Cable News at Midnight

Marcus had been installing cable for seventeen years, and somewhere around year twelve, he'd started feeling like a zombie himself—not the brain-eating kind, but the walking dead version, the sort that shuffles through routine on automatic pilot.

The house belonged to Mrs. Chen, a widow whose television had been dark since Thursday. She watched him with hollow eyes as he worked, both of them ghosts haunting different purgatories.

"You look tired," she said, not unkindly.

Marcus laughed, a dry sound. "It's the job. Always the job." Outside, lightning fractured the sky—a sudden, violent illumination that made the living room flicker like a dying heartbeat.

He'd been divorced for three years. His ex-wife had called him emotionally absent, a man who'd retreated so far into himself that she'd stopped waiting for him to return. She was right. He'd become a creature of habit, moving through days that blurred together like wet ink.

"My husband used to watch the weather channel," Mrs. Chen said suddenly. "Whenever there was a storm. He said it made him feel connected to something bigger."

Marcus tightened the coaxial cable with practiced fingers. "Maybe he was right."

"Maybe." She paused. "Do you feel connected to anything?"

The question hit like physical force. He thought about his solitary breakfasts, the empty apartment, the thousands of homes he'd entered as an invisible technician, leaving behind nothing but working cable and fading footprints.

"I don't know," he said finally.

Lightning struck again, closer this time. The room plunged into darkness.

They sat together in the blackness, two strangers suspended in momentary surrender. For the first time in years, Marcus felt something crack open inside his chest—not profound, not transformative, but real.

"The power'll come back," he said.

"Yes," she replied. "It always does."

When the lights returned, he finished the job in silence. But as he left, Marcus didn't feel quite so dead anymore. Just tired. Just human. And that, he decided, was worth something.