Zombies in the Orange Glow

The television flickered—a dead channel, gray static—because somewhere in the building's ancient labyrinth, the cable had finally given up. Not that it mattered. They hadn't watched anything real in months.

Marcus stood at the stove, stirring a pot of wilting spinach. The kitchen filled with the bitter smell of it, of their tired life together. Six years of dinners eaten in silence, in separate rooms, in the same apartment.

"You're like a zombie," Elena had said last night. Not angry. Just tired. Her voice cracked on the word. "Just walking through it. The job, the marriage, yourself."

He hadn't disagreed. What was there to say?

Now the evening sun poured through the window—this impossible orange light that made everything look like the end of the world, or maybe just the end of something smaller. The refrigerator hummed. A siren wailed from somewhere downtown.

Marcus turned off the burner. The spinach sat there, ruined.

In the bedroom, he found Elena packing. Just a small bag. She wasn't taking everything—just what she'd brought into this marriage, plus whatever had become hers along the way.

"I'm not coming back," she said softly. She didn't look at him.

He nodded. He knew. He'd known for months, maybe years. The cable had been cutting out for weeks. The spinach had been overcooked every Tuesday. They'd been living like ghosts haunting their own life.

The orange light faded to purple, then gray. She left. The door clicked shut, gentle as a secret.

Marcus stood in the kitchen. He looked at the spinach, at the dead television, at the empty chair across from him. For the first time in years, he felt something. It hurt. It hurt like hell.

And that, he realized, was the point.

He threw the spinach in the trash. Then he called the cable company.

"I'd like to upgrade," he said. "Something better."

Outside, the city lights flickered on. Somewhere, somehow, something was starting.