Last Man Standing

The fedora sat on the corner of my desk like a judge's gavel—silent, accusing. I hadn't worn it since the funeral, since before I started losing my hair in clumps that clogged the shower drain like dead leaves. Forty-two and my body was already deciding which parts were expendable.

Marcus noticed it first. We were standing in the breakroom, nursing coffee that tasted like burnt regret, when he pointed at my reflection in the microwave door.

"You look like hell, Dave."

"We all do," I said. "That's the point."

Marcus laughed, but his eyes were flat— shark eyes, predator eyes. He'd been with the company seven years, and somewhere along the way, the job had hollowed him out. We were all zombies now, really. The corporate pyramid above us demanded fresh flesh, and we kept climbing, kept feeding, even as something essential rotted away inside.

"I've got a proposition," Marcus said, lowering his voice. "Side thing. Multi-level. You and me, we build a network, we climb our own pyramid for once instead of someone else's."

I thought about Sarah, about how she'd stopped asking about my day because she already knew. About the hat in my closet, gathering dust beside the other versions of myself I'd discarded to become this—functioning, productive, half-alive.

"What's the product?" I asked.

"Hope, Dave. That's all anyone's selling."

The realization hit me like cold water: Marcus wasn't recruiting me. He was already gone. Whatever remained was just running patterns, chasing pyramids that dissolved when you got close enough.

I put the hat on that evening. Sarah looked up from her book, really looked at me, for the first time in months.

"You going somewhere?"

"No," I said. "I think I'm finally staying."