Zombie Tides

Maya stood before her bathroom mirror at 6 AM, the fluorescent light exposing dark circles beneath eyes that hadn't known real rest in six months.

The zombie stared back at her—a creature of hollow routine, clocking in at the investment firm where she moved other people's money around like meaningless chess pieces. Her colleagues were the same. Animated corpses in designer suits, running on espresso and crushing student loans, all secretly terrified the bull market would finally collapse and leave them exposed.

The water from her morning shower couldn't wash away the numbness anymore. She was drowning under the weight of expectations, her mother's voice still echoing from their last call: "Your father and I sacrificed everything for your degree, Maya. Make it count."

Make it count. As if her worth could be calculated in compound interest and quarterly returns.

Then came Tuesday's restructuring meeting—Dean from M&A, eyes hollow as he explained how they'd consolidate departments and eliminate "redundancies." "Synergy," he kept saying. "Streamlining for efficiency." Pure bull, and everyone in the room knew it. Maya watched her coworkers nod like bobbleheads, their mortgages and car payments speaking louder than their dignity. She felt something essential crack inside her—some final tether to hope snapping like an old cable under too much tension.

That night, she sat on her fire escape with a bottle of wine, watching the city pulse far below. The zombie apocalypse had already happened, she realized with cold clarity. It wasn't violent or cinematic—it was quiet and beige and filled with performance reviews and happy hours where nobody was actually happy.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Ethan, the analyst from the fifteenth floor who always noticed when she was spiraling, who left extra napkins on her desk when she cried in the breakroom. "You okay?"

Maya stared at the message until the screen dimmed. For three years, she'd been drowning, tethered to a life she loathed by invisible cables of obligation and fear and the crushing weight of other people's dreams.

"I want to come up," she typed back, fingers trembling.

The zombie found its heartbeat.