The Riddle of the Walking Dead

Maya stood before the bathroom mirror at 3 AM, studying the woman staring back. Eyes hollow, skin pale — the perfect corporate sphinx, she thought bitterly. Her life had become a riddle she couldn't solve: how does someone with everything feel like nothing?

Downstairs, her ex-boyfriend Jamie's cable show played on the TV he'd left behind. Some true crime network always running in the background, white noise for her insomnia. She'd been dating Jamie for three years, living together for two, until he'd announced last month that he needed "space." Whatever that meant. Probably space to screw his coworker, that clever little fox with the red hair and the innocent act.

Maya opened the refrigerator. Light spilled onto the dark kitchen floor. Inside, a container of spinach liquefied in the corner — she'd bought it weeks ago, intending to cook healthy meals, intending to take care of herself. Intentions. They rotted faster than vegetables.

She slammed the fridge door.

At 7:45 AM, she joined the zombie march to the subway. Business people in suits, faces buried in phones, shuffling toward their cubicles. Maya used to mock shows about the undead. Now she understood. The real zombies didn't eat brains — they ate spreadsheets, performance reviews, the hollow promise of someday.

Her phone buzzed. Jamie. "Can we talk?"

Maya watched the subway approach. The wind from the tunnel whipped her hair across her face. For weeks she'd been waiting for this message. Now she felt nothing. Maybe that was the answer to her sphinx's riddle. Not love or hate or even closure. Just the slow, steady work of becoming someone new.

She typed back: "No."

Deleted it. Typed again: "I don't think so."

The train arrived. Maya stepped on, leaving her message unsent. Behind her, the doors closed, and she moved forward into the tunnel, into whatever came next.