The Last Living Thing

The iPhone woke him at 3 AM — not a call, just the screen illuminating with another memory notification. Ten years ago today, it whispered. Sarah at the Grand Canyon, hair wild, grinning like she'd just discovered gravity was optional.

He watched the video, thumb hovering over her face. She'd been gone eight months now, but the algorithm kept her alive in pixelated fragments, a digital haunting more persistent than any ghost.

"You're becoming a zombie," she'd told him six months before the end, when the headaches had become something else. "Always working, always tired. I miss the man who would dance in the kitchen just because the radio played a good song."

She'd been right. He'd been dead inside long before she died. The job had eaten him piece by piece — PowerPoint presentations replacing passion, quarterly reports consuming his curiosity. He was already a zombie then. Now he was just slower.

The hospice nurse had said grief would come in waves. This felt more like a bear, heavy and permanent, sleeping on his chest. Some days he could breathe around it. Other days, like today, the weight pinned him completely.

He scrolled to the next video. Their anniversary, three years back. Sarah holding the iPhone at arm's length, both of them making faces at the lens. "Remember this," she said, "when we're old and gross and you forget why you married me."

He hadn't forgotten. He just couldn't bear it.

The iPhone dinged — a work email. Subject: Q2 deliverables. The zombie in him stirred, the part that still believed deadlines mattered more than grief. His thumb hovered over the notification, then swiped it away.

Outside, dawn was breaking. Somewhere in the city, people were starting their commute, eyes fixed on their phones, minds already at work. An army of the walking dead, shuffling toward something that wasn't living.

He opened his photos instead, found one he'd never shown her. A picture he'd taken of Sarah while she slept, back when she was just his girlfriend and he was just alive. She looked peaceful. He didn't feel peaceful anymore.

Maybe Sarah had been wrong about the zombie thing. Zombies didn't feel this much. Zombies didn't wake up at 3 AM, hearts cracking open, watching videos of the person they'd loved until their eyes burned.

Maybe this was what being alive actually felt like, and he'd just forgotten.

He deleted the work email. Then he texted his brother: "Breakfast? I need to remember what food tastes like."

The bear shifted on his chest. For the first time in months, he thought he might be able to breathe.