The Cable Guy at Midnight

Maya stood before the bathroom mirror, scissors hovering at shoulder length. The cable guy was due any minute—another late-night service call while David worked from his home office, or so he claimed. Three months of "emergency meetings" that always coincided with her sleep schedule.

She cut. A thick lock of dark hair fell into the sink, followed by another. With each snip, something loosened in her chest. David used to bury his hands in her hair, pull her close. Now he barely looked at her.

The doorbell rang.

Maya opened it to find a man her age, tired-eyed with a company patch on his chest. "Cable outage?"

"That's me." She stepped back. "Through here."

He worked efficiently, fingers deft as he spliced the coaxial cable in their living room. David's door remained closed. Always closed.

"Your husband?" the cable guy asked, nodding toward the office.

"Something like that."

He paused, cable stripper poised. "My wife stopped seeing me years ago. Not literally. Just... there was a distance. I'd come home and she'd be there, but she wasn't really there. You know?"

Maya's throat tightened. "I know."

"She called it the zombie marriage. Both of us walking around, technically alive, but..." He gestured vaguely. "We're all zombies sometimes, aren't we? Just going through motions until we don't remember why we started."

The truth of it hit Maya like physical pain. She and David had been zombies for years—eating dinner across from each other, sleeping in the same bed, occupying the same space without truly inhabiting it.

"Fixed," he said, packing his tools. "You've got a signal now."

He saw her hair then—chopped unevenly, somewhere between a pixie and a cry for help. He didn't comment, just offered a small, knowing smile. "Sometimes cutting things loose is the only way to feel something again."

After he left, Maya stood in the living room, fingers running through her jagged hair. The cable TV flickered to life, some late-night infomercial playing to an empty room.

David's office door stayed closed.

Maya turned off the TV. For the first time in years, the silence felt like a beginning instead of an end. She walked to the guest room, the one with the lock on the door, and lay down on the crisp unused sheets.

Tomorrow she would pack. Tomorrow she would remember what it felt like to be alive.