@emilyseatingtacos

8:14 p.m.

Sno’ Witty™ sat down on the sofa with one modest, non-partisan objective:

To watch Phony.

She was wearing charcoal sweatpants that had surrendered their elastic during the Obama administration and an oversized fleece vest that smelled faintly of damp woodsmoke and generic laundry detergent.

She held the Roku remote.

She opened Netflix.

She typed P-H-O-N-Y into the search grid using the directional pad, which required clicking thirty-eight individual times because the infrared sensor only recognized commands when pointed directly at the baseboard heater.

Netflix did not have Phony.

Netflix instead offered:

• The Great British Baking Show (Season 9)
• A two-hour German documentary about deep-sea squids
• Better Call Saul

Sno’ Witty™ stared at the television.

She pays twenty-two dollars and ninety-nine cents a month to this digital conglomerate. In exchange, their algorithm suggested she watch tentacled mollusks mate in the pitch-black Mariana Trench.

This was not entertainment. This was corporate breach of contract.

To Sno’ Witty™, the free-market concept of territorial streaming licensing does not exist. There are only monthly auto-drafts and bad faith.

She ate a single dill pickle spear wrapped tightly in a slice of yellow American cheese that had cracked down the center from refrigeration.

She did not leave a customer service review.

Reviews are for people who still believe in civilization.

She simply switched inputs to Hulu.

8:42 p.m.

Hulu had Phony.

Of course it did. Because modern life requires maintaining four distinct monthly subscriptions written on the back of a ComEd envelope just to watch forty minutes of scripted television before passing out.

The title card flickered.

The premise unfolded on screen: A young man becomes convinced that his mother has been covertly abducted and replaced by an exact physical imposter.

Sno’ Witty™ hit pause twelve minutes in.

She slowly rotated her head toward the carpet.

Bane was lying beside the entertainment console.

He had not moved in forty minutes. When the microwave beeped earlier, his ears did not lift from his skull. When she unwrapped the cheese slice, he did not stage a formal sit-in.

Sno’ Witty™ narrowed her eyes.

“Look at me,” she said to the room.

Bane did not look. He stared fixedly at the cold air return grate, blinking with the slow, measured indifference of a reptile.

“Suspicious,” she whispered.

A textbook behavioral tell.

The real Bane would have filed three separate grievances by now demanding dairy restitution.

This animal was eighty pounds of quiet, velvet compliance.

A decoy hound. Dispatched by someone…possibly the township drainage board or an insurance adjuster—to monitor residential complacency.

A sharp scratching sound came from the patio glass.

On the railing sat the fat gray squirrel that lives inside the neighbor’s silver maple.

The squirrel was clutching an acorn, staring directly through the double-pane glass with zero fear of God, man, or local leash laws.

Last Saturday, Travis spent forty-two dollars at Menards on a galvanized aluminum baffle specifically engineered to prevent squirrel ingress onto the thistle feeder.

The squirrel was currently using the baffle as a footstool.

Sno’ Witty™ pointed the pickle spear at the glass.

“You’re not permitted for that seed,” she informed the windowpane. “The thistle remains an active municipal matter.”

The squirrel twitched its tail twice, chewed with mechanical speed, and kicked a shell into the dead geranium pot.

Total contempt for authority.

9:50 p.m.

By ten o’clock, the episode had ended, and the house felt thoroughly compromised.

Travis came up from the basement.

He was not watching television.

Travis was carrying a yellow digital multimeter and three nine-volt smoke detector batteries.

“The chirp wasn’t the hallway unit,” he announced, wiping his hands on a blue shop towel. “It was the crawlspace hatch sensor. Had an intermittent ground fault.”

Sno’ Witty™ studied him from the sofa cushions.

His gray pocket tee was spotless. His work jeans had no dust. He had spent an hour and a half in an unheated crawlspace and possessed zero cobwebs on his person.

“Travis,” she said flatly.

“Yeah?”

“What’s my mother’s middle name?”

Travis didn’t pause.

“Lorraine,” he said, setting the multimeter on the counter. “Why? Is the television giving you ideas?”

“You’re too calm,” she said. “The crawlspace has black widows and standing water. A real husband would have come up swearing about the joists.”

Travis did not argue. He simply aligned the three square batteries so their metal terminals pointed due north, then walked toward the kitchen sink.

“Wind’s shifting out of the northwest,” he said, testing the faucet aerator. “Gonna drop into the thirties tonight. I shut the sillcocks off at the brass valves inside.”

He was either Travis, or the most competent imposter the state of Illinois had ever deployed to maintain residential plumbing.

Either way, the pipes wouldn’t freeze.

She decided to let it slide.

Bane let out a single, wet radiator snort from the carpet, rolled onto his side, and exposed all four paws to the ceiling in a posture of complete moral surrender.

Sno’ Witty™ tossed the paper plate into the trash, set the Roku remote on the armrest, and pulled the fleece blanket over her knees.

Tomorrow she would deal with the squirrel.

Tonight, the imposter was keeping the furnace at sixty-eight.

Good enough for a Tuesday.