The Zombies We Become

The alarm screamed at 5:00 AM, as it had every morning for three years. Emma dragged herself from bed, movements stiff, automatic—that peculiar shuffle of the corporate undead. She'd stopped asking when the numbness had started. Somewhere between the quarterly reports and the endless Zoom meetings, she'd become a zombie in a blazer, hollowed out by the relentless grind of a job that had stopped meaning anything years ago.

The pool at the Y was always empty at this hour. She slipped into the water, the cold shock briefly piercing the fog. Swimming laps became the only time she felt anything approaching real—the rhythmic stroke, the forced breath, the silence beneath the surface where emails couldn't reach. But this morning, her thoughts kept surfacing.

David's running shoes sat by the door, worn thin from his dawn marathons. He said it was for fitness, but she knew better. He was running from something—maybe their marriage, maybe the question he'd asked last night over takeout neither of them tasted: "Remember when we used to talk about things that mattered?"

She'd practically sprinted to the bedroom after that.

Now, in the locker room, she caught her reflection. Dark circles. Eyes flat and distant. A corpse in a swimsuit.

Her phone buzzed—a message from David: "Coffee after your swim? I need to tell you something."

Emma stared at the screen, heart suddenly hammering against ribs she'd forgotten could feel anything at all. The zombie narrative was getting old. Maybe it was time to stop swimming through days on autopilot. Maybe it was time to stop running.

She texted back: "I'm coming home."

The water had been warm. The real terror would be stepping into the cold.