The Autumn of Discontent

The meeting had entered its third hour, and Marcus felt like a zombie—half-alive, eyes glazing over as Kevin from Accounting droned on about quarterly projections. His phone buzzed: SHE'S AT IT AGAIN. Chloe, texting about their mother's decline into paranoia.

After work, he found himself at the padel club instead of home. Sarah was there, her laughter cutting through the indoor air like it always did. They'd been meeting here for months—just games, just friendship, though the way her hand lingered on his back during breaks suggested otherwise.

"You're running from something," she said after their match, wiping sweat from her forehead.

"Isn't everyone?" he countered, though his mind flashed to baseball—the Sundays his father spent teaching him to pitch, the way those same afternoons now seemed like artifacts from another lifetime. His dad had died before Marcus turned thirty, before he understood that some debts to the dead never get paid.

"My wife found the messages," he admitted suddenly.

Sarah's expression didn't change. "And?"

"And nothing. I haven't decided anything yet."

Later, walking his dog through the darkened neighborhood, Buster stopped to sniff at something in the gutter. A dead rat. Marcus thought about how love rots from the inside out—first the numbness, then the rot, then you're just going through motions while something vital decays unnoticed. He'd been dead inside his marriage for years, just like this city street was dead at 2 AM, illuminated only by the flickering lamp that had been broken since winter.

"Come on, boy," he said, and Buster trotted forward, tail wagging, stupidly loyal to a man who couldn't decide whether to save his own life or keep playing dead.

His phone buzzed again. Sarah. His thumb hovered over the screen. Above, the moon hung pale and indifferent, like God's cold eye watching another soul struggle toward some approximation of redemption.