the phantom
A ghost lived in the pictures Tristan McLean was in. Not his professional photo shoots or paparazzi stolen shots. Vacation pictures, pictures that he took when he was in his home, pictures he took when he was alone outside in the parks and beaches. Pictures from at least a decade ago. It wasn't like there were spirit orbs around him or a face hidden in the darkness. What bothered him was the space besides him where a person should have been standing.
Someone was supposed to be with him. These photos haunted his mind and followed him everywhere he went, telling him to look again and see—really see—what was missing.
What was taken away from him.
But what was it? Who was it?
He had a flourishing career he worked so hard for since he was a teenager, maintained a good physical and mental health thanks to his life-coach Gleeson Hedge. His extremely busy schedule was sorted out thanks to Hedge's wife Mellie. He was a bachelor at heart. He loved one person in his life, and loved no one else.
He was alone, but he wasn't lonely. He didn't start questioning the plot holes and mysteries in his life. Sometimes they needed to be left alone. But something was resurfacing from the bottom of his chest and making his way to his lungs, to his tongue. Something that needed to be said, something that he needed to hear from his own lips. He tried to grasp it, but it would disappear between his teeth.
Once in a while, he saw Gleeson and Mellie's son. Tristan played with him when he was away from the camera, spoiled him with gifts. He watched him grow and counseled the boy about the game of life a couple of times as if he was his second father. Seeing the boy made Tristan miss something. Did he want to start a family? Get a wife, and have kids? No, it was fine the way it was, and that was the truth.
It was slowly driving him insane. It kept him awake at night, and when he slept, he was restless. Dreams of the woman he loved came and went in the corners of his eyelids. Dreams of a smiling girl with beautiful brown braided hair and kaleidoscope eyes shadowed his consciousness. She crept and crept to the surface of his mind until she weighted on his shoulders.
"Help me," he finally confessed to Hedge one evening after a stressful shooting where he broke down in the middle of the set. The little man's face was warped with worry and frustration for his inability to actually help him. "I don't know what I've lost."
Hedge said he'd do something. A few days later, two men in their mid-thirties appeared in the doorstep of his home. A white man and his Latino best friend. They introduced themselves as Jason and Leo. They sat Tristan down and told him that they were not strangers, that they had met him before and a few more times in the past. They were Gleeson Hedge's friends and they were here to help him, but they were not therapists or psychologists.
The blond one, Jason, started babbling things that made no sense and at the same time a lot of sense. That Tristan had a daughter named Piper and she was sixteen years old. She was sixteen and demigod, half-mortal and half-god. That the love of Tristan's life wasn't exactly an ordinary woman. That she was the Greek goddess Aphrodite who lived in the highest floor of the Empire State Building, who ruled the New York skylines along with the likes of Zeus and Hera.
Piper McLean was sixteen when Tristan sent her to Wilderness School. She rebelled because she wanted her father's attention. She wanted her father's love. She was sixteen when the people in front of Tristan met her. When this man Jason first fell in love with her. She was sixteen when they first went to a heroic quest to save Tristan when he was kidnapped by cyclopes. She was sixteen when she fought and died in a gruesome war along with their other friends. She was sixteen when she saved the world.
The man named Leo got up from his seat and murmured if he could use the kitchen. Confused, stunned, and angry, Tristan lets him go.
"What's this bullshit you're spitting out of your goddamn mouth?" His fists tightened. Tears filled the lower rims of his eyes. "I have no daughter."
Jason told him that his memories were coming back if he felt like he was missing something, or someone. Piper was coming back. He loved her so much he was willing to hurt himself with the memory of her gone, that he buried pieces of her in the depths of his subconsciousness. But that was what his daughter was afraid of. So she made a promise with her friends and they intended to keep it.
They really were here to help him, Jason insisted. If Tristan really believed that he had no daughter, then they could get rid of his uneasy feelings, his nightmares, his pain, and the stubbornness of his subconsciousness. Everything would go back to the way it was. Everything they had told him, he'd forget because from then on they would become fiction, not facts anymore. This was what Piper wanted: for her not to exist to spare him suffering. He truly wouldn't have a daughter.
Leo came out of the kitchen holding a cup of tea. His fingers were shaking. He moved close to Tristan and wordlessly offered the drink to him. The aroma was strong and inviting.
Please take this and you'll be alright, Jason said. Piper won't bother you again.
Tristan traced the lines on Leo's tired face. He found reluctance and regret in both men's posture and expressions. The way Jason had told all of this seemed so over-rehearsed because he was so familiar with all the words he said. He drained the life of each line in the script as if he had said them many times before.
He reached for the cup.