Running from Zombie Hours

The fluorescent lights hum like dying insects as Marcus stares at his reflection in the office window. He's been running on autopilot for three years, moving through meetings and emails like a zombie in a tailored suit.

The glass shows him everything he's become—hollow eyes, slumped shoulders, a man who forgot how to want anything real.

Outside, the sun is painting the sky in strokes of tangerine and burning gold. Marcus watches the colors bleed across the Manhattan skyline, remembering how Julia used to drag him onto their apartment roof at dusk. "Look at that orange," she'd say, pointing at the sunset like it was something she'd personally arranged.

That was before she stopped seeing anything at all.

The corporate gym is empty when Marcus arrives at 7 PM. He runs until his lungs burn, until the treadmill's rhythm drowns out the thoughts he's been avoiding all day. Three miles in, he realizes the truth: he's not running toward anything. He's just running away from the realization that his marriage died six months ago and nobody bothered to bury it.

Julia is sitting at the dining table when he returns, her face illuminated by the harsh white glow of her phone. She looks up, and something in her eyes confirms what he's suspected for weeks.

They're both zombies now—two animated corpses going through motions they've forgotten how to feel.

"The sunset was beautiful tonight," she says, her voice flat.

Marcus nods. "I saw it."

Neither of them mentions the orange juice glass that's been sitting on the counter since morning. Neither mentions the running shoes by the door, or the fact that they haven't made love in four months, or the divorce papers hidden in his desk drawer.

They just move through another evening in a house that stopped being a home the moment they both stopped pretending to care.

Tomorrow, Marcus thinks, he'll finally say the words out loud. Tomorrow, he'll stop running from the truth that's been chasing him through every sunrise and sunset, every orange dawn and purple twilight. Tomorrow, he'll stop being a zombie in his own life.

But tomorrow, he knows, is just another word for never.