Pyramids in the Afternoon

Marcus stood before the floor-to-ceiling window on the thirty-seventh floor, watching the city blur beneath him like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. He hadn't slept properly in three weeks. His friend Sarah had stopped calling after the fifth unanswered voicemail.

"You're becoming a zombie," she'd said the last time they spoke. "And not the fun kind that eats brains. The corporate kind that eats souls."

She wasn't wrong. Marcus caught his reflection in the glass—hollow eyes, skin the color of old paper, a suit that cost more than his first car but fit him like a shroud. The corporate pyramid scheme stretched below him: executives at the apex, middle managers like himself squeezed in the middle, recent grads forming the base that would inevitably crumble.

His phone buzzed. Another Slack notification from the channel nobody actually read. The pyramid demanded its sacrifices.

Marcus walked to the break room instead. That's where he saw it—a corporate motivational poster of a literal pyramid, overlaid with words like "SYNERGY" and "GRIND." Someone had taped a photograph to the bottom corner: a golden retriever puppy, head tilted, eyes full of the kind of unconditional love that capitalism couldn't monetize.

The dog's name, written in sharpie, was "Buster."

Marcus remembered his own dog from childhood—how Buster would wait by the door, tail thumping against the baseboard, how the dog had died the summer before Marcus left for college. How Marcus had promised to visit his mother more often, how that promise had dissolved into quarterly phone calls and annual holiday obligations.

The friend who had truly known him wasn't Sarah. It had been that dog.

He returned to his desk, closed his laptop, and walked out. The pyramid would still be there tomorrow. The zombie could wait. Marcus had a mother to call, and maybe—just maybe—a shelter to visit afterward.