H. A. EUGENE

Brian is Missing

It’s twelve o’clock. We can’t find Brian.

He’s not on the Zoom meeting.

His last network login was an hour ago.

He’s not badged into the building.

His VPN is off.

His Slack status is away.

Nest Doorbell shows him not home.

He’s not logged in to WhatsApp.

He’s not returning my text messages.

I see a faint dot in Location Services. It’s his work laptop.

It’s at the beach.

It’s headed out to sea.

Five hundred feet.

Half a mile.

The signal’s half a mile out in the ocean. Brian is in the ocean.

I repeat: Brian is in the ocean.

One mile.

Five miles.

Seven miles into the ocean and diving.

Active sonar now shows Brian at twenty, thirty feet below sea level.

A hundred feet. Two hundred. Three.

Brian is now approaching the Mariana Trench.

Brian is now a thousand feet into the ocean.

Brian is beyond the reach of sunlight.

With his laptop.

Listen, I think we need to reschedule.

H. A. Eugene is an O. Henry-nominated writer of strange stories about food, work, and death. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y Lit, Radon Journal, HAD, and Flash Fiction Online, among others. Witness him talking to himself on Bluesky @autobono.bsky.social and Instagram @h_a_eugene.