Static in the Cables

The cable guy had been gone for twenty minutes when Elena finally noticed what was missing.

Not the internet, which still flickered intermittently on her laptop. Not the television, which stayed blessedly dark. It was the cable itself—that thick black umbilical cord that had tethered them to a hundred channels of simultaneous screaming commercials and cooking shows. Daniel had taken it when he moved out Tuesday.

She should have canceled the service. Should have called and said, "Disconnect everything." Instead she'd spent three days staring at the blank screen, waiting for something to happen.

The refrigerator hummed. Inside, a plastic container of spinach liquefied into something that might have been sentient. She'd bought it the night before Daniel said he needed space—before 'space' became a separate apartment and a forwarded mailing address.

Lightning split the sky outside, sudden and violent, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the kitchen. Thunder shook the windows.

"That's dramatic," she said aloud to no one.

Her phone buzzed. A notification from her running app: "You haven't logged a workout in 10 days. Remember your goals?"

She laughed, a dry, cracked sound. Goals. Her goals had been: finish this degree, marry Daniel, maybe get a dog, definitely not become someone who let spinach rot in the refrigerator while her husband moved out and she watched static where the cable used to be.

The lightning flashed again, closer this time. The building's fire alarm system would be triggered by the storm soon. She should pack a go-bag. That's what emergency preparedness websites said. Important documents, medications, sentimental items.

What would she grab?

Not the spinach. Not the cable box Daniel had stolen. Her laptop—work stuff, mostly, plus the photo folder she kept meaning to back up. Her grandmother's ring. The running shoes she hadn't worn since the marathon she'd trained for while Daniel was deployed, back when they were still writing letters that said things like "I can't wait to come home to you" instead of "I think we've grown apart."

Lightning struck the transformer down the street. Everything went dark.

Elena stood in her kitchen, illuminated only by the blue glow of her dying laptop battery, and finally started running—not toward anything, just away from the spinach and the static and the silence where Daniel's laughter used to be.