Watching

Prologue

My name is Oliver Cohen. I was born and bred in New York.

My family is probably one of the most ordinary families you have ever heard of. My Father works in a big corporation producing books or something. My Mother is a nurse working pretty much 24/7. I don’t have any siblings, and as my parents moved to New York – the city of dreams – I have no close relatives. During my childhood I never spent a lot of time with my parents, they were always working.

Maybe that’s what led me to realise, I wasn’t normal.

My mother used to tell me stories of how I would always come home from kindergarten and I wouldn’t stop talking about the other strange kids who went. She found this a little bizarre considering that there were only a few kids who actually attended, but she often let it slide.

As I moved up to elementary school I would often tell her stories of the people who would stand around the school and talk to me. She consulted the Principal about the children’s safety. And she began to worry about me when the Principal said I would often speak to thin air. That’s when she sent me to a therapist.

I haven’t seen Brenda in a couple of years, but I used to hang out in her office most sessions talking about the latest baseball game. She stopped questioning me when I was 12, when she realised what I could do.

I’m not the most regular guy out there. I keep myself to myself. it’s easier that way, as everyone tends to leave. My parents left me when I was 18, my ‘friends’ from elementary school left me when we went up to high school. At the end of the day I don’t need anyone else. I do just fine on my own.

As soon as I graduated from high school I got a job in a coffee shop downstairs from my apartment. It’s fitting as people always come and go and I can make small talk with them, but at the end of the day I don’t have to be friends with them.

Like I said I’m not the most regular guy out there.

Hell.

I talk to dead people.

Ghosts are the only ‘friends’ that will never leave me.