The Last Good Morning

The alarm screamed at 6:30 AM, and Marcus felt like a **zombie** before his feet even touched the floor. Forty-two years old, two divorces, and a mortgage that owned more of him than he owned of himself. He swallowed his daily **vitamin** D supplement—his doctor said it would help with the fatigue, but nothing helped anymore.

His cat, Barnaby, wound around his ankles, demanding breakfast. The only living thing that still seemed glad to see him.

"You're the lucky one," Marcus murmured, filling the bowl. "No corporate ladder. No pretending to care about Q3 projections."

The **cable** bill arrived yesterday, another monthly reminder of everything automatic and unexamined in his life. He'd meant to cancel it for years—streaming had replaced everything worth watching—but inertia was a powerful drug. Like the job. Like the marriage that had ended three years ago, not with fireworks but with the quiet erosion of two people who'd forgotten how to look at each other.

At the office, everyone was talking about **padel**. The new wellness initiative. "Team building through sport," the email had proclaimed. Marcus watched from his desk as his colleagues signed up with evangelical enthusiasm, as if hitting a ball against a wall could fix the hollow feeling in their chests.

"You in, Marcus?" Sarah from accounting asked, holding a clipboard.

He almost said yes. That was the problem—he almost always did. "Not this time," he heard himself say. "I've got... plans."

He didn't have plans. He had a sudden, crystalline awareness of every automatic yes that had carved the canyon his life had become.

That evening, Marcus canceled the cable. He called his mother for the first time in six weeks. He sat on his balcony with Barnaby purring in his lap, watching the sunset paint itself across the sky without documenting it for anyone.

The zombie opened his eyes. It was not a resurrection—it was quieter than that. Just a man, finally present for his own one wild and precious life.