The Funeral Cat

Elena stood in the garden behind the funeral home, pulling spinach from the earth. The soil still held the morning's chill, damp against her fingertips. Inside the building, David was preparing viewing number four of the week—a mechanic named Torres, dead at forty-two.

"How are the zombies today?" David called from the back door, that tired smile creasing his face. They'd used the joke for years, their private armor against the constant proximity of death. It had been funny once.

Elena didn't smile back. "Fine. Same as always."

A gray cat hopped onto the fence—Mortimer, who'd appeared during a service three years ago and simply never left. He watched her with yellow eyes, patient as the dead.

Inside, she washed the spinach at the industrial sink. David's footsteps echoed down the hall, each one precise. Everything about him was precise now. Their conversations were scripts. Their marriage was a series of efficient movements, choreographed around viewings and wakes and the endless logistics of other people's grief.

They hadn't made love in six months. Elena had stopped counting after three.

"You okay?" David asked, leaning in the doorway.

"I'm fine."

"You've been quiet."

"Have I?" She tore spinach leaves, the sound too loud in the silence. "Maybe I'm just tired of the zombies, David."

The joke fell between them, heavy and wrong.

That night, she set the table for dinner. Spinach salad with warm bacon dressing—something with taste, something alive. Mortimer wound around her legs, purring like a small engine, demanding to be fed.

David came home from the office and sat across from her. He looked at the spinach, at her, at the empty chair between them where they used to sit close enough to touch.

"We're the zombies, aren't we?" he said quietly.

Elena's knife paused. The cat jumped into her lap, warm and solid and undeniably present.

"I don't know," she said. "But I don't want to be anymore."

David reached across the table and took her hand. His palm was warm, his fingers trembling slightly. They ate spinach in the flickering light, the cat watching them both, and for the first time in months, Elena felt something stir in her chest—not grief, not duty, but the small, frightening possibility of becoming human again.