What the Riddle Asks

Gary had been 'The Bull' for twenty years in the ring—a mountain of muscle and bad decisions, thundering toward opponents while crowds chanted his name. Now at fifty-two, he shuffled through the Egyptian wing at 2 AM, flashlight beam cutting through darkness, security badge clipped to a uniform that still felt like someone else's skin.

He stopped before the sphinx. Its limestone face had eroded over millennia, but something in those empty eyes understood him better than his own reflection.

The chemotherapy had taken his hair first—thinning, then falling in clumps in the shower drain until Gary shaved it all. That was three months ago. His wife Sarah said she didn't care, said she loved him more now, but he'd started sleeping in the guest room. Couldn't bear her seeing him like this—shrinking, softening, the Bull rendered docile.

He'd fought harder opponents in the ring. But how do you punch your own mortality?

The sphinx's riddle echoed in his memory: *What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?* Man, crawling then walking then leaning on a cane. Gary had always thought the answer was incomplete. There should be a fourth stage—when you can't walk at all. When you're just waiting.

"You got answers?" he whispered to the stone creature.

His phone buzzed. Sarah. Again. She'd been calling since he stormed out after dinner. They'd argued about nothing—some dish left in the sink—but really about the tumor pressing against his spine, the way he'd closed himself off, the guest room door locked every night.

Gary pressed accept.

"I'm scared," she said, voice cracking. "Not of you dying. Of you living like you're already gone."

The flashlight flickered. In its dying light, the sphinx seemed almost cruel, almost kind—whatever creature has nothing left to lose.

"I don't know who I am anymore," Gary said, the truth catching in his throat.

"You're my husband," Sarah said. "That's enough."

Something broke inside him—something that had been clenched tight since the diagnosis, since the hair started falling, since he'd decided to face this like he'd faced every opponent in the ring: alone. The Bull had always fought solo. But this wasn't a match. It was a life.

"I'll be home in twenty minutes," Gary said.

The sphinx watched him go, its ancient silence finally answered.