Every Touch

by Parke, Nerika

  Every Touch

  by

  Nerika Parke

  EVERY TOUCH

  Copyright: Nerika Parke

  Published: 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  One

  Awake.

  Silence.

  Blackness.

  Nothing.

  Asleep.

  Awake.

  Silence.

  Blackness.

  Nothing.

  Then... white noise.

  Then silence.

  Asleep.

  Awake.

  White noise.

  Blackness.

  Then... a voice. Trish.

  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  Another voice. John.

  “You don’t have to be here. You could wait in the car, or I can take you home and come back.”

  A pause.

  “No. I have to do this. For Den...”

  Another pause. Crying. Trish crying.

  “Trish, baby, it’s too soon. We’ll pay another month’s rent. We’ll come back another day.”

  “No. It will always be too soon. We can’t afford another rent. It has to be now.”

  “Okay, but if it’s too much, you tell me. You’ve been through so much already.”

  “Let’s start in the living room. His more personal stuff will be in here. I want to leave that until last.”

  “Alright. I’ll start putting the boxes together...”

  The voices faded. A door closed.

  Everything was black.

  His eyes were open, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t see anything. He closed them, squeezing them shut, and then opened them again, to make sure. Still dark. He began to panic. Had he gone blind?

  He opened his mouth to call out, but no sound came. He swallowed and tried again. Still silence. Terror stricken, he opened his mouth and screamed. Slowly, a sound began to build. Tiny at first, it became louder and louder until his screaming filled his ears. He stopped, gasping for breath.

  Then he called out.

  “Trish?”

  There was no answer.

  He shouted louder, “Patricia!”

  Still nothing.

  He screamed as loud as he could, “TRIIISSSHHHHH!” and listened intently.

  He could hear the sound of voices, muffled like they were coming from another room. Why couldn’t they hear him?

  He was lying on his back. He tried to move, but he felt heavy, like his limbs were made of lead. With enough effort to make him grunt, he managed to roll himself onto his side. With another few grunts and a groan he was relieved no-one could hear, he pushed himself to a seated position.

  He was on the floor, he could feel the floorboards beneath his hands. Why would they have left him on the floor? Did they even know he was here? He reached out his hands and waved them around him. The fingertips of his left hand brushed against something soft to his side. He stretched out further towards it and grabbed hold of the edge of the soft thing. It felt like a duvet. Reaching further, he felt a mattress. A bed.

  Exhausted, he dropped his heavy arms to the floor. Every movement seemed to drain him of energy.

  After several long seconds of recovery, he took a deep breath and summoned every ounce of strength he had. Pushing himself to his knees, he crawled towards the bed, grabbed onto it and pulled his torso over the edge, collapsing across the top, his knees still on the floor. He lay still, breathing deeply, his eyes closed as he tried not to pass out.

  After a while, he pushed his body upright and opened his eyes. He blinked. Instead of black, his vision was now grey. Turning his head, he found that in one direction, beyond the bed, the grey was lighter than the others. He had a goal.

  He hauled himself onto the bed and sat. Moving seemed to be getting easier too. With a spark of hope to grab onto, he shuffled himself on his behind around the bed and sat on the other side, staring intently into the grey void.

  Gradually, the grey became paler and paler, lighter and lighter. It turned brown, then yellow, then cream. Indistinct shapes began to appear, eventually coalescing into a window. He was looking at a window. His window.

  The fog clearing from his eyes, Denny looked around. He was sitting on his bed in his bedroom. Beyond the floor to ceiling windows and the door leading to his small balcony, it was daytime, the sky overcast. He turned to see the rest of the room. He was alone. But Trish had been here, and John. He had heard them.

  He looked down at himself. He was wearing his white shirt with the grey checked pattern and the embroidered wings on the back and his indigo wash jeans. He tried to remember getting dressed and couldn’t. What day was it? He couldn’t remember that either. Had he been hurt? Was that why he was feeling so strange? Touching both hands to his head, he probed through his hair, feeling for any bumps or cuts. There were none. He did a quick check over the rest of his body, but found nothing there either.

  He glanced at the door to his living room in the far wall. That was where he needed to go.

  Looking down at his black lace up shoes, he moved his feet experimentally. Along with regaining his sight, he was relieved to find his body seemed to be getting lighter. He lifted first one knee, then the other. Satisfied that his strength was returning, he stood. Immediately he sat back down again, his head spinning. He leaned forward and held his head in his hands, taking deep breaths. The urge to vomit was churning his gut and the last thing he needed right now was to have to clean it up.

  As the dizziness diminished to a level where he no longer felt in imminent danger of reintroducing the contents of his stomach to the outside world, Denny raised his head. There was a chair near the bed, facing the windows and the balcony beyond. With a determination he didn’t often utilise, he stood back up again and grabbed it, holding on until his head cleared. When he was fairly sure he wouldn’t fall flat on his face, he let go and took a few unsteady steps, relieved when his wooziness didn’t return. He headed for the living room in search of his sister and brother-in-law.

  Reaching the door, he grasped at the handle... and missed. He looked down at it in confusion. Maybe the dizziness was affecting his co-ordination. He tried again, this time carefully moving his hand to the handle and closing his fingers around it. Instead of encountering cold metal, his hand formed into a fist. He jerked it back. It had looked just like... but no, that was impossible. His eyes must also still be acting up.

  Stepping back, he brought his hands together. When they joined perfectly, precisely where he expected them to, he tried just his index fingers, extending them and bringing his fingertips together in front of his face. Perfect, no trouble at all. He tried to take hold of the handle again and watched in horror as his hand passed straight through the metal globe. He staggered backwards in shock, almost falling. Regaining his balance, he looked at his hands in disbelief. What had just happened?

  He looked at the door again. The occasional sound of voices still came to him from his living room. He had to get in there. Stepping back to the door, he extended a trembling finger and touched the tip to the door. It passed through. Fighting the urge to pull it back, he kept going, watching in horrified fascination as his hand then his arm disappeared through the closed door until he was up to the shoulder. At which point his nerve failed.

  He pulled the limb back, rapidly checking it for any signs of injury or weirdness. It appeared intact. He clenched his fist a few times to reassure himself it still worked. When he was as satisfied as he could be that the experience wasn’t going to make his ar
m drop off or vanish into thin air, he moved it back into the door.

  At shoulder deep he closed his eyes, muttered, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” to himself and thrust his head forwards.

  He opened his eyes again and found he was looking into his living room. He glanced down at his body sticking halfway through the white painted wooden door. The sight made him shudder and he quickly stepped all the way through, standing still and shivering on the other side.

  “What do you want to do with this?”

  Denny turned at the sound of John’s voice. Trish was taking items from his kitchen cupboards and packing them into a cardboard box. John was next to her, holding up a jar of honey.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Trish asked.

  “It’s five years out of date.”

  She smiled. “Put it with the rest to throw out. I swear, I don’t think he’s taken anything out of these cupboards since he moved in.”

  She’s right, Denny thought. He always intended to have a good clear out, but there was always something more interesting to do.

  They were facing away from him and he walked across the room until he was a few feet away. Swallowing, his mouth suddenly dry, he spoke softly.

  “Trish?”

  She didn’t react, continuing to move his food into the boxes. He cleared his throat and spoke louder.

  “Trish? John?”

  They continued to ignore him.

  A twinge of fear lanced his gut. Heart beginning to pound, he walked around to stand in front of his sister.

  “Trish,” he said loudly, waving his hand directly in front of her face. Finally, she looked up at him. He smiled in relief and opened his mouth to speak.

  “Hey,” she said, “look at this.”

  She reached her hand forward and Denny gasped, watching in horror as it passed through his chest, stayed there for a second, then re-emerged holding a magnet from the fridge behind him.

  She frowned and looked at her hand, shaking it. “That was weird. My hand just got hot.” Shrugging, she looked at the magnet she was holding. “I’ve never seen this one before. He must have got it recently.”

  She held it out to John who looked at it and smiled. “‘You can touch the dust, but please don’t write in it’,” he read. “Sounds like him.”

  Trish pressed her lips together and nodded, staring at the magnet in her hand. John put down the packet of pasta he was holding and put his arms around her as tears began to run down her face.

  Denny backed away from them, shaking his head. Ice ran through his veins.

  “No,” he said, “no, no, no.”

  “I keep thinking he’s going to walk in at any moment,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “I know he’s gone, but...”

  “I know, baby,” John said, “I do too.”

  “I’m not gone,” Denny shouted running up to them, trying to get in front of them without stepping through anything. “I’m right here. Trish, I’m right here!”

  When they didn’t react to him at all, he stood still and looked at them.

  “Am I dead?” he whispered. His hand covered his mouth as he continued to stare at them in horror. “Am I dead?”

  Panic seized him. His heart thudded against his ribs. Tears burned his eyes. His lungs stopped working.

  He backed away from Trish and John, stopping in the middle of the living room. This couldn’t be happening. He had no memory of dying. How could he be dead? This couldn’t be real. He must be dreaming. That was it, he was dreaming. But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt horribly, horribly real.

  He sat down heavily on the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. He could hear Trish and John still packing up the contents of his kitchen cupboards, talking, but he didn’t want to look at them.

  He focused instead on scrutinising everything that had happened since he woke up on the floor, attempting to make sense of it, trying to work out what was really going on. Because he couldn’t be dead, that was ridiculous. That would make him a ghost, and he didn’t believe in ghosts.

  After a while he looked down at the sofa. He hadn’t been able to touch the door handle and he’d walked right through the door. Why was it he could sit on the sofa? Why was it holding him up? It shouldn’t be.

  As soon as the thought occurred to him, he promptly dropped through the surface of the couch and landed painfully on his backside on the floor. He winced and looked down, seeing his chest emerging from the seat cushion. It made him feel sick and he shuffled forwards rapidly until he was sitting on the floor in front of it. Sticking out of furniture. He would never get used to that.

  Get used to it. He wouldn’t get used to anything about this. The whole situation was like a nightmare. There had to be some kind of mistake.

  His sister and brother-in-law had started packing up other things in the room and were moving around him. Denny got up and went to sit on the floor in the corner where they wouldn’t accidentally walk through him. He didn’t even want to know what that would be like.

  For a long time he sat and watched as they packed away his belongings, sorting them into what they wanted to keep, give away and throw out.

  He watched them packing away his life.

  Two

  The numbness of despair was all Denny could feel.

  He’d lost all hope of waking up. If he was dead, why couldn’t he remember dying? What had happened? He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered before waking up. He was here, in his flat, he knew that. Watching TV, he remembered watching something, but he wasn’t sure what. The news maybe. And weather. That was it. He remembered it was going to rain the next day. But how long ago was that?

  Maybe it would come back to him, like his sight had. Although he wasn’t certain that was what he wanted.

  After a while, John phoned to order a pizza and he and Trish stopped to eat when it arrived. Denny watched them from his place in the corner of the living room.

  Eating. Could he eat? Would he ever be able to eat again? He wasn’t hungry, but the smell of the pizza drove him insane, making his mouth water. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he stood to look at it, decided to stop torturing himself and went back into the bedroom, pausing before plunging through the door as quickly as he could.

  He paced around for a while then went to look out of the window. The sky was overcast, but it was dry. He looked down at the people walking along the street three floors below, going about their lives. Their lives. They didn’t know how lucky they were to still have lives. He hadn’t appreciated his own enough.

  Denny knew he had never amounted to much, never really found his calling, if there had even been such a thing for him. He was thirty-three and he’d pretty much coasted through his too short life. Just done enough to get by in everything. He knew how to do a lot of things, but none of them well. He played the piano, but never in front of anyone because he wasn’t very good. He worked at the police station, but he wasn’t a policeman, just part of administrative support. He had thought at one time he would have liked to be a cop, but had never got around to trying, as with most things. He had wanted to find the love of his life, but all he’d had were a string of fun, but not very committed relationships. A life of good intentions, but not many actions, that was him.

  And now it was too late.

  He often thought, especially after his mother died five years ago in a car accident and his father of a heart attack a few months later, that his parents must have been disappointed in him. They never said so, they were always very supportive of both their children, but he thought they must have been so much prouder of their oldest. Trish was a lawyer, made a good living, was in a loving marriage, had a nine year old son. She was everything Denny wasn’t. And she was his heroine. He still looked up to her and he was still her baby brother who she loved and cared for. A lump came to his throat as he thought about the pain she must be feeling now.

  He went back to the living room where Trish and John were just finishing their meal and looke
d down at her. She looked so sad.

  “I’m sorry, Trish,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for leaving you.”

  His chest was suddenly painfully tight and he couldn’t hold back the sob that welled up within him. Going back to his corner, he sat and pulled his legs up to his chest, laid his head on his knees and cried.

  Denny didn’t move again for the rest of the afternoon. He sat watching Trish and John pack everything in his living room away, removing all trace that he had ever lived there. His bookcases stood bare, all his books, CDs, DVDs, gone. Every cupboard and drawer was empty. Everything that had said Dennis Carpenter lived here lay hidden in the pile of boxes by the door.

  Trish and John stood looking at it.

  “We can come back tomorrow and do the bedroom,” John said. “We need to leave now or we’ll be late picking up Jay.”

  Trish nodded. “Okay.”

  She turned to look around the now soulless room, if you didn’t count Denny still sitting in the corner. She sniffed, a tear running down her cheek.

  John put his arm around her. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go. You’ve done enough for today.”

  She nodded and they picked their coats up from where they were laid over the back of the sofa. Denny stood to follow them as they headed for the door. He didn’t want to stay by himself tonight. Whatever he decided to do in the future, whatever happened, right now he needed to be with his family.

  He managed to slip through the door before Trish closed it behind her. He knew he could just walk through it, but doing that still gave him the creeps. They stood silent in the elevator on the way down, John’s arm still around Trish. Her expression betrayed her sadness and Denny wished he could comfort her somehow. He looked down at her hand hanging by her side. Reaching out, he laid his hand over hers then slowly moved so his hand passed into it. She gasped, jumping, and he jerked back.