Dead Weight Walking

The email arrived at 6 PM on a Friday: mandatory team building at the padel courts tomorrow. Elena stared at her screen, feeling like a zombie who'd forgotten how to die. Three months since the layoffs, and she was still here, still grateful, still hollowed out by survival.

She'd been outfoxed by her own ambition. Marcus, that sphinx of a VP with his cryptic feedback and unreadable expressions, had kept her while cutting everyone she'd hired. Now she managed teams that didn't exist, projects that were zombie initiatives—dead things walking because no one had the heart to stake them through the heart.

'You're resilient,' he'd told her, his eyes flat behind rimless glasses.

The courts were humid, smelled of rubber and other people's sweat. Her colleagues shouted, laughed too loud, their competitive energy desperate. Elena stood near the chain-link fence, watching a real fox emerge from the brush beyond the parking lot. It moved with deliberate purpose, ignoring them completely.

'Good game, E!' Sarah called, wiping sweat from her forehead. They'd all been paired off strategically. Marcus played against the new hire, measuring him.

Elena watched the fox disappear into the woods. Something tightened in her chest. She was thirty-five, outstanding performer, two promotions in five years. And she'd never felt more expendable.

Monday morning, she resigned. Marcus's expression didn't change. 'Unexpected,' was all he said.

That afternoon, she saw another fox behind the grocery store. This one paused, looked directly at her with eyes that held zero obligation to explain itself, then continued on its way.

She stood there in the parking lot, finally breathing.

The sphinx had never been riddles. The zombies had never been the projects.

The only dead thing walking had been her.