The Corporate Tomb

Marcus felt like a zombie most mornings, but today the feeling was particularly acute as he stared at his reflection in the office bathroom mirror. His skin had that same gray pallor, his eyes the same vacant stare. At 42, he'd spent nearly two decades climbing the corporate pyramid, each step taking him further from the person he used to be.

The goldfish in the lobby aquarium swam in endless circles, and Marcus wondered if they felt the same peculiar kind of nausea he did—forward motion that never actually went anywhere. His ex-wife had kept their fish after the divorce. Sometimes he dreamed about that tank, the way the glass distorted everything behind it.

"Your report looks like someone chewed it up and spit it out," Chen said, dropping a folder on his desk. She was twenty-six, hungry in ways Marcus had forgotten how to be. "This spinach-colored background? Really?"

Marcus stared at the spreadsheet. He'd chosen the color because it reminded him of the garden his mother kept, back when dirt under his fingernails meant something honest. Now his hands were clean, his soul carefully sanitized.

"I'll fix it," he said, but the words felt distant, like someone else was speaking them.

That evening, Marcus didn't go home. Instead, he drove to the pet store and bought a single goldfish. He placed it on his boss's desk—a living thing in a room of the dead.

"Pyramid scheme," his father had called corporate America. Marcus finally understood. The real zombies weren't the ones in movies. They were the ones who forgot they were alive, who kept climbing because they couldn't remember how to do anything else.

He walked out with his phone already buzzing, the goldfish bowl heavy in his hands. For the first time in years, he felt something like hope—fragile as gossamer, but real.