Riddles in the Dark

The cat blinked at me from across the room, its golden eyes like two sphinxes guarding secrets I wasn't meant to understand. Outside, palm fronds scratched against the window, a dry whisper in the Miami heat.

'You're not listening,' Marcus said, not looking up from his iPhone.

'I am,' I lied.

We were at the impasse again—the riddle we couldn't solve, the answer that kept changing. The market had crashed last week. The bull run was over, and with it went our down payment, our future, the carefully plotted trajectory of the life we were supposed to build together.

Marcus's phone pinged. He smiled at something on the screen, and I felt the old familiar ache—the sphinx's riddle wrapped in a new form. What smiles when it shouldn't? What breaks without making a sound?

The cat stretched, arching its back like a question mark.

'I'm going for a walk,' I said.

'Sure,' he said, already gone.

I took the stairs down to the street. The heat hit me like something solid. Palms lined the sidewalk, their fronds brown at the edges, like paper burned and forgotten. I thought about Egypt, about the Sphinx itself—how it had sat for thousands of years watching empires rise and fall, how it had lost its nose to time and violence and still refused to speak.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A message from Marcus: 'I got the bonus. We're okay.'

I stared at the screen. The words sat there, bright and small.

The cat had been right. Some answers aren't meant to be understood. Some riddles you solve by walking away from them entirely.

I deleted the message. Then I deleted his number.

The heat pressed against my skin, heavy and real. For the first time in months, I could breathe.