The Palm Reader's Last Papaya

The zombie apocalypse didn't arrive with explosions or news alerts. It came through spreadsheets and quarterly projections, until we were all just walking dead in business casual. Elena sat across from me in the breakroom, cutting into a papaya with surgical precision. The juice stained her fingers like she'd been handling something vital.

'You have the hands of someone who stopped asking questions years ago,' she said, without looking up. 'But your palm—your palm tells me you're waiting for something to happen.'

I watched her slice through the fruit's flesh, each piece falling into a careful arrangement. She was the corporate psychic, hired during a team-building initiative I'd missed while at my mother's funeral. Now she read palms in the cafeteria, charging cigarettes and contraband coffee.

'Read my palm then,' I said, surprising myself. 'Tell me something I don't know.'

Elena wiped her sticky fingers on a napkin and reached across the table. Her skin was warm against mine, almost embarrassingly intimate. She traced the lines on my palm with the same attention she'd given the papaya.

'You'll die alone,' she said simply. 'But not for a long time. And there will be moments—like this one, right now—where you'll feel something real.' She smiled, suddenly tired. 'The papaya's the last fresh thing in this building. Supply chain issues.'

I ate a piece she offered me. It tasted like possibility, like something that could ripen or rot depending on who touched it next. Outside, the corporate zombies shuffled to their next meeting, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. But in that breakroom, with sticky fingers and papaya juice on my lip, I felt something wake up inside me that I'd thought was dead.

'What do you see when you look at your own palm?' I asked.

Elena's smile faded. 'Same thing I see in everyone's now. The same ending. But sometimes—sometimes there's fruit involved.'