The Last Telegram

Mara had become a zombie at thirty-two, not through any supernatural curse, but through the slow erosion of redundancy packages at the telecommunications firm where she'd spent twelve years becoming indispensable. Now she spent her days watching cable news on volume three, too anxious to disturb the neighbors who never noticed her anyway.

The cat—Barnaby, a judgmental rescue with one ear—regarded her from his perch atop the refrigerator. He'd been her ex-husband's idea, a desperate attempt to manufacture domesticity in a marriage already hollowing out from the inside. David had taken the dog. She'd kept the cat and the cable bill, a fair trade in the calculus of separation.

It started with spinach. Not metaphorically. Literally: a bag of organic spinach from Whole Foods, leaking green sludge onto the passenger seat of her Honda Civic. She'd noticed the woman in the adjacent cube—who she'd learned was named Elena through careful, creepily thorough examination of the corporate directory—eating spinach salads every day at 12:02 PM. Mara began buying spinach too. She ate it dry, standing over her sink, feeling like a spy in her own life.

The spying escalated naturally. First it was Elena's social media profiles, public and benign. Then it was walking past Elena's cubicle at 11:58 AM, "coincidentally" on her way to the restroom. Then it was learning Elena's coffee order through strategic eavesdropping. Mara began leaving anonymous gifts on Elena's desk: a expensive pen, a succulent, a book of poetry she'd seen Elena reading on the subway.

The gifts stopped appearing. Elena began leaving work through the fire exit. Mara began following her at a distance, learning Elena's routines, her favorite coffee shop, her Tuesday evening yoga class. She became a zombie haunting Elena's life, an invisible presence sustained entirely by the stolen oxygen of another woman's existence.

One Tuesday, Barnaby escaped. Mara chased him through the hallway of her apartment building, weeping in her pajamas, only to find him sitting outside Elena's door. The door opened. Elena stood there, holding her own cat carrier.

"Barnaby?" Elena said.

Mara's mouth formed silent vowels. Elena bent down, and Barnaby—her judgmental, one-eared Barnaby—purred against Elena's hand like they'd known each other for years.

"I used to catsit for David," Elena said softly. "Before you two separated."

The spinach in Mara's stomach turned to stone. All this time, she'd been haunting a woman who'd already been part of her life, who'd known her ex-husband, who'd been watching her back with the same careful distance.

"I thought you were following me," Elena said. "I've been waiting for you to say hello."

That night, Mara cancelled her cable. Barnaby slept on her pillow. And for the first time in years, the zombie opened her eyes and really saw.