Screen Time

Maya stood at her kitchen sink at 2 AM, her hands submerged in cold water, watching the dishes she'd been meaning to wash for three days. Her iPhone sat on the counter beside her, screen lighting up every few minutes with notifications she couldn't bring herself to answer. Marcus had texted seventeen times. Her mother had called twice. Her boss had messaged about the morning meeting she wasn't prepared for.

She pulled her hands from the water and watched droplets run down her arms like the tears she refused to cry. In the refrigerator, a container of spinach had turned to slime, forgotten in the corner shelf—a testament to the healthy lifestyle she'd promised herself she'd start back in January. It was April now. The spinach was rotting, and so was she.

Maya caught her reflection in the darkened window and barely recognized the woman staring back. Hollow eyes, pale skin, the slack expression of someone who'd been moving through life on autopilot. A zombie, really—that's what she'd become. Not the flesh-eating kind from movies, but something worse: the living dead who showered and paid taxes and showed up at work and pretended everything was fine while her soul slowly decayed like that forgotten spinach.

Her iPhone chimed again. Marcus: 'Please talk to me. I know you're awake.'

She'd ended things two weeks ago because she couldn't feel anything anymore—not his touch, not his kindness, not even the hurt in his voice when she'd said those words. But she couldn't tell him the truth: that she'd been numb for so long, she'd forgotten how to be alive.

Maya reached for her phone, her wet hand leaving a trail on the screen. She watched a water droplet slide down the glass, distorting Marcus's name. For a moment, she considered throwing the phone against the wall, watching it shatter into a thousand pieces. Instead, she opened the messages and typed: 'I don't know how to be the person you need me to be.'

The bubbles appeared immediately. Then: 'I don't need you to be anyone. I just need you to be here.'

Maya stood there for a long time, water dripping from her hands onto the floor, until she finally typed back: 'I'm coming over.'

She grabbed her keys, left the dirty dishes, ignored the rotting spinach in the fridge. For the first time in months, the zombie felt something like hope.