The Corporate Afterlife

The office tower rose like a glass pyramid against the smog-choked sky, its apex disappearing into the clouds. Elena stared out from the thirty-fifth floor, watching lightning fork across the horizon, a jagged promise of something other than this fluorescent purgatory.

Her iPhone buzzed—another Slack notification from Gary, who'd been dead inside since before the merger. She ignored it, just as she'd ignored her husband's texts for three days. The hair she'd found in the sink this morning—more gray than brown—had done something to her. Or maybe it was the realization that she'd spent fifteen years climbing a pyramid built on other people's graves.

"You coming to the meeting?" asked Marcus, the new hire. He was twenty-five, with the sort of skin that had never known stress. He looked at her with that hungry, living eyes expression.

Elena thought about the quarterly review she'd prepped last night—a zombie shambling through slides about synergy and optimization, speaking words that meant nothing to anyone. She'd become one of them. The walking dead who believed they were still alive.

"No," she said, surprising herself. "No, I don't think I am."

Marcus's eyes widened. "But Gary said—"

"Gary's a zombie," she said, feeling something crack open in her chest. "And I think I've been one too long."

She stood up, gathered her things—only her phone and the photograph of her daughter that she kept facing inward, away from the corporate art. Outside, lightning struck again, closer this time. The whole building seemed to shudder.

Her phone buzzed continuously now. Gary, her boss, her husband asking if she'd pick up wine on the way home. The wine. The routine. The performance of a life she'd stopped wanting years ago.

She walked to the window. Below, the city grid stretched outward like a circuit board designed by someone who'd forgotten what it was supposed to power. Thirty-five floors up, she could almost believe there was something beyond this. Some place where you didn't have to sell hours for survival.

The thought struck her like lightning: what if she just—stopped?

Elena pressed the power button on her phone. The screen went dark. In the black glass of the window, she saw her reflection—gray hair, eyes that looked alive for the first time in years, the ghost of a smile that wasn't for anyone's benefit.

Behind her, the meeting room door opened. Gary called her name. He sounded annoyed.

She didn't turn. Instead, she watched the storm approach, feeling the electricity in the air, wondering what it would be like to finally be something other than a zombie climbing a pyramid that led nowhere at all.