The Zombie's Lament

The HDMI cable lay twisted on the hotel room floor like a dead snake. Mara stared at it for a full minute before realizing she'd been standing there, motionless, for ten minutes. That was the thing about being a corporate zombie—you learned to move through the world on autopilot, while inside, something vital was rotting.

She ordered room service: a spinach salad with papaya, something that felt like a desperate grasp at vitality. When it arrived, the papaya looked sad, its orange flesh dimpled and tired. She ate it standing up, feeling like a fraud.

Three years with Marcus, and this was what it had come to. Their marriage had become a series of cables—visible, invisible, emotional—tethering them together even as they drifted further apart. He'd stopped asking about her dreams months ago. She'd stopped telling him about the moments she felt alive, the tiny rebellions she enacted in boardrooms and elevators.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus. Her palms went slick with sweat against the screen. They were supposed to meet for dinner, discuss whether to renew the lease on their apartment. The apartment they'd once painted together at 3 AM, drunk on cheap wine and the certainty that they were building something permanent.

"Hello?" Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears.

"I can't make it," he said. Something in his tone—resigned, final. "I think we both know what we need to discuss."

She set the papaya down on the desk. The zombie inside her stirred.

"Yes," she said. "I think we do."

After hanging up, she looked at her open palm, the lines etched there like a map to somewhere she'd never actually been. Then she unplugged the HDMI cable from the wall, coiled it carefully, and placed it in the drawer. Tomorrow, she would start over. Tonight, she would simply be alive.