Ghosts {L.P.}

1:15

Ｇｈｏｓｔｓ Ｃａｎ Ｔｒｅｓｐａｓｓ
Ｐｒｉｖａｔｅ Ｐｒｏｐｅｒｔｙ

▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။||||။၊|• 0:25

Riya couldn't sleep that night. She tossed and turned under the covers, staring at the fuming stick of sage she had lit on her nightstand.

Supposedly sage could ward off spirits—at least according to Google anyway—so Riya had been lighting sticks up from the time she began going to therapy, and so far, no ghosts had ever shown up inside her room, so she took that as a massive win in her book.

Sleep didn't find Riya until late hours of the night. After her father arrived of his night shift and tucked her in while she pretended to be asleep. After the noises of the street died down with the lack of people bustling down the pavement. And even as her father turned the light off in his room, indicating he had finally found sleep. Only then Riya could ease her mind into the endless abyss of the night.

Naturally, she woke up feeling like three semi-trucks had run over her and in a desperate need for a coffee, which, luckily for her, had already been placed on the kitchen counter still steaming alongside a note. Said note was written in the hasty scribbles of her father only Riya and her mother seemed to understand.

The note said he had an early shift to work and left without waking her, he claimed she looked too deep in her sleep and didn't want to wake her, but there was a sandwich in the fridge for her breakfast and lunch packed in the same bags as always.

Riya barely made it into opening the fridge, having the cold air waft over her face and near-silent hum fill her ears before she heard it. The same tune of the day before. Same sound. Same beat. Same words stringing themselves inside her mind.

She shut the door without another thought, barely managing to leave her mug of heavily milked coffee on the countertop without spilling a drop, before she ran full force to her father's room.

This time Riya didn't bother with closing the door, she didn't want to risk losing any precious seconds. Instead, she lunged straight towards the guitar, slumping underneath her mother's picture as she positioned her fingers between each individual fret.

Riya plucked at each string, allowing the melody to consume the walls of the entire apartment, her fingers tingling with the vibrations of the music coursing through her, finally finding peace within the chaos of ghosts around every corner.

For the first time since she had encountered those ghosts outside her building, Riya finally allowed herself to grin, swaying lightly with each hum as words began to fill the space. At first, they were just generic lyrics she heard on the radio and read inside her mother's lyric books, or words she heard passing down the street.

That was how all of Riya's song started, and how she supposed her mother's did too. A tune ringing in their heads. A humming finding its way into becoming words. And words turning into lyrics until they all came together in one smooth, catchy, mix.

Except Riya never made it past the stage of random words because it all fell to a stop as she heard another set of strings being played in her living room adding on to her own alongside a beat as if someone was using themselves as a drum.

Carefully, Riya set her mother's guitar back in its place, reaching for the baseball bat she knew her father kept under her bed. Each step she took was calculated, careful to keep them light and not stepping on any of the particularly creaky floorboards.