The Last Orange

The storm rolled in at 4 AM, lightning fracturing the sky like someone taking a baseball bat to heaven. Martin sat on the edge of his bed, watching through rain-slashed windows, the emergency cable he'd run from the generator coiled like a black snake across the floor.

He was forty-seven, unemployed, and sleeping in what used to be his daughter's room. The orange on the nightstand—her favorite—had sat there for three weeks, slowly collapsing into itself, a perfect sphere turning into a geography of decay.

"That's bull, Sarah," he'd said at dinner, six months ago, when she told him she was moving out. "You're not moving out. You're seventeen."

"I'm not your daughter anymore, Dad. Not the one you want."

The lightning flashed again, and in the split-second illumination, he saw the cable公司的 truck parked across the street. They'd cut his service yesterday. Another thing gone.

His phone buzzed—the cheap prepaid burner he'd bought after losing his company phone. A text from his brother: "Interview lined up. Tuesday. Don't fuck it up."

Martin picked up the orange. Its skin was soft now, yielding to his thumb like something dying. He remembered Sarah at six, peeling one for him, sticky juice running down her chin, saying "Daddy, you're the best."

The lightning made everything strobe-light sharp for a second: the empty room, the cable on the floor, the rotting fruit in his hand, the wrongness of everything. He wasn't a bad man. He just couldn't stop being the one who thought he was right.

Outside, thunder finally arrived, shaking the windows. Martin set the orange down on his daughter's empty nightstand, watched it roll slightly, coming to rest against the lamp.

"Okay," he said to the room, to the storm, to himself. "Okay."

He picked up the cable, began to coil it properly this time. The generator hummed in the hallway. Tuesday was four days away. He could do four days.