Creep

He reached over and touched me. A few strokes on my fingers, but it was enough to give me the shivers. I do not like to be touched. Especially by someone who looked like he has not bathed for a long, long time.

I would never think that just sitting there, just quietly reading as I waited for the metro on a Sunday morning would be an invitation to be touched by a complete stranger. It was as if the character in my novel, about ‘deformed’ people with ‘deformed’ lives, ‘deformed’ thoughts and acts, had somehow miraculously taken shape in front of me.

“Change?”

I shook my head, even though I did have some in my pocket. I refuse to give money to anyone who just begs, and does nothing else but beg. “Change? Cigarette?” he asked again, this time revealing his rotten and twisted teeth. His face, unshaven, and hair wild with dirt.

I said no firmly, and that I do not smoke. He looked at me, and grinned. A queer grin, and it was at that moment that his hand first reached out to touch my fingers. I pulled away, and just as he retracted his hand, he leaned over to stroke my cheek too.

Horror. Shock. Speechlessness.

“Please go away”, I eventually managed to say, perhaps too politely given what had just happened. What did just happen? It was too strange to comprehend… was there any meaning in it? The vagrant grinned away, and I returned with a grin too, but the kind of grin that quickly morphed into a look of disgust. A grin that taunted.

He left, and disappeared somewhere along the platform. But I was left sitting on the bench, feeling dirt, soiled, violated. Perhaps I should have done something to the man, like strike back, or push him. But how do you hit a man who is already so broken, who is already lost, delirious?

I smelt my hand, and it reeked of cigarettes. A few seconds of physical contact, and somehow all the foulness of smoke had crept onto my fingers. I longed to wash and scrape my fingers thoroughly with soap.

Creep.