The Riddle of Empty Rooms

The orange sat on the bedside table like a small sun, its vibrant peel mocking the sterile whiteness of the room. Elena had brought it because Sarah used to love them—would peel them in long, continuous strips, letting the citrus spray mist the air like cheap perfume.

That Sarah was gone now.

"You're my best friend," Sarah said, but her eyes were flat, searching. She said it every visit, each time with the same rehearsed warmth, like a line from a play she'd forgotten she'd performed a hundred times before.

Elena's throat tightened. She looked at the bear tattoo on Sarah's forearm—ink that had once represented strength, protection. Now it just swam in loose skin, its fierce eyes dimmed beneath the papery fragility of age. Sarah had gotten it after their first gallery showing, after some critic called her work "raw and untamed." They'd drunk cheap wine and laughed about bears and sphinxes and all the mythical creatures that guard treasures they weren't sure they'd ever find.

"What's the riddle?" Sarah asked suddenly, her voice thin.

Elena blinked. "What?"

"The sphinx. What's the riddle?" Sarah's hands twisted in the blanket. "I can't remember. I can never remember."

"What walks on four legs in the morning," Elena whispered, the words automatic from some distant memory of Greek mythology, "two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening."

Sarah's face cleared. "Man. That's easy."

But it wasn't easy. Nothing was easy anymore. Sarah was forty-six, and somewhere inside her ravaged mind, she knew it. Some days, the recognition was terrible to witness—the flash of horrified clarity before the fog rolled back in. Other days, she was something else entirely.

A zombie, Elena thought, and hated herself for it. Not the movie kind with their appetite for brains, but something worse: the walking dead, a body continuing its biological processes while the person—the spark, the laughter, the specific way she'd tilt her head when she was being sarcastic—had already left the building.

Sarah's hand found the orange. Her fingers, still graceful despite everything, began to tear at the peel. The scent released—sharp, bright, real. For a moment, her eyes focused. "Elena?"

"I'm here."

"Don't let me forget myself."

"I won't."

It was a promise Elena couldn't keep. They both knew it. Some riddles have no answers, only the asking, over and over, until the asking itself becomes the only truth remaining.