Post-Zombie Sunday

Mara moved through her apartment like something that had forgotten how to be alive. Three months after the divorce, and she was still operating in that strange suspended state between the person she used to be and whatever came next. Her coworkers had started calling her a zombie behind her back—she'd heard them in the breakroom, laughing about how she'd stare at spreadsheets for hours without blinking. They meant it as an insult, but there was something comforting about it. Zombies didn't have to feel the weight of their own loneliness.

She found herself in the bathroom again, standing before the mirror. Elena's expensive hair products still lined the shelf—conditioner made from crushed pearls, serums that promised eternal youth. Mara ran her fingers through her own graying hair, now grown past her shoulders for the first time in years. Elena had always hated it long. Said it made her look soft. So now it grew like rebellion.

The cat—Elena's cat, technically, though she'd left him behind—wove between Mara's ankles, meowing for breakfast. Barnaby had stopped eating after Elena left, the same way Mara had stopped sleeping. But somewhere along the way, they'd both started functioning again. Not living, exactly. Just functioning.

Mara stepped into the shower, letting the water run cold before it warmed. She'd forgotten to pay the cable bill again. Probably for the third month in a row. The television had gone dark, and instead of calling to fix it, she'd found herself reading actual books, the kind with cracked spines and yellowed pages she'd picked up from the free box outside the used bookstore. Without the endless drone of news and reality shows, the apartment had grown quiet. Terrifyingly, wonderfully quiet.

Something about the water made her think of drowning—not in the morbid way, but in the way that lets you shed everything you're carrying. She stood there until her fingers pruned, until the hot water began to run cold, until Barnaby scratched at the bathroom door, demanding to be fed.

Mara turned off the water and stepped out, wrapping herself in a towel. Her hair dripped onto the tile. In the mirror, her reflection looked back—not quite dead anymore. Not quite alive either. But something in between, and maybe that was okay for now. Maybe being a zombie was just what healing looked like from the outside.