What the Dead Eat for Lunch

Elena had been dead for three years, though no one at the accounting firm had noticed. She moved through the hallways like the rest of them—eyes glazed, feet dragging, the fluorescent lights humming overhead in a frequency that kept them all in a state of suspended animation. A zombie in sensible heels.

She ate lunch in the breakroom alone, as usual. The spinach salad she'd brought from home sat wilting in its plastic container, leaves going limp and dark like her own will to live. Across from her, Gary from HR was microwaving something that smelled of despair and processed cheese.

"You look tired," Gary said, which was zombie-speak for I recognize my own condition in you.

Elena speared a spinach leaf. "I'm fine."

The truth was, she'd been cultivating a secret rebellion. In her apartment, she'd been growing a papaya plant from seeds she'd saved from a fruit she'd bought on impulse during a rare weekend trip to the farmers' market. The plant was three feet tall now, its broad leaves stretching toward the window, uncompromisingly alive. It was the only thing that made her feel something anymore.

Last night, the first fruit had appeared. Small, green, impossibly precious.

"I'm thinking about quitting," she said suddenly. The words hung in the recycled air.

Gary laughed, a dry, cracking sound. "We all think about it. That's why they give us the free coffee."

"No, really. I'm going to do it."

She thought of her papaya plant, the way new leaves unfurled like slow revelations, the impossible sweetness of fruit she'd grown with her own hands. She thought about how she'd become a zombie by accident—mortgage, expectations, the slow erosion of joy—and how staying dead was a choice she made every morning.

"Good luck with that," Gary said, turning back to his microwave.

Elena ate the last of her spinach. It was bitter, earthy, unmistakably alive. Tomorrow, she would bring fresh papaya to work. Tomorrow, she would quit. Today, she had to finish the spreadsheet.

The dead don't notice change until it's already happened. But sometimes, even zombies decide to wake up.