Signal Lost

The coaxial CABLE lay severed across the living room carpet like a dead snake, its copper wire exposed where the teeth of something—or someone—had sheared through it. Sarah stared at it, the flickering blue light of her laptop the only illumination in the apartment. Three months since she'd stopped paying for cable. Three months since Mark left, taking with him the easy companionship of someone who knew which brand of shampoo she bought, which side of the bed she preferred.

Now she was thirty-seven and learning to be alone again, relearning the particular quiet of a solo Sunday evening.

Her phone buzzed. Elena.

Sarah hesitated. Elena had been her FRIEND since college, their friendship surviving cross-country moves, Sarah's marriage, Elena's divorce. But in the weeks since Mark left, Sarah had been ghosting everyone—too exhausted to explain that she didn't know who she was anymore, too afraid they'd see through her carefully constructed calm.

"Pick up," the text read. "It's been two months. I'm worried you've become a recluse."

Sarah's fingers trembled as she typed back: "I'm fine. Just working."

Her HAIR fell across her face as she leaned over the keyboard, unwashed for three days. She used to care. She used to have routines. Now she was operating on autopilot, moving through her days with the hollow efficiency of someone who'd forgotten why movement mattered.

"You're not fine," Elena wrote. "I'm coming over."

"No—"

But Elena was already typing: "See you in twenty."

Sarah stood in the middle of her apartment and realized she couldn't remember the last time she'd cooked a meal. Or showered. Or felt something that wasn't a dull, aching variation of tired. She was a ZOMBIE of her own making, undead in the way that mattered—emotionally, spiritually, going through the motions of life without living it.

The doorbell rang twenty minutes later.

Elena stood in the hallway with takeout containers and a bottle of wine. She took one look at Sarah—disheveled, pale, eyes rimmed with exhaustion—and didn't ask. She simply stepped inside, set the food on the counter, and pulled Sarah into a hug that smelled like rain and lavender and someone who remembered you even when you'd forgotten yourself.

"I know," Elena said. "I've been there."

And for the first time in months, Sarah cried. Not pretty crying. The kind that breaks you open. Elena held her through it, rocking her like a child, and when the storm finally passed, Sarah looked up and saw her own reflection in the darkened window—a face she hadn't recognized in months, finally coming back to itself.

"We'll fix the cable later," Elena said. "First, we eat."