The Last Morning on Court

Marcus swallowed the B-complex **vitamin** with his lukewarm coffee, the yellow pill dissolving on his tongue like his ambition had somewhere around age forty. At 7:30 AM, the **padel** court at the club was already occupied by men who looked exactly like him—microfiber shirts, expensive watches, marriages held together by shared mortgages and separate bedrooms.

He adjusted his grip on the racket, watching the ball bounce off the glass wall. His opponent, David, was ranting about his startup's Series B round, his eyes manic with the desperate energy of a man who hadn't slept since 2019. Marcus nodded at appropriate intervals, feeling the familiar sensation of being a passenger in his own body. A **zombie** in premium activewear, moving through motions that once meant something—success, achievement, the American dream distilled into a Thursday morning doubles match.

The ball sailed past him. He didn't lunge for it.

"You okay, man?" David asked, pausing mid-serve. "You seem... somewhere else."

Marcus looked at his hands—trembling slightly from the caffeine, from the lack of sleep, from the crushing weight of recognizing that this was it. This was the rest of his life. Tennis clubs and vitamins and conversations about venture capital while the world burned outside the glass walls.

"I'm fine," Marcus said, and the lie was so practiced he almost believed it himself. He bent to retrieve the ball, his knees cracking, and wondered if he'd ever actually been alive, or if he'd just been exceptionally good at pretending.