The Last Living Soul on 14th Street

The goldfish circled his bowl, orange tail flicking in the dim light of my studio apartment. Leonard — I'd named him after my ex-husband's father, the last person to give me anything resembling a compliment — was my only consistent company these days. He didn't ask why I hadn't left the apartment in three days. He didn't mention that I was wearing the same sweatshirt I'd worn to my mother's funeral.

Outside, the world had become something else. Not the pandemic — that was old news. Something quieter. People walked through their lives like the walking dead, eyes glazed with the blue light of screens, disconnected from each other, moving through the motions of jobs and relationships and grocery runs without really being there. We were all zombies now, just better dressed.

I'd finally called to cancel my cable this morning. The customer service representative had tried to upsell me to a premium package, her voice bright and practiced, while I sat cross-legged on my bed staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked like Rorschach's idea of a broken heart. "Why would I need five hundred channels when I can't bring myself to watch one?" I'd asked. She'd paused, the script failing her for a moment. "That's... that's a very good question, ma'am."

That's when I heard it — scratching at my door.

A dog. A real, actual dog, not the filtered Instagram kind my friend Sarah kept posting about with captions like "living my best life" while she cried through every therapy session. This dog was a terrier mix with matted fur and one ear that refused to stand up. He looked up at me with eyes that held more recognition than anything I'd seen in months.

I kneeled. "Hey there."

He licked my hand. His tongue was warm and real and somewhere in that simple sensation, something cracked open in my chest.

The collar tag read "Buster" with a phone number. I called it, expecting an owner relieved to find their lost companion. Instead, a woman's voice answered, thick with tears. "You found him? I — I can't take him back. My landlord says he has to go. You can keep him. I'm sorry."

And just like that, I wasn't alone anymore.

Buster slept curled against my leg that night while Leonard drifted through his silent orbits. For the first time in what felt like years, I woke to something needing me. The world outside was still full of the walking dead, still full of people scrolling through lives they weren't really living. But here, in this tiny apartment with a fish and a stray dog, something was finally alive.