Dead Signal

The zombie thing started small. Marcus would catch himself in the bathroom mirror at work—eyes glazed, skin grayish under fluorescent lights—shaving with an electric razor he kept in his desk because sometimes he couldn't remember if he'd done it that morning. Forty-two years old and already haunting his own life.

Then came the day with the iPhone.

He'd ordered a new case online—something heavy-duty, rubberized—because his current one was cracked. When the package arrived at the office, it wasn't his case. It was someone else's phone entirely, shipped by mistake. A silver iPhone, latest model, unlocked with no passcode.

Marcus should've returned it. Instead, he sat in his car during lunch and scrolled through.

The photos started normal enough—concerts, a beach trip, a golden retrief. Then: her. Elena. His wife of eleven years, photographed through what looked like a hotel window. She was laughing, head thrown back, wearing a dress Marcus had never seen. Next photo: the same room, empty bed. Next: a man's hand holding a whiskey glass, gold wedding band visible.

Marcus threw up in the parking lot.

"That's some bullshit," his brother said later, over beers Marcus barely tasted. "You confront her. You demand the truth."

"I can't."

"Why? Because you're scared?"

"Because I don't want to know."

The zombie feeling intensified. Marcus moved through his days as if underwater. At work, his boss—a man named Bull who'd earned the nickname through sheer, bellowing incompetence—roared about quarterly projections while Marcus nodded and thought about hotel rooms and unknown men's hands.

Two weeks later, driving home on route 9, Marcus saw the bull.

It had escaped from somewhere—a farm, a slaughterhouse—and stood in the middle of the road, massive and unmoving. Marcus slammed his brakes. The animal stared at him through the windshield, eyes dark and ancient, breath steaming in the October cold.

For a minute, they just looked at each other. Then the bull stepped aside.

Marcus kept driving. When he got home, Elena was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. She looked up and smiled.

"You're early," she said.

Marcus almost told her. The words formed in his throat: I know about the hotel. I know about the phone. I know I'm dead already.

Instead he said: "Traffic. There was a bull in the road."

Elena laughed. "Sure there was, honey."

She believed it was a lie. That was the thing. She thought he was making up stories.

Marcus set his own iPhone on the counter. Somewhere, in a hotel room he'd never seen, another phone buzzed with a message he'd never read. He picked up his knife and started chopping beside her, the two of them making dinner in the bright, clean kitchen of a marriage that had ended months ago, neither one willing to be the first to stop moving.