The day Rebeca Lundgren went mad was pretty much like any other in the chain of days that made up her life, with the exception, of course, of going insane. Had any of her old friends been there to witness the event they would have marveled she'd lasted as long as she did; her downhill slide into insanity had been relentless, irreversible, and because they loved her so much, because it hurt so bad to see her this way, they had simply stopped coming round. Rebeca noticed their absence only as one might notice the neighbor's dog has finally stopped yapping at two in the morning.

It was better this way, actually. Her friends had changed so much over the course of the last year that she found she had little in common with them any more. Besides, their studious avoidance of mentioning the accident, their oh-so-careful skirting around any and all subjects that might lead to mentioning Michael had grown wearisome. Maybe they were just being thoughtful, maybe they were just trying to avoid causing her pain, whatever it was it left little common ground for conversation, or friendship, for that matter. Her friends were shallow people, she decided. She could only hope she'd never been that superficial.

The result of all this was that she was alone, on this day of all days, the one-year anniversary of the end of her world. Twelve months since a drunken idiot in a Lexus shattered her pelvis, her hip, her life. Three hundred sixty-five days since Michael died in the twisted, fiery wreckage of their Prius miles from civilization, light years from help.

She finished her sumptuous feast of Ramen and red wine, moving with the slow deliberation of an eighty-year-old woman, though she was barely thirty. No broken dishes today, that was her goal. If she could load the dishwasher without breakage she would celebrate with one more glass of wine; if there was breakage she would console herself with a bottle.

She turned to the dishwasher, catching her reflection in the microwave door. An old woman with sad eyes stared at her, an angry purple scar bisecting her left cheek from nose to ear. The image never failed to startle her, taking her breath away each time, a hurtful reminder that the young, pretty Rebeca was gone, replaced by some old crone she didn't even recognize. This was the reason for the draped mirrors throughout the apartment, shrouded in sheets and towels, not some old-fashioned act of mourning, just a futile, desperate attempt to expunge from her mind's eye the image of what she had become.

She turned from the reflection, bending slowly, cautiously, to place her dishes in the machine. A lick of flame in her hip flared with sudden ferocity. The floor pitched and rolled beneath her. She collapsed against the counter, her dirty dish clattering to the floor, exploding across the tile. Pain blossomed like a mushroom cloud, bolts of electric pain arcing through the dozen steel pins holding her ruined pelvis and hip together.

Breathe, she told herself. Stay calm.

She grabbed for her walker, groping for the pain killers in the basket, fumbling with the safety cap, scattering three white pills across the counter. These she corralled with great difficulty, popping them in her mouth, washing them down with a hit from the wine bottle. Her vision blurred, her head twirled, her stomach cartwheeled as she fought to stay upright until the drugs kicked in. A million years later the pain retreated behind a boozy, narcotic veil; a temporary respite to be sure. Pain was her one true friend these days, never leaving her for long. Even now, it lurked deep in her bones like an unwanted house guest.

She dropped the wine and pill bottles in her basket, wanting to reach the relative safety of the living room couch while she could still move, not wanting to spend another night on the floor.

The TV was on, jabbering to itself in the corner of the half-lit room. She never turned the thing off any more; somehow the bodiless voices of complete strangers made the house seem a little less empty, reminding her that out there in the dark were other human beings, some, perhaps, with problems worse than her own. It was a cynical notion, to be sure, a pessimistic view of life unworthy of the Rebeca Lundgren of a year ago, but there was little room for optimism in the post-Michael world she found herself inhabiting, no place for joy, no room for hope. Someone had hit the pause button on her life; she was going nowhere, just treading water, waiting to slip quietly under the waves without so much as ripple to mark her passing. Her world had been steadily shrinking since his death, defined now by the walls of the tiny apartment she had not left for months. Soon, she suspected, her universe would be bounded by the confines of her own skull, but this notion bothered her not at all; in fact, she welcomed the thought: in her experience, reality was a much over-rated concept.

She collapsed at last on the couch, exhausted from her journey. Ten feet, maybe twelve, that's how far she'd traveled, the journey taking ten minutes and all her strength. She tried not to cry, tried to hold off the tsunami threatening to engulf her.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be, this was not how she was supposed to end up, all alone, a physical and emotional wreck at the age of thirty. She was supposed to grow old with Michael, they were supposed to spend their lives together enjoying themselves, their children, their grand-children. She felt violated, savaged by uncaring Fate, her life, her future ripped from her by a drunk on a country road. She cursed the man who did this to her, the drunk who had murdered Michael with his car, walking away without a scratch. Three months in jail, six months probation. The creep was out already while Rebeca served her life sentence in solitary.

She needed solace, yearned for relief. She fumbled around the cushions, searching for the remote, squinting with bleary eyes until she found play. The VCR clicked and whirred as it threaded the tape containing her preferred version of reality. A magical memory machine, that's what it was to her; the only true relief from her agony. Her former life, a life of love and joy and light, preserved on a thin film of magnetic tape, ready to be replayed over and over and over with the push of a button.

Rebeca watched in drunken fascination as indistinct shadows formed against a background of static, the picture rolling and tearing as the VCR struggled to track the image. This tape was all that remained of her former life, her former self, but with each viewing the video became less distinct, less focused, as the signal faded into noise. And with each viewing she felt herself fading into the humming background noise of pills, booze and pain.

She could have reached out for help, could have grabbed for the life-preserver of her well-intentioned therapist's business card still taped to the fridge door, could have called any of a dozen old friends. She could have tried to drag herself back from the edge of the abyss she found herself staring down, but there was a fundamental lack of motivation on her part. It was simply easier to let the booze, the pills, the self-pity gently ease her away from reality, to let herself fade into the static, to surrender herself to the noise.

She took a hit of wine. On the screen a smiling young man mugged for the camera, his image materializing out of the static. Michael, her One True Love, alive again through the miracle of technology.

"You're such a goof-ball," a young, healthy Rebeca said from behind the camera.

"Who's goofier," Michael laughed. "The goof-ball or the girl who married him?"

The picture went cockeyed as the Rebeca in the TV discarded the camera to join Michael on screen while on her couch, alone in the dark, the real Rebeca cried, laughed, somehow managed both at once as the young couple in the little box laughed and loved, oblivious to the lousy deal life was about to deal them. They were so young, so happy, so full of life, love, each other. If only she could warn them, if only she could convince them to stay home that cold September night. Stay home, she pleaded. Watch TV, make popcorn, make love. Stay safe, stay alive.

She closed her eyes, listening as specters of her past made love for the camera. In her delirium she felt Michael, smelled him, tasted him, his hands exploring her body, his lips brushing her own like butterfly wings on velvet.

"Beca."

That wasn't in the script. She squinted an eye at the TV.

"Beca," Mike said, his handsome face filling the screen, eyes full of love. "Listen to me, Bec," he said softly. "You know I'm not going to be with you much longer. I'm about worn out. Soon there won't be anything but static. Then what will you do?"

She giggled at the hallucination. Wine and oxycodone — what a combination. Maybe she should go to bed.

"Beca," Mike said, his brow crinkling the way it did when he was being Very Serious. "You're going to lose me. We can't have that happen, can we? What are you going to do about it?"

She leaned close, squinting at the screen. The background was blurry, snowy with static, but Mike's face was clear. She stroked his glass cheek tentatively, wishing to God she could do more. His face lifted itself ever so slightly from the glass and she found herself stroking the warm softness of his face, the stubble of his whiskers warm sandpaper against her fingers.

"Oh, Mike," she sobbed. "You're not real, you're just the wine talking," she said, only because it sounded like the sort of thing you ought to say when you find yourself tripping on the edge of the Twilight Zone.

"Silly girl," Mike smiled. "Of course I'm real. You're talking to me, aren't you? You watch me every day, over and over and over, don't you? I'm the only real thing in your life."

She couldn't argue with that. Of course he was real. Besides, she was talking to him and only crazy people talk to the television and Rebeca Lundgren wasn't crazy.

"Oh, Mike. I miss you so much!"

"I miss you too, Love."

"Why did you leave me? You promised you'd never leave me. You said we'd always be together, forever and ever."

"I know, Kitten," he soothed. "We can still be together forever and ever, just like I promised."

"But... you're dead."

"Death can't stop True Love, remember?"

"I remember," she said softly.

"I'm alive in your memories, in your heart, in this video."

"I know. But it's not the same, is it? I mean, you're in there and I'm out here."

Mike laughed, touching his nose with a finger. "On the nosey, Baby Girl! So we need to fix that, don't we?"

Rebeca struggled to focus her thoughts, to come up with a solution.

"Can you come out of there?"

"Nope," Mike smiled. "I was cremated, remember? 'I ain't got no body!'" he sang his best Marty Feldman.

"Then I have to..."

She fell back on the couch, giving the idea serious consideration. She could go to him, she realized, but there would be no coming back. A one-way ticket, that's what it was. But what did it matter? Out here was only pain, the unbearable loneliness of being. All she had were memories, a fading video tape and an Everest of unpaid medical bills. Was this crazy? Did it matter? Crazy with Mike had to be a whole lot better than sane without him. What would her friends think? Who cared? They'd abandoned her.

It came to this, she reasoned: she could stay out here, hurting like hell, popping pills and drinking herself to death, or she could live forever with her One True Love. In the end it wasn't a hard decision to make, really, and she wasn't surprised to hear herself say, "What do I need to do?"

Two days passed before the landlord, looking for the past-due rent, discovered Rebeca Lundgren on her urine-soaked couch, a look of pure bliss on her gaunt face. Two very concerned young men took her away in an ambulance, telling her she was going to be okay only because it was their job to say things like that. The landlord took a quick tour of the place, wondering how soon he could get it back on the market. He switched off the TV on his way out, never noticing the smiling, happy faces of Michael and Rebeca Lundgren fading into the static.