Dead Letters

The hat sat in the corner of my cubicle, a felt fedora I'd bought on impulse three years ago and never worn. It was gathering dust alongside my dignity.

My iPhone buzzed again—Marcia from marketing, asking about the Q3 deliverables I'd already submitted twice. The screen light washed over my face in the harsh fluorescence of the office at 11 PM. I'd stopped looking in mirrors months ago, but I knew what my hair looked like: limp, greasy, starting to thin at the temples. At 32, I was already decomposing.

We were all zombies here, really. Not the brain-eating kind, but something worse—the ones who keep showing up, keep typing, keep answering emails until there's nothing left inside. The walking dead with excellent dental benefits.

"You heading out?"

I looked up. Alex from accounting stood there, her coat half-on, holding a takeout container. She was maybe twenty-seven, pretty in that exhausted way everyone in this building was pretty.

"Soon," I said. "Just finishing—"

"Yeah. Me too." She hesitated. "Hey, you've got a little..." She gestured at her own teeth.

I wiped my mouth. "Spinach?"

"Lunch," she said, and I didn't need to ask what that meant—we were all eating at our desks now, all trying to convince ourselves we were taking care of ourselves. "There's a place down the street still open. My treat."

I should have said no. I should have finished the spreadsheet and gone home to my empty apartment and my cold bed. But instead I heard myself say, "Yeah. Okay."

We ate greasy diner food while she told me about her failed marriage and I told her about the creative writing degree I hadn't touched in six years. The hat stayed on my cubicle floor, gathering more dust. For an hour, neither of us were zombies.

"Why do we stay?" she asked when the check came.

"The money," I said, but that wasn't true anymore. Not really.

She reached across the table and touched my hand, her fingers warm and alive. "I'm quitting next week. Moving to Portland. My sister has a guest house."

The air between us suddenly felt very thick. "Oh."

"You could come," she said, not looking at me. "I mean—not with me. But Portland. Anywhere. You're a writer, right?"

I was still paying off the loans for that degree. I had a lease, a car, a 401k. A life that felt like someone else's.

"I can't," I said.

She nodded, like she'd expected that. When she left, she didn't look back.

At 3 AM, I finally went home. Alone in my apartment, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and really looked at myself for the first time in months. My eyes were dead.

The next morning, I put on the hat. My coworkers stared. Marcia asked if I was going to a costume party.

"No," I said. "I'm just done being dead."

I packed my desk into a single box. Left the iPhone on my desk. Left the hat on—it looked good, actually.

Alex wasn't in Portland. I looked her up—she'd never mentioned a sister. But that didn't matter. The life I was supposed to have was already gone. The one I actually wanted was somewhere else, anywhere else.

Some zombies don't want to eat brains. Some just want to finally, desperately, come alive.