The Dead Can't Float

Maya found him at 3 AM, floating face-down in her apartment complex pool. The security guard had left the gate unlatched again. She'd come down to swim laps when the insomnia got too loud—the water was the only thing that could drown out the sound of her marriage ending. Her cat, Buster, watched from the third-story balcony, a silent judgment in his yellow eyes. She'd stopped feeding him regularly. Another thing she was failing at. The body didn't move when she slipped into the water. She swam around it, back and forth, counting strokes, until she realized the chest was rising and falling. Not dead. Just drunk, or something worse. She pulled him to the edge. He sat up, water streaming from his clothes, and she saw it—that hollowed-out look, eyes like two burned-out bulbs. She knew that look. She saw it every morning in the mirror. "You're not a zombie," she said, surprised by her own voice. He laughed, a dry, rustling sound. "Aren't I?" He held up his hand, palm up, fingers curled into a loose fist. Tattoos of names crossed out. "Everybody's dead, Maya. Some of us just admit it." How did he know her name? She didn't ask. Instead, she sat beside him on the concrete, legs dangling in the water, while the palm trees cast spiderweb shadows across them both. "I'm leaving him," she said. It was the first time she'd said it out loud. The zombie nodded. "He's already gone, though. Has been for years." She'd never articulated it that way, but he was right. Her husband had become a routine she maintained, a mortgage and shared history she kept paying off. Emotional cost averaging. "Why do you come here?" he asked. "To feel something. Anything. The water makes me remember I have a body." "The dead can't float," he said quietly. "We're too heavy with the things we won't let go." He stood up, water dripping from him like he was made of it. "Feed your cat, Maya. He knows you're still alive. Even if you don't." She watched him walk toward the gate, disappear into the night. Upstairs, Buster was waiting. She filled his bowl, then her own glass with water. For the first time in months, she drank something that wasn't wine. The cat purred against her leg, a motor of forgiveness. She went to bed and slept until the sun came up. In the morning, she called a lawyer. The pool was empty when she passed it, just water moving in a slow, careful circle, like something was trying to remember how to breathe.