Dead Lines

Elena hadn't felt alive since the merger. Six months of answering calls from angry customers about their cable outages, and she'd become something else—something that moved through days on autopilot, mouth forming scripted apologies while her mind drifted elsewhere. A corporate zombie in a beige cubicle, grazing on breakroom coffee and processed vending machine snacks.

The new regional manager, Miller, was everything she wasn't: loud, aggressive, perpetually energized. He charged through the office like a bull in a china shop, slamming his hand on desks, demanding metrics, asking why retention numbers weren't better. Elena's team withered under his presence.

"You've got fire in you, I can tell," he'd told her during her performance review, leaning too close. "Don't let this place turn you into one of them."

She'd almost laughed. One of them. As if she wasn't already.

The cable to her apartment had been out for three days. No television, no internet—just silence when she got home. No scrolling through social media, no binge-watching shows to numb her brain. Just her thoughts, and the growing realization that she and Marcus hadn't really spoken in weeks. They moved around each other like ghosts, ships passing in the night, tethered together by little more than a lease and shared history.

He'd asked her last night if she was happy. The question had caught her off guard.

"I don't know," she'd said, and it was the most honest thing she'd said in months.

Today, Miller called everyone into the conference room for another motivational speech. Elena watched his mouth move, felt the familiar zombified fog descend, her body present while her consciousness wandered. She thought about the unplugged cable box at home, the quiet apartment, the way Marcus had looked at her like he was seeing a stranger.

Then her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Marcus: Cable's back on. Come home early?

Something stirred inside her chest, faint but real. Not dead yet.

She raised her hand. Miller paused, surprised. "Yes? Elena, right?"

"I need to leave early," she said, her voice steady. "Family emergency."

It wasn't exactly a lie. Some emergencies happened slowly, over years, until you woke up one day and realized your life had become something you never chose.

She walked out of the building into the bright afternoon, leaving the bull and the zombies behind her, and for the first time in months, she felt like she was actually walking somewhere she wanted to go.