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Alone?
by Bryan Doe

(c) 1999-2000 Mister Doe's Invisible Girl Files. All rights reserved.

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My name is James Lewis. You probably won't believe the story you're about to read. If the story were about someone else and I were reading it for the first time, I know I wouldn't believe it. But it is the truth. I don't quite know where to start, but anyhow, here goes...

I always had the habit of answering "I've been worse," when people ask me how I'm doing. But this situation made it hard to realize just when I'd actually been worse.

In the course of five days:

My girlfriend left me, and the very next day, before I could get a chance to make a case for reconciliation, she was hit by a car and killed;

my parents were killed in a car accident;

the apartment building I lived in caught fire and was almost completely destroyed;

and I lost my job, just after an expensive illness that drained my bank account.

Needless to say, that was a VERY difficult stretch. For weeks afterwards, I'd walk around in a daze, only barely aware of what was going on around me. I'd see couples together and their happiness would almost seem to mock me and my sadness. I'd see families together and THEIR happiness would mock my sadness over my mom and dad. Without a permanent address, I found it very hard to get a job, and without a job, I couldn't pay rent.

The "social service" agencies (the private ones; government is a joke) were all one big runaround, but by playing one off the other I did manage to eke out some kind of living after a while.

I was still feeling generally left out, though, as I watched people going about their daily lives. I began to notice that every day, at about the same time in the early evening, a particularly striking young woman would make her way down the street. A couple of times she saw me watching her and politely smiled at me but for the most part I didn't make much of an impression.

One day, though, at the usual time that I saw her, she passed by me going in the opposite direction from her usual destination, moving much more slowly than usual. I glanced her face in passing and saw that her usual radiant smile was replaced by a profoundly sad expression. I felt bad for her, that something had given her reason to become acquainted with my old friend Sadness.

And then it happened.

I had been standing with my arms at my sides. As I watched the sad young woman walking slowly away, a soft hand gently slid into my right hand. It had been so long since I'd held any hand in mine that I just stood there basking in the sensation of someone's touch, anyone's touch, until it occurred to me an embarrassingly long time later (probably no more than a couple of minutes) to look next to me to see who had taken it upon herself to brighten up my day.

I knew it was correct to refer to this person as "herself" because the hand was smaller and softer than mine, and as far as I could tell the fingernails were long, or at least longer than mine. But when I looked next to me, I saw...

Nothing. Not a thing.

Surely I must have gone mad. I must have slipped around that bend and into insanity, so strongly wanting to experience the touch of a woman's hand that my mind would just manufacture a hand out of thin air.

But despite what my eyes told me, or didn't tell me, that there was no one there, I felt this hand in mine.

I didn't scream. I was too scared.

I didn't run. I was too scared.

In fact, I was too scared to do anything but follow a pure, unthinking reflex. The one thing that most people do when holding the hand of a loved one. Why this reflex overtook me when I didn't know what I was holding, or what was holding me, or even if I had taken leave of my senses, I didn't know, except that this was the only way I could think of to verify that it was really happening.

I squeezed.

Not an "I love you" squeeze, of course, because that would raise the question, "I love... who? Or what?"

It was more of an "are you really there?" squeeze. A "reassure me please" squeeze.

While I tried to fathom what manner of madness had taken hold of my mind, the hand squeezed back.

It squeezed back. "She" squeezed back!

For the life of me I didn't know why, but I was overjoyed! I was thrilled! I was ecstatic! After feeling so all alone for what had already, in a very short time, come to feel like two eternities, someone or something was telling me, "You're not alone. I'm here with you." What's more, the someone/something was (or seemed to be) female.

Just to be sure, I squeezed again.

Again, the squeeze was returned.

Then I became a little kid again, squeezing and squeezing just to see if I'd get a squeeze back. I always did. But after a while (again, only a few minutes I'm sure, though it felt like lifetimes) I began to wonder just who or what this was.

Without trying to be too vulgar, I started... feeling this hand to see what it was attached to. It didn't seem to be attached to anything, stopping at the wrist like a glove. It was a hand, though, not a glove. It was definitely flesh, and had longish nails.

As joyful as this hand had made me, I was now filling up with curiosity about where it had come from, how it came to be, and what it really wanted with me. My recent experiences had left me far too cynical for my own good.

"Are you really there?" I asked. The hand squeezed.

"So this is not just a weird dream, or a hallucination?" Squeeze.

"Can you take my left hand with yours, just so it doesn't feel left out?"

Nothing.

"You can't take my other hand in your other hand?" No squeeze.

"So you're just a... a hand?" Squeeze.

"Well, I'm thinking something could be wrong with my hand. Is there some other way you could let me know you're there, just so I know it's not just some sensation in my hand?"

The hand let me go. After a few seconds, it began to gently squeeze and caress the growing bulge in my jeans. But only for a few seconds, before it let go and took my right hand again.

"... I see," I said. "Well, I don't know just who or what you really are, but I thank you for coming into my life, and I hope this isn't a one-time thing." Squeeze. I was fully prepared for the possibility that I had become unhinged, but I was so glad for the "company" that I didn't even care.

I brought the hand to my lips and kissed it. It then caressed my face and cupped my nose before taking my right hand again.

I took the usually-lonely walk to my "cozy" studio apartment, but with a spring in my step that wasn't usually there. People who usually looked pityingly at me as I walked past now seemed to be marveling at my bright smile. I wondered if they could have any inkling as to what I was smiling about, as I and my unseen manual companion squeezed at each other all the way to my apartment. If they had ever experienced anything like the happiness I was feeling. No, I decided, they couldn't have. None of these people could ever have been as alone as I had felt, or been visited by as unique a picker-upper.

When I finally got to my apartment, it was as if I was bringing home a new wife, I was so nervous. I mean, it had already been established that my companion was only a hand, and yet I was so fidgety and giggly that I didn't know what to do with myself.

Once I got to the front door of my building, I promptly dropped my keys on the ground in front of the door. Before I could bend all the way over to pick them up, my new friend let go of my hand, after which the keys floated up from the ground into my outstretched hand.

"Um, thank you," I said. Again my face was caressed by my new unseen friend. I was badly in need of a shave, and the hand pointed this out by drawing three of its fingers along my jaw toward my chin.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I have to shave," I said. The hand grasped my right hand again as I entered my apartment. I sat down on my couch/bed and thought about all that had happened that day. While I did, I absentmindedly kicked off my shoes and socks.

The hand let go of me and in a few seconds my shoes floated up and into an open slot on my shoe tree. Then my socks rolled themselves into a ball and deposited themselves in a plastic bag inside the closet, off to one side of the room.

A mental alarm went off. If this visitor knew where I kept my socks, that would mean that either I was right about having concocted an invisible hand out of thin air, or I had been tailed by someone or something invisible who had just now decided to become manifest.

For the rest of the night, I seemed to be alone in my apartment. I didn't know what to do to bring the hand back, since I didn't know just what brought it into my life to begin with. It took me a long time to get to sleep. With all I had on my mind, I needed help to unwind so I could get to sleep, so I used the sleep function on my clock radio to help me wind down. By the time the clock shut off, I was fast asleep.

Now, I'm a heavy sleeper. I sleep like a rock, so much so that I've had to put my alarm clock on the opposite side of my bedroom, so I'd actually have to get up out of bed to silence the thing. I also have to set it to blast me out of bed. If I set it at normal listening volume, I won't know anything about the clock going off for an hour or more after the time the alarm is set for. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I hadn't thought of that the night before when I went to bed.

In the morning, the alarm went off with the radio at normal listening volume. I grunted at it and rolled over. Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, the radio volume was blasting. Only vaguely did I realize that something was wrong with the volume going up after the alarm had sounded.

Again, I was just about to fall asleep when the volume started rising and falling seemingly by itself. By now I knew what was happening, but I was too tired to care (I'm not a morning person by any means).

I guess my new friend decided it was time for something drastic. I felt an unseen hand caressing my face, which definitely woke me up but didn't stir me enough to get me out of bed. So "she" tried something more drastic, as in grabbing my left earlobe and pulling it (I sleep on my right side). Now that I think of it, though, the tactic made perfect sense. The sensation of contact with a female hand (or any hand for that matter) when I know I'm alone was naturally unfamiliar to me.

"OK, OK," I said loudly, "I'm getting up. No need for torture."

I still wasn't really awake, and in a few moments I was asleep again. The next thing I remember was waking up on the floor looking up at my mattress, which seemed to have reared up and dumped me onto the floor.

"Boy, you mean business, don't you?" I said. Again the mental alarm went off. If I had been completely asleep when my visitor began trying to wake me up, then "she" couldn't have been a product of my mind, since "she" would have to be fully awake first. I suspected that "she" didn't wake me up "from scratch," but instead woke up with me when the clock first went off, then tried to get me fully awake.

"She" didn't make herself known again until I'd gotten in the shower. I'd turned on the water and stepped away from the shower itself to stretch. It appeared that "she" had decided to wash me.

My washcloth wrapped itself around the bar of soap and lathered itself up, placed the soap in the dish, and began washing me. I didn't know what to expect when it came time to take care of the privates, but nothing special happened, though I can't accurately express with words what it felt like to have an unseen hand grasping at my privates, even if it was through a washcloth. The same with the towel.

I remember thinking, "I could get used to this."

I opened my bedroom closet and took out the clothes I intended to wear. My friend sprang to action again. The shirt I had chosen slipped off its hanger and hung in space behind me. I put my left arm in the sleeve, after which the right sleeve pulled itself up my right arm and the shirt buttoned itself. Then the pants removed themselves from the hanger and positioned themselves for me to step into them. I did so and they pulled themselves up on me. My belt threaded itself into the belt loops and buckled itself. Likewise with my socks and shoes, though I tied the shoes myself, remembering that my unseen friend was one-handed.

When I went into the kitchen, the cabinet door opened and a bowl rose from the shelf and came to rest on the countertop. The box of Rice Krispies poured some cereal into my bowl, followed by the milk, and I imagine if I had given her half a chance she would have fed me too, but I did it myself.

The funny thing is, it didn't lead up to anything. The "appearance" of the hand, I mean. There was no sudden dramatic happening in my life where a woman came into my life making the hand unnecessary, or anything like that. I didn't suddenly learn some deep secret about myself through the "appearance" of the hand. In fact, it has become something like an accessory. I don't directly control it, or anything, but it always makes itself known at just the right time.

"Herself." The hand makes "herself" known at the right time. The hand is a "she," not an "it," and I have to respect that.

I still don't know anymore about how "she" came into my life than when she first did, but I'm glad she's here. Because with her around, well, I'm not alone anymore.