The Dead Season

The pool sat still at dusk, a turquoise mirror reflecting the first stars. Elena floated on her back, the water holding her up like an indifferent lover. She watched the palm fronds sway above—gentle, rhythmic, everything she wasn't.

Marcus sat at the edge, feet submerged. They'd come to Cabo to save their marriage, or at least to document its death with better lighting.

"You know what I thought about today?" Elena said, her voice rippling across the water.

Marcus didn't turn. "What."

"Zombies. Not the movie kind. The real kind. People who keep moving after whatever made them human is gone." She treaded water now, facing him. "Us. We're zombies, Marcus. We've been eating each other's brains for years, but somehow we're still walking around."

He finally looked at her. His eyes were flat. "That's your vacation speech? Really?"

"It's my honesty speech. Vacation was just the location." She swam to the edge, pulled herself up. Water slicked her skin like a second, colder existence. "I applied for that transfer. To Seattle."

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.

"You didn't," he said.

"I did."

"We have a mortgage. A dog. A life."

"We have a routine. There's a difference." She reached for his hand, but he pulled away. "I'm tired of being a zombie, Marcus. I want to feel something again. Even if it hurts."

Marcus stood up, water dripping from his calves onto the concrete. Dark spots that quickly faded.

"So that's it? You're just... leaving?"

"I'm asking you to come with me. But I'm going either way."

The palm fronds kept swaying, indifferent to everything. The water lapped against the pool's edges, a slow, hypnotic rhythm.

Marcus looked at his wedding ring, then at her. For the first time in three years, something flickered behind his eyes.

"Seattle," he said. "It rains there."

"I know."

"I hate rain."

"You'll feel it though," she said softly. "That's something."

He didn't say yes. But he didn't say no. And in the space between, something began to stir in the water between them—not alive yet, perhaps, but no longer entirely dead either.