What Zombies Eat

Sarah hadn't felt real since Thomas left. Three months of moving through her life like something undead — a zombie with a 401k and a downtown apartment. She'd sit at her desk checking her iPhone until the battery died, scrolling through posts of other people's lives, none of them touching her.

Her mother had always said you are what you eat, which was why Sarah found herself standing in her kitchen at 7 AM, staring down a container of wilted spinach and an orange that had seen better days. Something about the combination seemed right for how she felt: something that had once been vibrant, now slowly decaying.

"That's what zombies eat," Thomas had joked the night he told her he was leaving. "You're already dead, Sarah. You just haven't stopped moving yet."

She'd ripped the spinach leaves that night, standing at the counter in the dark, imagining each tear was something else. Now she stood doing the same thing, morning after morning, waiting for the hunger to return.

The orange was next. She peeled it slowly, watching the bright color against her pale hands. The zest sprayed up, sharp and citrus, and for a second — just a second — she smelled something real. Something that wasn't the paper-thin walls of her apartment or the forwarded emails from her mother asking if she was okay, if she was eating, if she'd thought about calling someone.

Her iPhone buzzed against the counter. A text from work: Q2 reports due.

Sarah looked at the phone, then at the spinach and orange arranged on her plate like some kind of funeral offering. She picked up a spinach leaf, folded it into her mouth. Bitter. Earthy. Alive. Then a segment of orange — the juice hit her tongue and she almost gasped.

For the first time in three months, something tasted like something.

She took another bite. And another. The zombie ate breakfast while the morning light came through the window, and somewhere inside her, something small and green began to grow.