Dead Things Walking

Mark stood in the doorway, watching Sarah move through the kitchen with the practiced, mechanical precision of a zombie. Her eyes had that glazed-over look he'd come to recognize—the look that meant she was somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere that wasn't their apartment or their marriage.

"The meeting ran late," he said, setting his briefcase on the floor. Their golden retriever, Buster, padded over, tail wagging tentatively, sensing the thickness in the air. Mark knelt, burying his face in the dog's warm fur. At least someone was still happy to see him.

"Hmm," Sarah responded, already turning back to the stove. Her back was a wall of indifference.

The corporate bullshit had been especially toxic today—three hours of Peterson grandstanding about "synergy" and "paradigm shifts" while the department hemorrhaged talent. Mark had sat there, nodding at all the right moments, feeling himself drain away, cell by cell. He was thirty-eight and had already become a ghost haunting his own life.

He fed Buster, watching the dog eat with simple, pure pleasure. No existential dread, no crushing weight of expectations. Just food, warmth, the occasional belly rub. Sometimes Mark thought Buster was the only honest thing left in his world.

"We need to talk," Sarah said suddenly, her knife hovering over a bell pepper.

Mark's chest tightened. "About what?"

"About how I haven't felt real in two years." She turned to face him, and for the first time in months, her eyes focused. "About how we're both just walking around like dead things pretending to be alive."

The bull in the room had finally been named—no more avoiding the enormity of what they'd become, no more pretending their marriage was anything but a hollowed-out structure they inhabited separately.

Buster whined, pressing against Mark's leg, and in that moment, something cracked open inside him. Perhaps it was time to stop being the living dead. Perhaps it was time, finally, to begin.