Zombies of the Glass Tower

The elevator reflected my face back at me—gray skin, eyes like two burned-out bulbs, mouth hanging slightly open. I looked like a **zombie**, which was appropriate since that's exactly what I'd become. Three years of corporate litigation had hollowed me out from the inside, leaving just a shell that showed up at 8 AM and left at 7 PM, programmed to bill hours and destroy people who had never done me any wrong.

My phone buzzed. Another message from Marcus: "Dinner tonight? I made that **spinach** lasagna you like."

I stared at the screen. Three months ago, I would've been thrilled. Marcus was kind, successful, patient—all the things my ex-husband wasn't. But somewhere between the deposition transcripts and the midnight conference calls, I'd lost the ability to feel anything. I was just going through motions, simulated responses to simulated affection.

"Can't," I typed. "Working late."

Again.

After work, I drove to the community center instead of home. The pool was empty at 9 PM—chlorine-scented silence, water rippling under fluorescent lights. I'd played **baseball** in college, shortstop with dreams of the majors until my knee shattered in three places. Now, **swimming** was the only thing that made me feel something close to alive.

I slipped into the water, cold shocking me awake, and began lap after lap until my arms burned. The rhythm of stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe was the only meditation I knew. Somewhere around the fiftieth lap, tears began mixing with the chlorinated water. I was thirty-four years old, successful by every metric society cared about, and completely dead inside.

Marcus deserved better than a zombie lover who remembered how to simulate intimacy but forgot how to feel it. My father deserved more than a daughter who hadn't visited since Christmas, even though he remembered every inning of every game I'd ever played.

I pulled myself from the pool, muscles trembling, and sat on the edge, dripping. Water pooled around me like the life I couldn't seem to reanimate.

The phone buzzed again. Marcus: "I'll save you a plate. It'll keep."

Something cracked in my chest—not wide open, but a fissure, a chink in the armor. Maybe tomorrow I'd go. Maybe tomorrow I'd feel something real. But for now, I just sat there, watching the water smooth itself into glass, and tried to remember what it meant to be human.