raindrops race down the car window.

Eventually, the rich forest fell away to cleared out, open land. They parked, the car spluttering to a stop as they stepped outside, Lyssa quickly rushing under to hide in the shelter of his wide, dark umbrella. They made their way to a plot of land dotted with stones of all shapes and sizes, marked with names. They walked for a while, Lyssa amusing herself by stomping in puddles and trudging through mud, only to find a hole dug deep into the earth. There were other people around, relatives, friends. Lyssa found herself suddenly curious about why they had driven all the way out here, confused why everyone was crying. Why were they sad? Did they not like the forests outside?

After a while, Lyssa tugged on the edge of her father’s sleeve, looking up at his unshaven face. He was crying too, silent tears, but he still turned to look down at her and murmur, quietly, “Yes, Lyss?”

“Dad, why is everyone crying?” Lyssa remembered asking, naive and unaware. If only curiosity hadn’t gotten the best of her.

Lyssa’s father gave a smile that even Lyssa knew was fake, shaking at the edges as he squatted down, his murmuring growing more focused, as to not disturb the rest. “Lyssa, do you remember what I said about Mom?”

Lyssa nodded, recalling the conversation from a week or so ago. “You said that she was hurt, and that the doctors would fix her up so she could come home. Twelve days ago, at eight-thirty.” She gave herself a nod, praising herself for keeping track.

Her dad took a deep, shuddering breath, wiping at his eyes before continuing. “The doctors did what they could, Lyss, they really did. But eventually, Mom had to…go away.”

“Go away? Where?”

“Somewhere far away from us, Lyss. Very, very far away.”

Lyssa felt her heart beat faster, her hands tightening on her dad’s coat. “How long will she be away for?”

Tears were flowing freely from Lyssa’s father now, his smile starting to fade. “Oh, Lyss. She…she won’t be coming back. We won’t be able to see her again, for a long, long time.”

Her fists tightened on her father’s coat, nails digging into fabric as her breath grew faster and faster. No, that wasn’t right. Mom wouldn’t leave, and they couldn’t keep her away from Lyssa. They couldn’t. If Mom was gone, then she’d…Lyssa would get her back. She’d reach into that far away place, and get her back. In that moment, Lyssa reached out a hand, and reached. She reached and reached with something more than hands and arms, reached with everything she had, trying to find where her mom went. She found something, for a moment, a mere wisp of a person, a hint of warmth.

Her mother’s smile.

But it fell, slipping from her hands like grains of sand on a beach. Mom was gone. Too far away, the part of her that had reached told her.

Lyssa pulled on her father’s sleeve, buried her face in his coat, and wept.

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Lyssa woke up to the loud sound of a dog barking in her ear, a hint of a whine in the tone. She groaned, cracking open her eyelids, sluggish as her hand groped around for her glasses. Yet again, a whining bark blasted straight into Lyssa’s ear, like an icepick to the eardrums. Finally, her fingers wrapped around her glasses, and she lurched upwards, placing the spectacles on her nose before rubbing her temples.

“I’m up, you mutt.” Lyssa muttered, hopefully forestalling the beast’s howling.

Properly focusing on her surroundings, her eyes wandered over the cramped, cluttered mess that was her room, before focusing on the hellion standing by her bed.

The golden retriever stood proudly, tail wagging furiously in light of its success in waking up a cranky teen. In retaliation, she flicked the creature’s nose. Or at least, tried to. Her finger phased straight through it without so much as a flicker.

It’s been years, and yet I still keep forgetting that rule. She grumbled to herself.

Lyssa had ‘met’ the dog recently as roadkill by the side of the road. Apparently, some careless owners let the poor thing run into traffic, and the rest is history. The little monster was lucky that Lyssa got there in time.

Well, a little late to keep it alive, but enough to save its soul.

At least, she thought the things she collected were souls. After something recently died, she could find them and…store? Grab? Eh, it didn’t really matter. Lyssa got whatever made the dead things think and act, and preserved it. They could see, act, probably think, and communicate with her in whatever way they could in life, as well as move around in a decent range around her (she didn’t care enough to get measurements).

The caveat? Lyssa couldn’t touch them, they couldn’t touch her, nobody else could see them, and they couldn’t affect the physical world. She sighed, lamenting her childhood dreams of resurrecting an army of dead to fight for her.

The ghosts she made could still be annoyingly loud, though. And the bastard before her was a very vocal dog.

Said very vocal dog proved Lyssa’s point by barking right in her face, before whining and moving back and forth between her and the doorway out of her room. “I’m going, you rascal.” Lyssa grumbled crankily, swinging her feet out of her bed and quickly grabbing some clothes before sliding on socks and walking out the door.

Lyssa’s feet tapped in a staccato rhythm as she moved down the stairs, the dog zooming ahead of her and excitedly running around the kitchen of their suburban home. Lyssa groaned as she stretched, walking past the paper note on the table. It was probably the same ‘I’m too busy, take after yourself’ bs that her dad put there every day, anyhow. She made herself a bowl of cereal, idly munching on the food as she ate, ignoring the ghost dog’s pleas as she slowly woke herself up.

Once Lyssa felt somewhat human again, she slipped on some sneakers and grabbed her backpack from the dinner table, not bothering with the dirty dishes lying right next to it before staggering out the door, dog in tow.

Today was a moderate day for weather, clouds blocking the sun and the winds carrying the slight chill of autumn, but still not enough to want to wear a coat. Lyssa locked the door behind her and started her walk to school, her shadow running ahead of her before sniffing the ground and continuing on. Lyssa, not for the first time, wondered whether or not the dog could actually smell something, or if it was just a habit ingrained in the mutt’s psyche. Around her, more creatures visible only to her started to trail behind. Pigeons, squirrels, even an owl followed behind, a menagerie only she was aware of.

When she had been a little kid, she had just revived whatever she could, and while her range was large, it had started to get a little crowded. This problem had solved itself later, when she realized that some of the ghosts could eat each other, though they didn't necessarily have to. As such, once she realized that summoning so many random dead animals would get annoying and stopped, the numbers had slimmed down by a decent margin, thanks largely to the owl above chopping down on numbers whenever it grew bored.

Next to the mutt, the owl was Lyssa’s favorite.

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Time passed quickly, the minutes blurring together as Lyssa’s feet carried her down the familiar route, streets passing by as she drew closer to school. Eventually, she found herself standing before a large, concrete-and-brick building, cheaply made and with a significant amount of its walls covered with graffiti that the janitors didn’t care enough to clean. Home sweet home.

Lyssa walked inside, opening the doors and letting the wave of voices and the tide of bodies wash over her. She slipped past crowds, squeezed by the occasional friend group standing side-by-side and taking up most of the highway (why do people do that, anyway?), and wandered the halls till she made it to her first class.

Lyssa walked inside, ignoring the teacher and her classmates, before plopping down in her rightful seat, letting out a sigh of relief as she dropped her bag beside her, taking out a notebook that she probably won’t be using.

“Sooo…” A voice said beside her. “Find anything that you could convince to haunt you, ghost-girl?”

Lyssa gave a sidelong glance to her friend, Dannielle Sanders. Her frizzy red hair poofed out in an only semi-tamed mess, and her mousey face sported enough freckles to look like the dots were convinced they could change her pale skin through quantity alone.

“No such luck, Danny. It appears that all the beings of the afterlife are intimidated by my otherworldly charms.” Lyssa sighed dramatically, raising a hand to her forehead in mock-dismay.

Danny snorted. “Otherworldly harm to my headspace, more like. You couldn’t find anyone in the living or the dead who can stand your attitude. Not all supers have to be overly theatrical, yknow.”

Lyssa placed a hand on her chest. “You wound me so, Danny. Besides, there’s at least one person I’ve swindled into sticking around.” She finished the retort with a wink towards her friend.

Danny grinned, punching Lyssa’s shoulder as she spoke. “That makes two of us, you doofus.”

Their banter continued on throughout class, as they continued on with their day. Lyssa let herself get lost in the rhythm of it, pointedly not thinking about the possibility of her returning to an empty house once again.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure if her father being there would be any better.

Eventually, all good things came to an end, and classes ended, Danny and Lyssa wandered out the front doors together, and Lyssa took a deep breath of the air. Danny spoke behind her.

“I gotta head back for volleyball practice, but do you wanna watch some Capeball together once I get home?” Danny asks, pointing a thumb back towards the school.

Lyssa shrugged. Capeball might be a supers-only sport, but Danny had way more interest in the whole scene than Lyssa ever did. Wasn’t like her power would be all that viable in Capeball anyways, but Danny usually asked Lyssa to watch with her when she couldn’t think of anything else. “Sure, I’ll head over, just text me.”

Danny nodded, giving a lazy two-fingered salute before heading back into the building for volleyball.

Once Danny was out of sight, Lyssa sighed and began the long trek home. She walked down the streets, thoughts wandering to other things, trails of animal spirits following like an invisible cape. Her mind wandered for a moment, before, in a single step, everything changed.

Lyssa’s blood ran cold. Something had died in her range. Not unusual in the slightest, but…it wasn’t just a random squirrel or owl.

A once living, breathing human being just died.

Lyssa froze. She wasn’t proud of it, but that’s what happened. Lyssa stood still as a statue, heart thrumming like war drums in her ears, thoughts going at a mile a minute. What happened? Can I save them? What can I do? Should I call the police? Should I call the city super team, since I detected the death with my power?

She was shaking. Lyssa’s hands shook as she stared at nothing, her sense telling her, with absolute, unerring certainty, that there was a dead human no less than two blocks away. The man was already dead, but what…Lyssa took a deep breath. She should go and save them. It didn’t matter who the person was, she should go and save their soul. Whatever half-life she gave is better than no life at all, yeah? She should move. She should go help.

The thought repeated over and over in her head, but her body didn’t move so much as an inch. Lyssa continued to stare into space. Lyssa wasn’t sure how much time passed as she just…stood there, doing nothing. Until, finally, something happened that spurred her to action.

The signal was fading.

Whatever thing that Lyssa stored to make her ghosts, it was disappearing from her senses, falling away, like…like sand between her fingertips.

Lyssa was moving before she had even formulated the thought, sprinting as fast as she could towards the dead soul, breath coming in panicked gasps. Streets passed by in a flash, and suddenly she ran, reaching, grasping desperately, hoping that she wasn’t too late, hoping to bring them back-.

Lyssa’s invisible fingers grabbed onto something the moment she turned the alley, but what she saw almost made her lose her grip on the fading soul.

The corpse was mangled.

Bloody contours were carved into pale skin, clothing ripped and torn in a thousand different ways. The face…it was torn up, bleeding strands of flesh exposed to open air, unrecognizable in almost every way.

Lyssa threw up.

It was as simple as that. She…she’d never seen anything even remotely like that. Even leaning against the alley, looking away from the grisly remains, the mere thought of that image brought bile out of her throat like a tide or revulsion.

Her hands were shaking even more now, so much so that she doubted she’d even be able to pick up her phone to call the police. Lyssa glanced at the expanding pool of blood beneath the body, but couldn’t bring herself to look at it again. She…her whole body was shaking, chest like an iron vice, her vision blurring in and out of focus, tears dripping on the ground as the urge to vomit surged up and through her again, a tsunami of wrongness that she could do nothing to stop.

Lyssa’s chest grew tighter and tighter, and she dropped down, fingers digging deep into her skin as she continued to stare at the brick wall, vision turning black at the edges.

It was hard to tell how much time Lyssa spent there, minutes blurring together as the panic clawed deeper and deeper into her chest, breath coming in short gasps as she continued to stare at nothing in an alley, a corpse mere feet away from her.

Some amount of time passed, and eventually the tension and awfulness receded, exhaustion stepping in its place. Lyssa leaned her back against the alley, trying hard not to look, not to even think. Eventually, back against the wall, Lyssa drew her attention back to her power.

Somehow, in all that, she had never relaxed her power, holding the spirit in a crushing, desperate grip, a singular lifeline in a sea of horrible experience.

Lyssa wiped her face with her sleeve, grimacing as the only thing she succeeded in was smearing tears and snot across her face, continuing to wipe till Lyssa felt like she wouldn’t fall apart the moment she interacted with anything that wasn’t her dog. Lyssa paused, noticing that her dog hadn’t made a noise, and was actually laying down right next to her, looking at her with big, caring eyes.

Lyssa sniffled, before giving a tiny smile. “Good boy.” She said, and though it came out as more of a croak than a coherent name, the dog seemed to recognize the sound of it enough that his tail swished side-to-side in a cautious tail wag.

“Alright. I can do this.” Lyssa got up, pointedly not looking at the body, instead focusing on the spirit in her hands. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she took another one.

Cupping her hands, Lyssa gathered the spirit together, and pulled. She pulled the spirit towards her, feeling it rest somewhere inside of her for a heartbeat, before passing out of her and moving towards the-

Lyssa looked away for a moment, before she took another breath. This was important. Really important. Perhaps the most important thing she’d ever done.

She looked at the corpse.

Lyssa held back her vomit, gagging a little, but she still managed to keep her eyes glued to the scene. For a moment, the body seemed to gain a second layer atop it, moving like a liquid upwards from the feet. A layer of non-mangled clothing covered the corpse, with frayed edges phasing straight through the undamaged parts. A flash of relief shot through Lyssa- She was very glad that clothing carried over past death.

The liquid covered over injured and bleeding gashes. Slowly, the liquid rose up further, flowing up to the mangled face of the cooling body. The face that grew over the mess was that of a woman somewhere in her twenties or thirties, with a face that was neither elegant nor rough, with pale skin and brown hair flowing out into two braids, full lips set in a frown.

Once the liquid continued traveling up to the top of the body’s head, there was a moment of pause. The woman let out a groan, sitting up and rubbing her temple, phasing slightly through the corpse below her. She opened her eyes.

She looked at Lyssa.

Lyssa looked at her.

“...who the hell are you?” She said, and when Lyssa opened her mouth to attempt to stammer an explanation, she barreled through her, annoyed. “Listen, it doesn't matter. Have you seen a bastard with buncha cuts on his arms? Got a mask that looks like a fourteen-year-old’s first character? Yknow, crap-ton of knives, all pointing out, edgy black clothing n stuff? Big boots?”

Lyssa continued staring at her, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish, trying to formulate a response.

“No? Ok, then you don’t matter. Bastards stabbed me in the goddamn back, I’ll show em what for…” She grumbled to herself, muttering something under her breath as she paced, seemingly unaware of what was beneath her.

Lyssa, after some time, managed to gather her composure enough to say. “Uh…Ma'am?”

The woman looked at her, surprised. “You’re still here? Nevermind, and don’t call me that, makes me feel old. What the hell do you want?”

Lyssa frowned, not sure how to break it to her. “Uh, well…what’s your most recent memory?”

She scowled. “Well, I was having a ‘friendly conversation’, and that as- ahem, I mean that man,” she managed to spit the word out as if it were a curse, “he took my information and decided to use his goddamn power on me over paying.” The woman scoffed. “Supers. Anyways, I must’ve passed out from blood loss or something…what’s it to you?”

Lyssa didn’t respond for a moment, before coughing. After a second or two of awkward staring, Lyssa decided to just be blunt about it.

Lyssa pointed downwards.

The woman glanced down, at the mangled mess that was her own corpse.

There was a moment of pause.

“WHAT THE FU-”