The Bullshit Artist's Last Spinach Leaf

Marcus stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror—fifty-three years old and already resembling the corporate **zombie** he'd secretly mocked for two decades. The fluorescent lighting caught the gray in his beard, the hollows beneath eyes that had seen too many spreadsheets and not enough sunrises.

His fedora—that **hat** he'd worn since his twenties, back when he thought affectations made a man interesting—rested on the counter beside his phone. Sarah had left him six months ago, taking the actual **cat** but leaving her voicemails, which he still played sometimes while drinking alone.

'You're full of **bull**, Marcus,' she'd said the night she walked out. She hadn't meant it as a compliment, though his manager certainly would have taken it as one. Marcus had built an entire career on bullshit, on finding the right words to make incompetence sound like strategy, on convincing rooms full of people that failure was actually an opportunity.

He looked down at his lunch: a sad container of wilted **spinach** that had been sitting in the breakroom fridge since Tuesday. Even his attempts at self-care felt performative. He was supposed to eat this. He was supposed to care about his cholesterol, his retirement fund, his personal brand.

Instead, he flushed the spinach down the toilet, put on his hat, and walked out of the building without forwarding his calls. He drove to the coast and sat on a bench watching the waves until sunset, and for the first time in twenty years, Marcus didn't feel like the living dead at all.

He felt remarkably, terrifyingly awake.