Read Every Touch for Free Online Page A

everyone.  Can be anything up to around five years.  But when our time is up, we start to... fade.”  He winced as he said it.
       “Fade?”
       “Yeah.  I saw it happen to this woman, Rachel, whose zone just butted up against mine.  She’d been there for over four years and we used to chat a lot.  She liked to hear the gossip.”  He smiled.  “Or maybe I liked telling her it.  Anyway, one day she showed me her hand.  It was, like, flickering in and out. Really weird.  She said it didn’t hurt, but it was creepy.  It got worse and worse until it was happening to her whole body and then, one day, about two weeks later, she just disappeared altogether.  Faded away right in front of me.”  He shuddered.
       Denny was horrified.  “What happened to her?”
       Oliver shrugged.  “Don’t know.  No-one I’ve spoken to does.  Maybe they’re still here, but just as, you know, pure energy floating around or something.  Maybe they move on to wherever they’re supposed to go next.  I just know it happens to all of us, eventually.  Otherwise the place would be wall to wall spooks.”
       Denny thought about it.  On the one hand, he wasn’t going to be stuck here forever.  On the other, he had no idea what was coming next.  Kind of like life really.  At least he didn’t have to worry about that for a while.  Maybe after five years of hanging around this one building, he’d be dying to move on, so to speak.
       “Okay,” he said, “thanks for being honest with me.  No sense in worrying about it now.”
       “Now that,” Oliver said with a grin, “is a very healthy attitude to have.  Just ignore the inevitable.  It’s what we did in life, right?”
       He was right.  It’s what Denny had done. 
       “The buzzer,” he said, changing the subject, “how did you press it?  I can’t touch anything.”
       “Really?  ‘Cause you look very much like you’re touching the floor.”
       Denny looked down.  He put his hands flat onto the floor, feeling the cold tiles beneath his palms.  It hadn’t actually occurred to him before. 
       “Oh yeah.”
       Oliver snorted at his surprise.  “And you went upstairs, so you were touching the steps.  And where did you sleep?”
       Denny’s eyes widened.  “On my bed.”  He frowned.  “But yesterday, I fell through the sofa.  At least, I sat on it then fell through it.”
       “What happened just before you fell through it?”
       He thought, trying to remember.  “I was watching my sister and brother-in-law pack up my kitchen, then I looked at the sofa and wondered how I could be sitting on it when I had just walked through a door, then I was on my ass on the floor.”
       Oliver laughed.  “I would have liked to have seen the look on your face.”
       “Hmpf.” Denny smiled.
       “Thing is, just like with the breathing and everything, touching stuff is now a choice for us, even if we’re not thinking about it.  You walked up the stairs without falling through them and slept on your bed because you didn’t expect to not be able to.  Other stuff can be more tricky, don’t ask me why, it just is.  I’m still having trouble wrapping my own head around the ins and outs of it.”
       “So, I can touch things if I want to, but I can also choose not to?”  Denny looked around for something on which to try out this new knowledge.
       “Yep.  Pretty cool right?  We can be substantial...”  He reached out and grabbed hold of the rail which ran up the steps to the door.  “...or incorporeal.”  He passed his hand straight through the rail.  “But I prefer ‘metaphysical’.  It sounds cooler, like a superpower.”  He grinned.
       There was a large, fake potted yucca near the door and Denny shuffled himself over to sit in front of it. 
       “So, how do I do this then?”
       “You have to believe you are solid.  Then you will be.”
       “Okay.  Believe