The Cat That Watched Us Drown

Marcus stood at the edge of the pool at 2 AM, the water black as ink. This was his swimming hour, the only time he could remember what it felt like to be alive. Inside their bedroom, Sarah slept—or pretended to. They'd become experts at the performance of marriage, two zombies shuffling through a life that had died three years ago, though neither had the courage to bury it.

Their cat, Binx, sat on the windowsill, yellow eyes glowing in the reflection. Binx had witnessed everything: the arguments that tapered into exhausted silence, the nights Marcus slept on the couch, the way Sarah stopped asking how his day was. Binx knew more about their marriage than their couples therapist did, and certainly more than their padel partners, Rick and Elena, who still invited them every Saturday like nothing was wrong.

Padel had been Sarah's idea. Something new, she'd said. Something we can learn together. They'd taken lessons, bought matching rackets, forced laughter over post-game drinks with the other couples. But on the court, Marcus could see it in the way she missed his volleys, how she stopped calling out plays. They were playing separate games on the same rectangle of artificial turf.

Tonight, the pool water felt colder than usual. Marcus submerged himself, holding his breath until his lungs burned. Down here, in the silence, he could admit what he'd been avoiding: the zombie wasn't their marriage. The zombie was him.

He surfaced, gasping, and saw Sarah standing at the pool's edge in her robe. Binx twined around her ankles.

"I forgot," she said, her voice small. "That you swim on Tuesdays."

"It's Tuesday," he said, treading water.

"I know." She sat down, dangling her feet in the water. "Rick and Elena canceled for Saturday."

"Okay."

"I was thinking," she said, and something in her voice made him still. "Maybe instead of padel, we could... I don't know. Come here? To the pool?"

The cat purred loudly against her leg, a steady, living thing in the dark.

"At 2 AM?" Marcus asked.

"Whenever," she said. "Together."

He swam to the edge. Her hand found his in the water, their fingers cold and tangled, and for the first time in three years, something in his undead heart stirred awake.