Screen Static

The dog had been dead for three years, but Maya still reached for his ghost every morning. That hollow space beside her in bed, the absence of warm fur against her calves—these were the first sensations that greeted her before she even opened her eyes.

She rolled over and grabbed her iPhone, the screen's blue light flooding her dark bedroom. 6:14 AM. Another night of sleep that felt more like a pause button than true rest. She scrolled through notifications she didn't care about, emails that could wait, social media posts from people she'd once called friends but now knew only as curated fragments of their lives.

Maya had been moving through her days like a zombie since the accident—not the flesh-eating monsters from movies, but something worse: the walking dead who still had mortgages and morning commutes and coworkers who asked "how are you?" without wanting the truth. She answered "fine" automatically, her voice smooth, practiced, a lie that had become so natural she almost believed it herself.

Her phone buzzed. Sarah.

The name hit her like a physical blow. Sarah, who had been her best friend since sophomore year, who had stood beside her at the funeral, who had stopped calling six months ago because Maya had stopped picking up. Some friendships died slowly, starved by one person's inability to be seen.

Maya stared at the screen. She could let it go to voicemail again. She could maintain the cocoon she'd built, safe and suffocating. But something—maybe the dog's memory, maybe the sheer exhaustion of being alive but not living—made her slide her thumb across the glass.

"Hey."

"You answered."

"Yeah."

Silence stretched between them, heavy with everything unsaid. Then Sarah's voice cracked. "I miss you."

Maya's throat tightened. She looked around her apartment, still and sterile since she'd cleared out all the dog toys, all evidence of a life that had once felt whole. "I'm still here," she said. "I think."

"Let me come over," Sarah said. "I'll bring coffee. We don't have to talk. We can just sit there and be miserable together. It's still friendship, Maya. Even the broken version."

Maya closed her eyes and felt something shift inside her, something small but real. "Okay."

After she hung up, she set down the phone and finally, for the first time in three years, allowed herself to remember the dog's name without pulling away.

"Barnaby," she whispered aloud.

The word felt like a key turning in a locked door. Not opening it yet, but reminding her that some things could still be opened. That she wasn't entirely a zombie after all. Just someone who had forgotten how to live, and was finally, slowly, remembering.