Free Bad Samaritan by Michael J. Malone

other man’s sorrow, by the drama of his hurt. He wanted to be up close. Forehead to forehead. Breath to breath. Pain to pain.
    He took a step closer and soaked up the other man’s energy. His eyes smarted, his chest puffed, adrenalin sparked in his fingertips. He stumbled to his knees, rapt, his arms out, wanting to touch the older man.
    Robert misread his intention and held a hand out to take one of Jim’s.
    â€˜You really cared for him, didn’t you?’ he asked in a whisper through his clenched throat.
    Jim nodded the lie. The ability to speak momentarily lost, his mind reeling. Until now, the black hole in his life had only been filled by the death of another. But this was an incredible charge. He felt replete. Sated.
    Grief would be his feast from now on.

11
    The clock never stops. It is inexorable. One moment moves to the next with an inevitable but inaudible tick. People go about their daily lives: what gadget to buy next, what processed crap to shovel down their neck for dinner, what wine goes with what meat, who said what to whom? And the pettiness of it drives me fucking nuts.
    That’s probably why I’m still single. I can’t switch off. I can’t leave the horrors of the day in the car before I enter my front door with a genuine smile on my face. I unlock my front door and think of Kevin Banks. How will that man ever find normality again?
    But the clock keeps on moving. One tick before another tock. Unceasing and soon the unbelievable becomes the normal. Mankind’s greatest trick. The ability to adjust. We have to or the species would never have survived the millennia.
    One of the first cops I worked with, Harry Fyfe, was always going on about how mankind was doomed. A pathetic pile of shit , was how he succinctly put it. We do some God-awful things to each other , he would say. We’re ruined. Hopeless cases . I used to laugh at him. After a day like today, I’m on his side.
    Jeez, I’m full of it tonight. Need to switch off. But I slump before the telly and switch it on. Some magazine show on the Beeb blares into the gloom of my living room, and they’re talking about the nation’s greatest fucking casserole.
    â€˜Oh for f … Turn that shite off,’ I shout and aim the remote at the telly. ‘Dinner,’ I say out loud. ‘What will I have for dinner?’
    You do that, don’t you, when you live on your own? Talk to yourself.
    There’s feck all in the fridge. And nothing apart from a tin of tuna in the cupboard. That’ll do. Hardly filling for a growing man. I pat my expanding belly. It’ll do.
    Aileen Banks’s laptop is still on my sofa. Oops. How did that happen? I need to get it into the office and recorded into evidence. Tomorrow.
    I push open the lid. Bring up Facebook and before I even articulate the thought I’m looking for the two girls as described by Karen. They were the “it” girls, so surely Aileen would want to follow them? I find her friend list. I’m looking for a Claire and an Emma.
    As I scroll through Aileen’s list of friends I have to fight down the old curmudgeon in me. How can people be arsed? There’s nearly three hundred “friends”, and an alert is telling me she’s had over fifty friend requests … since she died.
    As the online peeps say: WTF? Even I have heard of internet trolls. Are these internet ghouls? Befriending a dead person?
    There’s a Claire. Skinny with black, straight hair was how Karen described her, and that’s how the picture looks. Claire Baird, it says. Tells me she works at Starbucks. Goes to Glasgow University. Lives in Glasgow.
    Feeling ridiculously pleased with myself, I click on ‘ About ’.
    Her birthday, email address and mobile number are noted. Her favourite quote is “I am the one who knocks.” She’s lost me there. Some horror movie quote maybe?
    Is nothing sacred in this online world? All kinds