The Last Game at Sunset

The zombie state had set in gradually—the way autumn does, until you wake one morning and realize the trees are bare and you can't remember summer at all. Marcus moved through his days in finance autopilot, spreadsheets blurring into blurred dinners into restless sleep.

"You coming?" Elena's text read. "Padel at 6."

Elena. His oldest friend, the one who'd known him before the corporate reclamation project. They'd been playing padel together since college, back when their biggest problems were hangovers and heartbreak.

The court sat on the roof of the rec center, the city's golden hour wrapping around them in amber light. Elena was already there, stretching against the chain-link fence, her silhouette sharp against the sinking sun. She looked tired—not surface tired, but bone tired.

"You look like shit," she said, grinning. It was their standard greeting.

"Feel like a zombie," he admitted, which was more vulnerability than he'd allowed himself in months.

They played in that comfortable silence that old friends earn, the rubber ball cracking against walls, their movements mirroring years of shared rhythm. But something felt off. Elena's usually sharp returns were sloppy. She kept checking her phone on the bench between games.

"I'm moving to Portland," she said during a water break. The words hung in the cooling air like smoke.

"Oh." Marcus set down his racquet. "When?"

"Two weeks. Got a job offer. New start."

He nodded. Of course she was leaving. Everyone left eventually. Or maybe he was the one leaving, slowly, piece by piece, his zombie heart beating slower each year.

"Hey," she said softly. "You can still come visit. We'll find a court there."

"Yeah." He forced a smile. "Sure."

They finished their game without another word about it, playing until the automatic lights flickered on and their shadows stretched long across the court. Afterward, they sat on the bench watching the city below, the traffic streaming like glowing cables on the black velvet highway, connecting millions of people going somewhere else.

"You ever feel like we're all just..." Marcus gestured vaguely at the city. "Plugged in? Something feeding on us while we sleepwalk through our lives?"

Elena studied him for a long moment. "That's the depression talking, Mars. Or the midlife crisis. Either way—you're still here. That's not nothing."

She reached over and squeezed his shoulder, her grip firm, anchor-warm. The touch startled him. He realized it had been months since anyone had touched him without flinching.

"I'm not gone yet," she said. "Neither are you."

They sat there as the sky deepened to purple, two friends suspended between what was lost and what might still be possible, neither zombie nor fully alive, but still showing up.