Midnight at the Pyramid

Marcus stood at the kitchen counter at 2 AM, mechanically packing spinach leaves into a blender like someone whose body had outlived their intentions. Above him, the ceiling fan spun lazily, slicing through humid air that still smelled of the argument seven hours earlier.

"You're a zombie," Sarah had said, not unkindly, which was worse. "You died three years ago and nobody told you."

She'd left two hours ago. Now he stood in the apartment they'd shared for six years, watching water drip from a leak in the ceiling that had started the same week they'd moved in. The building superintendent kept promising to fix it. Marcus kept believing him, just like he believed staying late at the firm would eventually matter, that climbing one more rung of the corporate pyramid would finally feel like achievement rather than motion.

The internet cable snaked across the floor, tethering him to the building's ancient infrastructure. He'd tripped over it twice tonight while pacing.

His phone buzzed on the counter. A message from his boss: "System failure at the data center. Can you remote in?" Marcus stared at it until the screen went dark, then powered the phone off completely.

He drank the spinach smoothie standing over the sink, the taste sharp and alive in his mouth. It was the first real thing he'd tasted in days. Somewhere in the city, Sarah was probably asleep or maybe lying awake in her sister's guest room, and he didn't know which. He didn't know anything anymore except that for the first time in three years, he wasn't a zombie.

The water kept dripping. Marcus listened to it, counted the intervals between splashes, and didn't move toward his laptop.