The Last Supper

Maya stood at the kitchen counter, knife poised over a ripe papaya. The fruit's flesh was the color of sunset, impossibly vibrant against the gray winter light filtering through their apartment window. Behind her, Richard sat at the table, staring at nothing—a real, breathing zombie, his soul hollowed out by three years of corporate burnout.

"I bought fresh spinach," she said, not turning around. "Remember how we used to make those salads? Before you became... this?"

Richard blinked slowly. The fluorescent office lights had stolen the spark from his eyes. "I'm not hungry."

"You're never hungry anymore."

Maya sliced through the papaya, its juice running sweet and tropical over her fingers. She thought about their wedding day, how Richard had twirled her across the dance floor, alive and present. Now he moved through their apartment like a ghost, asleep before his head hit the pillow, gone before she woke.

The zombie metaphor wasn't original, but it fit. The walking dead.

"Maya, please. I'm tired."

"You're always tired." She turned to face him. "I met someone. At the farmer's market where I bought this papaya. He asked me about the spinach varieties. He knew the difference between baby spinach and mature leaves. He was... present."

Richard's eyes focused, really focused, for the first time in months. "You're leaving me?"

"I already left, Richard. I've been gone for a while. You were just too asleep to notice."

She placed the papaya and spinach on a plate, a colorful offering to a dying god. Then she took off her ring and set it on the counter.

"The lease is paid through March. You should eat something. You look like a zombie."

Maya walked out with nothing but her phone and the taste of papaya still sweet on her tongue. Some endings aren't tragic—they're just the moment a living person stops pretending to be dead too.