The Last Orange

The conference room smelled of stale coffee and collective despair. Sarah watched her team—once brilliant, now reduced to hollow-eyed automatones—nodding along as management announced another round of layoffs. They were all zombies now, really. Not the flesh-eating kind from movies, but something worse: people who'd forgotten how to want anything beyond survival.

She caught Marcus's eye across the table. He looked the way she felt—like someone who'd been bearing the weight of this place for too long, his shoulders permanently curved from carrying disappointments he couldn't name. They'd had something once, back when they still believed this job meant something. Now whatever existed between them was buried under layoffs that never ended and projects that died before they began.

After the meeting, Sarah found herself in the break room, peeling an orange she'd brought from home. The spray of citrus hit the air, sharp and bright, everything this place wasn't. Marcus appeared in the doorway, watching her.

"I haven't had a fresh orange in years," he said quietly.

She held out a segment. He took it, their fingers brushing for the first time in months. The small contact nearly undid her.

"Remember when we used to care?" Marcus asked, the orange wedge suspended between them. "When we thought we could actually change things here?"

Sarah felt something crack open in her chest. "I think that's the worst part," she said. "Not that we're trapped. But that we forgot we were ever supposed to be free."

The fluorescent lights hummed. The zombie workforce shuffled past their door. Outside, the sky bruised purple with coming night. But in this moment, with the scent of orange between them and something like hope stirring in Marcus's eyes, Sarah felt something bearable again.

They'd still be here tomorrow. But maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't have to be dead while living.