My job, my calling, is to give second chances, or perhaps that’s just a product of my work. I’m a tutor, that’s my title, that’s my ‘purpose’.

I don’t think it’s fair to give titles, to reduce someones ‘why’ into a microcosm of what it truly is. I love what I do, and I do more than what my title implies. I rebirth these children, I give them life once more, or rather a reason to continue the one they have.

The unfortunate ones who come my way, who sit across from me, are shells. An empty vessel that was once an Eden. They’ve been reduced, not unusually by outside forces, not unusually by the ones who they trust the most, to a slobbering heap. I can fix them, I always do.

I couldn’t fix this one.

She was so shy, so nervous, always pulling at the stringy, blond tendrils which sat in stiff heaps on her small head. Her home, her dwelling, was unnerving in its decadence, a stark contrast from the filthy pig sties I usually found myself drawn to.

Katie.

I yearned to help her, to fix her, though her regression even in my presence was immense. She loved to paint nails, fake ones, the ones you could buy in volume. They were perpetually strewn about her desk, some so thickly layered that they bent and twisted like palaces of colorful, melted candle wax.

Her blue eyes pierced into mine, burning a hole in my retinas. I can’t see, I can’t feel anymore. The world goes black. I wake up, I return to the realm of the living, the glass of water I had been offered was empty.

My fingers throb, they burn and bleed with immense pain. My fingernails are gone, torn from the seams.

Katies painting my nails.