The Powers Society

001: Seeing Isn't Always Believing

     They didn’t see me. Nobody did. Not except for her. How could they see me? The answer? Well, they couldn’t.  I had waited around on that fateful day, bored out of my mind. I decided to prank her, not knowing she’d be able to see me. Hear, yes. Everybody can hear me. They don’t know it’s me, they could never figure it out. They think I’m their subconscious, making them hear the noises of their past. The sounds were different to each person. Some people heard the tintinnabulation of pretty silver bells, and others heard the cawing noises of ugly vultures. I waited for a little while longer, before ringing her doorbell. Ding dong ditching isn’t what I specialized in, but it was the first prank I could think of at the time. I floated up a little higher, just before she answered the door. She looked around, then looked up, frowning. Seeing me. How? I thought mortals, especially humans, could see me. At that moment, I wished she couldn’t. I mean, yeah, it’s boring, walking around a bustling city with nobody ever noticing or caring about you. They just walk straight through you, as if you were a ghost. Or, in the words of a non-believer, as if you didn’t exist at all. She glared at me, her emerald green eyes that shone in the sunlight boring a hole straight through my soul. “Who are you?” She asked sternly. I thought about what I might say for a moment. Did I tell her the truth? No! Of course not! I couldn’t tell a single person on this planet anything real about me, so, being who I am and acting on pure instinct, I lied. “Nobody,” I said, keeping a straight face. “Tell me who you are, or I’ll-” I cut her off. “Or what? Do you even see what I can do? Know what I’m capable of?”
“Erm, no, I’ve never seen you in my entire life,” she answers, her expression softening a little bit. “But can you answer my question? Who are you?” she asks again, more gently this time. “Call me… Nathan,” I responded, having had more time to think about my new name. My names changed frequently, as did the rest of my life, but the one thing that always stayed the same was the order the starting letters came in. Since I was a little bit quirky, I had decided to go through the alphabet backwards, starting with the letter Z. My personal favorite so far was the name I picked for the letter V. Vander. It held a lot of memories, both the good and the bad, but, when I had to leave again and the blue flames of my love died out, Vander died too. I had felt when I was leaving that a part of myself died with him, even though he wasn’t real. I just had fun playing that one, long game of pretend. That one game had almost gotten me caught. I couldn’t let that happen, not again. So I packed my things and drifted away from that life. Here I am again, three years later, in the exact same place as I was before. This time would be different, I told myself. It had to be. For them. As I tilted my head downwards to get a better look at the female teenager in front of me my medium length celadon green hair fell in front of my eyes. I had a mullet at the time, a new-ish haircut to me. She was pretty. I fell. Shit.