Dead Things Don't Run

The treadmill hummed beneath David's feet, his breath syncing with the rhythm of his own running. Four miles every morning, same playlist, same view of the parking garage across the street. At thirty-seven, he'd mastered the art of motion without movement.

In the locker room, he swallowed his vitamin supplements with lukewarm water—D, B12, omega-3—a daily communion of health he performed religiously despite not believing in anything anymore. The mirror showed a man whose eyes refused to meet his own.

"You're like a zombie," she'd said three months ago, the night Mara left. "Just going through the motions. Dead inside."

He hadn't argued. Couldn't.

The office was its own kind of graveyard. David moved through meetings and presentations, his body present while his consciousness drifted elsewhere. He found himself at the water cooler more often, watching the bubbles rise, thinking how Mara had loved the way he looked at baseball games—really looked, with something like joy in his eyes. They'd had season tickets once. He couldn't remember the last time he'd watched a full inning.

Wednesday, the new client mentioned her son's baseball tournament. Something in David's chest twisted. He drove straight to the sporting goods store during lunch and bought a glove, then to the park where old men gathered for pickup games.

"You play?" one asked.

"Used to."

The ball hit his glove with a sound that unlocked something. The swing of the bat, the dirt under his cleats, the ridiculous joy of connecting with something real. For the first time in years, he wasn't running away from something—he was running toward it.

His phone buzzed. Mara. Maybe.

He didn't answer. Instead, he adjusted his cap and called out, "Hey! I got next."

The zombie had stopped running. And for the first time, he didn't want to start again.