The fluorescent lights hummed their constant funeral dirge above Marcus's cubicle. Row forty-three, seat twelve. His coordinates in this corporate purgatory for the past six years. The Excel spreadsheet on his monitor hadn't changed in twenty minutes. The cursor blinked mockingly in cell D47. It looked like a digital heartbeat he wished would just stop.
"Henderson!"
Marcus's supervisor's voice cut through the ambient noise. Keyboards clacked. People whispered into phones. Marcus didn't look up from his screen.
"The quarterly reports need to be cross-referenced by five. Think you can handle that without screwing up for once?"
Marcus adjusted his glasses. He clicked to the next cell. "Sure thing, Dave."
Dave lingered for a moment. He probably hoped for more resistance. More drama to break up his own mundane existence. Marcus offered nothing else. Dave shuffled away. His polyester pants made soft swishing sounds. They somehow managed to be annoying.
The clock in the corner of Marcus's screen read 2:47 PM. Two hours and thirteen minutes until freedom. Until he could leave this beige-walled tomb. Return to his apartment tomb. At least the apartment had Alphonso.
Had.
Marcus's fingers stopped moving across the keyboard. Three days. It had been three days since he'd come home to find the white furball motionless. Alphonso's favorite spot by the window had become his deathbed. The vet bills had been piling up for months. Kidney disease, they'd said. Like everything else Marcus cared about, Alphonso had slowly deteriorated. Marcus could only watch helplessly from the sidelines.
He minimized the spreadsheet and opened a new browser tab. His fingers typed automatically. Instagram.com loaded without thought.
Alice's profile appeared with the efficiency of muscle memory. Her latest post was from yesterday. A photo of her and her husband at some charity gala. Her smile radiated in a way Marcus remembered from senior year. The comments overflowed with heart emojis and congratulations. She'd gotten promoted to senior marketing director. Some firm downtown. The kind of success Marcus used to imagine for himself. Back when he still bothered imagining futures.
He scrolled down. More photos of vacations. Dinner parties. A new car. A life that looked like it belonged to someone who'd figured out the secret. The secret Marcus had missed. Her husband appeared in most of the recent photos. Tall, broad-shouldered. The kind of guy who probably played college football. Who now coached little league on weekends. Everything Marcus wasn't.
The cursor hovered over the message button. It had been there countless times before. Waiting for him to type something. Anything. Hey Alice, remember me? I'm the guy who peaked in high school and now spends his evenings stalking you on social media. Because my cat died and that was literally the only thing keeping me from completely giving up on existence.
Yeah, that would go over well.
Marcus closed the browser and stared at the Excel sheet. Cell D47 was still blinking.
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. He recognized it immediately. Marlon had gotten a new phone. Again.
Mom's asking about you. When's the last time you visited?
Marcus stared at the message for a full minute. Then he typed back: Busy with work. She's getting worse, Marcus. The doctors think...
Marcus deleted the message thread without reading the rest.
The apartment felt smaller since Alphonso died. Maybe it was the absence of the tiny sounds. Sounds that had filled the space. Purring. The soft thud of paws hitting the floor. The rustle of kibble in a bowl. Or maybe it was something else. Without the cat's routines to structure his evenings, Marcus became more aware of how little he actually did.
He sat on the couch where Alphonso used to curl up against his leg. During Netflix binges, the cat had been a warm, constant presence. The white hairs were still embedded in the fabric. Marcus had tried vacuuming them twice. They clung with the tenacity of the dead refusing to let go.
His phone sat on the coffee table. Screen dark. Seventeen missed calls from Marlon over the past week. Marcus knew what they were about. Their mother's condition. The treatments that weren't working. The conversations about "saying goodbye" and "making peace." Conversations Marcus wasn't equipped to handle.
He'd tried calling the hospital once. Two weeks ago. Got as far as asking for her room number before hanging up. What was he supposed to say? Sorry I haven't visited, Mom. I've been busy being a disappointment.
The truth was simpler and more pathetic. He couldn't face seeing her look at him with that expression. That expression she'd perfected over the years. The one that tried so hard to hide her disappointment. It made the disappointment more obvious. The look that said I love you, but I don't understand what happened to the son I thought I was raising.
Marlon never got that look. Marlon got the proud smile. The eager questions about his research. The maternal bragging to relatives. Dr. Marlon Henderson, the prodigy. The one who'd figured out how to matter.
Marcus opened his laptop and refreshed Alice's profile again. No new posts since this afternoon. But he scrolled through her photos anyway. There was one from last month. A group shot from what looked like a high school reunion. He recognized some of the faces. They were all older now. Filled out with the confidence of people who'd successfully become adults.
He wasn't in the photo. He hadn't gone to the reunion.
The cursor found its way to the message button again. This time he actually clicked it.
Hey Alice, he typed, then stopped. What did people say to ghosts of their former selves? I was just thinking about...
He deleted it.
Hope you're doing well. I saw your promotion news. Congrats.
He stared at the message for ten minutes before deleting that too.
The streets were slick with November rain. Neon signs and streetlights reflected in fractured patterns. They looked like broken promises. Marcus walked without purpose. His hands were shoved deep in his jacket pockets. His shoulders hunched against the cold. It seemed to seep through his bones.
He'd left the apartment around midnight. Unable to sit still any longer. The walls had started feeling like they were pressing inward. Like the space was contracting around him. At least outside, the emptiness was honest about being emptiness.
His phone buzzed again. Marlon, probably. Marcus didn't check.
The city moved around him. Late-night workers heading home. Couples walking close together under shared umbrellas. College students stumbling between bars with careless laughter. The kind Marcus vaguely remembered having once. Everyone seemed to exist in a different layer of reality. One where actions had consequences and consequences had meaning.
He stopped at a crosswalk. Watched the red hand blink its warnings to no one. The streets were mostly empty at this hour. A few cars passed. Their headlights cut temporary paths through the darkness before disappearing around corners.
Marcus thought about Alphonso. About how the cat used to wait by the door when he came home from work. Such a simple thing. Having something alive that was glad to see you. Now even that was gone.
He thought about Alice. Probably asleep next to her husband in their suburban house. The perfect lawn and the two-car garage. Living a life that looked like the ones in commercials.
He thought about his mother. Lying in a hospital bed. Maybe wondering why her older son couldn't be bothered to visit. Marlon would be there, of course. Marlon would be holding her hand and saying all the right things. Being the son she deserved.
The light changed to green. Marcus stepped into the crosswalk.
He was halfway across when he heard the engine. The truck was moving too fast for the wet roads. Its driver probably fighting sleep or distracted by a phone. Marcus saw the headlights bearing down on him. The clarity that only comes in moments when time stretches thin.
He could have moved. Should have moved. His body was capable of diving to one side or the other. Of preserving itself through simple physics and adrenaline.
Instead, Marcus stood still. He felt something that might have been relief wash over him. The truck's grille filled his vision.
The last thing he saw was the driver's face through the windshield. Eyes wide with horror. Mouth open in what was probably a scream. Someone who would have to live with this moment for the rest of their life.
Sorry, Marcus thought. Though he wasn't sure if he meant it for the driver. For his mother. For Marlon. Or for himself.
Then there was only the sound of impact. And then nothing at all. Nothing.
Until there wasn't nothing anymore.