Every Touch

by Parke, Nerika

  “But in their homes?” Denny frowned. “Just seems... wrong.”

  “Just chill with them at bit and don’t watch anything you shouldn’t. Although, with that blonde, I wouldn’t blame you if you overlooked that particular rule.” He winked.

  Denny smiled and shook his head.

  “By the way,” Oliver said, “what happened to your nose?”

  He gasped and lifted a hand to it. “What’s wrong with it? Does it show?”

  “It’s a tad purple,” he answered, tilting his head a little to one side, “and it may be swelling slightly.”

  It still throbbed when he touched it. “Will it heal?”

  Oliver shrugged. “I’ve managed to not hurt myself, so I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that as this body comes from our own imaginations, you may be able to heal yourself. Give it a go.”

  “Okay.”

  Denny closed his eyes and tried willing his nose normal again. After a while, the pain began to lessen. He opened one eye.

  “Is it working?”

  “Not unless you intended it to turn green.”

  His eyes flew open. “What?!”

  Oliver erupted into laugher and Denny rolled his eyes.

  “It looks better,” he said. “That was actually quite cool to watch.”

  “Anyway,” Denny said, hoping to divert attention away from his nose and remembering why he had been so eager to see Oliver in the first place, “check this out.”

  Bending down, he placed his hands either side of the yucca plant’s pot, grabbed onto it and lifted it from the floor. Oliver laughed, clapping his hands.

  “That is awesome!” he declared. “It took me a week to be able to do that. Must be your exceptional teacher.”

  Denny laughed, stopping abruptly when he noticed a middle–aged man in a trench coat walking past on the street do a double take at the sight of a large fake yucca in its pot hovering in mid-air. Oliver turned to follow Denny’s line of sight and let out a bark of laughter. Denny rapidly lowered the plant back into its place, watching as the man frowned, shook his head and carried on walking.

  “Is it wrong to think I’m going to have fun with this?” he said.

  “I have many, many stories about the fun I’ve had,” Oliver said, “and I’m just getting started. So, what did happen to your nose?”

  Denny cleared his throat. “Nothing. Just had a small accident. A door may have been involved.”

  The corners of Oliver’s mouth twitched. “’Nuff said.”

  Six

  Oliver was right, Denny did need the company. After a few days of sleeping, missing his friends and family, feeling sorry for himself, talking to Oliver and periodically checking on Mr Duncan to see if he was okay, he was going stir crazy. He was beginning to need less sleep so he had more time to fill.

  Six days after waking, he decided it was time to start finding out who his neighbours were.

  The first time was the worst. He stood outside the door to flat one feeling very uncomfortable. A myriad of different embarrassing situations were playing out in his mind. What if he walked in and someone was naked? Or a couple was having sex on the living room floor? Or someone was doing something they wouldn’t want anyone else to see, like a huge, bearded, leather clad biker dude giving himself a pedicure?

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the door. He turned away. He turned back again. He sighed. If all he did was stand there, he wasn’t going to see anything. Just do it, he told himself, and plunged his head through the door. When nothing wildly embarrassing presented itself, he brought the rest of his body through and walked in.

  “Mum?”

  The door he’d just walked through suddenly banged open and a small form ran through him, making him gasp. It didn’t hurt, but the sight of a head of black curly hair bursting from his stomach area was very disconcerting.

  “In here.”

  The woman’s voice came from the kitchen and the boy who had just sped through Denny hurtled in that direction. Denny smiled. He’d been that way as a child, always frantic, running everywhere, as if he couldn’t do anything fast enough because there was always something else interesting to do after that.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “I’m here, mum.”

  Denny turned to see an older girl of maybe fourteen walk into the flat and close the door, not looking up from her phone as she did so. She dropped a pile of letters she was carrying onto a table by the door and continued into the living room. He stood aside to let her past. She was wearing a school uniform and her black afro hair was tied up with a pink band.

  He tried to remember their names. He’d seen them around, said a quick hello every time they passed in the lobby or outside, but names? He was suddenly ashamed of himself. He always thought he was more sociable than that. He looked at the letters scattered on the table, noticing the words ‘Final Notice’ in red on the front of two of them. The name on each was Ms S. Pearson or just S. Pearson. No first name. He glanced back at the room. The girl had disappeared into one of the bedrooms and the boy was still in the kitchen. Turning his attention back to the letters, he gently slid a couple aside so he could see the addresses on the others. Finally he found one that said Sarah Pearson. He had a name. That was a start.

  He wandered into the kitchen where a tall black woman was stirring something in a saucepan and the boy was reaching for a jar of cookies on the counter. The delicious smell of cooking food was intoxicating. Denny took a deep breath.

  “Hands first, Alfie,” Sarah said.

  The boy rolled his eyes. “Yes, mum.”

  He moved to the sink and washed his hands so quickly they were almost a blur, giving them a cursory dry on a tea towel hanging from the handle on the front of the oven before rushing back to the cookie jar.

  “Just one,” his mother said, “dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

  “Yes, mum,” Alfie said in a resigned voice.

  Denny watched him glance at his mother’s back, then pull out two cookies.

  “I said one,” Sarah said without turning around.

  Denny laughed. Mummy radar, it never failed.

  “Nice try, kid, but you have to be better than that,” he said.

  Alfie’s shoulders slumped and he put one of the cookies back into the jar and closed it.

  “How was school?”

  Alfie stopped as he was about to take a bite of the cookie. Denny didn’t miss his brief expression of pain.

  “It was okay.”

  Sarah turned to look at him. “Really?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and took a bite of his cookie.

  “He’s lying.” The older girl appeared at the kitchen door. “When I got there those bullies had him surrounded.”

  “Shut up, Mae,” the boy said, glancing at her angrily.

  Sarah placed the lid back on the saucepan and walked over to her son, sitting at the small kitchen table and pulling out a chair. Alfie sat with a sigh.

  “I thought the teachers were supposed to be doing something about them,” she said.

  Alfie shrugged again. “I guess they can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “I’ll talk to them again,” she said, stroking his hair as he chewed his cookie, “this can’t keep happening.”

  Denny felt a flash of anger. He’d been a small child until the age of seventeen when he suddenly seemed to grow a foot overnight and hit his final height of six foot one. He was an easy target and, with the smart mouth he couldn’t seem to control, would have been subjected to plenty of beatings if it hadn’t been for his sister. Trish got into several fights protecting him until any potential bullies decided it wasn’t worth it to get the crap beaten out of them by an enraged redhead with a mean right hook. He knew how Alfie felt. He decided to talk to Oliver about it. Maybe he could do something to help.

  He hung out with Sarah, Mae and Alfie for a while, feeling a little like a voyeur, but enjoying getting to know them. Sarah was a widow, struggling
to make ends meet with her two jobs, cashier at a local supermarket during the day then waitress in the evening in a bar down the road. Denny knew the place, had been there a few times. Maybe he’d seen her there, but he didn’t remember. Mae had just turned fifteen and was into everything a typical fifteen year old girl was. Alfie was ten and just into everything. Watching him reminded Denny of Jay and on more than one occasion he had to fight back a tear when Alfie said something he could imagine Jay saying. He missed his nephew.

  Sarah left for the bar not long after they had eaten dinner, which looked so delicious it made Denny want to cry. He still hadn’t got over never being able to eat again.

  “I’ll be back at midnight and I don’t want to see either of you still up,” Sarah said as she walked to the door.

  “Yes, mum,” her two children chorused, too intent on watching TV to pay her much attention.

  Denny watched her smile at them, seeing the love in her eyes, then look worried. “And don’t answer the door to anyone. And I mean anyone.”

  “Yes, mum.”

  “Don’t worry,” Denny said to her, “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you, mum,” they said together.

  He laughed, getting the feeling it was like this every night. He stayed for a few minutes after Sarah had gone to make sure they were okay, then left, deciding to go and see who else he could meet in the other flats in between checking in on his two new charges.

  Seven

  The door intercom buzzed.

  “Finally,” Denny murmured to himself, moving his laptop onto the sofa next to him and standing, “I could die of starvation before I get to eat this pizza.”

  “Pizza delivery,” a man’s voice said when he answered.

  “Come on up.”

  Denny let the man in and fetched his wallet, opening the flat door when he heard the knock.

  “Took a while didn’t...” The door crashed open into him, hammering the breath from his body, hitting his head and throwing him against the wall. His wallet flew across the floor.

  A huge man with at least three inches on Denny pinned him in place, his massive forearm across his throat while he used his free hand to shove the door shut. Denny pushed against his assailant, trying to free himself, but he had no leverage.

  “Thought I wouldn’t find you, didn’t you?” the big man said, his face inches away, garlic soaked breath almost making Denny gag.

  “What?” he croaked. He had no idea who the man was.

  “You thought you could take her from me,” the man growled, poking a finger into Denny’s ribs for punctuation, “but Chrissy’s mine. She loves me.”

  Denny had been dating Chrissy for three weeks, but he knew she didn’t have a boyfriend. He struggled to breathe as the man’s arm constricted his windpipe.

  “I didn’t know she was seeing someone else,” he gasped.

  Without warning, the man rammed a fist into his stomach. He doubled over in pain, dropping to the floor. Gasping for breath, he clutched at his throbbing abdomen.

  “Pathetic,” the man sneered. “This is going to be no fun.”

  A heavy boot connected with Denny’s side and he cried out as something snapped. He blinked back tears of agony.

  “Chrissy’s mine,” the man snarled. “She’d know that if pieces of shit like you didn’t keep lying and tempting her. Now I’m going to have to show her how much I love her. By killing you.”

  Denny looked up at him in shock, unable to believe he’d heard correctly. But as the man reached inside his jacket, his self-preservation kicked in. He leaped up and threw himself across the room into the bedroom, slamming the door shut and throwing the lock, looking for something to use as a weapon. Before he could find anything, the door shuddered and buckled as Denny’s attacker threw himself at it. Seconds later and seemingly unable to feel any pain, the man repeated the action and the door flew open, hanging from its hinges, the frame splintering. He stumbled into the room, off balance, a gun waving in his right hand.

  Denny had never seen a gun in real life before, but he recognised the silencer attached to the barrel from countless TV shows.

  Acting purely on instinct, he grabbed at it, managing to wrestle it from his grasp, but not able to hang onto it as the man lunged at him. The gun spun away across the floor.

  Denny whirled around to go after it when he suddenly felt a sharp pain. He glanced down at his side and saw his white t-shirt staining red. Looking back up, he saw a blood-soaked knife in the man’s hand.

  The gun, he thought frantically, the pain from his wounds barely registering, I have to get the gun.

  Moving away quickly, adrenaline pumping through his body, he spotted the weapon under the chest of drawers. He heard movement behind him and grabbed for the ceramic lamp on the top of the drawers, swinging round and smashing it into the man’s head as he lunged at him, knife extended. The man grunted and staggered back, clutching at his bleeding head.

  Denny dropped to the floor and reached beneath the drawers, desperately feeling for the gun. As the man shook his head and focused on him again, Denny’s hand closed over the cold, hard metal. He grabbed onto it in desperate relief and pulled it out, but the man jumped forward and knocked it from his hand again. Denny scrambled to his feet, backing up against the drawers.

  His abdomen exploded in pain.

  He looked down as the man withdrew the knife from his stomach, then plunged it back in again. He screamed in agony.

  Suddenly overwhelmed by dizziness, he dropped to his knees on the hardwood floor. Tears ran down his face. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

  Then he heard laughter and he looked up into crazed eyes. Despair gripped him as he realised the man was utterly insane.

  “Please,” he gasped, “I don’t...”

  He grunted as the man stepped up to him and plunged the knife into his chest.

  As he collapsed onto his side on the cold, hard floor, in more pain than he could ever imagine, he thought desperately of Trish and Jay, how he didn’t want to leave them. And then his eyes fluttered shut and he thought of nothing.

  Denny jerked awake, gasping for breath and shaking uncontrollably. He sat bolt upright and darted his eyes frantically around the room. It was dark, moonlight the only illumination to see by. There were no large, knife wielding men. He closed his eyes again and held his hands to his head, trying to calm his racing heart.

  The nightmare had been so vivid, so real. And then he realised why. Not just a dream.

  A memory.

  He looked down at the spot on the floor in front of the chest of drawers. He couldn’t see the pale, scrubbed clean area on the floorboards in the dim light, but he knew it was there. The place where he’d bled out and died.

  Now he understood why Oliver had said he might not want to remember his death. He wished he could forget it all again. The panic, the agony, the hopelessness as his life had drained away, it all came flooding back. Pain squeezed his chest and he shut his eyes against the tears. Why him? He’d never hurt anyone. Why did he have to die that way? And then anger began to replace the sadness. He died because, somehow, he’d been the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He suddenly wanted to know why. Mr Duncan had said his killer had been caught. There must be something online about it. He determined to find an unattended computer the next day and find out.

  ***

  It turned out that Denny’s death had briefly made national headlines, if not the front pages.

  The first couple of computers he tried in the other flats were protected by passwords, but Larry White in flat two was apparently unconcerned with anyone finding out what he got up to in the privacy of his digital world. The wallpaper on his PC was a photo of a train pulling into Waterloo station. Denny guessed whatever he got up to wasn’t anything exciting.

  He went to work.

  His murderer’s name was Terrence Tate. He had been on two dates with Chrissy before sh
e’d dumped him, finding him, according to the quote in the newspaper article Denny read, “creepy”. Tate, however, had become obsessed and when she’d started dating Denny two weeks later, his delusional jealous rage had grown to the point where he had concocted and acted out a plan to remove Denny from her life three weeks after he’d entered it. Chrissy had had no idea Tate had been following her.

  Her quote said, “We’d only been seeing each other for three weeks, but I liked Denny a lot. He was caring and fun and I loved being with him. I miss him very much.”

  He smiled at that. He liked her too. He wished they’d had a chance to get to know each other more.

  Tate had two previous convictions for violent assault and was seeing a court ordered psychiatrist. Either the shrink was incompetent or Tate was a good actor, Denny couldn’t decide which. Not that it mattered. The end result was the same. His summation was right, he was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone could have dated Chrissy after Tate. It just happened to have been him.

  Tate had been caught easily. Apparently not the brightest person in the world, he hadn’t worn gloves and they found his fingerprints on the door handle and the murder weapon in his car with Denny’s blood still on it. His conviction was all but guaranteed.

  The article ended with a statement Trish had given to the press.

  “My brother was a kind, generous man and a wonderful brother, uncle and friend. Everyone who met him liked him and he will be missed greatly by all those who knew him. But he will be especially missed by his family. His loss is devastating. No-one will ever replace him in our hearts.”

  Denny sat back and wiped his eyes. So it was over. His killer was behind bars. Life went on. For everyone but him, and his suffering family.

  He shook his head, shut down the PC and made a decision. Tate might have killed him, but he wasn’t going to let him take his life. Other ghosts, like Oliver, had made being dead work for them. So could Denny.