The Dead Still Swim

You know you've become a corporate zombie when you find yourself at your sister's pool party, floating on your back at midnight, fully clothed in a blazer that cost more than your first car, wondering when exactly you died inside.

The water was cold, a shocking contrast to the humid Texas air. Maria's golden retriever, Buster, paced the pool's edge, whining softly. He could sense it—the rotting of my soul, the way I'd been hollowed out by fourteen-hour days and performance reviews that felt like eulogies.

"You going to swim or just float there like a corpse?"

I hadn't heard Elena approach. She was Maria's neighbor, a divorcee with laugh lines that crinkled around eyes that had seen too much. She sat at the edge, feet dangling in the water, cigarette glowing orange in the darkness.

"I'm contemplating the virtues of weightlessness," I said. "No emails. No expectations. Just physics keeping me from drowning."

She laughed, a low throaty sound. "That's dark, even for you."

"I'm not being dark. I'm being practical. The average zombie encounters more fulfillment than I did last quarter."

Elena stubbed out her cigarette. She slid into the pool, clothes and all, and suddenly she was treading water beside me, close enough that I could smell her perfume—something vanilla and expensive, like the life I was supposed to want but couldn't remember how to enjoy.

"My ex-husband called himself a zombie once," she said. "Right before he moved in with a twenty-three-year-old yoga instructor. Turns out he wasn't dead inside. He was just done with me."

"I'm not—" I started, but she was already moving away, swimming toward the deep end with smooth, practiced strokes.

Buster barked once, sharply, as if warning me. But I followed her anyway, leaving my blazer to sink like the compromise I'd been living for years. Some deaths, I realized, deserve a proper burial. Others demand resurrection.