Terminal Velocity

The last thing Elena expected to find in her husband's home office was a detailed spreadsheet of their marriage's declining returns. She'd come looking for the charging cable for her phone, but found instead a document labeled "ROI Analysis: Year Seven."

Their golden retriever, Buster, nosed at her ankle, sensing the shift in atmospheric pressure. He'd been sleeping more lately, the same heavy, defeated sleep that had claimed Elena after Mark moved out three weeks ago.

She scrolled through the spreadsheet. Row after row of disappointments, calculated with cold precision. Missed date nights. Declined intimacy. Emotional unavailability. All quantified, graphed, analyzed like the quarterly reports he stayed late to prepare.

The padel court sat empty in their backyard, a monument to the hobby they'd taken up together at the marriage counselor's suggestion. "Shared activity," Dr. Chen had called it. "Something new, something fun." Instead it had become another arena for Mark's competitive streak, another way to keep score.

Elena had gone through the motions for so long she'd begun to feel like a zombie inhabiting her own life—walking, talking, cooking, fucking, all on autopilot while her actual self watched from somewhere far away, screaming silently.

Now Buster whimpered at the door, wanting his dinner. The cable dangled from Mark's desk charger, a lifeline she no longer needed.

She closed the spreadsheet without saving. Opened her phone. Sent a single text to Mark: "I want the house. You can have the paddleboard."

Buster's tail gave a tentative thump against the cabinet. For the first time in three weeks, the pressure in Elena's chest eased enough to let her breathe.

They'd become strangers who happened to share a mortgage, a dog, and a slowly decaying padel court. But the zombie had awakened. And she was hungry.