--Echo--

“Do you expect me to send a thank-you note?” Piper asks. I scowl, still unfamiliar with this mortal form. “If I was caught and killed, I might have a chance to end it all. To not be a Phantom anymore. It would be preferable than having to deal with you.” Really, you’d give up your life to not be a Phantom? Piper opens the door and starts to walk out.

“Aurora said not to leave this place.” I argue.

“Aurora’s not here.” She angrily slams the door behind her. I walk around, and look for a mirror. What does my human form even look like? 

I find a piece of glass, and clean if off, holding it so the light reflects. I have black hair, pale skin, and black eyes. I’m tall-ish. Everything’s the same as how I was as a Storyteller. I even wear the same clothes I did before, including my satchel. 

Piper doesn’t return until nightfall, at the same time Aurora arrives. “You were outside?” Aurora asks. “Were you okay?” 

“I just went to the coast. It’s abandoned this time of year, so I was fine.” Piper says with a sigh. I hide in the corner, so Aurora doesn’t see me. Though Aurora seems nice, I don’t need another person today calling me preposterous. It all hurts for some reason. Ohh. This must be that human invention they call emotion. I mean, I could feel emotions before, but they never hurt this much. 

“You’re annoying, you know that?” Piper says, once Aurora goes home for the night. She sits next to me on the top floor, looking down at the ground as Walter battles a rat. Her green eyes are emotionless, and they don’t look at me.

“I’m not annoying, Piper.”

“And I’m not a Phantom.” She sighs. “What even is a Storyteller?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. We’re what mortals call a narrator. We float around, and the things we see around the different dimensions become what mortals know as novels.”

“You are a mortal now, remember?” She reminds me. 

“Right.” I say, and Piper snorts. “Was that almost a laugh?” I ask.

“No. I don’t laugh, remember?” She sighs. “So, you’re a narrator? Of a story here in the Otherside?”

“Yeah. You were kinda the antagonist for a while.” Admitting this makes Piper angry. She turns to face me, her eyes full of fire.

“Antagonist? Is that what a Phantom is? The bad guy who can’t be sympathized with?” She screams at me, then turns away. “Before you even knew me, you labeled me as a villain!”

“I was just listening to what everyone else was saying.”

“Well, what everyone says isn’t always true, you annoying brat.”

“I’m not annoying. And why are you so mean all the time?” I ask, and she raises her eyebrow at me.

“I’m not mean, I just don’t let emotions cloud my judgement. You wouldn’t understand emotions, but it’s something you’ll have to get used to now that you’re one of us lowly mortals.”

“I understand more than you think,” I say. She is the one who doesn’t understand. I mean, I’m four hundred and fourteen. I’m the wiser one, right?

“You don’t understand. You’ve never felt loss, or pain, or sadness. You haven’t felt a single emotion in your life!” She pauses to take a breath, and continues yelling. “You don’t understand what it’s like to have weakness in every breath you draw. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE HUMAN, FOR PETE’S SAKE!” 

“And you do?” I ask, and once I see the look in her eyes, I know I’ve crossed a line. She turns and walks up the staircase. I grab her forearm and she turns to look at me. 

“Let me go, Echo.” She says. 

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” Her eyes turn from hurt to hard. 

“No, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault you said it. I just momentarily forgot that I’m the antagonist in this story whose happy ending doesn’t matter.” She wrenches her arm free and walks past me, then slides down the fireman’s pole to the bottom floor. She pushes the door open and I’m left, watching her run towards the coast, fading in and out of visibility.

--Piper--

Antagonist. I think, running as fast as I can. Villain. Criminal. Evildoer. Things around me change from color, to black and white, and back again, over and over again.

I’ve been called a villain before. But to be called it by someone who knows me, who I trust, that’s much worse. To others, I’m a predetermined criminal. To someone I know, it’s more than just what the government’s been telling them.

Because of some mutation, I’m not allowed to live. Because of powers I don’t even want, I don’t get to go to school, or have friends. I didn’t want any of this, and now everyone acts like I asked for this.

“You don’t care what I want, do you? I’m just the villain in your story!” I ask nobody, screaming at the sky, which just stares back at me, as if mocking me. 

“Piper?” Echo’s voice says. No. I refuse to listen to his empty apologies. I close my eyes, and when I open them, there isn’t any color. Echo comes into the area, looking around for me. Everything is slowed down, and I am glad, because it gives me time to get away before the invisibility wears off. I reach the coast.

I learned how to swim when I was younger. My parents took me to the beach, before they died in the earthquakes and I was left to fend for myself. My parents were able to protect me from the police, from the world.

I wade into the water, and the invisibility goes away, but I don’t care. Nobody’s going to see me. Nobody cares to see me. 

“Piper, come back!” Echo calls. He stands in the trees, calling to me. I try to turn invisible again, but there isn’t any time. I turn and run into the water, my legs slowed down by the waves. 

--Echo--

“Piper, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” Piper ignores me, and continues into the water. How am I supposed to get her? They don’t exactly have swimming lessons when you’re training to be a member of the Guild of Storytellers. I jump as a voice behind me yells.

“Halt! You are out past curfew!” A policeman says. If I was a Storyteller, I probably wouldn’t have to obey curfew. Man, I miss my powers. “Put your hands up.”

“I’m not a Phantom. I promise.” I say, obeying them.

“You still have to be brought in for questioning.” The policeman starts to take me away, but looks over to where I am looking. Piper swims away, half-visible. The policeman says something into their radio. “Requesting Phantom Apprehension Team. We have a Phantom on the beach. North end.”

Within minutes, a team of police officers arrives. Piper notices them and swims faster. Hurry, or you’ll be caught. I think, wishing she could still hear my thoughts. The police wade into the water, one of their fancy electrocution nets in front of them. Hurry.

--Piper--

I’m going to be caught. I’ll be dragged away to wherever Phantoms go when the police catch up with them. Nobody knows what they do there. All we know is that nobody ever walks out of that place.

I dive into the water, tired of the water slowing down my legs. The salt gets in my eyes, making them sting. 

Face it. You’re not getting away from this. What are you going to do? Swim all the way across the ocean? They’ll catch you before you even make it to somewhere safe. 

My only choices are to keep swimming, or surrender. Not wanting to do either, I stop swimming. The police start to catch up. I close my eyes and allow myself to sink into the water. I turn invisible, and feel the soft ocean floor underneath me. Just hide here. Hide here until you drown, and then people won’t have to deal with your villany and your evildoing.

Echo opens his mouth to talk, but I stop him. “Just don’t.” Because of him, I’m now going to the place nobody like me comes out of. And it’s all Echo’s fault.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said.” He says, patting my hand. “You are human, and whether you have powers or not doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything. Because of my powers, I can’t live a normal life. I can’t go to school. I can’t have friends. I can’t walk outside without the fear that I’ll be dragged away. I can’t do anything without feeling scared.” I tell him. Echo sighs. I continue. “I’m alienated by society, and I have no purpose except to make people run away. Tell me what part of that is remotely human, Echo!”

“Shut up back there!” The policemen yell. I fold my arms, and turn away from Echo. It’s all his fault.

--Echo--

“If you would have just stayed in your perfect home up in the stars, none of this would have happened, and I’d still have a chance at living.” Piper says, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“You’re blaming me for everything? For getting caught?” She nods. 

“Every bit of it.”

“You’re the one who ran off into the woods, past curfew!”

“You made me do it.”

“I can’t make you do anything, Piper. You chose to leave.” Piper sighs and moves as far away from me as is possible with her chains.

“I didn’t ask to be a Phantom. I didn’t want this.”

“Well, I didn’t ask to be a Storyteller. Given the choice, I probably would want to be human. Sure, they’re a little weak, but they get to experience life.” Piper ignores me, her eyes hard. “Maybe I’d want to be a Phantom. It sounds cool.”

“Cool?” Piper asks, outraged. “You think that spending every day on the run is cool? You’d want your very existence to be labeled as illegal? You want to be an outcast? Barely human?”

“Calm down, Piper.” I say, though I doubt she’ll listen to me. “What I meant was that I thought your abilities are cool. That Phantoms’ abilities are cool. You’re basically a superhero.”

“Yet you still insist that I’m a villain.” Piper says, pain in her voice. “Because you listened to lies.”

“You can’t blame me for knowing nothing about the Otherside if I only arrived here a few days ago.”

“If you hadn’t entered my head in the first place, would you have still labeled me as a villain?” Piper asks. “If you just watched me from the outside?”

“Well, since I did not choose to do that, I guess I’ll never know what I’d label you as.” Piper rolls her eyes. “But I swear, I don’t think you’re a villain now. Not a fully evil villain, at least. You’re villainized by circumstance.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re only so prickly and emotionless because life made you that way. You don’t trust people because people have betrayed your trust too many times. You push away people because people pushed you away. You’re scared because people were scared of you.” I tell her, and she looks away.