Read Every Touch for Free Online Page B

I’m solid.”  He stared at the plant, focusing all his attention on it.  “I am solid.  I can touch this plant.  I am...” 
       The front door opened and a middle-aged man walked through.  Denny looked up at him in irritation, and momentary self-consciousness over being on the floor until he remembered he was invisible.
       “That’s the trouble with the living,” Oliver said solemnly, “they are always getting in the way.”  Then he laughed.
       Denny shook his head and turned his attention back to the plastic plant. 
       “I am solid,” he said, willing himself dense. 
       He reached out his hand and touched his fingertips to the pot.  They passed straight through.  Frowning, he withdrew them and tried again, again failing to connect with the pot.  After several more goes and a final frantic flurry of waving his hands uselessly through the plant, he looked at Oliver. 
       “It’s never going to happen,” he said.
       “It’ll happen,” Oliver replied, “you just need practice.  Believing is a strange thing.  You often think you believe things when you really don’t.  But you will.  Every ghost can do that.”
       A thought came to Denny.  “Poltergeists?”
       “Some people can’t take the differently manifesting and eventually lose it,” Oliver said.  “Start throwing things around for no reason.  Others just like scaring the crap out of the living.”
       They talked for a long time.  Denny had no desire to go back to his empty flat and Oliver didn’t seem to mind. 
       He liked Oliver.  He was sure if they had met when they were alive, they would have become friends.  He told Denny about his year of differently manifesting, what he’d learned, the other ghosts he’d met, what was going on in his zone.  Denny was impressed at how he seemed to be making the most of his time.  Apart from protecting the local school kids from any drug dealers who made the mistake of trying to sell to them (“I actually made one lose control of his bladder once.  One of my proudest moments.”), he often patrolled the area at night, making sure anyone out on the streets after dark was safe. Denny got the feeling he was trying to make up for what he’d done. 
       It gave Denny hope.  If Oliver could make being dead work, maybe he could too.
       Eventually, Denny felt sleep beginning to overtake him again and he started to yawn.  Another automatic reaction, he thought, as he wasn’t using the oxygen anyway.
       “You look like you need some more Z’s,” Oliver said.
       Denny smiled.  “Yeah.  This being dead stuff is really taking it out of me.”
       “I’m going to head back to the park anyway,” Oliver said, “watch the sunset.  Maybe I’ll be lucky and get to see the hot girls on their evening jog.  There’s this group of women who sometimes come through.  Watching them in their shorts and tight tops, everything bouncing,” he closed his eyes and sighed, “almost makes being dead worth it.”
       Denny laughed.  “Is it pervy if they don’t see us watching?”
       Oliver shrugged and grinned.  “Not like I didn’t do it when I was alive.  It’s just much easier to get away with it now.  I guess once a pervert, always a pervert.”
       “Ghost perverts unite,” Denny said, grinning and holding his hand up flat against the barrier.
       Oliver high-fived the other side with an exuberant “Hell, yeah!”

 
     
     
Five
     
     
    Denny slept soundly all night, from the moment he lay down on the bed, not stirring again until it was morning. 
       The first few seconds after he woke, with his eyes still closed, were blissful.  When his brain was still clouded with sleep and he could almost think that nothing was wrong.
       Then his death hit him again.  The loss of his life, his family, his friends, everything he knew, came flooding back.  That was the worst moment, the first few seconds when the pain was raw