The Last Shift

Maya stared at her reflection in the office bathroom mirror at 2:17 AM, eyes hollow, skin gray as a corpse. She'd become a **zombie** of her own making—sleepwalking through twelve-hour shifts as a senior analyst at a firm that commoditized human suffering into quarterly projections.

The fluorescent lights hummed their eternal song. She thought about her daughter's **goldfish**, Swimmer, who had somehow survived three weeks without food while they were on vacation. Maya had envied that fish. Its simplicity. Its ability to just exist without questioning the point of it all.

"You're still here?"

She jumped. David leaned against the doorframe, his tie undone, hair wild. He was the one person in this fluorescent hell who still seemed human. They'd been dancing around something for six months—a shared look in meetings, hands brushing near the coffee machine, the weight of unspoken things filling silence like smoke.

"Just finishing the Morrison projections," she said. "Michael says they're urgent."

"**Bull**." David stepped closer. "Michael's been golfing in Cabo since Wednesday. He just likes knowing we're here suffering. It's his power trip."

Maya's fingers trembled as she fixed her lipstick. "I need this job, David. The mortgage, Emma's tuition—"

"I know." His voice softened. "I know what it's like to carry that weight. Like a **bear** on your chest, crushing you slowly while everyone asks if you're okay and you smile and say yes because that's what you're supposed to do."

She looked at him then—really looked at him. At the lines around his eyes, the way his shoulders sagged, the same exhaustion she felt reflected in his posture. They were both drowning, both pretending they could breathe.

"What if we couldn't?" she whispered.

"Couldn't what?"

"Couldn't do this anymore. What if we just... stopped?"

David reached for her hand, his fingers warm against her cold skin. "Then maybe we'd finally start living."

Outside, the first hints of dawn painted the sky. Maya thought about Swimmer the goldfish, floating in his bowl, existing without purpose but existing nonetheless. She thought about the bear—the weight of expectations, of shoulds, of carrying everyone else's definitions of success.

She squeezed David's hand. "I think I'm done being a zombie."

"Yeah," he said, and for the first time in years, she saw something like hope in someone's eyes. "Me too."

They walked out together as the sun rose, leaving their badges on their desks, stepping into the morning light like survivors.