The Unspooling

The cable guy was three hours late, which meant Marcus had spent the entire morning watching nothing on a dead screen, the black mirror reflecting his own unshaven face back at him. He'd called in sick to work again—third time this month—though there was nothing technically wrong with him except a profound, cellular tiredness that no amount of sleep seemed to touch.

When the guy finally showed up, his name tag read 'Dave' and he smelled like cigarettes and that particular brand of loneliness Marcus had come to recognize in himself. Dave worked quickly, efficiently, his hands moving through the tangle of wires behind the TV stand like a pianist.

'You got a dog?' Dave asked, gesturing to the hair on Marcus's sweatpants.

'Had. She died last month.'

'Shit, man. Sorry.' Dave paused, a cable coiled in his hand. 'My wife left me. Took the dog.' A dry chuckle. 'She got the good end of that deal.'

After Dave left, Marcus turned on the TV. Four hundred channels of everything and nothing. He found himself standing at the sliding glass door, staring down at the apartment complex pool. The water was that impossible blue that only exists in artificially maintained spaces, the surface still except for a single leaf drifting across it like a judgment.

He remembered bringing Luna there, how she'd bark at her own reflection, convinced the dog in the water was a rival she needed to defeat. He'd laughed then. He laughed now, but it came out wrong, jagged at the edges.

The cable bill was due tomorrow. Another automatic payment, another month of watching other people live fictional lives while he let his own unspool frame by frame. He considered calling in sick tomorrow too. Considered walking down to the pool and slipping into that chemically perfect water, letting it fill his lungs, clean and blue and final.

Instead he sat on the couch and turned up the volume. Some sitcom audience laughed on cue. Marcus closed his eyes and for a moment, almost believed them.