Three AM Porch Light

Marcus stood on his porch at 3:17 AM, barefoot on concrete, watching the gutters overflow. The water had been rising for an hour now, a slow invasion from the storm drain that had backed up again. His landlord's problem, technically, but Marcus was the one standing there in boxers and a t-shirt, watching dirty street water inch toward his front door.

A movement caught his eye — the neighbor's cat, a ragged ginger thing that usually slunk through the shared fence like it owed nobody anything. Tonight it sat on a porch railing, tail twitching, watching the water rise with what looked suspiciously like judgment.

"You too, huh?" Marcus muttered. The cat ignored him, as cats do.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Sarah's name lit up the screen. Again. Three calls, two texts since midnight. She wanted to talk. She wanted to explain why she'd been sleeping with her coworker for six months. She wanted closure, as if closure was something you could request like a pizza delivery.

Marcus had spent the past three weeks running — not literally, though he'd started jogging again after a five-year hiatus — but running from conversations, from his apartment, from the life they'd built together like a house of cards in a wind tunnel. His friends said he should face it head-on. His therapist said he needed to sit with his feelings. His cat-less apartment said nothing at all.

The water reached the first step of his porch. The ginger cat finally moved, leaping gracefully to higher ground, then pausing to look back at Marcus with something almost like pity.

"Fine," Marcus said, and stepped out into the rain.

He ran until his lungs burned, past streetlights that flickered and died, through neighborhoods that blurred together in the downpour. He ran until the water in his shoes felt like part of him, until the thought of Sarah's voice couldn't catch up. He ran until he realized he was heading toward her building, toward the third-floor window where a light still burned.

The cat followed him at a distance, a ginger shadow keeping pace like some feline death guide.

Marcus stopped three blocks from her place. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. His phone was dead. His feet were bleeding. The cat sat on a nearby car, watching him with what was definitely judgment now.

He turned around. He walked home. The water on his porch had receded.

Some things, he decided, could wait until morning.