The Zombie in the Mirror

Margot caught her own reflection in the office window at 2 AM—face pale, eyes hollow, moving through the open plan like the walking dead. She'd become something else this past year, hollowed out by the hours, the endless deals, the bullshit that piled up faster than she could shovel it away.

Her iPhone buzzed against her palm, a ghost from another life. Marcus's name lit the screen for the third time tonight. She stared at it, thumbs hovering, then let it ring to voicemail. Another night, another 'I'll call you back' that meant something had died between them, slowly and quietly, while she'd been too busy building someone else's empire to notice.

The bull market had been their god, and she'd been its most devoted priestess. 'Just one more year,' she'd told Marcus, as if time were a currency they could save and spend later. Now she stood alone on the forty-third floor, the city sprawling beneath her like a galaxy that had forgotten how to shine, realizing she'd traded everything for numbers on a screen that meant nothing.

Her thumb found his last message—a photo of them at the beach last summer, before everything went wrong. Before she'd started disappearing into her work, becoming this creature who checked emails during sex, who measured love in quarterly returns, who'd forgotten how to be human somewhere between the elevator and her desk.

The zombie in the glass wasn't him leaving. It was her, already gone.