The Real Ones

Part 1

Marcus had a tell. Left eye. Two twitches. Fast like something dying under a floorboard.

Rachel never saw it. She was scrolling.

The twins were scrolling. Even Lily, three years old, three fucking years old, had those corpse eyes, blue-lit, thumb moving like she was trying to dig out of her own skull. Swipe-swipe-swipe. Everyone digging. Nobody getting out.

“Went for a walk,” he’d say.

The truth: Marcus had been under the overpass with Shoestring and Marlene and the kid everyone called Prophet. Prophet predicted which cars would stop at red lights based on “soul frequency.” Prophet was right more often than Marcus was happy about anything.

These were his people.

His only people.

Rachel would nod. Never looked up. Her face had that glow. The glow that made everyone look like they were already dead but their bodies hadn’t gotten the message yet. She was probably watching some seventeen-second video about narcissism. Or attachment theory. Or whatever the algorithm had decided she needed to be afraid of this week. She’d recite it at dinner. Word for word. Like she was the first person to discover that your childhood fucks you up.

Marcus had noticed it three years ago. Right after Lily was born everyone started talking the same way. Same cadence. Same phrases. “That’s giving...” “I’m obsessed.” “Not me thinking...”

They were all running the same software. Updated nightly while they slept.

His coworkers were Reddit threads with dental plans. His neighbors were YouTube comments with mortgages. His own mother was seventy-two years old and had started saying “period” and “slays,” her mouth forming words designed in a server farm, beta-tested on teenagers, pushed out like a virus.

But under the overpass-

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

Under the overpass there was Shoestring. Called that because he’d hanged a man with one. Or maybe he hadn’t. The story changed. That’s how you knew it was real, it was real stories that changed you.

Shoestring had theories about string theory that would crack your skull open. Marlene spoke four languages and used to play violin in concert halls until the thing with her hands. The thing she’d only tell you about if you brought the good cigarettes. The expensive ones. The ones that cost what Marcus spent on his daughter’s organic strawberries.

Prophet was probably schizophrenic. Definitely schizophrenic. But he saw connections Marcus had stopped seeing years ago. Before the kids. Before the mortgage. Before he became an algorithm himself: wake coffee commute work commute dinner kids scrolling sleep repeat wake coffee commute work.

The first time was an accident.

He’d pulled over to take a call from Rachel. Organic strawberries or conventional? Was he even listening? Had he ever listened?

While she talked, he watched a group of homeless people pass a bottle. They were laughing. Really laughing. Heads back. Mouths open. Bodies shaking.

When was the last time Marcus had laughed like that?

When was the last time Marcus had felt like that?

When was the last time Marcus had felt?

After Rachel hung up (organic, definitely organic, why was that even a question), he got out of his car. No plan. No script. Just walked over.

“You lost?” Shoestring had asked.

“I don’t know,” Marcus said.

First honest thing he’d said in months.

Now it was a habit. A need. An addiction that didn’t come in a bottle but tasted the same going down.

“Your wife know you’re here?” Marlene asked tonight.

They sat on milk crates around a burn barrel. Flames made everyone look like demons. Or angels. Depended on how you moved. How you wanted to be seen.

“She doesn’t know anything,” Marcus said. “None of them do. They’re all just—” He gestured. “Somewhere else. Even when they’re right there.”

“You’re addicted to us,” Marlene said. Smiled. Teeth brown at the edges. “We’re your drug.”

“You’re my reality.”

Prophet laughed. High. Sharp. “Man thinks we’re real and he’s fake. Man’s got it backwards.We’re the ghosts, He’s the one with a mortgage.”

“You have ideas,” Marcus insisted. “Original thoughts. When’s the last time someone in my neighborhood had an original….”

“We’ve outsourced ours to meth and Mad Dog 20/20,” Shoestring interrupted. “We’re just a different kind of algorithm, brother.”

No.

No, that wasn’t true.

It wasn’t the same.

Marcus came here because under this bridge, people bled real blood. Made real mistakes. Felt real things. There was danger here. Mild danger. The kind that made his heart remember it was supposed to beat. Made him feel alive instead of buffering.

At home, everything was child-proofed. Safety-locked. Sanitized. His kids would grow up never knowing real risk. Real consequence. They’d live in a padded algorithm, fed through screens, told what to want and who to be and how to perform being human.

Tonight Marcus brought leftover lasagna. Rachel made it from TikTok. It tasted like every other TikTok recipe.

They ate with their fingers around the barrel.

“You ever think about staying?” Prophet asked.

Marcus laughed. “What, here?”

“Why not? You hate it there. Every time. You said so.”

“I have kids.”

“Lots of us got kids,” Marlene said. Quiet. “Somewhere.”

The words hung in the smoke.

Marcus checked his phone. Two hours gone. Rachel texted once: “bringing milk.” He should go. Twins had school. He had a presentation. He had a life that looked like a life from the outside.

“Next time,” he said. Standing.

“There’s always next time with you,” Shoestring said. Still smiling.

Marcus drove home.

House ablaze with light. Every room broadcasting: someone’s home, someone’s safe, someone’s normal. He sat in the driveway five minutes. Watching his family move past windows like shadows in an aquarium. Like specimens. Like things behind glass that used to be alive.

Rachel read to Lily. Twins on tablets. No one noticed he’d been gone.

He went inside.

“Hey,” Rachel said. Didn’t look up.

“Hey.”

That night in bed, Rachel scrolled. Face blue-lit. Occasionally showing him something. A meme. A video. A thing she thought was a thing but was just another thing everyone was seeing. He made the right sounds. The algorithm sounds. The sounds that proved he was still there.

In the darkness, he planned tomorrow’s escape.

Three weeks later, Rachel answered his phone.

Marcus was in the shower. When he came out, she sat on the bed. Holding his phone. Face completely still. Face like glass.

“Shoestring is dead.”

The floor tilted. The world tilted. Everything tilted except Rachel, who sat perfectly straight, holding his phone like evidence.

“Police called. You’re listed as his emergency contact. I didn’t know you...” Her voice cracked. Cracked like glass. Like ice. Like something that had been holding too much weight for too long. “What the fuck, Marcus? Who is Shoestring?”

It came out. All of it. The overpass. The people. The nights. The lies. The walks that weren’t walks.

Rachel’s face did something he’d never seen. It came alive. Twisted and alive with real emotion that wasn’t mediated through a screen. Real rage. Real betrayal. Real.

“You’ve been lying for a year? You’ve been what, hanging out with homeless people while I’m here? With the kids? While I’m...”

“They’re real,” Marcus said. Tried to say. “They’re the only real people I...”

“Real?” Rachel’s voice went quiet. Quiet was worse than screaming. “Marcus. One of them died. You were his emergency contact. Did you even know his real name?”

Marcus opened his mouth.

Closed it.

He didn’t.

“They found him under the bridge. Overdose. You were playing poverty tourist while I was raising our children alone. Getting your little thrill. Your little danger fix. Treating human suffering like, like it was your personal theme park...”

“That’s not...”

“Get out.”

Hotel room. Single bed. Walls the color of nothing.

Shoestring’s funeral was small. Prophet and Marlene. A sister from Tucson. The sister spoke about a man named Robert Dennison. Robert who played piano. Who loved birdwatching. Who had a family before the gambling. Before the drinking. Before the choices that calcified into a life.

Marcus realized he’d never asked.

Never asked Shoestring about any of it. Never asked any of them. He’d just shown up. Basked in what he imagined was their authenticity. Their realness.

He’d been scrolling them.

They’d been his algorithm too. Different feed. Same consumption. Same hollow clicking. Same emptiness dressed up as connection.

Prophet cornered him at the reception. “You gonna disappear now? Now that it’s not fun?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s the first honest thing you ever said here.”

Marcus went back to Rachel on his knees. Therapy. Promises. Words. The twins asked where he’d been. Lily’s swipe technique had improved.

Six months later, Marcus sat in his car after work. House visible through the windshield. Everyone backlit. Everyone alive. Everyone in their aquarium, safe behind glass.

He realized he’d become exactly what he’d feared. He had nothing to say that wasn’t borrowed. He thought in memes. He performed his life. He was the algorithm.

The overpass was fifteen minutes away.

He drove there. No plan. No script. Just drove.

New people had taken the spots. Younger. They looked at him with suspicion. With the look you give tourists. With the look you give ghosts.

“Shoestring’s friend?”

“Yeah.”

“Marlene said you’d come back. Said to give you this.”

Cardboard. Sharpie. Marlene’s handwriting: “Go home. We were never your escape. We were people. Now be one too.”

Marcus sat in his car. Read it again. Again. Again.

Cardboard doesn’t burn easy. But he had a lighter. Watched the edges curl. Watched the words disappear. Watched the smoke rise like prayers nobody hears.

He drove home.

Found Rachel in the kitchen. Scrolling.

Lily was awake. Should have been asleep hours ago. She sat at the kitchen table with her tablet, swiping. Face blue. Eyes dead.

“I need help,” Marcus said.

Rachel looked up. Really looked. Eyes focused like he was actually there. Like he was real. Like they both were.

Then her eyes went to Lily.

Then back to Marcus.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve known for a while.”

She didn’t put her phone down.

Marcus waited for her to say something else. She didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know that too.”

Lily swiped. Swiped. Swiped.

“Can we talk?” Marcus asked.

“We are talking.”

“I mean really talk. Like...”

“Like what? Like real people?” Rachel’s voice was flat. Empty. The algorithm voice. “Marcus. There are no real people. There never were. You were just playing a stupid little game.”

She went back to scrolling.

Marcus stood there. Standing in his kitchen. In his house. With his family. Everything he’d been so desperate to escape back when he thought there was somewhere else to go.

He looked at Lily. Three years old. Already learning the only thing anyone needed to know anymore. How to swipe. How to scroll. How to perform being human.

She looked up at him. For just a second. Her eyes focused.

“Daddy,” she said. “You’re in my light.”

Marcus moved.

He went to the bedroom. Lay down in the dark. Rachel came in an hour later. Got into bed without a word. The blue glow of her phone painted the ceiling.

In the morning, Marcus made breakfast. The twins fought over screen time. Lily asked if they could get a puppy. Rachel reminded him he had a dentist appointment Thursday.

Everything was exactly the same.

Everything would always be exactly the same.

That night, Marcus drove to the overpass. The new people were there. They didn’t acknowledge him. He sat in his car and watched them around their fire. Watched them laugh. Watched them pass a bottle.

One of them looked over. Made eye contact. Looked away.

Marcus started the car.

He drove home.

He would do this every night for the next three months. Drive there. Watch. Drive back. Never getting out. Never speaking. Just watching people who didn’t want him there. People who knew what he was.

A ghost.

A tourist.

Someone who thought he could buy realness by standing close enough to it.

Rachel never asked where he went. She knew. Or she didn’t care. It didn’t matter which.

The twins got phones for their birthday. Lily learned to read by swiping through apps.

Marcus kept driving to the overpass.

He never got out of the car again.

Six months later, driving home from the overpass, Marcus took a different route. He didn’t plan it. His hands just turned the wheel. He ended up on the bridge. The high one. The one that goes over the river.

He pulled over. Put on his hazards. Got out.

Leaned against the railing. Looked down at the water. Black. Moving. Real.

His phone buzzed. Rachel: “milk?”

He texted back: “ok”

Looked back at the water.

Thought about Shoestring. Robert. A man whose real name he’d never bothered to learn until it was carved into a headstone.

Thought about Prophet saying: “We’re the ghosts”.

Thought about Marlene’s note. Now be one too.

Be one what? A person? He’d been trying. Failing. Trying. Failing. The algorithm doesn’t have an off switch. It just keeps running. You just keep running.

He got back in his car.

Drove home.

Bought milk.

Made dinner.

Put the kids to bed.

Lay next to Rachel while she scrolled.

Thought about the water.

Thought about the water a lot after that.

But he never went back to the bridge.

That would have been real.

And Marcus had finally learned the truth: he didn’t want real. He never had. He wanted the story of wanting real. The performance of wanting real. The aesthetic of authenticity without the cost.

The homeless people knew it.

Rachel knew it.

Even Lily, three years old, swiping her way toward the same empty future, probably knew it.

The only person who didn’t know was Marcus.

And now he did.

And now he had to keep living anyway.

That was the punishment.

Not death. Not divorce. Not losing his family or his job or his house.

The punishment was getting to keep all of it.

The punishment was knowing.

The punishment was waking up every day and performing the algorithm and knowing that’s what you were doing and doing it anyway because the alternative was scarier than the performance.

The alternative was the water.

The alternative was real.

Marcus chose the performance.

Every day.

For the rest of his life.

And that, finally, felt like exactly what he deserved.

THE END.