The Last Broadcast

The coaxial cable had been fraying for months, just like everything else in David's life—his marriage, his resolve, the thin veneer of competence he wore to work each day. Forty-two years old and he felt like a zombie moving through the days, hollowed out by the relentless bullshit of corporate existence, the endless meetings where men in suits projected confidence they didn't feel onto screens they couldn't quite read.

She had left on a Tuesday. Said she was tired of running alongside someone who'd already stopped moving. Her words had been sphinx-like, inscrutable riddles he kept turning over in his mind at 3 AM, lying in a bed that felt too large, too cold, too honest.

Now he stood in the living room of the apartment they'd shared, the cable box blinking its unanswered questions. The bull market on his trading app had turned bearish, mirroring everything else. His portfolio was down forty percent. His therapist had canceled. His mother kept calling to ask if he was eating, if he was 'still taking care of himself,' her voice thick with that particular maternal worry that felt less like love and more like a forecast.

David pressed the power button on the remote. Nothing happened. He jiggled the cable connection behind the TV—his one act of agency in weeks—and the screen flickered to life. A news anchor was speaking about something urgent, but the audio cut out, leaving her mouth moving silently, like a fish in an aquarium, performing significance she didn't feel.

He sank onto the sofa and something shifted beneath him—her reading glasses, forgotten in the cushions. The frames were still warm, as though she'd just set them down. As though she might still walk through the door, carrying groceries, complaining about the checkout line, asking what he wanted to do about dinner.

The sphinx's riddle solved itself in that moment: You don't realize you're the zombie until you're already dead.

David picked up his phone. Not to check the markets. Not to scroll through the hollowed-out lives of people he'd stopped caring about years ago. He opened the contacts list and found his brother's number. They hadn't spoken since the funeral. Since the argument about who got what, as if their father's possessions could compensate for what they'd lost.

His thumb hovered over the call button. The cable TV anchor was still mouthing silent urgency, her face composed in that practiced mask of concern that meant everything and nothing. Outside, a car alarm began its insistent rhythm.

David pressed call.